The Awareness of Awareness, Cover Stories, Essays

Dzogchen and Mahamudra retreat 2011

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Mon, Aug 22, 2011 1.Dudjom Rinpoche the great master of Dzogchen would often say : hundreds or thousands of explanations are given, there is only one thing to be understood, know the one thing that liberates everything----Awareness itself , your true nature. 2.Namkai Norbu another contemporary master of Dzogchen says this: Dzogchen does not belong to any religion, it is very nature of human awareness itself. No one owns Dzogchen and its naturalistic and experiential understanding is expressed in many traditions. Our own root teacher was Swami Muktanada and he was Hindu Shavite Meditation Master. He taught that meditation was becoming aware of awareness itself. Western phenomenology is also presents methodology for becoming aware of awareness. 3.The very essence of Dzogchen is to be aware of awareness itself.. Beyond words and letters ,there is a transmission that does not belong to any tradition which is very nature of human of awareness and this is the Buddha. This statement made in the 6th century by Bodhidharma indicates that although human beings easily and constantly transmit their minds from one to another, from family to children, from person to person, from group to group from culture to culture, human beings are also able to transmit the very nature of their own awareness to each other .this awareness is this field of light and of energy. This field is a field of gnosis direct lumenous knowningess and is the great compassionlove itself. 4.In the praxis of Dzoghcen if you to be able to suspend your mind even briefly, this suspension frees your awareness to become aware of own self, and in this action awareness becomes aware of its own nature. This nature this syunyata is spaceousness, or openness ,the great expanse and this nature is also light or radiance or lumenousity, and this nature is energy, or qi or shakti, and this nature is also oneness and pervasive. This nature is the great affection or great compassion, which is infinite in its horizons vaste and multidimensional. 5. In meditation and through meditation you learn through practice and happen stance to suspend your mind. The mind which is thinking, is feelings, is memory, and is sensation and is fantasy. And within the freedom of the suspension, this epoche , your awareness focuses within its own self and reveals itself and shows itself and unconceals itself to you as your own self. You begin to experience awareness itself.as .the base of your experience. The base of your experience is no longer mind alone but this field as non conceptual awareness, this field vast and infinite in its horizon. This base goes beyond the boundaries of your body.

The natural mystic drama of your lifev begins unfolding with immediacy. Your life and the mystic drama become one. 6.Dzogchen understanding and practice begins within awareness in order to dissolve suffering ,the suffering of never ending lost , the suffering of an indeterminate and unpredictable existence, the suffering of the abyss of emptiness and voidness, the suffering of non connectedness, separateness and solipsism , the anxiety of non existence ,ever present death. The phenomena of disappearance and appearance is the very essence of the field of awareness ,.ever present, timelessly present, coming and going, appearing and disappearingwithin timeless awareness. 7. The praxis is simple, suspend your mind, enter into awareness of awareness, holding it, entering it, becoming it, aham ah I am becoming what I am. As you become aware of awareness the qualities of awareness manifest themselves in you, in your experience. The qualities are spaceousness or openeness, lumenousity or light, energy, and the oneness and compassion as pure love. As you establish your self in this field as AND THE FIELD ESTABLISHES ITSELF IN YOU, YOU integrate your mind and your body into this field of awareness. And so you begin to live within awareness itself. You think in awareness, you feel within awareness field, you have memory, sensation and dreamsall within awareness .What is most amazing and the wonder of wonders is that is you begin experience not only within your own self this field but you begin to experience this field of awareness within everyone and in time everythinganimate as well as inanimate. What is in you is in the other. You begin to experience non duality, or oneness within the duality of the world.. You integrate everything within awareness field and this awareness metabolizes experience and frees you from the compulsivity of endless fixation . In time the light of awareness becomes more and more visible in your self and within in this world. all of which is the beingness of Being itselfthe translucidity of Being of all the beings. 8.More over your own awareness is multidimensional and the world you live in is of the same dimensions. These dimensions in Dzogchen are called Kayas. These dimensions become slowly but surely apparent and experiential. So within the dimension of ordinary appearance (nirmanakaya) you experience the energy and light within yourself and others. This light and this spaceousness and this energy is the source of non duality or oneness within appearances, this world of fles, the world of me and you. 9.In time You begin also to experience the dimension of apparitionalness(sambhogakaya). This happens especially in dreams andin visions. In Visions, you experience the archetypical dimension of your own being which is Being itself. Primordial energies, swirling vortexts of energy and light, archetypical manifestations all of these manfifestations are cosmological qualities of primordial awareness. Primordial Beingness expressed and symbolized as personafied deities. dakinis, devas..You experience them not outside of you but as the qualities your own awareness , your own beingness of Being itself.

10.And in time you experience the completely ineffable non conceptual , beyond all language and expression, the silent dimension of pure potential , potential space, the great void, the great openness out of which everything arises and dissolves, including your own self, your own awareness. This dharmakaya dimension is Creativity itself the great mother. 11.You begin to experience within your self as your self this pervasive immanence that is the source and pervades all of existence. The world becomes more inside to inside and less externalized.less objectified, less reified. In this bliss, this great bl iss, thisbliss over comes all suffering. Om ah hung, bodichitta, maha suka, jnana datu ah.

11.This unfolding of the field sometimes happens like this. More often then not a person lives in their mind. The mind is a kind of boxa jewel box. And a person can live in the functions of their mind, thinking, feelings, sensation ,memory and fantasy. Then one day you the person become aware of their mind, and the person experiences mindfulness.Soon the person discovers a space that is not their mind, and from that space the person can view their own mind. That is an amazing moment. This is the beginning of liberation. This may continue for some time. 12. Then one day that person becomes aware of that space itself . One day the person becomes aware of that intermediate space, that space in between, that transitional or liminal space . In that space of awareness , the person become aware of there innermost space and clearly realizes that awareness is not their mind. You and I are not our mind, and we are this space of awareness ,this field of awareness. Wonderfully The base begins to shift from our mind to our awareness. Moreover, to our surprise , to our unending surprise this awareness is field vast and its horizons are infinite and unbound. Moreover you and I begin to learn to extend this awareness field to each other within this field of immanance. In and through this mutual transmission we become stronger in the field and in the light of the field. Two awareness are truly better then one. 13. We begins to live in the energy and light of the field , We begin to sense the oneness of the field in ourselves and in others. We are entering the non duality of oneness and we experience the translucidity within us and within of the world. We experience the sameness of equality consciousness. 14.Moreover the different dimension of this awareness this amazing awareness begins to manfest to us, and we slowly but surely begin to feel and to glimpse the multidimensionalness of our own existence and the existence of others. You and I begin to experience ourselves as this unfolding field . We experience ourselves as

this primordial awareness, un born and undying..and in these moments death itself begins to dissolve. 15.. Dudjome Rinpoche says by simply relaxing in this uncontrived ,open, natural state, we obtain the blessing of aimless, self liberation of whatever arises. Your karma is the dharma, the map of liberation is you life just it is.. 14.there is a great lama named Penam Rinpoche. He visited the states one time a number of years ago. And he gave this talk on FIXATION. Penam Rinpoche would say never separate from awareness, never separate from awareness,never separate. 15.Fixation can take you out of the awareness field., out of the spontaneity of the field, out of the sea of awareness, this magical seathe sea of love. 16. He points out that the very indeterminateness of the unfolding field of primordial awareness can bring forth the spontaneity of the awareness field and that one can live and die within this spontaneous and syncrenistic unfolding. But the very spontaneity and syncrenistiy of the field can be overcome or undone by fixation. .Awareness can be loss because of fixation of our mind. There can be a fixation of thinking, a fixation of affective response, a fixation within fantasy, fixation within sensation, a fixation because of memory. Fixation creates mind or at least a very dense mind. Fixation creates density and disolves translucidity, disolves spaceousness. 17.Fixation destroys the field and the fullness of the field. Within fixation you go back to the beginning and become completely located within the box of your mind. You and I and everyone will always have problems but not necessarily fixatedness. Whatever is fixated bring the fixation into the field of awareness and awareness will dissolve fixation,metabolize the fixation. You can enter fixation and become fixatedness because of the fear of the indeterminanteness of this world, the vast array of unpredicableness, the vast array of lost, unending loss and to the degree you think you will solve this root problems by fixation and effort endless effort you will only become the fixation, never ending fixation. This is why the indeterminatess of reality, the impermanency, the contingency can not be dealt with by mind alone Within your own awareness is resolution to the terror of this experience of non knowningness what will happen next.