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.

Ignorance Is Bliss – Perfect Happiness
So they say …

If one is unaware of an unpleasant fact or situation, one cannot be troubled by it. That is the ultimate oxymoron.

Ignorance means that we succumb to the negative forces of jealousy, pride, fear and desire, which make life not only uncomfortable, but a living hell. We have become so used to this way of life that we don’t notice the alternative, the inner wisdom of pure consciousness – the great know-all! 😀

This ignorance reflects on the way in which we conduct ourselves, and is neither wise nor understanding.

There are two aspects to realisation on the path to enlightenment. One is knowing that we have always been pure consciousness – we don’t have to make it happen – and the other is realising the veil that obscures pure consciousness (‘veil’ is an interesting arrangement of letters – it can also spell evil!).

The opposite of ignorance is the wisdom of absolute reality
– the great know-all! 😀

How Many Know?

How many people know their (our) true nature? Some know about our true nature, but that doesn’t mean they know or experience it: it is still theory.

How would we know that they know? 🙂 Well, first, we’d have to know our true nature to be able to recognise that there was something in their conduct indicating an awakened consciousness.

How often do we meet such a person?

Most people on this planet do not know their true nature, and that they have a reality beyond the conventional. They haven’t a clue what’s going on in this world of manipulation. Everything has a cause, and everything can be made to appear to be an accident.

People are encouraged to be involved in this as opposed to that, always taking sides and never realising that they have lost their true reality for someone else’s translation of reality.

Manipulators who are involved in this and that do not know their true nature, but they do know how easily we become addicted through repetition, and they use this knowledge to get what they want.

Wake up!
Open sesame!
(Sesame seeds splits open when they reach maturity,
and so the phrase relates to unlocking a treasure.)
😀

Knowing that we are being controlled and exploited on all fronts should shock us out of complacency but, unfortunately, it doesn’t. Why not? Because we are so used to suits, uniforms, white coats, and robes making us believe that they know, so we now know.

When we realise our true reality,
no one can pull the wool over our eyes ever again.

Ordinary Consciousness And Pure Consciousness

It is a good practice to experience the difference.

Pure consciousness is open presence – ready for anything.
Ordinary consciousness is closed presence – not ready for anything.

If we don’t know pure consciousness, we remain closed in our views. When, however, we do realise pure consciousness, we don’t wander too far into the closed mindedness of ordinary consciousness.

We naturally move in and out of pure consciousness and ordinary consciousness, but may not notice this. Sometimes, we are happy for no reason! Which conscious we stay in longer depends on what we practise 🙂

In pure consciousness, there is just observation. In ordinary consciousness, we start relating. From the perspective of pure consciousness, relating can take a moment. From ordinary consciousness, we fixate on that relating, and so become caught and held – maybe for our entire life.

The practice:
Rest in being totally open to the moment,  without relating to anything. That is pure consciousness.
Now, relate to your environment, and see the I starting to identify – before words manifest.
Stop, and return to pure openness.
It’s that simple, and that familiar. It’s nothing strange.

This switching is quite natural; we do it all the time. It is only a matter of being aware both of just being there, and of not quite being there. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to fall into a vacancy, but again, if we are just aware of that vacancy, we are back in pure consciousness.

Realise where contentment lies,
and where trouble starts.
😀

Seeking The Right (Magic) Words

All my life, I’ve searched for the phrase, or set of words – the magic spell that would awaken us. I’ve come to realise that this will be different for everyone, as it has to be heard at the right time and in the right place, and probably said by right person.

Every day, a phrase comes to mind, and I wonder, “Does this fit? But who is there to hear it?”
Some days, a phrase will repeat itself – and, at the moment, that phrase is, “Fresh or frozen”.

Fresh is whatever is happening in this present moment, which is juicy and nourishing.
Frozen is whatever is brought in, prepackaged or borrowed from elsewhere, and is cold and dry.

We have come to believe that “fresh-frozen” is fresh. It isn’t. For this reason, the Buddha said, “Don’t take my word for it”. To experience this, we have to refine our taste by knowing that a fresh mind is pure consciousness, whereas a frozen mind is full of intellectual acquisitions.

The only way we can stay fresh and open is to drop all our ideas through meditation. We then have uncluttered clarity and are in the right place, free of contamination and fully receptive.

Right consciousness – right mind – right words – right empathy.

Scientists Want To Put Consciousness Into A Machine?

Their view of consciousness is a perception-memory-decision-making device; the favoured think that they will live forever in a machine.

Consciousness is not a thing. It is life itself, and cannot be switched on and off. Machines can be made to do anything and remember anything, but that’s all. They only appear to be sentient because some scientists think that consciousness is just a decision-maker.

Whatever it is that they think they are putting into a machine will forget it was a living being, beyond perception and memory.

A machine is a just recording device – which, like a dream, could turn into a nightmare. Machines can neither love nor have empathy.

If We Aren’t Willing To Change …

Surprise!
We stay the same and learn nothing new,
just going through set routines.

Seeing things afresh is exhilarating and inspiring. We let go of old habits to take the next step. This is how we learn sequentially through practical experience; we cannot be taught sequentially as individuals have different complications. Letting go of old concepts, we are on the verge of new realisations. We cannot just jump ahead to the answer as we have to do some work to form the right question. Don’t just accept what others say as being true; it’s only true for them.

Where We Went Wrong!
😀

Basically, consciousness – what we are – becomes excited about being conscious, motivating us to want more, which creates our karma, our life story. And we’re doing this right now …

If reincarnation is correct, then we have been doing this for infinite life times. This is why our habits of likes and dislikes are so strong. Even if we don’t accept reincarnation, this distraction is still evidence that we are constantly moving away from our true reality. And we’re all doing this right now …

How to go right 🙂
We merely recognise what is happening in our mind at every moment. Don’t feel guilty; we are all in the same boat. We all forget our true nature of pure consciousness.

Resting in pure consciousness is our happy place of equilibrium. All we do now is neutralise the results of karma, the product of previous decisions that we have to live through right now. We do this by no longer exaggerating, being over-stimulated and re-enacting.

Life isn’t a mess to entertain us.
It’s our training ground … or gentle bootcamp!
😀

Are We Fresh Or Frozen?

Fresh is raw experience in this moment.
Frozen is imported baggage imposed on this moment.

We are subject to both, but one will dominate.
Are we a positive person, or do we worry?

Whether we like it or not, it’s obvious that we live in the “age of strife”, so most raw experiences are unpleasant. This is why the real Dharma teachings are so potent; when life is pleasant, we don’t bother.

In the age of strife, evil hasn’t a clue that it can actually wake people up – inadvertently. 😀 It is in this very unpleasantness that we experience the raw deal of life that creates fresh emotions which are, in fact, wisdom. We are never totally negative as our essence is raw, pure consciousness.

Even though there are dark clouds over us, there is always an element of light, an aura, a distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person.

One might think that pleasant situations would wake us up, but do they? From an semi-enlightened point of view (and we are all semi-enlightened :-)), everything is frozen, imported baggage that we think is fresh.

If things are pleasant, we swoon and drift along, overcome with admiration and adoration – “Isn’t my package nice?” In focusing on the pleasant, we try to maintain it but end up freezing it.

If things are unpleasant, our wits sharpen. Having sharpened our wits/consciousness, the pleasant is taken in our stride. We arrive at one taste, bothered neither by the pleasant nor the unpleasant. If we only want the pleasant, we will never be able to deal with the unpleasant – the raw deal.

The raw deal is anything outside our comfort zone.

Frozen Dharma packages charm us into believing that we are awake.
Fresh Dharma is the beautiful rawness of life that awakens.

Better to be awake than to be a clever scholar
😀

Do We Know What Normal Is?

Normal: conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.
Conforming to whose standard?

Normal is the set standard of a carpenter’s-square to which everyone agrees; 90 degrees is 90 degrees.
Consciousness is a set standard as it applies to everyone.
Space is a set standard of infinity.
These three principles are normal.

When it comes to humans, however, what is normal?
Each of us has different norms – unless we rest in our original state of pure consciousness.

Normal for an busy person is busyness.
Normal for an lazy person is laziness.
Normal for a narcissist is a lack of empathy.
Human normals = our individual quirks that obscure pure consciousness.

Quirk: a peculiar aspect of a person’s character or behaviour.

Seeing The Same Way, Or Seeing More

We (consciousness) look out and see – just see. This is pure seeing. This is pure consciousness. There is nothing exotic; it’s natural. But oh, how we miss this altogether … altogether.

We see, but we miss that first moment of just seeing. Because of that, we begin to relate to whatever we see back to memory, and we superimpose on to the situation. We then judge from these old memories, and react in the same old tired way. That keeps our world ours, and we see no further.

This makes life pretty dull and predictable, and limits our understanding, imprisoning us in the same old assumptions. It’s vertical thinking – we do this and this and this because that’s what we always do.

Lateral thinking is standing back and taking another look, being open to all possibilities. That’s just seeing, without judgements or prejudice.

Seeing afresh is illuminating and inspiring.
Just seeing is Dharma practice.
Anything more exotic is a deviation.

Clear Consciousness = Clear Mind = Clear Conscience

When we feel uncomfortable, or that something isn’t right, that is conscience at work. There is a conflict between consciousness and the mind.

Conscience is the messenger between consciousness and the mind, and the quality of both consciousness and the mind will dictate what conscience comes up with.

Just saying, “I have a conscience”, only means we have a conscience at our level of understanding: there isn’t one conscience about which we will all agree.

What we thought was right or wrong a few years ago may not be the same today. It all depends on our level of experiential understanding of ultimate truth and convenient truth.

Am I Deluding Myself Or …

is my self deluding me?
Deluded = make believe.

My self is a projection of ideas in the mind, and I think that this is what I am.

Who am I really?
I am consciousness, pure and simple. The idea of a self doesn’t like the inconvenient truth that it has no existence: consciousness witnesses this – and that is the muddle we Buddhas are in.

This consciousness cannot be found as it is that which is seeing. If we ever find consciousness, we are deluded. We’ve been caught in this mental trap for so long that we never notice consciousness. We think it’s a thing that we have, but it cannot be found. It’s that idiotic because we don’t know what we are, and so we remain confused and thus, upset.

It is this idiot-self that keeps distracting consciousness. This idiot-self can do and say all sorts of clever things, but it can never know what it is. For this reason, a computer/robot can never be conscious, even though the gods of earth think that it can.

Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche 1846-1912

“To elaborate or investigate adds concepts.
To make effort or to cultivate is pointless
To meditate is to become involved.
Cut all effort from within.

“Beyond thought and expression, nothing remains.
This the profound resolving of one’s mind;
difficult to describe, but realised as spontaneously present.”

A perfect way of being.

.

.

In this modern age of technology and science that turn everything into politics and unquestioning beliefs, isn’t it a relief to know there is a reality that has been within all beings since before time?

Some Things Are Difficult To Talk About

Some things are difficult to talk about as they have to be timely, but as you’ve found your way here through favourable curiosity, we might as well continue :-). Some things can only be spoken about when the listener has received the pointing-out instruction on the nature of mind, but if you have read this blog, you sort of get it. 😀

In non-dual meditation, we realise that we are pure consciousness – aware, but inactive. This can be upsetting for some people as they want to be up and doing, re-creating themselves and their situation. 🙂 Anyway, pure consciousness does nothing, but be aware.

Now for the tricky part. Depending on the level of enlightenment or realisation – and from this position – action only takes place to be of benefit to a situation, rather than of benefit to us. Having realised our true nature, we don’t need or rely on anything.

Some practitioners withdraw from worldly activities, while others engage.
It’s a personal choice.

We aren’t here to change the world; even a Buddha can’t do that. We are here to realise what we truly are, rather than become attached to everything.

The pull to change the world and other people is great, but that will depend on how many can work together. There is far too much division for that to happen, just yet.

The ‘dividers’ are very clever, and idiotically divided from reality.
They’re all busy trying to re-create themselves and us.Daft creatures!
😀

Reality Isn’t Cultivated

What we do cultivate, however, is our likes and dislikes, while ignoring our true reality of pure consciousness = a good heart that acts unconditionally, expecting nothing in return.

We cannot truly love if our feelings come first
– my family, my talents, my life …
That is love which is conditional.

Reality is uncultivated love,
uncontaminated by any conditions.

Do You Focus On The Puppets Or The Strings?

Everyone has attachments.

If we attach ourselves to others,
we get tangled up in their strings as well.

How many people are without attachments?

This Blog Isn’t About My View

This blog isn’t about my view;
it’s about your view.

It’s not about what you think of the view;
|it’s about the moment of direct seeing,
which is pure consciousness.

Who’s Telling The Truth?

Not the truth of an effect,
but the truth of the cause.

Puppet Masters

They are the influencers behind the scenes.
We are the puppets who dance to their tunes/news/films/games …

Switch Off Your Ego

If you are easily offended,
you are easily manipulated.

The Search Box At The Bottom Of This Page

To date, there are three thousand six hundred articles on this blog (goodness knows how that happened! 😀 ).

Type a word that comes to mind in the search box at the bottom of this page, and see what comes up.

You never know … it might be a spark in the darkness.

PS to get the bottom of the page on a Mac, it’s command + down arrow, and on Windows, it’s End.

Flawless Consciousness

Consciousness is without imperfections. It is very alive and very sensitive, but is easily distracted by ideas and emotions. It is precisely because of being so readily distracted that it is easier to spot – if we are looking. This is why ‘immoral intent’ constantly plies us with ‘exciting news’. It knows us; it knows our bias, and feeds it.

All the while, flawless consciousness looks on, but it has become an audience wanting to be entertained, instead of refining realisation. Flawless consciousness knows that it has been distracted but ignores this because it’s become so used to following others that it is constantly being “RESET” to ignore its original nature.

Once realised, flawless consciousness is pure consciousness,
unaffected by ‘exciting news’.

We can reset our reality by remembering what we are at any moment.

What’s Eating You?

Emotions – brought on by strong association with thoughts and feelings of hopes, fears, pride, jealousy – stir up our mental state, and eat away at us. We become distressed, anxious and disappointed, and we suffer. This saps away our energy, and has an effect on our health.

The world will never change as everyone is full of thoughts and emotions. It’s the world in which we all live … well, not everyone. 😀

These very emotions are wisdoms. When we recognise them, they no longer eat us, but we become nourished by them. Sounds ridiculous, right?

Just before the very first instant when an emotion arises, something is noted. The mind brightens – it lights up! We all see this moment, but we ignore it. That is pure consciousness taking the scene in, but not being taken in by the scene.

Recognition and realisation are simultaneous. First, we have to know what we are looking for! It is only due to old habits that we give in to emotions, reacting and becoming eaten up by conflict, and spreading bad breath. 😀

Eat subtleties; it refines digestion.

Religion: The Beginning Or End Of Our Journey?

Is religion the beginning or the end of our journey?

Religion can be a magical home, where we meet like-minded people who accept the same given answers to happiness.

Conversely, religion can be a stepping stone that brings us to the beginning of our own personal and curious journey, where we are the magic.