What Is Pure Consciousness?
We are consciousness; we cannot be anything else, but we’re attached to our ideas in the mind. Consciousness is the cognisant space of mind. We are not what we can see, but fall into the trap of believing that we are.
On an ordinary, mundane level, consciousness has mingled with ideas, contaminating the mind and creating emotions to defend the idea of self, which is merely an excited concept about being … something. One such emotion is pride – we take pride in ourself, and we take ourself seriously.
We are hypnotised by thoughts which creates our behaviour; we know we’re doing this, but cannot stop. This clinging to ideas is ‘ego’ or ‘I’, and it’s how we function and organise ourselves. Egos grumbling at egos is our cycle of confused existence, and as soon as we meet someone who doesn’t believe what we believe, they become our enemy, and we shun them.
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When we become aware of our habitual antics – our foolish, outrageous or amusing behaviour – we notice that this obsession occupies us. We collect ‘interesting’ titbits of information that form our memories, our programming, our behaviour, and these references are what cloud pure vision, pure consciousness.
Evil knows all this before we do. Evil is inbred selfishness. Evil cannot understand pure consciousness, because it gets nothing out of it, and gain is evil’s intent.
It is because we are so intent on gaining (or perhaps thinking we can put things right) that we don’t notice that all this mind activity – which is ignorance – is being observed. That observation is done by consciousness.
When we sit in silent awareness, we notice that we follow thoughts, and become caught up in a dream state. The training is in not following these thoughts – they aren’t ours anyway. 🙂
We then notice or become aware that there is nothing other than consciousness present. Everything else just comes and goes. Consciousness drops any connection with thoughts to the extent that there is purely observation without an observer.
Observation, being instantaneous, is pure consciousness uncontaminated by what ‘I think’. In pure awareness, there is no time to consider; considering is another type of meditation, which is known as analytical meditation, reflection or contemplation – but this can only be done through pure vision.
Pure consciousness
is the purest, simplest principle in the universe
– the essence of life.
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. 