Yugen Series – Liminal Landscapes, by Bruce Alderman

Recognizing Knowingness

I wanted to share these passages, [sent to me from Eric Lichtman and Oda Lindner [two advanced TSK students]. They are ‘pointing-out’ passages that may be helpful to others who are interested, particularly our Monday—TSK Study Group, that has been practicing Ex, 23 – Welcoming Each New Arising, from ‘Gesture of Great Love,’ by Tarthang Tulku, and other similar practices.

The following quotes that are Buddhist teachings and not TSK per se. But may well apply to the experience of sitting at the edge of the future, at ‘Time’s giving instant’, ‘welcoming each new arising,’   the zero-point of cognition, [TSK phrases], while relaxing and letting go…

“…allow the mind to rest with vivid clarity in an unaltered, empty state of mind. When the mind is still, then settle into that stillness, without trying to alter it in any way. When it is not thinking, settle directly into that non-thinking, without trying to alter it.

In short, do not alter the mind, but settle directly within whatever occurs. Don’t try to adjust or improve or to block or cultivate anything. Allow whatever occurs to unfold and settle into it directly. Don’t draw the mind inwards. And don’t search for any external focus for meditation… Simply settle, without altering, in the very mind that seeks or thinks.”

From: “A Profound Method for Attaining Enlightenment According to the Ultimate Great Perfection,” by Patrul Rinpoche

And this passage as well…

“A Method in Sustaining the Nature of Awareness”

First of all, scrutinize the naked and natural face of awareness by means of your master’s oral instructions until you see it free from assumptions. Having resolved it with certainty, it is essential that you simply sustain the nature of just that. It is not enough just to recognize it; you must perfect the training in the following way:

You may already have recognized the face of awareness, but unless you rest in just that, conceptual thinking will interrupt it, and it will be difficult for awareness to appear nakedly. So, at that point, it is essential to rest without accepting or rejecting your thoughts and to continue by repeatedly resting in the state of unfabricated awareness.

When you have practiced this again and again, the force of your thought waves weakens while the face of your awareness grows sharper, and it becomes easier to sustain. That is the time when you should abide in the meditation state as much as you can and be mindful of remembering the face of awareness during post-meditation. As you grow used to this, the strength of your awareness is trained further.

At first, when a thought occurs, you need not apply a remedy to stop it. By leaving it to itself, it is, at some point, naturally freed – just as the knot on a snake becomes untied by itself. When you become more adept, the occurrence of a thought will cause slight turmoil but immediately vanish in itself – just like a drawing on the surface of water. When you train in just that, you gain experience that transcends benefit and harm, at which point thought occurrences cause no problem whatsoever. Thus, you will be free from hope or fear about whether or not thoughts do occur…

From: The Essence of Wakefulness, By Mipham Rinpoche

In that instant of open awareness, there are no doings, there is simply allowing by not-doing. And what seems to be essential… is for us to ‘recognize’ that ‘Knowingness’ when it happens. Without that recognition, we just keep swimming in our ordinary self-absorption… mind’s regime.

Warm regards, 

David