Tag Archives: awareness

Think non-thinking ~ Dogen Zenji

Before you begin meditation take several slow, deep breaths. Hold your body erect, allowing your breathing to become normal again. Many thoughts will crowd into your mind; ignore them, letting them go. If they persist be aware of them with the awareness which does not think. In other words, think non-thinking.

Dogen Zenji

The Nature of Awareness ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Once one has found emptiness, it is like the summertime, when the earth becomes warm and all the orchards and forests start to grow naturally without effort. When the nature of awareness has been identified, there is no longer any difference between meditation and the postmeditation experience.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

We don’t have to force it ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Awareness will become clearer and clearer of its own accord; we don’t have to force it to become so. In the practice of the Great Perfection, we first recognize the primordial nature of mind, and then become more and more experienced in recognizing it, eventually achieving complete stability in its realization.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Recognition of subtle shifts in mental behavior ~ Mingyur Rinpoche

The most important aspect of karma relates to the state of our mind. At some point, whether we meditate or not, we learn that certain activities disturb the mind. When we apply awareness to cause and effect, we cultivate recognition of subtle shifts in mental behavior, and we become more sensitive to how an agitated mind affects other activities. If we don’t pay for our bills, we might become so afraid that the bill collectors will call or knock on the door that we become increasingly anxious, untill we are in serious psychological trouble. In the same way, taking an opportunity to help in small ways, such as helping a lady lift her toddler’s stroller onto a bus, giving up a seat on the subway, even just smiling more than usual, can condition the mind to generate more goodwill and can infuse the whole atmosphere with some subtle sense of kindness.

Mingyur Rinpoche

The absence of wisdom and awareness ~ Thrangu Rinpoche

Due to the absence of wisdom and awareness and due to having failed to learn how phenomena manifest and how they are, the mind has built up and developed the habitual pattern of ignorance since beginningless time and remains entangled in its darkness.

Thrangu Rinpoche

The mind of a buddha is all-pervasive ~ Shri Singha

There is no difference between buddhas and sentient beings other than their scope of mind. What is called mind, consciousness, or awareness, is of a single identity. The mind of a sentient being is limited. The mind of a buddha is all-pervasive. So develop a scope of mind that is like the sky, which has no limit to the east, west, north, or south.

Shri Singha

Awareness contains impermanence ~ Mingyur Rinpoche

Awareness contains impermanence, not the other way around. But they have this in common: Our liberation comes from recognition.

Mingyur Rinpoche

Re-awakened ~ 14th Dalai Lama

Rigpa awareness, or Samantabhadra, is a primordially enlightened state, a quality of buddhahood that we all possess from beginningless time. However, this primordial quality of buddhahood is obscured by adventitious mental factors, our afflictions and other thought processes. Through practice, this primordial quality of buddhahood manifests. That is why, when all of the adventitious stains are cleansed, one is said to become re-awakened or re-enlightened.

14th Dalai Lama

The real source of fear is not knowing ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

When you begin to notice the damage that emotions can do, awareness develops. When you have awareness — for example, if you know that you are on the edge of a cliff — you understand the dangers before you. You can still go ahead and do as you were doing; walking on a cliff with awareness is not so frightening anymore, in fact it is thrilling. The real source of fear is not knowing. Awareness doesn’t prevent you from living, it makes living that much fuller.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

A simple moment of awareness ~ Khandro Rinpoche

The essence of the highest teachings lies within a simple moment of awareness.

Khandro Rinpoche

Advice for a King ~ Katok Rigdzin Tsewang Norbu

Svasti. You might have a hundred or a thousand teachers,
But the one who introduces you to mind’s nature is supreme,
Superior in kindness even to the Buddha —
To the root guru, I bow down in homage.

The very essence of your own mind,
Is entirely beyond arising, ceasing and remaining —
This is what followers of the Great Perfection
Call rigpa, pure and open awareness.

The essence of this approach is none other than
Taking this awareness as the path,
In undistracted, non-meditation —
So, without distraction, sustain the genuine nature.

What we call ‘stillness and movement inseparable’
Means that in stillness, which is beyond arising,
There is movement, which is beyond cessation —
Stillness and movement, arising and ceasing, are thus inseparable.

Undistracted awareness is the path of the Victorious,
And distraction is the playground of saṃsāra.
So maintain awareness without distraction,
Continuously, both day and night.

The nature of mind is clear light.
Sullying thoughts are to be purified.
But movement must neither be rejected nor indulged.
The stirrings of mind must naturally free themselves.

The source of virtuous action
Is none other than devotion for the guru.
So exert yourself in guru yoga,
And avoid sporadic practice.

There is no limit to what could be said,
But now is the time for essential practice,
So may this short explanation
Cause experience and realization to increase just like the waxing moon.

Katok Rigdzin Tsewang Norbu

Basic decency ~ Chögyam Trungpa

If you have awareness in whatever you do, you always have a sense of basic decency. You do not cheat. You do not do things just because they are traditional, and you don’t just do something this year simply because you did it last year. You always try to practice your discipline as genuinely and honestly as possible — to the point where the honesty and genuineness begin to hurt.

Chögyam Trungpa

Ego’s indoctrination ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Many people are afraid of being brainwashed by religion. But there is no fear of brainwashing in Buddhism; we know we are already brainwashed by ego. Because ego does nothing but create pain and suffering, Buddhism is about getting unbrainwashed. It’s about waking up from this hypnotic state of subservience to ego. Through meditation and self-reflection, our own awareness bears witness to ego’s “indoctrination”.

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Essence of mind ~ Mipham Rinpoche

What we call “essence of mind” is the actual face of unconditioned pure awareness, which is recognised through receiving the guru’s blessings and instructions. If you wonder what this is like, it is empty in essence, beyond conceptual reference; it is cognisant by nature, spontaneously present; and it is all-pervasive and unobstructed in its compassionate energy. This is the rigpa in which the three kayas are inseparable.

Mipham Rinpoche

The courage not to succumb ~ Jack Kornfield

When we examine anger and aversion with awareness, there is a radical shift of identity. These states are not who we really are. They are conditioned and impersonal, and they do not belong to us. It is scary to us and to those with whom we are locked in conflict when we release our blame. Sometimes our partners are confused when we step out of the dance of anger. They too will be required to change. In letting go of contention we return to our true strength and nobility. In our hardships, we discover the courage not to succumb, not to retreat, not to strike out in fear and anger. And by resting in a non-contentious heart we become a lamp, a medicine, a strong presence; we become the healing the world so dearly needs.

Jack Kornfield

Genuinne compassion ~ Khandro Rinpoche

Compassion is not about kindness. Compassion is about awareness. Compassion in the general sense of kindness would be an expression of awareness, but one that might not necessarily be free from the stain of ego-grasping. Genuine compassion is egoless. It is the inherent essence expressed, inseparable from awareness. This natural essence, which is genuine compassion, does not need to be formulated or even expressed as something like “compassion.” We see this exemplified in our great teachers. Their genuine compassion does not require phrases and expressions or even actions. Just their presence, who they are, is nothing other than the quintessence of compassion.

Khandro Rinpoche

Clear light ~ Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

At the time of the meditation of tranquil stillness and true seeing, although this meditation is not the basic nature of clarity and emptiness just as it is, it is the arising of an aspect of experience that is similar, like the way the form of the sky appears in water. This is called an example demonstrating clear light. The essential nature of wisdom is free from the coverings of experience, like stainless sky. When this is realized, it is called absolute clear light.

By realizing the basic nature of the great bliss of the clear light of empty awareness and by continuously sustaining it, when one actually accomplishes the stages of the path, the consciousness of the five senses will dissolve into mind. Mind will dissolve into the consciousness of alaya. When alaya dissolves into the dharmata of empty clear light, even though there is no consciousness, because consciousness is purified from the root, self-awareness wisdom light will arise like stainless sky. Thus it is also said. For example, when gold mixed with earth, stone, sand, and so on is melted down and refined, the power of the ordinary stain or nature of the elements of earth and stone is reduced more and more, like the gross energy of obscurations, and the quality of the element gold is purified more and more. Eventually the time will come when even the object of purification, the gold itself, will be purified and there will be nothing left.

Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

Recognition ~ Mingyur Rinpoche

Awareness is the natural, innate, knowing quality of mind that is with us all the time. We cannot function without awareness; we would have no experience of anything without awareness. However, we do not always recognize it. In fact, most of the time we don’t. Meditation teaches us to recognize the awareness that we already have.

Mingyur Rinpoche

The most important attitude and practice ~ Kalu Rinpoche

The essence of the Lama or Buddha is emptiness; their nature, clarity; their appearance, the play of unimpeded awareness. Apart from that they have no real material form, shape or colour, whatsoever – like the empty luminosity of space. When we know them to be like that we can develop faith, merge our minds with theirs, and let our minds rest peacefully. This attitude and practice are most important.

Kalu Rinpoche