Pointing Out That Spontaneous Presence Is Self-Liberation

Now we come to the fourth part of pointing out the mind within appearances, which is pointing out that spontaneous presence is selfliberation. First we meditate on appearances as mind, and then on mind as emptiness. Then, in order to ensure the recognition that emptiness, which is the nature of the mind, is not nothingness and absolutely nothing like space, emptiness is presented as being spontaneous presence. In the context of appearances, this means that emptiness is the potential for the appearance of relative truths,45 and that it is the unity of appearance and emptiness. In the context of the mind itself, the mind’s emptiness is the unity of cognitive lucidity and emptiness, the unity of awareness and emptiness, and the unity of great bliss and emptiness. The nature of emptiness is at the same time great bliss and, therefore, when it is fully realized, great bliss is achieved. In order to point all of this out, emptiness is pointed out as spontaneous presence. Therefore, spontaneous presence itself is the basis for liberation. Liberation here is liberation from suffering, the end of suffering, which is brought about through liberation from the cause of suffering, the kleshas. It is also liberation from the most subtle obscurations, the cognitive obscurations. What is pointed out here is that this liberation is not produced by effort. Those things that are to be abandoned in order to attain liberation have no existence. Therefore, liberation happens of its own nature, and is therefore called self-liberation.

The reason why spontaneous presence is self-liberated starts with the following: In samsara we experience a great variety of different kinds of suffering, and there are many different kleshas that are present in the minds of beings as causes and conditions for this suffering. But all of these things are empty. For example, in the practice called “looking at the mind within the occurrence of thought,” when you look at the three poisons—attachment, aversion, and apathy—or when you look at the states of delight and misery,

while normally we are overpowered by these states of mind and come under their control, when you actually look at them, you see that their nature is emptiness. Simply in having seen that, we are very fortunate. If kleshas really existed, if they had true and solid existence, it would require effort to abandon them. But once you see their emptiness, once you see that they are empty, they will gradually disappear. I say “gradually,” because simply seeing the emptiness of one particular klesha on one occasion does not prevent the reoccurrence of kleshas. When you practice tranquility meditation, one of the effects is that your kleshas are weakened, but, as you will remember, aside from weakening them, the practice of tranquility does not eradicate them. But when you practice insight meditation, you actually see their nonexistence. Through seeing the nonexistence of a klesha, it is conquered, it is completely pacified. That particular klesha at that moment is pacified and conquered, but that does not prevent a reoccurrence. The reason why simply seeing the emptiness of a klesha once does not prevent its reoccurrence is that we have a strong habit of entertaining kleshas, which we have accumulated throughout beginningless time. For example, you look at your mind and you observe the emptiness of a thought or klesha that is present within it. Then you arise from that meditation and you no longer observe the emptiness of thoughts and kleshas. In other words, simply observing the emptiness of kleshas on one occasion is not the end of the path.

There will also be fluctuations in your experience, which means that sometimes you will have a heightened awareness of the emptiness of kleshas, and it will be easy to observe that emptiness directly; and sometimes your awareness of emptiness will seem somehow dull or diminished, and it will not serve to enable you to see the emptiness of your kleshas. As long as the habit of indulging kleshas has not been eradicated, there will continue to be the need actually to observe their emptiness again and again.

The distinction between what happens when you see the emptiness of a klesha and what happens when you have actually fully eradicated all kleshas forever is, in the context of the graduated path, a distinction between the wisdom of the path of seeing and the wisdom of the path of meditation or cultivation.46 Although someone has seen dharmata, has directly experienced the nature of mind, this insight has to be further cultivated. In the same way, on the path of mahamudra, if having seen the emptiness of kleshas in experience once, you do not continue to cultivate that insight and you just abandon it, this will not have any effect on the rest of your kleshas. So there is a great deal of difference between what is abandoned simply through being seen once or a few times, and what has to be abandoned through the path of cultivation. Therefore it has been said by many mahasiddhas, “Our bad habits are like the tendency of a scroll that has been kept rolled up to roll itself back up every time we try to unroll it.” The insight into the nature of one klesha is not the end of the path. Therefore, even practitioners who have realized the nature of mind must continue practicing meditation. And it need not be said that practitioners who have not realized the nature of mind must also continue practicing. In short, the actual practice of meditation is very important. As was said by Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thayé in The Essence of Generation and Completion, “The achievement of the final fruition depends upon continuous diligent application. This in turn must be carried out throughout both meditation and postmeditation, through the application of both mindfulness and alertness.”

As for what the result of practice is, it has been said by many teachers, “The sign of having heard the dharma is to be peaceful and subdued. The sign of having meditated is to have no kleshas.” It is said that you can tell whether or not you have genuinely heard the teachings and understood their point by whether or not you are tame and peaceful in your conduct. And you can tell whether or not your meditation is effective by whether or not your kleshas are diminishing. Ideally, someone should finally have no kleshas whatsoever. But even on the way to that klesha-free state, your kleshas and thoughts should diminish. Therefore, I think that it is of far greater importance than the experience of dramatic instantaneous pointing out that people be taught mahamudra as a full system of instruction that they can implement on their own gradually through diligent application using either one of the three texts by the Ninth Gyalwang Karmapa—The Ocean of Definitive Meaning, Dispelling the Darkness of Ignorance, or Pointing Out the Dharmakaya—or one of the texts by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal—either Moonbeams of Mahamudra or The Clarification of the Natural State.

In short, I think it is of far more importance that people receive this kind of complete and systematic instruction so that they can gradually develop experience on their own, than that some kind of dramatic pointing-out procedure be done. Of course, it is possible to give dramatic pointing-out instruction, and when you do so, some people do recognize their mind’s nature. But, if I may say so, I question the stability and, therefore, ultimately the value of that. It certainly is a dramatic experience for those people who achieve it, but I see no evidence of their kleshas diminishing as a result. And furthermore, they then carry away with them the arrogance of the thought, “I have seen my mind’s nature.” I think it is of far greater importance actually to practice meditation slowly and surely and make all possible use of the resources which this book in particular gives you. It is after all a big book and contains within it much instruction, much guidance, and a lot of questions that can help you to question and therefore refine your own experience. When you make use of this book in applying it to your own practice, do not do so in a vague or casual way; do not look at a description of experience and think, “Well, that must be what I am seeing—after all that is what it says in the book.” Continue with each phase of the practice until you actually have definite experience that you are sure of. Remember, especially, that what you are looking at and what you are looking for is just the nature of your own mind. It is therefore not far away from you. It is not something that you have to search for in the manner of a hunter pursuing a deer through a dense forest. It is right with you. Therefore, in itself it is not really difficult to recognize.

So, we must practice meditation, and through meditation we have to generate real experience of our own mind. For this purpose, therefore, precise and complete instruction is very valuable. We have available to us the advice of so many great teachers who preceded us in the same path. All of these beings are embodied in and contained in the text that we are studying. However, I do not want to give you the impression that, while we need to practice mahamudra, there is no need for any other kind of practice at all, because that is not true either. The purpose of practicing mahamudra is first to develop prajna and finally to discover jnana or wisdom, and we must do anything we need to do to develop these qualities. Now, one issue is that there are times when you simply cannot rest in the nature of your mind, [and therefore it is virtually impossible to practice mahamudra.] Therefore, it is good to understand that there are many supplementary practices that will facilitate, enhance, and therefore make easier, the practice of mahamudra. For example, the preliminary practices or ngöndro are valuable for mahamudra practice, because they increase renunciation and devotion. Also, the generation stage practices connected with any yidam—and it does not matter which yidam it is—help a great deal. When you practice the generation stage you are working with your mind in the context of that iconography. This is very helpful in the cultivation of both tranquility and insight. Furthermore, in the context of such practices, when you perform the invitation liturgy, and so on, the devotion that you generate can change your attitude of mind, such that it can bring genuine experience.

Another issue is that we are especially plagued by our perception of impurity. Characteristic of samsara is that we see everything as impure. We need to transform our perception of impurity into the perception of purity. But we cannot do so as long as we continue to reinforce this perception of impurity. Therefore, in order to remedy that fault, we visualize a yidam or deity. Basically we do this in two ways: One way is called self-generation, in which you visualize yourself as the deity; the other way is called front visualization, in which you visualize the deity in front of you. The purpose of self-generation, visualizing yourself as a yidam deity, is to gradually reveal buddha nature. It is effective because yidams are all manifestations of the buddha nature or sugatagarbha, the innate potential of awakening that we all have. By visualizing yourself, not in your ordinary form or body, but in the pure form of a yidam, you gradually reveal that nature. This is a special technique of the vajrayana, as is front visualization. The reason for front generation, front visualization is that, if you only did self-visualization and not also front visualization, you might think that the yidam embodied only your buddha nature, that there was no possibility of any help from outside. That is simply not true; there are innumerable buddhas and bodhisattvas, and having achieved awakening, they actually can see us, although we cannot see them. When you visualize a yidam in front of you, you are considering that to be the presence of all buddhas and bodhisattvas in the form of that particular yidam. And when you cultivate devotion in that way for that yidam, then you receive the blessings and the assistance of all those buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Many yidam practices have a third type of visualization, called vase generation, in which you visualize all buddhas and bodhisattvas again in the form of that particular yidam or deity as present in the vase which will subsequently be used in self-empowerment. Finally, at a particular stage in the generation stage practice, they dissolve into and become indivisible from the water in the vase, which is then used to confer the empowerment. This is not pretending that one thing is something else, because the empowerment confers the blessing of that deity; therefore, it is in fact meaningful to visualize that deity as present within the receptacle or implement of empowerment.

Another especially important supplementary practice for mahamudra practitioners is guru yoga. Guru yoga may be meditation on one’s root guru or may be meditation on any guru of the lineage. It is necessary to make this clear, because, while some people have unchanging faith in their root guru, other people do not. So, if you find that you lack that type of inspiration of unchanging faith in your root guru, then study the lives of the gurus of the lineage and supplicate one or more of them, and their blessings will enter into you. When we use the word blessing, do not expect this necessarily to be something dramatic and overwhelming. Blessing is not necessarily going to make you shake and quake. The receipt of blessing actually is indicated when your mind starts to change. Whereas before you may not have had stable faith in the guru, in the teachings, and so forth, your faith becomes stable; whereas before you lacked devotion for practice, you now start to have it; whereas before your kleshas were uncontrollable, they start to diminish; whereas before you were unable to see anything wrong whatsoever with obsessive involvement in mundane activities, you start to detect that they are pointless. These are all indications of receiving blessing.

In order to induce the receipt of blessing, you can either use the sadhana of a yidam or the practice of guru yoga. Other supplementary practices include the lo jong teachings in general47 and especially the practice of tonglen,48 and other things that are less formal—for example, letting go of your greedy and obsessive attachment to things; starting to practice useful acts of generosity, such as giving to those in actual need, and in that way, actually setting about the proper practice of the six perfections of generosity, moral discipline, patience, exertion or diligence, meditation, and prajna, and so on. It is not absolutely necessary to attempt to imitate the inconceivable deeds of great bodhisattvas. Nevertheless, it is important to open your mind to the possibility of doing so. If you can actually do so, of course, that is fine, too. And finally, another supplementary practice that should be mentioned is the dedication of virtue to the awakening of all beings.

All of these supplementary practices exist for one reason. They exist in order to assist the achievement of mahamudra realization. Therefore, it was said by Shantideva, “All of these branches were taught by the Sage for the sake of prajna.” In other words, the first five perfections, from generosity up to and including meditation, were taught by the Buddha as methods leading to the achievement of the sixth, prajna. The point of all of these supplementary practices is the realization of mahamudra. Since they are conducive to and supportive of gaining that realization, they are by no means unimportant.

There is something else to which we must always pay attention, and that is what the Buddha referred to as the ten virtuous and ten unvirtuous actions. It is important, as much as one can, to avoid the ten unvirtuous actions and to engage in the ten virtuous actions. Sometimes you can do so perfectly and completely—you can avoid everything that is unvirtuous and you can practice a great deal that is virtuous. And sometimes you cannot. But it is important always to keep in mind the direction in which you are moving; the goal that you are seeking in your conduct is to avoid completely that which is harmful and to do that which is beneficial. Sometimes you are forced to do something that is negative, whether because of your previous karma or immediate conditions. Through maintaining mindfulness, alertness, and watchfulness, not just in meditation, but also in post-meditation, try to cultivate virtue and to avoid that which is unvirtuous. This is for your own benefit, because it is very hard to realize mahamudra in the midst of an unvirtuous life. Therefore, please practice mindfulness and alertness in post-meditation as well.

I am going to stop here for this afternoon, and now we will meditate a little bit. [[[Rinpoche]] meditates with students.] [[[Rinpoche]] and students dedicate the merit.]