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.

Nihilism = No Purpose: Eternalism = Creating Purpose

Understanding people.

Nihilism is a philosophical and ethical stance which holds that nothing in the world has any meaning, value, or purpose. Eternalists create their own transitory purpose or meaning.

A nihilist believes that life is meaningless and that the only known truth is the existence of the self. 
An eternalist believes that meaning can be created by the individual.
Because each of these standpoints entails belief, taking offence is inevitable.

People are too rational for their own good, maintaining a conclusion that leads to other conclusions which eventually leads either to nihilism or eternalism.

The Middle Way is not being stuck in either of these extremes – but people are.:-) People may see ’emptiness’ as ‘nothingness’ and, as a result, become cold, or they see the ‘form’ as something to believe in, and therefore become hot.

The Middle Way is awareness before it moves out into a religion or a philosophy. 

What sort of person is in the Middle Way? 

They’re nothing special, and they don’t take offence.
The practice is keeping this in balance – not too tight, and not too loose.

We Come With A Manual

We come with a manual;
it’s called ‘self’ – a karmic instruction programme.

Ordinarily, we hear the word self, and just get on with it,
believing that is all we are.

Realising that this idea of self is what drives us, 
this manual now becomes our guide to enlightenment.

Spiritual Pride

Spiritual pride is the most dangerous of prides. Intellectual pride is pathetic compared to spiritual pride, and physical pride of muscle or wealth is even more so.

Spiritual pride separates us from others as we look down on ‘ordinary humanity. People wanting to be part of that is its power. Certain groups in the world feel very attached to an idea that is handed down, generation after generation, with the driving force of wanting to leave a legacy. 

Evil is religious in its outlook. It wants power, and maintains that power by any and every means. It cares nothing for humanity; humanity is its daily bread through the maintenance of ignorance.

The driving force of evil’s pride is the materialistic belief in ‘awakening’, 
as opposed to the awakening of consciousness.

“My Mind Is Made Up”

Have you made up your mind, 
or has someone made it up for you?

Have you just read something 
and adopted it?

We assume we think for ourselves,
but do we have original thought?

There is no such thing.

Our origin is before thought.
Ever thought about that?
🙂

Clever Things

We are very clever creatures who can skilfully create all sorts of beautiful things for others to admire – and there’s the rub*. We become proud of recognising others achievements – even the spiritual achievements of others, where we become a copy of a copy. It may be a very good copy, but it’s still an imitation rather than the real thing.

The real thing isn’t of earthly or mental beauty. 
It is our reality of pure consciousness
– the insight of the light of clarity.

There is nothing clever about this.
It’s being quite ordinary – commonplace and unremarkable. 
In its completeness, it is orderly.

*’there’s the rub’ from Hamlet by Shakespeare, means there’s the conflict, the problem.

What Gives Evil Its Power?

Our ignorance.

When we ignore evil intent to control, it is we who become the enablers. Evil counts on ignorance to maintain confusion by impregnating the populace with ideas. Evil is anything that causes harm and restricts our freedom to be what we naturally are.

It’s an abusive relationship of ‘gaslighting’. This psychological manipulation causing people to doubt their capability or their sense of reality.

We fear using the word ‘evil’ because we think, “Well, it’s not that bad.” That, in itself, is a sign of resignation – the acceptance of something undesirable, but inevitable. 

It is not inevitable. There are levels or yanas of understanding, and as we ascend by transcending ideas, we see that what we left behind was restrictions and limitations in the guise of goodness. Transcending is a matter of dropping the levels of ignorance, and realising the reality beyond words.

Realisation isn’t for the woolly minded.
Enlightenment isn’t for the woolly minded.
Compassion isn’t for the woolly minded.

An Open Heart Needs An Open Mind

An open heart is caring. 
An open mind is the ability to carry out caring.

Unfortunately, just caring is sentimentality, while just having an open mind without caring is coldness.

Heart and mind need to work together. This is not just a saying – it’s a practicality of life, and it’s how we should deal with one another.

So many ‘spiritual’ people want to feel good, but don’t have the ability to actually care, as their minds are full of doctrine – do’s and don’ts. This used to be called ‘the Hinayana approach’ of self-discipline, self-salvation.

It is imperative that our conduct matches our understanding. Just saying whatever we think doesn’t help anyone. We first have to practise listening with an open mind which has no desires or competitiveness. It’s easy to say, “I have an open mind”, but actually having an open mind is staying silent so that there is no I involved.

The answer to all our problems is in our mind.

The Buddha’s Teaching Is Psychology

The nature of mind.

It’s not a religion. It’s not about being holy. It’s not trying to convince people.
It’s just revealing that we are, first and foremost, consciousness. We may call it ‘spiritual’, but that is because consciousness isn’t material – or anything physical. It’s not a ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ that we have – we don’t have consciousness, we are consciousness itself.

Seeing, smelling, tasting, hearing, touching aren’t spiritual. These are the senses, wide open, and our commentaries on these events are mental, and not spiritual.

Understanding the nature of mind is being practical, where we know what is worthwhile doing and what is not.

If we are materialistic people, every thing is important to us, and we have some thing to argue against and complain about. People take political or religious views, and defend those opposing, material views. This is all psychology.

The ultimate psychology is pure consciousness, where there is no thing to play with. When we understand this, things are merely trivia to which we’ve become partial.

‘Holy’ just means whole, complete. 
Pure consciousness is complete.

When we make it into some thing, 
it isn’t complete any more.
It’s partial.

Pure psychology doesn’t need a special hat.
🙂

Having An Attitude

Attitude: anything a person holds in mind.

It’s obvious that negative thoughts give us a bad attitude which fixes our mind. 
Positive thoughts, which are just a temporary fix, still bind us.

In the first instant of seeing or listening, there is no attitude as we haven’t yet made a decision. 

That moment is to treasure. 
That is our reality – no attitude.

We haven’t started to worry yet; 
it’s our happy place.

There Are Other People

There are other people who feel the same way as you, 
not being one of the crowd. 

They are rare, 
and we probably will never meet them, 
but it’s good to know that they’re there. 

You know what I mean?

Reincarnation – A Recording

We encode ourselves because we allow ourselves to be influenced by others, never realising that, in this way, a code can be slipped in, fashioning behaviour.

Whether reincarnation is a reality or not, it is still worth considering, because what we do now has an effect on our future. We maintain a continuity of tendencies throughout our life, don’t we? That is reincarnation.

This mind encodes our future self. We all have déjà vumoments, indicating a natural proclivity towards certain subjects. We’re blessed by our previous self, and some things feel natural, while we have to work at others. 

The question is, can we put a code in now for the future – something we don’t want to forget? 

It’s beneficial to consider out-of-the-ordinary possibilities, as these can affect our next reaction. 

Isn’t a reaction a reincarnation? 

In the coming year, 
“May I be more open-minded.”