Your true nature is just like the sky, says Mingyur Rinpoche, its love and knowledge unaffected by the clouds of life. You may entry it with this consciousness meditation.
Picture by John Salvino.
Humanity is at the moment going through among the biggest challenges in its historical past, together with local weather change and a worldwide pandemic. Many people face tough challenges and uncertainty in our personal lives, from sickness to job loss to traumatic relationships.
Individuals are determined for strategies to ease their struggling in unsure occasions. Whereas many Buddhist meditation practices are useful, none surpasses recognizing and resting in consciousness itself. The rationale for that is that the true nature of consciousness is a supply of lasting energy and resilience. Consciousness is past circumstances like ache and pleasure, struggling and ease. It’s that which permits any and all experiences to come up, and but is unchanged by them.
The necessary a part of this observe is the popularity of consciousness itself.
I spent plenty of years in a wandering retreat—transferring from place to put, following within the footsteps of the good masters of our Buddhist custom. This expertise introduced into focus many core facets of the teachings, notably impermanence and the transience of life.
As I wandered by the Himalayas, every part modified. I went from having no matter I wanted to being with out meals, shelter, household, mates, college students, and academics. Amidst this fixed change, there was one thing that remained, all the time: consciousness. It supplied me with an inside stability no matter circumstances. Trusting on this consciousness, the basic nature of our thoughts, was what allowed me to beat the challenges I confronted.
Let me inform you a narrative that illustrates this. A number of weeks after I started my retreat, I fell terribly in poor health. I had unrelenting diarrhea and I vomited again and again, most likely attributable to meals poisoning. My sickness obtained so unhealthy I used to be dropped at the precipice of dying. I misplaced my skill to see and listen to, and I felt as if my life pressure was like a lamp going out.
But, even when my physique was collapsing, my senses misplaced, and the conceptual thoughts dissolved, consciousness remained with me, unchanging. I noticed that consciousness was past the ache and struggling I used to be experiencing—past life or dying. Trusting in consciousness is what obtained me by and allowed me to maintain going.
This expertise echoed what I had all the time heard from my father, the good Dzogchen grasp Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. “No matter arises—ideas, emotions, your physique, topic and object, every part—is like clouds within the sky,” he stated. “They arrive and so they go. Your true nature, consciousness imbued with love, compassion, and knowledge, is just like the sky itself.”
We are able to practice ourselves to expertise this by consciousness meditation. The necessary a part of this observe is the popularity of consciousness itself. It doesn’t matter what object we select as a help for our meditation, whether or not we concentrate on the breath, sensations, or a visualization, the necessary half is recognizing and resting within the conscious and realizing high quality of the thoughts.
Consciousness Meditation Apply
Start by discovering a cushty posture, upright but relaxed. Deliver your consideration to the breath. Discover the sensations that you just expertise because the breath comes out and in. There isn’t any want to manage the breath in any method. Merely observe it, and see if you happen to can discover the straightforward realizing high quality of thoughts.
After a couple of minutes, broaden your consciousness to incorporate sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and bodily sensations that you just expertise. Once more, merely observe them. All through all of those experiences, discover that there’s a realizing high quality of thoughts that continues to be unchanged.
Once you really feel comfy, enable your consciousness to increase past any specific expertise. Relaxation within the realizing high quality of thoughts itself. It doesn’t matter what comes or goes, this realizing high quality stays.
Though every part falls aside, our true nature—consciousness itself—can’t disintegrate. It can’t die. It can’t be stopped. It can’t be destroyed, as a result of it’s unborn. Consciousness is all the time with us. Belief on this. That is your true nature and supreme refuge.