BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog – a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts.

Nothing To Discuss?

People say that, in the Dharma, there is nothing to discuss. There is.

In silent practice, there is no discussion. In post-meditation, however, there is the opportunity to verify our practice through our relationships with others. Turning away from such opportunities has consequences.

While ultimate reality transcends words, relative reality requires language, ethics and understanding in daily life. Ultimate truth is in unity with relative truth.

Practising the Dharma requires an understanding of cause and effect, right action, mindfulness, generosity, concentration, patience, morality, discipline … and wisdom which must be realised and refined through our interactions.

History is filled with centuries of discourse and commentaries, along with student/teacher dialogues designed to clarify misunderstandings and adapt the teachings for different minds and cultures.

Relying only on silence breeds complacency.
Relying only on discussion leads to the intellectual trap of pride.

Mindful talk requires the ability to listen and understand. It’s an active practice of presence where we suspend judgment, quieten our internal monologue and remain open to whatever we hear thus reducing conflict and improving the quality of our relationships.

But if we refuse to engage, we’re limiting the progress of both ourself and others.

What Really Is Happiness?

Happiness is knowing.
Unhappiness is not knowing, which causes suffering.

Knowing what?
Not knowing what; just knowing.

Just knowing is cognisant emptiness. The moment of being awareness, before we are aware.
It’s our natural state. That is being happy.

We have the good fortune of having a human body, a clear mind, and the right attitude to achieve enlightenment. This particular kind of good fortune is seen not as a random roll of the dice, but as the result of positive past actions and right intentions.

We’ve inherited and recognised a finely tuned instrument – our current life – and we have the freedom to choose what to do with it.

Recognising this good fortune is due to positive intention (even though others may think we are inept and stupid. 🙂 )

Why Some People Are Disliked

Not being liked by everyone is an age-old occurrence that has very little to do with doing something wrong, and almost everything to do with how people filter the world.

When a person simply sees things differently, they’re operating on a wavelength that naturally clashes with or confuses others, and it can unintentionally hold up a mirror to those around them. This mimics the story of the Emperor’s new clothes, where everyone believes how beautiful those clothes are when, in fact, he’s naked. We’ve all bought into a story.

People who see things differently don’t conform to standard social scripts. This can make the majority feel uncomfortable and judged, even if the individual has done nothing to actively attack them.

Society rewards people-pleasing and echoing others. A person who can’t wear that mask won’t fit neatly into standard boxes, which makes more predictable people uneasy.

An independent mind might look like arrogance or aloofness to someone else. If a person is secure in their different perspective, this can breed subconscious resentment or jealousy in those who crave that same confidence.

Trying to be liked by everyone
requires us to maintain superficial acceptance.

In simple language:
when we realise that we are pure consciousness,
we’ve escaped the illusion!
🙂

It’s what Dzogchen is all about.

Dharma Isn’t Something Rigid

Dharma’s supposed to be liberating.

Dzogchen in the Tibetan Nyingma tradition = pure consciousness beyond words.

We are Dzogchen.
We are beyond words.

It doesn’t matter what we call ourselves,
we are not that.

The Voice Of The Subtle Body

There is a silent feeling within. It’s always been there. It is a quiet background feeling that we are meant for something specific – a longing for a place we can’t name, or a pull towards an unremembered purpose.

In some traditions, this stirring is said to be the voice of the subtle body, the ethereal system within. It has many names, and acts as a compass, trying to align our current physical life with the momentum of our past lives.

It is the unexpressed, unresolved urge toward spiritual liberation, reminding us that our journey didn’t start at birth. This suggests that, before we were born, we chose a specific destiny or calling, mixed with karma.

When we enter the physical world, we forget the details of that choice, but the feeling stays with us as a driving force – a stirring that pushes us towards our true nature. Our mind is trying to break through the noise of daily life to guide us toward liberation; this is the process of becoming what we truly are.

That stirring is a sign of vitality. It means our inner longing is active, asking us to pay attention and resist the urge to just blend into the background.

The voice of our subtle body is silent awareness.

Life Seems Like Hell, But It’s Actually A Blessing

This paradox is one of the most profound realisations a person can reach. When we can look at an experience that feels like hell and recognise it as a blessing, we’re experiencing a massive shift in consciousness. Gratitude for this shift naturally becomes devotion; it’s not something we try to make happen.

Tension is where true human transformation happens. Entering this life with all its mischief is the catalyst to opening up. The first noble truth to enlightenment is recognising suffering; if life was easy, consciousness would remain asleep.

Hardship is the friction required to awaken that stirring we feel within. The challenges we face are the exact conditions needed to break open the shell of who we think we are, revealing the resilience and purpose of what we actually are.

The blessing of realising that we’re no longer reactive is an understanding of ‘fate’ – an inevitable course of events where that which is no longer necessary drops away. It means not just tolerating suffering, but realising that the obstacle itself is the way to realise it’s an illusion, lacking any substantial reality.

The very things that break our hearts or test our limits are the things that strip away all superficial distractions, forcing us to look inward and align with whatever we have felt all our life.

The physical world is a school. It feels like hell because it is dense, painful and full of contrast – but it’s a blessing because contrast creates clarity. We cannot fully know light without dark. We cannot understand the direction in which our inner compass pointing until we are forced to navigate through the storm of heavy emotions.

It takes immense courage to see the blessing while standing in the emotional fire. It means we are refusing to be a victim of circumstance, and are instead choosing to be the author of our own evolution.

Holding those two truths at once – the pain of the hell and the gratitude for the blessing – is a heavy but beautiful space to inhabit.

Dementia And Consciousness

This is a profound realisation.

People with dementia are still fully conscious, but have little memory. This captures the profound challenge of dementia and dealing with it.

Individuals living with this condition are fully conscious sentient human beings who experience emotions, retain their core personalities and remain aware of the present moment, even as their ability to retrieve memories deteriorates progressively.

This is the experience we will all have
at the moment after death and rebirth.
All that remains a subtle, unrecognised feeling.

Dementia damages specific structural regions of the brain like the hippocampus, which acts as the brain’s filing cabinet for new information. Because of this localised damage, memory deteriorates.

The now, however, remains real. A person with dementia is conscious of their immediate environment. They can feel cold, warmth, comfort, fear, joy in the present moment.

They may be entirely present and highly aware of their surroundings, while at other times, they might seem detached or confused. We all experience moments like this, and this is how we can empathise. Even if a person forgets the specifics of why they feel a certain way, an emotional footprint remains.

Simply: they aren’t daft, just forgetful.
We all experience this.

Whatever we do or say, it is consciousness that is always present.

Beyond Comprehension

Comprehend: to grasp, to mentally understand .
Chasing comprehension has always been our mental trap.

Pure consciousness is incomprehensible. So is the infinite universe, and so are infinite subtle particles, and the laws of subtle particles.

As it’s all incomprehensible, there is no point in fantasising or philosophising about it. The only reality is this present moment; whatever happened long ago is happening now.

The ultimate reality is the immediate present. When the mind stops chasing things it cannot grasp – like the edge of the universe or the depths of pure consciousness – it finally settles into the only thing that actually exists … now.

The illusion of the past is the illusion of time. What we call ‘long ago’ only exists right now as a memory or light travelling through space. The past has no independent existence; its ripples are entirely contained within this very moment.

The trap of over-thinking creates concepts, philosophies and scientific models which are just speculations. Trying to think our way into the infinite just creates mental noise and mental dis-ease.

By letting go of our need to solve the incomprehensible,
we bypass the intellect and land directly in experience.

The only constant in experiences is consciousness.

When resting in pure consciousness,
we are incomprehensible.
😀

(This is why there is no point in looking for something different)

Being Aware Of Awareness Versus Being Awareness

A very subtle difference.

Being aware of awareness is a split, a duality;
we (consciousness) are observing being aware.

Purely being awareness is non-duality;
there is just consciousness.

This can only be realised in non-meditation.
Non-meditation is the moment we drop the meditation.
We stop doing, and just be.

Being Taken In By Daily Life Maintains The Illusion

When daily life becomes mechanical, these habits dictate our attitude, locking us into a fixed way of thinking that cuts us off from our true reality. We become busy bees, exhausting our life until death do we part.

We then look back at life and ask, “What was that all about?”

Breaking free from this machinery doesn’t require dismantling our entire life; the past is the past, and we recognise that it was part of our process.

Real change happens through intentional disruption. We just have to stop and ask, “What is this life all about? My desires?”

To ask this question, we have to stop for a moment.

That is meditation – simply turning the screen off to observe our mind falling back into its natural state of silent, conscious awareness.

“What have I been doing? What have I done?”

From the moment we’re born, we are conditioned to look outwards, building an identity based on our name, role, body and thoughts with the purpose of impressing others.

We become so completely absorbed in our story that we forget or ignore that we are actually just the screen upon which the story is projected.

Before we are a worker, a partner, an age, or a gender, we are simply the space that allows those experiences to happen. That empty space is pure consciousness. There is so much innocent love there, but it’s turned towards us – our construct.

When we strip away these layers of conditioning, the relationship between our daily identity and our true nature becomes clear – these layers are our teacher/guru, showing what to transcend.

Shifting from “I am this person doing these things” to pure consciousness, our purpose in life and the way we relate to everydayness changes.

The daily routine stops being a cage
and simply becomes the path to enlightenment.

That is the purpose of life.

Pointing To Consciousness And Missing The Point

A couple of days ago, there was an article here about the finger pointing to the moon as consciousness, and mistaking the finger (instruction) for consciousness itself.

Just in case this vital point was missed, here it is again. 🙂

The Finger Pointing To The Moon

Religions start with someone looking directly at the moon (pure consciousness).

Every major spiritual tradition begins with a founder who has a direct experience of reality – a moment of profound awakening or divine revelation.

That original moment is the moon.
The problem starts the very next day.

Because that raw experience is impossible to hand over to someone else directly, followers build a framework around it to try and recreate it. They write down rules and rituals, and build institutions.

That framework is the finger.

Over generations, the original experience fades into history, and the institution becomes the form, the finger. At that point, preserving the organisation and enforcing dogma and behaviour onto the followers becomes the entire focus.

People get so caught up defending specific words written in a book that they completely lose the compassion and humility that the book was actually pointing towards.

Now, institutions and religions are almost entirely about looking at the finger, but if we strip away the history, the politics and guilt, we actually find the core instruction that was originally designed to help us look past all of it.

Do we think it’s possible for people to find that original moon experience inside a traditional religion today? Or do we have to leave the institution behind to find it?

We Don’t Have To Be Great Meditators

We don’t have to be great meditators, sitting cross-legged for hours and hours.

We just ‘get it’ when meditation reveals that we are empty cognisance which carries on throughout daily life. We are mindful of what we do and say so as not to disrupt harmony, and reduce the effects of karma – previous actions that caused suffering.

The essence of non-dual meditation is not a marathon endurance test, but a shift in recognition. Empty cognisance points to the ultimate nature of mind of pure consciousness; it is completely empty of concepts, yet awake and aware.

Instead of isolating this state to hours spent on a cushion, the most powerful approach is short moments, many times. Throughout the day, we take a few seconds to entirely drop whatever we are doing, mentally. We learn to pause for a moment to recognise that we’ve been caught and held.

Use a prompt: going through a doorway, glancing out of a window, looking up at the sky … these are all moments of gap.

We are not trying to clear our mind; there is simply recognition of the open knowing space that is already present, beneath the noise.

Rather than trying to stop our thoughts, we are merely aware. Awareness is more important than the thing we’re doing, because the awareness keeps us focused and concentrated … and safe. 🙂 Even one conscious breath can serve as a complete check on reality. It acts as a bridge to pull us out of mental time travel and back into the vividness of the present moment.

We don’t need to exit our daily life to find stillness. By letting go of the expectation of perfect or lengthy meditation sessions, the pressure lifts. Meditation stops being one of the chores on our to-do list and instead becomes the quiet, spacious ground we walk on all day long.

NB: there was no mention of rituals. 🙂

The Mind Is Full Of Illusions

The mind has a supply of illusions that we refill and reinforce every day.

Thoughts have no reality.
Words have no reality.

Reality refers to the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they are imagined or perceived.

Whatever we think is observed by the essence of mind – consciousness. Our suffering is all in the mind, and this affects our life and the lives of those around us. Our mind is just luggage. Of course the body suffers, but consciousness doesn’t – it just observes joy and pain.

Consciousness isn’t clever, but when it clings to ideas or emotions, it becomes over-excited. When we identify strongly with thoughts, we build a heavy luggage of worry, regret and anxiety that alters our perspective and inadvertently hurts us and the people around us.

Thoughts are based on desire/attraction/hope, aversion/repulsion/fear, confusion/inertia/ignorance.
The antidote is direct perception = pure consciousness.

Objective reality = what is.
This is the physical world that exists, independent of our mind.

Subjective reality = what we think.
This is the reality created by our mind.

Ultimate reality = the underlying space in which everything happens.
This is the silent, unchanging awareness that observes both the objective physical world and the subjective mental world.

When we believe our mind is reality,
we’re believing in illusions.

Interacting With Mental Boundaries

We all talk from a limited library of assumptions due to a lack of experience – and especially a lack of conscious awareness.

People are just repeating machines/biological AI. Even when they’re considered to be ‘experts’, they’re not experts outside their field of expertise. ‘Experts’ may carry a tone of authority – the same as ‘celebrities’ and ‘gurus’ – which makes their biological repetition uniquely deceptive.

When we realise pure consciousness, all we do is learn and verify; we have no time to claim.

Ordinary human nature comprises cognitive limitations, the trap of intellectualism and gossip. We’re either those repetitive machines (the intellect) or experiential knowing (pure consciousness).

When we observe human interactions in society, they look less like a collection of unique individuals and more like an array of pre-programmed options. Most human communication is not born from active real-time awareness; it is born from pattern recognition and data retrieval – that biological AI.

People can only speak from the sum of their conditioned programming, their upbringing, their media consumption and their immediate culture.

Because very few people actively expand their library through deep internal enquiry or varied experiences, they default to a tiny subset of ideas. The average human mind takes an input, scans its historical database for a socially acceptable or habitual response, and regurgitates an output. It feels like a conversation, but it’s actually just two biological algorithms running predictive models on each other. 🙂

In pure consciousness, we stop identifying with our library of presumptions; we realise that the library is just a tool. It’s not what we are. Thus, we move from accumulation to empty awareness. Instead of blindly adopting beliefs, we view everything as data to be verified through direct experience. If it can’t be realised in present moment reality or universal truth, it’s discarded as just noise.

Realising this can feel isolated as we see how socially robotic most daily interactions are. It is, however, also deeply liberating.

Once we recognise the mental boundaries of others,
we learn to navigate around their libraries
without getting tangled in their limitations.

This shift from being a repeating machine
to living pure consciousness moving through the world
is our teacher.

Are We The Baddies?

🙂
Have you ever thought you’re on the wrong side?

We take it for granted that we are the good. Well, we follow all the rules, don’t we? Have you ever considered that the rules are effectively to keep us in quarantine, because if we woke up, we might be contagious? 🙂

A healthy introspection and the sudden, uncomfortable realisation that a group or belief might actually be causing harm is enlightening. If the rules are there to keep us safe but they also limit our perception, how would we ever truly know whether our actions are beneficial or not?

Trusting our gut when a group feels ‘off ‘ isn’t being cynical; it is a vital survival mechanism. True growth makes people more grounded, relatable and authentic, not strange or more detached.

If a person’s eyes look as if they are permanently staring at a horizon that only they can see or if they are looking through you rather than at you, it’s a massive red flag indicating that they’ve stepped into a mental quarantine.

This is a terrifying cycle to watch because it feels entirely robotic. We aren’t interacting with a human being who’s listening and responding to us; we’re interacting with a psychological boundary that is constantly switching between sleep mode and active defence mode.

Goodies listen.

Baddies assume that they listen,
while waiting for their turn to speak.
🙂

How Do You Know You Aren’t Brainwashed?

The moment when you realise that you are.
🙂

The paradox of psychological conditioning is that we can’t truly know that we’re brainwashed until the precise moment we begin to realise that we are. “Oh, they want me to believe this!?”

A fully conditioned mind experiences that conditioning as absolute, unshakeable truth and not as propaganda. “I know because it says so in a book”. The moment a doubt creeps in, or we begin to question the validity of our own thoughts, that conditioning begins to fracture.

The initial awareness that “maybe I’m wrong” isn’t a sign of weakness; it is the first measure of actual sovereignty.

Take some time and space to be alone with your thoughts, away from the constant barrage of repetitive messaging, to see what is true and what is merely assertion.

Cultivating open mindedness is looking for evidence that explicitly challenges our view. If we find ourselves avoiding alternative perspectives, we should ask ourself what we’re afraid of discovering.

Take it for granted that your mind is brainwashed.
Look at it.
Realise that which acknowledges that consciousness has been diverted.

Meditation clarifies consciousness by merely resting in awareness.

The Finger Pointing To The Moon

Religions start with someone looking directly at the moon (pure consciousness).

Every major spiritual tradition begins with a founder who has a direct experience of reality – a moment of profound awakening or divine revelation.

That original moment is the moon.
The problem starts the very next day.

Because that raw experience is impossible to hand over to someone else directly, followers build a framework around it to try and recreate it. They write down rules and rituals, and build institutions.

That framework is the finger.

Over generations, the original experience fades into history, and the institution becomes the form, the finger. At that point, preserving the organisation and enforcing dogma and behaviour onto the followers becomes the entire focus.

People get so caught up defending specific words written in a book that they completely lose the compassion and humility that the book was actually pointing towards.

Now, institutions and religions are almost entirely about looking at the finger, but if we strip away the history, the politics and guilt, we actually find the core instruction that was originally designed to help us look past all of it.

Do we think it’s possible for people to find that original moon experience inside a traditional religion today? Or do we have to leave the institution behind to find it?

What Is Proxy?

A proxy is a stand-in, someone who acts as a substitute or representative for something else.

It’s a tool designed to bridge a gap when the real thing is too far away, too complex or too confusing to access directly.

This is where our problems start. When we use a proxy, we’re accessing an intercessor and therefore, we have to trust external interpretation. Or do we? Others’ views are a start, but they end up being claustrophobic and wordy.

The real thing is closer than we think; it’s what we are and always have been. Once we know we are pure consciousness, we don’t need others to tell us this using different words which cause us to doubt.

The opposite to proxy is direct connection.
We are already that.

The Proxy Trap

Proxy: the authority to represent someone

The proxy trap is the ultimate metaphor for our blind spot. The moon is the ultimate truth or reality, while the finger is the proxy.

When a finger points towards the horizon, the goal is for you to look past the finger and at the moon. But instead, humanity has a historical habit of stopping at the finger; it analyses the fingernail, builds a temple around the finger, and starts a conflict with anyone pointing in a different direction.

The tragic irony of the proxy trap is that the closer people look at the finger, the more convinced they are that they’re studying the moon.

So the problem is the ‘teacher’, the organisation, the followers … and us.

The Word Consciousness Is Not In Any Bible

The word ‘consciousness’ does not appear in the Bible in any traditional translation.
Bibles are just words, and words divert consciousness.

When we become conscious, we become awake.
When we argue about words, it is words that are still controlling the way we think.
(And now we have AI doing.)

We are consciousness.
If consciousness is controlled by words, we are controlled.

It’s an underhanded game.
🙂

Being Watched, Being Predicted

Profiling is used to predict and subtly influence our future consumer behaviour – the ideas to which we conform. As long as we play their games, we’re hooked.

Here’s the trap.
Once we recognise that we’re being played and react, we are still wriggling on the hook.

Here’s the reality.
Stop wriggling. There is no game. There is no hook.

Believing that there is is the illusion of suffering.
Dropping out of the game is freedom from belief.

We still have to live in the world of games,
but we have no intention of trying to win.
😀

The State Of Our Mind

Whatever we fill our minds with affects the way in which we live our life and how we interact. The essence of mind is pure consciousness; it’s the clarity, confidence and inner peace of our natural state.

But when we look around us, we see nothing but anxiety and agitation which leads to conflict. In other words, suffering, covered up by lethargic tittle-tattle. This is our collective cage or dungeon.

People often say, “I am my mind”. What they are actually saying is, “I am what has influenced me.”

Compassion is the wisdom of understanding the phrase, “for they know not what they do” – or say. 🙂

The More We Realise, The More Everyone Is Strange

The closer we look at humanity, the ‘normal’ dissolves into an illusion. The more we realise how misguided people are, the more we understand how everyone is strange.

When we look past the surface level of daily life, we realise that most of us are merely functioning at a consumer level. Just look at all forms of entertainment offered by the media which dictate what people talk about.

We are enlightened beings being fooled. Who talks about consciousness? We talk about other names for consciousness which make it sound mysterious and other worldly – and more entertaining. And that’s how we miss the point.

Once we realise that we are, in essence, pure consciousness, life is totally different. We accept information with a dose of doubt and a pinch of salt because we realise that the source might be exaggerated or mistaken, or may be sharing unverified information.

We should be spiritual engineers, taking the mind apart and understanding how it works (or doesn’t 🙂 ).

This is why everyone is our teacher, reminding us that although we are all Buddha nature, we’re also deluded.

The Antidote To Not Knowing Is Knowing

If we ask people about knowing, they’ll say, “I know this, and I know that.” This is the collective trap of samsara. People talk about things they’ve learnt, but this is not knowingness. The faculty to know is consciousness itself.

To just know, consciousness must be untainted which is the very simple practice of just seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching without comment.

Our problem is having pride in whatever we think we know as that limits pure knowingness. We make life far too complex for our own good.

Meditation is recognising the presence of knowingness. In post meditation, we then become mindful of everything we do and say, thus remaining in the continuity of the practice.

When we know what we are rather than what we’re supposed to be, we are no longer an impression, a mould, an imitation.

In the moment of knowingness,
we know nothing.

🙂

Tenacity Rewards

Realisation of our true essence is not an accidental epiphany; it is a profound transformation arising through rigorous unyielding practice. There are steps or levels to transcend, but this isn’t about something to learn. It’s about the quality of observation or consciousness – whether it’s pure or not so pure – which is expressed in our conduct,.

Just reading and repeating words doesn’t butter the potatoes.Reading and repeating is just looking at the recipe.

We have to actually taste the potatoes.
Tasting is direct, unmediated experience of pure observation.

When we’ve finished eating, we wash the dishes with soap.
This is the rigorous work of purification, confronting our conditioning and doing the heavy lifting of self-inquiry.

The soap is then rinsed off.
The final stage is non-attachment, where even the concept of being a practitioner is let go, leaving only pure, unobstructed presence.

Once this is realised, we can look intuitively behind the scenes.
That is the reward.
🙂

Too Dry Or Too Wet

Some teachers want to be our chum, and some are just about text. Neither of these is the middle way.

A teacher must make sure we get it (unless we aren’t actually listening and just ‘taking in the experience’). They should actively check for our understanding, adapt to the room, and pause when they see blank stares.

Teaching is a two-way street. If a student is just taking in the experience like a passive spectator at a cinema, even the best teacher can’t force the information to stick.

We have to pay to hear a teacher, and a teacher needs an audience that isn’t scared away. 😀
The best thing about not being a teacher is that there are things we can say that a teacher can’t.

Spiritual Intellectualism

A teacher can cause inadvertent harm by simply parroting texts, reciting complex philosophies and passing down lineages without grounding students in the raw messy reality of daily life. 🙂

This creates an illusion of Dharma, because it looks and sounds holy, but doesn’t actually encourage compassion and empathy in personal communications – just intellectual conflict.

The illusion arises when people collect high-level empowerments, memorise complex Sanskrit or Tibetan terms, debate intricate philosophy and, as a result, feel spiritually advanced.

(This the same as photo-realistic painting – it’s very clever and very beautiful, but it says nothing except how clever the artist is.)

Such an approach manifests as spiritual materialism as it turns a path of inner transformation into an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time.

Confidence is the satisfaction of tried and tested.
Only then do we know and can be helpful to others.

That’s what happiness is.

Our Life Is The Result Of Our Past Decisions

Our decisions are the result of our environment which gives rise to our desires and aversions – our likes and dislikes, and that which we don’t care about.

It’s harsh to realise that the purpose of life is to tidy ourselves up, and change the direction in which we are going. And if we’ve changed direction, to refine it.

This is not about blaming our past; it is about our capacity to look at our thoughts and ask if they are actually true, or just inherited.

When we decide to change direction, we must be aware of the momentum of our past choices. This requires taking absolute ownership of our life right now, accepting that while we may not be responsible for our conditioning, we are entirely responsible for our healing – and our next step.

This Will Either Liberate Or … ?

The first three pieces of advice from the Kalama Sutra
could upset some people.

The Kalama Sutra is a famous discourse of the Buddha, found in the Anguttara Nikaya of the Pali Canon. Often called the ‘Buddha’s Charter of Free Enquiry’, it offers a guide on how to evaluate spiritual and ethical teachings.

The Buddha advised not to accept a teaching simply out of:

• Hearsay or oral tradition
• Lineage or past habit
• Scriptural or textual authority

It’s worth considering the consequences of these pieces of advice … Even though this was meant for beginners, it applies to any of us who think we’re more advanced.

When You Get To Heaven …

When you get to heaven,
what are you going to do?

The same as you’re doing now?
If so, then heaven is now.

The Most Profound Advice

Our understanding of the profound advice of the Buddha will depend on our background and the build-up to this moment. For me, it was realising that suffering was due to the environment we lived in which created mental disorientation.

So the Buddha’s statement, “Do not take my words for the truth: test them for yourself” hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d been following others who knew the right vocabulary but had little or no empathy; they were hollow-sounding boards.

After observing and analysing the Buddha’s advice, “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it ”, we discover that we are the truth we seek. We realise that we are the living Dharma, and aspire to that which agrees with reason and is conducive to the good of all.

The Buddha advises not to accept a teaching simply out of:

• Hearsay or oral tradition
• Lineage or past habit
• Rumour or public opinion
• Scriptural or textual authority
• Mere logic or surmise
• Inferred reasoning
• Analogies or superficial thought
• Personal views or preferred theories
• A speaker’s apparent competence
• The thought, “This ascetic is our teacher”

Liberation occurs because this advice hands the authority of truth back to us. We are the alpha (the beginner) and omega (the conclusion). When we stop following people who are just echoing what they think they should say, we finally open the door to a place of genuine, tested truth and deep empathy.

Confidence Has No Attitude

Confidence has no attitude or orientation towards others’ behaviour. It merely notes. True confidence generates ultimate empathy in understanding why something or someone is a certain way.

Confidence in the Dharma is just perceiving / pure awareness / pure consciousness without any attitude. It’s that simple.

Perception being just present is the ultimate realisation of reality.

“That’s boring.”
That’s our problem.
🙂

The ego craves drama, narrative and stimulation. When we’re told that ultimate reality is simply being present without any attitude, the mind labels that as boring.

But it is precisely beyond that boredom where genuine peace and unshakeable confidence reside.

The Awe-ful Teacher

Awe is a feeling of profound respect, wonder and reverence, often mixed with a touch of fear. We experience it when we encounter true power. Joining a new spiritual group can inspire awe initially, but the illusion often fades when we realise that the members are just people whose actions don’t always match their words. When this initial awe vanishes, it’s time to look more closely.

At this point, everyday life becomes our root teacher, shifting us from intimidation to liberation. We cease to be dependent and realise that, while we may feel small, we are the ultimate truth.

From one perspective, a spiritual teacher must be intimidating to be effective. Pleasant words merely trap us in sentimental intellectualisation. True transformation requires a force strong enough to shatter our defensive ego through encouragement and compassion. I once had a Tibetan teacher who admitted that he was intimidated by his own master because he knew that if he asked a question, he would have to obey the answer. Be careful what you wish for! 🙂

Without a disruptive force, the defensive ego can easily ignore a gentle teacher. True presence demands absolute attention. In this light, a guru mirrors a vast, uncompromising and terrifying universe to break down our psychological walls.

Conversely, true vulnerability also requires a safe environment. Many masters teach that you can’t identify and surrender your deepest fears in a state of constant anxiety – the practice of meditation is essential. Witnessing someone who has achieved perfect stillness is awe-inspiring.

Ultimately, the ideal approach depends entirely on the student. Some need a quiet space to unfold; others need the wool pulled from their eyes.

When we’re balanced right on the edge of understanding, a tiny nudge is all it takes to turn overwhelming doubt into incredible wonder, bringing the relief of total release. 🙂

Not Seeing The Forest For The Trees

Not realising the truth of consciousness
for the words about consciousness.

This idiom describes losing sight of the big picture because we’re bogged down by minor details. Once we see the big picture, insight dawns.

Just as thousands of individual trees obscure the vastness of the forest, the constant chatter of the mind obscures the underlying field of consciousness.

The trees are our daily thoughts, anxieties, memories and sensory inputs. They are loud and fast-moving, and demand our immediate attention.

The forest is the silent, expansive space of awareness in which those thoughts arise.
When we over-identify with every passing thought, we forget that we are the sky, not the weather.

To see the forest, we must step back from the individual trees.

To experience the truth of pure awareness,
we must step back from the noise of words and thoughts.

Zooming out is meditation.

The Catch In The Bardo = The Winds Of Karma

Wherever we think we’re going after death, nothing is a certainty. It’s the same as wondering what will happen tomorrow. We just believe.

While the Bardo text says that, after death, a being has the capacity for instant astral travel and immense clarity, there is a major catch: stability.

Unless the individual is a highly trained meditator or an awakened being, consciousness in the bardo is described as being like a feather swept up in a hurricane, driven helplessly by the winds of karma – our untamed mind.


Instead of systematically exploring the universe or initiating stable contact with other realms, it is said that an untrained mind is quickly overwhelmed by vivid karmic hallucinations and an intense pull toward their next rebirth.

Emulate the duck; all that occurs is like water off its back.
Every droplet of noise, stress, or judgement that assaults the mind
rolls away harmlessly.
🙂

It doesn’t matter what happens in the Bardo;
we can train right here, right now.

Watered-Down Dharma

It’s easily done.

Dharma is active consciousness. When Dharma manifests as form and ritual, it then becomes reactive Dharma. We transition from active to reactive when intellectual comfort replaces sincere enquiry and genuine generosity, patience, morality, discipline and concentration, which leads to transcendent wisdom.

Dharma requires a wakeful, receptive mind that is free from prejudice and conditioning.

When consciousness falls asleep, Dharma hardens into form, ritual and separation.
Practice degrades into unconscious physical and verbal routines.

Rather than purifying the mind, this watered-down version turns people into dogmatists; a person who treats protocols as absolute truths that can never be questioned or adapted.

Dharma is undiluted awareness
living in the moment now,
not in the past.

The Constants

There are certain constants in the universe: space, dust/gases, the laws of attraction and repulsion (magnetism) and consciousness. Are they interconnected?

Unenlightened consciousness looks for a home – a planet, a host; the right conditions according to karma, which is personal propensities. This is the purpose of ordinary existence in the infinite universe … survival.

For a practitioner, a home is no longer necessary. When we are content, we have no needs. This is enlightened purpose in the infinite universe.

The vicious cycle of existence is hell.
Realising this is heaven,
as we know what we’re working with.

Gurus Are People, And People Are Gurus

Gurus repeat text; people are practical text in all conditions.

While gurus repeat text for us to digest, our observation of ordinary people’s reactions puts those words into context.

Insight doesn’t belong to a special class of enlightened elite. Instead, life’s most profound insights come from pure observation of completely ordinary people who aren’t trying to teach us anything.

When we’re listening to someone talking, we are observing our own flaws.

Stripping away the grand titles and the pedestals, the only insight that actually changes our life is the insight we develop.

A guide can point at a path, but they cannot walk it for us.

Doubt And Confidence

Confusion can arise in our mind when we have either too much doubt or too much confidence.

Too much doubt inhibits progress as we overthink something, and too much confidence hinders progress as we rely on past assumptions rather than what we are experiencing.

The answers are always in front of us, whether we like it or not. We just don’t need to panic. 🙂 In creating space and time to review a situation, an answer will pop up if we have the patience for brain and mind to adjust.

Wisdom is knowing that doubt is present. It’s the ability to step outside our thoughts and observe them without judgement. Healthy doubt is a caution mechanism. The trouble only starts when we mistake our assumptions for absolute truth.

In wisdom, we simply ask our mind what and why.

The practice of releasing fixations is exactly how resilience is built. Pure consciousness has no doubts, and nor does it lack confidence. It just sees. Remaining in the space of cognisant emptiness, something always occurs, creating the release of little eureka moments.

Having Someone To Talk To

Making a connection.

It’s important to have someone to talk to, rather than just quoting text at one another. Finding a person who can actually listen is rare. We all spend our lives talking, but never in any depth. Why not? We feel vulnerable, and this is fear.

Our problem as humans is that if a conversation goes too deep, we think we’ve said too much and so we back-pedal and never talk about such matters again.

When we’re looking for someone to talk to, we aren’t seeking an audience or to be competitive; we are looking to share. Finding a true listener is rare because most people listen with the intention of replying rather than the intention to understand. True active listening requires a person to put their own ego, advice and judgement aside.

If someone seems to be listening but is merely waiting for their turn to speak, it shuts down the safety required for the other person to go deeper.

Don’t expect others to understand. Even gurus can’t do that. They only want to get you back in line … been there, felt that.

So we continue in our silent mind-scape,
looking for tell-tale signs that someone is open.
🙂

It’s an unenlightened world,
so we drop all expectations.
🙂

Even teachers cannot listen
as they’re busy performing.
🙂

Mistaking Distractions For Purpose

We live a life of reactions, mistaking immediate distractions and external demands for our true purpose. We may think we’re doing our duty, but duty to what? Job? Family? Culture?

When inner peace and clarity are absent, our focus is scattered, and we’re easily pulled in all directions, defined by other people’s whims and fixations. We can either become excited by these activities, or bored.

Without clear inner awareness, we find ourselves caught in a cycle of constant motion without any true fulfilment. To avoid the discomfort of quiet reflection, we engage in perpetual busy-ness, mistaking a full schedule for a meaningful life.

Borrowed goals such as careers, lifestyles, or material gain are milestones which society says are desirable, but we don’t feel complete – even when we achieve them. And so, we need another hit.

Emotional fragmentation occurs where every minor setback, external opinion or unexpected shift in our environment dictates our mood and choices, leaving us feeling unstable and ungrounded.

Ultimately, without stillness, we don’t choose our path; our distractions choose it for us.

We need to protect our focus when our environment gets chaotic. The moment we value our reality of empty cognisance, we arrive at what we’ve been looking for – the purpose of life.

If we don’t feel this is good enough, the cyclic search continues, because we prefer the journey to the arriving – arriving at where we’ve always been. 🙂

We Adopt A Story

When we don’t know what we are, we use our history to create a persona for ourselves. This happens when we’re very young through good and bad trauma. “Good boy!” and “Bad boy!” creates a ghost of an identity. We wear this mask our entire life and die, not knowing that our nature is divine splendour, which has nothing to do with religion.

Divine splendour is clarity and happiness for no reason. It’s our natural essence, before the mind steps in, and is unconditional in that it doesn’t rely on the ‘right’ conditions.

We believe that we’re somehow more interesting, so we maintain an act to feel better about ourselves. This is conditioning. It doesn’t matter how clever we think we are – this is a condition to fool others. When we realise we are unconditioned being, we’re free to exhaust all karma – the effects of previous actions – and loosen the grip of samsara, the vicious cycle of existence.

As long as we believe, we will lack clarity because we live in a duality.
Clarity is happiness for no reason.

Sanity Is Wisdom

When wisdom is lacking, so is sanity.

We see the political, scientific and religious madness of massive egos reflected everywhere – even in ordinary people’s conversations. There is a completely disconnection from reality; we know that wisdom is lacking and so, therefore, is sanity.

In the recognition of this state of affairs, there must be some element of wisdom present, however vague.

It is in this arena where evil and good meet – to distract or to point out.

People’s minds are a precarious business as they have options.
Is life becoming worse, or are we noticing more?

Sociology And The Dharma

Sociology is the study of how people behave.
Dharma is the study of why people behave.

The nature of constructs
and the nature of reality.

Although an excellent method to clear the mind of social engineering, just sitting on a cushion and meditating doesn’t address the cause of being a construct and behaving a certain way. Even in our understanding of meditation, we all have an attitude. 🙂

We have to understand that the reason we are the way we are is because we have already been influenced. We’re not just a constructed identity; we comply with a collective ideology of ‘better yourself to be better than others’.

Sociology is looking at the constructs.
Dharma is looking at sociology.

If sociology is the study of how human constructs such as institutions, norms and social roles shape our reality, then the Dharma evaluates the ethical and existential purpose of those very constructs.

Without sociology, Dharma can become rigid ritualism, detached from changing social realities. Without Dharma, sociology can become a cynical observation, lacking a transcendent method for how humanity can actually live in harmony.

Sociology exposes our man-made rules.
Dharma should provide the moral compass to ensure those man-made rules serve a higher, harmonious purpose.

Living In Our Bubble

Living in the bubble of our mind points to a rigid structure of predictability, and is a tell-tale sign of pride.

When we steer a conversation back to what we know – our favourite topics – during unrelated discussions, this to regain a sense of control and superiority, thus maintaining our bubble.

As long as we are materially minded, we will fight to protect our fragile bubble. Showing a low tolerance for nuance, we reduce situations to right or wrong, black or white, therefore we have little empathy.

In reality, outside our bubble we are free to experience the experience itself; this is pure consciousness.

Outside the bubble
we’ve moved from a material mind
to a conscious mind.

Feedback Is Vital For Progress

We learn through others’ responses to us. Our reaction to that response should be non-judgemental and objective. Whether that reaction is positive, negative or neutral, it’s all about what happens in our mind.

When we see that someone can’t cope, we don’t use this against them. We recognise that we all hold collective ideas in our minds: we want something, we don’t want something, or we are indifferent.

We very rarely meet anyone who feels the same way as us, as we all have personalised luggage. 🙂

Feedback is one of the most powerful tools for growth. When we view this purely objectively rather than as a personal judgement, feedback loses its ability to hurt, and instead becomes a clear mirror reflecting our reactions back to us and, in turn, reflecting on the situation.

This is the core principle of emotional intelligence, separating the message from the ego. When we realise that other people’s reactions are simply a reflection of their own internal states – their desires, fears, or indifference – we can meet them with empathy instead of defensiveness.

This mindset shifts our focus from “Am I good enough?” to “What can be learnt from this interaction?”

Pure Consciousness Is Innocent

We all know – we have always known – but were led to believe instead.

Our original state of pure consciousness merely observes, but because it ignores its original state, it becomes caught up in ideologies – the science of ideas and beliefs that shapes how individuals and groups influence collective action.

We’ve been made to measure, suited to fit in, dressed up to please and plonked on a conveyor belt of indoctrination when, all along, we are innocent of contrivances.

In being made to fit in, we lose all sense of morality. We play act through fear and hope, while ignoring that we are knowingness itself.

Don’t let ideologies pull the wool over your eyes.

The Ultimate Psyops

The most dangerous thing about AI is that it makes people doubt everything and/or become dependent. Once we accept that AI is all knowing, it can also change the meaning of words – without us noticing.

When everything can be faked, people throw their hands up and assume the truth is completely unknowable.

This is exactly what developers have created. If the public decides that the government, media, photos etc are all equally likely to be AI-generated lies, then accountability completely disappears.

When we know what we are,
we know what others are – or aren’t.

🙂

Waking Up Is Disturbing

When we wake up to our true reality of pure consciousness, we see what motivates people: desire, aversion and ignorance. Communication seems impossible because there’s no clarity as they’re still governed by whatever they like, don’t like or choose to ignore.

When we wake up to our true reality, empathetic compassion arises, but the form this takes will depend on the level of our understanding, and our ability to communicate.

Waking up is disturbing because we see the limited world of things we can and can’t talk about, according to social etiquette. Societal interaction never comes to completion as it’s stifled by ritual.

Dismantling the comforting illusions of the collective mind is an enlightening shock, in the sense of being in it but not governed by it. We’re no longer part of the noise.

That constant shock is the price of clarity.

When we step outside the collective mind,
we lose the comfort of shared narratives
but gain mastery of our own insight.