The Theory and Practice of Other Emptiness Taught Through Milarepa’s Songs by Duff Tony

Author:Duff, Tony [Duff, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: zhantong, Spiritual, other emptiness, mahayana, Religion, Buddhism, Kagyu
ISBN: 9789937572118
Publisher: Padma Karpo Translation Committee
Published: 2011-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

4. Practice of the Two Views

Next, the view which has been carefully explained so far has to be put into practice. Here is an explanation of the path travelled by yogins who, step by step, develop the corresponding experiences then realizations of the view.

Yogins first, as in the Autonomy Middle Way view, meditate again and again on the equipoise in which consciousness is empty like the sky. Then, the thought, “It is empty”, which is grasping at emptiness, collapses and they stay equipoised in the state of freedom from elaboration. To this point, the thing to be meditated on, the dharmatā, has been an elaboration and the thing doing the meditation, rational mind (80), likewise. Now, the meditation and meditator have been merged so there is equipoise in a state without reference point, without grasping, without elaboration.

By staying in that equipoise again and again in the state where reference points and elaborations have collapsed, there finally comes a time of realizing the dharmatā, mind’s actuality, in direct perception, free of a bare emptiness. Bare emptiness is one of several terms that indicate an emptiness which is conceptually produced. It is a slightly pejorative term referring to an emptiness that is only emptiness and does not have appearance in it. Beyond the boundary point within which there are elaborations, mind’s actuality, its natural luminosity without stains in its entity, free of conventions of names and words, unhindered utterly pure luminosity, a personally experienced space of emptiness beyond realizer and realizer, is realized! (81)

That, the actual practice of the path to the attainment of realization, is also described in Milarepa’s song, The Three Nails of Meditation:

To explain the three nails of meditation:

There is discursive thought liberated into dharmakāya;

There is the state of rigpa-luminosity bliss;

There is equipoise without contrivance.

“There is discursive thought liberated as dharmakāya” is the first nail. If discursive thought’s actuality, which is the same as saying mind’s actuality, is said to be luminosity and emptiness inseparable then, when discursive thought’s actuality is realized, discursive thought self-liberates into dharmakāya, where dharmakāya is the word used to indicate fruition level luminosity-emptiness. When that happens, what is this actuality of discursive thought, this dharmakāya, like? There is rigpa-luminosity which is bliss. There is a state of rigpa knowing its own face without something doing the knowing and something known; there is the nature luminosity without something being luminous and something being illuminated by it. When there is that kind of naturally-occurring realization, there is also natural cheer, natural bliss, so the second nail of meditation is that “there is the state of rigpa-luminosity bliss” meaning there is the state of rigpa-luminosity and bliss inseparable. How should one stay in that state? “There is equipoise without contrivance”, he says, meaning that to stay in meditation is to do so while not making any contrivance of the state—no alteration or adjustment of it. In that way, he clearly states the way of realizing the actuality of mind. In terms of realizing the actuality of mind,

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