He had developed a superstitious fear of the instant, that tiny hole through which all the time available to human beings must pass.—César Aira, Varamo

 

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II The Primordial Purity and Cutting Through Hardness

 

If one condenses this meaning down in its entirety, the View, Meditation, Conduct, Fruit, Delusion, and Liberation, and so on, all phenomena comprising the appearances and arisings of Samsara-Nirvana, they are all within one’s own mind. 

If the mind, in its own basic nature, itself searches and tries to see whether it can discover its existence or non-existence, whether it is true or false, singular or differentiated, even at the level of the tiniest particle of conceptually elaborated dependent or conditioned phenomena, it won’t find anything. 

The cognizant awareness of the thinker who thinks ‘nothing has been found, there’s nothing that can be found or expressed’ reaches a point of refuting and undermining itself - having realized this, attachment to the basis of what has been realized disappears.  

The object of investigation is abandoned, the one who investigates is annihilated, one passes beyond the mind of philosophical tenets and conceptual elaborations entirely. All recollections and speculations, memories and thoughts are generally and wholly purified, appearances are clear and resplendent in their very essence, whatever arises dissolves into this clarity of the essence of awareness. All appears without any ground for appearing whatsoever, pure and clear, unobstructed by any mindful awareness. 

Being self-pure without any basis for arising at all, one realizes that one comes up empty-handed, that that which is sought after doesn’t exist. One realizes that one comes up empty-handed too in trying to find anyone who searches, and that the awareness that observes this ‘searcher’ is wholly undifferentiated, without any individual parts at all. 

Manifesting ineffably in an instant, it is self-radiant without any basis whatsoever. The object of cognition is clear and vivid, the cognizer or knower, realizing that it is without any graspable self, turns back on itself and is without any ‘home’ or location. Thus, being without any origin, it has no recognizable characteristics that can be perceived, nor can even this thought of its imperceptibility be perceived in any way either. 

Not even the slightest basis to hold onto can be found at all.

Remaining in a state of one’s own innate self-radiance, not grasping at or identifying anything, this discovery of non-discovery is vivid and clear like the vast expanse of the pure heavens. It is not limited in scope in any way at all, it is unbiased, has not fallen into any particular view or perspective. 

No essential quality of either centre or periphery exists for it at all. It is the mindfulness of self-cognizing awareness that is liberated in and of itself into insubstantiality, undistracted by the derailing of mindfulness or the break-down of concentration from the coming, going, and clearing away of thoughts.

—Nida Chenagtsang

Mirror of Light: A Commentary on Yuthok’s Ati Yoga, Volume 1

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It is a lie, any talk of God that does not comfort you.

—Meister Ekhart

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