Simplified Dharma.
Our true nature is awareness, pure awareness. That’s what we are! However, most of the time, we are something else: occupied, vacant or asleep. And so we are not aware of awareness. We are only aware of something outside ourselves. We are mainly distracted by clinging to images in the mind, and thereby clinging to an image of ourself which we have acquired: a generated “I”.
The recognition of pure awareness is called Dzogchen practice in the Tibetan Nyingma tradition, referred to as Rigpa. It is not really something that one practises: it is merely recognition of awareness, and in looking at that awareness ‘no thing’ is found. That non-finding is emptiness – your essence – pure awareness.
It’s that simple.
So what’s the problem? Well, we have spent eons either occupied, vacant or asleep, and it has become bit of a habit. So we need methods to cut through these evil habits 😉 That’s all! Evil is only our consciousness (that’s mind activity) clinging to likes and dislikes, because it is ignorant of its true nature. That’s all!
We start by being relaxed about……..everything…….as every thing has no permanent, true existence of its own. Things are created by causes and conditions. They dwell for a while, and then dissolve. Every thing only seems to be real.
The first step is recognising awareness: then we start to wake up. This happens when we recognise that we are suffering, dissatisfied with the illusory dream of being either occupied, vacant or asleep.
The only reality is our pure awareness, which is never born and never dies.
Dharma is cutting through the illusion we currently live in. Whether this illusion is nice or horrid, it is still an impermanent state. If a thing is real, it can never not be real. The only reality is that which is constant – our pure awareness.
Oh, and there is a bonus! When pure awareness is recognised…you can’t help loving. Compassion naturally arises.
This is so simple. In fact, it is our origin. It is being ordinary. So if this is ordinary, what on earth are we doing all the time?! 😉 Playing with whistles and bells and buttons and bows.
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. 
Too much mind and it seems like you are still trying to prove it to yourself. “Go back now to your cave and do not make a sound, make your body like a corpse and your mind like the sky”…
Hello Yeshe Rabsal,
Wonderful advice.
I do not have a cave, I have a tent. 🙂
Tony
Hi Yeshe.
Surely, if we stop “trying to prove it” (I’m assuming you mean the Dharma) to ourselves, trying and testing it, the teaching of the Buddha just become another religion as we’re living on belief.
Kathie
Oh, and Tony, I’d love to see a photo of your tent … 🙂
Lao-tsu and Zhuangsi were a couple of hundred years before the Buddha and separated by the Himalayas, yet they were able to give us proof that what the Buddha would later teach is spot on. The self is what deceives us. Clinging to notions (language, words and preconceptions, is how I imagine Zhuangzi would have put it) is what obscures the Dharma. Each moment is of itself, not what we anticipate before, or describe to ourselves after, it happens.
Hello Pablo,
So too were the Vedas. The Buddha must have known about them.
Our karma makes us predictable as it is a constant re-enactment.
Tony
Is it predictable? Once we become aware, aren’t we able to change its course?
Most are unaware of our habitual attachments i.e. karma. Once we realise that karma is our teacher, karma changes.
Tony
An Arahat, I hear, steps off the wheel of karma. Stops it all together. I understand this is what Theravadans teach.
There are many levels and traditions. Some have a wheel to step off, some realise the wheel never existed. Dzogchen is like that.
Tony
Thanks Tony, for you replies. Dzogchen is the only Buddhist system I haven’t investigated.
Then we have much to discuss! 😀
Tony
Yes.