Niguma: Mahamudra as Spontaneous Liberation

Niguma: Mahamudra as Spontaneous Liberation

Don't do anything whatsoever with the mind --
Abide in an authentic, natural state.
One's own mind, unwavering, is reality.
The key is to meditate like this without wavering;
Experience the Great [reality] beyond extremes.
In a pellucid ocean,
Bubbles arise and dissolve again.
Just so, thoughts are no different from ultimate reality.
So don't find fault; remain at ease.
Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
Don't grasp -- release it on the spot.
Appearances, sounds, and objects are one's own mind;
There's nothing except mind.
Mind is beyond the extremes of birth and death.
The nature of mind, awareness,
Uses the objects of the five senses, but
Does not wander from reality.
In the state of cosmic equilibrium
There is nothing to abandon or practice;
No meditation or post-meditation period.

~ Miranda Shaw (tr.) "Niguma: Mahamudra as Spontaneous Liberation," in Passionate Enlightenment.

equipoise

I see the gushing of creation
forms upon forms without end
like an exploded oil-well
how to stem the flow
contain the damage

refrain from augmenting in any way
remain in equipoise 
watching flowing never resisting
never inciting
calming quieting
watching with fine restraint
Surrendering to the sudden explosion of effulgence
I remain in equipoise at the stillpoint

Complete absence

Lightmare: Complete absence:

"Do not think of anything, do not think of anything at all!

Do not contrive, but relax naturally and gently!

The contrived state is the precious unborn treasury.

It is path blazed by all victorious ones of the three times."

Lonchen Rabjam

All thoughts are just projections of virtual reality, instead of resting in reality as it is -spontaneously arisen, here and now, vibrating from moment to moment.

Stop it. Without violence, just, simply and softly, cut through.

Day-dreaming is every thought which stays longer than trace on water surface.

With the help of gentle bringing of attention on the breath and corresponding rhythmic movements of the body, come back to the simplicity of being.

When you hear a sound, or see objects in the vision field, when you sense warmth of the sun rays on the skin, or smell some fragrance - notice that and stop!
Where are they?

Where is it?

Happening out there and perceived here inside?

Where? Inside and outside of what?

No, there is no answer. 
There is no here; there is no there.
It is just mind. And there is no mind, never was and never will be.

Where are all those thoughts?

From moment to moment everything seemingly arises and disappears, although there never were anything at all.
Feel the free space of awareness, non-local, luminous emptiness of the mind and bliss of return from multiplicity to unicity of experience.

Released, with consciousness shifted with open light channel to the space of heart, stay in deep peace.

Great Bliss of Dharma

Lightmare: Great Bliss of Dharma:

The Upadeśa of the Great Bliss of Dharma 

"There are three essences, four commitments, three deviations and four methods of equipoise.

The three essences:
Effortlessness;
Without contrivance;
Everything that occurs is understood as one's own mind.

The four commitments:
Afflictions are not abandoned because they are one's mind.
Antidotes are not relied upon because the mind is non-dual.
The true nature is not meditated upon because mind is without grasping.
A result is not hoped for, realizing the mind itself is Buddhahood.

The three deviations:
If there is hope for Buddhahood, it is a deviation.
If there is fear towards Samsara, it is a deviation.
If there is attachment to appearances, it is a deviation.

The four methods of equipoise:
Just like the limpid quality of water when it is undisturbed, remain relaxed in uncontrived mind.
Just as a bird in the sky leaves no tracks, consciousness remains without support.
Just like the sun not concealed by clouds, remain in one’s own unobstructed state relaxing into the objects of the six sense organs.
Just like water always falling, remain undistracted at all times and in all activities.

The heart upadesha of the great master Dombhi Heruka called 'Four Syllables' is complete."

Cosmic Equilibrium

Lightmare: Cosmic Equilibrium:

Cosmic Equilibrium

“Don’t bring anything to mind,
Be it real or imagined.
Rest uncontrived in the innate state.
Your own mind, uncontrived, is the body of ultimate enlightenment.
To remain undistracted within this, is meditation’s essential point.
Realize the great, boundless, expansive state.

 

In a pellucid ocean,
Bubbles arise and dissolve again.
Just so, thoughts are no different from ultimate reality.
So don't find fault; remain at ease.
Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
Don't grasp - release it on the spot. 
--------

Appearances, sounds, and objects are one's own mind;
There's nothing except mind. 

Mind is beyond the extremes of birth and death.
The nature of mind, awareness,
Uses the objects of the five senses, but
Does not wander from reality.
In the state of cosmic equilibrium
There is nothing to abandon or practice;
No meditation or post-meditation period."

Niguma, Mahamudra as Spontaneous Liberation

The Heart of Awareness - The Ashtavakra Geeta

Dear Friends,
I bring to you today chapter one (of twenty chapters) of a classic enlightenment text: The Heart of Awareness - in Sanskrit the Ashtavakra Geeta.

This text was recommended to me by Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now and The New Earth.

Each of the twenty verses in this chapter is a meditation in its own right. Reading all twenty will give you a sense of what the spiritual transmission of this text is, and then you may wish to contemplate one or more of the individual verses that speak to you at this moment most strongly.

Reading the translator's introduction will be very helpful and is beautifully enlightening.

May the New Year 2013 bring Awakening to All of Humanity!

source

The Heart of Awareness ~
a translation of The Ashtavakra Gita

by Thomas Byrom


Chapter One

The Self

1 
O Master,
Tell me how to find
Detachment, wisdom, and freedom!

2 
Child,
If you wish to be free,
Shun the poison of the senses.
Seek the nectar of truth,
Of love and forgiveness,
Simplicity and happiness.

3 
Earth, fire and water,
The wind and the sky—
You are none of these.
If you wish to be free,
Know you are the Self,
The witness of all these,
The heart of awareness.

4 
Set your body aside.
Sit in your own awareness.
You will at once be happy,
forever still,
Forever free.

5 
You have no caste.
No duties bind you.
Formless and free,
Beyond the reach of the senses,
The witness of all things.
So be happy!

6 
Right or wrong,
Joy and sorrow,
These are of the mind only.
They are not yours.
It is not really you
Who acts or enjoys.
You are everywhere
Forever free.

7 
Forever and truly free,
The single witness of all things.
But if you see yourself as separate,
Then you are bound.

8 
“I do this. I do that.”
The big black snake of selfishness
It has bitten you!
“I do nothing.”
This is the nectar of faith,
So drink and be happy!

9
Know you are one,
Pure awareness.
With the fire of this conviction,
Burn down the forest of ignorance.
Free yourself from sorrow,
And be happy.

10 
Be happy!
For you are joy, unbounded joy.
You are awareness itself.
Just as a coil of rope
Is mistaken for a snake,
So you are mistaken for the world.

11 
If you think you are free,
You are free.
If you think you are bound,
You are bound.
For the saying is true:
You are what you think.

12 
The Self looks like the world.
But this is just an illusion.
The Self is everywhere.
One.
Still.
Free.
Perfect.

The witness of all things,
Awareness
Without action, clinging or desire.

13 
Meditate on the Self.
One without two,
Exalted awareness.
Give up the illusion
Of the separate self.
Give up the feeling,
within or without,
That you are this or that.

14 
My Child,
Because you think you are the body,
For a long time you have been bound.
Know you are pure awareness.
With this knowledge as your sword
Cut through your chains.
And be happy!

15 
For you are already free,
Without action or flaw,
Luminous and bright.
You are bound
Only by the narrowness of the mind!

16 
Your nature is pure awareness
You are flowing in all things,
And all things are flowing in you.
But beware of
The narrowness of the mind!

17 
You are always the same,
Unfathomable awareness,
Limitless and free,
Serene and unperturbed.
Desire only your own awareness

18 
Whatever takes form is false.
Only the formless endures.
When you understand
The truth of this teaching,
You will not be born again

19 
For God is infinite,
Within the body and without,
Like a mirror,
And the image in a mirror.

20 
As the air is everywhere,
Flowing around a pot
And filling it,
So God is everywhere,
Filling all things,
And flowing through them forever.

Into Thin Air

Artwork Images Copyright Dave Goldman

Into Thin Air

We interface into this world out of nothing

Like a hand into the glove

We fit inside it like we were made for it

Made of it and we are but

We come from somewhere else

That is not this world

It is thin

And this world is thick

It is light and this world is heavy

It is of nothing and here everywhere there is something

What a longing to be so thin thinner than the air

Or the breath or thoughts or even thinner than light

He vanished into thin air and he came out of it again

In the morning after waking up out of it

He is now in the thick of it again

Up from a deep deep well at the bottom of nothing

He came up up up up up until he was in it again

Like the hand in the glove

Only the glove is the whole world

And it feels really does feel like he is it

This thickness dense and full of always something

Nowhere empty but he knows empty so somewhere empty is also

He slides into the in-between of the everywhere-something

Letting himself become thin very very thin

Like the finest sheet of nano-film

To slip into the in-between of all of this

Thin fine finest very slight and subtle most subtle hardly noticed

And so so so smooth silky infinitely delicate

Any thought disrupts its space in-between thoughts

Here is the birthplace and the peaceful dwelling of his in-dweller

So peaceful untouched never been touched and so pure

Pure beingness without being this or that

My salvation my sustenance

My essence

How can I forget Thee?

12/2/12

Belly Full of Tears

Light Opening

Take this belly full of tears

Let them rain down and water our dreams

Releasing the pain, the fear, the sadness

Let them drain away into the rivers of love

That are filling the dark valleys in our hearts

Feel how these tears come gushing forth

To wash away the past

For we have seen the folly of our ways

The hurt we have caused

And we hear the Voice from on high:

“Enough!”

Yes, we are the Masters of our Destiny

And we say NOW:

“PEACE ON EARTH TO ALL BEINGS OF GOOD WILL”

Clouds Dissipating

Krishnamurti: Passion Without Motive – What is Love Part Two

Krishnamurti: Passion Without Motive – What is Love Part Two

So when you ask what love is, you may be too frightened to see the answer. It may mean complete upheaval; it may break up the family; you may discover that you do not love your wife or husband or children—do you?—you may have to shatter the house you have built, you may never go back to the temple.

But if you still want to find out, you will see that fear is not love, dependence is not love, jealousy is not love, possessiveness and domination are not love, responsibility and duty are not love, self-pity is not love, the agony of not being loved is not love, love is not the opposite of hate any more than humility is the opposite of vanity.

So if you eliminate all these, not by forcing them but by washing them away as the rain washes the dust of many days from a leaf, then perhaps you will come upon this strange flower, which man always hungers after.

If you have not got love—not just in little drops but in abundance—if you are not filled with it, the world will go to disaster. You know intellectually that the unity of mankind is essential and that love is the only way, but who is going to teach you how to love?

Will any authority, any method, any system, tell you how to love? If anyone tells you, it is not love. Can you say, “I will practice love. I will sit down day after day and think about it. I will practice being kind and gentle and force myself to pay attention to others”?

Do you mean that you can discipline yourself to love, exercise the will to love? When you exercise discipline and will to love, love goes out the window. By practicing some method or system of loving you may become extraordinarily clever or more kindly or get into a state of nonviolence, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with love.

In this torn desert world there is no love because pleasure and desire play the greatest roles, yet without love your daily life has no meaning. And you cannot have love if there is no beauty. Beauty is not something you see—not a beautiful tree, a beautiful picture, a beautiful building, or a beautiful woman. There is beauty only when your heart and mind know what love it.

Without love and that sense of beauty there is no virtue, and you know very well that, do what you will—improve society, feed the poor—you will only be creating more mischief, for without love there is only ugliness and poverty in your own heart and mind.

But when there is love and beauty, whatever you do is right, whatever you do is in order. If you know how to love, then you can do what you like because it will solve all other problems.

So we reach the point: Can the mind come upon love without discipline, without thought, without enforcement, without any book, any teacher or leader—come upon it as one comes upon a lovely sunset? It seems to me that one thing is absolutely necessary and that is passion without motive—passion that is not the result of some commitment or attachment, passion that is not lust. A man who does not know what passion is will never know love because love can only come into being when there is total self-abandonment.

A mind that is seeking is not a passionate mind and to come upon love without seeking it is the only way to find it—to come upon it unknowingly and not as the result of any effort or experience. Such a love, you will find, is not of time; such a love is both personal and impersonal, is both the one and the many.

Like a flower that has a perfume, you can smell it or pass it by. That flower is for everybody and for the one who takes the trouble to breath it deeply and to look at it with delight. Whether one is very near in the garden or very far away, it is the same to the flower because it is full of that perfume and, therefore, it is sharing with everybody.

Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is beyond the turmoil of thought. It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world, which is not innocent.

To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly through sacrifice, through worship, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasure and pain, is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally to an end. Then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict.

You may ask, “If I find such love, what happens to my wife, my children, my family? They must have security.” When you put such a question you have never been outside the field of thought, the field of consciousness. When once you have been outside that field you will never ask such a question because then you will know what love is in which there is no thought and therefore, no time. You may read this mesmerized and enchanted, but actually to go beyond thought and time—which means going beyond sorrow—is to be aware that there is a different dimension called love.

But you don’t know how to come upon this extraordinary fount, so what do you do? If you don’t know what to do, you do nothing, don’t you? Absolutely nothing. Then inwardly you are completely silent. Do you understand what that means? It means you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing; there is no center at all. Then there is love.

(Freedom from the Known in Total Freedom –The Essential Krishnamurti p.131 ff.)

Razor’s Edge

The ocean’s vast expanse in the brilliance of early morning sun

The horizon cut with a razor into deep blue sky and steel blue ocean

Every blade of beach grass and each driftwood log etched into the sand

Each wave-curl sharp as crystal

There is no looking – only presence of the depth in all shapes cut of light

Do you ever feel you are Light being penetrated by Light these days?

Any ever so slight shadow on the screen of life is felt as pain

I am a razor walking on my own edge in this crispness and clarity

Acceptance is the ultimatum

Once answered “Yes!” the new paradigm is instantaneous and spontaneous

Take off your shoes and socks all protection and step onto the razor’s edge

Like the tightropewalker your were born to be

No Fear Only Love Unconditional

Our True Destiny!

Behind the Words

Seeing

I am writing words and behind the words is what I wish to say.

This life we are living as awareness alive as itself.

Can I release my words, concepts, my hold on reality?

There is a seeing happening, I call it consciousness.

It is a flow, a swirling, a curling, a joining and separating ~

All within this movement and seeing is what it is.

The wall, the man, the jar, the cat, the rock, the clock

All seeing is what it is.

As it sees it becomes and yet it moves not.

Such a power in this Organ of Perception! 
It sees and in that is creating.

Now it sees thinking, dreaming, wishing, wanting, learning 
and So It Is.

Make it so, Number One, 
and the One is you, is me, is we.

We are the Seeing “I”, the Self is the Seeing Eye.

We are That.

Let’s start enjoying our Self!

Our time is come and it is NOW without end.

I greet each of You as my Self 
and Love is our language behind the words.

October 22, 2012

Hear Listen Roar

Sequence created by memory

I project it onto the world;

Then from sequence I conjecture causality

And project it onto the world.

What does the world look like

without sequence and causality?

October 19, 2012

Krishnamurti: Not Crippled By Memory

"Of course, memory has a place at a certain level. In everyday life we could not function at all without it. In its own field it must be efficient, but there is a state of mind where it has very little place. A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom."

(Freedom from the Known, in Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti, p. 116)

Han Shan Poem - I Have Thrust Aside Everything

source: http://www.ancientrails.com/?p=953

I live alone by folded cliffs

where churning mists even at midday do not part.

Though it is dark here in the room,

my mind is clear and free of clamor.

In dreams I roam past golden portals;

my spirit returns across the stone bridge.

I have thrust aside everything that vexes me –

Clatter! Clatter! Goes the dipper in the tree.*

*someone feeling sorry for the hermit Hsu Yu because he had to drink water from his hands, gave him a gourd dipper. But after using it once, Hsu Yu hung it in a tree and went off, leaving it to clatter in the wind

Cold Mountain, 100 poems by the T’ang poet Han Shan, translated by Burton Watson, no. 42, p. 60

 more on Han Shan click here

My Comment:

I am strongly attracted to the Han Shan poems that transport me to a place of simplicity and oneness with myself and nature.  In this one, additionally, the words “I have thrust aside everything that vexes me – ” resonates with the “cat and the newlyweds” story that I included in my last post on my WordPress blog:

http://heartflow2012.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/the-uniqueness-of-my-life-and-the-power-of-non-duality/

which stands for the determination and also the necessary clarity to put away any thoughts, feelings, or emotions that tend to distract me from that place of simplicity and oneness with myself and nature. In the last few days, since reading these lines, this I have thrust aside everything that vexes me has become sort of a mantra reminding me and triggering me to stay centered in non-duality and in the uniqueness of this moment, of my life.

The Uniqueness of My Life and the Power of Non-Duality

The two come together: the uniqueness of my life and the power of non-duality.

The uniqueness of my life is the present moment. Leaving all residue of a previous movement of my life’s energy in the form of memory and conditioning, I find myself afresh in this NOW.

In a dark room I light a match and swirl my outstretched arm in front of me describing a large circle with the flame of the match. The fact is the burning wood of the match. It is at one single point of the circle at any given time. However, the eye sees a complete circle of fire. One could say that the circle is an illusion, created by the eye holding on to the impression of the path of the flame through space in the dark room.

The comment on my blog was written, sent and read by me days ago, however it is still alive in my perception because I am remembering it. When I let go of that memory, or clearly see it as a past movement of my energy, it is gone and my perception is free of it.

Afresh in the NOW my eyes take in with a sense of newness, never before seen, a unique view, a unique seeing. The seeing energy is pristine, free of the past and it feels its own movement of seeing with total clarity.

Non-duality is the power of absolute disintegration of all beliefs, concepts, ideas and all frames of reference. I get a taste of it every now and then and it is magnificent. Tuning in to and aligning with the vibration of non-duality anchors my existence in non-existence. Thus a field of vastness and emptiness is created, within which the energy of seeing comes into relation to the seen as an extension of itself. There is no interference by anything that is not itself.

The seeing light of consciousness takes in all that appears in its light. This light stems from the Inner Effulgence, which can also be called the Inner Sun. It is immobile and groundless. It exists out of Itself and is beyond all states and attributes. When all Its reflections and refractions are reduced to their essential substance, It is our true nature and It is no-thing.

The power of non-duality is the power of this one fact that reduces all forms (which make up what we call the “world”) to naught, from which they stem. When I attune myself more and more clearly to this felt sense of non-duality, all attachments, illusions and fondly cherished concepts of all kinds begin to dissolve under my feet. I am left in the formless, or rather, in that which IS before form, which is present while form is maintained and also after its dissolution. While my mind says that it gives up trying to follow, another part of me knows what I mean.

This felt sense of non-duality is the ground upon which I experience the uniqueness of my life, for out of nothing something appears for the first time, afresh out of the void, and it is untainted by anything that may have appeared “previously”. The overlay, or superimposition of old impressions, judgments, concepts and frames of reference onto what appears fresh is a function of my memory and the conditioned movements of my mind as it holds on to the “known” – the past.

Attuning myself to the power of non-duality coming together with the uniqueness of my life entails a vigilance towards the conditioned movement of my mind in order to ensure a radical departure from the old paradigm and create the space needed for the new paradigm to flower.

A relevant story: A newlywed came to his friend after the wedding night. “Can you imagine what happened? A cat snuck into the room and was yowling all night, so how could romance happen?” His friend said he would do him a favor, so he switched places with him that night.

The next morning the two meet and the groom asks how it went. “Wonderful! You are such a lucky man! Such a loving and affectionate wife you have!” “And the cat?” asked the groom. “Oh, that – off with his head!” replied the friend.

Please, dear cat friends, of which I am a great one – no harm was done to any living creature, and the story makes sense if you substitute the word “conditioned thinking” for “cat”, and the word “mastery of your life” for “wife”.