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
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.
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.
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