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Pointing Out That Emptiness Is Spontaneous Presence

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Pointing out the mind within appearances has four parts: pointing out that appearances are mind, that mind is emptiness, that emptiness is spontaneous presence, and that spontaneous presence is self-liberation. Yesterday we completed the first two—pointing out that appearances are mind and that mind is emptiness. Today we are going to begin with the third, pointing out that emptiness is spontaneous presence. First, it has been established that appearances are mind and then that mind lacks true existence, that its nature is emptiness. It is possible, however, that you might understand this emptiness or lack of true existence of the mind as nothingness, or that in the experience of meditation practice, when you look at the mind, you might experience some kind of nothing or nothingness. According to our text, if that is the case, your understanding is partial understanding and, if that is your experience, it is partial experience. Therefore, it is not regarded as genuine. In order to remove that potential for misunderstanding or partial understanding, what is presented next is pointing out that emptiness is spontaneous presence.


Talking about appearances, it was said by the Buddha, “Form is emptiness.” One of the implications of this is that all of the things that we see— mountains, walls, buildings, and so forth—lack true, substantial existence, and that they lack true, substantial existence even on the level of truly existent subtle particles. But when it says that they are empty, aside from meaning that they are empty of existence, it is not saying that they are nothing. It is not saying that they are nothingness, nothing whatever, absolutely nothing. Therefore, in the Heart Sutra it continues, “Emptiness is form. Form is no other than emptiness. Emptiness is nothing other than form.” Now, normally, if we were to think about this from an ordinary point of view, we would regard emptiness and form as contradictory. If something is empty, it is not there, and, therefore, is not a form. If something possesses form or is a form, it is something, and, therefore, is not empty. But this is not how things are. It is said, “There is no single thing anywhere that is not interdependent;


therefore, there is no single thing anywhere that is not empty.” What is meant by emptiness is interdependence, and interdependence is also the appearance of things. Therefore, since emptiness and appearance are interdependent, emptiness and appearance are not contradictory in the way we normally regard them to be. For example, when you are asleep and dreaming, all of the things that you dream of—the houses and people and so on—do not exist. You are not actually in those houses; you are asleep at home in bed. Nevertheless, they do appear to you; there is a mere appearance of those things to the dreamer. Like that, the appearance of something, and its nonexistence, are not contradictory.


That was about appearances. Now, about mind, we have to consider the cognitive lucidity of mind. When you look at your mind, you initially look to see if it has any shape. Eventually you discover that the mind has no shape. You look to see if the mind has any color, and you discover that it has no color. You look to see if it has any other substantial or material characteristic, and you find that it does not. You look to see if it has a specific location within or outside the body, and you cannot find it. At some point you start to wonder, maybe I am not finding this because I do not know how to look. But that is not the case. It is not the case that you do not find any shape or color or substantial characteristic or location for the mind because you do not know how to look. Nor is it the case that you do not find these characteristics because, although the mind possesses them, they are too subtle to find. Nor is it the case that you do not find them because the mind is somehow too clear, too transparent, to be seen in this way. The reason that you do not find these things is that the very nature of the mind is emptiness. However, as in the case of appearances, emptiness here does not mean nothingness. The mind is empty, but it is not dead; it is not incapable of experience. It is not static or devoid of cognition. The mind can and does experience, can and does know. The mind’s capacity to experience and to know is what we call its cognitive lucidity. Therefore, not only is the mind empty, but it is also lucid. However, if you then attempted to track down the mind’s cognitive lucidity, find where it is, where it is seated, you would not find it. For example, when you look at the mind within the occurrence of thought, and so forth, you find that that cognitive lucidity itself is empty. You find this because the mind’s cognitive lucidity is not separate from, is nothing other than, the mind’s emptiness—just as the mind’s emptiness is not apart from or separate from the mind’s cognitive lucidity. There is no emptiness in the mind other than that cognitive lucidity. And there is no cognitive lucidity in the mind other than that emptiness. Now, this is very hard to relate to when we think about it, because normally we see these two characteristics as con-


tradictory. We imagine that, if the mind is cognitive lucidity, it cannot be emptiness, and if the mind is emptiness, it cannot be cognitive lucidity. This is not a contradiction. When you look at the mind, while you find nothing, the cognitive lucidity of the mind remains continuous and functioning. The unity of cognitive lucidity and emptiness, which is our mind, is what is called the unity of awareness and emptiness, or the unity of lucidity and emptiness. Therefore, while the mind is lucid, it is empty; and while it is empty, it is lucid.

The importance of mentioning this is that you might otherwise wonder if meditation on mahamudra, meditation on the nature of mind, will cause you to become stupid and vacuous. You might wonder if somehow the only thing that maintains the lucidity of experience is fixation.43 That is not the case. The cultivation of prajna or discernment involves three stages: the prajna of hearing, the prajna of thinking, and the prajna of meditation or meditating. The first two, the prajnas of hearing and thinking, are supposed to be developed prior to developing authentic experience and realization. The third one, the prajna of meditation, is the cultivation of that experience and realization. The term “prajna” implies particularly clear cognition or particularly clear knowledge—“pra” being an intensifier. Nevertheless, there is a further development of prajna, in which prajna is refined into wisdom or jnana. “Jnana” has the connotation of something that is stable and all-pervasive, something that is not cultivated, but discovered. You will remember several days ago I spoke of the shunyata mantra, which begins, OM SHUNYATA JNANA, and so on. The shunyata spoken of in the mantra is the emptiness, for example, of the mind, which is like an expanse. The wisdom or jnana of which the mantra speaks is that wisdom which is the mind’s very cognitive lucidity, which is inseparable from that expanse. Because the mind is cognitive lucidity that is inseparable from emptiness, when you rest in that nature, you will not become stupid or vacuous. In other words, as you rest in the mind’s nature, the wisdom increases and all of the qualities of wisdom increase. Therefore, the wisdom of a bodhisattva is far greater than the wisdom of an ordinary being. And the wisdom of a buddha is far greater than the wisdom of a bodhisattva. For example, when someone achieves buddhahood, they are said to possess two types of wisdom: the wisdom that knows what there is, which is the full knowledge of relative truth, and the wisdom that knows how things are, which is the full knowledge of absolute truth. You can also describe the wisdom of a buddha as the five wisdoms, and so forth. In any case, resting in the mind’s nature leads to vast wisdom. All of that vast wisdom comes from the realization or seeing of dharmata, the essence of reality, which itself is realized, according to the tradition of practical i nstruction,


within one’s own mind—through looking at and recognizing one’s mind’s nature. This nature of the mind at which we are looking, and that we come to recognize and realize, is not something new. It is not created by the practice. The nature in itself is not changed by the practice. It has always been there. The only change that has occurred or is occurring is that this nature has been introduced to you; it has been pointed out. And through that and through the instruction and through the blessings of the root and lineage gurus you come to recognize and realize it. Nevertheless, this nature is exactly the same nature that is spoken of in the sutras as sugatagarbha or buddha nature. In the sutras it is spoken of as a potential, like a seed that can be cultivated into the full state of awakening. If we look at the term “sugatagarbha,” “su” means bliss. The bliss here is the bliss or supreme well-being that is beyond samsara and nirvana,44 and it is that which is achieved when this nature is fully recognized. “Gata” means gone. So, one who has gone to bliss is a synonym for a buddha. But it is not the case that they have gone, and we cannot go. We too can go, or come to realize this, because we have this same potential. It is always there. It is our basic being, and, therefore, it is called “garbha.” From the point of view of mahamudra, we describe sugatagarbha as awareness/emptiness or the unity of awareness and emptiness, as lucidity/emptiness or the unity of lucidity and emptiness, and as bliss/emptiness or the unity of bliss and emptiness. This is significant, because we may wonder if progress in mahamudra meditation will lead to the diminishing of the intensity of experience, if it will lead to the cessation of all experience—to some kind of state of neutrality or vacuity. It does not. It leads to the realization of bliss/emptiness.


Among the sutras, the prajnaparamita sutras of the second dharmachakra primarily present emptiness. The last teachings of the Buddha, the third and final turning of the dharmachakra, emphasized buddha nature. These teachings on buddha nature were further expounded on and explained in the five treatises of Maitreya, among which the most extraordinary is the Uttaratantra Shastra. Central to the Uttaratantra Shastra is an explanation of the presence of buddha nature within us which uses nine different analogies to point out how it is present. One of these analogies is the analogy of gold concealed below the ground. The analogy in detail is as follows: Imagine that somehow a large lump of gold falls into the ground. It is subsequently further concealed by a landfill made of all sorts of garbage. The gold itself is utterly unaffected by this. It remains gold, just as it was, but it is not available to anyone directly. It does not fulfill its function as gold. Eventually a poor person builds a primitive shack on top of this garbage landfill. Directly underneath where


he sleeps every night is this huge chunk of gold. So he has no need whatsoever to remain impoverished, but he does not know this, and therefore he suffers considerably from poverty. Someone who has extrasensory perception comes walking along, sees the shack and the terrible poverty of the person who lives in it, feels very bad for him, and also sees the gold that is right under his house. So he tells the person, “You do not need to be poor. You have a huge chunk of gold right under where you sleep every night.” The poor person believes him, moves his mattress and starts digging, and sooner or later he finds that huge piece of gold. In the same way, each of us has buddha nature, dharmata, within us. But it is covered by our obscurations: the cognitive obscurations and the afflictive obscurations. Since we regard ourselves to be our obscurations, we are always looking outside ourselves; we are always looking away from our own buddha nature. The primary function, the primary deed of the Buddha and his followers, is to tell us to look within, to tell us that within our bewildered minds is innate wisdom, there to be discovered if we look. Through the blessing of this we need not suffer further the bewilderment of samsara, which is like the poverty of the person in the shack.

That is what is presented in the Uttaratantra Shastra. In the sutras, buddha nature is presented as an object of inferential valid cognition, whereas in mahamudra this same buddha nature is presented as an object of direct valid cognition. Aside from that, the understanding of buddha nature is very similar. Therefore, Lord Gampopa said that the mahamudra practice of our lineage depends upon the five treatises of Maitreya. So that is pointing out emptiness to be spontaneous presence, and I am going to stop there for this morning and continue with the reading transmission. [[[Rinpoche]] continues with the reading transmission.] [[[Rinpoche]] and students dedicate the merit.]


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