Nature of Mind | Buddhism & The Big Questions: 'What is the Nature of Mind?' - Jnanavaca

good thank you uh much can you hear me all right very good [Music] so i'm aware that uh we've had loads and loads of input uh over the last 25 days and uh you're probably feeling um saturated somebody might use that word and i thought oh yes i can resonate with that but um i've got more so here we are um yes i was just very struck by um the generosity that has been shown today both this afternoon when money was being pledged to raise given to future time officers three wonderful speakers including marco and eve and showbit all the way from india and then the generosity the spontaneous generosity that's just been shown uh to vidiyamala uh i think um for me that means something very special about what we've created uh on this retreat and in a sense that i think points to the nature of mind the action of giving the action of resonating with another person or other people and then wanting to out of that resonance uh give i think that points to something very very profound about consciousness human consciousness human potential and the nature of mind to use that language for me um i knew that there was something more to life uh from at quite an early age i came across a stool project a few years ago i must have been nine or ten and i was inquiring in this school project i called it the meaning of life and i was inquiring in this project whether there was more to life i was inquiring in in in poems and little bits of texts and drawings uh about whether death was the end and if death wasn't the end uh whether there was more to life and then when i was 11 my dad died and he died uh suddenly one night at the age of 45 uh of a heart attack and um well a number of things um sort of um accelerated this i was existentially challenged as a kid and uh my father's death accelerated that one of those things was that um uh on his deathbed he was um um in agony and i can remember he held my hand it was the middle of the night i was there my mother was there and he held my hand we were waiting for an ambulance and he said uh something to the effect of i haven't been kind enough in my life i've i've he was quite an angry man a frustrated man um uh actually i think there was a lot of love and kindness there but it wasn't always expressed and uh yes he he had regrets he didn't die peacefully he didn't die well 30 something four years later my mother died and she died beautifully i i couldn't wish for a better death for her there was such a lot of grace in her dying in her letting go and i don't think it was a coincidence that for the last 30 or so years of her life she meditated she was a spiritual practitioner i think she was a buddhist she in fact we were taught about the dharma sometimes and she she was a buddhist she wouldn't have told herself that necessarily so those two deaths have sort of um uh helped shape my life uh and the first one my father's death definitely um started a quest for me uh the quest was um not just his dying uh and not just um started by his dying but because i um i and i'm not going to go into this but i had um i continued to have for quite a number of years psychic communication with him i would talk to him through various means and he would talk back and and so what that compelled me to i knew that it was him and we were talking i couldn't talking's not the right word there was communication but what that led me to know was that death wasn't the end and what that led me to then question was if death wasn't the end what were we doing here and i knew for a certainty and and this was at the age of 11 that it wasn't about possessions it wasn't about cars and houses and mortgages and it wasn't about holidays and and jobs and status and success in that ordinarily way it was obviously not about that and that that that i think has led me um to the dharma um i'm fortunate in my life that it's led me to the dharma sometimes i think at the time conditions that look uh like they're they're tragic um painful conditions now when i look back i i i don't know whether they were tragic or not they led me to the dharma and i feel actually they were pointers and blessings and opportunities and and i i wish that for everybody that i know there's little in our lives um and sometimes it feels senseless and cruel and uh devastating uh shattering as vidyamala was talking about and sometimes i think it can be um that shattering dream can be an opportunity and i think the dharma offers that yeah it offers anyway i wasn't gonna say any of that so uh uh where i was gonna start with is in 2018 uh four years ago i was on a on a long retreat i went on a six-month solitary retreat it was the longest solitary retreat that i'd ever done it was in the spanish mountains we've got a retreat center in southern spain called gokuloka extremely beautiful vivid sort of oh i don't know it's just dramatically beautiful uh and i was in a solitary cottage uh in in this valley about a thousand meters up overlooking the mediterranean uh and i had six months on my own and um it was one of the most um uh wonderful uh experiences of my life experience isn't quite the right word um anyway one morning i mean i i woke up and um every morning i'd go downstairs this stone cottage little stone cottage and um i'd have to evacuate the spiders and the beetles and things that got in in the night yeah i had a zero tolerance policy every day so we we just had this kind of friendly agreement that they could come in the night and in the morning i would scoop them up and take them outside and i i came down one morning and i could hear some rustling in in some in in the sort of basket of um kindling and wood and paper that i had for the fire and yes it was this kind of stag beetley thing um or the spanish equivalent of i don't know what they're called it was like a couple of inches long uh shiny black uh rather ponderous it sort of moves like slowly it doesn't seem very alert um uh a weight really i don't think they're very bright so i scooped it up in i had this kind of plastic beaker i scooped it up it in a way you just had to hold the beaker and it it pondered so it was it was scooped up and then suddenly it realized it was now in a in a tight little prison yeah uh and it started scuttling around you know it was distressed in some way not being able to get out would climb up and slide down and and it was so i was about to take it out when i heard another stag beetle you know uh in the in the cot in the house so i i found that and scooped it up as well just you know in the same cup so that you know the first one was was distressed and you know trying to get out as soon as the second one landed there was complete silence and i looked down and they were mating [Music] and suddenly they were completely happy i i imagine completely still there wasn't a lot of they don't there's not much vigor they're completely still one on top of the other and uh you know and i took the cup out and i just kind of tilted it and they they they didn't seem to notice that that anything had changed and i was just struck and i thought ah isn't this just like us if the buddha could look on me and us all of us unenlightened ones you know we're scrabbling around in this little prison but then soon as we get what we want soon as we've got the sense experience that we want all the fear everything's forgotten yeah and we're we're oblivious and uh drugged in a way so so yes i wanted to start with that as an image for our unenlightened mind yeah our unenlightened ordinary work a day everyday mind that we think is all there is of us because that mind is is is um only really concerned about sense experience through the five physical senses and yes it is also able to have rational thought and you know imaginative experience but mainly those rational thoughts and images that it has are directed to getting what it wants getting what we think i am wants from this world that we think of as uh uh objective and out there this material world which can give us sense experience so we live in the world of the senses that's what i'm trying to say and we assume that that is all there is to the world and that that is all there is to us yeah and gratifying the senses and i'm i'm i'm making a crude analogy with those stag beetles of course we do it in much more sophisticated ways and there is much more to us i know but all i'm trying to say is that you know when i was that 11 year old kid looking at the adults around me not seeming to be aware of death and something beyond death what i saw was they were in sophisticated ways mainly concerned with with as i say house and car and mortgage and work and status and really it's not much more than those beetles yeah it's not so um i know and i'm i knew then and i know now even more that that is not who we really are yeah uh that is not our potential and that there is in a way um oh i don't know what i want to say there is as you've experienced all of you i suspect on this retreat much more to consciousness to the mind if we put ourselves in the right conditions and make the necessary uh effort to grow yeah and i think that that growth that path is limitless that's that's how it feels um so far i'm sure it is i also want to i'm gonna come come back to what that potential might look like in in in different ways but i also want to just spend a little bit of time returning to this theme that we've had several times on this retreat about how our mind creates our world how our experience of the world is co-created how it's not fixed and solid and out there objectively independent of us and we're not passive observers uh of uh of uh unresponsive world we're not uh so i just thought i'd explore that in a in a few ways um i haven't got much time so i'll try and keep it brief but the buddha definitely said mind creates world one of the ways i think we create our world is um it's obvious that our mood and our psychological state affects our experience of the world and of other people yeah so so you'll have seen that on the retreat you know how your mood your state can change almost from moment to moment certainly from meditation to meditation and certainly from day to day on a retreat so much can happen internally and how that really completely transforms your vision of the world yeah uh so if you're feeling grumpy actually nothing's right about this retreat about the world about about each other on this retreat if you're feeling expansive uh this feels like heaven yeah uh and and uh it feels like blessings are pouring down on us and we can't express the gratitude enough and nothing objective has changed so yesterday we were maitre bando and i we were saying our views uh govern our experience they create our experience and and again the psychological truth isn't it if i feel if i have a deep-seated view that i am unlovable that i have nothing to offer the world that my life is meaningless uh i will live in a hell a prison created by that view created by my own mind if i can change that view uh my world will change and views become self-fulfilling prophecies if i have that view that i am somebody that nobody likes then every encounter i have will somehow confirm that view and any encounter that doesn't fit in with that view i will ignore have you done that yeah so so we're we're selective uh creatures in in uh experience is not um a passive thing we create our experience and we do that partly through the emotional state of mind that we're in and and and partly through the views that we carry so the dharma is offering us a way of creatively transforming both of those our emotions and our views into something that opens up the world that's a psychological way of talking about it the law of karma which um was talking about it says that if we act skillfully with generosity with love with awareness the world will mirror us back other people will mirror us back but also our consciousness will expand we've seen that just today i just felt uh moved to tears with with the generosity today that was shown just now and earlier my world feels my mind feels more expansive and i feel more connected i feel more connected with you i feel more connected with life the law of karma can be immediate like that yeah it can also be more mysterious and uh even um uh magical maybe um because the world isn't mechanical we don't live in a mechanistic universe we live in a for want of a better concept a living cosmos that that reflects us back if we look at reality at the world at life in a certain with certain eyes with a certain mind it will look back at us conversely if we look with unkindness uh blame resentment feeling um a victim of our lives and our circumstance that's what will be reflected back so the law of karma creates our world that's another way of looking at it and then subhadra matthew has been talking about uh uh enlightened mind the buddhas reaching down to us it's not just that we are alone in our striving towards liberation i really have experienced and i've seen other people experience again and again that if we determine to grow towards the truth towards value towards enlightenment however you conceive that it's as if the universe cooperates with us and will support us in that growth in that process that doesn't mean that you will get what you want yeah but you will get opportunities to grow sometimes they come in shapes that aren't what you want so there's more than even the law of karma there's something else cooperating with our intentions to grow the dharma and then from a more um for want of a better word scientific perspective we've touched on how uh quantum physics uh says that even a particular at a particle level at a those elements of matter of reality are responsive and and quantum physics says that those particles electrons or whatever they are it's not even clear that they exist independently of are observing them isn't that incredible maybe we are co-creators in existence maybe that's what we are if that is true i don't know if that's true but if that's true that's the opposite of us being uh isolated um uh passive meaningless creatures in a cosmos that is mechanical and uh completely oblivious to us it's the complete opposite it's a notion that some scientists seriously entertain that we life consciousness creates the cosmos it it's completely baffling and and and then at a more um maybe a bit more of an understandable level uh um i just wanted to touch on the mystery of perception because this then leads to uh what buddhism talks a little bit more about the mystery of perception so when you you're all looking at me now and you're seeing uh uh shape and color and shape and color really that you're interpreting as me and you're hearing uh sounds that you're associating with this form you know through your senses through your eyes through your ears primarily uh you're perceiving something but when you look at the nature of perception actually the image that you're what you're seeing is an image happening in your mind and the brain is somehow involved in that and we don't know how mind and brain work but somehow there's light going through your eyes inside the the head the cavity where the brain is there's no light that light is just now electrochemical signals neurons firing in the dark literally the dark creating in the mind whatever the mind is an image that you then project as out there existing independently of you how amazing is that how amazing is that the same is true of sound the same is true of every sense this world that we move around in and take for solid and real and it's not what we think it is it's a co-creation perception is a co-creation solidity isn't real yeah the only reason that i'm not falling through this chair and you're not falling through the ground uh into the center of the earth is do you know why well i'll tell you because i haven't got time to it's because the electrons on the surface of my bottom repel the electrons on the surface of the chair it's the electromagnetic repulsion of quantum particles that stops me falling through because solidity is an illusion is mostly empty space we are mostly empty space the chair the ground the earth the earth everything is mostly empty space solidity is an illusion so um buddhism says it starts with experience it ends with experience but it looks experience in a very clear sighted forensic way in a way that i've just i don't know perhaps um try to point a little bit too when i've talked about perception the buddha didn't know about quantum physics he he wasn't bothered uh about about electrons he was bothered about the experience that we have as embodied beings with a with a consciousness with a mind and how that causes us suffering needlessly because we've misinterpreted experience and we've created a cage for ourselves and what's more like those beetles we're not aware that we're in a prison we're not aware that we're in this tiny tiny cage that we call life and me we're not aware of it and so we go around making the best of it just like those beetles did yeah and uh how how limited how limited so he was concerned the buddha was concerned with looking at experience clearly clear-sightedly through meditative introspection because after all we as maitro bandu says have a mind so why don't we look at what that is why don't we look at it through meditative introspection yeah through clarity of mind look at the mind as best we can actually you can't but i'll come on to that so buddhism is concerned not with all this philosophy that we've been looking at not with quantum physics or or all of that is concerned with direct experience and how if you look with insight at your experience clearly what happens is all the deluded assumptions that we add on to experience fall away and when that happens consciousness opens up into something unlimited that you can only talk about in metaphor so that's what the buddha was concerned about that's what we're concerned about i don't actually care about physics or philosophy but i do care that our and my deluded views keep me trapped and i do think therefore anything any um thing that helps me unravel my delusions is worth paying attention to yeah and like most of us most of the time i mistake the world of the senses as real yeah and i want to undermine that i want to keep undermining that in me and therefore i want to keep reflecting in the way that i'm trying to talk about and you have to do that again and again and again and again because the delusion that this is real and nothing else is is so deep it's almost in our dna i would say it's like as deep as as our instinct to survive is as deep so so one model that buddhism came up with later buddhism came up with uh it's called um the school of buddhism this school of thought is called the yodachara and um the yogachara was developed by people who were particularly adept at meditating and particularly adept at therefore directly trying to observe the nature of experience through clear through as clear a mind as they could yeah and look at what happens in experience in a forensic kind of way and then they came up with a model of what happens actually the model kept evolving for hundreds of years and i'm just going to give you a tiny kind of very rudimentary um version of it yeah so so the model has three layers to the mind three levels to the mind and it is a metaphor this actually mind is a metaphor if sabuti was listening to me now he'd tell me off because he'd be saying how dare you talk about mind and how dare you talk about the nature of it bandhay would say booty would say my teachers would say you can't as soon as you use the word mind and start talking about it what you've done is falsify it because you've made it into a thing yeah you've you've you've used words like mind as a noun and nouns are associated with things as if the mind was an object in a world of objects but it's absolutely not a thing mind is what knows the world mind is a sort of knowing it's not a thing in a world of things it's apprehension and we don't have it's not in this world of of things it's not even in the world of subjects and objects but we'll come on to that so i really ought not to we ought not to talk about the nature of mind without every time we do that saying it's a metaphor it's a metaphor so so please don't take mind as a thing yeah we don't have consciousness is not a thing but nevertheless we do need to find ways of talking about it in order to transform it into the liberated experience of the buddha so the model that the yogacara came up with is that there are three levels to mind the first level is this sense perception the six senses the five physical senses and the ordinary mind the ordinary thinking reflecting anxiety provoking uh stag beetle mind yeah that mind and the five senses of sight and sound and smell and the consciousness associated with seeing hearing uh smelling tasting touching those five senses and this ordinary mind are called the sixth senses in buddhism that's the first level of mental processing it's only the first level though deeper than that is something that's unconscious a level uh of mind that's unconscious it's it's um sometimes called the manus and this is a model remember not literal it's at this manners level that the misinterpretation of experience begins and happens because there's nothing wrong with sight and sound and taste and touch and smell uh and there's nothing actually wrong with thinking uh there's nothing wrong with the stag beetles doing their thing there's nothing wrong with any of that it's the misinterpretation of it and the manners is where it's misinterpreted and what the manners does is it takes experience sight sound smell thought taste touch and what it says is oh there's a me and in inside me having that experience that's not part of the experience but is having the experience that somehow removed from the experience by owning the experience yeah a me called nyan of archer in my case that does the sight seeing hearing um etcetera etcetera yeah is somehow not even my body i mean it's not even their body but it has the body it owns the body as if you know it can say oh um uh my back hurts as if it put to the back owns the back and can say it hurts yeah the manus does that it's a construction it's a creation of the manners it's not a reality actually there is seeing sensing in all its multifaceted glory there is thought there is experience vivid experience but there's no little me little nyan of archer in the head somewhere or in the heart uh pulling the strings and saying yippee or or no thank you yippie it's apple crumble uh uh no thank you to something else there's no me that's independent of experience does that make sense but we think there is not just think we instinctively feel that there is yeah and then what we do is protect that little me inside and it gets hurt when it doesn't get what it wants or gets what it doesn't want or so forth and what's more the manus says is it says oh yes the images that i'm seeing and hearing and and things that i'm touching and tasting and so forth they're definitely independent of me yeah they're out there but do you see how i was saying perception isn't as simple as that in here and out there is not how it is there's something more mysterious going on that ian mcgill chris was talking about as co-creation of experience so the manus gets it wrong and that's where consciousness experience shuts down into this plastic beaker that we then live in it's it's it's a misinterpretation behind or underneath the manus is pure awareness is unbounded unlimited blue sky is the metaphor that we've been using vibrant luminosity responsibility pure unbounded awareness that doesn't belong to me because guess what the me was a construct so it's not mine it's not even not mine because that still implies in me you suddenly and says oh yeah this is not mine the whole construction doesn't apply to this pure awareness the whole construction of self and other of subject and object the yojita chara talks of grasper and grasped because that's what we do as stag beetles we grasp and are grasped if we're fortunate in the right way that whole construction is a delusion it's a construction yeah pure awareness doesn't know anything about that pure awareness is just liberated luminosity but we very seldom experience that because the manners and the constructions of the manners narrow everything down yeah we don't even know that we're imprisoned and that's the tragedy of it so what the dharma dharma practice the dharma life is teaching us to do is undo those constructions that keep us trapped and out of that uh our true potential is realized and and you see what an optimistic model this is what a positive model is because what it's saying is that in every moment there is pure unbounded luminous radiant awareness that is of the nature of love in every moment of experience that shines forth and then because of our force of habit and i don't mean conscious habit i mean habit that goes back lifetimes because of that we we misinterpret it and in our misinterpretation we close it down and then we live in that closed down way and guess what we cause ourselves unnecessary suffering and perhaps even more tragically we cause other people horrible suffering so what an optimistic model because that pure awareness is there all the time it's actually closer to us than anything could be it sort of is us at our at our um truest the image on the shrine of vajrasattva is a symbol for that radiant pure awareness that is our true nature unfortunately you can't just well sometimes some people in a moment of lucidity it breaks through sometimes that happens in the most tragic circumstances because tragedy sometimes wakes us up sometimes i think it it seems to be happening for people who have had near-death experiences at the moment of death it's said to break through because guess what at the moment of death all the constructions are going to collapse so it breaks through but if we haven't practiced in this life if we're not familiar with that radiant pure awareness it will overwhelm us at the moment of death we won't be able to handle it this is what the tradition says we won't be able to handle it and we will create again a limited sense of self that will that will gravitate towards another existence in this world or some other world in in a limited way so we'll miss that opportunity we missed it last time didn't we [Music] so unless we do anything about it i speak for myself i missed it last time you might be in touch with it unless we do something about it in this lifetime we'll miss it again and if you have had a near death experience or if you've had a glimpse in some other way of this pure awareness once you i i swear once you have had a glimpse even if it was minuscule if you let it it will change you because nothing else in this world of form and phenomena and getting and grasping compares with the freedom the bliss that you experience all the near death experiences that i've heard about read about or or watched on youtube being talked about everybody says they didn't want to come back they didn't want to come back and everybody or not everybody but most people a lot of people seem to say that what they were experiencing the other side of the death of the body was more real than this world is that this world in comparison is dreamlike compared to that so buddhism is saying wake up now because we have the potential because it is our true nature it's a wake up to it so how do you do that well all the practices that we've been doing on this retreat yeah all the discussions we've been having on this retreat what what buddhism says is that the reason that we're not in touch with this radiant pure awareness the nature of mind shunyata the enlightened mind the bodhichitta all those words the dharmakaya that buddhism uses it doesn't use the word god but theistic traditions have that word the reason that we're not in touch with it buddhism says it's veiled from us though and and one tradition talks about two veils there's the veil called the glacier the veil of claytures the clayshavarana which is glacier means uh emotional uh afflictions they're like poisons they're all our self-centeredness our greed the bit of us you know i i gave some money to future dharma fund but there was a little bit of me that didn't want to that was the greed that was the glacier that said oh no hang on to that money jana varcha you don't know you might need it i don't need it i don't need it now anyway yeah so fortunately i spotted that little uh voice of um self-centeredness and didn't didn't listen to it but the glaciers go very very deep uh i'm i'm under no delusion after 25 30 years of practice whatever it is i'm under no delusion that the clashes have been eradicated in me they're not they're not they're not the self-centeredness in me goes very very deep and it's not just um um uh self-centeredness in terms of greed and craving and so forth it when we don't get what we want it can turn into anger ill will hatred um etc yeah so that is a veil that's part of the manners it veils us from our true potential the other veil is the nyaya varana the nyaya varana is the is the veil of delusion the deluded views that i've been talking about that there's a real me in the real world and that we're separate somehow that it's not co-created so buddhism is what it's doing through all its practices through meditation through community through ethics and trying to become more generous through through friendship through service through uh uh worship through ritual through uh prayer even what it's and and then through study through reflection through uh uh examination of our experience what it's trying to do is is is rend a hole in those two veils and and actually all you need to do in this lifetime is render hole yeah you don't need to bring the whole veil down all if you can fantastic but if you can rend just a hole and let the light of pure awareness shine through if there's a glimpse then that will work its magic through your life eventually and who knows when the body dies maybe you'll recognize the opportunity maybe you'll you'll gain liberation then or maybe you'll gain liberation before and it's said that a liberated mind doesn't just then necessarily choose not to come back a liberated mind can come back in human form or in some other form in order to help others liberate themselves i believe that bantay was somebody who chose to be here so that he could help human beings raise their level of consciousness and if you don't believe me read his memoirs read his life story as he's written in his memoirs because there are so many coincidences and um uncanny uh incidents in his life that you'd you'd have to be a very um determinedly mechanistic materialist person to not believe that there was some sort of plan purpose uh in his life i'm gonna have to start wrapping up because of time so let me just see what i need to say i think i want to just touch on how the enlightened mind is said to see things um because you can be enlightened as the buddha was and still have a body and if you still have a body you've still got your senses like i talked about yeah so how would a buddha sense uh see hear touch taste smell um well the first thing to say is that a buddha would be able to have our ordinary seeing and touching and saying things and thinking even but a buddha wouldn't have the delusion going on that that it's it's um real in the way that we take it for he wouldn't have to sense that there was a real little him inside um having this experience uh he would know that this is a world of appearances of appearances and he would be able to function in that world of appearances as appropriate you know how i've never done this really but you know how you can have virtual reality games and you can wear a headset and be in a virtual world i have worn a headset once and been in a little i've watched a film of two black holes colliding which was mind-blowing but you know technology has improved and you can be in a virtual world now i think this is a good analogy but not a great it don't extend it too far because you could end up thinking there's no meaning and love and so forth but imagine that you're you're playing a virtual reality game with a headset on and you've got a little avatar and you're trying to navigate your way in this virtual reality game does this does this i don't know if anybody's ever done this actually so anyway some of the younger ones have i'll speak to luke uh all the time that you're doing that you'd know that you were playing the game unless you were really deluded you'd know that you were playing the game so even if you died in the game you wouldn't be that devastated you'd just press the button and give it another go wouldn't you well a buddha would be like that in our world he or she would be playing the game but they'd know that it was a game yeah now we are also in the game this is the game of life but we don't know that it's a game we don't know that we're in the game and so what we do is take it ever so seriously and what we do is we play to win and what winning means is getting everything that i want yeah the the beautiful partner the house the the car the holiday the money the career the status the fame all of that guess what i'll i'll win the game and get all the points yeah and then die yeah so we don't know that we're playing that that game a buddha an enlightened being could play the game but i think what they'd be playing is how can i help people be free from suffering in this game and the best way to help them be free of suffering is to wake them up to the fact that it's a game that it's not as real as you think it is and the reason that we wait woken up is because what you wake up to the pure awareness that you wake up to is completely fulfilling it's blissful it's fulfilling it it's got everything all the love all the fulfillment all the bliss all the freedom all the vibrancy the energy that we have always wished for in our deepest deepest desires and it's ours if you wake up to the game so that in in buddhism is called the maya way seeing things in terms of the maya way maya means delusion or illusion if we could see things as not really real yes they're happening they're being experienced but it's not what we think it is then we would be free yeah so when the buddha his his body died for him it was immaterial it was no more uh significant than somebody playing a virtual reality game and um and and losing their body in that losing their avatar in in that the enlightened mind is said to see things as they are so it's not that everything just goes black or dark or or or you enter into shunyata and then there's nothing because buddhism can sometimes imply that it's not quite like that a buddha would see everything with radiant clarity i mean with vivid clarity one of the wisdoms of the buddha mind is said to be the mirror-like wisdom which reflects everything just as it is just as it is with pristine beautiful clarity but without sticking to it just as a mirror reflects without sticking to the image there's no grasping there's no aversion everything is just presented as it is another wisdom the wisdom of ratna sambava sees everything with beauty and as i was saying in the interview with ian last night ratnasambhava's wisdom also sees everything as equally unreal and equally insubstantial because in that virtual reality world it's all mind made so so it's equally unreal equally beautiful another wisdom sees everything as unique because it's never repeated this creativity that somehow is the manifestation of pure awareness this cosmos that is the manifestation is every in every instant it's creating something unique which is to be wondered at and another aspect of the wisdom sees it as unique and and full of love sees it with love but in another sense it is love everything is a manifestation not just of radiant luminosity but of love and another aspect of this enlightened mind is a responsiveness to every situation where there's suffering it's a responsiveness that is spontaneous this aspect of the enlightened mind doesn't have to think about being generous or kind it just responds it just gives it just responds completely appropriately it is the compassion of the enlightened mind and it's completely spontaneous because there's no sense of separation ultimate separation it's not two it's not one it's something more more magical than that can i just go on a little bit longer five minutes more okay the fifth aspect of the light in mind i don't know how to talk about it it um it said that it sees reality in everything everywhere but also it seems to see everything in everything everywhere so this feels uh um mind-blowing uh this radiant pure awareness that is our true nature if you glimpse it it's not just like you become you dissolve and become part of the cosmos or part of reality it's as if the cosmos becomes in you it says bante says it's not just that the dewdrop becomes or the drop becomes the ocean which is a hackneyed uh um maybe not to hack need uh image of what happens when the sense of self another drops away it's not just that the drop becomes the ocean the ocean also becomes the drop and and this last wisdom says that each of us contains the whole the whole cosmos when you look at the stars are they really out there where's the image that you're perceiving where is that happening and when is that happening when are you seeing that star the james webb telescope is now showing us images of galaxies that are billions of years old that go back to the birth of the universe or close to and we're seeing them now for the first time what on earth is going on i want to go back to my retreat i am i know this is i'm indulg indulge me a little bit longer on on that retreat um in the last couple of weeks i've been there for six months i've been meditating on uh manjulosha who appears made of light uh like the sun um uh i'd been trying to vividly imagine him um i'd also been reflecting on the dreamlike um nature of reality as best i could i've been trying to in a way take these reflections that i'm talking about into my own experience and see that actually the reality the world is co-created it's an image in awareness anyway i went for a wart uh a couple of weeks before the end i went to the end of the valley that i was at there's a sort of sheer it's a cliff uh top going down about a thousand 900 or so meters it was a very sunny day and clear blue sky above but i get to the um end of the valley and um there's a bank of cloud uh like of a vertical bank of cloud just in front of me um you know down the cliff top so i can see everything behind me but there's just cloud which is which was interesting you know it's beautiful but suddenly i look up and in the clouds there's um a figure made of light it's a dark figure bigger than life size mangy josh is normally oh i was visualizing him seated cross-legged this figure isn't it's um standing upright it's it's it's male i think a dark kind of figure surrounded in um uh rings of rainbow light uh completely um vivid rainbow rainbow uh surrounding this this figure and uh i i felt that this was the bodhisattva uh um i was taken aback i i sort of gasped there was this light figure in front of me and i i should have bowed i should have knelt onto the ground and bowed frustrated but i didn't i waved [Laughter] you can tell what's gonna happen to me in the badass the buddhas will come to me and offer me liberation and it waved perhaps you waved back and that wasn't expected i mean none of this was expected but uh that that was huge and it was only then that it dawned on me that this figure was my with me it was my shadow being projected onto the clouds with the sun behind me surrounded in rainbows and later when i came home i i found out somebody told me it's a it's a scientific phenomenon known as a a broken specter you look it up rock and specter and i was seeing the most perfect beautiful example of a broken specter and others who have seen them have thought that they were seeing angels so i'm not the only one to have been [Music] sort of mistaken so i laughed and sort of waved but then i thought ah this this was a teaching after all you see i've been reflecting for five and a half months on how my experience of the world is a projection of my mind it is what i've been reflecting on that it is co-created that it doesn't exist independently of my observing it that it is rainbow-like that's what i was trying to reflect on and it felt like manjadosha in his cheeky way had shown me that yeah and i then wasn't interested in the scientific explanation of what happens with broughton's vectors it felt like a teaching if you're aware in if you look with the right eyes reality is trying to teach us all the time all the time it's saying wake up this is how it is i for one want to be more receptive to that all the time and i think it's the most important thing that we can be doing with our lives everything else your career or lack of or partner or lack of or even even our physical body and its imperfections and pain that it can give us none of that is as real and as important as using this opportunity that we've got to realize our true nature the nature of mind thank you [Applause]

Channel: Adhisthana

Views: 2,085

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Id: A5Nwh-fmKVA

Length: 64min 40sec (3880 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022