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,
Patrul Rinpoche
Have you realized it, all you realized ones?
Have you understood it, all you great meditators?
Put this into practice, all you yogis!
The Life and Liberation of the Mind
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.
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 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.
How supremely mad indeed we are.
Before and after!
Let it kiss you.
