Teachers do their best to convey what cannot be expressed in words, but the words can still get in the way. References to the luminosity of mind have always puzzled me, but Ken’s explanation in this class on the Ganges Mahamudra helped me "get" what this points to. Luminosity is not a light show. As Ken put it, "There's a clarity which arises as a knowing," and "It's the knowing quality that's always there in every experience."
From Ganges Mahamudra 2
Ken: What would it be like to have such familiarity with that empty, knowing quality of our experience that we could just experience everything and know that it was all just experience? What would it be like to live that way? This is really what we're pointing to. So we come back here:
Space has no color or shape.
It does not change.And as I said, and it's a highly non-trivial point, because there is nothing there to change.
It does not take on a color, either black or white.
Likewise, your own mind, in essence, has no color or shape.
It does not change because you do good or evil.So how many of you have a negative self-image? Hands up. Come on, let's be honest here. About half the class. How many of you have a positive self-image? A few. Okay. So you've got no basis for either of them. Well, there isn't any thing there.
The darkness of a thousand eons cannot dim the brilliant radiance that is the essence of the sun.
"The darkness of a thousand eons cannot dim the brilliant radiance that is the essence of the sun." A thousand eons, that's a very long time.
Let's take a more concrete example. Let's take a tomb, which was constructed a few centuries ago. And there's been absolutely no light in the tomb. And you find yourself—like Indiana Jones through a very intricate set of tunnels—in this room. And there hasn't been any light in this room for centuries. And you turn on your cell phone. You light a match or whatever. How long does it take for that darkness to be dispelled?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Where there's light, there's light. That's it.
Likewise, eons of samsara
For samsara, you can read, "habituated patterned existence." You can say your whole life. Okay.
Cannot dim the sheer clarity that is the essence of your own mind.
Now, the term in Tibetan is ’od gsal (pron: ösel). I can't remember what it is in Sanskrit. It's often translated as clear light. It's also translated as luminosity, or pellucidness, or various obscure words. Clear light, which is a literal translation of the Tibetan ’od gsal, is not inaccurate, but it does have the idea that there's some kind of light. Right?
And so,how many of you seek some kind of brilliant light experience in your meditation? Or you think that's what should happen, like the world should dissolve into light. I had a student who was saying, "You know, I'm just waiting for the blue flash of light. It's like a KMart special."
That's not what sheer clarity refers to.
Once again, look at your mind, or we could say, look at your experience, because they're not different. Now, when you look, as we've discussed earlier, you see nothing. But if I asked you, "Is that an experience of blankness?" what would you say? Anybody? Nava, your turn.
Nava: I'd say no, it's not an experience of blackness.
Ken: Blankness, or blackness. Okay, say more. And I know this is difficult to describe.
Nava: First of all, it changed the course of whatever happened before for me. Something stops, and there is movement.
Ken: So, what knows this? [Pause]
Now, right there, there's something which we can't put into words, but that is what the words "sheer clarity" are pointing to. There's a clarity which arises as a knowing, it arises as experience, but—and I don't know really how to put this into words myself either—but it's not blank.
So, when I ask Nava here, what knows this? And I've asked you this with respect to others. What knows this? Well, there is the experience of knowing. There is the experience of being aware. Everybody with me on that one? Okay.
That's what the sheer clarity—I chose the word "sheer" rather than say "clear light," because when we talk about a sheer cliff, it just goes shoom, and it just drops straight down. And so I used the word "sheer" to get at the nothing-to-it quality. And yet, that knowing's there, even though there's nothing to it. Does this fit with your experience? Yeah.
Now, it's a very subtle thing, and it's always there. Even when you're experiencing really turgid dullness in your meditation, where the mind just seems like completely black, all you have to do is ask, "What knows this?" and it's there.
That's what the sheer clarity is pointing to. And we've been emphasizing up to this point the space-like quality, but there's also this—radiant is almost too strong a word because you have this idea there should be something shining out of it. And as one's relationship deepens—and that can be brought out in various ways—it can, as you know it more and more clearly, have a radiant quality to it. But it's not like bright lights going off and wiping everything out. It's the knowing quality that's always there in every experience. Does that help?