Obsessing over Phenomena

Understand that from beginningless time, you and all your past lives have been obsessing over phenomena. Phenomena comes in two kinds: inner phenomena—your thoughts and feelings—and outer phenomena—your perceptions, your stuff. You're obsessed with stuff. What do you do all day? You think about stuff, you have feelings about it, and you play with it. You move it around, you wash it, you dust it, you put it through the washing machine, and then you do it all again. Sometimes you acquire new stuff, sometimes you clean out old stuff and give it away, but it’s still stuff—phenomena.

You understand that you're always talking to yourself, describing your reality and how you think and feel about it. "Oh, I’m tired today, I really don’t feel like doing anything." "Oh, I think I’ll go take the dog for a walk; I have some energy." "I wonder what I’ll cook for supper tonight?" Right? You do that all day. We all do. Not only do you do that all day, but you’ve been doing that since you were able to think in words, around one or two years old. Before then, you did the same thing but in pictures, feelings, and sensations. And before that, in whatever words or language you had in your last life, if you were human. If you were something else, without language, you did it in pictures, feelings, and sensations.

The bug looks for what it eats and tries to avoid being eaten by birds. Its attention is focused on phenomena.

This obsessive-compulsive behavior, which all sentient beings have, is what makes them sentient. This narrow-point focus: all day, what do you do with your eyes? You look at this thing, then that thing, then another thing. But you're always looking at a thing. Sometimes it’s your computer screen, sometimes it’s words in a book. Your eyes are always focused. This is part of your obsession with phenomena.

Your enlightened nature is not a phenomenon—that's why you haven’t noticed it. Because you’re obsessing with phenomena. So most of the instructions here are about how to shift your attention. It’s like learning to wiggle your ears. It’s hard. You can't find the muscle at first, but then, once you do, it’s easy. You know where that muscle is. So, we’re going to find the muscle of focus and learn how to open it.

How To Practice Working with Thoughts

The Teachings of the Body

The teachings of the body have to do with what physical positions make it easier to have your energy channels, your nadis, or tsa, aligned. This leads to the free flow of chi. When chi doesn’t flow freely, you’ll experience certain sensations, usually unpleasant ones. Sometimes, these are tactile sensations like pain, and sometimes they are mental sensations, such as grumpiness or anxiety. These sensations are not caused by external objects, but by chi in one of your six sense organs.

When you align your channels, it’s easier for chi to flow freely. That’s why we have certain body positions. For example, the Maitreya position, which is common among Westerners and older people, is almost exactly the same as an ergonomic office chair position. So, you can google it if you forget. Your feet should be flat on the floor, your calves absolutely straight up and down, your knees as close together as the thickness of your thighs allows, and your thighs parallel to the floor. Your weight should rest on the pad at the bottom of your gluteus maximus—right where your buttocks join your thighs, not on your tailbone.

Currently, if you are sitting on a “man-eating” couch, change. Go get a chair. Those couches will eat you and keep you from meditating. If your chair is too tall, put a pillow under your feet. If it’s too short, put a pillow under your buttocks. Arrange yourself so that you can sit in a Maitreya position, a full lotus, or half lotus position.

In the old days, before chairs, we used the full lotus position, and we still use it in Asia. For the full lotus, place your left foot on your right thigh, then your right foot on your left thigh. Put your left hand on top of your right hand, both hands placed on a cushion or carpet, and bring them to touch your belly, about four fingers below the navel. Don’t worry about what your thumbs are doing. This brings your shoulders slightly forward.

In the Maitreya position, place your hands on your thighs, two-thirds to three-quarters of the way toward your knees. This also brings your shoulders slightly forward. If you have lordosis (sway back in the lumbar spine), you may want to put a small pillow behind your tailbone to compensate. If you have scoliosis (such as dextroscoliosis, where your back curves left or right), you may want to place a small pad under one butt cheek to compensate for that.

So we have full lotus, half lotus, or cross-legged positions. In the Bon lineage, women place the left leg out, and men place the right leg out. However, I’ve found that some left-handed people may do better with the left leg out, rather than the right leg. Left-handed people sometimes find it easier to sit with the left leg out and the left hand on top.

If you feel yourself to be more female or have a more feminine nature, regardless of your biological sex, you may wish to place the left leg out. Similarly, left-handed people, regardless of how they identify, may wish to place the left leg out.

Adjust to suit yourself, but what you must not adjust is your shoulders, which should be slightly forward and relaxed. Keep your back as straight as possible without using muscular tension to maintain it. Get a backrest if needed, or a lumbar cushion for support.

Your seat is for you, not the other way around. Your seat should support you, not the other way around. If your thoughts are speeding, slow them down. If you’re falling asleep, raise your energy.

Your chin should be pulled back into as much of a double chin as you can manage without tension. Your mouth should be slightly open, and your tongue should rest on the roof of your mouth, helping your teeth not touch. This is practical for when you have a head cold—you still want to allow some airflow through your mouth while keeping most of it through your nose.

Now, we get to the important part: the position of your eyeballs. Look to your left and notice that you’re paying attention to the stuff to the left of you. Now, without paying attention to the stuff to your right, look right. It’s hard, isn’t it? This gives us an incredible ability to steer our attention because it follows our eyeballs.

For those of you who wear glasses and can't see well without them, use removing your glasses as a mnemonic to unfocus your eyeballs. There are little muscles around your eyes that adjust the focus of the lens, and you want to relax those muscles so your eyes aren’t focused on a specific thing. Instead, let go of point focus and try to perceive peripheral vision as clearly as central vision.

If you can’t do this just by wanting to, try placing your focus on empty space about two meters in front of you and relax from there. Take a deep breath in through your nose and slowly, like a sigh, breathe out through your mouth. Feel that it settles your chi.

The Teachings on Speech

The teachings on speech are really simple: one word—shut up. That little voice that describes what you're doing all the time—shut up. If you can’t stop the internal dialogue, even by adjusting your chin slightly lower, at least don’t pay attention to it. Ignore it.

Have you ever taken two little kids to a park and sat on the bench while they played in the sandbox? They're talking to the bulldozers, the shovels, and each other, but you don’t listen to what they’re saying. You're either watching people, reading a book, or looking at squirrels. Treat your internal dialogue the same way. If you can’t stop it, just ignore it.

The Teachings on the Mind

Now, let’s talk about the teachings of the mind. The mind is key—it’s the king. It makes your decisions. You’re here today because your mind decided to be here. Your mind made the decision, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Your mind is crucial—it makes all the decisions. Your body doesn’t decide to do things. Your body might hurt from stubbing your toe, but it’s your mind that decides whether to curse or not, or whether to sit or jump around. The mind is that important.

So, with your body following the teachings of the body and your speech following the teachings of the speech, now imagine in your mind’s eye.

Your mind’s eye is part of your mind, right? It’s where your imagination resides. So, let’s try to find that mind with our attention. I’ll probably use the phrase “look at,” but I mean direct your attention toward.

Imagine the image of a red rubber ball.

Now imagine the image of a white teapot.

Now imagine the image of a big palm tree, as if you're standing right near it.

Imagine with your ears—not visualize, but idealize—the sound of wind in the palms of the big palm tree.

Imagine your hand touching the trunk of the palm tree.

If you come from a place where there are no palm trees, imagine a different kind of tree you are familiar with.

This tactileization and idealization are in your mind. Find them with your attention. Where’s the picture? Where is the sensation of tree bark? Not in your hands, but in your imagination.

For those of you who are visual, you’ll have the best effect by finding the picture. For some musicians or those who are more auditory, you’ll do better focusing on the imagined sound of the wind. Those who are tactile will be more successful by focusing on the imagined sensation of the bark.

Now, where’s the picture? Is it inside or outside you? Is it far away or nearby? Gently allow your attention to leave the picture and relax into where the picture has been found.

If you find yourself thinking about the question, those words are just thoughts. They occur in your mind. Mind is the thinker of thoughts.

Where are your thoughts? Not what are you thinking—ignore the content. Open your attention to where the thoughts are happening.

If you find something there—something that feels like a thing—you’re looking in the wrong place. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions, they come and go—they arise and dissipate. But mind, in its infinitude, is not moving. It is the infinite ground, the unchanging constant within the dance of life.

Notice the stillness in which all moving phenomena—thoughts, feelings, perceptions—arise and vanish.

Gently open your attention, moving from the focus of your eyes on things and phenomena to the space where everything is happening.

I sometimes forget to blink, and then my eyes itch, which distracts me. Other things will distract you, too, but that’s okay.

When your attention gets caught by something and starts to focus on it—like a thought or feeling—relax your eyes again. Relax your attention again.

As far as your imagination extends, your mind extends. As far as your mind extends, Dharmakaya extends.

When awareness has learned to relax its point of focus, this is referred to as open awareness—vast as space. Even space itself arises in this space.

Time and space are ideas. They are words, thoughts that you think in your mind.

The idea arises in the mind and dissolves in the mind. Mind is unaffected.

A Florida orange is an idea.

Florida oranges arises in the mind and dissolves in the mind. The idea—mind is unaffected by whether it's thinking of infinity or an orange. The idea is not what we're pointing at. Do not focus on the idea of infinite mind; relax into the unchanging ground. It is called the unchanging ground of infinite open awareness, the Dharmakaya, the nature of mind.

But please notice: it’s not a big, dead void like outer space, black between the galaxies. It is alive, lucid, and capable of thinking, feeling, and perceiving. Mind has that ability—this is why it can do that. Obviously, because it’s been doing that forever.

That infinite open awareness, the ultimate ground of mind, the stillness, the great mother ocean, the Dharmakaya—is vital. We call this vitality inherent in the infinite open awareness of life its clear light nature. For it is light, by which one who sees, sees. It is vitality, by which one who thinks, thinks. Light is the symbol of aliveness.

Therefore, this infinite open awareness has inherent to it, inseparable from it, its own clear light nature, its own vitality. Do not mistake it for a void of dead nothingness—that’s nihilism. Don’t stray in that direction.

That clear light nature, that vitality, we call the Sambhogakaya nature of mind—where all the gods are born. It’s a land of sparkling jewel-like symbols of rainbow light, the potential for phenomena to arise and vanish, and the dance of phenomena itself. When not grasped with point focus but allowed to remain in its natural state of "no thing," dancing with liveliness in nowhere, we call that the Nirmanakaya nature of mind.

So you see, here the Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya are not separate things. They are three descriptive terms for the nature of mind. To sit in relaxation and open your attention from the point focus on phenomena that you are habituated to, to this infinite vast open awareness—we call it Tawa.

Sometimes it’s translated as the "view," but I prefer the word Tawa to "view" because when I think of the word view, I think of looking out the window at a view. There’s me, the doer, there is the verb "looking," and there’s the subject, the looked-at. This creates a kind of disassociation or fragmentation, which is unnecessary.

You see, it’s not you looking at Tawa. You always were Tawa. It’s your mind. You are your mind. Do not disassociate from the totality of yourself. Doing so is a bad habit, and it may take a little while to break.

Do not expect to see it with your eyes. To see, we're using the term as a euphemism for being aware of it.

Inner Mind Rushen - Looking for the Mind

This exercise is called the Inner Mind Rushen. It’s from the text "Yeshe Lama" (Wisdom Teacher) and is part of a series of Dzogchen Rushens or Ngondros.

Rushen actually means "separating out." This is used in Dzogchen to separate Samsara from Nirvana to avoid the confusion of thinking that the “idea of Nirvana” is Nirvana, whereas it’s only an idea – phenomena. This is one of the Rushens, the Inner Mind Rushen.

Utilizing the teachings of the body, assume the proper position. Think of an object about the size of your hand, or smaller. I’m thinking of a seashell.

Begin looking through your body for the image of the seashell. Start by examining your hair—does the picture of the seashell appear there? Next, examine your scalp. Perceptually check to see if the image of the seashell is there.

What you are doing is looking for the thinker of thoughts. You can use the image of a seashell, a word, or whatever you happen to be thinking at the moment.

Where are your thoughts happening? But search for them with the same fervor you look for your car keys in the morning when you’re running late, or for the key to your bicycle lock if you're not a driver. Methodically look through your body.

Start with your hair, then examine your scalp, the brain (left hemisphere, right hemisphere), the pineal gland, occiput, and all the regions of the brain. Check the sense organs—ears, eyes, nose, and mouth, the neck, veins in the neck, windpipe, food pipe, spinal cord. Then move down into the trunk, the shoulders, the muscles of the shoulders, the ribcage, and the organs within it. Each one by one, inspect them to see if that’s where thinking is happening.

Spend a good bit of time going through the different parts of the brain, the heart, and the liver, since those are common places where people assume thoughts occur. Tibetans feel it in the heart, while Westerners think it’s in the brain and the Chinese think it’s in the liver.

But don’t take anyone’s word for it. Give up all the hearsay and look for yourself. This is important too—not trusting rumors you’ve read on the internet.

Find your mind by looking all through your body, bit by bit. Keep doing that until you’re absolutely sure it’s not there, wherever the thoughts are happening. We’re defining "mind" for this exercise as the thinker of the thoughts.

When you are completely and absolutely certain, satisfied by your own experience, that the thoughts are not in your body, look outside. Look in front of you, two meters away. Is that where the thoughts are happening? Don’t just assume—actually look. Look a mile away, look behind the moon, to your left and right, three feet out, an inch out, above, below. Keep looking until you are absolutely certain that the thoughts are not outside of you.

For those of you who are uncertain whether you've glimpsed Tawa, that’s your homework. Keep doing this until you're sure it’s neither inside nor outside, and we’ll continue from there tomorrow.

Summary of the Practice

Sit. Shut up. Deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Relax. Let go of your intent to mediate, to find something to see, just relax. Thoughts will arise—leave them be. Your thoughts are not made of matter. They lack substance and duration. They are inherently without substance and duration. You do not have to remove these things from them. Leave them be as they are. Look through them, between them, right through them. They’re transparent. You cannot make a thought obey no matter how hard you try. So leave them be to dance freely thinking whatever. Don’t pay them no never mind. Relax. Let go of your intent and leave your thoughts be. Just this.

How to do Practice Sessions

If you aren't sure whether or not you have glimpsed your own mind in its utterly indescribable nature, then continue to practice sitting in reasonably short sessions, but many of them.

The inner mind rushen—the one where you start in your hair, looking for where the thoughts are happening. If you feel, think, or perceive that you have had a glimpse beyond thought, feeling, and perception of mind itself, simply sit with your channels in alignment in frequent short sessions and relax into that. Don’t grab it. Don’t try to stabilize it. Don’t try to hold it still. Just relax into it. When the distraction becomes too much, get up and do something else. The more sessions you do, rather than longer sessions, the more effective this will be. Just that.

Sessions should be anywhere from a minimum of three minutes to a maximum of 15 to 20 minutes. They should be the amount of time that works for you. If you’re relaxing into it and don’t feel like getting up, go ahead and sit there. But probably within about 15 to 20 minutes, you’re going to feel like getting up. If you’ve wandered off into a fantasy of what you’ll do when you get up, go ahead and get up, then come back after some time and sit again.

What is Awareness?

Awareness is the vitality of mind; it’s not separate from mind. You can put your attention anywhere, but your awareness isn’t moving about. Your awareness is your mind. It’s the aliveness of your mind.

What you're moving about is attention. We’re trying to shift attention from things to mind itself, which is vitalized by awareness. Awareness isn’t separate from mind; it’s like the sambogakaya nature of mind, the vitality of mind. Mind is more than just its vitality—it’s also infinite and creative. So I wouldn’t use them as synonyms, but I wouldn’t say they’re entirely different things either.

What can we do when we get distracted by an image, memory, or thought?

Take a deep breath in through your nose, then blow out slowly through your mouth, like a soft sigh. This will settle the chi. Thoughts, feelings, and perceptions ride the chi through the channels. When you settle the chi, it diminishes the loudness of those distractions, making it easier to take your attention back out of focus.