The Very Venerable Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

The Seven Points Of Mind Training

Birmingham Karma Ling, December 2002

II. The Main Practice of Bodhicitta Training

Absolute Bodhichitta - Part 2

Examine the nature of unborn awareness.

All phenomena are the projections of one's own mind. Do you think that there is a mind and there are projections? Does one exist and one not exist? Or is it like a mother giving birth to a child, we give birth to the phenomena?

It's not like that. The mind itself is emptiness. The mind is unborn. What we call mind, is like space. Space does not have any awareness, knowing or understanding.

The mind, though, has understanding naturally. This understanding and awareness is inseparable from this unborn mind. It naturally knows itself. This awareness can not be separated from the mind. Like water cannot be separated from its wetness. Can you separate the wetness from the water? The audience answer; conceptually yes. In the mind we can separate them.

In the mind we can do anything. We can think the whole world is in the palm of my hand. All of the world systems are in my hand. I'm just joking!

When it says examine the nature of the unborn awareness it means look at this mind that also doesn't have a truly existent nature.

Liberate even the antidotes.

If one has the mistaken idea that everything is empty, so karma doesn't exist, the three jewels are empty and don't exist, the lower realms don't exist and whatever I feel like doing I can do it, as everything is empty. This view arises because the person has not understood emptiness properly. This is the view of nihilism.

In this case the person has only heard the tong-pa of tong-pa nyi. The empty of emptiness. Emptiness means that anything can arise, anything is possible. For example. There was a hermit in a cave meditating on emptiness. After some time he had a good experience of emptiness. The hermit thought that his body was emptiness, all phenomena were emptiness. In the hermit's cave was a mouse and it was running all around the place. The mouse was sitting on the hermit's table. The hermit picked up one of his big leather shoes and thought, I am emptiness, the mouse is emptiness and this boot is also emptiness. Then he struck and killed the mouse; death is also emptiness he thought. This is what we call the wrong view; he didn't have a proper understanding of emptiness.

When it says to liberate even the antidotes it doesn't mean that we have to take some really existent thing and then make emptiness to go with it. Emptiness is naturally there. It doesn't have to be made.

Rest in the nature of Alaya, the essence.

When it says rest in the Alaya then it means to just rest one's mind naturally without doing anything. How do we rest the mind? Like a person who has finished all of their work and they just rest For example someone who works in a hotel who has finished all of their duties for the day so they can now relax. They are quite physically tired so first they take a bath in water that's not too hot or cold, just right. After their bath they go to the bedroom and just let out a sigh and relax. That's how we should relax. As if we have just completed a lot of hard work. Just let go and relax. We don't have to block the thoughts; in fact you can't block the thoughts. We can't shoot them with a gun. We can't blow them up with an atom bomb. We just rest naturally.

Together with this natural resting comes mindfulness or awareness. This mindfulness naturally arises. To say it in brief, we are not distracted. Not distracted, but not meditating. We are not meditating. We are just being relaxed, but we are not distracted.

Why are we not distracted? We are not meditating on something that we get distracted from and have to have mindfulness to return to. The mind itself recognises itself. Is it like this for you? You see wood; this table does not think does it? It doesn't understand anything. A stone doesn't understand anything. But it's not like this, mind naturally recognises itself. So when it says "Alaya" it means the natural awareness of the mind. Let us all for a minute or two rest and relax. Keep a straight back. (Short meditation)

Ok, so in the beginning it's good to have small periods of time repeated often. We can't sit like this for long before we are distracted. Just a few seconds at a time, repeated often. Then gradually over time it will become better and better.

In the post-meditation be like a child of illusion.

In the session one meditates on emptiness, then sometimes one doesn't meditate on emptiness, you just rest naturally as described before. Then again one meditates on the emptiness. If one cannot meditate on emptiness this is ok then just relax for a while.

Then in the post-session time one reflects on the dreamlike nature of all phenomena. Everything is like a dream, like an illusion. I am like a dream. "Child of illusion" means oneself. You are like an illusion.

In India there are many people who perform illusions. I have seen some of them. They produce illusory people. Then another man comes up and stabs a sword into the man. You can see the sword sticking out of his back. Sometimes he cuts off his head and holds it in one hand. Then he puts his head back on and talks as if nothing had happened. There are many people like this. This is not a real person though. It is an optical illusion. When you look at him he seems real. If you grasp him you can feel him. This is because he is an illusion of the five senses, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and sight. But he is not a real person. This is an example used for emptiness, the illusion. Another one is the dream. So as a child of illusion it means to see things like this as an illusion.

Now do you have any questions?

Q. Can I ask you about Buddha Nature? Is Buddha Nature an illusion and impermanent?

A. Buddha Nature is not an illusion, it is not impermanent. It is emptiness.

The Samsaric phenomena are what we call illusion. This illusion is impermanent. Emptiness is not an illusory phenomenon. It is not impermanent. Also it is not permanent. Emptiness does not exist. Also it is not non-existent. That is what emptiness is. It is free of the four extremes, which are; existence, non-existence, being both of these and being neither of them.

This watch is none of those four. It doesn’t exist; it is not truly existent. It is not non-existent as we can see it. It can't be both as they are opposites. And it is not neither of them. If we understand the emptiness then it goes beyond dualism.

Q. I think with my mind so it must be dualistic by definition.

A. There are two methods we can follow. One is following the path of emptiness and the other is following the path of nature of mind. The emptiness alone path belongs to Mahayana and Sutrayana. The nature of mind path belongs to the Vajrayana.

With the emptiness only path one has to see all things as emptiness and this blocks off the first view of existence. The hermit who killed the mouse understood the first one but didn't understand the second one. Having understood the first one we have to understand the second one, which is non-existence isn't it?

After blocking of the second one then we block off the third one and then the fourth one. Then naturally you will understand. Truly understand. So that is the sutra path and it takes a long time.

In the Vajrayana path there is a quick method. This is that we all have Buddha Nature. We don't have to check this, we have it. We have a special consciousness and we have to recognise that. If we rest with that then the illusions are naturally pacified. So at the time of our meditation we don't have to think this is emptiness or not.

Before we meditate though it's important that we know what emptiness is. In the Vajrayana the practice of emptiness and nature of mind go together. We can have the experience of the illusory phenomena, free from the dualism of subject and object.

When some people start to meditate on emptiness they get frightened. "Oh everything is emptiness, I might fall down". I had a student once who was meditating on emptiness. He came to my room once with his eyes very wide and quite scared. I asked him what was the problem. "Nothing," he said "except that yesterday you taught me about emptiness and today I feel quite scared walking around. I feel I might fall down". I told him that the person who falls, they are also emptiness aren't they? Then the student wasn't scared anymore. Generally fear is not bad. It's a sign at the beginning of understanding emptiness, it's good. Some people only feel joy when they hear about emptiness that's also good.