Thoughts, Thinking
Thoughts are like bubbles in water; when not clung to they arise within the water and dissolve back into the water. Really, for a true yogi there is no harm no matter how wildly the thoughts move. The state without any thought movement, the indifferent state of absentmindedness is a greater enemy.
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Thought means thinking and unenlightened sentient beings think. Let go of the thoughts of the three times, not by throwing them away – that is only more thinking – but by letting go. In the moment of seeing the essence, the thoughts of the three times are automatically dissolved, disbanded.
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By recognizing the empty essence in a thought, it vanishes like a bubble in water. That is how to deal with any particular thought at hand. Once you know how to let the present thought dissolve, any subsequent thought can be dealt with in exactly the same way, as simply another present thought. But if we get involved in the thought, thinking of what is being thought of and continuing it, then there is no end.
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The thoughtfree state of awareness is free from dualistic clinging, free from concepts. It does not mean a state of mindless cessation.
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The awakened state free from thoughts of the three times is the buddha mind.
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We need to train in this nondual awareness right now. Nothing else can stop our thinking and if thinking does not stop, neither does samsara – it continues on. Samsara needs our thinking to perpetuate itself, only our own thoughts can keep it alive.
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The moment you shatter the chain of thinking, you are free from the three realms of samsara.
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Thoughtfree Wakefulness
Thoughtfree means free of conceptual thinking, and wakefulness means that the knowing quality is not lost.
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Yeshe, original wakefulness, implies an absence of clinging to subject and object, perceiver and perceived. This is not the case with normal mind, which is always structured as the duality of perceiver and perceived.
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You cannot relinquish one thought by grasping onto another. In the moment of recognizing the authentic thoughtfree wakefulness, every type of discursive thought movement is destroyed.
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Buddhahood
There is only one buddhahood, one awakened state, one ultimate destination. The true essence of buddhahood is undivided empty cognizance suffused with knowing. This is also the basic nature of your own mind. The undivided empty cognizance, suffused with knowing is the same for a follower of Sakya, Gelug, Nyingma or Kagyü – they all have to enter the same path to enlightenment. Various types of true enlightenment do not exist, only different words, with the same meaning.
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There is a difference between being deluded and undeluded, between recognizing and not recognizing our nature. Although we have the essence of buddhahood within us, it is temporarily obscured. The primordially unmistaken quality is called enlightenment, buddhahood, the awakened state of dharmakaya. The primordially deluded aspect is called ignorance, the deluded experience of sentient beings.
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The awakened state is free of thought, yet vividly awake. If we train in this steadily and gradually, it becomes the fully awakened state, buddhahood.
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The real buddha is the nature of our mind. Right now, our buddha nature is covered by obscurations that we need to purify. We also need to gather the two accumulations of merit and wisdom. A practice in which we think that the buddha is outside of ourselves, while ignoring the buddha within, will, by itself, never bring complete enlightenment. If we expect an external buddha up there in the sky to give us all the common and supreme accomplishments, we are merely placing our hopes in an outer object. The ultimate deity is within our own mind. We attain enlightenment by recognizing our true nature and training in that recognition.
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The difference between buddhas and sentient beings lies in the latter’s narrowness of scope or attitude. The reason all sentient beings confine themselves to their own little area of samsara is their limited attitude and thinking; that is what does it.
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Right now, our awareness is fragmented. It is said that the mind of a sentient being is like a fragment of the sky. Whereas the mind of the buddhas is like the oneness of space, without one space during the day and another at night. There is neither a day nor a night space, nor such distinctions as yesterdays sky and today’s sky. Sky has no such division as past and present. It is oneness, a continuum.
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The difference between buddhas and sentient beings is only the difference between the narrowness and the openness of space. Sentient beings are like the open sky held within a tightly closed fist, while buddhas are fully open, all-encompassing.
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Dharma Practice
To practice the Dharma means, chiefly, to nurture the qualities of trust, diligence and insight. Trust is to have confidence in the teachings and the one who taught them – in the Buddha and the Sangha, the upholders of the teachings. Diligence is what carries you through to completion. Insight is the outcome of listening to teachings, thinking about them and applying them. When you hear something and you gain confidence in it, then you have insight, which is the knowledge resulting from learning. Thinking it over, you gain the knowledge from reflection. Finally, there is the knowledge acquired through meditation practice.
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The whole point of Dharma practice is to remove the clouds and allow the actualization of what already is – the awakened state of mind, the buddha nature. The nature of our mind is primordially pure, primordially enlightened. The way to remove our two obscurations is to train in conditioned virtue and apply the unconditioned training in original wakefulness, i.e. the two accumulations.
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Bodhichitta
By knowledge (prajña) alone or means (upaya) alone one will not get enlightened. By compassion alone, without emptiness, it is also somewhat difficult. Emptiness, unembraced by compassion, is not the perfect path and one’s Dharma will stray onto the wrong track of self-interest.
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Compassion does manifest spontaneously when resting in awareness. It is said that the expression arises as compassion. Although it is taught that compassion should be unartificial, uncontrived, in the beginning it is necessary to fabricate slightly.
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Vajrayana
During the present Age of Strife, it seems as though people are seldom amiable; rather, they are always trying to outdo one another. Our time owes its name to this fundamental competitiveness. But this is exactly the reason that Vajrayana is so applicable to the present era. The stronger and more forceful the disturbing emotions are, the greater the potential for recognizing our original wakefulness.
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There are three different approaches to applying Vajrayana in practice: taking the ground as path, taking the path as path, and taking the fruition as path. These three approaches can be understood by using the analogy of a gardener or farmer. Taking the ground or cause as path is like tilling soil and sowing seeds. Taking the path as path is like weeding, watering, fertilizing and tending crops. Taking the fruition as path is the attitude of simply picking the ripened fruit or the fully bloomed flowers. The Dzogchen approach is to take the complete result, the state of enlightenment itself, as the path.
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Vajrayana is said to be a swift path to enlightenment, simply due to unifying means and knowledge, development stage and completion stage. Vajrayana practice involves combining the visualization of a deity together with the recognition of mind essence; that is why it is a swift path.
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Vajrayana training is the means to realize everything as it is, to realize that all that appears and exists is the buddha mandala. That is why we train in sadhana practice.
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Yidam
When it comes to realizing a certain yidam, the most important points are: recognize emptiness, do the practice out of compassion for all sentient beings and be free from hope and fear. If you practice in this way, you are certain to realize the deity-, there is no doubt about it.
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The real practice is recognizing rigpa, and you use the yidam as the external form of the practice. Although every yidam manifests in various aspects with different qualities, in essence they are all the same the awakened state of rigpa.
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Try to see yidam practice as a gift the buddhas have given us because we have requested it. When we take refuge, we are asking for protection, to be safeguarded. The real protection lies in the teachings on how to remove the obscurations and attain realization. Yidam practice provides this true protection. Through it, we can remove what needs to be removed and realize what needs to be realized, and thereby attain accomplishment.
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Yidam practice can be brought into your life at any situation, at any moment. You bring this practice along whether you sit or whether you walk, whatever you are involved in. Do not think that you should stop after a set number of recitations. Continue this practice your entire life. Yidam practice is such a profound support because it contains all the aspects of Vajrayana.
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Yidam practice is like adding oil to the fire of practice; it blazes up even higher and hotter.
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Devotion, Compassion
It is not enough to just say, “Things are empty, mind is empty, everything is empty.” It is not enough to only think rigpa. One needs to gather the accumulations, purify negative karmas and receive the blessings of the glorious guru. It is said that to depend on other methods than these should be known as delusion. By other methods, one will not realize rigpa.
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Devotion to all the buddhas above means to all the enlightened lineage masters from dharmakaya, Samantabhadra down to your own guru. Compassion for all sentient beings below means for all the six kinds of beings who have been one’s mother. These two – devotion and compassion – are like your head and your feet. By heart alone you are not a whole human being. Never say, “Only rigpa, only rigpa, I do not need devotion or compassion.” That is not the authentic way to practice.
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The special quality of Buddhism is, at best, to recognize emptiness, the mind essence, but if not, you should definitely practice compassion. Anyone can cultivate compassion. As I have mentioned before, imagine your mother is in front of you and then some enemies come and cut off her arms, legs and head – how would you feel? That is called compassion. It is an overwhelming feeling. For example, especially if you are incapable or are tied down with chains and ropes and your mother is dragged in front of you. The enemies arrive and first they pull out her eyes, strangle her and finally take out her heart. How would you feel? You would feel love and compassion. Through the blessing or virtue of this compassion, emptiness will dawn within your being.
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The precious relative bodhichitta is compassion and the precious ultimate bodhichitta is emptiness. With compassion and emptiness, enlightenment is unavoidable. All the sutras, tantras, scriptures and oral instructions are contained within this. It is not all right to say, “I don’t need devotion, I don’t need compassion for beings, just meditation is sufficient.” With compassion and emptiness, the view is automatically like a blazing fire. When this happens the profound emptiness, self-existing wakefulness, very quickly arises in one’s being. This is unfailing, unfabricated, unobscured, the straight path for attaining enlightenment within rigpa.
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What is the supreme method or means? It is devotion and compassion. In the beginning, you need a fabricated devotion, a natural unfabricated devotion will not happen right away. It is also said that uncontrived compassion does not occur immediately. How do you do it? As you get more and more stable in awareness, you will feel, “Sentient beings are unaware of this most precious thing, which is like the Buddha in the palm of my hand.” Naturally, you will feel compassion toward sentient beings, that is how it will be. And devotion is like this, “How fantastic to have received teachings on how to cut through the very basis and root of confusion. It is incredible, this perfection of all virtues, exhaustion of all faults. There is nothing superior to this awareness!” This is how you gain trust and confidence. The devotion and compassion that does not need to be fabricated is present within this awareness, in your own essence.
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Four Mind-Changings
The most excellent body is the human body within the realm of desire, the Kamaloka. In the realm of desire, the emotions are quite strong, unlike in the gods’ realms including the seventeen realms of form or in the four formless realms where the emotions are not very strong nor are the wisdoms or the antidotes. It is said, “The stronger the emotions, the stronger the wisdoms.” When you have a fire if you only put on a little wood, the flames will only be quite small. If you put on a lot of wood, you will have a huge fire. The human body is said to be the most excellent, first class.
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We have been born in a place where it has been difficult to be born – the southern Jambu Continent; we have met the one who is difficult to meet – the great being, the qualified master; and we have obtained what is difficult to obtain – the sacred teachings. Thus, we now possess the threefold ease and being free from the three difficulties, we have obtained the precious human body. This possession is indispensable for the short path for attaining enlightenment in this very body and life.
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The starting point, the first step through the door to Dharma practice, is the understanding that life is impermanent, that our time is running out. Not taking impermanence to heart prevents our Dharma practice from being successful. Although we might think we do not have time for Dharma practice, is there anybody who has time to die?
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If the effect of an action were to manifest immediately, then even if someone said, “Please do a negative deed,” there is no way we would do so because we would instantly see the result. If we have eyes and stand on the brink of an abyss, we will not jump, because we see that by jumping we would die. If we could see the effect of our good and evil actions, we would never commit negative actions. But this world is not like that; here, the results of our actions appear unclear and vague. If the result of a negative action would ripen the moment after enacting it, nobody would commit evil. Likewise, people would not hold back from positive deeds because the effect would be instantaneous. However, the results of actions do not ripen immediately; they are not instantly discernible, but only ripen slowly. Due to not realizing the positive and negative results of actions and not understanding impermanence, we are completely oblivious to the consequences of our actions. We do not see what is happening, we do not see how much or how little merit we have, so we walk around like stupid cows.
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The Buddha spoke of the ultimate view that cuts through the root of the three poisons. If we want to bring an end to samsaric existence and cross the ocean of samsaric pain and suffering, we need to practice the precious Dharma that the Buddha taught. If, on the other hand, we are happy and content to continue in the three realms of samsara and we are not tired of undergoing endless suffering, of course we do not need to practice the Dharma. If we think, “I’ve been circling around taking birth, growing old, getting sick, and dying, taking birth, growing old, getting sick, and dying again and again endlessly, and I’ll just go on like that,” we can certainly continue doing so, and we don’t need to practice the Dharma.
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In Tibet, there is a saying, “When seen from afar, yaks look healthy and handsome; close up, they look like sickly sheep; but under their fleece, they are infested with lice and scabies.” In other words, when we look at others from afar they may appear to have happiness, prestige, friends and wealth. But when we get closer, we see that they are not very happy and their situation is not ideal. There is always something to complain about, and when we get very close and examine their inner feelings, each person has his own set of worries and carries his own burden around with him. No one is in perfect happiness. That is why the Buddha called samsara an ocean of suffering, not an ocean of bliss.
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Futility
To understand that whatever mundane activity we do, whatever we have done, is totally futile, that is true insight. That is real understanding. Nothing other than Dharma has any real value, any real substance. So, what next? Apply the Dharma! Apply it increasingly, and you will capture the stronghold of the view. That is the way to truly understand the Dharma. When we look closely at things around us and in ourselves, we should come to the understanding that everything we have done is basically useless, There is true understanding in realizing that: “I have really fooled myself. Nobody else fooled me; I fooled myself.”
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Meaningful
In this life, only the pursuance of buddhahood, the state of complete enlightenment is meaningful.
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