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.

How Is Consciousness Happiness?

How is consciousness happiness?
Happiness is realising the answer to our reality.

Whatever appears, physically or in the mind, is observed by consciousness.
No consciousness; no point to anything.

When pure observation is taking place – without comment – there is nothing else going on.
That is pure consciousness, our ultimate reality of divine light.
In this, there is no time for an observer, just pure observation.

Why divine? Divine means godlike – beyond mortality.
Everything changes, except consciousness, space and formula (that which creates form).

What created that formula?
Attraction and repulsion – magnetism.

Magnetism: a physical phenomenon produced by the motion of electric charge, which results n attractive and repulsive forces between objects produced by electrons orbiting within the atoms; in most substances, the magnetic effects of different electrons cancel each other out, but in some, such as iron, a net magnetic field can be induced by aligning the atoms.

In an infinite universe, magnetism just is. There is stuff flying through space which becomes attracted to bigger stuff; it wants to repulse, and is thus suspended in orbit. When enough big stuff collides, big bangs occur, and a solar system evolves. Conditions are then conducive for simple organisms to take form; these attract consciouses – and there we are, flying around the infinite universe, looking for a home.

Realising the answer is happiness.
It is we who have to take responsibility for our life,
and where we land up.
🙂

Of course, you can believe in something else…

Becoming Annoyed

We become annoyed, upset or anxious when something happens which we feel isn’t ‘right’, and we might be able to do something about it.

If, however, we see that every thing isn’t right, we can’t do anything about it. We’ve discovered a pattern, and once we can identify this pattern, there’s no problem, as recognising that pattern is the solution.

Even if our protests change one thing, the next pattern is created. A consciously aware person sees the cycle of all things – the pattern of creating hope and fear. Our everyday likes and dislikes reinforce this annoyance. It’s all our own doing.

In realising what’s going on, we can remain stable, happy in knowing that everything that is wrong is only recognised by the light of clarity. The light in the darkness.

This is what matters.

Reality Beyond Words

Our reality of pure consciousness is beyond words and names.
To experience this reality, we meditate, which is a method to come to mental stillness.

Once still, we drop the method, and rest in pure consciousness, pure awareness.
This is the reality of what we are, beyond who we are.

Thoughts will arise; the discipline is not to follow them.

It may seem like the mind is getting worse. It’s not.
We’re just noticing more, which becomes a way of life.

Hell And Paradise

Hell and Paradise are in the same place
– the mind –
right here, right now, and nowhere else.

Paradise is the pure space of cognisance.
Hell is whatever we put into that space.

If we are discontented, we are in Hell.
If we are contented, we are in Paradise.

Hoping for something better is a conjured-up fantasy placed in people’s minds.
We only get out of Hell when we recognise that we allowed ourselves to believe.

Just How Gullible Are People?

Gullible: easily persuaded to believe.

How does this happen?
We are led to believe from birth, and we go on believing.

Let’s Start From The Beginning … Again

It’s the place to be!

We want to be happy, but we aren’t. We seek something better, but we can’t find it. We know there is more to us, but we can’t verbalise this. We are dissatisfied with inappropriate rationalisations.

We’re doing exactly what the Buddha did – asking what is happening. But maybe we shouldn’t jump in too quickly for an answer.

There is a reason why we seek something better as there’s so much that disturbs the mind. It is easy to say that the cause of suffering is an identification with a self, but first we have to recognise what this self is, what holds it together and why it causes suffering.

The idea of self
is a programme running in the mind
that consciousness – our true being – clings to.

It is this idea of self that makes us feel vulnerable. We join a tradition or group and immediately we feel like crap – the dregs of beer. 🙂 This feeling of inferiority makes us desperate to appear as if we’re in the know – maybe even over-enthusiastic, zealots!

The start of our investigation is not about joining others; this only leads to conformity. The problem with jumping into a spiritual tradition is we have to lump it or leave it. We can’t question it, and we have to accept everything it says (which is very fishy). A tradition is something set; change isn’t welcome, and why should it be? We have to test the integrity of the atmosphere.

When people think of spirituality, what do they imagine? A beautiful building, rituals, robes, special words, all of which have nothing to do with their daily life? The work is to realise that enlightenment is in everyday action and reaction, and not in chanting or wishful projections.

When speech is limited or there are things we cannot say, we lose the faculty to express how it is for us. We can no longer can think for ourselves, so we borrow from others – and that turns spirituality into spiritual materialism. Unfortunately, this twist puts us in a conundrum.

Our beginning is pure consciousness,
the moment before we believe others.

To recognise evil’s distraction at work in the world,
we merely have to meditate
to see what consciousness clings to.

Consciousness Gives Purpose To Life

It is essential to recognise consciousness which gives purpose to life. Otherwise, we are just being entertained/distracted by those who don’t want us to recognise our true reality. Why not? Because they would have no control over us. Until we know what we are, we’re controlled through the media.

The inter-net catches more fish every day.

The Power Of Entertainment/Education

Entertainment is the ancient craft of communicating by telling stories, be they in images or words. It is the means by which people pass on their cultural values,

The entertainment industry – which has been adapted to suit any scale, even global – has been developed over thousands of years to hold the attention of an audience.

The Difference Between Mimicry And Understanding

Mimicry: quoting and acting like others.
Understanding: direct, raw experience.

Raw: strong and undisguised, frank and realistic.

Meditation In Action

When we hear or read information but don’t have actual experience, we become talkative to compensate for our lack of understanding. We guess, believe, assume, have opinions – all of which are acceptance without experience that leads to pointless talk.

Meditation is silent awareness of thoughts and their effects. Letting go leads to the realisation that we are and have always been that silent awareness. We have arrived, and can therefore drop the method of meditation.

We are not an opinion, an assumption, a belief, a guess.

Transcendent wisdom, beyond normal or physical human experience, has to be practised to be realised. Then we have the ability to deal with situations and people in an enlightened manner.

Listening, seeing, tasting
… without judgement from preconceived ideas …
is meditation in action.

We may then be able to say something worth saying.
🙂

Wearing Our Self Out

There comes a time when we’re fed up with the way we all react. It’s like everyone is addicted to a tradition of some sort to all think the same way. They may seem happy enough – unless they meet someone outside their comfort zone, their familiar world.

Wearing our self out is like wearing out an old coat that no longer fits.

We find life frustrating, going round in circles. Spiritual understanding is also like that. What was satisfying isn’t any longer. We see people stuck in a tradition without questioning it, just seeking validation.

Letting go of this self – this bunch of ideas – is done through simple meditation, stepping outside the familiar playground. Through meditation, panoramic vision develops; it’s like entering a room and taking the whole scene in, before we start deciding what we like and don’t like.

We have to be aware that there will always be a residue from the past interfering with the present, but this is precisely our path to enlightenment.

Don’t Make It Academic Or Religious

Don’t make it academic or religious –
‘it’ being our natural state of pure consciousness.

If we make this into something, we turn off the light of clarity,
and become heavy and serious.

Sanitising Informatiion

Sanitising information is removing data from the mind, and replacing it with another version to make something acceptable/believable. Euphemisms are used to play down information likely to disturb people.

No! Wake them up to the reality!

A lie has to have an element of truth to be believable. We’re told that one thing is reality when, in truth, reality is something else. This has been going on for thousands of years.

What Gives Me Sorrow?

What gives me sorrow?
What gives me joy?

What gives me sorry is the tap leaking and I don’t know why, and I can’t afford a plumber.
What gives me joy is understanding, on investigation, why the tap leaks (limescale in the cartridge) and dissolving it with vinegar.

The problems in the world do not give me sorrow
as there’s nothing I can do about them.

A simple life is a joyous life.

The Unprofitable Workings Of This World

How weary and unprofitable are the workings of this world.
In an unweeded garden, gross things grow.

 (sort of borrowed from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.)

This sentiment turns our mind to deeper things.

Different People Say Different Things

We hear a lot different things, so we have to choose what makes sense to us. The important thing is not to criticise others because that comes from a reaction in our mind, and we all have our personal paths to realise our enlightened essence. Being competitive and arguing is detrimental to everyone’s progress.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t notice other views, we just don’t need to follow them. Sitting in a town square, we see the manifestation of all sorts of decisions walking around. 🙂

Not Believing Can Get You Arrested

The power of belief is to make people stupid.

There are those who believe the world is flat.
To say otherwise is said to cause them harassment, alarm and distress
– which in itself is alarming.

Belief is foisted upon us to make us react.

Fool Me Twice

Fool me once, shame on them.
Fool me twice, shame on me.

After being tricked once, we should learn from our mistakes and avoid being tricked in the same way again. But we’re fooled into reacting, time and time again. It is our reactions that maintain the foolery.

People say words; they are just words.

The importance is in the hearing,
the same as seeing, smelling, touching, tasting.
This is pure perception that cannot be fooled.

The senses do not lie,
interpretations do.

Our Intelligence Reveals Our Stupidity

We may know about this and that,
and even be experts about this and that,
but how much wisdom is there?

How much E.Q. = emotional quotient = control of our mind?

We learn to be followers of I.Q. which is others’ control of our mind.
But that only leads us up the garden path,
rather than the path to enlightenment.
🙂

‘Up the garden path’ refers to being deceived, tricked, or seduced, unwittingly following a ‘false scent’.

What Is the Point Of Miracles?

What’s the point of a rainbow body (where the physical body transmutes into light), walking on water, leaving footprints in rocks … ? When miracles are hearsay, they are pointless. They may be real, but how do we know? We already know because we are knowingness itself, but stories of these miracles make us feel that we’re never good enough (and that is suspicious).

The idea of miracles is fascinating, but not practical. Our path is not in mental and physical gymnastics. The realisation of our true reality of pure consciousness, common to everyone, is all that is needed to traverse our path.

The Wrong Shopping List

Realising our enlightened essence isn’t out of reach; it’s already present. But this essence is piled high with concepts in the mind.

Our problem is eliminating the heap of ideas we’ve borrowed from others’ ‘shopping lists’.

This is why the Buddha said, “Don’t take my words for the truth; test them.”

What Adam And Eve Were Told

When Adam and Eve were told not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, this meant that our pure state of consciousness is beyond good and evil. Good and evil relate to the materialistic world, and the mind of judging and obsessing.

Of course, we need a little ego to decide what is beneficial and what is harmful, but that is merely in order to survive. The very essence of all sentient beings is pure consciousness, beyond the material world and the world of concepts.

‘The fall’ was ignoring our original true reality.
The serpent’s army sees to it that we stay ignorant.

Realisation:
you can turn everything on its head.
😀

We All Suffer From Exaggeration

Exaggeration creates more exaggeration and sentimentality to bolster self-esteem, the building blocks of a demonic mind.

Exaggeration: from Latin exaggerat- ‘heaped up’. Originally meant ‘pile up, accumulate’ – later, ‘intensify praise or blame’.

Exaggeration is the representation of something as more extreme or dramatic than it actually is, and it’s used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression.

Self is exaggerated consciousness.
The opposite is pure consciousness.