Consider the World as Dreamlike

What does "dream-like" mean here? If we understand it superficially to mean unreal or dreamy in a vague, unfocused sense, we miss the whole point. Other analogies may serve as well: the apprehended world is compared to a mirage, a magical illusion, an echo, or a reflection in a mirror. But a dream is especially apt.

Think back to an actual dream, a vivid one. While we dream, the events in the dream seem really to be happening: we find ourselves on another continent, a conversation takes place, we are punished or rewarded, perhaps even die. Anything can happen. All the appearances are there. But in spite of appearances, no such events are occurring. A woman dreams that she gives birth to a child, the child grows up, then is killed, and the woman grieves. She has experienced the whole process, but wakes up to recognize that there was no birth, no child, no death. In this sense phenomena are dreamlike; there is no substantial reality that accords with appearances. We observe phenomena as being far more concrete and tangible than in fact they are, and this is misleading. It occurs because of the mental process of reification.

Sechibuwa explains that there is no entity apart from the mind that is anything more than a deceptive appearance to the mind. Nothing exists independently of consciousness or mental designation. At first glance this looks like idealism, a denial of external reality: everything is just of the stuff of the mind.

..

Even through Physics we could build a strong case that the world of absolute space and time as we experience it with our senses is an illusion.

..

Phenomena exist as dependently related events, but they do not appear that way. When I look at the mountain across the valley, do I see that its existence depends on its attributes? Do I perceive that the existence of this mountain depends on the mental designation of it, and depends also on its own causes and conditions? I have to say no. The mountain appears to exist entirely in its own right, resting there, utterly self-sufficient. And that is an illusion. In that sense the mountain does not exist as it appears, and in that sense the mountain is This is true of all the environment, and also of our bodies.

Excerpted from: The Seven-Point Mind Training(first published as A Passage from Solitude : Training the Mind in a Life Embracing the World), by B. Alan Wallace. Copyright 1992 by Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, New York 14851.


To learn more about Lojong and to get slogans sent to your email
click here

Rest in natural great peace.

Rest in natural great peace
This exhausted mind
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.

Rest in natural great peace.

NYOSHUL KHEN RINPOCHE

Good Advise

In a sense everything is dreamlike and illusory, but even so, humorously you go on doing things. For example, if you are walking, without unnecessary solemnity or self-consciousness, lightheartedly walk toward the open space of truth. When you sit, be the stronghold of truth. As you eat, feed your negativities and illusions into the belly of emptiness, dissolving them into all-pervading space. And when you go to the toilet, consider all your obscurations and blockages are being cleansed and washed away.

DUDJOM RINPOCHE




In meditation, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible.

Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary, emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.

Sogyal Rinpoche

some excerpts from Sogyal Rinpoche (a little Buddhist primer 101)

Deluded Mind

Deluded Mind
by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
- Journey to Enlightenment, p. 52. About delusion, maya, and mind.


What we normally call the mind is the deluded mind, a turbulent vortex of thoughts whipped up by attachment, anger, and ignorance. This mind, unlike enlightened awareness, is always being carried away by one delusion after another. Thoughts of hatred or attachment suddenly arise without warning, triggered off by such circumstances as unexpected meeting with an adversary or a friend, and unless they are immediately overpowered with the proper antidote they quickly take root and proliferate, reinforcing the habitual predominance of hatred or attachment in the mind and adding more and more karmic imprints.

Yet, however strong these thoughts may seem, they are just thoughts and will eventually dissolve back into emptiness. Once you recognize the intrinsic nature of the mind, these thoughts that seem to appear and disappear all the time can no longer fool you. Just as clouds form, last for a while, and then dissolve back into the empty sky. so deluded thoughts arise, remain for a while, and then vanish in the emptiness of mind; in reality nothing at all has happened.

When sunlight falls on a crystal, lights of all colors of the rainbow appear; yet they have no substance that you can grasp. Likewise, all thoughts in their infinite variety — devotion, compassion, harmfulness, desire — are utterly without substance. This is the mind of the Buddha. There is no thought that is something other than voidness; if you recognize the void nature of thoughts at the very moment they arise, they will dissolve. Attachment and hatred will never be able to disturb the mind. Deluded emotions will collapse by themselves. No negative actions will be accumulated, so no suffering will follow.

Even in the greatest yogi, sorrow and joy still arise

Even in the greatest yogi, sorrow and joy still arise just as before. The
> > difference between an ordinary person and the yogi is how they view their
> > emotions and react to them.
> >
> > An ordinary person will instinctively accept or reject them, and so arouse
> > the attachment or aversion that will result in the accumulation of negative
> > karma.
> >
> > A yogi, however, perceives everything that rises in its natural, pristine
> > state, without allowing grasping to enter his perception.
> >
some excerpts from Sogyal Rinpoche (a little Buddhist primer 101)

we all cause pain!

"Bad" people dont think they are bad! often bad people think they are doing good.

The purpose of meditation is to awaken

All beings have lived and died and been reborn countless times. Over and over again they have experienced the indescribable Clear Light. But because they are obscured by the darkness of ignorance, they wander endlessly in a limitless samsara.

PADMASAMBHAVA

The purpose of meditation is to awaken in us the skylike nature of mind, and to introduce us to that which we really are, our unchanging pure awareness that underlies the whole of life and death.

In the stillness and silence of meditation, we glimpse and return to that deep inner nature that we so long ago lost sight of amid the busyness and distraction of our minds.


Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a windowsill. Be alert for any sign of beauty or grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments, to “the news that is always arriving out of silence.”

Slowly, you will become a master of your own bliss, a chemist of your own joy, with all sorts of remedies always at hand to elevate, cheer, illuminate, and inspire your every breath and movement.


Buddha was a human being, like you or me. He never claimed divinity, he merely knew he had the buddha nature, the seed of enlightenment, and that everyone else did too. The buddha nature is simply the birthright of every sentient being, and I always say: “Our buddha nature is as good as any buddha’s buddha nature.”


It is important to remember always that the principle of egolessness does not mean that there was an ego in the first place but the Buddhists did away with it. On the contrary, it means there was never any ego at all to begin with. To realize this is called “egolessness.”


If your mind is able to settle naturally of its own accord, and if you find you are inspired simply to rest in its pure awareness, then you do not need any method of meditation. However, the vast majority of us find it difficult to arrive at that state straight away. We simply do not know how to awaken it, and our minds are so wild and so distracted that we need a skillful means or method to evoke it.

By “skillful” I mean that you bring together your understanding of the essential nature of your mind, your knowledge of your various, shifting moods, and the insight you have developed through your practice into how to work with yourself, from moment to moment. By bringing these together, you learn the art of applying whatever method is appropriate to any particular situation or problem, to transform that environment of your mind.

Often it is only when people suddenly feel they are losing their partner that they realize how much they love them. Then they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more the other person escapes them, and the more fragile the relationship becomes.

So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: “How can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it?” How often attachment is mistaken for love!

Even when the relationship is a good one, love can be spoiled by attachment with its insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is gone, all you have left to show for it are the “souvenirs” of love, the scars of attachment.

What the world needs more than anything is bodhisattvas, active servants of peace, “clothed,” as Longchenpa said, “in the armor of perseverance,” dedicated to their bodhisattva vision and to the spreading of wisdom into all reaches of our experience. We need bodhisattva lawyers, bodhisattva artists and politicians, bodhisattva doctors and economists, bodhisattva teachers and scientists, bodhisattva technicians and engineers, bodhisattvas everywhere, working consciously as channels of compassion and wisdom at every level and in every situation of society; working to transform their minds and actions and those of others, working tirelessly in the certain knowledge of the support of the buddhas and enlightened beings for the preservation of our world and for a more merciful future.


some excerpts from Sogyal Rinpoche (a little Buddhist primer 101)

When a fish swims

"Mind and body dropped off; dropped of mind and body! This state should be experienced by everyone; it is like piling fruit into a basket without a bottom, like pouring water into a bowl
with a pierced hole; however much you may pile or pour you cannot fill it up. When this is realized the pail bottom is broken through. But while there is still a trace of conceptualisim which makes you say "I have this understanding' or ' I have that realization' you are still playing with unrealities." - Dogen

On his return to Japan after four years in China, Dogen was asked what kind of realization he
had obtained abroad. He replied, 'I have come back empty-handed. I have realized only that the eyes are horizontal and the nose is vertical.' He came back with nothing to show, no scriptures
or holy learning, not even ' a hair of Buddhisim'. From this dropped away, empty-handed clarity came the great soto sect of Japan.

To realize this moment now became the great aim of the soto school. Sitting in zazen was not a way of aiming at satori or anything else; it was entering the flow of each moment by unblocking the mind from the concepts of past, present and future. In his great work, the Shobogenzo, Dogen made it clear that to fix all one's hopes on a goal is pointless. He said:

"When a fish swims, it swims on and on, and ther is no end to the water. When a bird flies, it flies on and on, and there is no end to the sky. There was never a fish that swam out of the water, or a bird that flew out of the sky. When they need just a little water or sky, they use just a little; when they need alot, they use alot. Thus, they use all of it in every moment, and in every place they have perfect freedom.
Yet if there were a bird that first wanted to examine the size of the sky, or a fish that first wanted to examine the extent of the water, and then tried to fly or swim, it would never find its way. When we find where we are at this moment, then practice follows, and this is the realization of the truth. For the place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither self nor other. It has never existed before, and it is not coming into existence now. It is simply as it
is."



All extracted from ' ZEN - Direct pointing to reality ' By Anne Bancroft (Crossroad-Newyork-Publisher)

On the Spot with Master Chi

Lin-chi was a great smasher of religious conventions. He detested the roundabout
way in which clear truth was treated by philosophers and learned scholars. His own
methods emphasized spontaneity and absolute freedom. He said:

Many students come to see me from all over the place. Many of them are not free from their entanglement with objective things. I treat them right on the spot. If their trouble is due to grasping hands, I strike there. If their trouble is a loose mouth I strike them there. If their trouble is hidden behind their eyes, it is there I strike. So far I have not found anyone who can set himself free. This is because they have been caught up in the useless ways of the old masters. As for me, I do not have only one method which I give to everyone, but I relieve what ever the trouble is and set men free.
Friends , I tell you this: There is no Buddha, no spiritual path to follow, no training and no realization. What are you so feverishly running after? Putting a head on top of your own head, you blind idiots? Your head is right where it should be. The trouble lies in your not beliving in yourselves enough. Because you don"t belive in yourselves you are knocked here and there by all the conditions in which you find yourselves. Being enslaved and turned around by objective
situations, you have no freedom whatever, you are not masters of yourselves. Stop turning to the outside and don"t be attached to my words either. Just cease clinging to the past and hankering after the future. This will be better than ten years' pilgrimage.



All extracted from ' ZEN - Direct pointing to reality ' By Anne Bancroft (Crossroad-Newyork-Publisher)

Dzogchen Practice in Everyday Life

Dzogchen Practice in Everyday Life
by HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

The everyday practice of dzogchen is simply to develop a complete carefree acceptance, an openness to all situations without limit.

We should realise openness as the playground of our emotions and relate to people without artificiality, manipulation or strategy.

We should experience everything totally, never withdrawing into ourselves as a marmot hides in its hole. This practice releases
tremendous energy which is usually constricted by the process of maintaining fixed reference points. Referentiality is the process by
which we retreat from the direct experience of everyday life.

Being present in the moment may initially trigger fear. But by welcoming the sensation of fear with complete openness, we cut through
the barriers created by habitual emotional patterns.

When we engage in the practice of discovering space, we should develop the feeling of opening ourselves out completely to the entire universe. We should open ourselves with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind. This is the powerful and ordinary practice of dropping the mask of self-protection.

We shouldn't make a division in our meditation between perception and field of perception. We shouldn't become like a cat watching a mouse. We should realise that the purpose of meditation is not to go "deeply into ourselves" or withdraw from the world. Practice should be free and non-conceptual, unconstrained by introspection and concentration.

Vast unoriginated self-luminous wisdom space is the ground of being - the beginning and the end of confusion. The presence of awareness in the primordial state has no bias toward enlightenment or on-enlightenment. This ground of being which is known as pure or original mind is the source from which all phenomena arise. It is known as the great mother, as the womb of potentiality in which all things arise and dissolve in natural self-perfectedness and absolute spontaneity.

All aspects of phenomena are completely clear and lucid. The whole universe is open and unobstructed - everything is mutually
interpenetrating.

Seeing all things as naked, clear and free from obscurations, there is nothing to attain or realise. The nature of phenomena appears naturally and is naturally present in time-transcending awareness. Everything is naturally perfect just as it is. All phenomena appear in their uniqueness as part of the continually changing pattern. These patterns are vibrant with meaning and significance at every moment; yet there is no significance to attach to such meanings beyond the moment in which they present themselves.

This is the dance of the five elements in which matter is a symbol of energy and energy a symbol of emptiness. We are a symbol of our own enlightenment. With no effort or practice whatsoever, liberation or enlightenment is already here.

The everyday practice of dzogchen is just everyday life itself. Since the undeveloped state does not exist, there is no need to behave in any special way or attempt to attain anything above and beyond what you actually are. There should be no feeling of striving to reach some "amazing goal" or "advanced state."

To strive for such a state is a neurosis which only conditions us and serves to obstruct the free flow of Mind. We should also avoid thinking of ourselves as worthless persons - we are naturally free and unconditioned. We are intrinsically enlightened and lack nothing.

When engaging in meditation practice, we should feel it to be as natural as eating, breathing and defecating. It should not become a specialised or formal event, bloated with seriousness and solemnity. We should realise that meditation transcends effort, practice, aims, goals and the duality of liberation and non-liberation. Meditation is always ideal; there is no need to correct anything. Since everything that arises is simply the play of mind as such, there is no unsatisfactory meditation and no need to judge thoughts as good or bad.

Therefore we should simply sit. Simply stay in your own place, in your own condition just as it is. Forgetting self-conscious feelings, we do not have to think "I am meditating." Our practice should be without effort, without strain, without attempts to control or force and without trying to become "peaceful."

If we find that we are disturbing ourselves in any of these ways, we stop meditating and simply rest or relax for a while. Then we resume
our meditation. If we have "interesting experiences" either during or after meditation, we should avoid making anything special of them. To spend time thinking about experiences is simply a distraction and an attempt to become unnatural. These experiences are simply signs of practice and should be regarded as transient events. We should not attempt to re-experience them because to do so only serves to distort the natural spontaneity of mind.

All phenomena are completely new and fresh, absolutely unique and entirely free from all concepts of past, present and future. They are
experienced in timelessness.

The continual stream of new discovery, revelation and inspiration which arises at every moment is the manifestation of our clarity. We should learn to see everyday life as mandala - the luminous fringes of experience which radiate spontaneously from the empty nature of our being. The aspects of our mandala are the day-to-day objects of our life experience moving in the dance or play of the universe. By this symbolism the inner teacher reveals the profound and ultimate significance of being. Therefore we should be natural and spontaneous, accepting and learning from everything. This enables us to see the ironic and amusing side of events that usually irritate us.

In meditation we can see through the illusion of past, present and future - our experience becomes the continuity of nowness. The past is
only an unreliable memory held in the present. The future is only a projection of our present conceptions. The present itself vanishes as
soon as we try to grasp it. So why bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?

We should free ourselves from our past memories and preconceptions of meditation. Each moment of meditation is completely unique and full of potentiality. In such moments, we will be incapable of judging our meditation in terms of past experience, dry theory or hollow rhetoric.

Simply plunging directly into meditation in the moment now, with our whole being, free from hesitation, boredom or excitement, is enlightenment.

Praise to Manjushri

Praise to Manjushri
Homage to the Guru and the Protector Gentle-voiced Lord (Manjushri)!
Whose wisdom, free from the clouds of the two obscurations, (1)
perfectly illuminates all , like the sun.
Since he perceives the whole of Reality, just as it is,
he holds a book at his heart center.
Resounding with sixty melodious tones,
he regards with loving concern, as for an only child,
the entire multitude of beings tormented by the agony
of a dark cloak of ignorance in the dungeon of cyclic existence.
Thundering as fiercely as a dragon,
he shatters the trance of afflictions
and unchains the iron shackles of karma;
Brandishing the sword that cuts through budding torments,
he disperses the gloom of unawareness.
Foremost manifestation among the children of the Victorious Ones,
who completely embodies the qualities of primordial purity
and the ten perfect bhumis, bedecked with the 112 adornments,
dispeller of mental obscurity, Gentle-voiced One, I bow to you!
Affectionate One, your radiant beams of highest knowledge,
Totally vanquish the darkness of my deluded intellect;
Please bestow the light of intelligence and self confidence
That understands the traditions of canon, commentaries and root texts.
May anyone wishing to engage in study,
Or even wanting to do a little inquiry,
Unobstructedly behold you,
Gentle-voiced Protector (Manjushri).
OM AH RA PA TSA NA DHI

(1)(Emotional and Cognitive Obscurations- stinginess and the like are the emotional obscurations; and thoughts that conceptualize the three notions - subject , object, and action- are the cognitive obscurations)

So hard to find such ease and wealth
Whereby to render meaningful this human birth!
If now I fail to turn it to my profit,
How could such a chance be mine again?
As when a flash of lightning rends the night,
And in its glare shows all the dark black clouds had hid,
Likewise rarely, through the Buddha's' power,
Virtuous thoughts rise, brief and transient, in the world.
-shantideva

Cause and Effect

The Art Of Peace

The Art of Peace begins with you.
Work on yourself and your appointed
task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a
spirit that can be refined, a body that can
be trained in some manner, a suitable
path to follow. You are here for no other
purpose than to realize your inner divinity
and manifest your innate enlightenment.
Foster peace in your own life and then
apply the Art to all that you encounter.

- Morihei Ueshiba