Then
the practice becomes the thought moment between two moments of gaps. To
experience that luminous empty essence of that thought. It is in
essence clarity, awareness itself, and is empty. The waves and the ocean
are one and the same. All waves are One Taste. Experiencing Isness as
an ocean and shunning away thoughts and manifestation is equally lost,
the further insight (insight into non-duality) is the insight into
everything as self-luminous awareness or Mind. smile.gif
However,
start by practicing the gap between 2 moments of thought and expand it
but with the right understanding of no-self/non-duality. Then when the
luminosity shines, it will gradually understand because it knows what
blocks. When it tries all its best to do away the transients and yet the
transients persist, one will have to wait for the right condition to
come, such as having someone to point out or some verses that serves as a
condition for awakening.
So first experience the Isness of the gap between 2 moments of thought, then the Isness of the thought between 2 moments of gap.
Excerpt from Pointing Out Innate Thinking:
"Is
it an aware emptiness after the thought has dissolved? Or is it an
aware emptiness by driving away the thought from meditation? Or, is the
vividness of the thought itself an aware emptiness?"
If
the meditator says it is like one of the first two cases, he had not
cleared up the former uncertainties and should therefore be set to
resolve this for a few days.
On
the other hand, if he personally experiences it to be like the latter
case, he has seen identity of thought and can therefore be given the
following pointing-out instruction:
"When
you look into a thought's identity, without having to dissolve the
thought and without having to force it out by meditation, the vividness
of the thought is itself the indescribable and naked state of aware
emptiness. We call this seeing the natural face of innate thought or
thought dawns as dharmakaya.
"Previously,
when you determined the thought's identity and when you investigated
the calm and the moving mind, you found that there was nothing other
than this intangible single mind that is a self-knowing, natural
awareness. It is just like the analogy of water and waves."
~ 14th Century Mahamudra Master, Dakpo Tashi Namgyal
Dzogchen Master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche:
Even
if those who begin to practice this find it difficult to continue in
this state for more than an instant, there is no need to worry about it.
Without wishing for the state to continue for a long time and without
fearing the lack of it altogether, all that is necessary is to maintain
pure presence of mind, without falling into the dualistic situation of
there being an observing subject perceiving an observed object. If the
mind, even though one maintains simple presence, does not remain in this
calm state, but always tends to follow waves of thoughts about the past
or future, or becomes distracted by the aggregates of the senses such
as sight, hearing, etc., then one should try to understand that the wave
of thought itself is as insubstantial as the wind. If one tries to
catch the wind, one does not succeed; similarly if one tries to block
the wave of thought, it cannot be cut off. So for this reason one should
not try to block thought, much less try to renounce it as something
considered negative. In reality, the calm state is the essential
condition of mind, while the wave of thought is the mind's natural
clarity in function; just as there is no distinction whatever between
the sun and its rays, or a stream and its ripples, so there is no
distinction between the mind and thought. If one considers the calm
state as something positive to be attained, and the wave of thought as
something negative to be abandoned, and one remains thus caught up in
the duality of accepting and rejecting, there is no way of overcoming
the ordinary state of mind.
"Ananda,
you have not yet understood that all the defiling objects that appear,
all the illusory, ephemeral phenomena, spring up in the very spot where
they also come to an end. Their phenomena aspects are illusory and
false, but their nature is in truth the bright substance of wonderful
enlightenment. Thus it is throughout, up to the five skandhas and the
six entrances, to the twelve places and the eighteen realms; the union
and mixture of various causes and conditions account for their illusory
and false existence, and the separation and dispersion of the causes and
conditions result in their illusory and false extinction. Who would
have thought that production and extinction, coming and going are
fundamentally the eternal wonderful light of the Tathagata, the
unmoving, all-pervading perfection, the wonderful nature of True
Suchness! If within the true and eternal nature one seeks coming and
going, confusion and enlightenment, or birth and death, one will never
find them."
"You
still have not realized that in the Treasury of the Tathagata, the
nature of form is true emptiness and the nature of emptiness is true
form. That fundamental purity pervades the Dharma Realm. Beings’ minds
absorb itaccording to their capacity to know. Whatever manifests does so
in compliance with karma. Ignorant of that fact, people of the world
are so deluded as to assign its origin to causes and conditions or to
spontaneity. These mistakes, which arise from the discriminations and
reasoning processes of the mind, are nothing but the play of empty and
meaningless words."
I
think this five skandha scheme is a very interesting one, in the sense
that it can begin to raise some very interesting questions and help us
dig deeper, rather than just having a vague, amorphous kind of
understanding. We are individual. We are each responsible for ourselves
and our karma and our relations. Our individuality is comprised of these
five aggregates or skandhas. We can work with that. It is actually an
expression of the Buddha-nature.
Now,
doesn't anybody want to say, "I didn't hear anything about
Buddha-nature in the five skandhas. Where's the Buddha-nature? Who made
that up?" That's the right question. What Buddha-nature? I never said
anything about it. Who made that up? What enlightenment? What nirvana?
Who made all that stuff up? Is it in us or elsewhere? How to get from
"here" to "there"?
We're
all looking for something to hang our hopes on, but when we really get
down to the present moment, to our own experience, to clear seeing, we
come to what Buddha said: "In hearing there is only hearing; no one
hearing and nothing heard." There is just that moment, that hearing. You
might think, "Oh, a beautiful bird." How do you know it's a bird? It
might be a tape recorder. It might be bicycle brakes squeaking. In the
first moment, there is just hearing, then we get busy, our minds and
concepts get involved. The Buddha went through all the five senses. "In
seeing there is just seeing; no one seeing and nothing seen." And so on,
with tasting, touching, smelling, and thinking. Thoughts without a
thinker. In thinking there is just thinking. There is just that
momentary process. There is no thinker. The notion of an inner thinker
is just a thought. We imagine that there is somebody thinking. It's like
the Wizard of Oz. They thought there was this glorious wizard, but it
was just a little man back there behind the screen, behind the veil.
That's how it is with the ego. We think there's a great big monkey
inside working the five windows, the five senses. Or maybe five monkeys,
one for each sense; a whole chattering monkey house, which it sometimes
feels like. But is there really a concrete individual or permanent soul
inside at all? It seems more like that the lights are on, but no one is
home!
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