Appearances
2024, January, Issue 79
Then, after my introduction to Dzogchen, after my realization of the Nature of Mind, this has stopped. I lamented this in a dream one night, and a million dakinis laughed about it. This woke me up.
* * *
AH HO!
My Guru from the physical dimension is
Buddha Shakyamuni;
My Guru from the energetic dimension is
Padmasambhava;
My Guru from the ultimate dimension is
Samantabhadra;
And these Gurus are all the same!
HO HO HO!
~Robert Aho~
An excerpt from, The Frog: A Spiritual Autobiography, Spanning Many Lifetimes, pg. 313, © 2021.
When I was the light for an eternity, in a place that some people call the death bardo and others refer to as Dharmakaya, all and beyond were not separate. It was All-Good, not an appearance, not an object, blazing brightly, clearly, infinitely in all directions, total and complete awareness beyond any sort of limitations. This is difficult to understand, simply because we delude ourselves with concept and belief. Our ineffable condition is not an appearance, it is beyond such things. It is naturally, as it is.
The excerpt from The Frog above is from the chapter on dreams and daily life. You’ll have to read the book in order to see just what it is that made me lament and a million dakinis laugh. In that chapter, I discuss being in dreams that lasted an entire lifetime, receiving teachings from great masters, meditating, dealing with all sorts of appearances. I really enjoyed dream yoga and the fruits that it brought. I was becoming attached to that incredible series of experiences.
Now, having tasted our ineffable condition, seeing that dreams and daily life are not two things, understanding that we are not separate from our Gurus, and that they are not separate from each other, I simply rest within awareness. There’s really nothing to report.
As I’ve mentioned before to people, when I wanted to paint my death experience, I could have stopped with a bright white canvas. After much deliberation, I decided to create the full experience of my journey back into my body. The energetic dimension was wildly brilliant, containing far more than everything all humans have ever imagined. So, I ended up painting a white canvas, with lots of swirling color around the edges, as well as a small dot, which represented our entire universe. These appearances on canvas, though vastly inadequate, seemed to satisfy what I was trying to accomplish. I also shared this on the back cover of Timeless Luminosity, so that people might benefit.
The thing that people need to understand, however, is that this symbolic representation of my journey through the death bardo is just an appearance. It’s not really a big deal. We’ve all experienced something very similar in our journey between lifetimes. If you awaken, you will see that very clearly.
In our human condition, this incredible reality that is our apparent existence is too much. We ignore almost everything. This gives us the opportunity to remain in perpetual suffering and confusion. I call it an opportunity, because people seem to like an infinite stream of unfortunate events. Awakening seems like too much work when we are attached to our own misery.
I realize that this sounds a bit cynical to say; however, it’s what appears in my mind as a common reaction that people have, when they encounter the Dharma, when they are given the opportunity to awaken. All sorts of excuses and intellectual contortions arise as a way to deflect awakening. We have become attached to cyclic existence, hoping that things will get better chasing carrots or hopping onto another belief. We think that making more money, joining a political movement or finding a new religion will somehow make everything right at last, even though, as we can rather easily discover, it’s never been satisfying to be in cyclic existence, not even before the illusion of time arose in our minds.
People choose their own way to respond to whatever appears. If we cling to our delusions, then we choose to suffer for all eternity in cyclic existence. If we choose to have a little bit of compassion for ourselves, developing a strong sense that we must awaken at some point, then the full benefits of awakening will be certain. It’s very simple.
So, here’s an important point for you to digest: People think that they will lose everything if they go into the light. That’s why they cling to everything they can think of in life. When we go from one lifetime to another, we do lose everything. Then we start again, thinking that this next lifetime will be permanent or that we can keep what we gather. Then we go into the light, just before our next lifetime, and we start over again. The irony here in this great eternal struggle is that the only way to keep everything is to awaken; and, when we awaken, we let everything go, knowing that these objects of mind are simply appearances, no more substantive that what we dream.
When we awaken, we accept our ineffable reality, as it is. We no longer cling with white knuckles clutching on to what is not there. This timeless awareness that we discover encompasses all, beyond any limitations.
Blessings in Light,
Robert Aho