“When one meditates on the ocean, the waves are also the ocean, as are the thoughts of the ocean mind. The waves are like a manifestation of the ocean like mind, they are not separate from the ocean-mind. So in the same way, thoughts are like the appearance or manifestation. They don’t transcend the nature of mind.”
“If you want an instruction based on experience (nyung tri), then you need to get that from someone who is experienced, I cannot teach this. I cannot teach such an experiential instruction. It is something that should only be given to a small number of superior individuals of the three types, it is not like one can teach it to a whole load of people. If you teach an experiential explanation like that to a lot of people all over the world, then it will not work. So that is a complete explanation on the words of shamatha.”–17th Karmapa
“The empty expanse mind cannot be identified/grasped. The gate of unceasingly clear awareness. This naked clarity-emptiness, free of intellect.” –8th Karmapa’s Instructions on Yangonpa’s Seven Pointing Outs
On Day Two of the 17th Karmapa’s recent winter teaching on the 8th Karmapa’s short Instructions on Gyalwa Yangonpa’s Seven Pointing-Outs, the 17th Karmapa went into more detail on the first three points of the seven, Calm-Abiding (shamatha/zhi-ney), Superior Insight (Vipassana/lhag-thong) and Bringing Thoughts/Concepts Onto the Path. Pulling out pithy quotes from the 8th Karmapa’s Instructions, the 17th Karmapa explained the instructions on these three points.
I have compiled a full transcript of the teaching, together with my own translations of the Tibetan quote, most of which I reproduce below here. I hope to put all the full transcripts together (depending on time and being able to find a quiet, conducive place to write/study!) into one document for free download, as a full commentary by the 17th Karmapa on the 8th Karmapa’s Instructions on Yangonpa’s Seven Pointing Outs. For now, here is my outline and transcript of the Day Two teaching by the 17th Karmapa. To give you a taste of the teaching, I have also created a video clip of the teaching on calm-abiding of the Tibetan original (with English captions) here.
Music? Of course, Let It Be by the Beatles and I Am Sailing by Rod Stewart.
Transcribed and part-translated by Adele Tomlin, 15th January 2023.
The first ‘pointing out’: Calm-abiding (Shamatha/Zhi-ney)
The 17th Karmapa spoke about the first point, calm-abiding, as detailed in the Instructions of 8th Karmapa, which is divided into three sections:
1. Placing the Mind (Calm-abiding I)
If I give a ‘word explanation, I thought it might be beneficial. Here are the root words by Yangonpa, which were given in a song. So they are lyrics/words of a song. The words in this photo here are from Yangonpa’s Collected Words. The words in black below the photo are from the Short Instructions of the 8th Karmapa. So they are slightly different, there are various song lyrics perhaps. It says:
“Fortunate children who long to meditate. Do not look outside for meditation, look inside.
With placement, it will not happen, so let it roam free. You won’t hold it by grasping, so rest relaxed.”
Here ‘children’, that means students who entrust themselves to their qualified guru and consider them to be authoritative. For example, in the worldly society, a good child who listens to their parents and does what they are told, this is what we call a good child. So here, children means someone who is entrusting themselves to a qualified guru.
Then, ‘long to meditate’, are these fortunate ones who are diligent about practising the path and long to meditate, they really want to do that and have a very strong interest and seek it out. The next line is:
Do not look outside for meditation, look inside.
Gyalwang Yangonpa is saying to his students, ‘if you want to develop meditation, if you look outside, it will not occur. So you have to look inwards at your mind to make it meditation. give up your attachment to external appearance. Then:
With placement, it will not happen, so let it roam free.
This means that the mind does not stay in one place. Like if you have an ant on a leaf, and if the leaf is being carried away by water, then it has no control where it is going, it has to go where the water takes it. Likewise, thoughts won’t stay in a single place. Many different thoughts occur, so it is difficult for the mind to stay in a single place, so if it wants to roam, then let it roam free.
Even if the ant does not have any control, if it is not careful and runs back and forth and jumps up and down there is a danger it will fall into the water. So the ant which is on the leaf has to be careful. There is no need to worry because the water will take it wherever it goes, and there is nothing it can do about that. But it has to be careful to stay on the leaf carefully, otherwise there is a danger it will fall in the water. Similarly, as an analogy, one should never be without mindfulness and awareness. In that way let your mind rest comfortably when you meditate. The third line is:
‘You won’t catch it by grasping so, rest relaxed’.
This means we think the mind needs to stay stably and during calm-abiding, and not let it go and stay where you want it to. So if you work really hard at that it still won’t stay in the same place. It will not continue to stay, the more worried and fearful about that occurring the more thoughts you will have about that. So then there is a greater danger you will be distracted by external objects . In brief, it will get worse.
So instead of making a distinction between the meditator and the meditated on, instead of non-distraction, then rest relaxed and loosen. As all the meditators of the past have said;. ‘Don’t anticipate the future, let the present mind be as it is, without altering or fixing it. That is the teaching on placing the mind at rest.’
2. Sustaining evenly without fabrication (Calm-abiding II)
Here it says:
“If you wish to meditate, look at the appearances of non-meditation. Do not chop meditation into chunks, rest evenly. When meditating on the nature, don’t alter it with your mind. Let it settle itself, do not distort it with fabrications. Profound, clear meditation will not be changed by conditions.”
So the first, line is:
“If you wish to meditate, look at the appearances of non-meditation.”
When you are meditating, you are thinking ‘I want to do a good meditation.’ We all naturally have a hope like this right? If we have that hope, if we let the mind rest in appearances, we need to let the mind relax in that. And when you rest in those, between the time when the previous thought has ceased, there is the mind which is not grasping at appearances and is a clear awareness, it is clear but unidentifiable, this happens right? Without any attachment we need to sustain the essence of that and that is what we call meditation.
When we experience that, meditation is not something we have to do separately. Non-meditation or lack of meditation is something we just give up. Everything appears as meditation. There are not any appearances that are not meditation. So we can look and see are there any meditations that are not meditations? There is nothing that is not an appearance of meditation. Everything is an appearance of meditation. So you can develop this superior appearance. That is the meaning of that line: The next line is:
‘Do not chop meditation into chunks, rest evenly.’
Instead of saying this is the object and meditator, the focus of an individual’s focus. So we make distinctions but when you make so many distinctions between meditator and meditated, saying this is the subject and this is the object, and divide them into two this is a fault. Instead of dividing meditation into something with a strict boundary, however, the subject and object appear, you should rest evenly without distinguishing them so much, rest evenly without altering them.
Also, when you feel good and comfortable you meditate, but when you do not feel good you do not meditate. Sometimes you might thing you are meditating well, and sometimes think you are not. Instead of doing that, you should have moderate diligence that never slackens. For example, when playing guitar, dranyen, the string has to be just right, not too loose or too tight. If it is too tight or loose it will not sound good. Not too tight or too loose. Your diligence should be the same, it should be moderate. If it is too tight, then your mind and body will become tight and you will get exhausted easily and become slothful and lazy sometimes if you get too confined in your meditation. so when you say rest evenly without too much tightness or looseness, and when the mind is resting, and not resting and you think you cannot meditate that is not how it is. If it is resting you stay in that. If the mind is not resting or staying, then you make that itself, the focus of your meditation and do not change it.The next line:
“When meditating on the nature, don’t alter it with your mind.”
There is a lot we can say about this. To explain it easily, the nature of mind has always been free of elaboration and it is always abiding in that fashion. So when you meditate on that, then you need to rest in the nature of the mind. If instead you make something up new with the mind and try to change and fix it, you should not do that, the nature of the mind as it is, we just need to know it as it is. We just need to understand it and experience it. Meditation is not like making up or changing something.
The next line is:
“Let it settle itself, do not distort it with fabrications.”
This means from the very beginning the mind itself is abiding and self-illuminating, so one should let it settle itself as it is. However, sometimes you might be dissatisfied with that, you might think “Oh I have to meditate.” But you need to rest in that ordinary mind without altering it. Usually, ordinary people think there is a big difference between meditating and not meditating. Ordinary people think it is something we do not usually do, that we need to do. It is like we want it to stay and be more luminous, we want it to be clearer. If it’s not staying, make it stay, if it’s not clear, make it clear. If it is not brighter, make it brighter. So if we specifically fabricate and contrive to make our minds that way, all such meditations are like dead-ends of meditation, or faults that can occur when meditating. The next line is: The next line is:
“Profound, clear meditation will not be changed by conditions.”
The mind itself, as I said before, the nature the way that the mind actually abides, is self-luminous and self-aware. That is the essential nature. So when meditating, whatever types of experiences, high or low, agitated or lazy one should not let these be circumstances steal or effect your meditation. For example, if you have a good experience you should not be attached to it. If it is a bad experience, you should not dislike it. It is important to be like that. The reason is in the expanse if you have an experience of bliss, clarity and non-thought, these experiences happen and arise. When such experiences of bliss, clarity and non-thought occur, on the one hand it is a good experience. On the other hand, if you get attached and fixated on experiences of bliss, clarity and non-thought then it is a cause of being reborn in samsara again.
A bad experience is when you have the feeling there are more appearances or stronger afflictions of greed, hatred are stronger than before. These feelings occur but they are not totally bad because they are enhancements to Mahamudra practice. It is because of something bad occurring then it is possible that you could have even better meditation experiences that improve and enhance your experience of meditation. They improve it. Or it is possible that you can change them into something that will improve your meditation. So if you have a good experience and you get attached to it, it can be a fault. if you have a bad experience and you are able to take it as the path then it can be an enhancement to Mahamudra or a way to improve it. It is possibly beneficial. For that reason, not matter high or low good or bad, one should not think ‘Oh I have something to be excited about,’ or that something bad happened and be disappointed or unhappy in your mind.
3. ‘Bringing thought onto the path’ (Calm-abiding III)
“Without viewing conceptual mind as a fault, specifically meditating on non-thought, let mind be as it is, and pause to look at it. Meditation will arrive at the pith of shamatha.”
So, this is saying first, without viewing conceptual mind as a fault, when you are meditating, in particular Shamatha meditation, your mind is staying put and you feel like you are having more and more thoughts. You feel like your mind gets more hurried and frenzied. So we have this feeling that we cannot rest peacefully and calmly and we worry about it. However, when a thought arises one should not see it as being fault. See it like a wave arising from water, the thought itself naturally will arise no matter how it rests and will disappear, you do not need to follow the thought. One should not think, ‘Oh a thought happened and that is terribleཐ that is not OK། you should not worry about it. One should understand it is like a wave arising from water.
There is the song ིby Milarepa in ? Collected Works that says:
“When one meditates on the ocean, then the waves are ocean, so they are the thoughts of the mind. The waves are like a manifestation of the ocean mind, they are not separate from the ocean/mind. So in the same way, the thoughts are like the appearance or manifestation. They don’t transcend the nature of mind.”
So just let the mind be alone as it is. Let the thoughts disappear on their own. One should not specifically look at them as being a thought, and trying to stop the thoughts, pacify our thoughts. If we meditate in that way. On the one hand, it is difficult to overcome the thought to pacify thoughts, and the thoughts will become more and more numerous.
The next line is:
Specifically meditate on non-thought.
If you want to have a mind free of thoughts, and you hope for that and specifically try to make your mind thought-free and non-conceptual, if you work at that, you have not transcended dualistic thought. So trying to meditate and hoping your mind will be free of thought is not good. One should not meditate in that way. The next line, is:
Let mind be as it is, and pause to look at it.
As I said earlier, one should not grasp at a thought-free mind, one should not make effort to have that. So don’t abandon thoughts. That means if a thought arises we get rid of it and abandon it. One should not do that either. Instead, just let the mind itself rest as it is, without changing it all. So as a meditator, for your own part, don’t change it or do anything. Let it be as it is, just leave it as it is. Also, one should not allow oneself to be distracted. When you rest there, if our awareness is not clear, if we get distracted, if our mindfulness and awareness are not clear, instead of trying to change the mind one should relax and let it be. Next line is:
Meditation will arrive at the pith of shamatha.
When all the thoughts and afflictions naturally subside and rest in a thought-free state that is the pith of calm-abiding. So this is just an explanation of the words. I thought it might be of benefit to give a word explanation. If you want an instruction based on experience (nyung tri), then you need to get that from someone who is experienced, I cannot teach this. I cannot teach such an experiential instruction. It is something that should only be given to a small number of superior individuals of the three types, it is not like one can teach it to a whole load of people. If you teach an experiential explanation like that to a lot of people all over the world, then it will not work. So that is a complete explanation on the words of shamatha.
Pointing Out Two: Special insight (Lhag-thong)
So now we move to the section on Superior Insight/Seeing [The Karmapa gave an oral transmission of the words of the 8th Karmapa’s text from 31 until 41 minutes]. I will give an explanation of the words. We cannot have an explanation of the experience, so will talk about the words. According to the outline in the commentary by Barawa Gyeltsan, there are two parts teaching the nature and teaching how to look at it:
So the first is teaching on the abiding reality.
“The empty expanse cannot be identified/grasped by the mind. The door of awareness unceasingly clear. This naked clarity-emptiness, free of intellect.”
To give a word explanation, there are these three lines on teaching the ultimate nature. The first of them is the empty expanse mind that cannot be identified. Usually, when we think about a thing, like something that we use such as a phone, or shoes or clothes or whatever it is, when we think about what that thing is like, we might think about its shape we think about its colour. Or if it’s food then we might think about its scent, we think about the flavour that it might have. If it’s like clothes we think about how they feel, a soft touch, those sort of things that we think about right? But if we think about the mind is it’s not a thing that exists substantially. So the mind is, if you ask what is it like? We can’t really describe it like external things like the phone, shoes or clothes. We cannot think about it as a shape or color or anything because it doesn’t exist like that. Or we might think it’s like a feeling, like some sort of feeling you have and that’s the mind. That’s also difficult though because the pleasant or unpleasant feelings are basically just sensations and just basic functions of the sensory faculties. There is nothing really to think about or place but it’s difficult to think of the mind as just that. One might wonder well is the mind like thinking or thoughts? But the mind has other functions besides thinking. So it’s also difficult to say that it is just thought or thinking. In brief, when we say mind, we have some sort of mind that can think of anything at all or know anything at all. But if we look for what its essence is or nature is and we look for that thing which we can say: ‘oh this is real essence, this is actual nature’ there’s nothing that we can find. So it is empty, that is why we say the empty expanse of mind that cannot be identified.
It is difficult right? Even scientists these days say how should we explain it? It’s difficult to identify we don’t need to speak about science but if we speak about it in terms of our experience, it’s very difficult in terms of our own experience to say the mind is like this. The next line is:
“The door of awareness unceasingly clear.”
This is saying is that although the nature of mind is empty, the aspects or the functions of mind are unceasingingly clear. The emptiness of the mind doesn’t prevent the mind’s aspects and functions from occurring because the aspects of functions of mind can occur unceasingly. The reason for this is that appearance is the same in essence as emptiness. The moment that an appearance occurs it’s empty. It’s like if you’re thinking about an Indian roti, there is a back and there is no difference between the back and front. So its similar, it’s like the essence and the appearance are just the difference between how it looks and how it actually is. But is is not like they are separate. Like the right and left horns of a yak being completely different things, that’s not how it is. The next line is:
“This naked clarity-emptiness, free of intellect.”
This is actually taught really in the guidance of Mahamudra 46:41 where it says: “the meaning beyond mind is not seen with mental Dharmas. Our present ordinary mind that we have now, actually transcends the object of mind. Our ordinary mind now. There’s like the level of our capacity of our mind it’s difficult to put a limit to that.It’s not something we can realize. That sort of inseparable appearance-emptiness, with the naked mind of no-duality of subject or object, the clarity of the mind, the nakedness of the mind the unobscured.
The second section is how we look at it. Here there are these two lines from the text on how to look.
“While being in its own place, look at it. Meditation will arrive at the pith of superior insight (lhag-thong).”
This is the method for how to look at the mind, and what is the way to look at the mind? It is saying that whatever the nature of mind, or the state of the mind itself is, don’t alter it at all, without fabricating it, without altering it, without being distracted just rest naturally in that state, however it is, without getting distracted. Without making any distinction between ‘this is what I’m looking at’ and ‘this is a looker.’ There is a clear distinction between the looker and what’s looked at but you don’t need to do that. Instead you should have no distinction between the looker and what is looked at, no division between the two. One must look at the non-dual nature as much as you can. So, by looking this way you will see/arrive at the Dharma nature in a manner without any seeing, with clear insight without the duality of subject and object. So this is how you look during superior insight.
Pointing Out Three: the way of meditation free from elaborations
This third ‘pointing out’ section, the way of meditation free from elaborations has two topics:
- teaching on undistracted meditation and
- teaching that is ineffable, inconceivable and indescribable.
- Teaching on undistracted meditation
The first is teaching on undistracted meditation, which says:
“Post the lookout for undistracted mindfulness. Don’t alter the abiding reality of non-meditation.”
What is says in Yangponpa’s Collected Works is “don’t lose the lookout of undistracted mindfulness.” So the line is a bit different. If we explain it as it’s found in the Collected Works what
“Don’t lose the lookout of undistracted mindfulness, rest naturally without altering it.
Whatever the nature is, however it is abiding, just rest in that exactly it is without being distracted. Having a little bit of the power of mindfulness keeping it so you’re not losing the lookout. As I said before, you post the lookout of mindfulness right? Mindfulness and awareness. Like have this level of mindfulness and awareness. So you must not let that diminish. So while not losing that lookout of mindfulness you need to look at the essence of the meditation. This mindfulness is extremely important whether meditation is good or bad, from one perspective really depends to a great degree on how strong your mindfulness and awareness are. If it is not caught by mindfulness and awareness and even if you have a little bit of meditation this could automatically slip into ordinariness. You have just a bit of experience in meditation, if you’re able to slightly see the essence of meditation if at that point you are unable to apply with your mindfulness-awareness there is the danger of slipping into ordinariness, in particular during the post-meditation. That’s the period of equipoise right? But then in post-meditation your mindstream will become ordinary and you won’t be able to take your actions as the path. We need to be able to take them as a path we need to do them in a way that just matches the Dharma, and that makes them able to become the path. But we won’t be able to have that happen. So it is really important for us and applying mindfulness and awareness is the foundation of qualities. So the next line says:
“Don’t alter the abiding reality of non-meditation.”
However the nature of the mind is, and the state of the mind is, you just need to leave it as it is. You do not need to have like some special focus saying I need to meditate this on you don’t need any particular focus. Resting evenly free of elaborations. You should not have this idea being something, or being nothing and particularly examining that. Trying to change anything instead of that rest letting it be, without any mental work or just let it go completely without any antidote. Just rest and relax without holding, rest freely without letting go, you should just sustain the lookout of mindfulness. In any case, one should not try to make it stay on a particular focus being really tight. That’s not okay. On the other hand, if you’re too loose about it, if it’s not imbued with mindfulness, the mind then then gets distracted then that’s not good, you need to have that perfect moderate tension in in the mind. This is very difficult to achieve you have to that keep that right tension in the mind.
2. The teaching that is ineffable, inconceivable and indescribable
The second section of the third pointing out is teaching that is ineffable, inconceivable and indescribable. The words of the text say:
“Don’t desire to speak about inconceivable awareness. Sustain experience giving it a free rein, evenly undistorted by conceptual consideration and examination. Seeing the actual face of meditation, the unelaborated nature will arrive.”
The first line is:
Don’t desire to speak about inconceivable awareness.
What this means is that, as I said before, sustaining the mind, don’t speak much about the inconceivable nature of the mind, saying it’s this or it’s that. You don’t need to think about that or speak a lot about that. If you think about it think is it this, or is it that? You think about that or you talk about it a lot, then there is a danger you’re just going to be making projections or denials of the nature of how things are. In other words, it makes an obstruction for seeing the nature as it is. The next line:
“Sustain experience giving it a free rein, evenly undistorted by conceptual consideration and examination.”
Instead of saying specifically ‘this is the mind, this is emptiness, this transform this is unborn free of extremes. If we think about it too much in that way then it’s a pitfall in meditation it’s a fault in meditation.This is something I need to do don’t think about this. It says sustain experience giving it free rein, means let the mind go wherever it’s going, but you must always never be free of the mindfulness, it must always be imbued with mindfuness but then let it go wherever it’s going to go.
“Seeing the actual face of meditation, the unelaborated nature will arrive.”
So when you are meditating one day you will see the unelaborate nature of the mind.
The words in Yangonpa’s Collected Songs reads differently, it says:
” the mother and child free of elaborations will meet.”
This means that by meditating on the path realizing the freedom from elaborations and the unelaborate object of the will, like water poured into water come together like a mother and child. So that’s a brief explanation.
The obstacle Yangonpa faced early in his life, not meeting a qualified lama
So, Yangonpa himself from the time he very young, just naturally had the prajna to be able to meditate. He did listen to many experienced lamas, but from a young age he had a natural ability to meditate. He started meditating at the age of five and was able to rest in meditation sustaining the essence for a very long time.
So his father had died when he was very young probably before he was even born and the one who primarily cared for him with his mother and also a sister. His mother and his sister were extremely worried because at the age of five he was just sitting there, just like an adult he was sitting there you know meditating like an adult. People would get worried about that so his mother and sister were really worried about this and thought he must have been possessed by spirit or maybe there’s something wrong with his body. Maybe the winds and the prajnas in his body, something was wrong in body. They didn’t at all consider it as meditation. As soon as he started, his mother and sister would start doing doing anything to prevent him from meditating. They did anything they could to not allow him to do meditation.
So Gyalwang Yangonpa himself later said , at that time when he was 5 years old and meditating at that time to think about the experience, if he had met a lama who was really experienced in meditation and given them an experiential spiritual instructions, he immediately would have been able to develop and sustain the essence of it, and develop a realization. But at that time from one perspective he had the real natural prajna but his sister and mother presented from another perspective. So he didn’t meet any experienced Lama or receive an experiential instructions. This was an obstacle to developing the realization. Now when I speak about the insight and shamatha, basically that is connected with Mahamudra meditation. We talk about shamatha and insight meditation, the union of shamatha and insight. So I think there’s quite a bit to think about this.
Founder of Tselpa Kagyu, Lama Zhang’s distinguishing between thoughts and actual experience/realisations and the advice from Gampopa’s nephew, Tsultrim Nyingpo on the importance of supplicating the guru for blessings
Next, I will speak about the life-story of Tselpa Kagyu, Zhang Yudrakpa Tsondru Drakpa (zhang g.yu brag pa brtson ‘grus grags pa, b.1123 – d.1193) [known as Lama Zhang] he wrote an autobiography and then he described how he developed realization and I thought this is good. So what this is when Lama Zhang was 33 years old, he met Je Gampopa’s nephew so this is Gampopa’s older brother’s son, Gompo Tsultrim Nyingpo (sgom po tshul khrims snying po, 1116 – d.1169), These are who we are call Gampopa and his nephew. In any case, Lama Zhang Tsondru Dragpa went to meet Lama Tsultrim Nyingpo, and as soon as he met him Tsultrim Nyingpo gave him the pith instructions on co-emergent union.
In the instructions on the seven points by Mikyo Dorje, 8th Karmapa, these are what he speaks about at the beginning, these are the ones passed down from Atisha to Gampopa. So the first is the co-emergent union, which is a little different from this, but when he received this he first saw that when he meditated about this, he saw that his previous meditation had flaws. What he saw is that until the time he was 33 years old he had taken teachings from many different gurus, and done a fair amount of listening, contemplation and meditation. Then with his direction focused outwards, his previous meditation wasn’t correct, he was directing his attention outwards. He would think that “now I really need to determine who is the meditator? Who is the meditating individual? What is the mind? That is I need to determine what that is.
So at that time, as this previous meditation was wasn’t quite right but they also had this idea now I need to determine, I really need to meditate but in the other perspective he was really divided and the reason why he was so pleased is he said: “oh I’ve received this really profound instructions.” So he’s really happy about this. When he meditated on these instructions of co-emergent union, he was unable to distinguish the borderline between experience and realization, about what is experience what is realization. When he looked at it he said it seems like its realization but it’s actually your experience. Or you think you look at it and it seems like it’s a mixture of experience and realization. He was unable to do it kind of vague and not distinct. So Lama Zhang went and asked about this to Tsultrim Nyingpo and he said: “you’re trying too hard you need to supplicate with extreme fever, supplicate to the guru.” The hope that this mind has the blessings to produce realization depends upon the blessings of the guru. So what you need to put your hope in is the blessings of the Guru. so you need to supplicate the guru with great fever.
Now you need to practice Mahamudra, then he then he gave the instructions in mahamudra. only giving the instructions on the co-emergent union, not the instructions of Mahamudra. He was given the actual instructions in Mahamudra and he was meditating based on the instructions he received from Lama Zhang, he said all these felt like all the experiences, it felt like his prajna was how do I say this. He had like an experience different before, saying “oh this is what it’s like. This is what it is like. There was a real certainty in this strong experience feel like this is what it is. When he explained to the guru what it happened ‘I had this experience different before when resting in the mind as it is experience, I had this strong superior certainty and thought that this is how it is it’s like this. So a sort of wisdom or awareness that occurred this happens. So he asked the guru, who said: “you should not think about it like that, you shouldn’t examine think of what it is or what it isn’t, such as this is it or this is not it, don’t examine that other. If you examine it your meditation won’t improve and there is danger and a pitfall that you will fall straight from meditation. So he continued to to meditate as the Guru had told him and he saw that his previous certainty thinking this is what it is, as went deeper and deeper developed realization when went deeper all of these experiences were just sort of thoughts or certainties, he just didn’t examine them a lot. He just realised they were all thoughts, they weren’t actually realisations. When he understood that they weren’t that and stopped following them and he just rest and relaxed into it, then the realization naturally arose from within.
The realization is not something that you find from outside. It’s something that happens from inside. That sort of realization. So the thought ‘this must be realisation, this must be certainty’ they’re completely different. This realization that occurred within him when that happened he realized immediately that the borderline between his experience and thoughts was clearly distinguished and finally this is what experience is, the realizing he was able to clearly distinguish and what he was able to recognize that all of his previous realizations and thoughts and been mere understanding, or just mere examination, or just mere words they were not real realizations, he said he felt this very strongly.
If you think about it in terms of the words explanation, in words there’s no difference how it is explained in terms of the words. But he realized that previously, his mind and the meaning were not really mixed these are subject, object the mind. Like an outer house, there is the mind that realized and there is the object that realized the separation between the subject and object. Like there’s a distance between the two. So he realized all his previous realizations were like the outer house they were not the actual thing of the subject-object fully mixing together. How did this realization come about? Resting evenly in the state without altering the mind occurred but these things feelings experience thought or certainty all these different thoughts happened and he didn’t follow any of that, he just rested right there. So those ‘ideas about realisation’ naturally disappeared on their own. When they disappeared then he saw this nature of the mind that is free from arising andceasing. Only then did it stop so many coarse thoughts and when they all stop only then you have like this. Only then did that subtle wisdom or that prajna actually become manifest and so this is is a very well-known advice he wrote about.
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