Friday, June 1, 2012

Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

As the protector Nagarjuna writes in his Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way:

Like a dream, like an illusion
Like a city of gandharvas,
That's how birth, and that's how living,
That's how dying are taught to be.


The meaning of this verse and the one from Guru Rinpoche's supplication are exactly the same.

This is the actual way forms are. They are appearance-emptiness undifferentiable, but sentient beings do not see this because they think things truly exist, and their thoughts that cling to the true existence of appearances obscure the appearance-emptiness that is their true nature. That is why we practice the Dharma—to cleanse ourselves of this clinging to appearances as truly existent so that we can realize appearances' true nature is appearance-emptiness undifferentiable.

It is like when you dream and you do not know that you are dreaming. The appearances in the dream are appearance-emptiness, but your thought that they truly exist prevents you from seeing that. Even though the dream appearances are appearance-emptiness and have no inherent nature, they seem to be real when you do not know that you are dreaming. You think that they are real and you have experiences that seem to confirm your belief that they are real.

But however much you cling to the appearances in a dream, that does not change what the appearances are from their own side. The essential nature of these appearances is unchanging appearance-emptiness. It never moves from being just that. When you dream and you know you are dreaming, you are free of the thoughts that fixate on the appearances as being truly existent. You are free from that obscuration so you can experience the appearances just as they are: as appearance-emptiness. That enables you to do wonderful things like fly in the sky, move unobstructedly through rock mountains, and travel to pure realms. All that is possible when you recognize a dream for what it is, and in that way, not be blocked by thinking that the appearances truly exist.

In our waking life, even though the environment and sentient beings appear to us, the supplication says "let them rest where no self's found." The environment and sentient beings appear, but let them rest without clinging to them as truly existent. Let them rest in their natural state of appearance-emptiness without fixating on them as being real. When we let the appearances rest without fixating on them as being real, all of the thoughts of there being an actual object out there to perceive and an actual distinct subject perceiving it just dissolve. The thoughts that take the duality of perceived object and perceiving subject to be real dissolve. They are purified.

http://www.ktgrinpoche.org/guru_rinpoche.html

http://gururimpoche.myblog.it/archive/2011/02/index.html

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