“Mind” is discovered to be without something outside or inside. It does not have someone that looks; it is not the act of looking. It is experienced as a great original wakefulness without center or edge, an immense all-pervasiveness that is primordially empty and free. This original wakefulness is intrinsic and self-existing. It is not made right now, but is present within yourself from the very beginning. Decide firmly that the view is to recognize just that! To “possess confidence” in this means to realize that like space, mind is spontaneously present from the beginning. Like the sun, it is free from any basis for the darkness of ignorance. Like a lotus flower, it is untainted by faults. Like gold, it doesn’t alter its own nature. Like the ocean, it is unmoving. Like a river, it is unceasing. Like Mount Sumeru, it is utterly unchanging.Once you realize that this is how it is [and stabilize it], that is called “possessing the view of realization.”

Padmasambhava

from the book Advice from the Lotus-Born

translated by Erik Pema Kunsang


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Further quotes from the book Advice from the Lotus-Born:

• Your natural face
• Path of enlightenment
• Mingle the practice with your own being
• Practicing the true Dharma
• Diligence
• Present in yourself
• Although
• All This
• Generosity
• Meditator
• Hermit
• Gain mastery over your mind!
• Degenerate age
• The union of samsara and nirvana