The Play of Emptiness

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Dakini Workshop

When we taste the nature of the dakini through our practice, through whatever realization we achieve, when we taste that nature, when we taste the purity of that event through being exposed to, in a natural way, our own poison, our own fixation, our own determination to continue to absorb and be absorbed in and to remain fixated in a certain kind of view, a view of clean and dirty, a view of this and that, a view of high and low, a view of here and there, we can eventually come around to seeing through that absorption.

To the degree that we understand that by stabilizing our mind, by remaining unattached to the distinction between dirty and clean and up and down and here and there and you and me, we can begin to view the play or movement of emptiness.  However, we think very superficially, we think we will achieve enlightenment and that is what is going to happen and we think we will have some kind of blissful experience – I think we have the idea of evolution.  We think that we are going to evolve into something quite different.  That is the kind of idea that we have.

What we do not attempt and what we should attempt by meditating on the nature of the dakini and by utilizing this particular phenomena, this particular movement of the Buddha nature, is to understand that the point is to pierce the veil of our own confusion, to see through this mistaken belief that things continue, to see the primordial empty nature that is inherent in all display, to see that all phenomena is instantly complete, to hold to our nature, to practice that view.

Unfortunately, however, we insist on breaking samaya.  We break the commitment.  We hold so much more importance in our own value judgments, our own distinctions, our own understanding of the way things ought to be and the way they are and therefore we see what our minds are filled with.  We see the appearance of this enlightened activity as being ordinary, having certain qualities.  We brand it with mental qualities that are our own.  We see physical, emotional qualities that we ourselves are hooked on and we do not taste the appearance of that nature.   So, we miss the entire point.

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