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.

Transmission And Receptivity

No communication, no transmission, no reception,
no spontaneous insight, no magic, no open mind, no blessings.

An open mind clears all channels.

There Is No Dharma In The Present Moment

In the present moment, there is nothing to hold on to 
– not even the Dharma, words, devotion …
These separate us into a duality – me and something.

The greatest trick evil ever played 
was to make people believe in words. 

The real Dharma is the present moment.
What else is emptiness?
🙂

Dharma without hardship … without anything.

Being Taken Over

Capturing the mind en masse is a war we never noticed.

We don’t notice that we’ve been taken over by a gradual cultural change until it is too late. When people have taken on ideas, they’ve have been assimilated. We’ve been processed. People self-censor without noticing, which means they cannot be honest or trustworthy. Our communication skills are woefully inadequate, and we never realise that there are those who are out-thinking us. 

An example: we may feel good about ourselves playing a game, not realising someone else wrote the rules. We think we know everything because we catch up with the news, not realising that someone chose what we read – and that someone could even be AI nowadays.

We are kept in a maze of concepts. Our culture is being managed in the guise of evolving, but in reality, we are conforming to chaos and conflict, and this will then be used to create more aggressive processing.

When we know our own mind, the essence of which is pure consciousness, we are free to see with clarity – divine splendour. Never say, “I know my own mind.” What is this ‘I’ that knows? 

In the first instant of anger or annoyance, wisdom or pure consciousness is present. Something is seen and the mind brightens – that moment is our reality of divine splendour – but then, our processing kicks in and we are captured again with an emotion, and we react.

We merely have to notice this processing, and we are free. 
Enlightenment is never being taken over by appearances.

What People See And Don’t See

Which is more amazing –
what people see, or what people ignore?

Magic is the art of deception. It has captivated and enthralled us for over 2,500 years. The first recorded magic act was by the magician Dedi, who performed his tricks in Ancient Egypt in 2,700 BCE – and we’ve been watching magic ever since.

The art is not in what is done; it’s in the words, which keep us in thrall. 
Thrall: from Old English thrǣl ‘slave’, from Old Norse thræll.

It takes place in theatres and temples, and on screens. 
Why?
In childhood, we learn to believe, and that stays with us as a trauma.

What Is ‘Going With The Flow’?

Whatever comes our way is due to our previous decisions that cause our re-actions now. It’s our programmed mindset, which is called karma in Sanskrit. Karma is showing us our judgemental re-actions which just create further karma, maintaining our fixated view of life and therefore perpetuating conflict and suffering. 

Whether pleasant or unpleasant, every situation is potentially our teacher to release us from our habitual, limited way of thinking. 

When people assume that there’s only one way to live, they suffer, and think that change isn’t possible. They go up and down, round and round, following adopted ideas. Realisation is working in the opposite direction to this conventional, not-so-merry-go-round

In ‘going with the flow’, life qualities of tolerance, perseverance, discipline, morality, concentration and wisdom develop. These refined qualities let us off the merry not-so-merry-go-round, and we become a witness, rather than witless. 🙂

What Is More Important?

What is more important,
our thoughts or the awareness of those thoughts?

One is our original reality, while the other is our interpretation, 
which is either a generalisation or a fantasy. 

One is the common element that unites us, 
while the other divides us.

When we actually realise what is important,
all conflict stops.

Ideas Separate People

It’s obvious that ideas separate people, but we still cling to our ideas.
Why?

It’s a habit, and it’s wilful – this is me, that’s you – so we appear to different, while in essence we’re not. We all hold on to our ideas because of a subtle fear of being misunderstood.

As long as we hold on to ideas – political, religious, scientific, cultural, racial, social – we take sides, and therefore, we see others as not like us, even if they’re interested in the same subjects as us.

What actually unites us is pure awareness, which is always present before our ideas. but which we ignore. It is this subtle ignorance that causes the conflicts in the world.

Once we cling to an idea about life, we fossilise our self image – this is me, that’s you. Realising what we are is an extremely rare event, where we’re always seeing things afresh. There are no mechanical replies. We ask,“What is this reaction ..?”

In realisation, there is a constant assimilation – an absorption and integration in the process of becoming one with whatever appears. 

The light of clarity acknowledges the darkness;
the darkness reminds the light of our true reality.

The light is the clarity of pure awareness.

Existentialism Is A Misnomer

Existentialism: a philosophical theory which emphasises the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.

The misunderstanding here is that it makes us believe we have free will in our own development, when we are actually puppets to others’ ideas. Existentialism is an illusion promoted by pseudo-intellectuals who think but do not look, and so cannot see.

What is free will?
Is it the mind or consciousness? 

Exist: from Latin exsistere ‘to come into being’. 
What comes into being?
A consciousness governed by emotions of pride, hope and fear…

Our true reality, which is pure consciousness, has the potential of free will only when consciousness realises its true reality, and is no longer governed by others’ thoughts.

It is consciousness that observes the plotting in the mind.

Blaming The Distraction

There is suffering in the world, and we blame the effects but not the actual causes. Nothing just happens; problems are orchestrated by the ‘right elements’ in order to create suffering and produce a desired effect. Why? To control the narrative. We cannot blame nature, so we blame human intervention, but blaming the effect obscures the intention in the cause.

We should never accept whatever we are told as that’s always someone else’s version. The Buddha said, “Don’t take my words for the truth; test them for yourself”. These words were spoken for a very good reason, as adhering to words alone is either misinterpretation or can be used to orchestrate an agenda, whether religious, political or other. If this is true for the Buddha’s words, it’s true for lamas and gurus and philosophers and the presenters of the news – and anyone we meet. They are all echoes. 

Orchestra: Latin from Greek orkheisthai, ‘to dance’.
To dance to someone else’s tune.

Don’t even trust your own mind – it’s reverberating with echoes. Trust pure awareness that is without comment, bringing intuition and insight where no words exist.

The blame game is endemic in life. It’s always someone else’s fault. We are not going to put the world right, as so many take sides and become extremists.

Silent observation is the way: our path.

Is Enlightenment Simple, Or Out Of Reach?

Enlightenment’s simple. 
There is nothing to it! 
🙂

If we become stuck with the idea that our true reality is something out of reach, extra special, secret with complicated rituals, we will remain half-hearted about enlightenment, and enthusiastic about the rituals. There is no potential in this – just hope – when we are already what we seek.

It’s religion that has made enlightenment (or wisdom) an elaboration.

We have a choice. Enlightenment is either something to hear about and chant mantras about, or it is right here, right now, spontaneously present, without an off-switch.

How do we know when we’re enlightened? We’re already enlightened, but we ignore it. 
Pure consciousness is already present, but obscured either by indifference, or enthusiastic performances. 🙂

Between every thought, there is a gap.
We are this gap. 
It’s that simple.

Or we can do more mantras.

How does this seem to you?

Leaving the Auditorium

We live in a theatre, repeating our script every day, and making our entrances and exits. Karma sees to it that we are always on cue, our signal for reaction. All the while, we misuse the space in which we dwell, unable to break out of character.

Conscious awareness stops all acting by asking, “What am I doing here? How did this awful play come about?” 🙂

Realising our true reality of just being (pure consciousness), we are released from the performance. In other words, we’re free. And we realise we are on our own.

The shock is that everyone is on the stage, 
and the audience is the producers 🙂 

The wise have left the auditorium.
Happiness is the relief of not having to do this all again.

Once We Realise The Truth

Once we realise the truth, 
we realise what is a substitute for the truth.

The Pointing Out Instruction And The Realisation

(Previous pointing out instruction at https://buddhainthemud.com/?s=the+pointing+out+instruction)

The way we hear this will depend on our being mentally uncluttered, having the right intention, and being totally confused (which means we aren’t holding on to any ideas. 🙂 )

Maybe it’s a matter of luck, good fortune, right karma that we get it. 🙂

We either get it, allow it to permeate our being or, as happened to me … “Is that all!?” 😀 “Oh, that’s all!” I then spent the next twenty years contemplating it, and the past 11 years writing about it on this blog. 

It is we who have to see, and test it. This has nothing to do with religion; after all, the Buddha wasn’t Buddhist.

It’s all about re-cognising what we already know and what we already are, which we have ignored. It’s what we’ve been looking and longing for. We are what we seek. Different people come at this in different ways.

However, we mustn’t be greedy in thinking that this is a short cut, or get angry or disappointed if we find this is too simple. This entire eleven-year-old blog is about the pointing out instruction, but it’s for the reader to relax and live with.

In front of you is space. Whatever takes place in that space, space doesn’t change. We spend our entire lives enthralled by things in space, while ignoring space. Now look at the mind which is trying to figure it all out. Again, we are enthralled by our thoughts and ideas, while ignoring awareness of these thoughts. Awareness of this commotion in the mind doesn’t change. That unchanging awareness is consciousness. It’s what we are. We’re not all the same consciousness, but we can be at one with each another, and in harmony. 

Being only aware of things in space or the mind is a materialistic view of life. 
Being aware of awareness is the spiritual view of life; this isn’t being religious.

Now the point. 
While consciously aware, we come to realise that there is nothing else. 
Consciousness is empty of thought; that is pure consciousness. 
The true essence of mind is pure consciousness. This is what we are. 
In Sanskrit, it is called ‘shunyata’ – emptiness – which is fully aware because of the presence of clarity. 

The hallmark of realisation is genuine, unconditional, empathetic compassion for others who do not realise this.

I’ve received this instruction many times, the first about twenty years ago. It is something that increases in value, as we see the ramifications of ignorance of this reality in society.

Rather than believing anyone, it’s all about personal practice of pure seeing.

The Satisfaction of Accuracy 

We all have different levels of satisfaction
because of different levels of accuracy.

This is why one person’s satisfaction is another’s poison.
That same poison, conversely, is another’s satisfaction.

Negative emotions (poisons) become wisdom.

The more accurate we are, the more we see life differently.
We can go with the flow.

We Grow When We Feel Uncomfortable

We are sensitive creatures living inside a hard shell.
Times of stress signal growth; we evolve through adversity. 

If we yearn for a pleasant life,
and have people only say nice things about us,
we cannot grow.
Ego just expands.

Growing up is outliving our past.

Dealing With Vacancy In Meditation

In meditation, it’s easy to fall into a state of vacancy – a not knowing, that creates sleepiness. Merely be aware of that which is aware of this state; that is our true reality.

We can take the same approach when the mind is busy.

In meditation, it’s easy to fall into a state of distraction – a not knowing, that creates a dream state. Merely be aware of that which is aware of this state; that is our true reality.

Stupid People Don’t Have A Problem

Ignorance is bliss.
🙂

It’s we who have the problem … 
that’s if we’ve recognised how stupid we’ve been.

We cannot engage with stupid people, because we will always be talking at cross-purposes or with contrary intentions. Unable to communicate with each other in the quest for happiness, this misunderstanding creates obstacles which leads to tragedy. 

This confusion – this failure to communicate – arises because people have different goals.

The Requirement Of Sanity 

Sanity is the ability to reason how this self is constructed, and what is actually observing this process. Insanity is adopting others’ thoughts as the basis of our thinking.

Self is a construct of traumatic insanity, and confusion about these traumas created this illusory self to defend or justify our attitude.

Sanity is our true basis of being – pure consciousness – and not our ideas and desires.
It is up to each individual to decide how much sanity and insanity there is in the world.

Spirituality Without Religion

Spirituality is personal endeavour. 
Religion is group guided.

Pure consciousness is our spiritual reality. 
Religion is belief in our spiritual reality.

Having experienced suffering, we can empathise with how depressing it is.
Belief in suffering is guessing, which lacks empathy. 

There is a big difference between spirituality and religion.

The Saddest Thing

The saddest thing is not being able to resolve differences with others. 
Even if we do talk, old influences block the way. 

This is the saddest thing we have to live with.

Beyond Memory

The more we learn, the more we fill our minds with acquired memories, the cleverer and more special we think we are, and the more we become baffled as we’re fascinated by ourselves.

Memories are that baffle, preventing the spontaneous light of wisdom from evolving.

We – consciousness – are the pure essence of mind, which became obscured by memories.
Our conversations are all about these memories, and that fascinates consciousness. This is the illusion we’ve been under for millennia, and it’s the reason we cannot be spontaneous.

Information changes constantly, due to our fascinations.

The simple truth never changes, however, because consciousness never changes, 
and so our essence never changes.

Baffle: late 16th century, from French bafouer ‘to ridicule or deceive’; to prevent the spreading of sound or light.

Fascination: from the Latin ‘fascinum’ (evil spell); first defined as to bewitch.

If we hang on to the past, we remain bewitched.

Understanding Misunderstanding & Misunderstanding Understanding

When we realise that the world (people) is crazy, everything makes sense. This isn’t some cute saying on a t-shirt; it’s the Buddha’s teaching. Pure consciousness sees that we are governed by our mind’s likes, dislikes and indifferences, which we think is our reality but which causes us suffering. When we see this misunderstanding, we understand and are free … until we forget again. 🙂

If we justify our likes, dislikes and indifferences, we are misunderstanding our understanding.
It is the seeing, and not what is seen, that is the reality. 

If we think that we understand this, it’s merely a concept. 
Understanding is the silent realisation of how the craziness was formed.

Crazy: late 16th century,in sense of ‘full of cracks’.