Trust You Will Ripen

For me, solo retreats nourish and energise practice in daily life. This year, while preparing, I listened again to Ken’s instructions on the sky-gazing practice.

From A Trackless Path II 14

Ken: There are a number of teachings in various traditions on sky-gazing but the one that I’ve been exposed to and feels most complete is one from the Dzogchen tradition in which there are three skies, just to make it complicated. The practice consists of sitting or lying down in a location where ideally all you have is sky in front of you. There were caves that were carefully constructed in Tibet on the sides of mountains so that when you sat in them if you sat in a certain position you saw nothing but sky. There was no other reference point whatsoever.

...

And then you quite literally look at the sky. Now as Tilopa says, “When you look at space, seeing stops. When you look at mind, thinking stops.” It is important to look at the sky, or to put it slightly differently, to look into the sky. So you’re actually looking. You’re not just letting your eyes go into soft focus because there’s nothing to look at. When you do that you actually become passive and probably move in a somewhat dull direction. The looking is active.

And the first sky is what we ordinarily call “sky”; it’s an infinite expanse of blue in front of us. And you look at that or into it. And just because the way the eyes are constructed there will be pixelation, and variation in shades and so forth you know. Pay no attention to all of that, that’s just stuff, and look. If the looking is active you’ll find a couple of things. In the beginning you probably won’t be able to do it for very long ’cause the intensity, the clarity is a little overwhelming, and you just find you’re sort of short-circuiting. But as you do it again and again you’ll build up more capacity. And as you look with that active looking you find it is actually difficult to hold any train of thought. I should mention one other thing on the practical side, at this altitude wear sunblock.

...

So there’s that active looking into the sky. And as you engage that and increase your capacity to hold that gaze into the sky—very hard to hold together the ordinary train of thinking—it just keeps disintegrating. Which of course is part of the purpose of this practice. And you find you’re beginning to experience calm-abiding, shamatha, just resting. But it’s got a little more juice than shamatha and meditation because you’re opening to the sky, and there’s just all that energy of the light coming in filling your whole mind and being with light and energy. So it’s quite a powerful practice.

And as your mind, or the thinking process, crumbles and disintegrates—and it doesn’t do this immediately so don’t get your hopes up—you find, speaking technically, the sensory consciousnesses become less and less dominant in one’s experience. That’s the five associated with the senses except the one for seeing, of course, and the mental consciousness, which is associated with thought. And you’ll find that the seventh consciousness, the emotional mind, which is what I like to call it, also subsides. And you’ll find yourself resting without much sense of “I.”

And basically what’s happening here is that you’re experiencing basis-of-everything consciousness. Sanskrit term for that is alaya-vijñāna. Now in basis-of-everything consciousness there is no explicit sense of “I” or “other” but it is not beyond duality. There’s no explicit sense of I or other, and as Dezhung Rinpoche explained to me, it’s clear, empty, and ineffective. And for those of you who want the Tibetan for ineffective it's lung ma bstan (pron. lung ma ten).

...

Carolyn: It’s interesting that that’s lung ma bstan because that’s the dullness in meditation too.

Ken: Sure, yeah. It’s as Dezhung Rinpoche would say, stong gsal lung ma bstan (pron. tong sal lung ma ten). lung ma bstan is often translated as neutral but there’s no juice to it, that’s the idea. Now, this is a little bit of an aside, but particularly in reference to Carolyn’s comment, it’s important. There are countless meditators over the centuries who mistake resting in alaya-vijñāna for enlightenment and it’s not.

Again Dezhung Rinpoche explained this when he was giving us mahamudra instruction: it’s empty, clear, and ineffective. No juice—however you want to describe that to yourselves. It’s like a block of ice. And alaya-vijñāna to buddha mind is like ice to water. That is, ice is clear, can see right through it, you don’t know it’s there, and it can’t do anything because it’s a block of ice. And when you rest in it, bringing active attention into it, basically the ice melts. And then you have empty, clear, unrestricted experience. And the lung ma bstan, the ineffective becomes unrestricted. So it becomes very, very alive.

Having no mental imagery or experience of "hearing" thoughts, my mind is naturally rather quiet. Rather than a flow of thoughts I experience a stream of sensations and feelings punctuated by silent thoughts. Looking into the sky dissolves the sense of I and other, and each time I do the practice, I recall Ken's often repeated advice: “Don’t work at practice, let practice work on you,” and also a line from T. S. Eliot that he often quotes: “The rest is not our business.”

James Low sums it up like this:

From Open to Life 8

James: If we're not ripe, it's not going to work.

...

So how do we become ripe? How do we become? Well, when we want things to ripen, it's better if they can ripen on the tree, and when the tree is rooted. So we root ourselves in the source, in the ground, in the openness, and we resource ourselves by exposure to the ripening forces, the warmth of engaging in the world, blowing with the wind of circumstances, absorbing the rain of the confusion which can flow on to us very easily, and gradually we ripen. Don't force it. Trust you will ripen. Everybody has buddha nature, everybody has buddha potential, but you have your unique individual story, and your path will not be like anyone else's.

In Open to Life 7 and many other retreat recordings, James also teaches a practice that doesn't depend on an unrestricted view of the sky. It's called the guru yoga of the three ah.

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Reality is the Best Teacher

A crucial task for you as a student is to be clear about your own intention. If you don’t clearly understand what you are looking for in a teacher or in internal work, you will inevitably accept someone else’s agenda as your own. While you may start internal transformative work on the suggestion or advice of another person, at some point your practice has to become a response to your own questions about life and being. Your own suffering, however it manifests, is the basis and motivation for your practice. To lose sight of it is to lose connection with your reason for practicing. Another person's experience can never answer your own questions. You have to know what you want from your practice. Then you can know what you want in a teacher.

From “The Mystery of Being,” p. 12, in Wake Up To Your Life by Ken McLeod

From time to time, friends talk about a workshop they've attended, a healing modality they've discovered, a new spiritual teacher they've encountered, or a framework that has helped them make sense of their lives. As culture evolves, so do our interests, and the way we talk about them. Lately I've noticed a shift in emphasis. These days, the framing is rarely about becoming your best self or manifesting the life you desire. Today's theme seems to be healing: healing trauma, healing old wounds, healing relationships, healing the self. Underlying much of this language is a wish to feel more whole, more understood, or more at ease.

The Buddhist tradition shares some of those concerns, and also points in a rather different direction. A central question is not how to become a better self, but how to see through the assumptions that make the self seem so solid and separate. I've sometimes wondered what, if anything, to say about this difference.

“How can I feel better about myself?” is a very different question from, “Who or what is this sense of self that I spend so much energy protecting?”

The first question seeks improvement. The second points in a different direction altogether. Many spiritual conversations never seem to reach that second question. They remain focused on managing experience, reducing discomfort, making sense of life, or cultivating a more satisfying identity. There is nothing wrong with these pursuits, and indeed, they may be necessary.

Practice often begins with these very practical concerns. In my case the concern was anger and the suffering it created. I was looking for improvement, for a way to live differently. Over time, however, the question that brought me to practice gave way to other questions.

When I first read this passage from Wake Up To Your Life, I took Ken's words mainly as advice about teachers and spiritual groups. Increasingly, I hear them differently. They point to a simple fact: no one else can give us the questions that matter. Those questions emerge from our own lives, our own disappointments, our own encounters with uncertainty, loss, beauty, love, and death. Reality is the best teacher.

So these days, when friends talk about their spiritual paths, I mostly listen.

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Looking for the Missing Piece

From Aspirations for Mahamudra, commentary on verse 19 by Ken McLeod

One day shortly after the three-year retreat ended, I went to Kalu Rinpoche for instruction in dzogchen. I had asked for the instruction because, frankly, I thought I might be missing something.

Rinpoche picked up a piece of paper from a pile of pages in front of him and read a pointing-out instruction to me. “Sounds like mahamudra to me,” he said.

He then picked up another piece of paper and read another instruction. “Hmmm, that sounds like mahamudra, too.” Another piece of paper elicited, “That sounds like dzogchen, no?”

I was familiar with almost all the instructions from my studies during the three-year retreat, and began to say so. Rinpoche ignored me and continued to read, mahamudra, dzogchen, dzogchen, mahamudra, back and forth—for half an hour or more.

Eventually he stopped, looked at me, and asked, “Do you understand?”

At the end of his commentary on verse 19, Ken shares this anecdote, which begins with a very familiar anxiety: “I might be missing something.” Shortly after completing the three-year retreat, he still wonders whether there is some crucial instruction, some hidden distinction, some deeper level that he has not yet received.

I find myself relating to this very strongly. Over the years, again and again I've had the feeling that somewhere there might be instructions that would work like a Rosetta Stone, decoding or illuminating experiences that don’t sit comfortably within descriptions of effects and results of practice, and releasing deep reactive patterns that keep reemerging. I've explored more than one ultimately fruitless rabbit hole searching for such keys. Then, through pure serendipity, I encountered Ken's anecdote.

Kalu Rinpoche’s response is wonderfully indirect. He doesn’t answer Ken’s question. He doesn’t explain the relationship between mahamudra and dzogchen or offer a philosophical comparison. Instead, he keeps reading instruction after instruction, refusing to let Ken settle into categories. Mahamudra. Dzogchen. Dzogchen. Mahamudra. Back and forth until the distinctions begin to lose their solidity. It feels as though Rinpoche is responding to Ken’s search for certainty by wearing out the mind that wants to classify, compare, conclude, and know the answer.

This anecdote touched a very tender place. Ken wanted to be sure he hadn't missed anything. I recognised that impulse immediately. My version of it has been, “I want to find a teaching or a practice that provides the missing piece.”

Ken comments that he is familiar with the instructions Rinpoche is reading. His frustration is palpable; he can distinguish one set of instructions from another. But Kalu Rinpoche seems to be pointing to something else. When he finally asks, “Do you understand?” it's not a test of knowledge. It's invitation to stop looking elsewhere. Searching for the perfect map is the very thing obscuring the territory.

Ken doesn't reveal how he answered, and Rinpoche’s question is left hanging in the air. Do we understand? Not the difference between mahamudra and dzogchen, but the nature of the doubt that keeps asking whether there is something else, somewhere else, that we still need to find or acquire.

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Luminosity is Not a Light Show

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. Scroll down to read or listen to the whole passage.

In Your Mind is Mahamudra: Tilopa’s Meditation Advice, James Low explains luminosity like this:

I have now been talking for about 30 minutes. You now have some sense of how I speak and what I say. You might think, 'Whoa, James is a bit strange.' You think 'He is like this.' That is how you gradually develop an image of who James is. How does your image of James compare with James's own perception of himself? Which is more accurate? Perhaps yours. Maybe I am completely deluded.

We don't know because the content of the mind is shifting and changing. In mahamudra, therefore, we do not focus on trying to correct, shape or organise the content of our experience. Instead, we relax and open to the ground basis of experience: the mind itself, which is simply basic knowing or illuminating. This is the sphere in which the luminosity of inner experience and the ceaseless movement of outer experience are perceived.

I am sitting here. I am aware of a sensation in my throat that you are not aware of. This sensation is mine. The sensation in my body is mine alone. You can't access it directly. Even if you were a doctor, you would still have to ask me how my throat feels. You have your memories, plans, hopes and fears. This is the inner content of the mind. Nowadays, this is often described as 'luminosity' in the translation of Tibetan texts, because it is the arising of an experience within the mind.

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?

And here is Kalu Rinooche's wonderful explanation:

Another aspect of the nature of mind is its luminosity. Normally we think of this term in a visual sense. We think of a luminous body like the sun or the moon which shines and gives off light. However, this is merely a metaphor to give us some idea of what is being hinted at. To say that the mind is luminous in nature is analogous to saying that space is illuminated. … This is not a visual experience per se, but the ability of mind to know, perceive and experience.

We may utilize a metaphor here. The emptiness of mind is the ocean; the luminosity of mind is the sunlit ocean; and the impeded dynamic quality of mind is the waves of the sunlit ocean. When we take the waves of the sunlit ocean as an event or situation, it is not as though we are trying to separate ocean from waves from sunlight; they are three aspects of a single experience. The unity of these three aspects forms the seed or potential for enlightenment. They are the pure nature of mind; the impurity of obscurations , ignorance and confusion overlays what is inherently the nature of mind itself.

—His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche, recognised as the activity emanation of the great Jamgon Kongtrul, author of The Five Great Treasuries.

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