The True Nature of Mind
By Tulku Thondup

To understand how the world can be a creation of the mind, it is useful to recognize that our mind has two aspects: ordinary mind and enlightened mind. Ordinary mind, also known in Mahayana teachings as deluded mind, is conceptual, dualistic, and emotional. Enlightened mind also known as the awakened state or Buddha-nature is the true and pure nature of the mind. For most of us, the dualistic concepts, unhealthy emotions, and obsessive sensations (particularly strong clinging and craving) of our ordinary mind cover the enlightened aspect of our mind. These thoughts are like coverings that obstruct us from realizing and manifesting our true nature like clouds covering the sun.

Consider the difference between how an awakened person and an ordinary person view a flower. When an awakened person sees a flower, they see it through their enlightened wisdom-eyes that are free from the shrouds of duality, emotions and sensations, and that dwell instead in the nature of boundless openness, also known as “emptiness” nature. By contrast, when an ordinary person sees a flower, they see it through the eyes of their deluded mind, which is characterized by duality. Duality leads to attachment and aversion, which, as they become increasingly tight and obsessive, result in the familiar cycle of fireworks and misery.

"[Enlightenment, of which the Buddha] said: “It is by nature clear light,” is similar to the sun and space.
It is free from the stains of the adventitious poisons and hindrances to knowledge, the veils of which obscured it [like] a dense sea of clouds.

Buddhahood is permanent, steadfast, and immutable, possessing all the unpolluted buddha qualities.
It is attained on the basis of [two] primordial wisdoms: [one is] free from ideation with regard to phenomena, [the other is] discriminative.

Buddhahood is indivisible, yet can be divided according to its property of [twofold] purity.
[Thus] it has two features, which are abandonment and primordial wisdom, similar to space and the sun.

Luminous clear light is not created.
It is indivisibly manifest [in the nature of beings] and holds all the buddha properties outnumbering the grains of sand in the river Ganges.

By nature not existent, pervasive, and adventitious, the veils of the poisons and of the hindrances to knowledge are described as being similar to a cloud."

Mahāyānottaratantra Śāstra

"Rid of pollution [and] all-pervasive, [true buddhahood] has an indestructible nature since it is steadfast, at peace, permanent, and unchanging. As the abode [of qualities] a tathagata is similar to space. For the six sense-faculties of a saintly being it forms the cause to experience their respective [pure] objects [of perception]."

Mahāyānottaratantra Śāstra

"Buddhahood is inconceivable, permanent, steadfast, at peace, and immutable.
It is utterly peaceful, pervasive, without thought, and unattached like space.
It is free from hindrance and coarse objects of contact are eliminated.
It cannot be seen or grasped. It is virtuous and free from pollution."

Mahāyānottaratantra Śāstra

Prayer to the Moon: OM Som Somaya Namaha

“The greater and greater awakening of consciousness and its climb to a higher and higher level and a wider extent of its vision and action is the condition of our progress towards that supreme and total perfection which is the aim of our existence.”

~ Sri Aurobindo

#consciousness


💖 @OfLoveAndGrace 💖

"Vision is mind.
Mind is empty.
Emptiness is clear light.
Clear light is union.
Union is great bliss."

Dawa Gyaltsen

"Say that someone demolishes all the stūpas
found here in Jambudvīpa;
the bad actions of someone who abandons the sūtras are far more grave.

Even if someone murders as many arhats
as there are grains of sand in the Ganges,
the bad actions of someone who abandons the sūtras are far more grave."

Samādhirājasūtra

"Faith is the foremost vehicle
leading to definite release.
For that reason the intelligent
rely on the pursuit of faith.

In those lacking faith,
virtuous phenomena do not arise,
just as in seeds burnt by fire,
no green sprout can germinate."

Daśadharmakasūtra

"If you engage in no practice of pure Dharma at all for the sake of lasting happiness but strive your entire life merely to eliminate your suffering and attain happiness, then you are like an animal despite your fortunate rebirth since animals do the same."

Je Tsongkhapa

By and large, human beings tend to prefer to fit in to society by following accepted rules of etiquette and being gentle, polite, and respectful. The irony is that this is also how most people imagine a spiritual person should behave. When a so-called dharma practitioner is seen to behave badly, we shake our heads over her audacity at presenting herself as a follower of the Buddha. Yet such judgments are better avoided, because to “fit in” is not what a genuine dharma practitioner strives for.

Think of Tilopa, for example. He looked so outlandish that if he turned up on your doorstep today, odds are you would refuse to let him in. And you would have a point. He would most likely be almost completely naked; if you were lucky, he might be sporting some kind of G-string; his hair would never have been introduced to shampoo; and protruding from his mouth would quiver the tail of a live fish. What would your moral judgment be of such a being? “Him! A Buddhist?” This is how our theistic, moralistic, and judgmental minds work. Of course, there is nothing wrong with morality, but the point of spiritual practice, according to the vajrayana teachings, is to go beyond all our concepts, including those of morality.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Any kind of adherence to views prevents the realization of a truly open awareness, the only capable of reflecting the boundless wholeness. Therefore, merely understanding the absence of inherent existence (through inferential conclusions - as in madhyamika-prasangika) is not enough to understand the Ultimate

“Of all the battles in the world, ignorance is the most dangerous enemy and anger the deadliest weapon. Only a warrior of wisdom wielding the spear of compassion can defeat them”

- Chamtrul Rinpoche

"As a disciple you must regard your Guru as an Enlightened Being. Even if from his own point of view he is not Enlightened and you, his disciple, have gained Buddhahood before him, you must still show him respect and pay homage.

For instance, Maitreya, the fifth and next Buddha of the thousand of this world age, who now presides over Tusita Buddha-field, became Enlightened before his Guru, Sakyamuni Buddha. To demonstrate respect for his Guru, Maitreya has a stupa or reliquary monument on his forehead.

Likewise Avalokitesvara, the incarnation of the compassion of all the Buddhas, is crowned in his eleven-headed aspect with the head of his Guru, Amitabha Buddha, the one who presides over Sukhavati Buddha-field.
This learning from a Guru should not be like killing a deer to extract its musk and then discarding its corpse.

Even after attaining Enlightenment you must still continue to honor your Guru who made all your achievements possible."

Geshe Ngawang Dhargey

"In the Vajra Vehicle, like the lesser vehicles, the practitioner overcomes all forms of ignorant conceptuality that create the grasped difference of this and that. By doing so, the phenomena produced by dualistic grasping are stopped and the conventional mindstream is eliminated. The practitioner opens up his inherent wisdom and the complete display of wisdom appearances with it. The experience of these pure appearances is the experience of bliss. Hence the practitioner returns to a wisdom which is a wisdom of co-emergent bliss-emptiness."

Tony Duff

If you fully understand karma, at the deepest level, you will not only have compassion for beings who are suffering, but you will also have compassion for any beings who are harming others.

- Chamtrul Rinpoche

New blog! And a brand new entry!

On the Buddhist Concept of Divine Monarchy according to the Golden Light Sutra

https://vajrakingdom.wordpress.com/2023/03/15/on-the-buddhist-concept-of-divine-monarchy-according-to-the-golden-light-sutra/

"It is difficult to feel fear without thinking that something is going wrong. We react impulsively when we judge others or ourselves in an attempt to escape the pain of suffering.

It doesn't work, just as running away into the woods doesn't work either. Even sacred places are doomed to disappoint us if we go there motivated by a desire to escape. However, if we take refuge in the Dhamma, interest in understanding fear and learning from it can be triggered.

Can we experience the feeling of fear without becoming afraid? Fear is still fear, but it is recognized through an expanded consciousness that is less foggy and less threatened. We can even begin to realize that fear too 'is what it is'.

A non-judgmental and wholehearted recognition, in body and mind, of the condition of fear, here and now, can transform our pain into freedom. The willingness to recognize where we stand is the way."

Ajahn Munindo

How to interpret surface level contradictions? Listen to this explanation from a Buddhist: “These stories are not contradictory because Highly Realized beings
abide in the Expanse of Great Equanimity with Perfect understanding and can do anything. Everything is possible. Everything is flexible. Enlightened beings can appear in any way they want or need to.”
~ Buddhist Scholar KPS Rinpoche

"The best response to negative emotion is to allow it to self-liberate, by remaining in non-dual consciousness, free from attachment and aversion. If we can do this, the emotion passes through us like a bird flying through space; no trace of its passage remains. The emotion arises and then spontaneously dissolves into emptiness."

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

“By acknowledging that mind is continuous and the root circumstance of all phenomena, we must try to recognize its pure essence, which is Buddha nature. We must try to transform temporary obscurations into positive, contributing circumstances in order to become the same as all Buddhas. We must try to distill the pure essence from the unclear confusion of subject and object which remains in the fragile coincidence container of our nihilist habit's fragmented mind. Instead of creating impure and contradictory phenomena which are the cause of suffering, we must create pure and complementary phenomena through positive habits that create positive karma in our continuous Buddha nature land until we transcend the phenomena of relative truth and attain enlightenment”

~ Thinley Norbu Rinpoche