The Quintessence of My Teaching

By Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Maharaj: Whatever appears has really no existence. And whatever has not appeared also drops away; what remains is That, the Absolute. "That" is like Bombay.

Visitor: Bombay certainly seems to be appearing at the moment. We should sell him another city.

M: But I normally ask you this kind of question, whether Bombay sleeps, whether it wakes up in the morning, whether it is worried, whether it has pain and pleasure. I do not refer to the people of Bombay, nor to the land, but to that which remains.

Now you know that you are. Prior to this moment, did you have this knowledge that you exist? This consciousness, beingness, which you are experiencing now, was it there earlier?

V: It has been, on and off.

M: This confidence that you are, the knowledge of your existence, was it there earlier?

V: When I do what Maharaj tells me, it is very clear. It is still in an infantile stage, but my sense of "me" is completely undone, and there arises great happiness, peace and clarity; but it comes and goes, and I forget.

M: Its inherent nature is time-bound. It has appeared as childhood and it is there now; but it wasn't there some years back. So you cannot possibly say that it is the Eternal. So don't believe that it is true.1 And so long as you are having this "I"-consciousness, you will be trying to acquire things; so long as you know that you are, the things that you possess have an emotional significance to you. Now there is the fact that your "I"-consciousness itself is time-bound. So when this dissolves, what is the value of all those things which you possessed?

V: Nil.

M: As long as you have not understood this child-consciousness, you'll get involved in the world and its activities. Therefore, the real liberation is only when you understand that child-consciousness. Do you agree?

V: I do agree.

M: During your entire lifetime, you do not have any permanent identity. Whatever you consider yourself to be changes from moment to moment. Nothing is constant.

V: And what you think you are going to become changes too, with time, in spite of yourself.

M: That change is also made possible by the child-conciousness. Because of that, all these changes take place. That is why you must grasp this principle.

If you really want to understand this, you must give up your identification with the body. By all means, make use of the body, but don't consider yourself to be the body while acting in this world. Identify yourself with the consciousness, which dwells in the body; with that identity, you should act in the world. Will it be possible?

So long as you identify yourself as the body, your experience of pain and sorrow will increase day by day. That is why you must give up this identification, and you should take yourself as the consciousness. If you take yourself as the body, it means you have forgotten your true Self, which is the atman. And sorrow results for the one who forgets himself. When the body falls, the principle which always remains is You. If you identify yourself with the body, you will feel that you are dying, but in reality there is no death because you are not the body. Let the body be there or not be there, your existence is always there; it is eternal.

Now who or what has heard my talk? It is not the ear, not the physical body, but that knowledge which is in the body; that has heard me. So identify yourself with that knowledge, that consciousness. Whatever happiness we enjoy in this world is only imaginary. The real happiness is to know your existence, which is apart from the body. You should never forget the real identity that you possess. Consider a patient on his deathbed, certain to die. Now when he first comes to know of his disease, say cancer, he gets such a shock that it is permanently engraved in his memory. Like that, you should never forget your true nature — the true identity I have told you about.





Reprinted with permission from
The Ultimate Medicine: As Prescribed by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Edited by Robert Powell

ORDER IT FROM THE PUBLISHER
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Published by Blue Dove Press (1994).
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Our main reference page on Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.




1. On the basis that a transitory appearance cannot be the real.


A patient who is suffering from cancer is, as it were, all the time silently chanting "I'm dying from cancer"; and that chant proceeds without any efforts. Similarly, in your case: Take up that chant "I am consciousness." That chant, too, should go on without any effort.


A patient who is suffering from cancer is, as it were, all the time silently chanting "I'm dying from cancer"; and that chant proceeds without any efforts. Similarly, in your case: Take up that chant "I am consciousness." That chant, too, should go on without any effort. One who is constantly awake in his true nature — having this knowledge about himself — is liberated.

A patient suffering from terminal cancer always remembers his state and ultimately undergoes that very end; so much is certain. Similarly, one who remembers that he is the knowledge, that he is the consciousness, has that end, he becomes the Parabrahman.

So if you are about to photograph this land, I would say, no don't photograph… take a photograph of it but without land. Whatever is Bombay, take a photograph of that and show me. Can you?

V: I could not do it.

M: So that is like photographing yourself without the body. You are that, like Bombay. Remembering that you are the consciousness should be without any effort. When you say "I," don't refer to this body's "I," but to that "I" which represents this consciousness. The consciousness is "I," and make use of this knowledge when you act.

The pleasure or happiness that you have had, is it through the words that you have heard or because you have had a glimpse of your atman?

V: I have been studying a lot all along in doing the sadhana. Since I met Maharaj, things are becoming clarified and also I am getting confirmation of what I have learned.

M: What should be your ultimate conclusion after reading a lot, doing sadhana and listening to these talks? It is that the hearer, the knower, is not concerned with the upadhi — that is, the body, mind and consciousness — and that he is separate from this upadhi that has come upon him.

V: Does that mean sakshivan, witness-consciousness?

M: You use that word sakshivan, but what do you really mean by it? That there is sentience, through which you see what is happening. But other than that, is anything needed for witnessing to take place? The sun has arisen, and there is daylight. Have you put yourself out to do any witnessing? Or do you see effortlessly; therefore, witnessing simply takes place. There is nothing that what you call the "witness" has to do; witnessing happens purely by itself.

This knowledge "I am" has dawned on you. Since then, whatever other knowledge you have acquired, whatever experiences you have had, whatever you have seen of the world, has all been witnessed. But that one to whom the witnessing takes place is entirely separate from that which is witnessed. In this witnessing, in these experiences, you have assumed that you are the body, and you are involved in it. Therefore, you get the reactions of whatever you have seen and witnessed only through this identification with the body. But actually, you are not concerned with that which makes your seeing possible and that which has been seen. You are apart from either of them.

from: www.realization.org

Skeletons

By Ikkyu (1394-1481)

These thin lines of India ink reveal all truth.

Students, sit earnestly in zazen, and you will realize that everything born in this world is ultimately empty, including oneself and the original face of existence. All things indeed emerge out of emptiness. This original formlessness is “Buddha,” and all other similar terms-Buddha-nature, Buddhahood, Buddha-mind, Awakened One, Patriarch, God—are merely different expressions for the same emptiness. Misunderstand this and you will end up distracted for eons.

Filled with disgust and longing to liberate myself from the realm of continual birth and death, I abandoned home and set off on a journey. One night, I came to a lonely little temple, looking for a place to rest. I was far off the main road, at the base of a mountain, seemingly lost in a vast Plain of Repose. The temple was in a field of graves, and suddenly a pitiful-looking skeleton appeared speaking these words:

A melancholy autumn wind
Blows through the world:
The pampas grass waves,
As we drift to the moor,
Drift to the sea.
What can be done
With the mind of a man,
That should be clear
But, dressed up in a monk’s robe,
He just lets life pass him by?

All things become naught by returning to their origin. Bodhidharma faced the wall in meditation, but none of the thoughts that arose in this mind had any reality. The same held true for Buddha’s fifty years of proclaiming the Dharma. The Mind is not bound by such conditioned things.

Such deep musings made me uneasy and I could not sleep. Toward dawn I dozed off, and in my dreams I found myself surrounded by a bunch of skeletons, acting as they did in life.
.
One skeleton came over to me and said:

Memories
Flee and
Are no more:
All are empty dreams
Devoid of meaning.

Violate the reality of things
And babble about
“God” and “Buddha”
And you will never find
The true Way.

Still breathing,
You feel animated,
So a corpse in a field
Seems to be something
Apart from you.

I got on well with this skeleton—he had renounced the world to seek the truth and had passed from the shallows to the depths. He saw things clearly, just the way they are. I lay there with the wind in the pines whispering in my ears and the autumnal moonlight dancing across my face.

What is not a dream? Who will not end up as a skeleton? We appear as skeletons covered with skin, male and female, and lust after each other. When the breath expires, though, the skin ruptures, sex disappears, and there is no more high or low. Underneath the skin of the person we fondle and caress right now is nothing more than a bare set of bones. Think about it—high and low, young and old, male and female, all the same. Awaken to this one great matter, and you will immediately comprehend the meaning of “unborn and undying.”

If chunks of rock
Can serve as a memento
To the dead,
A better headstone
Would be a tea mortar.

Humans are indeed frightful beings.

A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky:
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness

Have a good look—stop the breath, peel off the skin, and everybody ends up looking the same. No matter how long you live, the result is not altered. Cast off the notion the “I exist.” Entrust yourself to the windblown clouds, and do not wish to live forever.

////

Skeletons Part II

One night, I came to a lonely little temple, looking for a place to rest. I was far off the main road, at the base of a mountain, seemingly lost in a vast Plain of Repose. The temple was in a field of graves, and suddenly a pitiful-looking skeleton appeared speaking these words:

This world
Is but
A fleeting dream
So why be alarmed
At its evanescence?


Your span of life is set and entreaties to the gods to lengthen it are to no avail. Keep your mind fixed on the one great matter of life and death. Life ends in death, that’s the way things are.

The vagaries of life
Though painful,
Teach us
Not to cling
To this fleeting world.

Why do people
Lavish decoration
On this set of bones
Destined to disappear
Without a trace?

The original body
Must return to
Its original place:
Do not search
For what cannot be found.

No one really knows
The nature of birth
Nor the true dwelling place:
We return to the source,
And turn to dust.

We enjoyed ourselves together, the skeleton and I, and that illusive mind that generally separates us from others gradually left me. The skeleton that had accompanied me all this while possessed the mind that renounces the world and seeks for truth.

Many paths lead from
The foot of the mountain
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.

If at the end of our journey
There is no final
Resting place
Then we need not fear
Losing our way.

No beginning
No end;
Our mind
Is born and dies:
The emptiness of emptiness!

Let up
And the mind
Runs wild:
Control the world
And you can cast it aside.

This is how the world is. Those who have not grasped the world’s impermanence are astonished and terrified by such change.

Rain, hail, snow, and ice:
All separate
But when they fall
They become the same water
Of the valley stream.

Without a bridge
Clouds climb effortlessly
To heaven:
No need to rely on
Anything Gotama Buddha taught.

Gotama Buddha proclaimed the Dharma for fifty years, and when his disciple Kashyapa asked him for the key to his teaching, Buddha said: “From beginning to end I have not proclaimed a single word,” and held up a flower.

Kashyapa smiled, and Buddha gave him the flower saying these words: “You possess the Wondrous mind of the True Law.” “What do you mean?” asked Kashyapa. “My fifty years of preaching,” Buddha told him, “has been beckoning to you all the while, just like attracting a child into one’s arms with the promise of a reward.”

This flower of the Dharma cannot be described in physical, mental, or verbal terms. It is not material or spiritual. It is not intellectual knowledge. Our Dharma is the Flower of the one Vehicle carrying all the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. It holds the twenty-eight Indian and six Chinese Patriarchs; it is the original ground of being—all there is.

All things are without beginning and thus all-inclusive. The eight senses, the four seasons, the four great elements (earth, water, fire, wind), all originate in emptiness, but few realize it. Wind is breath, fire is animation, water is blood; when the body is buried or burned it becomes earth. Yet these elements too are without beginning and never abide.


Excerpted from Wild Ways translated by John Stevens 2003- White Pines press

From: DailyZen 1 and DailyZen 2

Before you go further

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Before you go further you must accept, at least as a working theory, that you are not what you appear to be, that you are under the influence of a drug. Then only will you have the urge and the patience to examine the symptoms and search for their common cause. All that a guru can tell you is: "My dear sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the person you think yourself to be." Trust nobody, not even yourself. Search, find out, remove and reject every assumption till you reach the living waters and the rock of truth. Until you are free of the drug, all your religions and sciences, prayers and yogas are of no use to you, for, based on a mistake, they strengthen it.

***
In reality you were never born and never shall die. But now you imagine that you are, or have, a body and you ask what has brought about this state. Within the limits of illusion the answer is: desire born from memory attracts you to a body and makes you think as one with it. But this is true only from the relative point of view. In fact, there is no body, nor a world to contain it; there is only a mental condition, a dream-like state, easy to dispel by questioning its reality

***
Neither your body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself.

***

Do realize that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you, and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your real being - that is the absolute truth.

***

Stay without ambition, without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual.

***

A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.

***

Pain is physical, suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life. As a sane life is free of pain, so is a saintly life free from suffering. A saint does not want things to be different from what they are; he knows that, considering all factors, they are unavoidable. He is friendly with the inevitable and, therefore, does not suffer. Pain he may know, but it does not shatter him. If he can, he does the needful to restore the lost balance, or he lets things take their course.

***

By looking tirelessly, I became quite empty and with that emptiness all came back to me except the mind. I find I have lost the mind irretrievably. I am neither conscious nor unconscious, I am beyond the mind and its various states and conditions. Distinctions are created by the mind and apply to the mind only. I am pure Consciousness itself, unbroken awareness of all that is. I am in a more real state than yours. I am undistracted by the distinctions and separations which constitute a person.

As long as the body lasts, it has its needs like any other, but my mental process has come to an end. My thinking, like my digestion, is unconscious and purposeful. I am not a person in your sense of the word, though I may appear a person to you. I am that infinite ocean of consciousness in which all happens. I am also beyond all existence and cognition, pure bliss of being. There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I am all. No thing is me, so I am nothing. Life will escape, the body will die, but it will not affect me in the least. Beyond space and time I am, uncaused, uncausing, yet the very matrix of existence.

***

It is choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing--food, sex, power, fame--will make you happy is to deceive yourself.


***

Perfection is a state of the mind, when it is pure. I am beyond the mind, whatever its state, pure or impure. Awareness is my nature; ultimately I am beyond being and non-being."

***

Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now, all
is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only.

Bloodstream Sermon

Bodhidharma (440-528)

Even if you can explain thousands of sutras and shastras, unless you see your own nature, yours is the teaching of a mortal, not a buddha. The true Way is sublime. It can’t be expressed in language. Of what use are scriptures? Someone who sees his own nature has found the Way, even if he can’t read a word. Someone who sees his nature is a buddha. A buddha’s body is intrinsically pure and can’t be defiled. Everything he says is an expression of his mind. Since his body and expressions are basically empty, you can’t find a buddha in words. Nor anywhere in the Twelvefold Canon.

The Way is basically perfect. It doesn’t require perfecting. The Way has not form or sound. It’s subtle and hard to perceive. It’s like when you drink water. You know how hot or cold it is. But you can’t tell others. Of that which only a tathagata knows, men and gods remain unaware. The awareness of mortals falls short. As long as they’re attached to appearances, they’re unaware that their mind is empty, and by mistakenly clinging to the appearance of things, they lose the Way.

If you know that everything comes from the mind, don’t become attached. Once attached, you’re unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. Its thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes in midsentence. What good are doctrines?

The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions. They’re no different from things that appear in your dreams at night, be they palaces or carriages, forested parks or lakeside pavilions. Don’t conceive any delight for such things. They’re all cradles of rebirth. Keep this in mind when you approach death. Don’t cling to appearances, and you’ll break through all barriers. A moment’s hesitation, and you’ll be under the spell of devils. Your real body is pure and impervious. But because of delusions, you’re unaware of it. And because of this, you suffer karma in vain. Wherever you find delight, you find bondage. But once you awaken to your original body and mind, you’re no longer bound to attachments.

Anyone who gives up the transcendent for the mundane, in any of its myriad forms, is a mortal. A buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad. Such is his power, karma can’t hold him. No matter what kind of karma, a buddha transforms it. Heaven or hell are nothing compared to him. But the awareness of a mortal is dim compared to that of a buddha, who penetrates everything inside and out.

If you’re not sure, don’t act. Once you act, you wander through birth and death and regret having no refuge. Poverty and hardship are created by false thinking. To understand this mind, you have to act without acting. Only then will you see things from a tathagata’s perspective.

But when you first embark on the Path, your awareness won’t be focused. You’re likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn’t doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else.

If you see your nature, you don’t need to read sutras or invoke buddhas. Erudition and knowledge are not only useless, they cloud your awareness. Doctrines are only for pointing to the mind. Once you see the mind, why pay attention to doctrines?
To go from mortal to buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness and accept what life brings. If you’re always getting angry, you’ll turn your nature against the Way. There’s no advantage in deceiving yourself. Buddhas move freely through birth and death, appearing and disappearing at will. They can’t be restrained by karma or overcome by devils.

Once mortals see their nature, all attachments end. Awareness isn’t hidden. But you can only find it right now. It’s only now. If you really want to find the Way, don’t hold onto anything. Once you put an end to karma and nurture your awareness, any attachments that remain will come to an end. Understanding comes naturally. You don’t have to make any effort. But fanatics don’t understand what the Buddha meant. And the harder they try, the farther they get from the Sage’s meaning. All day long they invoke buddhas and read sutras. But they remain blind to their own divine nature, and they don’t escape the Wheel.

A buddha is an idle person. He doesn’t run around after fortune and fame. What good are such things in the end? People who don’t see their nature and think reading sutras, invoking buddhas, studying long and hard, practicing morning and night, never lying down, or acquiring knowledge is the Dharma, blaspheme the Dharma. Buddhas of the past and future only talk about seeing your nature. All practices are impermanent. Unless they see their nature, people who claim to have attained unexcelled, complete enlightenment are liars.

Among Shakyamuni’s ten greatest disciples, Ananda was foremost in learning. But he didn’t know the Buddha. All he did was study and memorize. Arhats don’t know the Buddha. All they know are so many practices for realization, and they become trapped by cause and effect. Such is a mortal’s karma: no escape from birth and death. By doing the opposite of what he intended, such people blaspheme the Buddha.

People who see that their minds are the buddha don’t need to shave their heads. Laymen are buddhas too. Unless they see their nature, people who shave their heads are simply fanatics.


Excerpted from The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma Trans by Red Pine


Who was Bodhidharma? *

Bodhidharma is considered the founder of Zen bringing the teaching to China from India in 520 AD. The story of his life and teachings is almost mythological in that most of his teachings were not written down. What makes Bodhidharma stand out among all the masters of Zen was his very unique approach. He brought the following message:


“A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence upon words and letters;
Direct pointing at the soul of man;
Seeing into one’s nature and the
Attainment of Buddhahood.”

While others at the time viewed meditation and Zen as a way of purification of the mind and a stage on the way to Buddhahood, Bodhidharma introduced the direct method of seeing into one’s nature cutting through all the stages.

Direct perception and a total revolution in the way one sees and experiences the world from there on out. You read these accounts of these moments when the student at once perceives the whole, but you don’t read the years of practice that preceded their genuine insight. Hence, there is a place for the sudden and gradual schools of Zen. After all, what is one supposed to do while awaiting our magic breakthrough? There is still the monkey mind that jumps from feeling to thought to feeling that needs to calm down. There is a kind of focus on a koan or question or experience that these students in the
past delved into until it became all they could think of. How many of us have that kind of deep intention?

So we live and act “as if” we truly understand that All is One, and that alone can be a transforming way to live whether one has that breakthrough experience of insight or not.

In a grove of tall bamboos
Beside an ancient temple
Steam rolls from the brazier
In fragrant white clouds.
I’ll show you the path of Sages
Beyond this floating world,
But will you understand
The lasting taste of spring?

Baisao (1675-1763)

Fonte: http://www.dailyzen.com/zen/zen_reading0712.asp

Stay On Your Meditation Seat!

By Shabkar (1781-1851)

Once, I gave this advice to some fifty friends and disciples doing retreat:

Life is short; the time of death uncertain;
Even tonight you may die.

A lot of talking is the source for evil deeds.
A lot of thinking is the work of Mara.
A lot of running around just weakens your practice.

The crucial instruction:
Stay on your meditation seat!

Keep to your silent retreat, don't talk;
Obstacles won't come, siddhis will.

You who practice the preliminaries,
Persevere throughout day and night.

Meditators resting in samadhi,
Meditate with unwavering body, speech, and mind.

Practitioners of tummo, the path of skillful means,
Be diligent, and bliss-warmth will blaze forth.

Even those of you who know only the mani,
Don't run around, stay inside; do your recitations.

Be ready to starve to death for the sake of Dharma;
Be ready to endure hardship for the sake of happiness in future lives.

In brief, don't think so much!
Put all your energy into practice!

Thus I exhorted them. Some practiced for one year, some for two. Ngondro practitioners had dreams indicating that their obscurations had been purified. Those who trained in relative Bodhicitta developed kindness, compassion, and the wish to benefit others. Those who meditated on absolute Bodhicitta were able to remain steadily in mind's true condition, the state of simplicity that is like the sky: empty, luminous, and beyond grasping. Phowa practitioners had many signs, such as itching, swelling, and secretion of liquid at the top of the skull. Those practicing on prana gained extraordinary realization of bliss-emptiness, their bodies blazing with the bliss-warmth of tummo. In reality, in dreams, or in meditation, Chöd practitioners had all the appropriate signs: the arising of challenging experiences and their successful termination. Those who prayed to the Great Compassionate One and recited the mani mantra were blessed: their obscuring emotions diminished, as did their clinging to reality. They had extraordinary experiences and realization of renunciation, Bodhicitta, and the perfect view.


The Life of Shabkar: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Yogin
by Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol, Matthieu Ricard (Translator)
Published by Snow Lion, Ithaca, 2001

From: Ogmin Twitwall

Stop Cloning Around

by Tröma Rinpoche

It happens when we see a great musician performing or someone doing some work that they are completely integrated with. People want to become them, but what they really want is to become what they already are. When people see my favorite Ayurvedist practicing natural medicine, it often happens. People see him so wholly integrated with his art, he is Ayurveda, and immediately they want to learn Ayurveda. When people see my martial arts teacher teaching, they want to be warriors, he makes the sport of meeting violence seem so delightful that people in his classes enjoy imagining encounters with attackers, muggers and thieves. When people see Jack White singing and playing guitar, they want to be that, they buy the guitar, the clothes, the attitude. Kenneth Cole is this for fashion and advertising. Ngak'chang Rinpoche makes so many activities seem like the most fulfilling things we could ever pursue. Some radical contagion takes place when we are in the presence of someone who is wholeheartedly expressing what they are, when they display a quality of total enjoyment in an un-self-conscious expression of their own personal passion. We experience that and want to find it ourselves. Most of the time people get confused, thinking this is about some special magic in Ayurveda, in a particular music, in that profession, in those clothes, in that sport, but this is a mistake. We could put all our efforts into being carbon copies of these people and never find the magic that they held. We could dress like them, act like them, speak like them, train in their profession, change our name to theirs, but never find it. The root of all carbon copy-hood and conformity is the same as the root of all compulsive refusal to conform, search for special-ness, uniqueness and individuality. Behind it all is really the thirst to unleash our art, the intrinsic brilliance that sparkles through in wholehearted experience.

WHOLEHEARTED EXPERIENCE
We long for the wholehearted experience that some great people display in moments. In Buddhism, this longing could be spoken of as impulse to express the dimension of experience known as Sambhogakaya. Sambhogakaya refers to the total manifestation of intrinsic brilliance. It literally means the dimension of enjoyment (in Sanskrit, bhoga means pleasure) and refers to the dynamics of realized emotion, beginning-less-ly enlightened energy, resonance, pure light, color, sensation and art (Tibetan, long-ku). Whenever we are able to enter fully into an experience, without self-consciousness, contrivance, or the inhibition of dualism conceptions, it is Samghogakaya that beams out. When our creativity is allowed to fully course through our veins, we are pulsing with Sambhogakaya experience. When we are inspired, it is the Sambhogakaya dimension we are connected to. It is a state free of dissatisfaction. It is the source of compassion, and synonymous with wholeheartedness. Trying to become anything inhibits it, instead we must find it as natural luminosity of our being. Everyone has a deep intuition to experience Sambhogakaya but most people live their lives cut off from it, or only access it accidentally or partially. For some it is let through in only in moments of discreet virtuosity, but not experienced within the rest of one’s life; for example rock stars who are extraordinary musicians but then fail to manifest as beautiful or even functional people. Too often Sambhogakaya is only present as a potential. We are often too busy trying to become something else, meanwhile that internal brilliance can only be found through authenticity, a total presence in what we are. As practitioners of Yogic Buddhism, to study and elicit this dimension of our being is our religion.


Fish play in water,
Birds play in air,
Sublime beings play in display.
- Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

NOT WILLING TO ENTER INTO EMPTINESS, WE MISS IT
Most people inhibit internal brilliance because of their need to conform to a fixed personal identity. We imprison ourselves in our own biography, biology, culture, and rationale. The plague of fixed identity dictates that we maintain a coherent, life-less demeanor that makes sense in the context of cultural rules for how people should be. There is some commonly held belief that we should all be satisfied with this and go along with the beige world of blending in. We should not wear pink ties and feathers to work. We should not wear black every day unless we are a part of some social group that does that. We should not wear high heels to bed. We should not be too happy or too sad. Rock stars and certain artists can express themselves wildly, but few others feel such total permission to play in display. Most people seem to be waiting for that permission, forever. It never comes, because Sambhogakaya experience is not based on permission. Other times people seem to be waiting to be “good enough” before they express it, but that time never arrives either. It is not based on being good enough. It is in fact baseless just like everything else. It’s basis is the momentary electricity of being that has no substance, it has no cause. According to Buddhism, everything is based only on vast open space, the luminous dimension of all possibility. Part of what makes the greatest people great, is that they have owned their magic anyway, even though there is no secured basis for it, whether or not they have been given permission to shine, even if it makes no sense, even if there are other artists that are much better than they are. The only way to contact Sambhogakaya, is to be willing to stand on empty ground, unconfirmed, un-guaranteed, impermanent, without credentials. Experiencing internal brilliance requires leaping beyond the confines of dualistic scripts and limited identities into a dynamic energy that is based on emptiness. Meditation is a training to enter the empty experience that Sambhogakaya arises from.

EXPLORING INSPIRED ENJOYMENT
A student of mine came to a retreat to meet me for lunch wearing a renaissance outfit, complete with giant hat and feather. It was not a renaissance day. There was no renaissance fair. The place where the center is located is a lively, active, bustling little village but everyone else was dressed in modern clothing. It made me so happy to see him do this. Strangely when people approached us, they asked him why, why had he dressed up like this? Wasn’t it obvious why? It’s almost always fine to ask sincere questions with good intentions and an open mind, but, did they really need to ask? They should be asking themselves the same question about their own clothes! A good reason we should do anything as practitioners – is for the sake of unbridled enjoyment, as a celebration of the art of experience, as compassionate appreciation of the boundlessness of phenomena - that’s Yogic Buddhism. He wore that outfit simply because it lit his fire to do so, not necessarily to be different. Courting Sambhogakaya, our internal brilliance, may incidentally make us different, but it is not about contriving some "uniqueness," it is more about being willing to authentically enjoy our own particular inspired experiences.

ENJOYMENT IS A BUDDHIST PURSUIT
Enjoyment is a Buddhist pursuit, it is an aspect of the natural state that we can wake up to. Some people think Buddhism and enjoyment do not go together, but that is just the renunciate, monastic Buddhism of Sutrayana, which has come to dominate Tibetan Buddhism for the last 1000 years. That Sutric view is the one that most people train in, even when they are training in something called Vajrayana. But there is some other kind of Buddhism too – that which spawned Vajrayana in the first place, the Yogic Buddhism of the MahaSiddhas. It flourished in many unexpected forms because it was a celebration of form, rather than a renunciation of it. It was imperative for the MahaSiddhas to communicate this in terms of being people and personalities from every walk of life, every socio-economic background, biography, preoccupation, interest and age group. It communicated something essential about Yogic Buddhism (and all of Vajrayana) from the start – it is about finding that which is already within everyone.


“Everyone is an innate artist.”
- Ngak’chang Rinpoche


STOP CLONING AROUND
How each individual access intrinsic brilliance is unique. I prefer my students to be different from each other and from me; it would be a total nightmare to walk in one day and see them all looking the same. I find something very sad about habitual carbon copying and cloning of others’ behaviors, hairstyle, dress, voice, mannerisms, goals and professions. It is sad because it often represents the total and utter failure to taste the juice of life. No amount of imitation of others will unlock our magic. No amount of dressing up as someone else will give ultimate confidence, which is only found in authenticity. No amount of plastic surgery will guarantee connection with the most beautiful thing on Earth - our wholehearted alive-ness. We will only ever be disappointed by such pursuits, because trying to be other than what we are is always dissatisfying. The only way to find the magic that has glistened out from others, is to court our own living dynamic. Our enjoyment and inspiration is a giant clue to Sambhogakaya. But genuine enjoyment requires us to enter into our own experience, as it is, complete with dualism and non-duality, confusion and wisdom (1). Doing this requires training, but the training has very juicy elements, since if properly applied, Buddhism could end up being an opening into the vivid landscape of the senses where all great art takes place, where we could dare to communicate with what we are.

IMPERMANENT, NON-FORMULAIC
Intrinsic brilliance is dynamic and that is also why people do not live within this dimension. It is highly personal and absolutely fleeting. It requires an ongoing cultivation, a willingness to respond, evolve, to halt and change directions when our art demands it. No formulaic approach will do. The lucid vividness of being seems to require being re-approached anew endlessly, because Sambhogakaya only exists in the moment. We can only ever experience what we are in the moment, expressing it is a living conversation, we have to learn to speak the language and then pay attention to keep up with the dialogue. That paying attention is what meditation practice trains us in.

AVAILABLE ANY MOMENT, MANY WAYS TO ACCESS IT
As Buddhists we do not believe in fixed Self, what a wonderful freedom, to never dwell in what we were, that any moment could be completely new and different. We previously behaved like a jerk. Now we could behave as a kind person. In one moment we may dress up as wall-paper enjoying being back-ground-man, and in the next, stark overt expressiveness, according to whatever elicits the living energy within us. It may not necessarily be logical, or it may be highly logical if this is what floats our boat. I’ve met people like that who seem to really get off on logic. I have met people who fully inhabit the uniforms of social convention but in a wholehearted way that makes it beautiful. Total ordinariness can be magic. Unusual or highly ordinary, it may stand out or blend in, but it is marked by the experience we are having within it, within those clothes, that music, that art, that science, that word, that movement, an experience of energy and awareness.

IT IS LIBERATING
Investigating our intrinsic brilliance threatens fixed identity. It threatens dualism, the attempt to live out a predictable, secure, permanent, continuous existence. It threatens our un-enlightenment, which is precisely why it must be cultivated, for our own sanity. It must be cultivated for the world’s sake, for Buddhism’s sake, lest people forget what Buddhism is really all about.

IT IS COMPASSIONATE
There are some people who would equate this phenomenon with “doing what you feel,” “being true to yourself” and only doing exactly what one wants – but that is as misguided an approach as conformity is. Knee jerk non-conformity is based on concepts, driven by conditioning, it may assume that others’ needs and desires cannot be a priority in our own enjoyment. What comes from this approach is stale and pale. Selfishness is quite boring because it is ultimately inauthentic. It is based on sacrificing oneself and others for some true “Self” that doesn’t really exist. We should not forget being compassionate and considerate in some pursuit of being authentic and true to our feelings (yuck!). Quite the contrary, we must absolutely consider others. Uninhibited enjoyment does not exist in a vacuum, it exists in a continuum of communication with everyone, everything, everywhere. This is why it is distasteful to show up topless when everyone else is wearing clothing. Enjoyment only reaches its full potential when it is not intentionally harming others, imposing on others or forcing them to become the audience to our narcissism.


FOR ITS OWN SAKE
When we are authentic, others may appreciate it or they may not relate to it and that cannot be a decisive factor. As soon as we become Self-conscious we have split apart from Sambhogakaya dimension. It cannot be contrived. We can't find it by trying to be good or original and we can't expect everyone will understand it. It must occur only for its own sake, otherwise it becomes distorted. It seems to me that there is something interesting about anyone who is sincerely inspired, the wholeheartedness itself is a captivating quality. Yet, sometimes it really gets people's goat when other's creativity is uninhibited. That could happen. Sambhogakaya experience has a quality that makes experience worth it anyway, for its own sake.



AVAILABLE IN WHAT WE ARE
Yogic Buddhism is a tradition of people inspired to experience a magic available in what we already are, in ordinary life where Sambhogakaya is always taking place as the basis of our own being. This vividness is constantly communicating itself all the time and meditation methods are a training to be present within it. Whenever we let go of attempts to become something else, there is what we are in this moment and that itself has its own brilliance, a brilliance that can be cultivated and explored. The more we experience it, the more capacity we will have to enter wholeheartedly into any experience, into every experience, into every aspect of life.


Footnotes
1) The path is not about getting rid of duality to find non-duality. Non-duality is only ever found by entering fully into the experience of duality, wakefully. That’s the brilliant essence of the six yogas and the heart-essence of the MahaSiddhas.

From: .yogicbuddhism.org