Rest in the sky of natural mind

[dwai]

Quote

AN ACCOMPLISHED DHYĀNASIDDHA DESCRIBES TRUE NATURE OF MIND OR THE TATHĀGATAGARBHA 

"One of the first things I learned as a Buddhist was that the fundamental nature of the mind is so vast that it completely transcends intellectual understanding. It can’t be described in words or reduced to tidy concepts. For someone like me, who likes words and feels very comfortable with conceptual explanations, this was a problem.

In Sanskrit, the language in which the Buddha’s teachings were originally recorded, the fundamental nature of the mind is called tathagatagarbha, which is a very subtle and tricky description. Literally, it means “the nature of those who have gone that way.” “Those who have gone that way” are the people who have attained complete enlightenment—in other words, people whose minds have completely surpassed ordinary limitations that can be described in words.

Not a lot of help there, I think you’ll agree.

Other, less literal translations have variously rendered tathagatagarbha as “buddhanature,” “true nature,” “enlightened essence,” “ordinary mind,” and even “natural mind”—none of which sheds much light on the real meaning of the word itself. To really understand tathagatagarbha, you have to experience it directly, which for most of us occurs initially in the form of quick, spontaneous glimpses. And when I finally experienced my first glimpse, I realized that everything the Buddhist texts said about it was true.

For most of us, our natural mind or buddhanature is obscured by the limited self-image created by habitual neuronal patterns—which, in themselves, are simply a reflection of the unlimited capacity of the mind to create any condition it chooses. Natural mind is capable of producing anything, even ignorance of its own nature. In other words, not recognizing natural mind is simply an example of the mind’s unlimited capacity to create whatever it wants. Whenever we feel fear, sadness, jealousy, desire, or any other emotion that contributes to our sense of vulnerability or weakness, we should give ourselves a nice pat on the back. We’ve just experienced the unlimited nature of the mind.

Although the true nature of the mind can’t be described directly, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try to develop some theoretical understanding about it. Even a limited understanding is at least a signpost, pointing the way toward direct experience. The Buddha understood that experiences impossible to describe in words could best be explained through stories and metaphors. In one text, he compared tathagatagarbha to a nugget of gold covered with mud and dirt.

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Imagine you’re a treasure hunter. One day you discover a chunk of metal in the ground. You dig a hole, pull out the metal, take it home, and start to clean it. At first, one corner of the nugget reveals itself, bright and shining. Gradually, as you wash away the accumulated dirt and mud, the whole chunk is revealed as gold. So let me ask: which is more valuable—the chunk of gold buried in mud, or the one you cleaned? Actually, the value is equal. Any difference between the dirty nugget and the clean is superficial.

The same can be said of natural mind. The neuronal gossip that keeps you from seeing your mind in its fullness doesn’t really change the fundamental nature of your mind. Thoughts like “I’m ugly,” “I’m stupid,” or “I’m boring” are nothing more than a kind of biological mud, temporarily obscuring the brilliant qualities of buddhanature or natural mind.

Sometimes the Buddha compared natural mind to space, not necessarily as space is understood by modern science, but rather in the poetic sense of a profound experience of openness one feels when looking up at a cloudless sky or entering a very large room. Like space, natural mind isn’t dependent on prior causes or conditions. It simply is: immeasurable and beyond characterization, the essential background through which we move and relative to which we recognize distinctions between the objects we perceive."

~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche 

https://www.lionsroar.com/rest-in-the-sky-of-natural-mind/

[Born in 1975 in the Himalayan border regions between Tibet and Nepal, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is a much-loved and accomplished meditation master. From a young age, Rinpoche was drawn to a life of contemplation. He spent many years of his childhood in strict retreat. At the age of seventeen, he was invited to be a teacher at his monastery’s three-year retreat center, a position rarely held by such a young lama. He also completed the traditional Buddhist training in philosophy and psychology, before founding a monastic college at his home monastery in north India.

In addition to extensive training in the meditative and philosophical traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, Mingyur Rinpoche has also had a lifelong interest in Western science and psychology. At an early age, he began a series of informal discussions with the famed neuroscientist Francisco Varela, who came to Nepal to learn meditation from his father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Many years later, in 2002, Mingyur Rinpoche and a handful of other long-term meditators were invited to the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Richard Davidson, Antoine Lutz, and other scientists examined the effects of meditation on the brains of advanced meditators. The results of this groundbreaking research were reported in many of the world’s most widely read publications, including National Geographic and Time.]

 

[manitou]

My understanding of the natural mind is the mind without words.  When a person has been meditating for a long period of time and has been able to successfully meditate with no object - just spaciousness - this is the state of wu-wei, in a sense.  One is totally open and receptive to whatever comes along, prior attitudes are ignored and ultimately discarded.  Each situation is handled with no prior conditioning interfering, if we're in awareness.  Our conditioning has caused us to become opinionated people, coloring everything we see with our prior attitudes. 

 

For clarity, these must be abandoned.

[Nungali]

Interesting title this thread has .

 

When teaching people sword art ( and other martial things ) I have explained the 3rd principle - mind  .... what is required of the mind  is ' to have 'no mind ' / no thoughts . and if that is too hard , just think of 'clear blue clear sky' .

[manitou]

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

just think of 'clear blue clear sky' .

 

 

It's like a jar with a lid or no lid.  Take the lid off, the air in the jar and the sky are one.  That's when the answers come too; all we have to do is get ourselves out of the way.