Unshakeable Serenity

If you conquer the primordial nature by distinguishing mind from awareness. The view of the absolute will gradually become clear. Even if inwardly awareness is not clear right now, simply keep the mind from wandering outside. This will do. For awareness lies in the very depth of the mind. 

Although mind and awareness are different in a sense, they cannot be distinguished by analytic reasoning. They are, it is said, like water and ice. 

Water and ice are not entirely the same, for the latter is solid and can be held. But molten ice is non-other than water. So in truth, water and ice are not two things, but one. Likewise, mind is not awareness being deluded, but mind’s nature, when realized is non-other than awareness.  

One day, as your confidence in awareness grows, mind will appear as witless as a child, and awareness as wise as a venerable old sage. Awareness will not run after mind but eclipse it.  In a relaxed, serene state, rest at ease. 

While mind is watching mind, though there is nothing to see, it is vividly clear, uncontrived, free, and at ease in that state. Rest naturally. Simply undistracted. Whatever thought occurs from that state, without stopping or analyzing, watch its very nature. Its arising doesn’t obscure the absolute nature. Whatever occurs, relax right there. 

Don’t follow thoughts about the past. Don’t anticipate thoughts about the future. Directly transcend the external world. 

If you maintain this recognition of thoughts, you will feel that they do not truly begin, remain, or end. Though you notice them, they have no effect on your true nature. That is the bare natural state.  The way it is.  

If you take that empty awareness, open and carefree, as the path, all the time, during formal practice and afterward, you will quickly and surely acquire a confident realization that confusion is freed by itself. 

In order to conquer the high ground of the uncreated nature of mind, we must go to the source, and recognize the origin of our thoughts. Otherwise, one thought gives rise to a second thought, the second thought to a third, and so on, forever. We are constantly assailed by memories of the past, and carried away by expectations for the future, and lose all awareness of the present.

It is our mind that leads us astray into the cycle of existences. We hold fast to our thoughts which are nothing but manifestations of that nature.  This freezes awareness into solid concepts such as I and other, desirable and detestable, and plenty of others.  This is how we create samsara.  But if, instead of letting our thoughts solidify, we recognize their emptiness, then each thought that arises and disappears in the mind renders the realization of emptiness even clearer. 

To be attached to the reality of phenomena, to be tormented by attraction and repulsion, by pleasure and pain, gain and loss, fame and obscurity, praise and blame, creates a solidity in the mind.  What we have to do therefore is to melt the ice of concepts into the living water of the freedom within. 

All phenomena of samsara and nirvana arise like a rainbow, and like a rainbow, they are devoid of any tangible existence. Once you have recognized the true nature of reality, which is empty, and at the same time appears as the phenomenal world, your mind will cease to be under the power of delusion. 

If you know how to leave your thoughts free to dissolve by themselves as they arise, they will cross your mind as a bird crosses the sky.  Without leaving any trace. Maintain that state of simplicity. If you encounter happiness, success, prosperity, or other favorable conditions, consider them as dreams and illusions, and do not get attached to any of them.  If you are stricken by illness, calamity, deprivation, or other physical and mental trials, do not let yourself get discouraged, but rekindle your compassion, and generate the wish, that through your suffering, all beings’ sufferings may be exhausted. 

Whatever circumstances arise, do not plunge into either elation or misery, but stay free and comfortable, in unshaken serenity. 

So practice the essential meaning with tenacity. 

May this delightful, sacred offering cloud, of essential pith instructions, cause you to gain realization of the definitive secret that is like space. 

By Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche