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Dharma Teachings
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Four Thoughts and the Nature of Mind
In 2003
the Keo Satellite will be launched into space and will This is the text that Lama Ole is sending. It comes from the Great Seal (Mahamudra). Hope you enjoy reading it and thinking of the future possibilities.
Recognize that few people have the chance to work with their mind from a beyond dualistic view point. Understand the impermanence of everything outer and inner. One may die at any moment and only the space-awareness of mind is present always and everywhere. Be aware of cause and effect, beings’ thoughts, words and actions sow the seeds for their future and the results have the same emotional color as their cause. Finally, understand the wisdom of common growth. All beings aim for transient kinds of happiness while trying to avoid suffering. Enlightenment is the most formidable happiness and cannot disappear. Closing one’s mind to its richest potential through laziness would be a grievous mistake. Whoever remains on a conceptual level experiencing being one’s body and owning one’s possessions doesn’t have the power to ultimately benefit others and will find no comfort when old age, sickness, death and loss arrive. The success of one’s life depends on the degree to which one manages to dissolve the superficial perception of a separation between experiencer, experience and object experienced. The origin of these concepts is the tendency of any unenlightened mind to function like an eye. It experiences what appears but not itself and does not recognize its own all-encompassing space. The cause of all hindrances is the inability to understand that this is essentially mind’s all-pervading consciousness. Although nothing lasting or real can be found in either one’s body or thoughts, due to this basic ignorance, space that is aware experiences itself as an ‘I’. Its clarity, its richness, which produces the inner and outer worlds, becomes a ‘you’ or something ‘separate’. The interaction between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ results in the disturbing feelings that are taken to be real and lead to clumsy words and actions. Then feedback from one’s store-consciousness and the outer world produce unpleasant experiences that strengthen one’s tendency towards further unskillful acts. These disturbing feelings are taken as one’s basis for action and cause the suffering of all beings who are not liberated and few experience how embarrassing anger is. Genuinely strong people feel no frustration, they can simply do what they want. The basis
for mind’s full expression is the Truth State. Here, space is Truth is all-pervading. It is the vibration of each particle, every appearance and disappearance, beings’ birth and death. The fact that all phenomena ultimately appear from the potential of space and have causes on the relative level makes them basically true. Objects, people and events need neither an outside creating entity nor any kind of approval from elsewhere. Inseparable from maturity and intuitive wisdom, this understanding brings about the state of fearlessness, the basis for all fine qualities. It manifests effortlessly when mind recognizes its indestructible space-nature. The rich potential of space, its free play, clarity and constant freshness is the Joy State and manifests outside as the Buddha’s powerfields of energy and light and inside as immediate experiences of recognition, artistic expression and purity. There is always something going on, outer and inner events change in every instant. Experiencing this richness with complete awareness is mind’s self-arisen highest bliss. Being unchanging like a mirror or the depth of the ocean, instead of being conditioned like images and waves, the Joy State appears when nothing is expected or feared. This blissful space-awareness, which is nothing but mind’s radiance, will manifest wherever conditions permit. A third richness, the Activity State, coexists with one’s insight into mind’s space, the interdependent functioning of all things and the bliss of experiencing mind’s clarity. It also has no other cause than mind. It relies on the recognition that the experiencer is basically unobstructed and unlimited. In spite of the marked differences in peoples’ ability for abstract thinking and in their needs to understand the causes and effects of their worlds, all want nothing but happiness and ultimately share the same inner and outer space. When this is understood, one must benefit beings in an intelligent, foreseeing way. In today’s world that would mean providing birth-control for poor people and educating the children they have. This ocean of compassionate actions targets the sources of suffering. It springs from the unlimited qualities of mind and expresses itself through the peace-giving, increasing, fascinating and protective buddha activities. From the
level of liberation where one’s belief in a real and existent ‘I’ Truth, bliss
and intelligent action, what could be added to these three –
by Lama Ole Nydahl
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