Buddhism Is Pure Observation
Buddhism isn’t about learning; it is about clarity.
Clarity means divine splendour – not divine cleverness 🙂
Buddhism is pure observation. It’s not a matter of thinking about what is being observed; that is for the religious, and the academics, historians, philosophers, believers and politicians among us.
Pure observation is just pure awareness, pure consciousness.
That is what it’s all about, and in this, there is no observer.
If we identify with an observer, that would – and does – create a duality.
Duality is the condition of this and that, where we oscillate, always judging and comparing, and never come to stillness. It is a condition of poverty or neediness.
Non-duality is just seeing. This is hard to understand for non-meditators – and even for meditators.
Stare at a word on this page.
Don’t try to understand it.
Just be aware of seeing, feeling the body on the chair.
The breath entering the nose.
The sounds around.
There is nothing to think about.
This is pure perception – pure consciousness. There is no ego present, no I. Just consciousness. It’s totally relaxing.
Now continue your day, remembering from time to time to just be.
Short moments, many times, gradually extend.
Remembering is the academic backup system; it’s a copy stored as a memory in the mind so that it may be retrieved when the original is ignored or forgotten. 😀 Academics become so enthralled with text that they forget what it’s really all about, and are on a different path.
Being mindful, we don’t need to remember.
In the moment of pure awareness where we start from emptiness,
all necessary knowledge is available to us.
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. 
My first ‘intense experience’ of (what I later on discovered, is often called ‘Satori’ ) was from a spontaneous staring at a full moon through my living room window years ago…where there was a conscious fully alert seeing, an awareness of watching only, a connection with the moon without any thoughts ‘about’ the moon…with no interference from the one who was watching.
For several minutes the whole experience of the room altered into something that can only be described as a diffused glowing “unreal” space unlike I had ever known, drastically different relative to the usual perception. I continued to work afterwards, still in this state (washing dishes in the kitchen sink), for at least 10 to 15 minutes, then I was back to the ‘normal/ usual kind of perceiving again’.
I could never go back to that same experience again by ‘trying’ to see this way. But spontaneously…rarely, such seeing happens by itself.
Hello Ramble,
This experience is always present … we just get distracted. We’re so attached to the mundane that we miss the supra-mundane. It’s just a matter of becoming more familiar with it, and, in fact, it’s quite ordinary.
One could see this as a blessing of our full potential.
Tony
PS There are experiences in meditation – known as ‘nyam’ – which we do not need to hang on to.
Thank you…yes I have assumed this, although I am perhaps not “centred/grounded/ rooted in the reality” for a constant experience of this yet…but the glimpses give me hope, not to give up, when efforts seem to be futile and frustrating.
🙂
A Zen teacher would probably say, “Stop trying too hard”. 🙂 Tony
Yes…but more often than not, I am guilty for not trying enough 🙂
🙂 really… it’s all about letting go.
We will talk more.
Tony
Thank you! i really appreciate all your pointers 🙂