Awakening the Luminous Mind: Tibetan Meditation for Inner Peace and Joy (5 page)

You can feel that things are coming up within you. As sensations, thoughts, emotions, or memories come into awareness, as you notice them arising within you, allow them all. Everything that comes eventually dissolves. Anything arising in open spaciousness dissolves in that spaciousness. That is why it is called inner refuge. Do you have to go anywhere? No. Do you have to take your laptop or cell phone or remember the address or number of the inner refuge? No. You have everything you need: your body, speech, and mind are the doors to the inner refuge, accessed through the experiences of stillness, silence, and spaciousness.

T
HE
S
OURCE OF
A
LL
P
OSITIVE
Q
UALITIES

How do positive qualities arise, such as love and joy, or positive actions such as caring for others, or being creative and productive? Being productive is important in life. It is hard to imagine being paid a nice salary for being still, silent, and spacious for eight hours a day. According to the teachings of Bön, the space of being is infinitely rich. It is the source of positive qualities, and the actions that express these qualities are beneficial. You will feel the infinite potential of the source within you as you begin to recognize and then trust openness. But your attention must be directed in the right way in order to recognize openness. You don’t want to get lost in that open space; you want to be aware of that space. In the same way, you don’t want to be lost in your pain; you want to be aware of your pain. Your awareness of openness reveals the greatest source of all antidotes and positive qualities. The teachings of
dzogchen
do not focus so much on
cultivating
positive qualities. The advice is to go directly to the source, openness itself, and discover that the qualities are already there. If you do that, then you don’t have to work hard to feel love, for example; love is abundant in the open space of your being.

Happiness is not a product of working harder. We get exhausted and depleted from working so hard. When you connect with the space of refuge, you can feel you are recharging yourself. You are ready to give more, to receive more, to share more. That space of refuge is what we are referring to as a source of all the beneficial qualities that we need in life.

T
URNING
P
AIN INTO THE
P
ATH

It is most important to acknowledge the existence of our pain identity and to have the proper relation to it. Often, pain goes unrecognized. For instance, you could be sitting on a bench in a beautiful park waiting to meet a friend for lunch. Perhaps you are checking your e-mail on your phone without hearing the birds or seeing the play of light on the trees. Physically you are breathing, but you may have no connection with your body. You could be caught up in your thoughts about some work issues, strategizing various solutions. Nothing is truly fresh and alive when you are caught up in your habitual patterns of body, speech, and mind. And it is not that easy to recognize these habitual patterns unless your discomfort becomes more acute. There are many in-between moments in our lives when we are waiting for the next “event.” These are excellent opportunities to turn to the refuge. We can be anywhere—in a business meeting or at a lovely celebration—and recognize that we are not fully present. The bottom line is that we are often distracted and disconnected from our own creative energies and from what the natural environment and others have to offer. Each of us can find many opportunities throughout the day to become aware of habitual disconnection and to shift our attention to the refuge.

Until you recognize your pain identity, whether you experience it as boredom, disconnection, or some other manifestation of discomfort, no path of healing is available. Recognizing pain is the first step on the journey to awakening the sacred body, authentic speech, and luminous mind.

Directly in the midst of a bored, confused, or agitated experience, simply draw your attention to your body, and experience the stillness that becomes available. As you find stillness again and again, you will begin to realize that it is always available. It is a matter of turning your attention to the right place. Finding stillness sounds so simple that perhaps you might think it is not very convincing as a remedy for your problems. And because it is so simple, it can take years or a lifetime for someone to make that shift of drawing attention inward to discover what becomes available when they do so. Many do not make that shift and will always perceive the world as dangerous and threatening. But if you are able to make that shift of attention again and again, it can cause a remarkable transformation of your experience of yourself and the world. It is important to know that at any given moment of challenge or pain, there is another way to experience that very moment. Connect with the fundamental stillness of being. It is already there, but unrecognized.

When there are competing internal voices, hear the silence. It is right there, within those voices. We do not listen to inner silence or have a good relationship to it. We are drawn again and again to the stimulation and distraction of inner dialogue, negotiating and rehearsing. And we are pleased when we come up with a good strategy. At other times we try not to think about something that is bothering us, and with effort, push it out of our minds, distracting ourselves with other things. Whether we arrive at what we consider a good strategy, or actively distract ourselves from thinking about something, it is all pain speech from the point of view of the inner refuge. As we listen to the silence that is truly available in any given moment, whether we are in the middle of a busy airport or sitting at a holiday dinner table, our inner voices dissolve. These are the moments when something fresh and alive becomes available.

When you struggle with so many thoughts and strategies, recognize the spacious, open aspect of the mind. Spaciousness is always available, since it is the natural state of things. But instead of relaxing into the natural mind, your attention tends to get drawn outward when you feel hurt, threatened, or angry about a particular person or situation. You end up feeling that if you don’t do something immediately, things will go in a bad direction. The irony is that if you do not draw your attention to the spaciousness within you, and instead, continue to follow the strategies of reactivity, then you are only worsening your pain. When you are engaged in making a plan or worrying about whether something will work or not, this is all the activity of the pain mind. And the pain mind will never be the source of genuine relief from suffering.

I am not suggesting that you reject, control, or try to stop your thoughts. What you simply do is
allow them
. You look at thinking as it is. Instead of rejecting or pushing it away, you open to it; you go toward it with your focus, and as you get close to it, it is like trying to catch a rainbow. You go through it, and what you find there is just space. Or you feel space around and within that thought. You are neither rejecting the thoughts nor inviting the thoughts. The moment you feel spacious, the thought cannot sustain itself anymore. It is not there anymore. But if you reject it, that is another thought. And that thought is a kind of smart ego:
I am outsmarting that thought by observing it. Oh, there it is
. And there you are, talking to yourself, holding on to the credential of being the observer of thoughts.

The mind that strategizes is itself the creator of our suffering, and no matter how elegant or refined our strategy, it is still a version of the pain identity—and a more pernicious one at that, because it doesn’t recognize itself as the creator of the problem. So instead of coming up with a winning strategy, we must shift our relationship with the pain mind entirely, and become aware of the spaciousness. Then we also allow the observer to dissolve as well. Now you may wonder,
What is left?
You must find the answer for yourself, by directly and nakedly observing. We need to look directly into our busy, thinking mind in order to discover the luminous mind. Fortunately, others who have gone before us have done it and have provided instructions and encouragement for us.

So first we need to acknowledge our pain and draw our attention to stillness, silence, and spaciousness. If our pain dissolves, much becomes available in the open space of being. But if our pain has not simply dissolved, we need a proper relationship with it. We need a caring relationship.

To use an example from ordinary life, let’s say you are in trouble, need help, and turn to a family member for support. How do you feel supported? It is likely that you will feel supported by another if they make themselves available and simply listen to you. We feel less supported if they interrupt us to point out a few flaws in our logic and suggest ways we can improve. “You really got yourself into a mess here, and I feel I need to point a few things out to you. I can only help you if you will listen to me this time.” Or perhaps somebody is anxious about what you are revealing to them. They may be more fearful of the circumstances than you are. Do you feel supported? No. You also feel no support when somebody is there physically but they are distracted or seem rushed for time. They look at their watch; they take a phone call—it is clear their mind is somewhere else.

We feel supported when somebody is fully present, open, nonjudgmental, available, caring, and silently attentive. And the silence that contains the fullness of presence is quite beautiful. Just having another sitting next to you or across from you in this way makes you feel supported.

The example I have just given, showing how one person can be supportive to another, illustrates exactly how you should treat yourself, in order to have a caring relationship with your pain. Be open as you experience your pain. Be nonjudgmental, silent, and fully present. Host your pain with warmth. If you do that, you will heal more quickly. Being present in this way may take some practice, for it is quite possible you will discover that you are constantly judging yourself. There is not a moment of silence to just be with the pain, allow the pain, feel the pain, and host the pain with openness. Instead, you try to control your pain, force your mind, judge your pain, and as a result you become even more nervous and agitated. Of course, this increases feelings of being isolated and unworthy.

Our ego separates us from direct experience. It is a reaction to a perceived threat. You think you are in relation with pain because you are experiencing pain, but actually the reactive ego has no real connection to the pain. That is the fundamental suffering of ego—it has no connection to what is. Pain can be experienced purely and directly. Simply allow the experience fully and feel it. Why would you do such a thing? Because awareness itself is true connection, and this true connection gives birth to the warmth of many positive qualities such as love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Awareness is the key to the natural healing process.

As with self-healing, a most powerful communication occurs when you understand someone else’s pain with open awareness. This is the experience of compassion. Compassion—the genuine wish to relieve others’ suffering—is one of the greatest paths to enlightenment. If you truly listen to the pain of another, no matter who that person is, you will feel compassion. Discovering compassion often necessitates a shift in how we view someone, a shift from being constricted to being open, open to experiencing the pain of another. An ordinary example of shifting your perspective could go like this: Imagine you have been waiting for a friend to come over for a nice dinner that you have prepared. As it gets later and later, you become angrier and angrier. The person finally shows up shaking and says, “I had an accident on my way over and my car was totaled.” What do you feel? In a second your accumulated anger dissolves. How is it possible? Because you have recognized someone else’s pain. When you experience someone’s pain, the platform of your logic dissolves. We all have the natural capacity to dissolve the structure that separates us from another. And when we understand someone’s pain, the constricting defenses of ego melt. Likewise, when we experience our own pain without judgment, the constricting structure of ego melts. Awareness that is direct and naked is compared to the sun, and the warmth of awareness dissolves the solidified pain body the way the warmth of the sun melts a structure of ice. This warmth is the warmth of connection. In connection, positive healing qualities such as love and compassion are readily available.

Remedy for Pain: Three “Pills” of Inner Refuge

Let’s explore how you could heal a painful experience by finding refuge through the three doors of body, speech, and mind. First, engage in a brief reflection and become aware of a challenge or issue in your life at this time. As you bring it to mind, notice how this issue lives in your body. Bring clear attention to any agitation or tension you may be experiencing. As you experience the sensations in your body, draw attention to being still. Focus on stillness. As you begin to feel stillness, the agitation begins to calm; as you continue to focus on stillness, the agitation releases. Continue to draw attention toward stillness and as you feel it, rest there. Stillness can become the doorway to experience a glimpse of the unbounded space of being, a deeper stillness that is always present. That deeper stillness is the medicine, for it gives access to a sense of unbounded spaciousness. Your agitation has become the path for liberation, and it is a matter of fully realizing that stillness is the access or doorway to integrate unbounded spaciousness into everyday life. I actually refer to this medicine of
stillness
as a “white pill,” and I encourage my students to take the white pill frequently throughout the day.