Our Pristine Mind by Orgyen Chowang

Author:Orgyen Chowang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

LEAVE YOUR MIND ALONE

In his instructions for resting the mind, Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava says, “Leave your mind alone.” In meditation we should have no fabrications, no resistance, no wandering, and no concern. Just leave your mind to be the way mind is naturally—calm and clear like water.

When there is too much going on in our mind, when our mind is distracted, unhappy, or stressed, if we are moody or agitated, what we need to do is leave our mind alone. At those times our mind is like water that has dust and debris stirred up in it. We must let the dust and debris settle to return to the calm and tranquil state that is actually inherent to our natural condition. When we do, the agitation, despair, and fatigue evaporate like a mirage when we approach it.

How do we clarify murky water? We don’t shake it. We don’t stir it. The best way to clear the water is just to leave it alone. Let it settle, and the water will naturally clarify itself. The water slowly regains its transparency after all the dust settles.

In the same way, when our mind is cloudy, unhappy, or agitated, the best way to improve it is to leave it alone and let it settle. Once we return to the present moment, there are no more mental elaborations; there are no mental contrivances, no judgments of any kind. Once we just leave our mind alone, then all these distortions and agitations settle down and the mind slowly regains its calm, clear, boundless state. A happy, clear, open state comes to the surface.

Leave your mind alone. So often, we mess with our mind and let ourselves be swept away by its troubled states. That’s why we are so stressed and fearful much of the time. The working of our ordinary mind, which we tend to take as a given, is the origin of so many of these feelings, the mental junk and garbage that we call suffering. It does not have to be that way. Pristine Mind meditation is the highway to the essence of our nature, which is pristine and changeless.

Sometimes we may think, “I’m not doing anything to make problems for myself. I’m just stressed out.” We don’t think we are contributing to the cause of these feelings. We think we are just unhappy, stressed, or angry. We believe we are innocent bystanders to our experience, but that is not true. The mind is constantly creating the very suffering that we think we have nothing to do with. We may be sitting on the couch, seemingly passive, but actively thinking, “He did this. She is doing that. I don’t like any of it. How did this happen?” Internally, an enormous amount is happening. We are pondering so many situations and dwelling on so many problems. We think this is all an involuntary and inevitable response to life, but leaving our mind alone is really all we need to do to release all stresses and other mental agitations.

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