Swooping down.

Lama Surya Das. _/\_ _/\_ _/\_

The Single Word of Heart-Advice Homage to all the sacred masters. The heart-mind of all the Buddhas of the past, the present, and the future, widely renowned as Dharmakaya, as Mahamudra, as enlightened mind, is precisely your own mind, which thinks of this and that. What kind of Buddhist teaching is this? Even with all the poisons and everything, today's mind is inseparable from Buddha Mind?

This is what the Karmapa says; and, as you all know, the Karmapa is the big boss, so it must be true. (Just joking!) But let's find out for ourselves if it is true. It's possible. The Karmapa says that the essential nature of your own mind, which thinks of this and that, is the Buddha Mind, is Dharmakaya, absolute truth, Mahamudra, Dzogchen. All the phenomena of Samsara and Nirvana appear within this unique awareness, your awareness.

Samsara is not downtown somewhere, while Nirvana is uptown, or on the other shore. Karmapa says all the phenomena of Samsara and Nirvana fit within this unique awareness. This unique innate awareness is the heart-essence of all the sutra teachings, the tantra teachings, and all the commentaries and pith-instructions. Yet, when you apply it in practice, there is nothing whatsoever to be meditated upon. It is an empty, luminous, spacious, unobstructed void. Simply allow this unique awareness to rest vividly awake and present in its natural way.

This is Karmapa's teaching. That's what you have to do. There's nothing to meditate on. Just allow awareness to rest totally present and awake. That's why it's called mirror-like awareness, sky-like awareness. Not doing anything. Everything happens as if in that sky-like mirror of mind. The sky and the mirror don't do anything of their own volition, but simply accommodate transitory reflection, without essentially changing. You don't need to worry or think, "Is this really it? Could this be Mahamudra?"

Don't bother yourself with these doubts and questions. Don't hope for improvement or be afraid of degeneration. How can we progress and develop spiritually if we don't hope for improvement? What kind of Dharma path is this? Karmapa says don't hope for improvement and don't fear going down. Don't chase such transient concepts, like improvement and degeneration. Just rest nakedly at home in this vividly awake present awareness. Relax loosely and rest. Beside this, you don't need anything to meditate on.

So let that be the object of your meditation, of non-meditation. The non-meditation called sustaining present wakefulness. By practicing in this extraordinarily simple way, again and again, you will definitely recognize the groundless, rootless open essence of all thoughts, appearances, and phenomena. When that happens, realization blooms naturally. All attachments, all habitual patterns, all conditioning is spontaneously liberated and released in this blossoming of realization. http://www.dzogchen.org/teachings/talks/Swoopdown10894.html