Awakening the Luminous Mind: Tibetan Meditation for Inner Peace and Joy (14 page)

T
HE
I
NFORMAL
P
RACTICE OF
M
IND
I
S
E
MPTY

How can we apply the advice
Mind is empty
informally in our everyday life? It is similar to the way we did the formal practice with
Vision is mind
. Here, rather than facing an outer situation or relationship, you are confronting challenges within you. It is your own pain body that becomes the focus. You are challenged by your own inner voices and inner emotions. Sometimes you get angry without understanding why, depressed for no discernible reason; or you experience a sense of loneliness and isolation as you face the challenges of the external world, which constantly bombards you with demands, pressures, and stimulation.

Here is one example of the pain body in everyday life. In the West people who work a weekly nine-to-five job have an interesting relationship to Monday. It produces what I call the Monday-morning face. This is usually in contrast to the Friday-afternoon face. There is a big difference. If you observe people’s faces, you can see a more rigid face with perhaps a tinge of sadness or disconnection on Monday morning. By contrast, the face of Friday afternoon is often joyful and playful. So we can bring our awareness in any given moment to this sense of face or identity. Regardless of whether it is Monday or Friday, am I in that sad or disconnected mood? Am I sitting on a rotten karmic cushion? Be conscious of that. The moment I’m conscious of that, I can release that pain body.

In
Chapter 1
, we spoke of taking the three pills: white, red, and blue. (The white pill is stillness, related to body; the red pill is silence, related to speech; the blue pill is spaciousness, related to mind.) I will repeat the process because I feel it is essential to remember these basic practices. So first you must remember to become aware of yourself. Perhaps your body is rigid and your face tense. This is obvious and easy to become aware of: your body is not relaxed, and you can feel that your expression is the Monday-morning face. You are aware of your pain body. As you connect with stillness, you release tension in your face and body, and as you do so, you are also releasing tension in your ego, which is really the pain body. You feel more relaxed in your body, more relaxed in your breath, and more complete in who you are in this moment. That is the white pill. Remember to do that.

How can we understand and work with pain speech? One student of mine told me he is not worried about his death during the day, but during his sleep he is awakened at three in the morning with thoughts of dying. His mind is actively chattering away, fearfully worried about death. Clearly he needs the medicine of silence. He needs a red pill. First it is important to be aware rather than continuing the internal dialogue, thinking you will find a solution to your dilemma. Don’t have another ego conversation. The true medicine here is to hear the silence. Be conscious and open, and bring attention to that voice. Don’t struggle with that voice, but host it in the space of awareness. Gradually journey into that voice and experience the silence in and around it. The moment you hear the silence, that voice weakens and dissolves. Slowly you reenter sleep or return to doing your daytime activity. But remember what to do whenever those voices are active: hear the silence. In that way you are taking the red pill.

The third pill is important to take whenever thoughts and emotions such as anger, jealousy, or pride are active. Whenever such thoughts are active, you are creating stories and are less aware of space. Be conscious, and take the blue pill by holding that awareness in and around your thoughts and emotions. The moment you feel spaciousness around and within your thoughts, the thoughts become weak. The thoughts were feeding the ego, and now it also dissolves. When you feel that space open up, you have taken the blue pill of spaciousness.

Take the white, red, or blue pill in relation to whatever challenges you are experiencing. To work with challenges, it is important to make a commitment: “I will remember stillness, silence, and spaciousness five times a day.” It won’t be effective if you faithfully practice your sitting meditation in the morning but then forget to be conscious during the rest of the day. But committing yourself to remembering inner refuge throughout the day truly protects you. Whenever you need protection, you will find it—through stillness, silence, and spaciousness.

I
N
C
ONCLUSION
:
M
IND
I
S
E
MPTY

Whatever experience you have created, you observe this nakedly and directly. Observing, you realize that nothing is there; you have the benefit of the first advice of Dawa Gyaltsen if the object of your awareness is no longer solidly there.
Vision is mind
. What remains is the one who is creating it. When you observe nakedly and do not find anything, it simply takes you to the mind itself. You are able to connect with that mind, that ego, much better. Then the second question applies: What is that mind? Through the same method—naked, open awareness—you observe the mind. Be conscious of the pain body, pain speech, the pain mind. When you are conscious of that, the pain body dissolves, the pain speech dissolves, the pain mind dissolves. What do you find? You find clear, open, and luminous space, which we are calling empty.
Mind is empty
. That is the conclusion of the second line.

In
dzogchen
there is a metaphor: a thief goes to a house to steal and finds the house empty. There is nothing to steal:
Mind is empty
. So when you look at that mind very clearly, nothing is there. If you are disappointed when you look at your mind directly and you do not find anything, ego is still there. When you find nothing and then thoughts and stories rush in because that can’t possibly be the right conclusion, that means there is a lack of clear recognition of emptiness. If you simply have clear awareness of that emptiness, it is freeing. Dawa Gyaltsen’s advice is to acknowledge and honor what you have discovered:
Mind is empty
.

Finding that emptiness or spaciousness is traditionally expressed by the image of a child who has lost his mother in a crowded marketplace and, after searching, finally finds her. What happens then? You find connection and a deep sense of familiarity. Connecting with the clear and open space of mind is like that. Traditionally, the clear and open space of mind is referred to as the “mother.” The mind or awareness that recognizes the mother is referred to as the “son,” or the child. In the natural mind they are inseparable, and when you recognize their union, the result is dynamic energy, which is experienced as the free and spontaneous expression of virtuous qualities. Experiencing this is like feeling impoverished and then suddenly discovering that you have been wealthy all along. Your ego, your pain body, speech, and mind, your sense of separateness and not belonging—all this becomes the door through which you pass to encounter the sacred, the divine, your true self, the recognition of being complete as you are in this moment. Knowing this, when you encounter
Mind is empty
, remain in that recognition. Meditation is staying with awareness of that emptiness. That is the realization and the encouragement of the second line,
Mind is empty
.

CHAPTER SIX

E
MPTINESS
I
S
C
LEAR
L
IGHT

Mind is empty
has taught us that we cannot find a solid inherent mind; when we look inward with naked awareness, we find spaciousness, openness, emptiness. Many people equate
emptiness
with nothingness. It is not uncommon for a person to feel a sense of loss or fear when encountering emptiness. For some, the pain body is their identity and, in a strange way, their support. Through pain people find friends, and they may feel supported by others who suffer in similar ways. So when the discovery is made that your identity is not solidly there and a completely new space opens up, this space can be pervaded by a sense of loss, and emptiness appears as lack. The experience of fear may accompany this loss. To conclude that the mind is empty in this way is incorrect. This is the error of nihilism, a pessimistic assumption that space is empty and therefore is nothing.

The empty mind is not “nothing.” Emptiness is everything. Emptiness is fullness. Emptiness is completeness. The term
dzogchen
itself means “great completeness.” In this emptiness, in this space, everything is spontaneously perfected. Joy is here, love is here. Compassion and forgiveness are here. Confidence is here. Every quality that you can name is fully present in spaciousness. It is a matter of being aware long enough to nourish and ripen the experience of openness. It is a matter of familiarity.

So Dawa Gyaltsen’s third advice,
Emptiness is clear light
, is encouragement on the path. It means emptiness is not just empty and nothing; it is clear light, the source of every quality. His advice is protection from falling into nihilist denial and depression, and encourages the meditator to allow the time to be aware and connect with the infinite possibilities that are available.

We have been working with the “famous person,” the vision or object, which we have discovered is not there externally as we previously experienced. Then we continued our investigation to discover that there is no solidity in the subject, the observer, either. As a result of this, we experience a sense of clear open space. Now we continue in meditation to explore the relationship with the clear space of being, sitting comfortably and drawing our attention inward. I am looking with the same naked awareness, open and conscious of the emptiness. I am fully aware of that spaciousness, that emptiness. If you comment to yourself, “Oh, I understand,” that is a movement of thought, and that thought does not understand this space fully. Without following any thoughts, simply be aware of emptiness, of spaciousness. Awareness itself is clear light.

When clear light manifests outwardly, it is possible to perceive lights and visions, and people do have clear-light experiences in dreams, in sleep, and in deep meditation. In near-death, or, according to the teachings, in after-death experiences, people also encounter these lights, which are related with inner awareness. However it manifests, when we speak of clear light, its real meaning is pure awareness—the luminosity, vitality, and warmth of the awareness of spaciousness.

It is important to be fully aware of the space that was previously occupied by our vision and our pain identity. That is the important point here. In psychotherapy it sometimes seems that the goal is to understand and resolve conflict and pain by reflecting, analyzing, and thinking, which is a difficult enough task. And when a person is able to overcome pain by these means, it is possible to conclude: “Okay, now I’m clear; I understand my personal conflict deeply, and now I am no longer troubled by this problem. I can move on. I am ready for the next challenge.” According to the teachings, that attitude is mistaken in that it doesn’t go far enough. What is lacking in psychological methods is the cultivation of the
absence of problem
. In most forms of psychotherapy, we fail to become aware of the space that the problem had occupied or obscured, and we are not taught to cultivate it through further attention. Awareness of the space is not acknowledged as important, and therefore we do not become familiar with it.

In the process of healing, when someone is able to resolve the pain body, speech, or mind, that is only half the journey. Only half of the work is done. To truly mature as a human being, the second half of the work of healing needs to happen. According to these teachings, the maturing of the second half occurs as you cultivate or maintain awareness of space. That is why it is important to understand
Emptiness is clear light
in the correct philosophical sense, so as not to fall into an extreme position, the nihilist idea that this means “nothingness” in a negative sense. And it is also important to understand
Emptiness is clear light
experientially, by following the path of liberation from pain. Even if our suffering seems to have ceased, we do not stop our work of healing, but instead we go on being continuously aware of awareness itself. This light of awareness is what recognizes emptiness or spaciousness. That is why
Emptiness is clear light
is the third line of advice.