The right answer may not be the right answer

Actual experience is not the same as received information. It’s easy to mistake the words for the actual experience. Recognising our mind at work at this moment is what it is all about. We need the theory, but we also need to experience.

When we say ’emptiness’ and ’empty’, we mean it is clear and empty of contaminates. Nonetheless, it still has qualities of purity, awareness and unconfined capacity – the three kayas or wisdoms. It’s not ’empty nothingness’. The mind is clear, and that clarity is mind essence. This can easily be recognised when sitting in stillness: when the stillness looks in on itself, it finds not a vacancy, but the qualities of pure awareness, pure perception.

However, our mind is full of continuous thoughts, so we cannot see the wood for the trees! This is why mindfulness training is so important in recognising the clutter and focusing to stop the agitation, which may lead to awareness meditation, and then pure awareness non-meditation.

Our empty essence is aware, and so it experiences. Emptiness is primordial purity and awareness is spontaneous presence. Tulku Urgyen explains this as Trekcho and Togyal– emptiness and experience.

Awareness is the expression of emptiness.
Emptiness is the source of awareness.

It is said that pure perception is Trekcho and Togyal: this is seeing all phenomena as male and female deities, but for the moment, these are only words…! 😉

An example of the right answer not being the right answer:

At a retreat, the Lama asked a question and went round each one of us for the answer. I can’t tell you how desperate I was (and probably the others also) to get the ‘right’ answer. The actual answer was…seeing my pride in wanting to get the right answer!