Catch It & Rest

“Information talk is one thing, transformation talk is another. When the latter is uttered, something happens.”  ~Bruno Lattour

“Dzogchen can’t be taught but can be caught, when you catch on; it can be transmitted and realized. Teaching is a sacred profession. The best teachers strive to produce students who surpass them. Especially in this Over-Information Age, genuine higher education must include wisdom for life education and learning to learn, including cultivation of character development and self-knowledge. Self-deception is one of the hidden pitfalls on the spiritual path, and hard to avoid. For seekers of truth, sanity, reality– honesty is everything. Authentic inquiry and questioning is crucial.

Follow the grace-full arc from me to we.  No one can do it alone; take my word for it, I’ve tried. Meditate as fast as you can! Everything is subjective. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

~ Lama Surya Das

"Buddhist teachings make a distinction between what is called Big Mind, or Natural Mind, and "small mind," or ordinary, deluded... mind. Small mind, or deluded mind, is the buzzing, unpredictable, frequently out-of-control ordinary mind.

This is our finite mind, our limited conceptual mind; our ordinary, rational, discursive, thinking mind. The deluded mind has so many impulses and needs; it wants so many things. It's frequently confused; it's subject to mood swings; it's restless. It gets angry; it gets depressed; it becomes hyper.

Some ancient traditional texts refer to this small mind as "monkey mind," where it is pictured as a chaotic little monkey jumping from tree to tree, looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places.

What is meant by Big Mind is the essential nature of mind itself. This is what we call Buddha-nature, or natural mind. This is our true nature - the pure boundless awareness that is at the heart, and part, of us all. The Buddha described it as still, clear, lucid, empty, profound, simple (uncomplicated), and at peace.

It's not really what we usually think of as our mind at all. It is the luminous, most fundamental clear light nature of our ground of being. This is Rigpa, the heart of enlightenment.

Dzogchen teaches that all we have to do to become enlightened is to recognize and rest in this natural state of mind. In Zen they call this original mind. This is raw, naked awareness, not something we've learned or fabricated. 

This is the Buddha within - the perfect presence that we can all rely on. Waking up to this natural mind, this Buddha-nature, is what meditation is all about."
~ Lama Surya Das ~  Awakening the Buddha Within