Mipham’s Progression of Insight

 Yin Ling shared:

I really like the progression of insight that Mipam Rinpoche alluded to below: 

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When beginners properly investigate using the reasons that establish emptiness—such as [the reason of] being neither singular nor plural—through contemplating the meaning of the nonestablishment of a pot and so forth, they [mistakenly] think that the abiding reality is nonestablishment itself because, although existing when not analyzed, nothing is found upon investigation. Therefore, through alternating appearance and emptiness, the empty quality dawns.

  At that time, by contemplating that the nonexistence of phenomena also is just a mere imputation not actually established, or by contemplating the manner in which things appear while empty from the beginning, one generates the distinctive certainty that while empty, they appear and while appearing, are empty, like [a reflection of ] the moon in water. When the absence of intrinsic nature and dependent arising dawn without contradiction, one has “the understanding of unity.”

  At that time, certainty is generated in the manner that both—the lack of inherent nature and dependent arising—although different in being expressed by two phrases, are indivisible without the slightest difference in essence. Thereby, the thought that apprehends appearance as the basis of negation, which is affixed to an object of negation that is eliminated, naturally deconstructs. And then “dawn the qualities of a freedom from constructs, such as the ability to remain naturally free from negation and affirmation, adding and removing.

  Through becoming familiar with such a freedom of constructs again and again, all aspects of dualistic phenomena, in which one sets apart particular objects and their distinctive suchness, are purified. Through bringing forth an exceptional certainty in the nature of all phenomena as equality, one reaches completion.

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“The corpus of the doctrines of Maitreya and the scriptures of the great chariot, Asaṅga, both teach with a single intent that a person on the ground of motivated conduct first understands all phenomena to be merely mind, and then experiences that the mind has nothing to perceive. Then, at the time of the supreme quality on the path of joining, one realizes that since the perceived does not exist, neither does the perceiver. Right after this, the truth of suchness, which is free from dualistic fixation, is directly realized. This is said to be the attainment of the first ground.”

Excerpt From

Jamgon Mipam: His Life and Teachings

Jamgon Mipam

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