This Rigpa which is pointed to is nothing like the words used to point to it. Yet beings cannot help trying to point to it with words! No matter that any concept that forms in your mind is not ‘it’ in ‘itself’.
Any object, any subject, any this or that is not it. Beyond all notions or concepts, yet how to point to it without words and concepts?
What lies beyond the concept that we use to try to convey minds nature – its nature that is as-if awaiting you, never other than what it is, never anywhere else? Always right there, right now, even though not of time and space?
How do you stop looking at the finger pointing to the moon – the concept or metaphor expressed, and see what is pointed at?
Let Dudjom Rinpoche show us how …
No words can describe it
Don’t focus onto an object of any description. Don’t think it’s an ‘it’ to be found. Something solid. Something that your mind can fabricate. Something that would come and go.
Instead, ask:
What looks when you hear the following:
No words can describe it
?
What is looking for this thing that cannot be described?
Allow your awareness to open out, open back, to drop, to rest into that unfocussed, wide open, spaciousness, which simply is.
Allow open awareness to become aware of open awareness.
Allow yourself to rest in what surely seems like the mere background, the ‘place’ behind everything of interest.
Surely this nature of mind is something of interest? Surely it’s something that I can focus on, hold onto, grasp?
Allow your awareness to open out and relax.
Allow yourself to ‘look’ by stopping looking.
To ‘see’ by stopping seeing.
To ‘know’ by dropping knowing.
To open out into being. Just simply being.
No example can point to it
No matter the metaphor used, it’s not how it is. But can it help point?
It’s sky-like – vast, open, contains everything. Blue sky never sullied by the clouds – as they pass, the deep blue sky remains deep blue sky, as if the clouds were never truly there.
How is your minds nature like the sky?
It’s like space.
Vast, open, empty. Relax the mind from looking ‘at’ itself for something, and allow it to open out into spaciousness. Anything that arises in that spaciousness is fully accommodated. The space doesn’t get less by something arising. It doesn’t get more by the appearance ceasing. Untouched. Accommodating. Even.
How is minds nature like space?
Minds nature is space-like, it is spacious. But it’s also luminous – it’s aware, it knows, it expresses itself in movement, in appearance, in you and the world. But can you ‘see’ how it’s like sky? Like space?
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
We can spend so many years, a lifetime even, trying to change our minds, trying to cultivate good qualities, eradicate bad qualities, become someone, become perfect, Enlightened, liberated.
But how mind really is is not touched in any way by greedy thoughts, by fear, by anger. They arise and cease, and our nature remains untarnished, utterly pure, primordially pure, and still radiant.
Even the best of thoughts, the highest motivations, faith, devotion, joy, peacefulness, jhana, and so on – they leave minds nature exactly as it was. Exactly as it was.
They don’t improve it one jot. Not an iota.
Here’s a funny thing: As Samsara or Nirvana arise, they are non-other than mind’s nature. They are empty, luminous, and fully expressive of that nature. Luminosity and Emptiness nondual, not separate – not the same, but not separate or different either. The basic wakefulness, naked awareness is utterly empty. The emptiness is awake, not dead and nothing. Nondual luminous emptiness.
It has never been born
It has never ceased
How many appearances have come and gone in your mind since you were born?
How much life have you experienced?
Where is it now?
Where was it when you assumed it was there?
It seemed truly there if you could not taste Rigpa, as it all seemed solid, congealed, an object or a subject – and awareness collapsed down into whatever this solidity was.
You became it. It became you. It was real. And there.
But taste Rigpa, and you see that these things you took to be utterly solid and real, are nothing but phantoms. Nothing but dreams. Nothing but a magical display.
Not nothing. But dream-like. Like a magical illusion. So utterly, utterly transparent that there’s utterly nothing there. Yet, there is ‘something’ there.
Indisputably something seems to appear. To arise. To cease.
Yet even when indisputably there there’s nothing truly there.
Just this naked awareness, this vast, open emptiness. This luminous emptiness. Vividly present, yet utterly empty. As if space itself, spaciousness itself could display you, your experiences, the world, and at the same time nothing truly happens.
What knows all this that seemingly arises and ceases? ‘Look’ without looking. Allow that knowing to open out, without any object that it knows.
What knows is beyond time – timeless. Time appears within it.
What knows is beyond space – without location. Location appears within it.
It remains unborn, always there – not there in any spatial sense, but primordially before anything. Not in before as in time. Just beyond time, unborn. Always. Timeless.
This naked awareness, this luminous emptiness never ceases, it never goes away.
Awake, asleep. Focussed, lost in thought or activity. Never goes, even though you may not be aware of it.
Never born, never ceases.
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
This unborn, pristine purity is as it is. It is not liberated, though you may appear to be. it is not deluded, though you may appear to be.
The nature of you mind does not become something else, better or worse. Though you may recognise it. You may stabilise that recognition. You may purify all your karma, lifetimes of karma through that stabilised recognition.
Yet minds nature remains as it is.
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
Let go of all these words, and allow the mind to open. To relax. To simply be.
What is this glow of naked awareness, which is never an object for attention. Never anything we can grasp, can understand?
When you recognise Rigpa, you see that minds nature is quite unlike the seeming solidity of minds content, that you previously grasped at, and valued so highly that you either wanted more of, or wanted to get away from.
You see that it doesn’t exist as you’ve always known the contents of mind existing, as something coming and going. As solid. As real.
Something altogether else from that – you can’t say it exists or doesn’t exist.
Relax your mind, your attention, and recognise what lies beyond existing and not existing, if that means coming and going. What lies beyond that?
It’s not something extraordinary. Something special. It’s just the naked awareness itself, the empty luminosity itself. It’s always there, it’s always been there. It’s always been the background of all that you’ve experienced since you were born. It’s always been what all you’ve experienced since you was born is made of, so to speak – the nature of all that you’ve experienced. Experiencing does not change that emptiness. That naked, open, spacious awareness.
But you’ll never grab hold of it, and make it something, like all the ‘somethings’ that you’ve always held in your mind.
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category.
Anything at all can arise ‘in’ this luminous emptiness. ‘As’ this luminous emptiness.
Nirvana. Liberation. Samsara. Delusion.
Unlimited in what is expressed, what appears to manifest, what appears to appear.
Liberation and Delusion. No limits. Untouched. Untarnished. Unimproved. By the highest of highs, the lowest of lows. Pristine purity. Spontaneous presence. Utter delusion. No limits.
It’s not like any of the categories that you can arrange your experiences into, your mind states into. Whatever arises and ceases into.
I say empty, but I could say full. Nondual empty – full.
I say empty, but I could say appearances. Nondual empty – appearances.
Whatever we experience, thought, emotion, feelings, perceptions, touch, sight, sound, on and on. Large, small. Past, present, future. Nice, not nice. Skillful, unskillful. Amazing meditation states. Terrible states of despair.
How many categories of things to be experienced are there?
This is not like any of them. Unborn, unceasing. Beyond time. Not something that can be known as an object, as a state.
What knows all of that, without being something itself?
Like a mirrors surface that everything appears on, yet which remains utterly untouched by what it reflects. Yet continues to reflect everything that arises.
Stainless and pure. Yet knows the pure and the impure when they appear.
Utterly vast and empty, yet primordially wakeful.
So near to you that you can’t see it – it’s been so close to you throughout your whole life, but you looked beyond it, bewitched by phantoms and illusions.
So natural, simple and not so special – you looked beyond it to special mind states and experiences.
Just here, just now, what is timelessly present?
Present everywhere yet nowhere?
Not something for you to see.
Not something which is a ‘you’ that sees.
Just simply ‘this’.
Thus.
Shush now (I mean to myself – just stop now) and allow knowing to know itself. Space to know space. And drop this and that ……
No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category.
Dudjom Rinpoche
