Meditation on Form and Sound

Meditation on Form and Sound

From the Fifteenth Nail "The Nail of Gaining Decisive Certainty of the Mother and Son" of the Twenty-One Nails

Relax, allow yourself to totally relax and be calm. Let all your thoughts about practice or the teachings empty out of your mind. Let your mind be empty like the space of the sky. Relax with open eyes. Look at any objects in front of you that you can see. Look at them. Check whatever you see. If it’s a book, what is it’s color? What is it’s shape? What is it’s size? Check. If you see a picture, check in the same way. No matter what is in front of your gaze. You may get a lot of results from checking. Like it is big like this, it’s color is that, it’s beautiful, it’s something. All these results we get now, do they exist or do they not exist? Check yourself. 

As you get the results of seeing whatever is in front of your eyes, you may say “This is a book. This is a white book. This is a big book. This is a small book.” Whatever you decide based on what you are looking at, keep that only. Do not follow the thoughts about what you are looking at. If the book is white; stop. No more thinking after that. If the book is beautiful; stop. No more commentary after that. Do not continue to follow. Do not connect through your attachment to what you see. Look and let them be whatever they are. Leave them alone. Give them space. Don’t connect with the results of your perceptions. Keep some distance between the results and your mind. Don’t make connections. If you are looking like “this is my book.” Leave it be, don’t make a connection to the story. Let the focus rest between the result and your mind. Don’t go onto the subject, or onto the object. Stay in the inbetween. Keep that state.

[Five minutes of silent practice]

This is the practice with the form. You can practice this same way with the sound. You make sounds that you don’t like; sounds you don’t ever want to hear. Such as sounds of bad words, degrading words, and humiliating words. You listen to this sound. You try to understand the meaning of that sound. And you don’t follow the meaning, but keep your distance and let yourself rest between the meaning of the sound and the mind. 

We should practice like this for five minutes every day. Little by little every day in short amounts can be a big help to us. We are often so easily excited by what we experience. We go into a store and get excited by all the many colors and shapes we see. We like everything we see and we sit our attention on the object. But through this practice we can say “Hello, you are beautiful.” and simple leave the object where it is, as it is. Not following, not attaching, not connecting emotionally to what we see. We simply see, because our eyes are open. We can hear because our ears are open. What is important is to control ourselves and not let ourselves become entranced by the meaning of what we see or hear. Stay like a rigpa king. Think like “I know the meaning of this sound. The meaning of this sound arises from my mind, from my nature state of mind. I am the rigpa king. They are the manifestation from mind.”