Awakening the Luminous Mind: Tibetan Meditation for Inner Peace and Joy (10 page)

If you want to explore how this gift of awareness, the gift of the second refuge, can work in your life, reflect and bring to mind a relationship where you have been disappointed or hold an unmet expectation. As you are aware of this feeling of your needs being unmet, recognize that there is a sense of incompleteness in you. As you are aware of this experience, without judging yourself, come fully to the refuge. Bring awareness to the unbounded space of being, listen to the inner silence, and feel the richness and completeness of the moment. Rest here, allowing the sensations and feelings of your unmet needs to be hosted in the liveliness of the connection to spaciousness. As they are hosted fully, they gradually dissolve. As they dissolve, you connect with the liveliness and fullness that are naturally present in this moment. In this way, you experience the power to go beyond conflict-producing hopes. Recognize, understand, and rest in the second refuge, feel nourished in so doing, and imagine radiating this sense of vitality to the other person, allowing the other to be as they are.

T
HE
G
IFT OF
W
ARMTH
: T
HE
B
ODY OF
G
REAT
B
LISS

With the third refuge we speak of warmth. The body of great bliss is a sense of natural warmth that arises from open awareness. You are open and you are aware of the openness. This awareness of openness is referred to as
union
, and this union spontaneously births warmth and positive qualities. You are connected and feel the warmth of being who you are. Now is the time to manifest and to engage others. You will discover that humor will spontaneously come from the confidence and awareness you have. If there is no self-confidence, there can be no genuine playfulness and humor. Humor comes from playfulness, playfulness comes from warmth, warmth comes from confidence, and confidence comes from openness.

With the gift of warmth, you are able to dance with someone as they discover their creativity. Your actions don’t interfere. As we experience the gift of space and awareness and warmth, we want to fully allow and participate with others. Share. Merge. Move. Sing. Laugh. Accomplish. This is a beautiful experience to achieve in one’s life. There is nothing greater than finding space, awareness, and warmth in you, and engaging with that warmth and sharing it with others.

Overcoming Suffering with the Third Refuge

The warmth of inner bliss melts the frozen structures of suffering and pain. It frees us from inner ignorance; it heals pain, sickness, blockages, and troubled relationships. The warmth that arises from the connection of awareness and openness is the greatest medicine, the greatest healer within us.

In your meditation practice you can work with experiences of discomfort, pain, or sickness. Bring open and clear attention to your pain or sickness, and feel pervasive space, because it is already there. It is not that you are bringing space to your pain; rather, you are becoming aware of the presence of spaciousness and connecting to it. This means that you do not reject your pain in any way, nor do you elaborate upon it by thinking or talking to yourself. The moment you feel the space in the presence of your illness or pain, you can feel the light of awareness, the connection, the warmth, and you begin to heal. You allow spontaneous healing, for as you recognize the space that is already there, the warmth of connection manifests spontaneously.

Continue resting the warmth of your attention in the area of your discomfort. As you are aware and feel that warmth, gradually bring your attention right into the center of the pain, the blockage, or the sickness. The more spaciousness and openness you feel, the more your natural ability to heal is supported.

Unbounded space is a great gift, infinite awareness is a great gift, and natural and spontaneous warmth is a great gift. These gifts are already in us in this very moment. As you recognize this, you come to
know
this. This knowing becomes the greatest resource in your life. This knowing is what has been lacking. We have lacked the conscious recognition of what is inherently here within us. In this moment, you can become conscious of this great gift of warmth. Many experiences arise from that warmth, such as joy, love, compassion, kindness, care, acknowledgment, appreciation, enthusiasm, and devotion. All the qualities that arise from that warmth are gifts.

It is not necessary to strategize and plan to express the gifts of warmth. Our inner intelligence knows when and where and to whom to manifest specific qualities. This intelligence knows far more than any ego will know. Trust this. When the right moment comes, you will remember; you will know what to do and how to give. You will naturally and spontaneously give to those who are in pain, suffering, sick, and lost. You will open to those who are confused, hostile, aggressive, and mean from pain and confusion. Many suffer and need your gifts. Be aware that you have gifts to give. As you discover that you are the gift, you discover that giving is more joyful than receiving.

You may wish to deepen your experience of the inner refuge by listening to Track 3 of the CD, Guided Meditation: Inner Refuge.

CHAPTER FOUR

V
ISION
I
S
M
IND

Having explored the power of drawing our attention within and discovering the gifts of the inner refuge, we are ready to receive the heart instructions of Dawa Gyaltsen, the concise guidance he offers that can lead us from conflict and confusion to freedom. As we explore and contemplate the meaning of each line, may you discover how this ancient teaching can be a remedy for any confusion and suffering you experience. Here are the five lines, the quintessential teachings of this highly revered meditation master from my tradition:

Vision is mind.
Mind is empty.
Emptiness is clear light.
Clear light is union.
Union is great bliss.

“Vision” encompasses two fundamental things: the subject or self, and the objects or appearances formed by the imagination of that self. Both are equally unreal and are certainly not as solid and concrete as we see and feel them to be. When you say, “I am feeling sad,” or “I am feeling hurt,” that “I” is formed by the imagination. It is not inherently real. I have referred to this sense of “I” as the pain body. If you look closely at that “I” or ego, is it really there? Does it solidly exist? Many meditation masters have sent their students on journeys of inquiry to investigate this “I.” Does it have a shape or color? Is it thick or thin? Is it located inside the body or outside the body? Can you actually find it? When you thoroughly and exhaustively investigate the apparent solidity of this “I,” it is not possible to conclude that there is anything inherently there. It is amazing that something that doesn’t inherently exist can produce so much pain, create so many complex stories, and need such elaborate defenses. But that is what happens when we fail to recognize the truth that there is no solidly existing self. Recognizing that the self does not inherently exist is the beginning of the cessation of suffering.

Ego survives and thrives through the imagination. Appearances and stories are the food of ego. If those appearances “dissolve” one after another, if we recognize that they are not as solid as they appear, ego gets weaker and weaker and weaker. So to understand the first line of Dawa Gyaltsen’s teaching,
Vision is mind
, we bring our attention to the appearances created by ego. We start with what appears in our life, because that is a place where we are more obviously caught.

What is an example of a typical “vision” that expresses or captures our suffering in any given moment? We may find ourselves feeling or thinking:

That person is really annoying me
.

This is a waste of time
.

I wish he would leave me alone
.

I hope she contacts me
.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me
.

How am I going to pay this bill?

I just don’t have the energy to do that
.

I’m so jumpy I can’t stand this
.

This is boring
.

I hope I get that job
.

According to Dawa Gyaltsen, all of the above statements and their accompanying scenarios are created by the imagination of ego. Yet when something “appears” in this way, it often seems real and true. We believe we need to do something about it, or we feel powerless to do anything about it, or we try to ignore and distract ourselves from feeling something about it. You may say, “Well, it is obvious that many things are just the imagination of ego, but some of my problems are real. My mother is dying and that is not my imagination.”
Vision is mind
is not saying that your mother is not dying, but if you realize the truth that
Vision is mind
points to, your relation to your dying mother can be one of beauty and compassion. Perhaps we have begun to meditate, and we think,
Oh, I can just be with that. I can accommodate that suffering. I know: like all things, it will pass
. Even that is missing the opportunity that
Vision is mind
points to. There is a more direct and vital relationship to our life’s experiences, to the appearances of mind, that we can have.

In everyday life, when you really like someone or something, or when you become angry or disappointed by someone, where is your attachment or your aversion directed? To the object. The object becomes the focus. “Who” is liking or disliking is not so obvious or important to us, because we are focused on the object. We can so easily become fixated or focused on appearances that we disconnect from ourselves. We may not be conscious of what is happening in ourselves; instead, we locate our experience out there in the other person. It is that particular person that I love or hate. There may have been a progression or development that preceded this conclusion, but we are no longer aware of it. With aversion, for example, you may dislike what a person did or said.
I really don’t like it when you do that
. That experience goes on for some time and finally you just think,
I don’t like you. It really doesn’t matter what you do at this point because I just don’t like you
. When you create this imagination of ego, there is an unsettled, ungrounded, vulnerable place in you that projects the cause of this insecurity as having to do with what some other person is doing or saying. So you attack, criticize, or otherwise seek to change that person. If it goes on long enough, you just conclude that the other person is bad or wrong or dangerous. Ego has clearly created a solid vision, and you are stuck with that vision.

If you do any kind of personal work that involves reflection, you begin to shift your focus from the object or other person, to the subject or the one who is distressed. People who don’t work with themselves at all just see their projection as the full story. Those who work more with themselves find some kind of space to reflect more upon themselves:
What am I feeling? Why am I angry?
So your awareness begins to shift from the person or situation to yourself. In spiritual practice, awareness is always 100 percent focused upon oneself. In the end you conquer the demon of ignorance in yourself, not the demon that is the projection of ignorance. The outer demon is not the source of your problem; it is only an appearance coming from the source within. And in deep spiritual work, you are interested in cutting the root of suffering and confusion, not just cutting off a branch, for there will always be another branch.

So first we must understand
Vision is mind
. The only way the apparent solidity of your vision can dissolve is when you recognize its nature, its condition. The only way to recognize this is to look back to who has produced it. Where do we begin? It is important to begin where we are, in the state in which we find ourselves.

In helping students recognize their own personal experiences, I use the term “famous person” or “famous situation.” By “famous” I am referring to your perception, whether momentary or prolonged, that a person or situation appears in your life as a problem. If it is a person, you may feel this person knows which button to press to make you feel uncomfortable. You may recognize you are experiencing a “famous person” after you have avoided returning someone’s phone calls for several days, or you find yourself arguing with this person in your vivid imagination as you take your morning shower. You can be sure that you are imagining your famous person, for even simple logic shows that the person is the loving mother or brother or a good friend of someone else. This person may be good things to others, but for you is an annoyance or problem. Such is the vision created by the imagination of ego. An example of a “famous situation” could be anxiety and dread over giving a presentation at work, or finding that you are always late for appointments.