Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3908, Sunday, May 30, 2010, Editor: Mark
How can that be-empty space that is full of everything that
matters? The mind cannot grasp it fully, as presence exists
beyond concepts and even beyond its own forms; and yet, that is
what you are. You can experience it with more subtle senses than
the physical senses and the mind. Ultimately, you
"sense" it by being it. You just are this full empty
presence.
It is this second movement of realization of essence, presence,
and fullness of Being that counteracts the belief that since I
(as ego) do not exist, therefore nothing exists and all is
illusion. It gives a heartfelt sense of meaning and purpose back
to this relative life of the body and mind, not as a means of
gratification to your idea of yourself, but as a pure expression
of the wonder and beauty of this deeper reality. Instead of
living a life in service to the ego's wants and needs, you can
find yourself fulfilling the deepest purposes of a human life: to
serve and express freedom, joy, beauty, peace and love. By itself
the realization of no-self can end up dry and lifeless, but when
the heart opens wide to the bigger truth of the true Self, life
is anything but dry and lifeless.
- Nirmala, from Beyond No Self
Beyond Words
Beyond words,
beyond imagining,
within the silent Void of Unknowing
the vastness of Reality is...
Behold!
The overflowing Fullness and
Infinite splendor of
THIS! - Metta Zetty
The world appears to you so overwhelmingly real because you think
of it all the time; cease thinking of it and it will dissolve
into thin mist.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That, posted to
DailyDharma
Immeasurable Reality
In its true sense spirituality is not a plaything or a pastime.
It has nothing to do with enhancing you or your status in the
dream state. Nor is it about gurus in long flowing robes, secret
oral teachings, ancient traditions, or holy books that people
claim were written by God. It's about here and now and you, and
whether you are asleep within the dream state or awake within the
awakened state.
It is the nature of all dreams that the characters therein are so
busy being - well, dream characters - that the bigger reality of
what lies outside the dream state eludes them. But then again,
dream characters don't wake up from the dreams they are a part
of; the dreamer does. If spirituality is to be meaningful it must
address what lies beyond the dream state that most of us create
in our minds and humanity lives in day-to-day, for unless we
awaken from our personal and collective dreams we will continue
to live in a state of unconsciousness on the surface of a life of
infinite potential.
Only that which is real and true has the power to liberate us
from the mechanical and magnetic draw of the dream state. For
ultimately it is ignorance (the belief in things that are untrue)
that imprisons us within a trance state, which is induced by
taking the conditioned stream of thinking within one's mind to be
true. If we are to awaken from the mind's hypnotic embrace, we
must question all of our beliefs and assumptions down to the very
source of our being until that which is true, real, and
everlasting reveals itself.
Truth is that which lies beyond the grasp of the dreaming mind.
It is not something that can be captured and stated like a fact
can. Truth is a timeless reality and therefore sacred in the true
sense of the word. Please do not think of truth in mystical terms
or even in spiritual terms. Truth refers to the whole of
existence and beyond. Truth exists as much in your teacup as it
does in your temples and churches. Truth is as present in
shopping for your groceries as it is in chanting to God. To think
of truth only in spiritual or religious terms is to miss the
whole of it, for in doing so you create the boundaries and
divisions that are the very antithesis of truth.
Truth is an immeasurable reality not at all separate from your
own being. For in the revelation of truth, all beings rest within
your being. Put more simply, if you cannot find it now underfoot,
I'm afraid that you have missed it entirely.
- Adyashanti
No Poem...
No poem with jeweled words
visits me now. Only the hills,
silent and black on an afternoon
of clouds in an almost-spring,
when children's laughter is swallowed
somewhere in schools, and you are away,
and the landlord's black hound
lies sleeping in the awakening grass.
There are letters scattered
as if on the floor - orders to pay
fines, or report to the Registry,
to meet the dark gavel of deadlines,
and there are prohibitions, posted
from someone without a face, without
a signature or name. Yet, if I wait
the spring leaves will write themselves,
the scripts of trees filling the hills.
And the granite and quartz will grow
ever so slowly, rising between cedar
and pine. This is the orchestra
of legato, while the daffodils play a quick
stacatto, and mosquitoes sleep at the window.
Perhaps soon the black hound will wake, bark,
run, like my heart, when you come home.
- Elaine Maria Upton
The everyday practice of dzogchen is simply to develop a complete
carefree acceptance, an openness to all situations without limit.
We should realise openness as the playground of our emotions and
relate to people without artificiality, manipulation or strategy.
We should experience everything totally, never withdrawing into
ourselves as a marmot hides in its hole. This practice releases
tremendous energy which is usually constricted by the process of
maintaining fixed reference points. Referentiality is the process
by which we retreat from the direct experience of everyday life.
Being present in the moment may initially trigger fear. But by
welcoming the sensation of fear with complete openness, we cut
through the barriers created by habitual emotional patterns.
When we engage in the practice of discovering space, we should
develop the feeling of opening ourselves out completely to the
entire universe. We should open ourselves with absolute
simplicity and nakedness of mind. This is the powerful and
ordinary practice of dropping the mask of self-protection.
We shouldn't make a division in our meditation between perception
and field of perception. We shouldn't become like a cat watching
a mouse. We should realise that the purpose of meditation is not
to go "deeply into ourselves" or withdraw from the
world. Practice should be free and non-conceptual, unconstrained
by introspection and concentration.
Vast unoriginated self-luminous wisdom space is the ground of
being - the beginning and the end of confusion. The presence of
awareness in the primordial state has no bias toward
enlightenment or non-enlightenment. This ground of being which is
known as pure or original mind is the source from which all
phenomena arise. It is known as the great mother, as the womb of
potentiality in which all things arise and dissolve in natural
self-perfectedness and absolute spontaneity.
All aspects of phenomena are completely clear and lucid. The
whole universe is open and unobstructed - everything is mutually
interpenetrating.
Seeing all things as naked, clear and free from obscurations,
there is nothing to attain or realise. The nature of phenomena
appears naturally and is naturally present in time-transcending
awareness. Everything is naturally perfect just as it is. All
phenomena appear in their uniqueness as part of the continually
changing pattern. These patterns are vibrant with meaning and
significance at every moment; yet there is no significance to
attach to such meanings beyond the moment in which they present
themselves.
This is the dance of the five elements in which matter is a
symbol of energy and energy a symbol of emptiness. We are a
symbol of our own enlightenment. With no effort or practice
whatsoever, liberation or enlightenment is already here.
The everyday practice of dzogchen is just everyday life itself.
Since the undeveloped state does not exist, there is no need to
behave in any special way or attempt to attain anything above and
beyond what you actually are. There should be no feeling of
striving to reach some "amazing goal" or "advanced
state."
To strive for such a state is a neurosis which only conditions us
and serves to obstruct the free flow of Mind. We should also
avoid thinking of ourselves as worthless persons - we are
naturally free and unconditioned. We are intrinsically
enlightened and lack nothing.
When engaging in meditation practice, we should feel it to be as
natural as eating, breathing and defecating. It should not become
a specialised or formal event, bloated with seriousness and
solemnity. We should realise that meditation transcends effort,
practice, aims, goals and the duality of liberation and
non-liberation. Meditation is always ideal; there is no need to
correct anything. Since everything that arises is simply the play
of mind as such, there is no unsatisfactory meditation and no
need to judge thoughts as good or bad.
Therefore we should simply sit. Simply stay in your own place, in
your own condition just as it is. Forgetting self-conscious
feelings, we do not have to think "I am meditating."
Our practice should be without effort, without strain, without
attempts to control or force and without trying to become
"peaceful."
If we find that we are disturbing ourselves in any of these ways,
we stop meditating and simply rest or relax for a while. Then we
resume our meditation. If we have "interesting
experiences" either during or after meditation, we should
avoid making anything special of them. To spend time thinking
about experiences is simply a distraction and an attempt to
become unnatural. These experiences are simply signs of practice
and should be regarded as transient events. We should not attempt
to re-experience them because to do so only serves to distort the
natural spontaneity of mind.
All phenomena are completely new and fresh, absolutely unique and
entirely free from all concepts of past, present and future. They
are experienced in timelessness.
The continual stream of new discovery, revelation and inspiration
which arises at every moment is the manifestation of our clarity.
We should learn to see everyday life as mandala - the luminous
fringes of experience which radiate spontaneously from the empty
nature of our being. The aspects of our mandala are the
day-to-day objects of our life experience moving in the dance or
play of the universe. By this symbolism the inner teacher reveals
the profound and ultimate significance of being. Therefore we
should be natural and spontaneous, accepting and learning from
everything. This enables us to see the ironic and amusing side of
events that usually irritate us.
In meditation we can see through the illusion of past, present
and future - our experience becomes the continuity of nowness.
The past is only an unreliable memory held in the present. The
future is only a projection of our present conceptions. The
present itself vanishes as soon as we try to grasp it. So why
bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?
We should free ourselves from our past memories and
preconceptions of meditation. Each moment of meditation is
completely unique and full of potentiality. In such moments, we
will be incapable of judging our meditation in terms of past
experience, dry theory or hollow rhetoric.
Simply plunging directly into meditation in the moment now, with
our whole being, free from hesitation, boredom or excitement, is
enlightenment.
- HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Dzogchen Practice in Everyday
Life