who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?’
The Summer Day Mary Oliver
Mister Grasshopper painting by Nancy Griswold.
This poem really speaks to me, so profoundly. Of prayer, awareness, of doing nothing, letting go, and opening to what is. Profoundly opening.
How wonderful the evocation of the richness of life which opens up for us when we drop agendas and rest in open receptivity. Life can truly reveal itself, in all its fullness.
For me this is one of the reasons why Dzogchen suits me so well at this point. It’s not an approach which is fundamentally built on a renunciate model, as Sutrayana is. Instead it’s one where the goal is coming into full relationship with life. Mahamudra shares this approach.
When we let go of the push/pull of want/not want we begin to come into relationship in life in which it can present itself in all its colour and vibrancy, and reveal the profound freshness that is its luminous emptiness.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
… the poem asks – when choices are made, and we live from those choices.
Resting in the utter freshness what more could there be, what more could be done? Not wanting something from it, not needing something. Just being, just there, just open, just bare.
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?’
How precious this human life, and how rapidly it passes by. Is it passing us by, or are we it. Being life. Loving life?
And then death. This thing that validates life. That gives it its meaning. Life and death. And that which is beyond life and death. The unborn, the undying. That which expresses itself in this entrancing, luminous display.
Poetry reaches beyond words
So often I find poetry conveys what more prosaic descriptive text does not. Somehow reaching those beyond time, beyond space realms which defy more conceptual writing. Even poems from other spiritual traditions, where I may not be fully aligned with their approach or view. Or poems from outside the various spiritual traditions. There are words in poems, and then a space opens. And you rest there, in that space.
How wonderful indeed, this poem …. and this life!
The poet Mary Oliver, writer of the poem Summer Day
I thought I’d reflect on Patrul Rinpoche’s profound Dzogchen teaching on the nature of mind, awareness, and emptiness. The wisdom of inseparable emptiness and clarity is so clearly and directly pointed out here in his ‘The Life and Liberation of the Mind’.
Emaho! Mind itself has always been without substance. It is not seen by looking, but is emptiness. It is not a void, but is cognizant and clear. This inseparable awareness and emptiness is pervasive like space. You can steady it, but it moves aimlessly and unimpededly. You can set it in motion, but it returns to its own natural state. Even without arms and legs, it runs about everywhere. In motion, it does not disappear but returns to its own place. Even without eyes, it sees everything. But the experience of seeing turns into emptiness. You cannot pinpoint any essence of mind, And yet thoughts and impressions still arise. It is not existent because it turns into emptiness. It is not non-existent because it thinks, sees and experiences. The radiance of the union of appearance and emptiness blazes. The self-radiance of empty yet cognizant dharmakāya is clear. Complete with the five wisdoms, it radiates fully. The primordially pure natural state is spontaneously present, The kāyas and pure realms appear without obstruction, And the mother and child luminosities merge as one.
The natural state of mind, which is like this, Have you realized it, all you realized ones? Have you understood it, all you great meditators? Put this into practice, all you yogis!
Patrul Rinpoche The Life and Liberation of the Mind
Patrul Rinpoche – from the murals of Shechen Monastery
Patrul Rinpoche’s teachings are always so right to the point for me – pointing out so directly, so powerfully. How wonderful to have found his teachings in this lifetime!
Mind itself has always been without substance. It is not seen by looking, but is emptiness.
When you look at mind, at experience, you will not find anything of any substance. It’s all dreamlike, and melts before your gaze.
Utterly transparent, completely ungraspable, even though you are aware that something seems to be there.
How wonderous that all that you formerly felt was so important now appears like a conjuring trick – just a play of light, reflected and groundless.
It is not a void, but is cognizant and clear. This inseparable awareness and emptiness is pervasive like space.
Yes, something seems to be there. So clearly there. You witness this magical display in all its colour, all its vibrancy. You cannot deny the display. Yet equally there is absolutely nothing there at all. How marvellous this seemingly paradoxical to logic, yet utterly clear to insight view of emptiness-appearances!
Not two different things, inseparable and non-dual – emptiness and appearances both reveal themselves. And most surprising of all the appearances are themselves entirely empty. Emptiness, and empty appearances! Appearances which are none other than the expression of emptiness itself!
You can steady it, but it moves aimlessly and unimpededly. You can set it in motion, but it returns to its own natural state. Even without arms and legs, it runs about everywhere. In motion, it does not disappear but returns to its own place.
Years gone by I knew I had to work so hard, as a matter of life and death, to create the right conditions in mind to give rise to insight and then release. How hard I tried to train my mind and develop my meditation.
Yet how clearly now I see that truly, nothing needs to be done (in a sense). Mind is this way. It’s nature is this way. Appearances self-arise. Appearances self-liberate. They never stray from their appearance-emptiness nature. How could they! So what is to be done?
No longer desperately needing to still the mind, to create the conditions for attainment. No longer needing things to be this way, rather than that way. No longer in the dualistic push and pull of suffering, trying to get beyond suffering.
Just this way appearances sometimes and often arise. Just this way they melt away, never once straying from utter groundlessness. Groundles before arising, groundless when in motion, groundless when seemingly gone.
Where did they go? Did they arise? I saw a move, and play in mind. Did I?
Appearances return to their place. What place was that? Did they ever leave?
Self-liberating, *I* did nothing. Nothing to be done.
Vapour-like clouds in a clear blue sky.
Even without eyes, it sees everything. But the experience of seeing turns into emptiness.
I used to hear the instruction to *look* and really strained to see. Later I heard the instruction to *look* and gently allowed whatever to be just be. Now I know that the looker is the looked at – well, neither of those is remotely true. There is no difference between looker or looked at. So how to look? Rest in the knowing, rest in awareness, rest in arising, rest in being. Just be that which is being that. As if awareness is aware of awareness. As if both sides of that are utterly missing the point – View (Tawa) is not viewing something – one looking at the other. Both sides collapse, and you be Tawa.
Opening out, vastly out, emptiness somehow knows. Emptiness reflects emptiness. And all is complete. Resting in vastness, resting in pristine purity. Resting as completeness. Where nothing can be found, yet the magical display expresses its … incontestable vibrant play.
You cannot pinpoint any essence of mind, And yet thoughts and impressions still arise.
Somehow I thought that I’d find ‘something’. This reality, this nature of mind, this essence. How convinced I was of looking for this prize that all the teachers announced as the beyond the beyond.
Yet how close and simple and utterly unassuming is this that I searched for. No wonder the Mahamudra song warns it’s too easy, too close, too good and too deep that you’ll overlook it, as if its so far away, so utterly special.
Yet really, it’s like the water the fish swims in, yet doesn’t know what water is, as its all its ever known, the nature of its whole universe. Overlooked, surely this can’t be it?
Try as you might you can’t really say the essence of mind is this. You say words like empty and groundless – but if the mind focuses on those, and looks for them, how easily it collapses down onto concepts, into contents of mind. Yet how wondrously spacious is what was pointed to, utterly open, utterly transparent, utterly without characteristics.
Yet I want to say pure, pristine pure, never tarnished by those empty arisings. I want to say empty. I want to say peaceful. I want to say natural, preternaturally natural. Yet every word takes you away, unless you drop and let go, back to where you’ve always been.
It is not existent because it turns into emptiness. It is not non-existent because it thinks, sees and experiences.
Not truly existing, yet not not existing. Empty, utterly empty, yet this very emptiness is the expression itself, the magical display itself. How wondrous.
The Five Wisdom Buddhas
The radiance of the union of appearance and emptiness blazes. The self-radiance of empty yet cognizant dharmakāya is clear. Complete with the five wisdoms, it radiates fully. The primordially pure natural state is spontaneously present, The kāyas and pure realms appear without obstruction, And the mother and child luminosities merge as one.
You could hardly say this magical display didn’t blaze, such is the vibrant luminosity of the display.
You could hardly say this display that emptiness itself manifest isn’t utterly pure, despite the intensity of that unborn, undying diversity of appearances. Not even remotely affected by the display, utterly pure, primordially pure. Primordial purity.
I didn’t do anything to cause it. It’s always there. Whether clouded by ignorance, and lost in the minds drama. Or resting in Rigpa, seeing emptiness, appearance and their nondual, non-separate equality and sameness. One taste. One flavour. Yet the manifest manifests in seeming multiplicity. All the while never straying from the empty, pure essence that is the groundless ground.
Luminous emptiness is the ground. Luminous emptiness the meditation. Luminous emptiness the result.
The natural state of mind, which is like this, Have you realized it, all you realized ones? Have you understood it, all you great meditators? Put this into practice, all you yogis!
Beloved Patrul Rinpoche, who gave us Flight of the Garuda, we hear your words!
Stop seeking, stop trying, let go, and slide back into the warm bath of empty awareness, allow it to hold and enfold you, and find what you looked beyond. Be that which you searched elsewhere for. Right there, right here, right in its utter rightness.
As I stumble along I hear the faint echoes of the pointing out instructions. Hear the reflected sounds. And know all will be well. All is complete. Never otherwise. Coming home, never having truly left.
The searcher will never find the searched for.
Yet you’ll never know that unless you search.
How marvellous. How hilarious. How paradoxical this is.
It is certain that the nature of the mind is empty and without any foundation whatsoever.
Your own mind is insubstantial like the empty sky.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
Being without any view that decisively decides that it is empty,
It is certain that self-originated primal awareness has been clear (and luminous) from the very beginning,
Like the heart of the sun, which is itself self-originated.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
It is certain that this primal awareness or gnosis, which is one’s intrinsic awareness, is unceasing,
like the main channel of a river that flows unceasingly.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
It is certain that the diversity of movements (arising in the mind) are not apprehend-able by memories,
they are like insubstantial breezes that move through the atmosphere.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
It is certain that whatever appearances occur, all of them are self-manifested,
like the images in a mirror being self-manifestations that simply appear.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
It is certain that all of the diverse characteristics of things are liberated into their own condition,
Like clouds in the atmosphere that are self-originated and self-liberated.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
from Self Liberation: Through Seeing with Naked Awareness Karma Lingpa / Padmasambhava
Karma Lingpa – the Terton who revealed Padmasambhava’s Self Liberation: Through Seeing with Naked Awareness
These verses from Self-Liberation: Through Seeing with Naked Awareness are as if directly spoken face to face with me by Karma Lingpa. How potent!
Mind’s nature is empty
It is certain that the nature of the mind is empty and without any foundation whatsoever.
Your own mind is insubstantial like the empty sky.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
Just so! Mind is this way.
When I look there is nothing solid there, nothing I can grasp, nothing I can really see. I look, but I do not see.
I clearly see emptiness. This groundless ground. This unborn, uncreated, still, silent and absolutely pure nature that I seem to reside within, to be resting on, to be.
Absolutely pristine. Beyond all characteristics. These things I say it’s like – well it’s absolutely nothing like them – yet these words are the only ways I can try to communicate how it is.
This groundlessness is utterly, utterly ungraspable.
Like the empty sky seems so apposite as a pointer. Vast and pure like the sky. Vast like empty space. Both metaphors indicate how this spaciousness can hold anything within it.
When Karma Lingpa says:
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
That’s the funny thing I didn’t get in years gone by. How to look?
I always ended up trying to look at my mind. Yet somehow this isn’t it at all. There’s this strange dance in the way of looking. Not looking at. More like looking from within it. As it, from it, at it, in it. It’s all of those and yet none.
It’s like sliding back into a hot bath, and relaxing. Relaxing into it. Relax into the looking at isn’t a looking from something and at something. It’s a looking which is a being it. Voidness looks at voidness, is voidness. Recognises voidness.
And whatever appearances arise, sounds, sights, thoughts, anything at all – it’s all just as empty as that which knows it, which holds it within it – the Dharmadhatu.
Self-originated primal awareness
Being without any view that decisively decides that it is empty,
It is certain that self-originated primal awareness has been clear (and luminous) from the very beginning,
Like the heart of the sun, which is itself self-originated.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
Honestly I’m not completely certain what the first line refers to here. My sense is it’s pointing at not holding a one-sided view of mind’s nature, that it is empty and void as a nothingness. Like space is just empty.
Mind’s not this way.
It is certain that self-originated primal awareness has been clear (and luminous) from the very beginning,
This very spaciousness, this groundless ground is itself aware, luminous clarity. Without becoming something, without being something, the emptiness has a naked wakefulness which leaves the emptiness entirely empty!
How can something utterly without substance have attributes?
Luminous emptiness.
Naked awareness does not come or go
It’s clear to see that this awareness does not come and go. It’s not caused by anything, it isn’t created. It’s as if beyond time and space. Not in the present any more than in the past or future. It’s just something entirely different to and beyond all of that. And whether I’m awake, asleep, dreaming, lost in thought, whatever – it’s always there. Awake, and without any characteristics. The purest thing that is so far beyond any notion of purity.
Like the heart of the sun, which is itself self-originated.
Somehow it’s just this way, uncaused by anything else. Just self-manifested. Beyond this whole world of comings and goings, arising and ceasing.
Mind’s infinite expressiveness is unceasing
It is certain that this primal awareness or gnosis, which is one’s intrinsic awareness, is unceasing,
like the main channel of a river that flows unceasingly.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
When I look at mind I see this luminosity endlessly expressing itself as an unceasing array of appearances.
On and on goes the endless dance.
On and on goes the magical display.
None of it has any substance. Only in grasping do appearances condense down towards solidity – towards the sense of beings objects. Which can then be grasped by a subject.
But this magical illusion has none of that solidity. Appearance-Emptiness, not separate, nondual, two sides of the same coin.
The luminosity does not switch off, does not diminish in any way. And neither is it tarnished or affected by anything that arises in awareness. These appearances are of the nature of luminosity itself. They are emptiness itself. Clearly there. Clearly present. Constantly, unceasingly manifesting. Yet utterly groundless, unfindable. Empty.
Ungraspable appearances
It is certain that the diversity of movements (arising in the mind) are not apprehend-able by memories,
they are like insubstantial breezes that move through the atmosphere.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
You know appearances are there. You can see all their diversity. All the multiplicity of appearance. Yet there’s one-taste. All empty. All sublimely unified. Just this field. This space. This Dharmadhatu. Singleness. And multiplicity. Not the absolute oneness of Advaita Vedanta, perhaps. Not monism.
But not separate or dual, not one more real than the other.
I can look back at what appeared to arise, but I can’t grasp it. The memory of it is no more substantial than the manifestation itself. Both are dreamlike. Both insubstantial like the breeze or the wind.
Padmasambhava / Guru Rinpoche
Self-manifesting appearances
It is certain that whatever appearances occur, all of them are self-manifested,
like the images in a mirror being self-manifestations that simply appear.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
Here’s the thing. I know on one level about karma, about conditionality, about cause and effect.
Yet here when I rest in this looking that isn’t a normal looking. This resting in the looking/knowing/being is really Tawa – the view as it’s described in Dzogchen. It isn’t a looking at something in the sense of how we ordinarily look at a view out of a window. Something looking at something.
It’s certainly not a set of concepts to take on, and then decide the world is this way in accordance with my concepts I’ve learnt.
It’s more like a way of being, a way of resting, an inhabiting of how it is. Seeing it, but being it. Like the seen is doing the seeing. Like the view is being view, as view.
When awareness looks at awareness, it isn’t something looking at something. It’s a way of resting in and as this.
Being (without being something).
all of them are self-manifested,
like the images in a mirror being self-manifestations that simply appear.
Just this way. As I said before, I know on one level there is karma, conditionality, arising and ceasing. Yet this empty luminosity is just there, uncreated and unborn. Beyond all causes and conditions. Beyond all. Yet holding and manifesting all.
Does this mean that the groundless ground is beyond karma? That seems readily apparent to me. Unborn, unchanging. Uncaused.
Lord knows how that fits with Buddha Dharma teachings!!!
Yet it seems clearly so, without a shadow of a doubt. Untarnished, unaffected and untouched by anything that arises. And more than that – it self-arises as this display, these magical illusions.
Just there, from where? Nowhere.
Caused by what? By nothing.
Self arisen.
Self liberating appearances – nothing to do
It is certain that all of the diverse characteristics of things are liberated into their own condition,
Like clouds in the atmosphere that are self-originated and self-liberated.
You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not.
Self arisen they are – appearing out of nowhere, and without cause that can be grasped.
Ungraspable whilst manifest.
And then self-liberated the dreamlike appearances are no more. Yet never were. Something seems to have gone. All on its own. Never really there, never really gone. Just a crazy dreamlike display which endlessly entertains and entrances.
It is certain that all of the diverse characteristics of things are liberated into their own condition,
It matters not a jot what the appearance was that arose. Sound, touch, thought, emotion, perception, anything at all from this endless display.They all self liberate. All ‘return’ to emptiness, never having been non-empty at all. Empty appearances. Empty emptiness.
Diversity in manifestation.
Non-difference in emptiness.
These are nondual.
Nothing to do, as all these appearances self liberate.
No project of Enlightenment to take on. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to be.
Just being the dance, the magical display, the endless empty responsiveness.
Resting … as … Naked Awareness.
Self Liberation: Through Seeing with Naked Awareness – translation by John Myrdhin Reynolds aka Vajranatha
