The Mind in Martial Arts And Eastern Thought: Part 4: Space:

We start with two quotations from the Dzogchen traditions of Tibet:

Resting the watcher in awareness, there is vivid emptiness.
Free from colour, free from material substance.
Not forming the thought “It is empty!”
That is the moment of seeing the nature of mind.
                                                  Chokyur Lingpa

Don’t analyse! Don’t analyse!
Don’t analyse your mind!
Don’t grasp! Don’t grasp!
Don’t grasp your mind!
Don’t correct! Don’t correct!
Trying to correct or modify just makes the mind contrived.
The fabricating mind obscures your essential nature.
                                                  Longchen Rabjam

The key words here are, “nature of mind” and “essential mind” The nature of mind is already liberated, free, empty of the ten thousand things (to use the Taoist term) If we can have some realization of this, then it is possible that “all things” will fall into place, including the difficult subjects of Birth, Death and Rebirth (which we will cover soon) However, all ideas (creations of the conditioned mind) must be put to one-side, or we cannot look at the subject with new open and clear energy. The old mind wants to hold on to the familiar, the known, and the “comfortable”, the religions, the ideas, the theories; it does not want to step off then edge of the cliff. At sometime in our lives, we may see the short comings of all systems, philosophies, religions and ideas, then if the time is right we may just “give up” shake our heads and say “Do you want to know something? I know absolutely nothing” I have to say, believe it or not, this is a great place to get to. I mean genuinely get to. Why? Because once all the structures have been removed, and you don’t have yet another “Spiritual” path to follow; you are back at the original place that you started from, your original mind, which, from the very beginning has always been free. So, you may ask, “What’s the difference”? The difference is now you recognize your original mind. You see the blank canvas (metaphorically speaking) This base consciousness (Kunzhi in Tibetan) is said to be empty of all inherent existence, and also it is said to be aware of it’s own nature. Often described by teachers of Dzogchen, as a candle that not only illuminates its surroundings, but also illuminates itself. I know this is a difficult subject, but without a grasp of it, nothing, such as the possibility of continued existence (rebirth/reincarnation) will make sense. We will cover birth, death and rebirth in the next issue, but to try and understand this cyclic process without recognizing that there may be something beyond the conditioned mind would be a waste of time. However, if we see that all condition things arise and fall in a base consciousness, that is beyond space, time, birth and death, then the possibility that nature of our minds, (which is said to be inseparable from the base consciousness) may also be beyond birth, death and all condition existence. And that death, rather being something to be avoided, becomes the very thing to add total meaning to our lives.

Teachers are guides, (all good teachers explain this) even the Buddha said “This is the way that I found enlightenment, but you must know that, “You yourselves must make the effort” So the next thing to look at is making space for ourselves, and becoming spacious. Becoming spacious is to take the attitude of a warrior, in as much as, no matter what is put in our path, we will deal with it. Buddhism points out that our unenlightened attitude to things is either to grasp, or reject. In other words we try to move away from unpleasant things (that which we want to avoid) or we move towards the pleasant things (that which we want to posses), so can we reach a place of non- movement? That is, can we look at things without judgement? There are various approaches, for example to avoid the world we may join a monastery and become a monk, or give our lives over to some Guru, or Religion where we don’t have to take any real responsibility. Or, we can try to change things by the use of Tantric methods, such as anger into clarity etc. Then there are ways such as Dzgochen where the thoughts that arise are allowed to self liberate. Whatever approach we take, should be suited to our mental make-up, and understanding. As the ultimate goal is total liberation of the mind, we cannot become slaves to any systems or ways! Now this is scary. The Lamas’ say, “What you must realize is that all the Deities, Gods, Demons, Visualizations, Meditations, spring from the mind, and return to the mind”. The vast open, empty, luminous, mind whose centre is everywhere, and boundaries nowhere.

So how do we know if we are on the right track? Well, I have heard many of the Tibetan teachers say that we all have “innate wisdom”, that is “common sense” to you and me. But, have you noticed that when it comes to spiritual paths or martial systems people are quite happy to totally believe the most outrageous claims? Our common sense, or innate wisdom flies quickly out of the window. Why is this?

Anthony Court

(Article reprinted from Combat and Healing magazine with kind permission from Master Erle Montaigue)