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.

Emptiness – Between This And That

We spend our entire lives comparing ‘this’ to ‘that’ – judging, evaluating, reasoning – trying to achieve satisfaction. We never notice the gap in between, of just seeing before we leap.

Shunyata or emptiness
is our undisturbed, natural, neutral state,
where we couldn’t be happier.
🙂

What’s Emptiness All About?

Emptiness is what it’s all about.

It’s all about the magic, the magi, the art of wisdom to influence events by realising the emptiness of illusions, and understanding the tricks the mind plays on consciousness.

We have to be very careful that we don’t fall into nihilism, where everything seems pointless. Likewise, we don’t want to create something to adhere to and make special. Both these sets of ideas fix us in a state. We need our mind to quieten down to understand pure reality, which is not a set of ideas: it is unchanging consciousness that recognises these ideas.

The one thing that we forget or ignore is consciousness, because we’re so busy being filled with phenomena, deeming it pleasant or unpleasant. Consciousness just notes, is always present and is full of potential but, at the same time, it is empty of contaminating concepts. It is purely aware. That is what is termed ’empty cognisance’. The emptiness of consciousness does not create anything; it sees the nature of creation as being emptiness itself – subtle matter changing form, due to causes and conditions, within the emptiness of space.

We’re so busy and involved in looking at things and interpreting them that we become indifferent to the empty, cognisant essence that is seeing. That is our constant reality – and our constant confusion.

Whatever we see has no permanent reality;
everything comes to pass.

That which sees
– that which is purely aware –
is emptiness of consciousness.

The moment now is also empty;
it is the pure light/clarity of spontaneous presence.
The sheer joy of being.

The challenge is to not become bound by enjoying. 🙂
We are all work-in-progress.

Where Does Evil Come From?

To own, or to hack into another’s mind is what evil does.

Any being able to think is sentient and conscious – in essence, pure consciousness. In an infinite universe, there are infinite beings who do not know what they are, and so they are easy subjects for being ‘owned’ *.

Through ignorance, we identify with being ‘something’. This identification is a feeling of being a body and mind that we call self, but our uncertainty about this means that our true being remains a mystery. 🙂 Evil like mysteries.

A self identity breeds selfishness, controlled by desire, fear and ignorance. This self can be extremely clever and skilled to get its own way, and can turn a good idea into a idea into self-aggrandisement. This is a feeling of superiority which feeds off others’ insecurity. Evil likes to be adored under a disguise, so that we do not recognise what we, in fact, worship. We are influenced to worship outer appearances.

These controlling urges want to dominate and feed off others’ reactions, and this creates and recreates a chain reaction of oneupmanship. That is the evil element within all of us – and it’s never too far away. Wealth is merely a tool to maintain power, which is seductive to the uninitiated.

The Buddha was an influencer,
but he said,
“Do not take my word for the truth; test it for yourself.”

Clarity allows us to realise the degree to which we are being owned and hacked.
🙂

* The term ‘to own’ originated in hacker culture, and referred to compromising and gaining control of a computer system, effectively enslaving it.

Essence And Form, Truth And Fiction

Essence is pure cognition; the truth of an uncontaminated mind.
Form is a projection, an illusion, a fiction which contaminates the mind.

Consciousness perceives through the senses, and it is in that very instant of pure perception that we see clearly without interpretation and interruption. This is the essence or truth of that moment.

When we miss this moment of perfection through being over-excited, perception is diverted directly to our mind as we refer to memories, clouding judgements and reactions. This is the form we take on, which is the fiction.

Our fictional persona projects our judgements on to everything we see, and so we become predictable. In this way, our words and actions say more about us than whatever we are judging.

In the moment of pure perception, there are no judgements.
It takes discipline and integrity to see how our mind reacts,
deflecting perception and distorting what is seen.

Form is an illusion.
Essence is pure cognition.

Testing The Mind

Think of infinity.
It’s not possible;
consciousness just has to accept it.

Consciousness is infinite;
the mind just has to accept it.

Lost In Thought?

The moment we notice we are lost in thought, we aren’t!
That moment is pure consciousness.

All we need to do is value it; it’s what we are
– totally objective –
and not dependent on the mind for existence.

Objective: free, not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

Brain Stop?

“How did the universe start?”
A pointless question, as our usual brain cannot go that far.

What we hear is “Big Bang!” or “God!”
What did the Big Bang bang in?
What is God doing now, in an infinite universe?

Officials tell us:
“There was a Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago (in infinite space) where the universe just occurred, but what caused this explosion in the first place is still a mystery.”

The other officials tell us:
“The universe was created by God.” But in an infinite universe, why did God just create Earth for humans, and planets circling a sun? Why did his creation cause so much division?

Both these versions start a chain reaction,
without any absolute conclusion.

The universe can have no beginning, but our brains cannot take this in because we’ve been influenced by conjecture. Matter isn’t created out of nothing; it already exists in some form in space.

The same can be said for consciousness; it has no beginning as it is also infinite. How do we know this? Consciousness has never changed throughout our life, but everything else has. For some, this is meaningful, whereas for others, it’s meaningless.

Once we free our minds and let go of fantasies, we realise the truth about consciousness.

How the universe started is a pointless question;
what we do now is meaningful.

We cannot think about infinity – we just have to accept it.