The Stainless Sphere of No Circumference
This is mind essence. Pure awareness. Sacred space. It is what we are.
This stainless sacred space embodies, through ignorance, a temporary form as dictated by karma.
Mind essence is pure. Through the bodily senses, we perceive phenomena, which appears in the mind. Therefore, all appearances are first noted in the mind.
If we are aware of our pure nature, these appearances (whether pleasant or unpleasant) appear as energies of light in the first instance. If untouched, these melt into the clear light of pure essence – our clear light of bliss.
If this clear light of bliss becomes attracted to or repelled by external phenomena, it makes illusory appearances seem solid. Essence becomes more attracted to the illusions than to its own nature. Forgetting its own nature, a partial self is created, turning these energies of light into darkness. Through habitual reactions and responses over eons, pure light becomes obscured by our habitual clinging to illusory phenomena.
In an instant, the light can be turned on and all phantoms will disappear. A moment of knowing dispels unknowing. ENLIGHTENMENT IS WHEN THE LIGHT IS PERMANENTLY ON.
We all have different capacities of fluctuating between knowing and not knowing – of the light being turned on and off. And so we live in a flickering world. Our capacity – our flicker rate – will be different in every individual. Our job is to merely recognise. The more we recognise the dark, the more the light is present. It’s simply a matter of not reacting: non-reaction loosens the dark stains created.
The test for this is whether our response has an aftertaste: if we have circling thoughts and fixations, that is merely a partial self clinging (an ego). If the response is stainless, there will be no aftertaste.
The important point to recognise is that these stains are not “bad”. They are merely a recognition of misperception. That recognition is the unity of the two truths, one reflecting the other: recognising the dark is the light itself. Like wetness and water, they cannot be separated.
At this level, there is no good or bad. There is merely misperception or pure perception
We all have an inkling of this truth because we all experience the flicker.
Like a candle inside a clay pot: the light is obscured but once the pot is broken, the light can’t help but shine out.
I like the image of a “flicker” – I’d say this relates to a post you wrote a while back about the veil obscuring our clear vision being fine and almost transparent.
Thanks Tony!