Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's Articles on Lions Roar

A teaching on the nature of mind by the late Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche on The Hundred Verses of Advice by Padampa Sangye. The great pandit Shantarakshita, who was instrumental in transplanting Buddhism from India to Tibet, promised that one of his students would come one day to complete his work. Kamalasila (Tib., Padampa Sangye) fulfilled this prophecy, making three trips to Tibet during the eleventh century. This was the time when the great yogi Milarepa lived, and his autobiography describes a momentous dharma debate between the two teachers. The story behind the teaching presented here begins when Padampa Sangye throws a stone magically bestowed upon him by the Buddha, saying that he would teach wherever it landed. The stone landed in the village of Tingri, in Tibet, and true to his word, Padampa Sangye founded his monastic seat there and proclaimed The Hundred Verses of Advice to the villagers. Translator Matthieu Ricard requested that his teacher, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910-1991), considered an emanation of Padampa Sangye, offer a commentary on these pithy verses. A renowned Dzogchen master, Khyentse Rinpoche spent most of his early life in solitary retreat in mountain caves. He studied and taught tirelessly for many decades, influencing scores of teachers and thousands of students. He made several important teaching tours to Europe and North America and his works have been translated into many Western languages. In his final years, he was head of the Nyingma lineage. Khyentse Rinpoche offered this commentary in 1987 to a gathering of students at Shechen Monastery, his seat in Nepal. John Canti of the Padmakara Translation Group translated Padampa Sangye’s verses into English. Matthieu Ricard provided the translation of Khyentse Rinpoche’s commentary. The entire one hundred verses succinctly survey the path. They begin with the miserableness of all aspects of samsara and the unavoidability of karma and death and end with the means of achieving enlightenment. The verses excerpted below, numbers 51 to 69, expound on the limitless nature of mind. In a state of emptiness, whirl the spear of pure awareness; People of Tingri, the view is free of being caught by anything at all. Our realization, our view, should be as high and vast as the sky. Once the awakening of pure awareness arises within the vortex of emptiness, conflicting emotions can no longer obscure it, but instead become its ornaments. The unalterable realization of this view, which has no birth, duration or cessation, is accompanied by an enlightened consciousness that observes the movement of thoughts as a serene old man regards children playing. Confused thoughts cannot affect pure awareness any more than a sword can pierce the sky. Lady Peldarbum said to Milarepa: When I meditated on the ocean, My mind was very comfortable. When I meditated on the waves, My mind was troubled. Teach me to meditate on the waves! The great yogi responded: The waves are the movement of the ocean. Leave them to calm themselves in its vastness. Thoughts are the play of pure awareness. They arise within it and dissolve back into it. To recognize pure awareness as the very source of thought is to recognize that our thoughts have never begun, continued or ceased to exist. At that point, thoughts can no longer trouble the mind. As long as we run after our thoughts, we are like a dog chasing a stick. Each time we throw the stick, he runs after it. If we look at the enlightened consciousness instead, the source of our thoughts, we will see that each thought arises and dissolves in the space of that consciousness, without engendering other thoughts. Then we will be like a lion, which does not chase after the stick, but turns to face the thrower. You can throw a stick at a lion only once. To conquer the uncreated citadel of the nature of mind, we must go to the source and recognize the origin of thoughts. Otherwise, one thought gives rise to a second, then a third, and so on. We will be constantly assailed by memories of the past and anticipation of the future, and will lose the pure awareness of the present moment. A story is told of a practitioner who was giving some rice he had offered on his altar to the pigeons one day, when he suddenly remembered the numerous enemies he had had before devoting himself to the dharma, and conceived this disastrous thought: "If I had had as many soldiers then as I have pigeons at my door now, I could have easily wiped out my enemies." This idea obsessed him until he could no longer control his hostility, and he left his hermitage and assembled a band of mercenaries to fight his former enemies, thus committing incalculable misdeeds. And it all began with one simple, deluded thought. If we recognize the emptiness of our thoughts instead of solidifying them, the arising and subsidence of each thought will clarify and strengthen our realization of emptiness. In a state without thoughts, without distraction abandon the watcher; People of Tingri, the meditation is free of any torpor or excitement. If our mind dwells in limpid awareness, with no thought of past or future, without being attracted by external objects or occupied by mental constructions, it will dwell in primordial simplicity. In this state, there is no need for the iron hand of forced vigilance to immobilize our thoughts. "Buddhahood," it is said, "is the natural simplicity of the mind." Having once recognized this simplicity, we should maintain it with effortless presence of mind. Then we will know an inner freedom that has no need to block the arising of thoughts or to fear that they will spoil our meditation. In a state of natural spontaneity, train in being free of any holding back; People of Tingri, in the action there is nothing to abandon or adopt. Preserve that state of simplicity. If you encounter happiness, success, abundance and other favorable conditions, consider them like dreams, illusions. Do not become attached to them. If we are struck by illness, calumny, deprivation or other physical and moral trials, guard against discouragement, rekindle your compassion, and wish that the sufferings of all beings might be exhausted through your own. Fall neither into elation nor misery, whatever the circumstances. Stay comfortable and free in imperturbable serenity. The four bodies, indivisible, are complete in your mind; People of Tingri, the fruit is beyond all hope and doubt. The state of buddhahood may seem to be a distant goal, almost beyond attainment, but the natural emptiness of our mind is none other than the “absolute body,” or dharmakaya. Its luminous expression is the “body of perfect endowment,” or sambhogakaya. The universal compassion which emanates from it is the “body of manifestation,” or nirmanakaya. The intrinsic unity of these three bodies is the “essential body,” or svabhavikakaya. These four bodies, or dimensions, of a buddha, have always been present in us. It is only through ignorance of their presence that we consider them as something external and distant. "Is my meditation correct?" we wonder restlessly. "When am I finally going to make some progress? I'll never attain the level of my spiritual master." Torn between hope and fear, our minds are never at peace. According to our mood, we practice intensely one day, and the next day not at all. We cling to the agreeable experiences that arise when we attain some mental calm, but feel like abandoning the meditation when we are unable to slow the flood of thoughts. This is not the way to practice meditation. Whatever our state of mind, we should constrain ourselves to a regular practice, day after day, observing the movement of our thoughts and following them back to their source. We cannot expect to be able to maintain the flow of our concentration day and night all at once. When we begin to meditate on the nature of the mind, it is preferable to practice in short, frequent sessions. With perseverance, we will progressively realize the nature of our mind, and this realization will become more and more stable. By that point, thoughts will have lost their power to perturb and enslave us. The root of both samsara and nirvana is to be found within your mind; People of Tingri, the mind is free of any true reality. Our own mind is what leads us astray in the cycle of existence. Blind to its true nature, we fixate on thoughts, which are nothing other than the manifestations of that nature. Pure awareness becomes frozen into solid concepts such as "self" and "other,” "desirable" and "repulsive," and many more. That is how we create samsara. If we can melt the ice of these fixations by following the instructions of a spiritual master, pure awareness will recover its natural fluidity. Put another way, when we cut a tree at the base, the trunk, branches and leaves all fall at the same time. Similarly, if we cut thoughts off at their source, the delusion of samsara will fall away entirely. The phenomena of samsara and nirvana appear with the vivid clarity of a rainbow, and like a rainbow they are devoid of any tangible reality. Once we recognize the nature of phenomena, which are manifest and at the same time empty, our mind will be freed from the tyranny of delusion. In substantive terms, to recognize the ultimate nature of the mind is to realize the state of buddhahood, and failure to recognize it is to sink into ignorance. In either case, it is our mind, and our mind alone, which binds or liberates us. This does not mean that the mind is an entity that can be worked like clay, to which the potter can give beautiful or ugly forms. When the spiritual master introduces the disciple to the nature of the mind, he isn't pointing to a concrete object. When the disciple seeks and finds that nature, he doesn't lay hands on a graspable entity. To recognize the nature of the mind is to recognize its emptiness. That is all. It is a realization that takes place in the realm of direct experience and cannot be expressed...

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