Listen...Keep Listening
(Shawn Kappukatt)
A few years pass and I'm feeling like getting back into meditation more consistently. I'm at the glen, not having the best meditation session in particular. Too many bugs. Can't find the right rock to sit on. I maybe get 10 minutes in before calling it quits. I do the same thing I always do. I listen.
I watch and listen to my body getting annoyed. As I get up and start back up the metal staircase I play a game with myself. I try to make every step meaningful. I try to become aware of every perception or sensation that arises, without conceptualization or judgment. Just awareness and letting go. I reflected on how has taken 14 billion years for this moment to happen. How special this moment is because I am a sentient being experiencing and passing through life on this rock in the apparent void of space! Actually not separate at all from the universe, rather a consciously aware piece of the universe inspecting itself. Reflecting on how organisms on earth are all family; we belong to the super organismic structure of DNA. Four building blocks re arranging and optimizing in different ways to get the variations of life we see. Reflections and different manifestations of self. And then all of a sudden I just stop holding on to distinguishing mental faculties. I basked in my pure naked awareness. My mind is blank. I am blissful. I actually start singing to the trees. I am suddenly compelled to acknowledge our tree cousins and thank them for allowing us to be here. It sounds silly but it is powerful and I am sober and very lucid. For a moment I have awoken from maya. The illusions that other people impose, and the perceptions that I impose melt away and I am awake. It dawns on me that I will only be in this human configuration for a while. Being human is a gift...an opportunity. We've experienced this before. I want to run home and laugh and share this with my family. It is wonderful. I have only allowed myself to experience this kind of mental state a few times after this experience and with varying degrees of intensity.
There are 2 main aspects of mind, Sem(ordinary mind)-That which discriminates and plans, ordinary thinking etc-appearances and perceptions which are relative.
The second aspect of mind is Rigpa, our true buddha nature which all things possess. It is pure cognizant awareness 'emptiness' as absolute.
Rigpa is the very nature of mind, the innermost essence which is absolutely always untouched by change and death. Primordial, pure, pristine awareness. Radiant and always awake. Other religions might call it God. supposedly its hiding in all of us, "enveloped and obscured by the mental flurry of thoughts and emotions".
Listen...keep listening...and perhaps the nature of mind will be revealed to you.
