Open Mind by Eva Natanya

Author:Eva Natanya
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

Instructions for Introducing the View to Novices

With regard to novices like us, the instructions for introducing [the view] are as follows. A guru with experiential realization, as explained earlier, truly reveals how existence rests in the ground of being to a disciple [62] whose mind is filled with faith and admiration. Then the sublime method for bringing that to the state of fruition depends on truly manifesting the wisdom that realizes compassion with pristine awareness. One properly identifies compassion with pristine awareness by the extraordinary power of the unmistaken instructions for an introduction to that sacred compassion itself — which is pristine awareness. Since it is crucial to be able to do so, here is the way: First one must seek authentic stillness by gently releasing all conceptual elaborations involving investigation and analysis regarding the past, present, and future. Since the stillness that comes by force of settling the mind in that way is freshly contrived, when that stillness is suddenly disrupted with phaṭ, a blank nothingness is left behind as something that is not [the contrived stability of the mind] itself. From that instant, consciousness devoid of conceptual elaboration, with no object — an unmodified consciousness without any basis — arises. At that time, without diverging from that very nature, one must rest there in an unmodified, lucid manner.

This ground sugatagarbha, pristine awareness, self-emergent primordial consciousness, the indwelling, actual nature of existence, is the all-creating sovereign of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. Subtle and vast, it is the spontaneously actualized presence of the uncontrived, self-emergent [63] enlightened qualities of the three kāyas. In a state of dissolution that is not dull, it pervades and is naturally present in all the virtuous, evil, and ethically neutral, good and bad, subtle and coarse thoughts in the mindstreams of all sentient beings. And it pervades in such a way that the actual nature of reality does not negate the existence of phenomena. However, due to the present power of all forceful karmic energies and conceptual fabrications, the constant movements of conceptual fabrications regarding whatever comes to mind, as well as whatever karmic energies may be present, cause you to abide exclusively in the nature of the substrate. Even though primordial consciousness is naturally present within you, when you fail to recognize your own nature, the primordial consciousness of unimpeded emptiness and luminosity, which is indivisible from the energy of primordial consciousness — having the nature of inconceivably many apparitions when it appears — is feeble. When that is so, once such primordial consciousness of the nondual profundity and luminosity emerges uncloaked, it is difficult to ascertain. However, when primordial consciousness is nakedly present — free of all the conceptual fabrications and karmic energies and so on, which obscure the face of primordial consciousness, pristine awareness — on occasion it is present even now, at the time of the ground. Such primordial consciousness is present [64] in the nature of all subtle and coarse configurations of thoughts, just as sesame seeds are pervaded by oil.

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