Wisdom of the Masters
Lama Shabkar - A Guided Meditation on Examining the "Mind" - Dzogchen
31 Mar 2021
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: Who was Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol and what is his significance in Tibetan Buddhism?
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Songs of Examining by Lama Shabka Emaho, now listen once again, fortunate and noble children of my heart. No matter which spiritual practice you may perform, it can't reach the crucial point unless you resolve your own mind. It would be like standing directly in front of a target and shooting your arrows far away. It would be like letting a thief stay inside your house
while frantically searching for him outside of it. It would be like having a demon at the eastern door and placing a ghost trap in the western entrance. It would be like a beggar who does not know that a stone in his fireplace is made of gold. and goes around begging alms from others. For this reason, examine your mind to its root in the following way, my heart children.
This so-called mind thinks and knows this and that and moves to and fro. If you pursue it, it isn't caught but vanishes, elusive as mist. If you try to settle it, it won't stay but moves here and there and then disperses. you cannot pin it down by saying, that's it. Rather, it is an insubstantial emptiness. . First, examine the source of your mind, this knower of happiness and sorrow.
Where does it come from? Does it come from external phenomena like mountains, rocks, water and trees? Or the wind in the sky? From something solid or from something immaterial? Where can you find its source? If you think that it comes from the semen and blood of your father and mother how did that happen?
Thank you.
After analysing in this way and finding no source, next examine the upper and lower body. Then the sense organs, heart and so forth. At this very instant, Where is the mind? If it's in the heart, is it in the top or the bottom?
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Chapter 2: What are the 'Songs of Examining' and their purpose in meditation?
What kind of shape and color does it have? When you haven't found the dwelling place of mind after precise examination, try finally to determine where the mind goes when it moves. Through which door of the sense organs does it leave? when it reaches outer objects in split seconds? Does the body go? Or is it only the mind that goes? Or do the body and mind go together?
In this way, examine and analyze. When an emotion or a thought first arises, find the place from which it arose. Then, in the present moment, look at where it remains and whether or not it has colour and form. Finally, when it spontaneously vanishes, find out where it went when it disappeared.
Thank you.
Investigate how the mind leaves at the time of death. Analyze this precisely until you have established with certainty that it is inexpressible and utterly empty intangible beyond birth and death beyond coming and going
Amen.
It brings no benefit to parrot the examples and statements of others by just saying, it is emptiness. . For example, people may say that there aren't any tigers in a place where they are rumoured to be, but you may not feel convinced that this is true. Instead, you may be disturbed by doubts about it.
But when you yourself have traced the root of mind and have arrived at certainty about it, it is as if you had gone to a place where tigers are said to live and had explored the whole region from top to bottom to see for yourself if there are any tigers. When you don't find any, you are certain. And from then on, have no doubt about whether or not tigers are there. Aim a hole.
Once again, pay attention, my fortunate children. So now you have examined and analysed in this manner and haven't found even an atom of substantial matter. that you can point to and say, this is the mind. It is his not finding anything that is the supreme discovery. First of all, mind has no place from which it arises.
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Chapter 3: How can one examine the mind to reach deeper spiritual understanding?
Empty since the beginning, it has no tangible essence. Second, it has no dwelling place, no color, no form. Finally, there is no place to which the mind goes, nor is a trace left that shows where it went. It's moving is an empty movement. Its being empty is an appearing emptiness. To begin with,
This mind was not produced through causes and in the end it will not be destroyed by outer conditions. Knowing neither decrease nor increase It neither gets filled nor gets emptied. Since it embraces the whole of Samsara and Nirvana, it is beyond partiality. Since it manifests as everything, without limitation, it is not defined by your saying, this is it.
since it does not possess any substantial existence. It is beyond the extremes of being and non-being. Beyond being obscured or cleared, without coming and going. It is beyond both birth and death. The qualities of the mind are like those of a stainless sphere of crystal its essence is empty its nature is luminous and its expressive quality is vivid Beyond limitation.
Without being tainted by the defects of samsara, even in the slightest. The mind itself is surely the enlightened state since the very beginning.
Thank you. . . Thank you. . . .
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