Discovering the True Nature of Mind
Geshe
Tenzin Wangyal teaches us a five-stage Dzogchen meditation that begins with contemplating
our worst enemy and culminates in the discovery that mind is empty, clear and
blissful.
Vision is mind.
Mind is empty.
Emptiness is clear light.
Clear
light is union.
Union is great bliss.
This is the heart instruction of Dawa
Gyaltsen, a Bön meditation master who lived in the eighth century. Bön
is the native, pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet, which has incorporated many Buddhist
elements. This teaching is a direct introduction to the nature of mind and is
not elaborate with ritual. The pith instructions of these masters-their heart
advice to their students-are often only a few lines, but these few lines can guide
the fortunate practitioner to recognizing his or her own true nature as Buddha.
Vision
is mind.
How do we work with Dawa Gyaltsen's instruction, which begins, "Vision
is mind"? Vision includes everything we perceive, but I suggest that you
use what bothers you as an entrance to this practice. Do you have a famous person
in your life? The famous person is the one who seems to be born to create a problem
for you, as if that were his or her number-one mission in life. Sometimes we feel
there are people like that. Such people can make trouble for you not only with
their presence, but with one single postcard sent to you. When you see the postcard
with their handwriting on it, you are immediately disturbed.
So we begin our
meditation practice with this famous person as our starting point. Create a protected
environment and sit in a comfortable upright position. Now invite the image of
your famous person to come into your awareness. They always come anyway, but this
time you are inviting them so that you can look more deeply into this experience.
What exactly is this famous person composed of? See the image of the person, the
character of this person who bothers you so much. Sense the energetic or emotional
presence of this person. When your famous person was born, he or she did not show
any physical signs or marks of what you now see. And not all people share your
view of this person. What you perceive is your mind, your karmic vision, which
is more karma than vision.
So in this moment, instead of looking out and focusing
on that person, look inward. Step back and let the experience come in. Do not
step forward but step backwards. Don't go to your office and make phone calls
and send emails. Just sit and close your eyes and reflect on this person, and
experience what you're experiencing at this very moment. This is your vision.
It is very much in you, in your mind. That famous person is now an image or a
felt sense. Perhaps you have a sense of being contracted, closed or agitated in
the presence of this person; feel this fully, not simply with your intellect.
Sit with the image of your famous person, and with the resulting feelings and
sensations, until you recognize that this experience is in you, and you conclude,
"Vision is mind."
Mind is empty
The next question is, "What
is this mind?" Look for your mind. Look from the top of your head to the
soles of your feet. Can you find anything solid? Can you find any permanent color,
shape or form that you can call your mind? If you look directly, you come to the
conclusion that your mind is empty. Some people come to this conclusion very quickly;
for others it requires an exhausting search to discover this clear awareness.
But this is what mind is. You can obviously pollute that clarity in any given
moment, but by continuing to look directly, you can discover that mind itself
is just clear. Clear means empty. "Empty" is a philosophical term, but
as experience it is clear and open.
So what began as the famous person is
now clear and open. If this is not your experience, you are grasping the image
and holding on to the experience in some way. Just be. Relax into the experience.
Simply be. Mind is empty. When we arrive at the experience of emptiness and vastness
through the doorway of the famous person, it is possible to have quite a strong
experience of emptiness.
Emptiness is clear light
Our next question is,
"What is this emptiness?" Sometimes emptiness is scary to the point
where someone may prefer even their famous person to this nothing where one experiences
the absence of self. But this experience of open space is essential. It clears
the identity that creates the famous person. In order to clear the obstacle of
the famous person, you have to clear the identity that creates that famous person.
There is an expression, "The sword of wisdom cuts both ways." Don't
be scared by this. Remember: "Emptiness is clear light." It has light.
It is possible to feel the light in the absence of the stuff.
Usually we accumulate
a lot of stuff in life. Then we have a big yard sale in order to get rid of that
stuff. For a moment we might feel "Ahhh . . ."-a sense of relief at
getting rid of our old stuff-but soon we are excited again about all the new stuff
we can accumulate to decorate and fill the open space. In your meditation, when
things clear, just be with this. Don't focus on the absence of the stuff, but
discover the presence of the light in that space. It's there. I'm not saying it's
easy to recognize and connect with the light-clearly it will depend on how much
you are caught up with appearances and with the famous person. I'm not talking
about the clear appearance of the famous person; I'm speaking of the clear appearance
of the space.
So when you look at appearance and discover it is mind, and then
discover that mind is empty, clear light emerges. When you look for the mind,
you don't find the mind. When you don't find anything, the Dzogchen instruction
is to "abide without distraction in that which has not been elaborated."
What has not been elaborated is that space, that openness. So you look for mind;
you don't find anything. What you don't find is pure space which is not elaborated.
So don't do anything. Don't change anything. Just allow. When you abide in that
space without changing anything, what is is clear light. The experience or knowledge
of emptiness is clear light. It is awareness.
Clear light is the experience
of vast emptiness. The reason you have a famous person in the first place is that
you experience yourself as separated from the experience of the vast, open space.
Not recognizing the vast space, not being familiar with it, you experience visions.
Not recognizing the visions as mind, you see them as solid and separate and out
there-and not only out there, but disturbing you and creating all kinds of hassles
for you that you have to deal with.
Perhaps you say, "Well, I am very
clear about the direction in my life." Here, you are clear about something.
The clarity Dawa Gyaltsen points to is not clear about something; it is clear
in the sense of being. You experience your essence, your existence, your being
as clear. That clarity is the best. Through experiencing that clarity, you overcome
self-doubt.
Clear light is union
From this experience of vast emptiness
we say, "Clear light is union." The space and the light cannot be separated.
Clear refers to space, and light refers to awareness; awareness and space are
inseparable. There is no separation between clear presence and space, between
awareness and emptiness.
We have a lot of notions of union: yin and yang,
male and female, wisdom and compassion. When you pay close attention to the experience
of emptiness, you experience clarity. If you try to look for clarity, you cannot
find it-it becomes emptiness. If you don't find it, and you abide there, it becomes
clear. The experiences of clarity and emptiness are union in the sense that they
are not separate. Clarity is the experience of openness. If you don't have the
experience of openness, you cannot be clear. What is clear is that openness, the
emptiness. What is empty and open is that clarity. The two are inseparable. Recognizing
this is called union.
This means that our experiences do not affect our relation
to openness. It is usually the case that experiences affect our connection to
openness because immediately we get excited and attached. Then we grasp, or we
become agitated, conflicted and disturbed. When that doesn't happen, when our
experience spontaneously arises and does not obscure us, that is union: the inseparable
quality of clear and light. You are free; you are connected. You are connected;
you are free.
This combination experience, whether in deep meditation or in
life, is rare. Often, if you are "free," that means you are disconnected.
So this sense of union is important. Having the ability to do something and the
ability to feel free, having the ability to be with somebody and still feel a
sense of freedom, is so important. That is what is meant by "clear light
is union."
Union is great bliss
If you recognize and experience this
inseparable quality, then you can experience bliss. Why is bliss experienced?
Because that solid obstacle to being deeply connected with yourself has disappeared.
You can have a strong experience of bliss because you have released something.
Bliss spontaneously comes because there's nothing that obscures you or separates
you from your essence. You have a feeling that everything is complete just as
it is.
So you begin with the famous person, and you end up with bliss. What
more could you ask for? This is the basis of the whole Dzogchen philosophy in
a few lines. The famous person you project is great bliss, but you must understand
this as your mind, and that very mind as empty. From there, emptiness is clear
light, clear light is union, union is great bliss. You can experience this in
an instant. The moment you see the famous person, you can instantly see light.
But sometimes we have to go through a longer process to see this. It is a question
of ability. So this progression, this process, is our practice. It takes time.
But there is a clear map.
These five principles can be applied in daily practice.
You can do this practice anyplace, in any given moment, and especially when the
famous person is bothering you. When a difficult circumstance arises, of course
you could just live with it, or you could try to find one of many solutions. But
as a Dzogchen practitioner, this practice of the Fivefold Teachings is what you
do. Perhaps you lost a business deal and you feel bad. What does "lost"
really mean? You look at that; that is vision. Whether fear-based vision or greed
vision, you look directly at that experience. Be with that experience. Then you
realize it is mind, and you look at your mind and discover that mind is clear-just
clear. Even when we have a lot of problems, the essence of mind is always clear.
It is always clear. There is always the possibility to connect with the essence
of mind rather than the confusion aspect of it.
How we conclude
I love
this practice very much. On the one hand, it is so practical. It gives you a tool
to deal with a very specific situation. On the other hand, it guides you directly
into the essence, to the root of yourself. It always amazes me when people fight
with one another and say, "Oh, that terrible person. We have been good friends
for a long time and I always thought that person was so honest. It took me a long
time to discover that that person is really terrible." So your conclusion
is that that person is terrible. Have you heard people say things like that? This
is not really a healthy solution. It's like going to therapy and realizing, "My
dad was really a bad guy. Now I feel much better." Of course, you might realize
some difficult aspect of your situation, but realizing that is not the conclusion.
You need to conclude into the essence, conclude into the root, to come to the
place in yourself where you realize your mind is clear and blissful and the image
that was bothering you has finally dissolved through your meditation.
What
is the conclusion here? The conclusion is bliss. "Union is great bliss."
What better conclusion would you want than that? And it will be like that if you
open your mind to learn, trust with your heart, and pray. It's really important
to pray, and to pray for a deep experience. Because if what you think is not that
deep, the result won't be that deep either. Through prayer, you open your heart
and receive the blessings of effortlessness. The quality of effortlessness is
a quality of heart, and devotion and prayer open the heart. So praying is wonderful.
It sets up the intention and puts you in the right direction, so when you do the
practice of meditation-of directly looking and being with your experience-it will
work.
I encourage you to practice this heart advice of Dawa Gyaltsen, to look
directly into what is disturbing you and discover the nature of your mind. Through
the profound simplicity of these five lines, not only can you heal your day-to-day
life and make it lighter and more pleasant, but you can recognize and connect
with your innermost essence, the nature of your mind as Buddha.
Questions and
Answers
Question: In terms of the experience of "vision is mind,"
it seems that our grasping mind, our small mind, is different from the natural
state of mind which is clear light. I don't know how to bridge the gap between
the grasping mind and emptiness, because the grasping mind doesn't seem empty.
Tenzin
Wangyal Rinpoche: It doesn't seem empty, but it is. If you look at the ocean you
might find it calm and peaceful, or with small ripples, or bigger ripples, or
small waves, or bigger waves. All these appearances-from calm to ripples to waves-have
the quality of wetness. All are water in every appearance. The appearance of the
ocean can never be anything other than water, no matter how terrible or peaceful
the ocean appears. In the same way, no matter what vision appears, it is always
empty. The essence is always there. The only question is, "Am I able to see
it or not?"
It is wonderful when the famous person dissolves, but I still
have an obligation to him or her, a responsibility. He or she is my child. So
the "famous person" situation may keep recurring. Do I keep dissolving
in the same way?
Sure. The famous person can still be famous without disturbing
you as much. The reason we call him or her "famous" is that they really
bother you. Do they really need to bother you? No. He or she can be as they are
or they can be different, but they don't have to bother you. We have expectations
that things need to be a certain way. Do they really have to be a certain way?
No.
Let's take a situation in which I'm trying to help my child. How am I trying
to help? I want him to go to school and study well. So what's the problem? Well,
the child has some difficulty learning. O.K. So I'm trying to do the best I can
under the circumstances. If I'm doing that, then what am I worrying about? Some
people learn faster, some learn slower. Right?
But the problem is not about
the child learning too slowly; it's that I can't accept the situation. It's not
about the child; it's about me. I have some fixed idea about what would be good
for my child. This is usually the case. I think, "What I want is good for
you." The child probably doesn't agree. He might be interested in a completely
different thing than I am. But I feel like I'm the boss, and of course I am: I
have a moral responsibility and so on. But there is someplace where it is just
fine. I need to realize that.
Is it just the lack of practice of recognizing
that "vision is mind" that makes me feel there is a hook that draws
me back to, "Yeah, but that famous person really is mean"?
I am not
suggesting that this is the only way to deal with life. This is one of the Dzogchen
ways. It is not a samsaric way, and sometimes we have to deal in a samsaric way.
If somebody is trying to cheat me, of course I don't like that. If somebody asks
me for something, I don't mind giving. But if somebody is taking something from
me, then I don't want to give. If that aspect of me seems to be who I really am
in this moment, then I will fight or do whatever needs to be done. It's not a
question of one approach being more valid than another. Who I am and what realization
I have determines how skillfully I am able to work. In the end, the real sense
of victory is the practice. But in the conventional sense, we do whatever we have
to do. We naturally defend and we fight. Sometimes, you defend, you fight, and
you still lose. Then maybe you don't have any other choice but to see it as emptiness!
That is a forceful way of discovering emptiness.
Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche,
the director of Ligmincha Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia, was the first
lama to bring the Bön Dzogchen teachings to the West. He is the author of,
among other books, Healing with Form, Energy, and Light: The Five Elements in
Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra, and Dzogchen.