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.

Realisation Feels Outside Of Time

We watch people going through their predictable routines,
saying, doing, fixating as if they are behind glass.

We can enter their world,
but they cannot enter ours
– unless they knock.
😀

Can An Action Be Neutral?

Anything that manifests has a cause and an effect,
and so cannot be neutral.
Things do not just happen.

Only consciousness remains neutral in its pure state.

Neutral is seeing clearly,
disengaged from fixations.

Making The Most Out Of Life

Life is consciousness, and consciousness is natural goodness. Making the most out of consciousness is realising that we are this pure, good spirit, rather than spending our life trying to look good.

Nature dazzles with sensuality, and colour, smell, taste, sound, touch bring us to our senses. The seasons are a welcomed change as they follow naturally. We needn’t exaggerate this, however: simple appreciation will do, otherwise we turn nature – and our life – into a ‘fascinating’ subject.

Exaggeration is a distraction. If we hold on to exaggerations, we merely fill up time and space. It’s ironic that religions exaggerate talk about good spirit, while actually separating us; exaggeration breeds extremism, and extremism wants to dominate.

There is a difference between wanting to look good
and having a good look.

A good spirit unites us
– and we don’t have to be religious to appreciate a good spirit.

Is Enlightenment Sophisticated?

Sophisticated Sophism.

Sophisticated: developed to a high degree of complexity.
Sophism: a clever but false argument, to deliberately deceive.
Sophistry: a fallacious argument; a mistaken belief.

Maintaining sophistication requires a high degree of complexity.

Enlightenment is the simplest view in the universe.
It is just seeing, without judgement or comment.

What is sophisticated?
Denial.

A Higher Purpose Is Unknowable?

What a confused world we live in.

Some think that there is a higher purpose which is “unknowable”.
What is the point of having a higher purpose that’s unknowable?! 🙂

There are so many blogs like this … so many videos, so many books, so many views, it’s hard to make sense out of it all. The important questions is, “Does this information genuintely add quality to our life, or is it just ‘interesting’?”

If we do not come to some conclusion, we will remain con-clue-sion-less 🙂 Coming to a conclusion doesn’t mean this is fixed; it is our conclusion so far. If this conclusion, however, arrives at “unknowable”, that is the end of our story – not anyone else’s – and any enrichment to our life is negated.

To say that a higher purpose is “unknowable” views others’ ability to realise the enlightened state with contempt. With that attitude, a person is regarding themselves as higher than a Buddha, an enlightened being, while subconsciously, they are trying to pull others down by refusing to acknowledge the enlightened potential in us all.

Is our mental universe finite or infinite?

Living With Realisation

Living with realisation of ultimate truth is precarious in a relative world. Those who relate to everything and pride themselves on having opinions are unstable and dangerous people who constantly feel threatened.

This is why realisation has to come with empathy and right conduct.
Realisation is a piece of cake compared to compassion.
🙂

Is The Foundation At The Beginning Or The End?

Is the foundation the ground or the golden roof?
There is a choice.

Most spiritual traditions start at the beginning of the ‘book of wisdom’, creating the atmosphere for the realisation of truth. At the conclusion, we may understand what truth is, or we may merely maintain a belief.

By starting at the end of the ‘book of wisdom’ – the conclusion – we know what the truth is all about.
The conclusion is that we know what we are, and what we’re doing and why, by testing the contents of the rest of the book.

I spent decades confused about the contents of the ‘book of wisdom’, not becoming any wiser, but just maintaining idiot meditation (so I was told).

One moment of instruction about the end of the book (probably at the right moment, as I had received it before but it had left confusion in my mind) and everything changed. It wasn’t so much the instruction, as the realisation that this ultimate truth was there all the time; it was timeless, in fact, and I had known it all my life.

That golden roof was the foundation of my journey.

They Don’t Want Us To Think For Ourselves

They don’t want us to think for ourselves.
The evidence for this is that most cannot.

“Toe the line, and follow the queue.”

When did you last think of something original?
It’s not possible 🙂

Thoughts are both limited, and limiting. Thoughts come in words, and word are not infinite – we only use a certain number of words.

First, we have to stop this chattering mind to think clearly: there needs to be clarity in seeing before there is clarity of thinking, without interruption by memories.

Pure consciousness sees clearly as it is uncontaminated. We are that consciousness. Seeing clearly, no new thoughts are necessary – but what we can do is put words together in a different way, and that comes about by not thinking in a usual way.

Are we freely inspired or predictable?

Getting Used To Boredom

Bored:
feeling weary and impatient
because one is unoccupied
or lacks interest in one’s current activity.

‘Boredom’ is a misnomer.

Merely being unoccupied or lacking interest
does not equate with boredom.
It is just coming to rest within inner peace.

Bored? Then go deeper. Mindfulness is not interesting. If there is something that needs to be done, we just do it. There is a fleeting moment of satisfied completion, and then there is the next moment to deal with. Meditation is like that; all the while, we come to rest.

Sitting down with a cup of tea
and doing nothing is satisfying,
isn’t it?

Activities are never fulfilling. They might be exciting and distracting, but that’s all. Because of this excitement, we want more, and this is called addiction.

Boredom sets us free. The saying, “The devil makes work for idle hands”, was written by the devil 🙂 ie those who want to make money out of us.

When we actually realise our true reality,
we just rest there
– mindfully and precisely –
doing only what has to be done.

One View, Many Expressions

The one view is pure consciousness. We are all pure consciousness, but individual. If we were all ‘one’ then, when one person became enlightened, we would all become enlightened 🙂 This does not happen.

We each express the experience of realisation differently. One master emphasises this, while another emphasises that – they have different approaches. The only definitive answer is in personal experience beyond words. And remember that there are levels of experience; the same words will be used but the meaning changes. In expression, nothing is fixed, while pure consciousness is continuous light.

The levels are coverings that are exposed at the right time. We are already enlightened beings because we are pure consciousness, but we just don’t notice it. 🙂

The point is:
don’t be upset if one master says this,
and another says that.

The Dharma is like a book. Some traditions start at the beginning, and you work your way to the end … sounds reasonable enough. However, there are traditions such as Dzogchen that start at the end of the book, and the rest of the book merely supports the conclusion … this is also reasonable.

Crazy but true.

To the exoteric, we all have to be the same.
To the esoteric, we are all the same.

Crazy but true.

Courage Is The First Step To Realising Consciousness

The moment when we admit that we are not satisfied and are therefore suffering, we take our first step to the ultimate realisation of reality. If not, we remain in ignorance, believing only information that we receive from unenlightened beings.

This information that we cling to is the elephant-in-the-room, or the MacGuffin.

A MacGuffin sets and keeps the plot in a story, despite usually lacking intrinsic importance. It is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but is insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. It is insignificant, so we don’t notice the elephant-in-the-room – an obvious major issue that people avoid discussing or acknowledging.

People avoid the question,
“What am I?”

We may ask, “What am I?”,
but at an intellectual level not at a practical level,
because this will change our lives forever.

Why we do not ask this question – truly?
It is fear of change.

The Science Of Spirituality

Oh yes, spirituality is science – pure science.

Science: the intellectual and practical study of the physical world through observation and experiment. From Latin scientia;‘know’.

What is the point of the intellectual and practical study
of the physical world through observation and experiment,
when we don’t know what we are?

This obsession with the impermanent physical world
maintains the illusion that it is all real.

When we don’t know our true reality,
we live in ignorance.

Spirituality: the quality of consciousness, ultimately pure consciousness. The study of what we are.

When Consciousness Is Deceived …

When consciousness is deceived,
we are deceived.

Deception is everywhere.
This is why the view of enlightenment is uncommon.

Who talks about realisation of the nature of reality?
We are so distracted that it never even occurs to us.

Information/gossip from others constantly deceives us,
so that we obliterate
the realisation of what we are.

Enlightenment is, ultimately, the pure realisation of reality.
The continuity of this depends on our seeing the ‘light’ in the ‘darkness’.