Awakening the Luminous Mind: Tibetan Meditation for Inner Peace and Joy (12 page)

When we identify with the object of bliss or samsaric joy, we don’t think there is a problem. I love pizza. There is no problem. I love chocolate. There is no problem. But when I feel pain because I am not allowed to eat pizza anymore or I become allergic to chocolate, then I’m looking for a remedy. So pain brings you into the search for a solution. And when you wonder how you can understand the ego, it is especially obvious when you are in pain.
I feel pain. I am sad. I am depressed
. The ego who is suffering is easier to recognize than the one for whom suffering is not that intense. So in some sense, there is more advantage when you are suffering in an obvious way.

If the eye that perceives the vision is another pain body,
Vision is mind
cannot be realized. If it is naked awareness, then it is realized. What is difficult for us is that we have a strong, long habit of being in our pain body and looking at the world through our habits, through the eyes of the pain body. The practice of naked observation is simple, but our habits are strong and complex. One common reflex when experiencing pain is to separate from the pain and put distance between yourself and the pain. What we don’t recognize is that the distance is the problem. Distance is produced by our fear of an experience. And as long as we remain distant, we will never be free of pain and the fear of pain. So it is important to locate that person, situation, object, or experience that is challenging or difficult, and recognize it as your vision. Usually we engage our vision by thinking and strategizing and speculating and talking to ourselves and others. That is how we habitually engage. We try to get a handle on things. With
Vision is mind
, in order to liberate suffering, we don’t want to do what we usually do. We don’t want to see with the deluded eye; we want to engage the wisdom eye. That is the only way it will change. So we need to observe directly, observe nakedly, observe without thinking, observe without distancing, being intimate in our practice, and not separating ourselves from our experience.

What is the benefit of realizing
Vision is mind
? As an example, at this moment I am looking at the cup of tea that is next to me. This is quite a lovely cup that one of my students gave to me. If I have attachment to this cup, I cannot experience myself clearly, because I am looking at the world—in this case, my cup—from a place of attachment. If I am aware of that, conscious of my attachment, that allows me to let go and relax and feel more open. I’m still looking at the cup. But now I’m seeing the cup from openness. This is an ordinary example, but such a moment in our lives is unexamined, and therefore unrecognized as an opportunity to fully enter the natural state of mind. Seeing clearly in this way for even 30 seconds will have an impact on how I relate to myself and the world as I experience it. Because of this simple release of attachment, I am experiencing a new relationship.

Of course, when you are suffering and you look at the object of your attachment, if you look back to the subject, you, the one who is suffering, you can see loneliness, need, and fear. That is who you are identifying with, but it is not who you are. The only way to understand that this is not who you are is to be conscious. As you are aware of the one who is lonely, as you host the experience in open awareness, you will feel the release of that pain. Deep inside is the fear that if you lose what you have, something will happen to you. When you feel that fear while experiencing inner stillness, the power of experiencing the inner stillness releases the pain body of insecurity. That stillness is indestructible. That is a fundamental and perceivable quality of space—ceaseless, changeless, deathless, and birthless. These qualities are not perceivable by the ego; they are perceivable only with naked awareness, the wisdom eye. These are the fundamental qualities of space, and perceiving them affects our state of mind. We feel the indestructible quality. You feel,
I am not dependent on the other person’s approval or attention
, because in the stillness itself the survival mind is not dominating your experience. That is why the recognition of that stillness is the clear, direct antidote of fear. Fear is fundamentally the fear of change. Connecting with stillness is a direct experience of the changeless space of being. That is why it is a direct antidote. You discover the connection to the changeless space of being and immediately feel released from the pain body, which is the fear of change. It is natural.

When you rest deeply in that quality of changelessness, you are free from attachment to any outcome. If this person does this, it is fine; if this person doesn’t do that, it is fine. How does such confidence develop? It ripens by being in the changeless space longer. That is all. Just trust and remain longer, and confidence will emerge by itself. That sense of well-being comes naturally when one is more familiar with the practice of abiding in openness.

T
HE
I
NFORMAL
P
RACTICE OF
V
ISION
I
S
M
IND

How do you work with your everyday experiences? Connecting with the inner refuge of stillness, silence, and spaciousness brings the medicine of
Vision is mind
into everyday life. So the informal practice is to take the three pills of stillness, silence, and spaciousness that we discussed in
Chapter 1
.

In everyday life, vision appears. Suppose your boss is your “famous person,” and you go to the office and actually see your boss on a daily basis. Now your boss not only appears in your imagination, but you also hear and see and receive e-mails and directives from this person. Throughout your day, whenever you feel yourself hemmed in by conditions and limitations, and experience tension, discomfort, anger, sadness, or other emotions, simply hold the space of stillness. Just draw your attention to your body, be with whatever you are feeling, and feel the stillness of the body. Check in:
Am I feeling stillness?
Then continue with your day, doing whatever you need to do while maintaining a connection to that stillness. If you do this, you will feel protected within the situation and from your own overwhelming emotions. The moment you draw attention to stillness, you will begin to feel that protection and support. Stillness is the medicine for the pain body.

Second, if your life involves much energy around conversation and dialogue; much internal arguing and mentally talking to yourself; or bickering or gossip in the work environment, draw your attention inward and listen to the silence. Ask yourself,
Am I hearing silence? Am I feeling the silence? Am I being in that silence? Am I silence?
…
I hear it. I feel it. I am it
. The moment you feel you
are
that silence, you are free from the voices within you and the voices of others around you. You are free from the critical voices of yourself and your boss. It doesn’t mean you don’t listen to your boss! It means you don’t listen from a fearful, agitated, and angry place. You listen from deep silence. You hear more and communicate more from that creative and wise silence. Silence is the medicine for pain speech.

The spaciousness of awareness is the medicine for the pain mind. Perhaps at some point in your day you are angry or jealous or feel overwhelmed. At that moment you don’t feel any spaciousness. You are occupied with anger or a sense of loss or depression. The pain mind has manifested and occupied your space. But you can rediscover that space. How? Simply by being open and allowing whatever emotions you are experiencing. Don’t push down anger. Don’t invite further anger. Don’t negotiate with anger. Host the anger and simply feel the space within and around the anger. With awareness, you can journey to the center of the experience of anger by being open to it and feeling the space in and around it. That spaciousness is the medicine of the pain mind.

I
N
C
ONCLUSION
:
V
ISION
I
S
M
IND

With
Vision is mind
, I have been instructing you to directly and nakedly experience whatever you are experiencing. I humorously refer to the famous person, the famous situation, the famous moment—whatever that is for you—and encourage you to bring your attention to that experience. Whatever is bothering you or whatever you are experiencing is an image or appearance or occurrence formed by the imagination of ego. Again, the important point is
how
you look at your experience. The instruction is to observe directly, nonconceptually, nakedly. These are the words used.

When I am looking directly at my experience, I’m not trying to interpret what I’m doing by saying that object or that experience is necessary or not necessary. Do not further engage the commenting mind. Be still in your body, and still in your internal energy, and just look at your experience. This is one way to understand how to observe. Another way to phrase it is
Just be aware
. It is the same outcome as far as realization is concerned. In
dzogchen
there is an expression:
nakedly observing, nakedly liberating
. “Observing” here means experiencing with awareness. Can you gaze at a flower without judging and without thoughts? Can you see the flower clearly and vividly, without commentary? A flower is outside you, while anger is experienced as inside, but both are called “vision” because the process is the same: gaze upon your anger without thought, directly with awareness. Sometimes you may be looking at an image that you associate with anger, such as the face of your boss, and at other times you bring attention to your angry feeling itself when it is present in the moment. You can be aware of the anger itself, rather than always interpreting anger, or being driven into thinking fueled by anger.
Vision is mind
.

Observe the object formed by the imagination of ego. You can observe the fear of death, or the fear of not being productive or not accomplishing anything. Any fear that you are aware of, observe it nakedly. Usually we spin so many stories when we feel something such as anger or fear.
I hate that feeling of fear
. Or we change the words as we talk to ourselves:
Oh, it is not death I’m afraid of, it is living
. So we change the words and we read more books to see if someone has a better spin on our suffering, and we get busy rearranging our thinking about our problem. What we don’t do is let it be as it is. Observe nakedly, look nakedly, nonconceptually. Simply put: be aware of it.
Vision is mind
.

As you are aware for longer and longer periods of time, eventually anger just clears. It is very surprising and pleasurable. But then you may hear yourself thinking:
I’m faking it; I must be avoiding the real issue
. Those thoughts and words can be quite vivid. But the truth is, in order for ego to survive, it needs its object. A subject without an object cannot survive while remaining what it is. If there is no pain or conflict, ego cannot survive in its habitual form. That is why you hear your inner voice say,
I’m just making this up and avoiding the real issue because I can’t face it
. That is why it is important to continue listening to the silence. Hear the silence. The power of this practice is to continuously remain aware, simply be aware of that object. As you do so, all the clouds disappear.

When that happens, what you are experiencing is the mind itself. You begin to feel the luminous aspect of the mind. You begin to feel the one who is looking. Only the mind is there. There is no solid object there. Only the mind is there, the one who is seeing it. You realize this by simply being conscious of it, rather than feasting on the food of words and thoughts about the object.
Vision is mind
. When you are simply and directly and nakedly aware, the object dissolves, and what remains is quite luminous because mind is luminous. When you are conscious of it, that distressing object is nothing more than the clear, luminous presence of mind. Making this discovery is wonderful medicine.

Now you are ready for the next investigation: what is mind?

CHAPTER FIVE

M
IND
I
S
E
MPTY

I had the opportunity at the age of 26 to leave my monastery in India and travel throughout Tibet. I was invited to teach in a small monastery. I was reluctant to teach, since I was only 26 years old, and the monks who requested the teaching were as old as 70. But they were persistent in their request, and so I accepted. The older monks took the occasion very seriously. First they invited all the villagers into the shrine room of the monastery to partake in a purification ritual. At the conclusion of the ritual, they sent the villagers out. They then posted guards outside the monastery doors, and only the older monks were present for my teaching. I asked them to share their practice experiences and understanding. Gradually, one after another, each monk opened up and shared. On the basis of what I heard from each, I responded. As we finished, an older monk with one blind eye took me to the back of the meditation hall. As he held my hand, he told me that he had received the introduction to the nature of mind from the successor to Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen—a realized master who was revered throughout Tibet—but went on to say that he didn’t get to clarify the instruction before the many changes happened in Tibet, during which time his master died. Therefore, some doubt had remained in his mind. As tears streamed down his face he thanked me for my teaching, saying, “You have cleared my doubt. For the rest of my life, I know how to practice.”