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#2250 - Sunday, September 4, 2005 - Editor: Gloria Lee

 


Endless Ages

Through endless ages, the mind has never changed

It has not lived or died, come or gone, gained or lost.

It isn’t pure or tainted, good or bad, past or future.
true or false, male or female. It isn’t reserved for
monks or lay people, elders or youths, masters or
idiots, the enlightened or unenlightened.

It isn’t bound by cause and effect and doesn’t
struggle for liberation. Like space, it has no form.

You can’t own it and you can’t lose it. Mountains.
rivers or walls can’t impede it. But this mind is
ineffable and difficult to experience. It is not the
mind of the senses. So many are looking for this

mind, yet it already animates their bodies.

It is theirs, yet they don’t realize it.

 

 

Bodhidarma

 



    "One mind is not-moving, empty mind;
clear mind is using this mind meticulously
from moment to moment.
One mind is like pushing "CLEAR" on your
calculator to return to zero;
clear mind means using your calculator:
1 + 2 = 3... CLEAR."
~ Zen Master Seung Sahn


From the book; "Only Don't Know," published by Shambhala
posted to Daily Dharma
 


    The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering ­ ours and that which is all around us ­ everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem to be.
- Pema Chodron


Transforming Confusion into Wisdom
Pema Chodron
Berkeley Shambhala Center
Fall 1999

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.

In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean ­you name it­ to have compassion and to care for these people, means not to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one's whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one could open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more loving and kind.

The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering ­ours and that which is all around us­ everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem
to be.

We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain, our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.

At that point you can change the focus and begin to do tonglen for what you are feeling and for millions of others just like you who at that very moment of time are feeling exactly the same stuckness and misery. Maybe you are able to name your pain. You recognize it clearly as terror or revulsion or anger or wanting to get revenge. So you breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same emotion and you send out relief or whatever opens up the space for yourself and all those countless others. Maybe you can't name what you're feeling. But you can feel it ­a tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness or whatever. Just contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it in ­for all of us and send out relief to all of us.

People often say that this practice goes against the grain of how we usually hold ourselves together. Truthfully, this practice does go against the grain of wanting things on our own terms, of wanting it to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to the others. The practice dissolves the armor of self-protection we've tried so hard to create around ourselves. In Buddhist language one would say that it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego.

Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure and, in the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we being to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality. It introduces us to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call shunyata. By doing the practice, we begin to connect with the open dimension of our being. At first we experience this as things not being such a big deal or so solid as they seemed before.

Tonglen can be done for those who are ill, those who are dying or have just died, or for those that are in pain of any kind. It can be done either as a formal meditation practice or right on the spot at any time. For example, if you are out walking and you see someone in pain ­right on the spot you can begin to breathe in their pain and send some out some relief. Or, more likely, you might see someone in pain and look away because it brings up your fear or anger; it brings up your resistance and confusion.

So on the spot you can do tonglen for all the people who are just like you, for everyone who wishes to be compassionate but instead is afraid, for everyone who wishes to be brave but instead is a coward.

Rather than beating yourself up, use your own stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all over the world.

Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us.

Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.

Source: http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/tonglen1.php#
___

Pema Chodron's Biography and Teachings
http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/biography.php



photo by Alan Larus http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/light&dark.htm      

Buddha Within
Jamgon Kongtrul


The ultimate luminosity of Dharmakaya, absolute truth,
is nothing other than the very nature
of this uncontrived, ordinary mind.
Don't look elsewhere for the Buddha.

It is nothing other than the nature of this present awareness.
This is the Buddha within.

There are innumerable Dharma teachings.
There are many antidotes
to many different kinds of spiritual diseases.
There are many words
in the Mahamudra and Dzogchen nondual teachings.

But the root, the heart of all practices is included here,
in simply sustaining the luminous nature of this present awareness.

If you search elsewhere for something better,
a Buddha superior to this present awareness,
you are deluding yourself.
You are chained,
entangled in the barbed wire of hope and fear.

So give it up!
Simply sustain present wakefulness,
moment after moment."


posted to Dzogchen Practice by Jax

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