The Method of Attaining Conviction

The Method of Attaining Conviction
Extracted from book 'Flight of the Garuda, Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol'

EHMAHO! Once again, beloved sons and daughters, listen with devotion! "Mind in its insubstantiality is like the sky." Is this true or false, my children? Confirm it by relaxing completely and looking directly at the mind, gazing with your entire mind, free of all tension.

"The emptiness of the mind is not just a blank nothingness, for without doubt it is the primal awareness of intrinsic Awareness, radiant from the first. Self-existent, natural radiance is like sunlight." Is this indeed true? To confirm it, relax completely, looking directly at the nature of your mind.

"There is no doubt that it is impossible to objectify or grasp thought or the movement of memory. This capricious, changeable movement is like the cosmic wind!" Is this indeed so? To confirm it, relax completely, looking directly at the nature of your mind.

"Without doubt all appearances whatsoever are our own manifestation. All phenomena, whatsoever manifests, is like reflection in a mirror." Is this indeed so? To confirm it, relax completely, looking directly at the nature of your mind.

No experience is possible anywhere but in the mind, so there is nothing to see other than that seen at the moment of vision. No experience is possible anywhere but in the mind, so there is nothing to meditate upon other than mind. No experience is possible anywhere but in the mind, so there is nothing to do other than what is done in the mind. No experience is possible anywhere but in the mind, so there is no samaya to be sustained outside the mind. No experience is possible anywhere but in the mind, so there is no goal to be reached that is not in the mind.

Look, look, and look again. Look at your own mind!

Project your attention into external fields of space, and, attentively watching the nature of your mind, see if it moves. When you are convinced by observation that the mind does not move, retract your attention and concentrate upon the mind within, and look carefully for the projector of diffused thought. When you have decided that there is no entity responsible for thought patterns, look carefully for the colour and shape of the mind. When you arrive at the emptiness that has no colour or shape, look for a centre or circumference. Certain that middle and margin are the same, search for an inside and an outside. Finding no distinction between inside and outside, you arrive at Awareness, which is as vast as the sky.

"By virtue of its all-penetrating freedom this Awareness that has no centre or circumference, no inside or outside, is innocent of all partiality and knows no blocks or barriers. This all-penetrating intrinsic Awareness is a vast expanse of space. All experience of samsara and nirvana arises in it like rainbows in the sky. In all its diverse manifestation it is but a play of mind."

You need only look out from the motionless space of intrinsic Awareness at all experience, illusory like the reflection of the moon in water, to know the impossibility of dividing appearances from emptiness.

"In a state of Awareness there is no separation of samsara and nirvana." Look out from the motionless space of intrinsic Awareness at all experience, illusory like the reflection in a mirror, and no matter what manifests it can never be tasted, its existence can never be proved. In this dimension samsara and nirvana do not exist and everything is the dharmakaya.

All beings wandering in the three realms of samsara remain trapped in dualism until they realize that within their own perception resides the primal awareness that is the ultimate identity of all experience of samsara and nirvana. Due to the power of the delusive subject/object dichotomy, they hold samsara and nirvana to be different states of mind. They remain bound because, where in truth there is nonduality, they see a duality.

In reality no distinction between samsara and nirvana can exist in anybody's mind. However, when the worldly fool rejects some things and indulges in others, avoiding the "bad" and cultivating the "good", despising one while loving another, then due to partiality, prejudice and bias, aimlessly he wanders through successive lives.

Rather than attain the spontaneously accomplished three modes of intrinsic Awareness without striving, thick-headed aspirants explore the techniques and stages of many time-consuming methods of "self-improvement", leaving them no time to reach the seat of the Buddha.

"Emphatically, all phenomenal appearances whatsoever are one's own vision." Look out from the state of motionless intrinsic Awareness and all light-form and animate existence is like reflection. Appearances are empty, sound is empty and indeed one's own nature is originally empty.

Similarly, turn your attention inwards to the mind that is the viewer, and your thought processes, naturally subsiding, are empty like the sky, unstructured, free of conceptual elaboration, utterly indeterminable, beyond description, concept and expression of any kind.

All events whatsoever are an illusory magical display of mind and all the magical display of mind is baseless and empty. When you have realized that all events are your own mind, all visual appearances become the empty dharmakaya.

Appearances are not binding. It is through attachment to them that beings are fettered. Sever all delusive attachments, children of my heart!



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