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.

Why Use The Word ‘Emptiness’?

The word ’empty’ is the opposite of the word ‘full’.

The mind and consciousness are, by nature, clear.
We recognise this in the very first empty instant of seeing,
before we start judging and filling up.

Our minds are full of opinions, fixations and obsessions that we cling to, and which distract consciousness. This is why we become anxious and confused about our actual reality, being unaware that we are pure, bright consciousness.

When the mind is free of stress, it returns to emptiness, and consciousness finds peace. We find peace. This is where our true intelligence lies – seeing directly, rather than through a cluttered mind.

If we ignore pure consciousness, we become pseudo-intellectuals, always ready to try and impress; by thinking we are right, we use knowledge as a weapon. Constantly judging, we sentence ourselves through misunderstanding the nature of reality.

If we fixate on phenomena, we suffer, as all phenomena cannot be said to truly exist. It is impermanent and only exists in time; being a temporary arrangement of elements, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and is thus empty of any true existence.

Know emptiness, know perfect peace.

‘I’ Blindness

The ‘I’ is blind to reality.
What we think of as our selves is blind to reality.
The result: the blind leading the blind.

All of us, like silly sheep, have gone astray from our true reality because we are led by the blind, and we are therefore confused about our reality. Even meditation can maintain this blindness if all we are doing is doing meditation.

Don’t be blind to the purpose of meditation.
Look for the meditator.

Not finding a meditator,
we arrive at total exhaustion,
pure awareness wide open.

We are not a thing; we are a presence.

Whatever Someone Says Doesn’t Matter

It doesn’t matter what people say;
what matters is what’s happening in our mind – our reactions.

Ideas placed in the mind make us think that we ‘know’, when this information is having opposite effect of actually knowing. “Don’t take my word for it”, said the Buddha.

Ordinary people react;
practitioners note.

We weaponise information that then lies in ambush in the mind as memory. At a given stimulus, we judge and react, causing conflict. Information works like brand awareness, where the brain lights up and the mind responds before a person even knows it. This is how we lack mental control.

Mind training is giving space to our reactions, holding off by being generous, patient and disciplined. Without this, our reaction are just self-preservation.

Look at yourself and gain confidence in the seeing of that self.
That which sees our self in action is pure consciousness.

Earth: Beautiful But Bonkers

People of Earth are beautiful but bonkers.

Their essence is a pure heart – the beautiful –
but their minds are self-indulgent – the bonkers.

When we know our true nature,
all the bonker-ness makes sense.

We can now cruise through life,
able to skirt around the bonker-ness.

Is It Really A Scary World?

In a genuinely scary situation, we have no time to be scared as we have something to deal with which overrides fear. Fear derives from rumour – every good filmmaker knows how to achieve this. Merely listening to people talk, with their beliefs in this and that, reminds us how scary the world is! The media is full of scaremongering – so much so that it becomes a comic.

If we wrap our self up in a cosy bubble, we will worry that everything can pop our bubble, and so we feel vulnerable. This bubble is our self-image, which is the cause of our suffering as we have to protect it constantly.

If we have pierced our bubble and immersed our self in this scary world, we are dealing with it moment by moment, and it’s no longer scary.

It Doesn’t Matter What We Know About The World …

It doesn’t matter what we know about the world,
things will happen anyway.
They always have.

Under the guise of a warning is insidious programming.
We see and hear, and we are influenced.

What matters isn’t what we know; it is that which knows which is of absolute importance. Realise that our true nature is pure consciousness, above and beyond all that is happening. Pure consciousness cannot be touched or destroyed.

If, however, we still believe that we are just this body and mind – for example, people who believe they are old will act old – whatever is happening in the world will affect us.

Whatever happens in the world,
it can never affect pure consciousness,
but consciousness can be distracted because it hasn’t realised its purity.

Being distracted is the job of evil intent,
which steers consciousness away from its reality.

The Dharma Isn’t Hoity-Toity

The Dharma isn’t haughty, snobbish and self-congratulatory.
The Dharma isn’t holy or other-worldly.

The Dharma is right here, right now, in all conditions;
even if we get things wrong, and life is a mess,
consciousness is still present.

If we realise that,
we realise everything.
Dharma is merely showing us that we are consciousness itself,
aware and pure.

Purity isn’t an act.
Purity is unbiased seeing.
We are Dharma – just see.

Dharma Needs No Adornment

Pure consciousness needs no adornments to attract.
Never allow materiality to pull the wool over your eyes.

Dharma isn’t an adornment.
Dharma is our realisation.
Dharma is independent of structure and organisation.

Some Days Are Light, Some Heavy, Some Flat

The condition is which we find ourselves on any particular day is the karmic display of the absolute truth of the universe uncovering our path for us.

We are the absolute truth of the universe that needs to realise that this path is our undoing 😀
What else can we be?

Believing we are something less,
we create our path, going round in circles.

Whatever condition we find ourselves in,
we will always be Buddha nature.

Liberation is noting our reactions,
thereby letting them go and taking back control.

Beyond Knowing And Not Knowing Is Knowingness

Thinking we know,
we are in an occupied state.

Thinking we don’t know,
we are in a vacant state.

We cannot deny that knowingness
– which is synonymous with awareness or consciousness –
isn’t present.

While resting in knowingness,
there is nothing known to occupy us,
– and neither is there not knowing, because awareness is present.

When occupied or vacant,
note that there is a recognition of these states.

That is our true being
of pure knowingness, pure awareness, pure consciousness.

We don’t have to ask anyone else if this is so.

Science And Religion Have The Same Effect

In the early years, we seek the mythical, holy grail of life.

It doesn’t matter whether we follow science or religion, we end up obsessed and fixated. Depending on the type of person we are, we become seekers of either science or religion for a better existence. Science and religion may seem poles apart, but they have something in common; they bind us, and create division.

Pursuing favourable conditions is worthwhile but, like all of our endeavours, we become caught up in status and fortune. Obsessed about our subject, our objective mind loses touch with reality.

Our minds have been hacked through religion, technology and neurolinguistic programming. This is the confused system in which we live and, as long as we are predictable, we conform.

If we know how to return to our original clarity of direct seeing, without referring to memory (programming) and judgement (reactions), we connect to the clarity of innate, pure consciousness.

We are the mythical, kept-a-secret holy grail.

We Need A Constant Reminder

We need a constant reminder of our true reality,
because of constant, misleading information.

If we hang around with clowns,
we become part of the circus.

Recognise and gain certainty in the one principle that is provable
– even when things seem unpleasant.

This principle refines, and clarity ensues.
Minute reactions remind us that our true being is present.

En masse, we have moved far from reality,
and life has become complicated and stressful.

No longer reacting to the circuit of stimuli, we are free.
Pure consciousness cost nothing; it’s already present.

We are never without pure consciousness.
We are pure consciousness.

Making Our Self Feel Better …

Making our self feel better,
instead of feeling better about our self.

This has always been the human dilemma
– to cover our self in selfishness, or to understand this self.

We spend our entire life in ignorance, defending our self. When we understand our true nature, which is pure consciousness, this sees our self in action; it sees all its hopes and fears, and so, pure consciousness becomes at ease with this self.

Pure consciousness is the perfection of our reality.
Self is the perfection of our confusion.

The moment when pure consciousness acknowledges our confusion,
the perfection of wisdom arises.

Does Anything Exist?

It’s not a question we like to ask 🙂

Existence: coming into being.

If something comes into being, it didn’t exist before.
Does it exist now? Is it a temporary phenomena?

We think we exist, but how?
The body is temporary; the mind is temporary.
They are animated by consciousness.

What of consciousness?
Consciousness is not created; it is just awareness, and never changes.
Consciousness cannot be said to exist – come into being.

We may say that consciousness came into a body,
but consciousness itself wasn’t created.
Throughout our lives, consciousness has never changed.

When we die, consciousness leaves the body, but with ‘add-ons’ = karma.
Due to these add-ons, consciousness will be attracted to a certain form;
add-ons are our karmic tendencies which we are born with.

Believing everything to be real, we create more karma.
Seeing the illusory nature of existence, we aren’t so attached to everything.
Karma is thereby dissolved.

Can The Dharma Be Used Against Humanity?

Dharma is the knowledge to enable enlightenment,
pointing out whatever obscures this potential.

Dharma principles are unfailing,
especially regarding the obscurations of desire, aversion and ignorance
that obscure our potential.

If these obscurations are promoted,
division occurs, and the Dharma is used against humanity.

Dharma is seeing the effects of these obscurations,
transforming them into the wisdom of purity, consciousness and compassion.

We have to see what is being promoted in the world.

Find Your One Point In Life
Gain confidence and freedom.

Garab Dorje:
Recognise your essence.
Decide on this one point.
Gain confidence and freedom.

First, recognise your true essence. Without that, you cannot decide or gain confidence beyond doubt.

Decide that your essence is pure consciousness, and that this is what you are.

We may study, but our understanding will remain just an idea, an attachment held in mind. Essence has to be recognised, experienced, realised and then dropped. Truth is not recognised through the dualistic understanding. If we take that approach, we fixate and cling to a mistaken view that covers and obscures essence, and all we do is relate. That’s why we suffer.

Curly knows …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k1uOqRb0HU

Now, all we need to do
is get on with life as it presents itself.