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.

If Our Mind Hasn’t Been Blown

If our mind hasn’t been blow clear,
then it’s still full of cobwebs, spun with ideas.

We will never be free to think for ourselves until we can think with clarity, which is defined as divine splendour. That definition, in itself, should blow our mind 🙂

Don’t just read and acquire information;
dare to experience and realise it.
There’s a huge difference.

Just reading about truth is fraught with undesirable results, when we are laden down with confused pride that creates confused karma.
Fraught: late Middle English, laden, equipped, loaded with cargo.

If we want something new to appear, we have to give up theories and models, and stop imitating. New is now, without luggage, so that experience can be redefined with a subtler meaning.

We will never hear or read anything new,
but we can realise higher levels of meaning.
To do this, we allow in the inner wind of clarity.

Heaven’s Doorkeeper Is The Devil
… and the devil doesn’t exist.

If we spend our life only looking for ‘goodness’, we fall under the spell of pride and evil. It’s easily done, and we become trippers, buying into trinkets. The way is through knowledge of good and evil. The Naga in the Garden of Eden was divine wisdom, which is the opposite to what the magi-cians translated for us.

The ‘devil’ – or Mara – is our own likes and dislikes which lie in ambush to distract consciousness to look in the opposite direction. This is activated through being judgemental, by taking sides.

It is the very recognition of this reaction that opens the door to heaven, nirvana, enlightenment. When we know the secret behind the illusion, this actually points the way. That’s what magicians do; it’s very clever and believable, but pointless to a discerning eye when we are able to distinguish between truth and not-quite the truth.

Our job then is to see through the illusion and actually walk through the door – the mind – and leave it open for others. And to our surprise, we are still here. Heaven is a state of mind which is pure consciousness that has no judgements; habitual judgements come a moment later to obscure the mind.

There are a lot of clever illusions about,
so there is a lot of guidance and teaching about
– if we look in the right way.

The evil is the world is showing us the way. For this reason, evil never works in the way it wants to work, and it’s also why it can never stop, as it’s totally insatiable and confused. If we do not see evil, we are its minions, followers, enablers, servile underlings; as such, we are unimportant, and no threat as we’re easily turned away by the doorkeeper.

Dare to open the door of your mind, and see through it.

NB ‘Magi’ comes from the Zoroastrian belief system of a creator, and originated the area of modern day Iran. Also from that region came the Vedic tradition of non-duality, which is the opposite view.

The Psychology Of Wisdom And Demons

The activity of Wisdom and Demons is Buddhist psychology.

All sentient beings are Buddhas, but aren’t aware of it.
1. Our essence is uncontaminated emptiness.
2. Our nature is cognisant consciousness.
3. Our expression is compassionate energy.

These, if unnoticed, become the demonic activities:
1. Ignorance.
2. Desire/attraction/grasping.
3. Aversion/hatred.

This is a description of the four enlightened activities of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and the way in which the dark forces (Maras-Demons) can pervert these within us.

Mara is the likes and dislikes in the mind. When we like or dislike, we fall prey to these emotions, which can attract additional negativity. Understanding the emotions is the key to sanity.

The following may seem a little complex, but it is meant for those who like the idea of being spiritual engineers.

THE FOUR ENLIGHTENED ACTIVITIES
We have to be aware that there is another side to these activities; every action can be distorted by the ego! Our level of understanding will attract a specific quality – as we sow, so we reap.

An enlightened person will manifest certain qualities when a particular situation arises. These qualities are pacifying, enriching, magnetising and destroying.

Pacifying accommodates everything. It reveals that there are no problems, and that aggression from the ego is unnecessary.
Enriching brings to light the process of growth, and allows the development of knowledge.
Magnetising bypasses conventional reality. In conventional reality, we continually try to draw desired situations towards ourselves, and fend off undesirable ones. A realised person simply remains as he or she is, attracting naturally without this ego intervention.
Destroying is connected to compassion, and is aimed at ego’s manipulations.

THE DISTORTIONS OF EGO = THE FOUR MARAS
These four demonic activities are directed at building and fortifying our concept of ‘self.’

The Mara of pacifying attempts to make peace by using pleasure and security to eliminate whatever is unpleasant. It is an imitation of genuine pacifying, which is beyond any self-serving strategy, such as “There, there – it will be all right, trust me”.

The Mara of enriching is the Mara of accumulating. Ego takes natural growth and turns it into its own ground. It hijacks the richness, and turns it into my wealth – “See how clever I am?”.

The Mara of magnetising attempts to attract, in order to feed one’s ego with whatever is desirable, based on the possessive emotions – “I enjoy praying for others”.

The Mara of destroying obliterates everything, rather than just whatever needs to be destroyed. Trungpa Rinpoche wrote, “It begins to get inspired in the wrong way, and uproots the whole tree…and that is the karmic quality of destruction gone wild, unnecessarily”, as in “You’re talking total rubbish!”.

Be aware that worldly demons use these very principles to twist our minds, and divert consciousness.

Understanding these two aspects of our psychology reveals that reality is nothing other than wisdom. We need to look closely at the world we inhabit, and contemplate our most ordinary experiences.

If we do this
– if we let go of what we think and simply let the true being of what we are show itself –
we will discover that it is nothing other than
primordial immaculate wisdom.

This is the blueprint of everything that happens in the world.

How Do We Learn?

How do we learn?
By getting an answer?
No.
By tasting it, and seeing if it works – for us and for others.

If we just accept when we are told something without experience, this is no better than belief, which we repeat. It may sound right, but have we tested it?

How do we test it? By noting our reaction towards others. If it is one of confident, empathetic kindness with genuine interest and no aftertaste, then we know we understand. If it is one of feeling superior for having ‘knowledge’, we’ve misunderstood, and misbehave with much aftermuttering. 🙂

There are plenty of ‘holy’ people and places,
and plenty of followers of ‘holy’ people and places,
but not many genuine, raw-experienced students.

Student: from Latin verb studere, related to studium ‘painstaking application’.

Many think they have the answer, because they have a good memory for whatever they’ve read or heard.
This is exoteric knowledge.

A few have the answer by having a good memory for life experiences.
This is esoteric knowledge.

The purpose of life is to learn,
and realise what we are

The Value Of Comments

To make the Dharma practical rather then believable, feedback is vital – even genuine critical feedback. The Dharma is absolutely adaptable, with different emphases to suit individuals.

One size/pill doesn’t fit all. If we hold back a feeling, we will become stuck there, and achieve no release. This blog isn’t advertised; people come here through serendipity = karma.

(If you do comment, you don’t have to leave a name or email contact – that is a wordpress invention. Just type your words and click ‘Comment’.)

Authorities Monitor Our Thinking

Authorities monitor our thinking
so that we think the way they do.

It’s easier to control people that way.
Whether it’s government, religion, media … it’s all about group-think.

When we can monitor our own thoughts,
we are free to see their limiting effects.

That monitoring is meditation.

We Are Already In Nirvana, Looking Out

Nirvana: Extinguished self

We (pure consciousness) are already in Nirvana, but don’t realise it, in favour of being locked into an idea of a ‘me’, a ‘self’. We are enlightened beings ignoring what we are, and identifying with beliefs which cause us to create, therefore firing-up self.

This identification with beliefs and creation obscures our reality.

Once we realise our true essence, our view changes. What is important changes. We still do our daily chores, but this is to create the time and space to remember what we are.

The world is in a very dark place;
reacting to it deepens our attachment to darkness.

Acknowledge that it is the light of consciousness
which naturally extinguishes the darkness.

Riddles Control Our Thoughts

Our thoughts are cliches, overused to the point of losing their originality, and becoming unproductive. we are merely repeating conventional understanding and so, our thoughts are not our own and we live a narrow existence. We actually talk in riddles, thus maintaining circling confusion.

Interpreting these riddles – such as “Are we created, or do we create ourselves?” – results in speaking in tongues, making hollow sounds with no substance.

When we can experience the rawness of life for ourselves, the question arises, “How do I feel about this?” There is no immediate answer, as there is a cause to discover. When we no longer have to believe in others’ habitual riddles, the mind opens up to all possibilities.

As the Buddha said, “Do not take my word for truth; test it for yourself.”

The word ‘riddle’ shares its origin with the word ‘read’, both stemming from the Germanic verb rēdaną, which meant ‘to interpret, to guess’.

Know the mind,
and know how whatever’s in it got there.
😀

Knowing The Universe and Consciousness

Everything creates an opposite: attraction and repulsion.
If there is an up, there must be a down.
If there is dark, it is only known because there is light.
If there is confusion, it is seen by clarity.

This is why taking sides creates conflict,
because it’s not the complete picture.

The truth is in the unity of opposites.
A mirror (consciousness) and its reflections (mind).
Heaven and hell.

No intellectualisation is necessary.
No ritual is necessary.

The universe (empty space) and consciousness (empty space) abide by the simple principles of attraction and repulsion / hope and fear. Transcending these principles or natural laws is the wisdom of pure consciousness – panoramic vision.

This is why we have to be very careful what we listen to as the opposite will also occur. 🙂

Can Spirituality Be Organised?

When we are meditating, sitting in silent awareness,
there is no organised religion.

There is no duality; there isn’t even a meditator.
There is no ‘we’.

Being Religious Or Non-Religious

Being religious is being bound to an idea.

Religious: relating to or believing in.
Religion: being bound.

We are all attached to some idea, be it in a form of religion, politics, science, entertainment, appearance, education … it’s all in the mind.

‘Religion’ is an oxymoron: a figure of speech that is a concept with opposite meanings – it’s a contradiction, a paradox. We can be so against religion that we are religious about it 🙂

The whole point of being conscious is freeing ourself from elaborate attachments which are all in the mind. We are bound by chosen distractions but, in the moment of just seeing, we’re free of attachments. No elaborations are necessary.

This is what meditation is – just seeing.
Just seeing is clarity, and clarity is divine splendour.
Divine? Divine: Supreme reality.
Supreme? Supreme: that is above all concepts.

Freedom is not being enslaved.

When Consciousness Is Present, There Is No Ego

Consciousness is individual freedom.
Ego is consciousness ignoring itself and clinging to an idea which creates an organised ‘I’. This ‘I’ runs amuck in the mind, confusing consciousness. When we look at the ‘media’, it is constantly creating fear and attraction, which keeps us distracted, and ignorant of our true reality.

Mind terrorises consciousness but, when this is realised, it now serves as a reminder not to believe anything, and to recognise that pure consciousness is constantly present.

This is why evil can never totally succeed,
and why they constantly have to think up alternative distractions.

All the while, pure consciousness appreciates their efforts.
😀