primordial is-ness

  

Mike Walker

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The daily enhancement practice system of the Completion stage teachings of the Yuthok Nyingthig (called) the ‘Spontaneous Arising of the Three Kayas’:

“Having ascertained that all the phenomena, all the appearances and arisings of Samsara-Nirvana exist within your own mind, recognize the essence of one’s mind as primordial - it does not arise, cease, or abide, it is free of either center or periphery, of the stain of (spatial) elaboration. Devoid of any basic characteristics whatsoever, it appears as a manifold display of radiance (of light and colour), and yet even in appearing it is devoid of any fundamental basis of an ‘appear-er’. 

Beyond expression and thought, inconceivable, ineffable, the naked primordial awareness is clear and bright, totally relaxed and open. It is all external appearances without exception, it is all internal awareness without exception. It is wholly unobstructed wisdom. It is beyond the need for rejecting afflictive emotions and bad actions, and is free of any ‘rejecter’. Perceive, without perceiving any ‘thing’, the natural state of this primordial is-ness. With this changeless wisdom of experiential awareness appearing in the depths of one’s mind, relax into the freshness of this suchness, the immediacy (that pervades) the four activities of walking, moving, lying down and sitting, of body, speech and mind, every activity. 

Let go into relaxed and uncontrived presence, relax into your own uncontrived spontaneously manifesting self-radiance. Maintaining this awareness in its bare and open state without any distraction whatsoever, your own mind will undoubtedly be transformed into that of Samantabhadra within this very life.” 


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

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somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will enclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands


—e. e. cummings

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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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