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.

Why Meditate?

Proper meditation brings a calm spacious mind, where we’re able to cope with anything that appears; we are never panicked, disturbed or alarmed. We are not subject to emotions. 

Meditation isn’t adopting a particular lifestyle, typically an unconventional one. It’s a practical method of attaining mental stability.

We gain stability and genuine stillness – which is admirable – but we have a little further to go. Meditation is a method to come to stillness and a feeling of stability, but “I feel good” and “This is it” is still a duality.

Drop any attachment by dropping the meditation. When nothing else is present, that is pure consciousness. If we’re wanting more than this, we have forgotten purity, and we’re back in conventional consciousness … so we meditate again.

Letting Go Of The Past

It’s obvious that the past no longer exists, but its effects are still felt. This moment that we live in now will, in the future, be the past, and so won’t exist, but its effects will. That is karma at work. To a materialist historian, the past is all important as it serves as our memories, traditions, cultures … our habitual way of thinking. This is the mud we enlightened beings are stuck in.

A materialist is someone who supports the theory that nothing exists 
except matter and its movements and modifications.

Most of us are stuck in a mindset. This is why there’s no talking to people because they cannot be in the present moment as they are in constant conflict with what’s happening now and memories.

The only reality is right here, right now, in no man’s land, in pure cognisance. Letting go isn’t about being told to let go; that is merely a temporary antidote. Letting go is about seeing whatever we’re holding on to and feeling the effects: anger, frustration, fear – all mental dis-orders – and letting go is the shock of realising this.

Our karma is the effect of our mind dwelling on the past. Our mind is just memories that we impose on to every occasion, where we go through our predictable routine while thinking it’s all new when it’s all old.

The temptation to hold on to pessimism is like attachment to an abusive master, 
thinking it’s safer while, in reality, such behaviour only leads to cyclic misery.

Better to realise the freedom of optimism 
– that seeing evil is the best of all possible worlds. 

Good ultimately prevails over evil in the universe. 
How?
Appearances and recognition are simultaneous.
We are free in the moment of just seeing.
If we don’t let go, we are evil’s enablers, gossipers, idle talkers about others.

Letting go is letting go of depression, anxiety, pointlessness …
In the moment now, where is this depression, anxiety, pointlessness … ?

Clarity Can’t Be A Bad Thing

The definition of the word ‘clarity’ is divine splendour; it is that powerful. It’s well worth appreciating. Clarity is being open-minded, willing to consider everything in an unprejudiced way.

We don’t have clarity; we are clarity – which is pure consciousness – but we cling to ideas that cloud this view. It is that clouding that is a bad thing. Ideas help us function in a social way to get through life, and that’s all we do – get through life. Our functioning may be very clever, but what have we understood about our true reality?

Living in clarity is a whole different view of life – ‘whole’ as in complete. 

Clarity doesn’t hold on to to any ideas whatsoever. 
It isn’t a vacant state; 
it’s fully alive, fresh and wondrous, inspiring a feeling of wonder or delight. 
It’s a good thing. 🙂

Being too mentally busy to appreciate clarity is a sad thing.

Writing A Blog

Writing a blog is like drawing in a sketch book; through practice and realisation,  realisation evolves. You look back and see what you held on to.

Realisation is an ongoing experience. It’s why I cannot write a book, as the words are only a generalisation for that moment.

A question and answer is only pertinent to that instant.
Questions are welcome as they advance understanding.

Don’t Try To Understand

You cannot think the Dharma.
Dharma is pure experience.

Don’t Make A Meal Of The Dharma

Don’t make a meal of the Dharma.
It will give you indigestion.

‘Make a meal out of it’ is to spend more time or energy doing something that isn’t necessary. Dharma is not a thing that we can achieve; it’s what we already are – pure awareness. When we make it into something,we exaggerate it, wear it, name it, polish it, display it, put it on a shrine, put a huge building around it.

The Dharma is the life within consciousness.
That’s it.

What If There Was No Enlightenment Or Reincarnation?

If there was no enlightenment or reincarnation, would it make any difference to the Buddha’s teaching? No. The reality that pure awareness is present in an ever-changing world of deception still holds true. Reality is happiness itself, without any struggling with semantics. Life is fulfilling when we no longer see two.

Painting a window frame is being one with the brush, paint, wood – no drips or splashes, while knowing the wood is protected. What is more satisfying than that? Oh yes, being at one with another person. 🙂

The problem in the world is that people want to be two – divided, and thus, unhappy.

We Do Not Have To Learn Dharma

Learning terminology and symbols doesn’t mean that we realise the Dharma.

It is through realising that we are the Dharma
that the Dharma manifests.

When We’re Thinking, We’re Actually Listening!

🙂

Listening to what?
Memories.

Memories placed in the mind.
Placed?

Everything in our mind is socially engineered.|
By whom?

By those who don’t want us to think for ourselves.
If you think you’re thinking for yourself, think again.

What Woke Me Up?

The pretence of goodness.

After following gurus, lamas and students for decades, I realised that there wasn’t much – if any – compassion around. No real lasting connection, but just competitive ‘goodness’. Everyone is caught up in the exotic, without any esoteric realisation of wisdom, the full understanding of being.

Decades of chanting ‘compassion’
while all around showed a lack of compassion seemed fishy.

We’re so easily charmed into worshipping that we ignore the essence of reality within all sentient beings; we may revere names, academic theories or religious rituals, but still have no actual empathy.

When we genuinely wake up,
that is the birth of compassion
No defensiveness present.
No pretence. No confusion.
Just a genuine connection.

We learn to bow and scrape – behaving in an obsequious way to someone in authority. This isn’t waking up. The Buddha wanted us to know directly through experience, rather than becoming reliant on others.

A Buddha cannot wake us up; we need a shock which is precisely measured to each individual’s confusion.

There isn’t one word / pill to suit all.

The Dharma Is A Generalisation

The Dharma is a generalisation.
Realisation of the Dharma is personal.

Neither life nor the Dharma are about learning facts;
that is a sleepy view.
Personal experience is alive, awake and constantly refreshing.

If anyone tells you about the Dharma and you accept it as truth,
you will be living their dream.

Because everyone else is doing it,
make sure you know what the it is that they’re doing.

Know the difference between an act and reality
as it can be confusing.

Waking Up To Foolishness

We only wake up when we realise how foolish we’ve been to believe what others say. Realising our ultimate truth isn’t easy, either in the secular or non-secular world. The secular world is only interested in material words for gain. The non-secular world is dominated by religious words for gain.

Words are a biased filter in the mind; actual experience is seeing directly through the eyes, rather than seeing through the ideologies. Well-educated or well-indoctrinated are the same things – being unable to see clearly.

We acquire ideas and then project them as our own, colouring everything that we see. So, we see through a glass darkly. Even if our words are very clever, it’s still second-hand programming, and we get angry and defensive when others don’t believe us. This is so ridiculous, as we now think of disbelievers as an enemy.

When we wake up, we walk alone,
and we are no longer dependent.

Waking up is not complicated; it is just seeing, pure awareness, pure consciousness without any fixed ideas.

In other words, just seeing without attitude,
being neither clever nor special.

Seeing clearly is the clarity of divine splendour.
It is that magnificent.

Splendour: late Middle English, from Latin splendere – ‘shine, be bright’.

The Light That Eliminates Darkness

It’s possible that, while meditating, we fall into a state of vacancy where there is no thought, but no wisdom of knowingness of our true essence of pure consciousness either. If there is no wisdom, there is no compassion. We may feel good, such as when we go into a temple, but there’s nothing lasting as there is a reliance on a feeling that is a ‘right’ place to go to.

Merely become aware of this situation, without mental comment, realising that there is nothing else. That is ever-present pure consciousness; that is the ‘right place’, our original place.

We are so used to doing something to feel good – praying, chanting, prostrating – that we can fall into the other extreme of nothingness, which can turn into feeling of pointlessness.

The middle way is neutral awareness – not too tight and not too loose, neither accepting nor rejecting.

We each have to decide what is real.

What Alternative Facts Would Wake You Up?

We all know the facts of life: we’re born, educated, work, breed, eat, play games, holiday, worry, die.

What if there is a caste of people unknown to the public who saw themselves as a group that inherits exclusive privileges, or who are perceived as socially distinct by degrees of ritual purity?

Caste: mid 16th century from Spanish and Portuguese casta: lineage, race, breed. Feminine
of casto: ‘pure, unmixed’, from Latin castus ‘chaste’.

How do they see humanity?

‘As Above, So Below’ Is The Great Illusion

‘As above, so below’ is a common chant among the proletariat, but this is the great illusion.

We may think there is a higher self – something above – because it’s portrayed in all religions and philosophies that way. This has kept us wanting, seeking and hoping … bound in the dark dungeon of existence.

Ultimate reality is at eye level.
Realisation is at eye level.
Enlightenment is at eye level.

Direct perception, pure awareness, pure consciousness
is right here, right now.

Our perception is misdirected,
kept below eye level in the mud of confusion.

Why do you think that is?

Proletariat: mid 17th century from Latin proletarius, from proles ‘offspring’, denoting a person having no wealth in property who only serves the state by producing offspring. 

That is to say, slaves … captive and captivated.