Thank you Ralph, for sharing this!
NON-DUAL AWARENESS: RIGPA
The fundamental reality of mind is pure, non-dual awareness: rigpa. Its essence is one with the essence of all that exists. In practice, it must not be confused with even the subtlest, quietest, and most expansive states of the moving mind. Unrecognized, the nature of mind manifests as the moving mind, but when it is known directly it is both the path to liberation and liberation itself.
Dzogchen teachings often use a mirror to symbolize rigpa. A mirror reflects everything without choice, preference, or judgment. It reflects the beautiful and the ugly, the big and the small, the virtuous and the non-virtuous. There are no limits or restrictions on what it can reflect, yet the mirror is unstained and unaffected by whatever is reflected in it. Nor does it ever cease reflecting.
Similarly, all phenomena of experience arise in rigpa: thoughts, images, emotions, the grasping and the grasped, every apparent subject and object, every experience. The conceptual mind itself arises and abides in rigpa. Life and death take place in the nature of mind, but it is neither born nor does it die, just as reflections come and go without creating or destroying the mirror. Identifying with the conceptual mind, we live as one of the reflections in the mirror, reacting to the other reflections, suffering confusion and pain, endlessly living and dying. We take the reflections for the reality and spend our lives chasing illusions.
When the conceptual mind is free of grasping and aversion, it spontaneously relaxes into non-fabricated rigpa. Then there is no longer an identification with the reflections in the mirror and we can effortlessly accommodate all that arises in experience, appreciating every moment. If hatred arises, the mirror is filled with hatred. When love arises, the mirror is filled with love. For the mirror itself, neither love nor hatred is significant: both are equally a manifestation of its innate capacity to reflect. This is known as the mirror-like wisdom; when we recognize the nature of mind and develop the ability to abide in it, no emotional state distracts us. Instead, all states and all phenomena, even anger, jealousy, and so on, are released into the purity and clarity that is their essence. Abiding in rigpa, we cut karma at its root and are released from the bondage of samsara.
Stabilizing in rigpa also makes it easier to realize all other spiritual aspirations. It is easier to practice virtue when free of grasping and the sense of lack, easier to practice compassion when not obsessed with ourselves, easier to practice transformation when unattached to false and constricted identities.
The Mother Tantra refers to the nature of mind as “primordial mind.” It is like the ocean, while ordinary mind is like the rivers, lakes, and creeks that share in the nature of the ocean and return to it, but temporarily exist as apparently separate bodies of water. The moving mind is also compared to bubbles in the ocean of primordial mind that constantly form and dissolve, depending on the strength of the karmic winds. But the nature of the ocean does not change.
Rigpa arises spontaneously from the base. Its activity is ceaseless manifestation; all phenomena arise in it without disturbing it. The result of abiding wholly in the nature of mind is the three bodies (kayas) of the buddha: the dharmakaya, which is thoughtless essence; the sambhogakaya, which is ceaseless manifestation; and the nirmanakaya, which is undeluded compassionate activity.
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