http://simpo.proboards20.com/index.cgi?board=insight&action=display&thread=1170547575&page=3(By Thusness)

Hi Star,

You have loosen the ‘bond’ of a background, no-self is experienced; but the propensity of ‘attempting to understand through seeing things as object and subject’ is still there. “What it means, what it is, how do we make sense of it’ is a struggle. It is a struggle of the dualistic mind attempting to understand something from measurement and comparisons. This propensity must also be deconstructed until you are so comfortable of being naked in awareness. This mode of gaining knowledge from deduction, induction, measurement and comparison is ‘learnt’, it is not the natural state of awareness. There must be a clear understanding that the depth of spirituality cannot be known through such mode of ‘understanding’. This is also a 'seed' that creates the ‘sense of self’. A unit of experience is ‘blocked’ by all these propensities that we are unable to intuitively know the unborn nature of awareness. It is not a 'mind trick' as what some said although wisdom practitioners do not talk about non-local issues.

Conventionally, to experience non-local aspect of pristine awareness is through concentration. It is the job of concentration. Concentration till one enters into a deep stage of absorption and object-subject becomes one, a state of transcendence. Non-local experiences in such a practice are reached through the power of ‘focus’. So the key towards non-local experiences is absorption and transcendence.

Non-duality on the other hand is a form of realization, a realization that all along there never was a split. Its clarity and level of transcendence come from dissolving the ‘seeds’ that prevents the ‘seeing’. Very seldom we hear people talk about the non-local aspect in the practice of wisdom but non-duality do meet non-locality at the point of transcendence (phase 4). It is some sort of absorption as in the case of concentration but it is more of 'clarity till the point of absorption'. It may sound paradoxical, but this is true. This is the way of wisdom.

There are many layers of consciousness and the truth of non-duality must first sink deep down into the inmost consciousness. It is important to reach the phase of ‘turning point’ as at this phase, the realization of no-self has sunk sufficiently deep into consciousnesses till there is no retreat. Otherwise that joy and experience of no-self will be lost in few months time (This is my experience) and re-surface again until "Emptiness as forms' is deeply experienced. In phase 2-3, non-local experiences may be experienced for some people and mostly with the help of concentration (like asking a question of our past lives) it can be experienced after 6-9 months of practices especially after deeply experiencing ‘Emptiness is Form’. Non-local aspect is triggered at the point of transcendence.

Below is some sort of summary of what I think a insight practitioner will go through. What I outline is far from being authoritative, it is just for communicating and sharing purposes.

1. Perception still lingers but there is a clear understanding that there is no-self apart from manifestation. Practice clarity from insight meditation will help. Clarity from all 6 doors – eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, consciousness.

2. Perception is dropped. Mind/body dropped. A very important phase. ‘Body’ is but a ‘mental construct’. When that ‘imprints’ and ‘meanings’ of ‘body’ is dropped, division between inner and outer is gone. All divisions of senses are also gone. All is One Taste. Just Isness. Manifold of presence experienced clearly.

3. Emptiness as Forms and Spontaneous manifestation.
Submerge oneself into spontaneous manifestation yet there is crystal clarity of the texture and fabric of awareness as ‘forms’. Dualistic cognition is replaced by directness, naturalness and spontaneity. Spontaneity, naturalness and flow took over all dualistic perceptions. Conscious, sub-consciousness and unconsciousness function as a whole without division. There is no need to hold on to a conscious knowing; there is no need to understanding anything. Whether one understands is no more important, all knowingness comes from flow of wholeness. There is no attempt to deviate from what is as a whole. Here, there is a danger of skewing towards spontaneity. Not to miss out the luminosity aspect, Emptiness as Forms. These 2 aspects must is one. Luminosity is conscious level and spontaneity is unconscious level, the 2 as one. True spontaneity is in luminosity. Psychological death is overcome. Turning point.

4. Only one tremendous spontaneous clarity flows, there is no differentiation between what that spins the earth or what that pumps your heart beats or what that makes the plants grow. When you eat an apple, it is the entire universe that eats the apple. Just one whole clarity spontaneity flow. Continual experience of transcendence joy and bliss.

How the 'seeds' bond us is amazing...Ultimately nothing gain!

Good Luck!

Also check out related articles on self-enquiry: The Direct Path to Your Real Self Ramana Maharshi's instructions on Self-Enquiry If you like these writings, consider checking out Ken Wilber's books "A Simple Feeling of Being" and "A Brief History of Everything" Here are some articles by Ken Wilber, which differentiates and clarifies the Witness (a.k.a. Thusness's Stage 1, the I AM) with Non-Duality (a.k.a Thusness's Stage 4): There are many things that I can doubt, but I cannot doubt my own consciousness in this moment. My consciousness IS, and even if I tried to doubt it, it would be my consciousness doubting. I can imagine that my senses are being presented with a fake reality – say, a completely virtual reality or digital reality, which looks real but is merely a series of extremely realist images. But even then, I cannot doubt the consciousness that is doing the watching… The very undeniability of my present awareness, the undeniability of my consciousness, immediately delivers to me a certainty of existence in this moment, a certainty of Being in the now-ness of this moment. I cannot doubt consciousness and Being in this moment, for it is the ground of all knowing, all seeing, all existing… Who am I? Ask that question over and over again, deeply. Who am I? What is it in me that is conscious of everything? If you think that you know Spirit, or if you think you don’t, Spirit is actually that which is thinking both of those thoughts. So you can doubt the objects of consciousness, but you can never believably doubt the doubter, never really doubt the Witness of the entire display. Therefore, rest in the Witness, whether it is thinking that it knows God or not, and that witnessing, that undeniable immediacy of now-consciousness, is itself God, Spirit, Buddha-mind. The certainty lies in the pure self-felt Consciousness to which objects appear, not in the objects themselves. You will never, never, never see God, because God is the Seer, not any finite, mortal, bounded object that can be seen… This pure I AM state is not hard to achieve but impossible to escape, because it is ever present and can never really be doubted. You can never run from Spirit, because Spirit is the Runner. To put it very bluntly, Spirit is not hard to find but impossible to avoid: it is that which is looking at this page right now. Can’t you feel That One? Why on earth do you keep looking for God when God is actually the Looker? Simply ask, Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? I am aware of my feelings, so I am not my feelings – Who am I? I am aware of my thoughts, so I am not my thoughts – Who am I? Clouds float by in the sky, thoughts float by in the mind, feelings float by in the body – and I am none of those because I can Witness them all. Moreover, I can doubt that clouds exist, I can doubt that feelings exist, I can doubt that objects of thought exist – but I cannot doubt that the Witness exists in this moment, because the Witness would still be there to witness the doubt. I am not objects in nature, not feelings in the body, not thoughts in the mind, for I can Witness them all. I am that Witness – a vast, spacious, empty, clear, pure, transparent Openness that impartially notices all that arises, as a mirror spontaneously reflects all its objects… You can already feel some of this Great Liberation in that, as you rest in the ease of witnessing this moment, you already feel that you are free from the suffocating constriction of mere objects, mere feelings, mere thoughts – they all come and go, but you are that vast, free, empty, open Witness of them all, untouched by their torments and tortures. This is actually the profound discovery of… the pure divine Self, the formless Witness, causal nothingness, the vast Emptiness in which the entire world arises, stays a bit, and passes. And you are That. You are not the body, not the ego, not nature, not thoughts, not this, not that – you are a vast Emptiness, Freedom, Release, and Liberation. With this discovery… you are halfway home. You have disidentified from any and all finite objects; you rest as infinite Consciousness. You are free, open, empty, clear, radiant, released, liberated, exalted, drenched in a blissful emptiness that exists prior to space, prior to time, prior to tears and terror, prior to pain and mortality and suffering and death. You have found the great Unborn, the vast Abyss, the unqualifiable Ground of all that is, and all that was, and all that ever shall be. But why is that only halfway home? Because as you rest in the infinite ease of consciousness, spontaneously aware of all that is arising, there will soon enough come the great catastrophe of Freedom and Fullness: the Witness itself will disappear entirely, and instead of witnessing the sky, you are the sky; instead of touching the earth, you are the earth; instead of hearing the thunder, you are the thunder. You and the entire Kosmos because One Taste – you can drink the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp, hold Mt. Everest in the palm of your hand; supernovas swirl in your heart and the solar system replaces your head… You are One Taste, the empty mirror that is one with any and all objects that arise in its embrace, a mindlessly vast translucent expanse: infinite, eternal, radiant beyond release. And you… are… That… So the primary Cartesian dualism – which is simply the dualism between… in here and out there, subject and object, the empty Witness and all things witnessed – is finally undone and overcome in nondual One Taste. Once you actually and fully contact the Witness, then – and only then – can it be transcended into radical Nonduality, and halfway home becomes fully home, here in the ever-present wonder of what is… And so how do you know that you have finally and really overcome the Cartesian dualism? Very simple: if you really overcome the Cartesian dualism, then you no longer feel that you are on this side of your face looking at the world out there. There is only the world, and you are all of that; you actually feel that you are one with everything that is arising moment to moment. You are not merely on this side of your face looking out there. “In here” and “out there” have become One Taste with a shuddering obviousness and certainty so profound it feels like a five-ton rock just dropped on your head. It is, shall we say, a feeling hard to miss. At that point, which is actually your ever-present condition, there is no exclusive identity with this particular organism, no constriction of consciousness to the head, a constriction that makes it seem that “you” are in the head looking at the rest of the world out there; there is no binding of attention to the personal bodymind: instead, consciousness is one with all that is arising – a vast, open, transparent, radiant, infinitely Free and infinitely Full expanse that embraces the entire Kosmos, so that every single subject and every single object are erotically united in the Great Embrace of One Taste. You disappear from merely being behind your eyes, and you become the All, you directly and actually feel that your basic identity is everything that is arising moment to moment (just as previously you felt that your identity was with this finite, partial, separate, mortal coil of flesh you call a body). Inside and outside have become One Taste. I tell you, it can happen just like that! (Source: Boomeritis, Sidebar E: “The Genius Descartes Gets a Postmodern Drubbing: Integral Historiography in a Postmodern Age”. More to be found in The Simple Feeling of Being, a collection of Ken Wilber’s inspirational, mystical and instructional passages drawn from his publications, based on his experiences.) -------------------------------------------------------------- The Nondual Level "In the previous level, you are so absorbed in the unmanifest dimensions that you might not even notice the manifest world. You are discovering Emptiness, and so you ignore Form. But at the ultimate or nondual level, you integrate the two. You see that Emptiness appears or manifests itself as Form, and that Form has as its essence Emptiness. In more concrete terms, what you all is all things that arise. All manifestation arises, moment by moment, as a play of Emptiness. If the causal was like a radiant moonlit night, this is like a radiant autumn day. What appear as hard or solid objects “out there” are really transparent and translucent manifestations of your own Being or Isness. They are not obstacles to God, only expressions of God. They are therefore empty in the sense of not being an obstruction or impediment. They are a free expression of the Divine. As the Mahamudra tradition succinctly puts it, “ All is Mind. Mind is Empty. Empty is freely-manifesting. Freely manifesting is self-liberating. The freedom that you found at the causal level- the freedom of Fullness and Emptiness- that freedom is found to extend to all things, even to this “fallen” world of sin or samsara. Therefore, all things become self-liberated. And this is extraordinary freedom, or absence of restriction, or total release- this clear bright autumn day- this is what you actually experience at this point. But then “experience” is the wrong word all together. This realization is actually of the nonexperiential nature of Spirit. Experiences come and go. They all have a beginning in time, and an end in time. Even subtle experiences come and go. They are all wonderful, glorious, extraordinary. And they come and they go. But this nondual “state” is not itself another experience. It is simply the opening or clearing in which all experiences arise and fall. It is the bright autumn sky through which the clouds come and go- it is not itself another cloud, another experience, another object, another manifestation. This realization is actually of the utter fruitlessness of experiences, the utter futility of trying to experience release or liberation. All experiences lose their taste entirely- these passing clouds. You are not the one who experiences liberation; you are the clearing, the opening, the emptiness, in which any experience comes and goes, like reflections on the mirror. And you are the mirror, the mirror mind, and not any experienced reflection. But you are not apart from the reflections, standing back and watching. You are everything that is arising moment to moment. You can swallow the whole cosmos in one gulp, it is so small, and you can taste the sky without moving an inch. That is why in Zen, it is said that you cannot enter the Great Samadhi: it is actually the opening or clearing that is ever present, and in which all experience- and all manifestation- arises moment to moment. It seems like you “enter” this state, except that once there, you realize that there never was a time this state was not fully present and fully recognized- “ the gateless gate.” And so you deeply understand that you never entered this state; nor did the Buddhas, past or future, ever enter this state. In Dzogchen, this is the recognition of mind’s true nature. All things, in all worlds, are self-liberated as they arise. All things are like sunlight on the water of a pond. It all shimmers. It is all empty. It is all light. It is all full, and it is all fulfilled. And the world goes on it ordinary way, and nobody notices at all. Wilber, K. (1999). Stages of Spirituality. Collected Works, vol.4, pg.361-362. -------------------------------------------------------------- From “A Brief History of Everything (Second Edition)”, Ken Wilber: The Nondual Q: So this casual unmanifest – is that the absolute end point? Is this the end of time, the end of evolution, the end of history? The final Omega point? KW: Well, many traditions take this state of cessation to be the ultimate state, the final end point of all development and evolution, yes. And this end state is equated with full Enlightenment, ultimate release, pure nirvana. But this is not the “final story,” according to the Nondual traditions. Because at some point, as you inquire into the Witness, and rest in the Witness, the sense of being a Witness “in here” completely vanishes itself, and the Witness turns out to be everything that is witnessed. The causal gives way to the Nondual, and formless mysticism gives way to nondual mysticism. “Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.” Technically, you have dis-identified with even the Witness, and then integrated it with all manifestation – in other words, the second and third phases of fulcrum-9, which leads to fulcrum-10, which is not really a separate fulcrum or level, but the reality or Suchness of all levels, all states, all conditions. And this is the second and most profound meaning of Emptiness - it is not a discrete state, but the reality of all states, the Suchness of all states. You have moved from the causal to the Nondual. Q: Emptiness has two meanings? KW: Yes, which can be very confusing. On one hand, as we just saw, it is a discrete, identifiable state of awareness – namely, unmanifest absorption or cessation (nirvikalpa Samadhi, ayn, jnana Samadhi, nirodh, classical nirvana). This is the causal state, a discrete state. The second meaning is that Emptiness is not merely a particular state among other states, but rather the reality or suchness or condition of all states. Not a particular state apart from other states, but the reality or condition of all states, high or low, sacred or profane, ordinary or extraordinary. Recall that on figure 9-1 we had Spirit as both the highest level (“causal”) and the ever-present Ground of all levels (“nondual”). Q: We already discussed the discrete state; now the Nondual. KW: Yes, the “experience” of this nondual Suchness is similar to the nature unity experience we earlier discussed, except now this unity is experienced not just with gross Form out there, but also with all of the subtle Form in here. In Buddhist terms, this is not just the Nirmanakaya – gross or nature mysticism and not just the Sambhogakaya – subtle or deity mysticism; and not just the Dharmakaya – causal or formless mysticism. It is the Svabhavikakaya – the integration of all three of them. It is beyond nature mysticism, beyond deity mysticism, and beyond formless mysticism – it is the reality or the Suchness of each, and thus integrates each in its embrace. It embraces the entire spectrum of consciousness – transcends all, includes all. Q: Again, rather technical. Perhaps there’s a more direct way to talk about Nondual mysticism? Kw: Across the board, the sense of being any sort of Seer or Witness or Self vanishes altogether. You don’t look at the sky, you are the sky. You can taste the sky. It’s not out there. As Zen would say, you can drink the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp, you can swallow the Kosmos whole – precisely because awareness is no longer split into a seeing subject in here and a seen object out there. There is just pure seeing. Consciousness and its display are not-two. Everything continues to arise moment to moment – the entire Kosmos continues to arise moment to moment – but there is nobody watching the display, there is just the display, a spontaneous and luminous gesture of great perfection. The pure Emptiness of the Witness turns out to be one with every Form that is witnessed, and that is one of the basic meanings of “nonduality.” Q: Again, could you be even more specific? Kw: Well, you might begin by getting into the state of Witness – that is, you simply rest in pure observing awareness – you are not any object that can be seen – not nature, not body, not thoughts – just rest in that pure witnessing awareness. And you can get a certain “sensation” of that witnessing awareness – a sensation of freedom, of release, of great expanse. While you are resting in that state, and “sensing” this Witness as a great expanse, if you then look at, say, a mountain, you might begin to notice that the sensation of the Witness and the sensation of the mountain are the same sensation. When you “feel” your pure Self and you “feel” the mountain, they are absolutely the same feeling. In other words, the real world is not given to you twice – one out there, one in here. That "twiceness" is exactly the meaning of "duality." Rather, the real world is given to you once, immediately – it is one feeling, it has one taste, it is utterly full in that one taste, it is not severed into seer and seen, subject and object, fragment and fragment. It is a singular, of which the plural is unknown. You can taste the mountain; it is the same taste as your Self; it is not out there being reflected in here – that duality is not present in the immediateness of real experience. Real experience, before you slice it up, does not contain that duality – real experience, reality itself, is "non-dual." You are still you, and the mountain is still the mountain, but you and the mountain are two sides of one and the same experience, which is the one and only reality at that point. If you relax into present experience in that fashion, the separate-self sense will uncoil; you will stop standing back from life; you will not have experience, you will suddenly become all experience; you will not be “in here” looking “out there” – in here and out there are one, so you are no longer trapped “in here.” And so suddenly, you are not in the bodymind. Suddenly, the bodymind has dropped. Suddenly, the wind doesn't blow on you, it blows through you, within you. You are not looking at the mountain, you are the mountain–the mountain is closer to you than your own skin. You are that, and there is no you – just this entire luminous display spontaneously arising moment to moment. The separate self is nowhere to be found. The entire sensation of “weight” drops altogether, because you are not in the Kosmos, the Kosmos is in you, and you are purest Emptiness. The entire universe is a transparent shimmering of the Divine, of primordial Purity. But the Divine is not someplace else, it is just all of this shimmering. It is self-seen. It has One Taste. It is nowhere else. Q: Subject and object are nondual? KW: You know the Zen koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Usually, of course, we need two hands to clap – and that is the structure of typical experience. We have a sense of ourselves as a subject in here, and the world as an object out there. We have these "two hands" of experience, the subject and the object. And typical experience is a smashing of these two hands together to make a commotion, a sound. The object out there smashes into me as a subject, and I have an experience – the two hands clap together and experience emerges. And so the typical structure of experience is like a punch in the face. The ordinary self is the battered self – it is utterly battered by the universe "out there." The ordinary self is a series of bruises, of scars, the results of these two hands of experience smashing together. This bruising is called "dukkha," suffering. As Krishnamurti used to say, in that gap between the subject and the object lies the entire misery of humankind. But with the nondual state, suddenly there are not two hands. Suddenly, the subject and the object are one hand. Suddenly, there is nothing outside of you to smash into you, bruise you, torment you. Suddenly, you do not have an experience, you are every experience that arises, and so you are instantly released into all space: you and the entire Kosmos are one hand, one experience, one display, one gesture of great perfection. There is nothing outside of you that you can want, or desire, or seek, or grasp – your soul expands to the corners of the universe and embraces all with infinite delight. You are utterly Full, utterly Saturated, so full and saturated that the boundaries to the Kosmos completely explode and leave you without date or duration, time or location, awash in an ocean of infinite care. You are released into the All, as the All – you are the self-seen radiant Kosmos, you are the universe of One Taste, and the taste is utterly infinite. So what is the sound of that one hand clapping? What is the taste of that One Taste? When there is nothing outside of you that can hit you, hurt you, push you, pull you – what is the sound of that one hand clapping? See the sunlight on the mountains? Feel the cool breeze? What is not utterly obvious? Who is not already enlightened? As a Zen Master put it, "When I heard the sound of the bell ringing, there was no I, and no bell, just the ringing." There is no twiceness, no twoness, in immediate experience! No inside and no outside, no subject and no object–just immediate awareness itself, the sound of one hand clapping. So you are not in here, on this side of a transparent window, looking at the Kosmos out there. The transparent window has shattered, your bodymind drops, you are free of that confinement forever, you are no longer 'behind your face' looking at the Kosmos – you simply are the Kosmos. You are all that. Which is precisely why you can swallow the Kosmos and span the centuries, and nothing moves at all. The sound of this one hand clapping is the sound the Big Bang made. It is the sound of supernovas exploding in space. It is the sound of the robin singing. It is the sound of the waterfall on a crystal-clear day. It is the sound of the entire manifest universe – and you are that sound. Which is why your Original Face is not in here. It is the sheerest Emptiness or transparency of this shimmering display. If the Kosmos is arising, you are that. If nothing arises, you are that. In either case, you are that. In either case, you are not in here. The window has shattered. The gap between subject and object is gone. There is no twiceness, no twoness, to be found anywhere – the world is never given to you twice, but always only once – and you are that. You are that One Taste. This state is not something you can bring about. This nondual state, this state of One Taste, is the very nature of every experience before you slice it up. This One Taste is not some experience you bring about through effort; rather it is the actual condition of all experience before you do anything to it. This uncontrived state is prior to effort, prior to grasping, prior to avoiding. It is the real world before you do anything to it, including the effort to 'see it nondually.' So you don't have to do something special to awareness or to experience in order to make it nondual. It starts out nondual, its very nature is nondual – prior to any grasping, any effort, any contrivance. If effort arises, fine; if effort doesn't arise, fine; in either case there is only the immediacy of One Taste, prior to effort and non-effort alike. So this is definitely not a state that is hard to get into, but rather one that is impossible to avoid. It has always been so. There has never been a moment when you did not experience One Taste – it is the only reality in all of reality. In a million billion years, there has never been a single second that you weren't aware of this Taste; there has never been a single second where it wasn't directly in your Original Face like a blast of arctic air. Of course, we have often lied to ourselves about this, we have often been untruthful about this, the universe of One Taste, the primordial sound of one hand clapping, our own Original Face. And the nondual traditions aim, not to bring about this state, because that is impossible, but simply to point it out to you so that you can no longer ignore it, no longer lie to yourself about who you really are. (Source: A Brief History of Everything. More to be found in The Simple Feeling of Being, a collection of Ken Wilber’s inspirational, mystical and instructional passages drawn from his publications, based on his experiences.) -------------------------------------------------------------- In this excerpt from The Eye of Spirit, Ken Wilber offers one of the most powerful (and beautiful) pieces of spiritual writing he has ever produced.  This is the very first time these words have been reproduced on the web, and we invite you to share this chapter however you like. “What follows are various ‘pointing out’ instructions, direct pointers to mind’s essential nature or intrinsic Spirit. Traditionally this involves a great deal of intentional repetition. If you read this material in the normal manner, you might find the repetitions tedious and perhaps irritating. If you would like the rest of this particular section to work for you, please read it in a slow and leisurely manner, letting the words and the repetitions sink in. You can also use these sections as material for meditation, using no more than one or two paragraphs—or even one or two sentences—for each session.” –Ken Wilber Where are we to locate Spirit? What are we actually allowed to acknowledge as Sacred? Where exactly is the Ground of Being? Where is this ultimate Divine? The Great Search The Realization of the Nondual traditions is uncompromising: there is only Spirit, there is only God, there is only Emptiness in all its radiant wonder. All the good and all the evil, the very best and the very worst, the upright and the degenerate-each and all are radically perfect manifestations of Spirit precisely as they are. There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other. This realization undoes the Great Search that is the heart of the separate-self sense. The separate-self is, at bottom, simply a sensation of seeking. When you feel yourself right now, you will basically feel a tiny interior tension or contraction—a sensation of grasping, desiring, wishing, wanting, avoiding, resisting-it is a sensation of effort, a sensation of seeking. In its highest form, this sensation of seeking takes on the form of the Great Search for Spirit. We wish to get from our unenlightened state (of sin or delusion or duality) to an enlightened or more spiritual state. We wish to get from where Spirit is not, to where Spirit is. But there is no place where Spirit is not. Every single location in the entire Kosmos is equally and fully Spirit. Seeking of any sort, movement of any sort, attainment of any sort: all profoundly useless. The Great Search simply reinforces the mistaken assumption that there is some’ place that Spirit is not, and that I need to get from a space that is lacking to a space that is full. But there is no space lacking, and there is no space more full. There is only Spirit. The Great Search for Spirit is simply that impulse, the final impulse, which prevents the present realization of Spirit, and it does so for a simple reason: the Great Search presumes the loss of God. The Great Search reinforces the mistaken belief that God is not present, and thus totally obscures the ‘reality of God’s ever-present Presence. The Great Search, which pretends to love God, is in fact the very mechanism of pushing God away; the mechanism of promising to find tomorrow that which exists only in the timeless now; the mechanism of watching the future so fervently that the present always passes it by—very quickly and God’s smiling face with it. The Great Search is the loveless contraction hidden in the heart of the separate-self sense, a contraction that drives the intense yearning for a tomorrow in which salvation will finally arrive, but during which time, thank God, I can continue to be myself. The greater the Great Search, the more I can deny God. The greater the Great Search, the more I can feel my own sensation of seeking, which defines the contours of my self. The Great Search is the great enemy of what is. Should we then simply cease the Great Search? Definitely, if we could. But the effort to stop the Great Search is itself more of the Great Search. The very first step presumes and reinforces the seeking sensation. There is actually nothing the self-contraction can do to stop the Great Search, because the self-contraction and the Great Search are two names for the same thing. If Spirit cannot be found as a future product of the Great Search, then there is only one alternative: Spirit must be fully, totally, completely present right now—AND you must be fully, totally, completely aware of it right now. It will not do to say that Spirit is present but I don’t realize it. That would require the Great Search; that would demand that I seek a tomorrow in which I could realize that Spirit is fully present, but such seeking misses the present in the very first step. To keep seeking would be to keep missing. No, the realization itself, the awareness itself: this, too, must somehow be fully and completely present right now. If it is not, then all we have left is the Great Search, doomed to presume that which it wishes to overcome. There must be something about our present awareness that contains the entire truth. Somehow, no matter what your state, you are immersed fully in everything you need for perfect enlightenment. You are somehow looking right at the answer. One hundred percent of Spirit is in your perception right now. Not 20 percent, not 50 percent, not 99 percent, but literally 100 percent of Spirit is in your awareness right now—and the trick, as it were, is to recognize this ever-present state of affairs, and not to engineer a future state in which Spirit will announce itself. And this simple recognition of an already present Spirit is the task, as it were, of the great Nondual traditions. To Meet the Kosmos Many people have stern objections to “mysticism” or “transcendentalism” of any sort, because they think it somehow denies this world, or hates this earth, or despises the body and the senses and its vital life, and so on. While that may be true of certain dissociated (or merely Ascending) approaches, it is certainly not the core understanding of the great Nondual mystics, from Plotinus and Eckhart in the West to Nagarjuna and Lady Tsogyal in the East. Rather, these sages universally maintain that absolute reality and the relative world are “not-two” (which is the meaning of “nondual”), much as a mirror and its reflections are not separate, or an ocean is one with its many waves. So the “other world” of Spirit and “this world” of separate phenomena are deeply and profoundly “not-two,” and this nonduality is a direct and immediate realization which occurs in certain meditative states—in other words, seen with the eye of contemplation—although it then becomes a very simple, very ordinary perception, whether you are meditating or not. Every single thing you perceive is the radiance of Spirit itself, so much so that Spirit is not seen apart from that thing: the robin sings, and just that is it, nothing else. This becomes your constant realization, through all changes of state, very naturally, just so. And this releases you from the basic insanity of hiding from the Real. But why is it, then, that we ordinarily don’t have that perception? All the great Nondual wisdom traditions have given a fairly similar answer to that question. We don’t see that Spirit is fully and completely present right here, right now, because our awareness is clouded with some form of avoidance. We do not want to be choicelessly aware of the present; rather, we want to run away from it, or run after it, or we want to change it, alter it; hate it, love it, loathe it, or in some way agitate to get ourselves into, or out of, it. We will do anything except come to rest in the pure Presence of the present. We will not rest with pure Presence; we want to be elsewhere, quickly. The Great Search is the game, in its endless forms. In nondual meditation or contemplation, the agitation of the separate-self sense profoundly relaxes, and the self uncoils in the vast expanse of all space. At that point, it becomes obvious that you are not “in here” looking at the world “out there,” because that duality has simply collapsed into pure Presence and spontaneous luminosity. This realization may take many forms. A simple one is something like this: You might be looking at a mountain, and you have relaxed into the effortlessness of your own present awareness, and then suddenly the mountain is all, you are nothing. Your separate-self sense is suddenly and totally gone, and there is simply everything that is arising moment to moment. You are perfectly aware, perfectly conscious, everything seems completely normal, except you are nowhere to be found. You are not on this side of your face looking at the mountain out there; you simply are the mountain, you are the sky, you are the clouds, you are everything that is arising moment to moment, very simply, very clearly, just so. We know all the fancy names for this state, from unity consciousness to sahaj samadhi. But it really is the simplest and most obvious state you will ever realize. Moreover, once you glimpse that state—what the Buddhists call One Taste (because you and the entire universe are one taste or one experience)—it becomes obvious that you are not entering this state, but rather, it is a state that, in some profound and mysterious way, has been your primordial condition from time immemorial. You have, in fact, never left this state for a second. This is why Zen calls it the Gateless Gate: on this side of that realization, it looks like you have to do something to enter that state—it looks like you need to pass through a gate. But when you do so, and you turn around and look back, there is no gate whatsoever, and never has been. You have never left this state in the first place, so obviously you can’t enter it. The gateless gate! “Every form is Emptiness just as it is,” means that all things, including you and me, are always already on the other side of the gateless gate. But if that is so, then why even do spiritual practice? Isn’t that just another form of the Great Search? Yes, actually, spiritual practice is a form of the Great Search, and as such, it is destined to fail. But that is exactly the point. You and I are already convinced that there are things that we need to do in order to realize Spirit. We feel that there are places that Spirit is not (namely, in me), and we are going to correct this state of affairs. Thus, we are already committed to the Great Search, and so nondual meditation makes use of that fact and engages us in the Great Search in a particular and somewhat sneaky fashion (which Zen calls “selling water by the river”). William Blake said that “a fool who persists in his folly will become wise.” So nondual meditation simply speeds up the folly. If you really think you lack Spirit, then try this folly: try to become Spirit, try to discover Spirit, try to contact Spirit, try to reach Spirit: meditate and meditate and meditate in order to get Spirit! But of course, you see, you cannot really do this. You cannot reach Spirit any more than you can reach your feet. You always already are Spirit, you are not going to reach it in any sort of temporal thrashing around. But if this is not obvious, then try it. Nondual meditation is a serious effort to do the impossible, until you become utterly exhausted of the Great Search, sit down completely worn out, and notice your feet. It’s not that these nondual traditions deny higher states; they don’t. They have many, many practices that help individuals reach specific states of postformal consciousness. These include states of transcendental bliss, love, and compassion; of heightened cognition and extrasensory perception; of Deity consciousness and contemplative prayer. But they maintain that those altered states—which have a beginning and an end in time—ultimately have nothing to do with the timeless. The real aim is the stateless, not a perpetual fascination with changes of state. And that stateless condition is the true nature of this and every conceivable state of consciousness, so any state you have will do just fine. Change of state is not the ultimate point; recognizing the Changeless is the point, recognizing primordial Emptiness is the point, recognizing unqualifiable Godhead is the point, recognizing pure Spirit is the point, and if you are breathing and vaguely awake, that state of consciousness will do just fine. Nonetheless, traditionally, in order to demonstrate your sincerity, you must complete a good number of preliminary practices, including a mastery of various states of meditative consciousness, summating in a stable post-postconventional adaptation, all of which is well and good. But none of those states of consciousness are held to be final or ultimate or privileged. And changing states is not the goal at all. Rather, it is precisely by entering and leaving these various meditative states that you begin to understand that none of them constitute enlightenment. All of them have a beginning in time, and thus none of them are the timeless. The point is to realize that change of state is not the point, and that realization can occur in any state of consciousness whatsoever. Ever-Present Awareness This primordial recognition of One Taste—not the creation but the recognition of the fact that you and the Kosmos are One Spirit, One Taste, One Gesture—is the great gift of the Nondual traditions. And in simplified form, this recognition goes like this: (What follows are various “pointing out” instructions, direct pointers to mind’s essential nature or intrinsic Spirit. Traditionally this involves a great deal of intentional repetition. If you read this material in the normal manner, you might find the repetitions tedious and perhaps irritating. If you would like the rest of this particular section to work for you, please read it in a slow and leisurely manner, letting the words and the repetitions sink in. You can also use these sections as material for meditation, using no more than one or two paragraphs—or even one or two sentences—for each session.) We begin with the realization that the pure Self or transpersonal Witness is an ever-present consciousness, even when we doubt its existence. You are right now aware of, say, this book, the room, a window, the sky, the clouds…. You can sit back and simply notice that you are aware of all those objects floating by. Clouds float through the sky, thoughts float through the mind, and when you notice them, you are effortlessly aware of them. There is a simple, effortless, spontaneous witnessing of whatever happens to be present. In that simple witnessing awareness, you might notice: I am aware of my body, and therefore I am not just my body. I am aware of my mind, and therefore I am not just my mind. I am aware of my self, and therefore I am not just that self. Rather, I seem somehow to be the Witness of my body, my mind, my self. This is truly fascinating. I can see my thoughts, so I am not those thoughts. I am aware of bodily sensations, so I am not those sensations. I am aware of my emotions, so I am not merely those emotions. I am somehow the Witness of all of that! But what is this Witness itself? Who or What is it that witnesses all of these objects, that watches the clouds float by, and thoughts float by, and objects float by? Who or What is this true Seer, this pure Witness, which is at the very core of what I am? That simple witnessing awareness, the traditions maintain, is Spirit itself, is the enlightened mind itself, is Buddha-nature itself, is God itself, in its entirety. Thus, according to the traditions, getting in touch with Spirit or God or the enlightened mind is not something difficult to achieve. It is your own simple witnessing awareness in exactly this moment. If you see this page, you already have that awareness–all of it—right now. A very famous text from Dzogchen or Maha-Ati Buddhism (one of the very greatest of the Nondual traditions) puts it like this: “At times it happens that some meditators say that it is difficult to recognize the nature of the mind”—in Dzogchen, “the nature of the mind” means primordial Purity or radical Emptiness—it means nondual Spirit by whatever name. The point is that this “nature of the mind” is ever-present witnessing awareness, and some meditators, the text says, find this hard to believe. They imagine it is difficult or even impossible to recognize this ever-present awareness, and that they have to work very hard and meditate very long in order to attain this enlightened mind—whereas it is simply their own ever-present witnessing awareness, fully functioning right now. The text continues: “Some male or female practitioners believe it to be impossible to recognize the nature of mind. They become depressed with tears streaming down their cheeks. There is no reason at all to become sad. It is not at all impossible to recognize. Rest directly in that which thinks that it is impossible to recognize the nature of the mind, and that is exactly it.” As for this ever-present witnessing awareness being hard to contact: “There are some meditators who don’t let their mind rest in itself [simple present awareness], as they should. Instead they let it watch outwardly or search inwardly. You will neither see nor find [Spirit] by watching outwardly or searching inwardly. There is no reason whatsoever to watch outwardly or search inwardly. Let go directly into this mind that is watching outwardly or searching inwardly, and that is exactly it.” We are aware of this room; just that is it, just that awareness is ever-present Spirit. We are aware of the clouds floating by in the sky; just that is it, just that awareness is ever-present Spirit. We are aware of thoughts floating by in the mind; just that is it, just that awareness is ever-present Spirit. We are aware of pain, turmoil, terror, fear; just that is it. In other words, the ultimate reality is not something seen, but rather the ever-present Seer. Things that are seen come and go, are happy or sad, pleasant or painful—but the Seer is none of those things, and it does not come and go. The Witness does not waver, does not wobble, does not enter that stream of time. The Witness is not an object, not a thing seen, but the ever-present Seer of all things, the simple Witness that is the I of Spirit, the center of the cyclone, the opening that is God, the clearing that is pure Emptiness. There is never a time that you do not have access to this Witnessing awareness. At every single moment, there is a spontaneous awareness of whatever happens to be present—and that simple, spontaneous, effortless awareness is ever-present Spirit itself. Even if you think you don’t see it, that very awareness is it. And thus, the ultimate state of consciousness—intrinsic Spirit itself—is not hard to reach but impossible to avoid. And just that is the great and guarded secret of the Nondual schools. It does not matter what objects or contents are present; whatever arises is fine. People sometimes have a hard time understanding Spirit because they try to see it as an object of awareness or an object of comprehension. But the ultimate reality is not anything seen, it is the Seer. Spirit is not an object; it is radical, ever-present Subject, and thus it is not something that is going to jump out in front of you like a rock, an image, an idea, a light, a feeling, an insight, a luminous cloud, an intense vision, or a sensation of great bliss. Those are all nice, but they are all objects, which is what Spirit is not. Thus, as you rest in the Witness, you won’t see anything in particular. The true Seer is nothing that can be seen, so you simply begin by disidentifying with any and all objects: I am aware of sensations in my body; those are objects, I am not those. I am aware of thoughts in my mind; those are objects, I am not those. I am aware of my self in this moment, but that is just another object, and I am not that. Sights float by in nature, thoughts float by in the mind, feelings float by in the body, and I am none of those. I am not an object. I am the pure Witness of all those objects. I am Consciousness as such. And so, as you rest in the pure Witness, you won’t see anything particular—whatever you see is fine. Rather, as you rest in the radical subject or Witness, as you stop identifying with objects, you will simply begin to notice a sense of vast Freedom. This Freedom is not something you will see; it is something you are. When you are the Witness of thoughts, you are not bound by thoughts. When you are the Witness of feelings, you are not bound by feelings. In place of your contracted self there is simply a vast sense of  Openness and Release. As an object, you are bound; as the Witness, you are Free. We will not see this Freedom, we will rest in it. A vast ocean of infinite ease. And so we rest in this state of the pure and simple Witness, the true Seer, which is vast Emptiness and pure Freedom, and we allow whatever is seen to arise as it wishes. Spirit is in the Free and Empty Seer, not in the limited, bound, mortal, and finite objects that parade by in the world of time. And so we rest in this vast Emptiness and Freedom, in which all things arise. We do not reach or contact this pure Witnessing awareness. It is not possible to contact that which we have never lost. Rather, we rest in this easy, clear, ever-present awareness by simply noticing what is already happening. We already see the sky. We already hear the birds singing. We already feel the cool breeze. The simple Witness is already present, already functioning, already the case. That is why we do not contact or bring this Witness into being, but simply notice that it is always already present, as the simple and spontaneous awareness of whatever is happening in this moment. We also notice that this simple, ever-present Witness is completely effortless. It takes no effort whatsoever to hear sounds, to see sights, to feel the cool breeze: it is already happening, and we easily rest in that effortless witnessing. We do not follow those objects, nor avoid them. Precisely because Spirit is the ever-present Seer, and not any limited thing that is seen, we can allow all seen things to come and go exactly as they please. “The perfect person employs the mind as a mirror,” says Chuang Tzu. “It neither grasps nor rejects; it receives, but does not keep.” The mirror effortlessly receives its reflections, just as you effortlessly see the sky right now, and just as the Witness effortlessly allows all objects whatsoever to arise. All things come and go in the effortless mirror-mind that is the simple Witness. When I rest as the pure and simple Witness, I notice that I am not caught in the world of time. The Witness exists only in the timeless present. Yet again, this is not a state that is difficult to achieve but impossible to avoid. The Witness sees only the timeless present because only the timeless present is actually real. When I think of the past, those past thoughts exist right now, in this present. When I think of the future, those future thoughts exist right now, in this present. Past and future thoughts both arise right now, in simple ever-present awareness. And when the past actually occurred, it occurred right now. When the future actually occurs, it will occur right now. There is only right now, there is only this ever-present present: that is all I ever directly know. Thus, the timeless present is not hard to contact but impossible to avoid, and this becomes obvious when I rest as the pure and simple Witness, and watch the past and future float by in simple ever-present awareness. That is why when we rest as the ever-present Witness, we are not in time. Resting in simple witnessing awareness, I notice that time floats by in front of me, or through me, like clouds float through the sky. And that is exactly why I can be aware of time; in my simple Presentness, in my I AMness as pure and simple Witness of the Kosmos, I am timeless. Thus, as I right now rest in this simple, ever-present Witness, I am face to face with Spirit. I am with God today, and always, in this simple, ever-present, witnessing state. Eckhart said that “God is closer to me than I am to myself,” because both God and I are one in the ever-present Witness, which is the nature of intrinsic Spirit itself, which is exactly what I am in the state of my I AMness. I am not this, I am not that; I rest as pure open Spirit. When I am not an object, I am God. (And every I in the entire Kosmos can say that truthfully.) I am not entering this state of the ever-present Witness, which is Spirit itself. I cannot enter this state, precisely because it is ever-present. I cannot start Witnessing; I can only notice that this simple Witnessing is already occurring. This state never has a beginning in time precisely because it is indeed ever-present. You can neither run from it nor toward it; you are it, always. This is exactly why Buddhas have never entered this state, and sentient beings have never left it. When I rest in the simple, clear, ever-present Witness, I am resting in the great Unborn, I am resting in intrinsic Spirit, I am resting in primordial Emptiness, I am resting in infinite Freedom. I cannot be seen, I have no qualities at all. I am not this, I am not that. I am not an object. I am neither light nor dark; neither large nor small; neither here nor there; I have no color, no location, no space and no time; I am an utter Emptiness, another word for infinite Freedom, unbounded to infinity. I am that opening or clearing in which the entire manifest world arises right now, but I do not arise in it—it arises in me, in this vast Emptiness and Freedom that I am. Things that are seen are pleasant or painful, happy or sad, joyous or fearful, healthy or sick—but the Seer of those things is neither happy nor sad, neither joyous nor fearful, neither healthy nor sick, but simply Free. As pure and simple Witness I am free of all objects, free of all subjects, free of all time and free of all space; free of birth and free of death, and free of all things in between. I am simply Free. When I rest as the timeless Witness, the Great Search is undone. The Great Search is the enemy of the ever-present Spirit, a brutal lie in the face of a gentle infinity. The Great Search is the search for an ultimate experience, a fabulous vision, a paradise of pleasure, an unendingly good time, a powerful insight—a search for God, a search for Goddess, a search for Spirit—but Spirit is not an object. Spirit cannot be grasped or reached or sought or seen: it is the ever-present Seer. To search for the Seer is to miss the point. To search forever is to miss the point forever. How could you possibly search for that which is right now aware of this page? YOU ARE THAT! You cannot go out looking for that which is the Looker. When I am not an object, I am God. When I seek an object, I cease to be God, and that catastrophe can never be corrected by more searching for more objects. Rather, I can only rest as the Witness, which is already free of objects, free of time, free of suffering, and free of searching. When I am not an object, I am Spirit. When I rest as the free and formless Witness, I am with God right now, in this timeless and endless moment. I taste infinity and am drenched with fullness, precisely because I no longer seek, but simply rest as what I am. Before Abraham was, I am. Before the Big Bang was, I am. After the universe dissolves, I am. In all things great and small, I am. And yet I can never be heard, felt, known, or seen; I AM is the ever-present Seer. Precisely because the ultimate reality is not anything seen but rather the Seer, it doesn’t matter in the least what is seen in any moment. Whether you see peace or turmoil, whether you see equanimity or agitation, whether you see bliss or terror, whether you see happiness or sadness, matters not at all: it is not those states but the Seer of those states that is already Free. Changing states is thus beside the point; acknowledging the ever-present Seer is the point. Even in the midst of the Great Search and even in the worst of my self-contracting ways, I have immediate and direct access to the ever-present Witness. I do not have to try to bring this simple awareness into existence. I do not have to enter this state. It involves no effort at all. I simply notice that there is already an awareness of the sky. I simply notice that there is already an awareness of the clouds. I simply notice that the ever-present Witness is already fully functioning: it is not hard to reach but impossible to avoid. I am always already in the lap of this ever-present awareness, the radical Emptiness in which all manifestation is presently arising. When I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I notice that this awareness is not an experience. It is aware of experiences, it is not itself an experience. Experiences come and go. They have a beginning in time, they stay a bit, and they pass. But they all arise in the simple opening or clearing that is the vast expanse of what I am. The clouds float by in this vast expanse, and thoughts float by in this vast expanse, and experiences float by in this vast expanse. They all come, and they all go. But the vast expanse itself, this Free and Empty Seer, this spacious opening or clearing in which all things arise, does not itself come and go, or even move at all. Thus, when I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I am no longer caught up in the search for experiences, whether of the flesh or of the mind or of the spirit. Experiences—whether high or low, sacred or profane, joyous or nightmarish—simply come and go like endless waves on the ocean of what I am. As I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I am no longer moved to follow the bliss and the torture of experiential displays. Experiences float across my Original Face like clouds floating across the clear autumn sky, and there is room in me for all. When I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I will even begin to notice that the Witness itself is not a separate thing or entity, set apart from what it witnesses. All things arise within the Witness, so much so that the Witness itself disappears into all things. And thus, resting in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I notice that there is no inside and no outside. There is no subject and no object. Things and events are still fully present and clearly arising—the clouds float by, the birds still sing, the cool breeze still blows—but there is no separate self recoiling from them. Events simply arise as they are, without the constant and agitated reference to a contracted self or subject. Events arise as they are, and they arise in the great freedom of not being defined by a little I looking at them. They arise with Spirit, as Spirit, in the opening or clearing that I am; they do not arise to be seen and perceptually tortured by an ego. In my contracted mode, I am “in here,” on this side of my face, looking at the world “out there,” on the “objective” side. I exist on this side of my face, and my entire life is an attempt to save face, to save this self-contraction, to save this sensation of grasping and seeking, a sensation that sets me apart from the world out there, a world I will then desire or loathe, move toward or recoil from, grasp or avoid, love or hate. The inside and the outside are in perpetual struggle, all varieties of hope or fear: the drama of saving face. We say, “To lose face is to die of embarrassment,” and that is deeply true: we do not want to lose face! We do not want to die! We do not want, to cease the sensation of the separate-self! But that primal fear of losing face is actually the root of our deepest agony, because saving face—saving an identity with the bodymind—is the very mechanism of suffering, the very mechanism of tearing the Kosmos into an inside versus an outside, a brutal fracture that I experience as pain. But when I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I lose face. Inside and outside completely disappear. It happens just like this: As I drop all objects–I am not this, not that–and I rest in the pure and simple Witness, all objects arise easily in my visual field, all objects arise in the space of the Witness. I am simply an opening or clearing in which all things arise. I notice that all things arise in me, arise in this opening or clearing that I am. The clouds are floating by in this vast opening that I am. The sun is shining in this vast opening that I am. The sky exists in this vast opening that I am; the sky is in me. I can taste the sky, it’s closer to me than my own skin. The clouds are on the inside of me; I am seeing them from within. When all things arise in me, I am simply all things. The universe is One Taste, and I am That. And so, when I rest as the Witness, all things arise in me, so much so that I am all things. There is no subject and object because I do not see the clouds, I am the clouds. There is no subject and object because I do not feel the cool breeze, I am the cool breeze. There is no subject and object because I do not hear the thunder clapping, I am the thunder clapping. I am no longer on this side of my face looking at the world out there; I simply am the world. I am not in here. I have lost face—and discovered my Original Face, the Kosmos itself. The bird sings, and I am that. The sun rises, and I am that. The moon shines, and I am that, in simple, ever-present awareness. When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, every object is its own subject. Every event “sees itself,” as it were, because I am now that event seeing itself. I am not looking at the rainbow; I am the rainbow, which sees itself. I am not staring at the tree; I am the tree, which sees itself. The entire manifest world continues to arise, just as it is, except that all subjects and all objects have disappeared. The mountain is still the mountain, but it is not an object being looked at, and I am not a separate subject staring at it. Both I and the mountain arise in simple, ever-present awareness, and we are both set free in that clearing, we are both liberated in that nondual space, we are both enlightened in the opening that is ever-present awareness. That opening is free of the set-apart violence called subject and object, in here versus out there, self against other, me against the world. I have utterly lost face, and discovered God, in simple ever-present awareness. When you are the Witness of all objects, and all objects arise in you, then you stand in utter Freedom, in the vast expanse of all space. In this simple One Taste, the wind does not blow on you, it blows within you. The sun does not shine on you, it radiates from deep within your very being. When it rains, you are weeping. You can drink the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp, and swallow the universe whole. Supernovas are born and die all within your heart, and galaxies swirl endlessly where you thought your head was, and it is all as simple as the sound of a robin singing on a crystal clear dawn. Every time I recognize or acknowledge the ever-present Witness, I have broken the Great Search and undone the separate self. And that is the ultimate, secret, nondual practice, the practice of no-practice, the practice of simple acknowledgment, the practice of remembrance and recognition, founded timelessly and eternally on the fact that there is only Spirit, a Spirit that is not hard to find but impossible to avoid. Spirit is the only thing that has never been absent. It is the only constant in your changing experience. You have known this for a billion years, literally. And you might as well acknowledge it. “If you understand this, then rest in that which understands, and just that is Spirit. If you do not understand this, then rest in that which does not understand, and just that is Spirit.” For eternally and eternally and always eternally, there is only Spirit, the Witness of this and every moment, even unto the ends of the world. The Eye of Spirit When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I am resting in intrinsic Spirit; I am in fact nothing other than witnessing Spirit itself. I do not become Spirit; I simply recognize the Spirit that I always already am. When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I am the Witness of the World. I am the eye of Spirit. I see the world as God sees it. I see the world as the Goddess sees it. I see the world as Spirit sees it: every object an object of Beauty, every thing and event a gesture of the Great Perfection, every process a ripple in the pond of my own eternal Being, so much so that I do not stand apart as a separate witness, but find the witness is one taste with all that arises within it. The entire Kosmos arises in the eye of Spirit, in the I of Spirit, in my own intrinsic awareness, this simple ever-present state, and I am simply that. From the ground of simple, ever-present awareness, one’s entire bodymind will resurrect. When you rest in primordial awareness, that awareness begins to saturate your being, and from the stream of consciousness a new destiny is resurrected. When the Great Search is undone, and the separate-self sense has been crucified; when the continuity of witnessing has stabilized in your own case; when ever-present awareness is your constant ground—then your entire bodymind will regenerate, resurrect, and reorganize itself around intrinsic Spirit, and you will arise, as from the dead, to a new destiny and a new duty in consciousness. You will cease to exist as separate self (with all the damage that does to the bodymind), and you will exist instead as vehicle of Spirit (with the bodymind now free to function in its highest potential, undistorted and untortured by the brutalities of the self-contraction). From the ground of ever-present awareness, you will arise embodying any of the enlightened qualities of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas—”one whose being (sattva) is ever-present awareness (bodhi).” The Buddhist names are not important; the enlightened qualities they represent are. The point is simply that, once you have stably recognized simple, ever-present awareness-once the Great Search and the self-contraction have been robbed of separative life and returned to God, returned to their ground in ever-present awareness-then you will arise, from the ground of ever-present awareness, and you will embody any of the highest possibilities of that ground. You will be vehicle of the Spirit that you are. That ever-present ground will live through you, as you, in a variety of superordinary forms. Perhaps you will arise as Samantabhadra, whose ever-present awareness takes the form of a vast equality consciousness: you will realize that the ever-present awareness that is fully present in you is the same awareness that is fully present in all sentient beings without exception, one and the same, single and only—one heart, one mind, one soul that breathes and beats and pulses through all sentient beings as such—and your very countenance will remind all beings of that simple fact, remind them that there is only Spirit, remind them that nothing is closer to God than anything else, for there is only God, there is only Goddess. Perhaps you will arise as Avalokiteshvara, whose ever-present awareness takes the form of gentle compassion. In the brilliant clarity of ever-present awareness, all sentient beings arise as equal forms of intrinsic Spirit or pure Emptiness, and thus all beings are treated as the sons and daughters of the Spirit that they are. You will have no choice but to live this compassion with a delicate dedication, so that your very smile will warm the hearts of those who suffer, and they will look to you for promise that they, too, can be liberated into the vast expanse of their own primordial awareness, and you will never turn away. Perhaps you will arise as Prajnaparamita, the mother of the Buddha whose ever-present awareness takes the form of a vast spaciousness, the womb of the great Unborn, in which the entire Kosmos exists. For deepest truth, it is exactly from the ground of your own simple, clear, ever-present awareness that all beings are born; and it is to the ground of your simple, clear, ever-present awareness that all beings will return. Resting in the brilliant clarity of ever-present awareness, you watch the worlds arise, and all the Buddhas arise, and all sentient beings as such arise. And to you they will all return. And you will smile, and receive, in this vast expanse of everlasting wisdom, and it will all begin again, and yet again, and always yet again, in the womb of your ever-present state. Perhaps you will arise as Manjushri, whose ever-present awareness, takes the form of luminous intelligence. Although all beings are equally intrinsic Spirit, some beings do not easily acknowledge this ever-present Suchness, and thus discriminating wisdom will brilliantly arise from the ground of equality consciousness. You will instinctively see what is true and what is false, and thus you will bring clarity to everything you touch. And if the self-contraction does not listen to your gentler voice, your ever-present awareness will manifest in its wrathful form, which is said to be none other than the dreaded Yamantaka, Subduer of the Lord of Death. And so perhaps you will arise as Yamantaka, fierce protector of ever-present awareness and samurai warrior of intrinsic Spirit. Precisely those items that pretend to block ever-present awareness must be quickly cut through, which is why ever-present awareness arises in its many wrathful forms. You will simply be moved, from the ground of equality consciousness, to expose the false and the shallow and the less-than-ever-present. It is time for the sword, not the smile, but always the sword of discriminating wisdom, which ruthlessly cuts all obstacles in the ground of the all-encompassing. Perhaps you will arise as Bhaishajyaguru, whose ever-present awareness takes the form of a healing radiance. From the brilliant clarity of ever-present awareness, you will be moved to remind the sick and the sad and those in pain that although the pain is real, it is not what they are. With a simple touch or smile, contracted souls will relax into the infinite vast expanse of intrinsic awareness, and disease will lose all meaning in the radiance of that release. And you will never tire, for ever-present awareness is effortless in its functioning, and so you will constantly remind all beings of who and what they really are, on the other side of fear, in the radical love and unflinching acceptance that is the mirror-mind of ever-present awareness. Perhaps you will arise as Maitreya, whose ever-present awareness takes the form of a promise that, even into the endless future, ever-present awareness will still be simply present. From the brilliant clarity of primordial awareness, you will vow to be with all beings, even unto an eternity of futures, because even those futures will arise in simple present awareness, the same present awareness that now sees just exactly this. Those are simply a few of the potentials of ever-present awareness. The Buddhist names don’t matter; any will do. They are simply a few of the forms of your own resurrection. They are a few of the possibilities that might animate you after the death of the Great Search. They are a few of the ways the world looks to the ever-present eye of Spirit, the ever-present I of Spirit. They are what you see, right now, when you see the world as God sees it, from the groundless ground of simple ever-present awareness. And It Is All Undone Perhaps you will arise as any or all of those forms of ever-present awareness. But then, it doesn’t really matter. When you rest in the brilliant clarity of ever-present awareness, you are not Buddha or Bodhisattva, you are not this or that, you are not here or there. When you rest in simple, ever-present awareness, you are the great Unborn, free, of all qualities whatsoever. Aware of color, you are colorless. Aware of time, you are timeless. Aware of form, you are formless. In the vast expanse of primordial Emptiness, you are forever invisible to this world. It is simply that, as embodied being, you also arise in the world of form that is your own manifestation. And the intrinsic potentials of the enlightened mind (the intrinsic potentials of your ever-present awareness)—such as equanimity, discriminating wisdom, mirrorlike wisdom, ground consciousness, and all-accomplishing awareness—various of these potentials combine with the native dispositions and particular talents of your own individual bodymind. And thus, when the separate self dies into the vast expanse of its own ever-present awareness, you will arise animated by any or all of those various enlightened potentials. You are then motivated, not by the Great Search, but by the Great Compassion of these potentials, some of which are gentle, some of which are truly wrathful, but all of which are simply the possibilities of your own ever-present state. And thus, resting in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, you will arise with the qualities and’ virtues of your own highest potentials—perhaps compassion, perhaps discriminating wisdom, perhaps cognitive insight, perhaps healing presence, perhaps wrathful reminder, perhaps artistic accomplishment, perhaps athletic skill, perhaps great educator, or perhaps something utterly simple, maybe being the best flower gardener on the block. (In other words, any of the developmental lines released into their own primordial state.) When the bodymind is released from the brutalities inflicted by the self-contraction, it naturally gravitates to its own highest estate, manifested in the great potentials of the enlightened mind, the great potentials of simple, ever-present awareness. Thus, as you rest in simple, ever-present awareness, you are the great Unborn; but as you are born—as you arise from ever-present awareness—you will manifest certain qualities, qualities inherent in intrinsic Spirit, and qualities colored by the dispositions of your own bodymind and its particular talents. And whatever the form of your own resurrection, you will arise driven not by the Great Search, but by your own Great Duty, your limitless Dharma, the manifestation of your own highest potentials, and the world will begin to change, because of you. And you will never flinch, and you will never fail in that great Duty, and you will never turn away, because simple, ever-present awareness will be with you now and forever, even unto the ends of the worlds, because now and forever and endlessly forever, there is only Spirit, only intrinsic awareness, only the simple awareness of just this, and nothing more. But that entire journey to what is begins at the beginningless beginning: we begin by simply recognizing that which is always already the case. (“If you understand this, then rest in that which understands, and just that is exactly Spirit. If you do not understand this, then rest in that which does not understand, and just that is exactly Spirit.”) We allow this recognition of ever-present awareness to arise—gently, randomly, spontaneously, through the day and into the night. This simple, ever-present awareness is not hard to attain but impossible to avoid, and we simply notice that. We do this gently, randomly, and spontaneously, through the day and into the night. Soon enough, through all three states of waking, dreaming, and sleeping, this recognition will grow of its own accord and by its own intrinsic power, outshining the obstacles that pretend to hide its nature, until this simple, ever-present awareness announces itself in an unbroken continuity through all changes of state, through all changes of space and time, whereupon space and time lose all meaning whatsoever, exposed for what they are, the shining veils of the radiant Emptiness that you alone now are—and you will swoon into that Beauty, and die into that Truth, and dissolve into that Goodness, and there will be no one left to testify to terror, no one left to take tears seriously, no one left to engineer unease, no one left to deny the Divine, which only alone is, and only alone ever was, and only alone will ever be. And somewhere on a cold crystal night the moon will shine on a silently waiting Earth, just to remind those left behind that it is all a game. The lunar light will set dreams afire in their sleeping hearts, and a yearning to awaken will stir in the depths of that restless night, and you will be pulled, yet again, to respond to those most plaintive prayers, and you will find yourself right here, right now, wondering what it all really means—until that flash of recognition runs across your face and it is all undone. You then will arise as the moon itself, and sing those dreams in your very own heart; and you will arise as the Earth itself, and glorify all of its blessed inhabitants; and you will arise as the Sun itself, radiant to infinity and much too obvious to see; and in that One Taste of primordial purity, with no beginning and no end, with no entrance and no exit, with no birth and no death, it all comes radically to be; and the sound of a singing waterfall, somewhere in the distance, is all that is left to tell this tale, late on that crystal cold night, bathed so beautifully in that lunar light, just so, and again, just so. When the great Zen master Fa-ch’ang was dying, a squirrel screeched out on the roof. “It’s just this,” he said, “and nothing more.”

Thusness first told me of this teaching by Padmasambhava in 2007. He said "Best of the best. By Padmasambhava. Non-dual and emptiness into one."

See below for more comments by Thusness.


By Guru Rinpoche, Padmasambhava

1.

Here is contained "Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness," this being a Direct Introduction to the State of Intrinsic Awareness, From "The Profound Teaching of Self-Liberation in the Primordial State of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities."


2.

Homage to the Trikaya and to the Deities who represent the inherent luminous clarity of intrinsic awareness.


3.

Herein I shall teach "Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness," which is a direct introduction to intrinsic awareness From "The Profound Teaching of Self-Liberation in the Primordial State of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities."

Truly, this introduction to your own intrinsic awareness should be contemplated well, O fortunate sons of a noble family!

SAMAYA! Gya! Gya! Gya!


4.

Emaho!
It is the single (nature of) mind, which encompasses all of Samsara and Nirvana.
Even though its inherent nature has existed from the very beginning, you have not recognized it;
Even though its clarity and presence has been uninterrupted, you have not yet encountered its face.
Even though its arising has nowhere been obstructed, still you have not comprehended it.
Therefore, this (direct introduction) is for the purpose of bringing you to self-recognition.
Everything that is expounded by the Victorious Ones (Buddhas) of the three times
in the eighty-four thousand Gateways to the Dharma.
Is incomprehensible (unless you understand intrinsic awareness).
Indeed, the Victorious Ones do not teach anything other than the understanding of this.
Even though there exist unlimited numbers of scriptures, equal in their extent to the sky,
yet with respect to the real meaning, there are three statements that will introduce you to your own intrinsic awareness.
This introduction to the manifest Primordial State of the Victorious One
is disclosed by the following method for entering into the practice where there exists no antecedent or subsequent practices.


5.

Kye-ho!
O my fortunate sons listen!
Even though that which is usually called "mind" is widely esteemed and much discussed,
still it is not understood or it is wrongly understood or it is understood in a one-sided manner only.
Since it is not understood correctly just as it is in itself,
there come into existence inconceivable numbers of philosophical ideas and assertions.
Furthermore, since ordinary individuals do not understand it,
they do not recognize their own nature,
and so they continue to wander among the six destinies (of rebirth) within the three worlds and thus experience suffering.
Therefore, not understanding your own mind is a very grievous fault.
Even though the Sravakas and the Pratyekabuddhas wish to understand it in terms of the Anatman doctrine,
still they do not understand it as it is in itself.
Also there exist others who, being attached to their own personal ideas and interpretations,
Become fettered by these attachments and so do not perceive the Clear Light.
The Sravakas and the Pratyekabuddhas are (mentally) obscured by their attachments to subject and object.
The Madhyamikas are (mentally) obscured by their attachments to the extremes of the Two Truths.
The practitioners of the Kriya Tantra and the Yoga Tantra are (mentally) obscured by their attachments to seva-sadhana practice.
The practitioners of the Maha-yoga and the Anuyoga are (mentally) obscured by their attachments to Space and Awareness.
And with respect to the real meaning of non-duality, since they divide these (Space and Awareness) into two, they fall into deviation.
If these two do not become one without any duality, you will certainly not attain Buddhahood.
In terms of your own mind, as is the case with everyone, Samsara and Nirvana are inseparable.
Nonetheless, because you persist in accepting and enduring attachments and aversions, you will continue to wander in Samsara.
Therefore, your active dharmas and your inactive ones both should be abandoned.
However, since self-liberation through seeing nakedly by means of intrinsic awareness is here revealed to you,
You should understand that all dharmas can be perfected and completed in the great total Self-Liberation.
And therefore, whatever (practice you do) can be brought to perfection within the Great Perfection.
SAMAYA! Gya! Gya! Gya!


6.

As for this sparkling awareness, which is called "mind,"
Even though one says that it exists, it does not actually exist.
(On the other hand) as a source, it is the origin of the diversity of all the bliss of Nirvana and all of the sorrow of Samsara.
And as for it¡¯s being something desirable; it is cherished alike in the Eleven Vehicles.
With respect to its having a name, the various names that are applied to it are inconceivable (in their numbers).
Some call it "the nature of the mind" or "mind itself."
Some Tirthikas call it by the name Atman or "the Self."
The Sravakas call it the doctrine of Anatman or "the absence of a self."
The Chittamatrins call it by the name Chitta or "the Mind."
Some call it the Praj?¨¢p¨¢ramit¨¢ or "the Perfection of Wisdom."
Some call it the name Tathagata-garbha or "the embryo of Buddhahood."
Some call it by the name Mahamudra or "the Great Symbol."
Some call it by the name "the Unique Sphere."
Some call it by the name Dharmadhatu or "the dimension of Reality."
Some call it by the name Alaya or "the basis of everything."
And some simply call it by the name "ordinary awareness."


7.

Now, when you are introduced (to your own intrinsic awareness), the method for entering into it involves three considerations:
Thoughts in the past are clear and empty and leave no traces behind.
Thoughts in the future are fresh and unconditioned by anything.
And in the present moment, when (your mind) remains in its own condition without constructing anything,
awareness, at that moment, in itself is quite ordinary.
And when you look into yourself in this way nakedly (without any discursive thoughts),
Since there is only this pure observing, there will be found a lucid clarity without anyone being there who is the observer;
only a naked manifest awareness is present.
(This awareness) is empty and immaculately pure, not being created by anything whatsoever.
It is authentic and unadulterated, without any duality of clarity and emptiness.
It is not permanent and yet it is not created by anything.
However, it is not a mere nothingness or something annihilated because it is lucid and present.
It does not exist as a single entity because it is present and clear in terms of being many.
(On the other hand) it is not created as a multiplicity of things because it is inseparable and of a single flavor.
This inherent self-awareness does not derive from anything outside itself.
This is the real introduction to the actual condition of things.


8.

Within this (intrinsic awareness), the Trikaya (Triple Bodies) are inseparable and fully present as one.
Since it is empty and not created anywhere whatsoever, it is The Dharmakaya (Dharma-Body).
Since its luminous clarity represents the inherent transparent radiance of emptiness, it is the Sambhogakaya (Reward-Body / Utility-Body).
Since its arising is nowhere obstructed or interrupted, it is the Nirmanakaya.
These three (the Trikaya) being complete and fully present as one are its very essence.


9.

When you are introduced in this way through this exceedingly powerful method for entering into the practice,
(You discover directly) that your own immediate self-awareness is just this (and nothing else),
and that it has an inherent self-clarity, which is entirely un-fabricated.
How can you then speak of not understanding the nature of the mind?
Moreover, since you are meditating without finding anything there to meditate upon,
how can you say that your meditation does not go well?
Since your own manifest intrinsic awareness is just this,
how can you say that you cannot find your own mind?
The mind is just that which is thinking:
And yet, although you have searched (for the thinker), how can you say that you do not find him?
With respect to this, nowhere does there exist the one who is the cause of (mental) activity.
And yet, since activity exists, how can you say that such activity does not arise?
Since merely allowing (thoughts) to settle into their own condition, without trying to modify them in any way, is sufficient,
How can you say that you are not able to remain in a calm state?
Since allowing (thoughts) to be just as they are, with out trying to do anything about them, is sufficient,
How can you say that you are not able to do anything with regard to them?
Since clarity, awareness, and emptiness are inseparable and are spontaneously self-perfected,
how can you say that nothing is accomplished by your practice?
Since (intrinsic awareness) is self-originated and spontaneously self-perfected without any antecedent causes or conditions,
How can you say that you are not able to accomplish anything by your efforts?
Since the arising of discursive thoughts and their being liberated occur simultaneously,
how can you say that you are unable to apply an antidote?
Since your own immediate awareness is just this,
how can you say that you do not know anything with regard to it?


10.

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.


11.

There exist no phenomena other than what arises from the mind.
Other than the meditation that occurs, where is the one who is meditating?
There exist no phenomena other than what arises from the mind.
Other than the behavior that occurs, where is the one who is behaving?
There exist no phenomena other than what arises from the mind.
Other than the samaya vow that occurs, where is the one who is guarding it?
There exist no phenomena other than what arises from the mind.
Other than the fruition that occurs, where is the one who is realizing (the fruit)?
You should look at your own mind, observing it again and again.


12.

When you look upward into the space of the sky outside yourself,
If there are no thoughts occurring that are emanations being projected,
And when you look inward at your own mind inside yourself,
If there exists no projectionist who projects thoughts by thinking them,
Then your own subtle mind will become lucidly clear without anything being projected.
Since the Clear Light of your own intrinsic awareness is empty, it is the Dharmakaya;
and this is like the sun rising in a cloudless illuminated sky.
Even though this light cannot be said to possess a particular shape or form, nevertheless, it can be fully known.
The meaning of this, whether or not it is understood, is especially significant.


13.

This self-originated Clear Light, which from the very beginning was in no way produced by something antecedent to it,
is the child of awareness, and yet it is itself without any parents--amazing!
This self-originated primordial awareness has not been created by anything--amazing!
It does not experience birth nor does there exist a cause for its death--amazing!
Although it is evidently visible, yet there is no one there who sees it--amazing!
Although it has wandered throughout Samsara, it has come to no harm--amazing!
Even though it has seen Buddhahood itself, it has not come to any benefit from this--amazing!
Even though it exists in everyone everywhere, yet it has gone unrecognized--amazing!
Nonetheless you hope to attain some other fruit than this elsewhere--amazing!
Even though it exists within yourself (and nowhere else), yet you seek for it elsewhere--amazing!


14.

How wonderful!
This immediate intrinsic awareness is insubstantial and lucidly clear:
Just this is the highest pinnacle of all views.
It is all encompassing, free of everything, and without any conceptions whatsoever:
Just this is the highest pinnacle among all meditations.
It is un-fabricated and inexpressible in worldly terms:
Just this is the highest pinnacle among all courses of conduct.
Without being sought after, it is spontaneously self-perfected from the very beginning:
Just this is the highest pinnacle among all fruits.


15.

Here is the teaching of the four great vehicles that are without error:
(First) there is the great vehicle of the unmistaken view.
Since this immediate awareness is lucidly clear,
and this lucid clarity is without error or mistake, it is called "a vehicle."
(Second) there is the great vehicle of the unmistaken meditation.
Since this immediate awareness is that which possesses clarity,
and this lucid clarity is without error or mistake, it is called "a vehicle."
(Third) there is the great vehicle of the unmistaken conduct.
Since this immediate primal awareness is that which possesses clarity,
and this lucid clarity is without error or mistake, it is called "a vehicle".
(Fourth) there is the great vehicle of the unmistaken fruit.
Since this immediate awareness is lucidly clear,
and this lucid clarity is without error or mistake, it is called "a vehicle."


16.

Here is the teaching on the four great unchanging (essential points called) "nails."
(First) there is the great nail of the unchanging view:
This immediate present awareness is lucidly clear,
because it is stable in the three times; it is called "a nail."
(Second) there is the great nail of the unchanging meditation:
This immediate present awareness is lucidly clear,
because it is stable in the three times; it is called "a nail."
(Third) there is the great nail of the unchanging conduct:
This immediate present awareness is lucidly clear,
because it is stable in the three times; it is called "a nail."
(Fourth) there is the great nail of the unchanging fruit:
This immediate present awareness is lucidly clear,
because it is stable in the three times; it is called "a nail."


17.

Then, as for the secret instruction, which teaches that the three times are one:
You should relinquish all notions of the past and abandon all precedents.
You should cut off all plans and expectations with respect to the future.
And in the present, you should not grasp (at thoughts that arise) but allow (the mind) to remain in a state like the sky.
Since there is nothing upon which to meditate (while in the primordial state), there is no need to meditate.
And since there does not exist any distraction here, you continue in this state of stable mindfulness without distraction.
In this state, which is without meditation and without any distraction, you observe everything with a naked (awareness).
Your own awareness is inherently knowing, inherently clear, and luminously brilliant.
When it arises, it is called the Bodhicitta, "the enlightened mind".
Being without any activity of meditation, it transcends all objects of knowledge.
Being without any distraction, it is the luminous clarity of the Essence itself.
Appearances, being empty in themselves, become self-liberated; clarity and emptiness (being inseparable) are the Dharmakaya.
Since it becomes evident that there is nothing to be realized by means of the path to Buddhahood,
at this time you will actually behold Vajra-sattva.


18.

Then, as for the instruction for exhausting the six extremes and overthrowing them:
Even though there exist a great many different views that do not agree among themselves,
This "mind" which is your own intrinsic awareness is in fact self-originated primal awareness.
And with regard to this, the observer and the process of observing are not two different things.
When you look and observe, seeking the one who is looking and observing,
since you search for this observer and do not find him,
At that time your view is exhausted and overthrown.
Thus, even though it is the end of your view, this is the beginning with respect to yourself.
The view and the one who is viewing are not found to exist anywhere.
Without it¡¯s falling excessively into emptiness and non-existence even at the beginning,
At this very moment your own present awareness becomes lucidly clear.
Just this is the view (or the way of seeing) of the Great Perfection.
Therefore understanding and not understanding are not two different things.


19.

Although there exist a great many different meditations that do not agree among themselves,
your own ordinary present awareness is directly penetrating.
The process of meditation and the one who meditates are not two different things.
When you look for the meditator who is meditating or not meditating,
since you have searched for this meditator and have not found him anywhere,
at that time your meditation is exhausted and overthrown.
Thus, even though it is the end of your meditation, this is the beginning with respect to yourself.
The meditation and the meditator are not found to exist anywhere.
Without it¡¯s falling under the power of delusion, drowsiness, or agitation,
your immediate un-fabricated awareness becomes lucidly clear;
and this unmodified state of even contemplation is concentration.
Therefore remaining in a calm state or not remaining in it are not two different things.


20.

Although there exist a great many different kinds of behavior, which do not agree among themselves,
your own self-originated primal awareness is the Unique Sphere.
Behavior and the one who behaves are not two (different things).
When you look for the one it is who behaves with action or without action,
Since you have searched for the one who acts and have not found him anywhere,
At that time your behavior is exhausted and overthrown.
Thus, even though it is the end of your conduct and behavior, this is the beginning with respect to yourself.
From the very beginning neither behavior nor the one who behaves have existed (as separate realities).
Without its falling under the power of errors and inherited predispositions,
your immediate awareness is an un-fabricated inherent clarity.
Without accepting or rejecting anything, just letting things be as they are without trying to modify them,
such conduct or behavior alone is pure.
(Therefore) pure and impure action are not two (different things).


21.

Although there exist great many different fruits that do not agree among themselves,
the nature of the mind that is inherent awareness is (none other than) the spontaneously perfected Trikaya.
What is realized and the one who realizes it are not two (different things).
When you look for the fruit and for the one who has realized it,
since you have searched for the realizer (of the fruit) and have not found him anywhere,
at that time your fruit is exhausted and overthrown.
Thus, even though it is an end to your fruition, still this is the beginning with respect to yourself.
Both the fruition and the one who has attained the realization are found to not exist anywhere.
Without its falling under the power of attachments or aversions or of hopes and fears,
your immediate present awareness becomes spontaneously perfected inherent clarity.
Understand that within yourself the Trikaya is fully manifest.
(Therefore) this itself is the fruition of primordial Buddhahood.


22.

This intrinsic awareness is free of the eight extremes, such as Eternalism and nihilism, and the rest.
Thus we speak of the Middle Way where one does not fall into any of the extremes,
and we speak of intrinsic awareness as uninterrupted mindful presence.
Since emptiness possesses a heart that is intrinsic awareness,
therefore it is called by the name of Tathagata-garbha, that is, "the embryo or heart of Buddhahood."
If you understand the meaning of this, then that will transcend and surpass everything else.
Therefore, it is called by the name of Praj?¨¢p¨¢ramit¨¢, that is, "the Perfection of Wisdom."
Because it cannot be conceived of by the intellect and is free of all (conceptual) limitations from the very beginning,
therefore it is called by the name of Mahamudra, that is, "the Great Symbol."
Because of that, in accordance with whether it is specifically understood or not understood,
Since it is the basis of everything, of all the bliss of Nirvana and of all the sorrow of Samsara,
Therefore it is called by the name of Alaya, that is, "the foundation of everything."
Because, when it remains in its own space, it is quite ordinary and in no way exceptional,
this awareness that is present and lucidly clear
is called by the name of "ordinary awareness."
However many names may be applied to it, even though they are well conceived and fancy sounding,
With regard to its real meaning, it is just this immediate present awareness (and nothing else).


23.

To desire something other than this
Is just like having an elephant (at home), but searching for its tracks elsewhere.
Even though you may try to measure the universe with a tape measure, it will not be possible to encompass all of it.
(Similarly) if you do not understand that everything derives from the mind, it will not be possible for you to attain Buddhahood.
By not recognizing this (intrinsic awareness for what it is), you will then search for your mind somewhere outside of yourself.
If you seek for yourself elsewhere (outside of yourself), how can you ever find yourself?
For example, this is just like an idiot who, going into a crowd of many people,
And having let himself become confused because of the spectacle,
Does not recognize himself; and, even though he searches for himself everywhere,
He continually makes the error of mistaking others for himself.
(Similarly) since you do not see the natural condition of the real disposition of things,
you do not know that appearances come from mind, and so you are thrust once again into Samsara.
By not seeing that your own mind is actually the Buddha, Nirvana becomes obscured.
With respect to Samsara and Nirvana, (the difference is simply due) to ignorance or to awareness respectively.
But at this single instant (of pure awareness), there is in fact no actual difference between them (in terms of their essence).
If you come to perceive them as existing somewhere other than in your own mind, this is surely an error.
(Therefore) error and non-error are actually of a single essence (which is the nature of the mind).
Since the mind-streams of sentient beings are not made into something that is divided into two,
the unmodified uncorrected nature of the mind is liberated by its being allowed simply to remain in its own (original) natural condition.
If you are not aware that the fundamental error or delusion comes from the mind,
you will not properly understand the real meaning of the Dharmata (the nature of reality);


24.

You should look into what is self-arising and self-originated.
With respect to these appearances, in the beginning they must arise from somewhere,
In between they must remain somewhere, and at the end they must go somewhere.
Yet when you look (into this matter), it is, for example, like a crow gazing into a well.
When he flies away from the well, (his reflection) also departs from the well and does not return.
In the same way, appearances arise from the mind;
they arise from the mind and are liberated into the mind.
The nature of the mind which (has the capacity) to know everything and be aware of everything is empty and clear;
As is the case with the sky above, its emptiness and its clarity have been inseparable from the very beginning.
Self-originated primal awareness becomes manifest,
And becoming systematically established as luminous clarity, just this is the Dharmata, the nature of reality.
Even though the indication of its existence is all phenomenal existence (which manifests externally to you),
You are aware of it in your own mind, and this latter is the nature of the mind.
Since it is aware and clear, it is understood to be like the sky.
However, even though we employ the example of the sky to indicate the nature of the mind,
this is in fact only a metaphor or simile indicating things in a one-sided fashion.
The nature of the mind, as well as being empty, is also intrinsically aware; everywhere it is clear.
But the sky is without any awareness; it is empty as an inanimate corpse is empty.
Therefore, the real meaning of "mind" is not indicated by the sky.
So without distraction, simply allow the mind to remain in the state of being just as it is.


25.

Moreover, as for this diversity of appearances, which represents relative truth,
not even one of these appearances is actually created in reality, and so accordingly they disappear again.
All things, all phenomenal existence, everything within Samsara and Nirvana,
Are merely appearances (or phenomena) which are perceived by the individual's single nature of the mind.
On any particular occasion, when your own (internal) mind-stream undergoes changes,
then there will arise appearances, which you will perceive as external changes.
Therefore, everything that you see is a manifestation of mind.
And, moreover, all of the beings inhabiting the six realms of rebirth perceive everything with their own distinct karmic vision.
The Tirthikas who are outsiders see all this in terms of the dualism of Eternalism as against nihilism.
Each of the nine successive vehicles sees things in terms of its own view.
Thus, things are perceived in various different ways and may be elucidated in various different ways.
Because you grasped at these various (appearances that arise), becoming attached to them, errors have come into existence.
Yet with respect to all of these appearances of which you are aware in your mind,
Even though these appearances that you perceive do arise, if you do not grasp at them, then that is Buddhahood.


26.

Appearances are not erroneous in themselves, but because of your grasping at them, errors come into existence.
But if you know that these thoughts only grasp at things which are mind, then they will be liberated by themselves.
Everything that appears is but a manifestation of mind.
Even though the entire external inanimate universe appears to you, it is but a manifestation of mind.
Even though all of the sentient beings of the six realms appear to you they are but a manifestation of mind.
Even though the happiness of humans and the delights of the Devas in heaven appear to you, they are but manifestations of mind.
Even though the sorrows of the three evil destinies appear to you, they are but manifestations of mind.
Even though the five poisons representing ignorance and the passions appear to you, they are but manifestations of mind.
Even though intrinsic awareness, which is self-originated primal awareness, appears to you, it is but a manifestation of mind.
Even though good thoughts along the way to Nirvana appear to you, they are but manifestations of mind.
Even though obstacles due to demons and evil spirits appears to you, they are but manifestations of mind.
Even though the gods and other excellent attainments appear to you, they are but manifestations of mind.
Even though various kinds of purity appear to you, they are but manifestations of mind.
Even though (the experience) of remaining in a state of one-pointed concentration without any discursive thoughts appears to you, it is but a manifestation of mind.
Even though the colors that are the characteristics of things appear to you, they are but manifestations of mind.
Even though a state without characteristics and without conceptual elaborations appears to you, it is but a manifestation of mind.
Even though the non-duality of the one and the many appears to you, it is but a manifestation of mind.
Even though existence and non-existence, which are not created anywhere, appear to you, they are but manifestations of mind.
There exist no appearances whatsoever that can be understood as not coming from mind.


27.

Because of the unobstructed nature of the mind, there is a continuous arising of appearances.
Like the waves and the waters of the ocean, which are not two (different things),
Whatever arises is liberated into the natural state of the mind.
However many different names are applied to it in this unceasing process of naming things,
With respect to its real meaning, the mind (of the individual) does not exist other than as one.
And, moreover, this singularity is without any foundation and devoid of any root.
But, even though it is one, you cannot look for it in any particular direction.
It cannot be seen as an entity located somewhere, because it is not created or made by anything.
Nor can it be seen as just being empty, because there exists the transparent radiance of its own luminous clarity and awareness.
Nor can it be seen as diversified, because emptiness and clarity are inseparable.
Immediate self-awareness is clear and present.
Even though activities exist, there is no awareness of an agent who is the actor.
Even though they are without any inherent nature, experiences are actually experienced.
If you practice in this way, then everything will be liberated.
With respect to your own sense faculties, everything will be understood immediately without any intervening operations of the intellect.
Just as is the case with the sesame seed being the cause of the oil and the milk being the cause of butter,
But where the oil is not obtained without pressing and the butter is not obtained without churning,
So all sentient beings, even though they possess the actual essence of Buddhahood,
Will not realize Buddhahood without engaging in practice.
If he practices, then even a cowherd can realize liberation.
Even though he does not know the explanation, he can systematically establish himself in the experience of it.
(For example) when one has had the experience of actually tasting sugar in one's own mouth,
one does not need to have that taste explained by someone else.
Not understanding this (intrinsic awareness), even Panditas can fall into error.
Even though they are exceedingly learned and knowledgeable in explaining the nine vehicles,
it will only be like spreading rumors of places, which they have not seen personally.
And with respect to Buddhahood, they will not even approach it for a moment.
If you understand (intrinsic awareness), all of your merits and sins will be liberated into their own condition.
But if you do not understand it, any virtuous or vicious deeds that you commit
will accumulate as karma leading to transmigration in heavenly rebirth or to rebirth in the evil destinies respectively.
But if you understand this empty primal awareness, which is your own mind,
the consequences of merit and of sin will never come to be realized,
just as a spring cannot originate in the empty sky.
In the state of emptiness itself, the object of merit or of sin is not even created.
Therefore, your own manifest self-awareness comes to see everything nakedly.
This self-liberation through seeing with naked awareness is of such great profundity,
and, this being so; you should become intimately acquainted with self-awareness.
Profoundly sealed!


28.

How wonderful!
As for this "Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness" which is a direct introduction to one's own intrinsic awareness,
It is for the benefit of those sentient beings belonging to the later generations of those future degenerate times
That all of my Tantras, Agamas, and Upadesas,
Though necessarily brief and concise, have been composed.
And even though I have disseminated them at the present time, yet they shall be concealed as precious treasures,
So that those whose good karma ripens in the future shall come to encounter them.
SAMAYA! Gya! Gya! Gya!

This treatise which is an introduction to one's actual intrinsic awareness or state of immediate presence
Is entitled "Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness."
It was composed by Padmasambhava, the Master from Uddiyana.
Until Samsara is emptied of living beings, may this Great Work of liberating them not be abandoned!

(On the full moon day of the eight-month of the Wood-Ox year, this Terma text entitled the Rig-pa ngo-sprod gcer mthong rang-grol, belonging to the Zab-chos zhi-khro dgongs-pa rang-grol cycle of Rigdzin Karma Lingpa, was translated by Vajranatha in the hope that it will enlighten and benefit all beings.

Sarva Mangalam!

(Translated into English by John Myrdhin Reynolds)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments by my friend, Thusness, at http://buddhism.sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=234629:

quote:

---

Originally posted by longchen:
This is really good. Sure spell out the different subtle attachments.
It also in a way explain why there can so many different types of mystical or transcendental experiences. All are but the various types of subtle attachments giving rise to different understandings and experiences.

Thanks so much. It is helpful for me

---

Hi Longchen,

Not only that. This work by Padmasambhava is truly deep and profound; it discloses the self-liberating aspect of our intrinsic nature. It is especially important for you now.

At that time when you posted the thread of non-dual and karmic pattern,
http://buddhism.sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=225462, the condition is only right for understanding 'the strength of karmic propensities’, as such, this aspect was not disclosed. Instead, the second door of impermanence was introduced and it was introduced with the purpose to complement the no-self experience you had in order to give rise to this insight of “Self-Liberation”


----------------------

Update in 2019:

• 
  

  

  
  

  Soh Wei Yu shared a link.

  Admin · 27 mins

  As John Tan said, this Chinese translation of Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness by Padmasambhava is clearer than the English version existing now by John Myrdhin Reynolds. He commented that just as I was thinking about the same thing right before he said it. The essence of anatta and empty clarity more clearly expressed than the English one.
  Good for Chinese readers, which I think is few in this group. Too bad for English readers. Maybe one day we'll have an Arcaya Malcolm standard of translation in English

  
  

  • [1:28 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: These two part that u quoted, is anatta.
    [1:30 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: However emphasis isn't there.  It is difficult for ppl to understand and differentiate anatta teaching of empty clarity from awareness teaching.
    [1:34 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: Although what u pasted is clear, the emphasis is unclear.  Esp in the first para, it said all the different path including advaita is talking about same thing.
    [1:35 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: If it is expressed as opposite, then it will b beautiful.
    [1:35 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: Otherwise awareness practitioners may think it is the same.
    [1:35 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: hmm he's saying all paths including advaita are talking about clarity, but he said advaita and hinayana and lower yanas all have faults (The Tirthikas who are outsiders see all this in terms of the dualism of Eternalism as against nihilism. Each of the nine successive vehicles sees things in terms of its own view.) 
  • [1:35 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: for example
    [1:36 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: 二十五
    有些外道常持二元论，或以不灭论来驳斥空论，
    密法九乘中也各据立场来观外境。
    人们不仅观察外境的方式不同，解说立论也互异，
    一旦执着於变化无常的表相，谬误便由此而生。
    你若能对自心所见的表相，
    不论它们是虚是实，始终不执不取，便是佛境。
  • 
    [1:39 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: This is by who?
    [1:40 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: dzogchen padmasambhava?
    [1:42 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: However [the chinese] translation is much better than western translation.. lol
    [1:43 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: The essence of the teaching is maintained.

  [1:43 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: many bad translations elsewhere
  [1:44 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: if malcolm translate in english i think will be better
  [1:44 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: than existing translation
  [1:44 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: Yes
  [1:45 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: In fact Chinese translation is more clear than english
  [1:46 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: Yeah.. i think so too
  [1:47 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: like the english version said "
  The mind is just that which is thinking:" and you commented
  (My opinion is it should be translated to “The mind is just the thinking” but I do not have the original text.)
  [1:47 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: but the chinese is really just the mind essence is just the thinking
  [1:47 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: exactly as you thought
  [1:47 AM, 11/3/2019] Soh Wei Yu: lol
  [1:49 AM, 11/3/2019] John Tan: And in thinking, there is just thoughts. When u look for thoughts, u can find anything.
  
  Therefore re-examine the idea of existing and non-existing, they do not apply.
  
  

  

  
  

  nonahz.org

  无染觉性直观解脱之道

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  • 

    Soh Wei Yu I have seen a Chinese version years ago that was bad, terrible, worse than John Reynolds. This one seems much more accurate and clear
• • Like
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  •  · 26m
  •  · Edited
• 

  Soh Wei Yu And John Reynold's translation is already much clearer than the previous version
• • Like
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  •  · 23m
  •  · Edited
• 

  Soh Wei Yu by Evans-Wentz, which has a tendency of translating the text into a super-Vedanta universal-mind doctrine
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  •  · 22m
• 

  Soh Wei Yu Anyway, John Reynold's version is already pretty good, here's a link: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/.../self...
  
  You'll notice that at the bottom, John Reynolds translated - "The mind is just that which is thinking:" and John Tan commented
  (My opinion is it should be translated to “The mind is just the thinking” but I do not have the original text.)
  
  In the Chinese version, it is translated this way: 心性原本就是那一念，
  
  Mind-essence originally/already is that one thought
• 

  awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com

  Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness

  Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness

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  Soh Wei Yu There are other places where the Chinese version is clearer. But John Reynold's one is not too bad as well.
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莲华生大士作

刘巧佛译

本文叙述「无染觉性直观自行解脱之道」，这是开示本来觉性最直接的法要，源自「宁静忿怒尊无上自性解脱最胜教敕」。

一

敬礼法报化叁身，敬礼一切圆证空明觉性之诸佛。

二

我将开示『无染觉性直观自行解脱之道』，

源自『宁静忿怒尊无上自性解脱最胜教敕』，

它为你真实解说自己的本来觉性。

有幸佛子，谛听觉照！

叁昧耶　嘎嘎嘎

叁

何其奥妙！

娑婆与涅盘同时圆具於一心之内，

它的本性亘古即然，你却无缘得识。

它空明无染，永世不灭，你却无缘一睹它的丰 。

它处处显现无碍，你却视而不睹。

因此着文，为解说自己的心性。

若不了解内在自性，

叁世诸佛所开示之八万四千法门，

无人得识其中奥义。

此言不虚，大雄诸佛之密意尽在於此矣！

佛法经典纵然遍满虚空，

究竟教诲终归於导入自性的叁要诀。

今开显诸佛自性，

下文解说修持要诀，此法既无前行，也无续修。

四

谛听！

有幸佛子，谛听！

常人虽也重视心性的问题，且广加研究，

对它仍然茫然无知，或落妄见，或入边见。

乃因彼等未能正视心性之本身，

只知发展为各种哲学观念及学说，

深奥难解，

使一般人错失了认识自性的机缘，

以致轮回流转於六道叁界，受尽诸苦。

由此可知，不觉自己的心性，是十分可悲的谬误。

纵然声闻缘觉试由无我的道理深入，

却无法了解自性之本来面目。

其他行者亦各执一论，

自作缠缚，无缘得见净光。

声闻缘觉受到主客（能所）二元之分别见所障，

中观派则蔽於真俗二谛的执着，

事乘与瑜伽乘因执着本尊外相而受缚，

大瑜伽（方便父续）及随瑜伽（般若母续）则因分别空性与觉性为二而生惑，

从不二的究竟义观之，

他们因分别空觉为二而步入歧途，

唯有先识破空性与觉性不二，方能证入佛性无碍。

由自性观之，不论凡俗，娑婆与涅盘本来不二，

只因你不断造作贪 诸毒，

故至今仍然流转於娑婆世界。

因此，暂且放下你现行或未行的佛学法事，

藉今日开示『无染觉性直观自行解脱之道』的因缘，

你终将明白，

所有佛法都在这无上自性解脱中得以圆满。

不论你修持何法，均将融入大圆满的究竟境界。

叁昧耶　嘎嘎嘎

五

那光明灿烂的觉性，也就是所谓的心性，

有人视它为具体存在，实际上它并非实存。

然而它又是一切之始，涅盘极乐及娑婆苦海的根源。

它一向被密宗十一学派所推崇。

从名相来讲，它具有各形各式的名称。

有人称它为心，或心性；

有人称它为梵，或大我；

有人视它为无我的教义；

有人直称它为心而已；

有人称它为般若，或圆满智慧；

有人称它为如来藏，或佛种；

有人称为大手印；

有人称为唯一本体；

有人称为法界；

有人称为阿赖耶，或一切种；

有人只称它为平常心（觉）。

六

现在为你开示本觉。要点有叁：

清除过去之念，不留纤毫痕迹；

向未来之念开放，不受他境所染；

安住当下心境，不修整造作。

如此的觉照，实在平凡无奇，

无思无念地观照自我，

若仅仅纯粹的观察，唯见明空之境，并无任何观者存在，

当下只是纯粹的觉照而已。

此觉空明无染，非由他生，

它真实无杂，明空不二。

它既非永恒，亦非受造，

然而它绝非虚无，因它光明遍在。

它也不是单一的实体，因它明显地遍存万物。

然而它亦不似一般物质和合而成，

因它不可分割，只具一味。

总之，我们本具的自觉，绝非源自任何外物。

如此方是真正观察实相之道。

七

在这本觉内，法报化叁身圆满如一。

因它不生及空性，故是法身；

因空性圆具光明朗净，故是报身；

因它能够自在显现，故是化身。

这圆满一体的法报化叁身，便是觉性的本质。

八

谛听这殊胜的开示，

你顿见自己当下的本觉原是如此，

本来空明，纤毫未染，

你怎能说，你不了解自己的心性？

你的修持本无所执，亦无所求，

你怎能说，你修持不佳？

既然你的本觉就是这个，

你怎能说，你寻不着自己的心性？

心性原本就是那一念，

你百般寻找，为何仍说你找不到那个起心动念的人？

由是可见，起心动念的主体根本不存在，

然而此念确有，你怎能说此念未生？

你只需随任此念生灭，不修不整，

你为何还说自己无法进入空境？

既然你只需顺其自然，无为无作，

你为何还说，你对它们一筹莫展？

何况明、空、觉性，本是圆满不可分的一体，

你怎能说，自己的修持一无所成？

既然本觉是自然出生、自然圆满，不受前因或外境所限，

你怎能说，一切功夫只是徒然？

既然所有念头都是当下生起，当下寂灭解脱，

你为何还说，你不知对治之道？

既然当下的觉性本来如此，

你为何还不识自己的本性？

九

自性本空，它真的无实无根，

你的自性也如虚空，

你不妨仔细观照一下自心是否确实如此。

你真的不用先入为主地秉持着空观，

那自然生起的本觉，从无始以来一直空明朗净，

好似太阳一般，由核心自然发出光热，

你不妨仔细观照一下自心是否确实如此。

这本觉本智，真的是不灭的，

好似江河流水一般永无止尽，

你不妨仔细观照一下自心是否确实如此。

心念变化无常，真的不是我们的意念所能尽解，

它们就像微风一般难以捉摸，

你不妨仔细观察一下自心是否确实如此。

不论任何外境生起，真的就是本体显现，

就像明镜能反映出一切外境似的，

你不妨仔细观察一下自心是否确实如此。

世上纷纭万象，真的都在它的自身内解脱，

就像空中的云彩自行生出又自行寂灭，

你不妨仔细观察一下自心是否确实如此。

十

一切境相无非是心性所生，

在修持之外，岂另有修持之人？

一切境相无非是心性所生，

在事行之外，岂另有行者之存在？

一切境相无非是心性所生，

除了叁昧耶戒之外，岂另有守戒之人？

一切境相无非是心性所生，

除了证果之外，岂另有悟者之存在？

你应该仔细观照自己的心性，审思再叁。

十一

当你外观身外虚空，

若无杂念，亦不受外界所染；

你再内观自性，

亦无念者以念向外造境，

那麽，那微妙的心性，便空明朗净，无垢无染。

你的本觉净光，即是法界本身，

好似无云晴空中的太阳，

阳光虽无形无相，却光明遍照。

不论你了解与否，此乃最胜法义。

十二

这本来圆满的净光，自始便非源自他物，

乃由觉性自生，本身却无父无母，真是不可思议！

自生之无上觉性，亦非由他物所造，真是不可思议！

它既无生，故也无由而灭，真是不可思议！

它虽无所不在，却无人得见真相，真是不可思议！

纵然流转於娑婆世界，却无损其身，真是不可思议！

纵使得证佛性，对它亦无所增益，真是不可思议！

它存在每个人内，却无人认出它来，真是不可思议！

然而你还冀望成就其他外在的证果，真是不可思议！

明知它在自身之内，你却四出寻觅，真是不可思议！

十叁

何其奥妙！

这当下的本觉空明朗净，无实可执，

仅此，即是无上的知见。

它涵括一切，却不受任何观念事物所羁，

仅此，即是无上的修持。

它不修不整，又是言语道断，

仅此，即是无上的道行。

无需四处追求，它本来圆满具足，

仅此，即是无上的证果。

十四

殊胜之正道有四：

殊胜的正见：

正因当下觉性光明朗净，

此光明净性又无瑕无疵，故可称之为道。

殊胜的正修：

正因当下觉性本具此光明，

此光明净性又无瑕无疵，故可称之为道。

殊胜的正行：

正因当下觉性本具此光明，

此光明净性又无瑕无疵，故可称之为道。

殊胜的正果：

正因当下觉性就是这光明朗净，

此光明净性又无瑕无疵，故可称之为道。

十五

今开示叁世不易的四定法：

不易之正见，是为一法，

当下常在的觉性光明朗净，

叁世不易，故称为定法。

不易之正修，是为一法，

当下常在的觉性光明朗净，

叁世不易，故称为定法。

不易之正行，是为一法，

当下常在的觉性光明朗净，

叁世不易，故称为定法。

不易之正果，是为一法，

当下常在的觉性光明朗净，

叁世不易，故称为定法。

十六

既然你已聆受叁世如一的 密教诲，

便应尽抛过去的知见及一切，

断除未来的冀望及筹划。

眼前这一刻，纵有念头生起，不执不取，心如虚空。

既然，由究竟观之，根本无法可修，故无需修持。

既然，那儿本不散乱，你只需心不散乱地安住此境，

不修不整也不散乱，只是觉照一切，

你的觉性便本知本明，光明灿烂。

当它生起时，称为菩提心，亦即悟性。

因无所修整，故超越一切外在知识，

因无所散乱，它是本体的光明净性，

外境外相，既无自性，故自然解脱。

明空不二，是为法界。

一旦悟及佛性无道可及，无法可悟，不证自明，

便得如实而见金刚萨 。

十七

下面的开示，将为你穷究六种边见，并推翻其说。

不论当前的知见学说，立论何等分歧，

所谓的心性，便是你的本觉，

它是自然生起的无上觉性。

应知，观者及观照本来不二，

当你观照，不妨寻找观者为谁，

若遍寻不得，

此一妄见便顿现其穷，而自然瓦解。

这妄见一了，即是你重生的一刻。

知见及持此知见之人并无分别，

若能不落入空见或空境，

当下的觉性顿显空明，

这便是大圆满见。

於是，不论识与不识，亦无分别。

十八

不论当前的修行方法，立论何等分歧，

你的日常觉心，具有透视观照的能力。

应知，修持与修持者本来不二，

不论你在修行与否，不妨寻觅一番修持之人，

若遍寻而不得修持之主体，

你的修持便顿现其穷，而自然瓦解。

修持一旦放下，便是你重生的一刻。

你若能既不落幻境，也不昏沈散乱，

当下无染的觉性自现光明朗净，

这毫不造作的觉照，便是专一定境。

如此，入定或不入定，本非二境。

十九

不论当前的行事标准，是何等的分歧，

你本具的元觉，却是唯一本体。

应知，行为与行者本非二事，

不论你正在造作或无事，不妨观察一下，

是否有一行者存在，

若遍寻行者而不可得，

你的行事便顿现其穷，而自然瓦解。

造作停止的那一刻，便是你的新生。

无始以来，事行与行事之人本无分别，

你若能不落入妄见，染着习气，

当下的觉性刹那归於清净无染。

既不相应，也不排斥，随顺事物，不加修整，

唯此道行，方称清净无染。

如此，净行与不净行，亦本来不二。

二十

不论当前的悟境证果，是何等的分歧，

心性的本质就是本觉，亦即本来圆满的法报化叁身。

应知，悟境与悟者本来不二，

你不妨寻找一下悟境及悟者。

若遍寻悟者而不可得，

你的悟境便顿现其穷，而自然瓦解。

悟境一旦寂灭，便是你新生的一刻。

悟境与悟者皆觅不可得，

你又不落於执着或贪 惧情，

当下的觉性便归於本来的清净无染。

只要了悟法报化叁身圆具於你内，

此即无上佛果。

二十一

本觉是不受不灭论或空见诸种边见所染的，

此即所谓不落两边的中道。

本觉原来就是清净无碍的常存觉性，

它又是空性之核心，

因此被称为如来性，即佛心或佛种。

你若明了此究竟奥义，便已超越一切论说，

因此它又被称为般若波罗蜜多，即圆满智慧。

又因它超越了理性及观念的 畴，

因此又被称为大手印，即无上的象徵奥义。

因此，不论你了解与否，它皆自适其所。

由於它是涅盘极乐与娑婆苦海的根源，

故被称为阿赖耶，意即一切种。

由於它本来面目平凡无奇，

这空明常在的觉性，

又被称为平常心（觉）。

不论它具有多少个深奥而美妙的名相，

最终所指，不过是这当下觉性而已。

二十二

於此心外，向外驰求，

就好比外出追寻象迹，其实你的象正安居家中。

即使你通晓整个宇宙，也无法穷究这奥 的究竟。

如果你不了解万象皆出自一心，便无由证得佛果。

不知识取本觉之人，自然向外驰求，

一味向身外寻求自我的人，怎会找到自己？

好比一个笨人，进到人群中，

便受到外境所惑，而忘失了自己，

一旦忘失自我，便四处乱寻，

不断误将他人当作自己。

同理，如果你不知万物之本性，

不知外境原是出自一心，便会再叁流转於娑婆。

你若看不透自己的本来心性就是如来，

涅盘便变得遥不可及。

所谓娑婆与涅盘，全凭你一念无明或一念明觉。

若由究竟义观之，两者本质实在无所分别。

你还以为它们存在於你的自性之外，

真是极大的错误！

其实错误与无误，本来也是一味（自性而已）。

一切有性的心念本来不可分割，

不修不整的心性，

只需安住本来自然之境，便是解脱。

如果你认不出那根本的迷惑及幻相也是出自本心，

你便无法认识法界的实相。

二十叁

你应努力觉照那自始自生者，

由外相观之，起初似有所生，

存在期间，似有所住，最後终将归於某处。

可是你若加以细究，它却似乌鸦照井，

当乌鸦离井而去，它的倒影也一逝不返。

同理，一切表相皆由心所生，

既由心生，也由心灭，

唯此心性了知一切，且知一切本空本净，

有如天上穹苍，它的空虚与澄澈本不可分。

自生的本觉虽能生出外境，

变成光明透澈又井然有序的万象，

此即法性，也是实相。

它虽藉外相来显示自身的存在，

你心中却明明白白，那便是你的自性。

由於它是如此明朗透澈，故被视为虚空。

但虚空只是心性的一个比拟而已，

不足以涵盖其意。

因为自性虽如虚空，却具本觉，无所不明，

天空却无觉性，它的空虚好似死 一般地空虚，

了无生命，

因此，心性的真相，是无法以天空作譬的。

总之，能毫不散乱地任心性安住本然便是。

二十四

何况纷纭万象，也具有俗谛（相对性的真理）的价值。

没有任何现象真正地存在，它们迟早会消逝。

涅盘及娑婆中的一切事物现象，

只不过是表相而已，靠那唯一的自性去觉察。

每当内在的心境有所改变，

感受到的外境也随之变迁，

因此，你所见的一切，只是心性的流露。

六道众生都是依照自己的业报而认取外境的。

二十五

有些外道常持二元论，或以不灭论来驳斥空论，

密法九乘中也各据立场来观外境。

人们不仅观察外境的方式不同，解说立论也互异，

一旦执着於变化无常的表相，谬误便由此而生。

你若能对自心所见的表相，

不论它们是虚是实，始终不执不取，便是佛境。

二十六

外境本身并无过错，因为执着才成障碍。

你若了知那执着外相的念头，就是自性，

此念当下解脱。

一切显现只是心性的流露。

即使整个宇宙毕现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使六道众生毕现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使天人的福报毕现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使下叁道的苦境毕现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使贪 痴等五毒毕现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使自生的本觉呈现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使涅盘道上的善念呈现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使各种魔难障碍出现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使天界神 及其境界出现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使各种净念出现於前，也只是心性的流露。

即使证入无念的定境，也只是心性的流露。

即使观得万物光影交错，也只是心性的流露。

即使证入色无边处定或识无边处定，也只是心性的流露。

即使证入一多不二，也只是心性的流露。

即使一切色与一切空毕现於前，这也是心性的流露。

没有任何境相，不是出自心性。

二十七

正因自性无碍的本质，境相才能不断生起，

有如大海及波浪本是一体。

因此凡是生起之现象，必将在心性内自然解脱，

不论你用多少不同的名相去指称它，

由究竟观之，心性不曾离开过一切而存在。

这一体性并非建 在任何有形基础上的，

它虽是一，你却无法由任何一边而得其全貌。

它也不是存在某处的实体，因为它不由造作。

它也不是虚无，因它的光明及觉性光辉遍照。

它更不是各种形色，因为空性与光明是不可分割的。

当下此刻的自觉是如此空灵及实在，

虽有此觉照，却找不到觉照的主体，

所悟实在只是被悟而已，一无实质。

只要据此修行，一切自然解脱，

我们的官能（五根）便能不受理性意识的干扰，

当下体认一切。

有如芝麻榨成麻油，牛奶搅成奶油的过程一样，

不经榨压，哪来麻油？不经搅拌，哪来奶油？

一切众生虽本具真实佛性，

不经修持，如何证入佛果？

若肯修持，即使放牛郎也能悟道解脱。

他虽不了解其中学理，

仍能从经验中一步一步地调练自己。

譬如有人亲口 过糖的滋味，

哪里需要他人解说其中滋味？

错失本觉，即使班智达（博学之士）也堕入歧路，

不论他们学问何等渊博，通晓密宗九乘的次第，

缺乏证量经验，所说难免以讹传讹，

离佛地益远。

一旦了知本觉，一切功德业报当下灭尽；

若不识本觉，一切德行或恶业，

终将累积为业报，在善恶二界中轮回流转。

只要你能识破自性中空虚的觉性，

善、恶、德、业，便不致落实成报。

就如虚空流不出泉水一般，

功德与罪业在虚空之境也无法滋生业果。

那自生的本觉方能观照透视一切，

以无染觉性直观自行解脱之道，是如此深奥！

你必须熟谙自己的觉性。

这 密教敕何等深奥！

二十八

何等奥妙！

『无染觉性直观自行解脱之道』，

直接为人开示本觉，

这是为了未来众生的利益。

此论虽精简非常，

所有密法、要门、口诀，尽在於此矣！

我既已传授此法於当世，仍另将它隐藏某处，

作为 藏密法，

使未来善业成熟之人，有缘闻此妙法。

叁昧耶　嘎嘎嘎

以上论述是开示人的当下觉性，

定名为『无染觉性直观自行解脱之道』。

此文乃是邬金教主莲华生大士所作，

愿这殊胜的解脱之道永不失落，

直到娑婆众生毕竟解脱。

木牛年第八个满月日，此 藏定名为Rig-pa ngo-sprod gcer mthong rang-grol，取自Rigdzin karma lingpa传承的Zab-chos zhi-khro dgongs-pa rang-grol。一九八五年Vajranatha恭译为英文，一九九一年刘巧玲恭译为中文，回向众生毕竟解脱。