List of Talks and Writings

One Mind, Many Minds, No Mind - Seonaidh Perks

Message to all sentient beings - Peg Junge

One Mind, Many Minds, No Mind and the Union of Nirvana and Samsara

Talk given by Seonaidh Perks - 3/7/2004

This morning I wanted to talk about the practice of non-duality and how to practice that in your everyday life, which is the union of nirvana and samsara. According to the dictionary when that has taken root in your mindstream, then you are a realized person. We could say enlightened but that is somewhat pretentious because it comes and goes. Realization is a better word, until it eventually gets there and won't go away. Then we could call it enlightenment, I suppose.

The prerequisite of union of nirvana and samsara is the realization of the illusionary self, that the self is illusion. The practice is that one sees everything as dream, both in the sleeping and waking state. The reason we do this is that illusions of all kinds are predominant in our minds, from fantasies to illusions, more fantasies and more illusions. If one went to the movies for four days straight, from movie to movie, one would get kind of an idea of what the illusionary nature is. What would happen is you would see a happy comedy and you would laugh, then you would see a tragedy and you would cry, then you would see an inspiring movie and you would be inspired, and all the way down the line. Well we know all that. What is in our minds, what comes into our minds is, at the best, not too permanent and not reality. Reality seems to be very simple. River is river, grass is green, leaves are leaves. That is the point of view of the union of samsara and nirvana. They just are. For instance, I am now, for the benefit of this talk, holding up an item. What is this?

Student -That's "that".
Seonaidh - (laughingly) No one wants to say!
Student - I'll call it an "onion".
Seonaidh - Aha! She fell for it. Okay, what's this?
Student - That's also an onion (it was a sweet potato).

Well, the thing is of course, if you say onion then you box it in the onion box. Or if you say sweet potato you put it in the sweet potato box. So at some point the "illusionary-ness" of the boxes and their separateness meets the quality of one mind, or many minds, or no mind. There are three aspects. One mind, many minds or no mind. This is the transition. First of all there is one mind concentrated, then the onion starts to peel, kind of like peeling away the layers of the onion. It is interesting that when you peel onions people cry because of the nature of impermanence. The nature of impermanence makes one cry because one would really like to hold on to things, oneself and others. And as you peel further then maybe the crying starts to stop. Anyhow we don't really know what it is (referring to the onion). And the same with this person (the sweet potato) we don't really know what it is.

For realization of the illusionary self one actually has to practice, and we have talked about this a lot. We've talked about regular shamatha vipashyana, doing tonglen and doing deity yoga. Implicit in deity yoga is that you become the onion and then you don't become the onion. And then you become the onion and you don't become the onion. So it goes back and forth, back and forth into the quality aspect of the Buddha (which is the onion) and the aspect of your self, which is also Buddha, but unrealized. So somewhere in between the two, the realization of the illusion of the whole thing occurs to you. You just get it. You may get it slowly over a period of time or you may get it in a rush while you are sitting on the toilet, or something like that. The reason that people get realized sitting on the toilet is because you ingest the deity and it goes through your system and then you are eliminating it. So you actually have the feeling of the whole thing occurring and you feel that just maybe you are not you, but just a tube that breathes in, breathes out, eliminates, and has all these funny little things that go off in its activity center.

This talk is what we call an atmospheric talk. So from some point of view it doesn't make any sense at all!

The practice for the union of nirvana and samsara could also be based on the very simple practice of seeing everything as Buddha. One sees everything as an aspect of Buddha. So the practice is one of not making a judgment between this and this. (Again holding up the vegies). So you eat this onion and this sweet potato and it's just the flavor of this person and it's just the flavor of that person. But in the beginning you don't say, "Oh I really do like this" or "Oh, I really don't like that." So you actually start to be introduced to the real world, you actually experience the total quality of this person. Like if you were to eat it raw you would cry, but you would get some kind of real feeling for it. The "it-ness" of it. So at that point it doesn't become onion, it becomes "it". You experience a relationship, even beyond relationship, because relationship means having a situation with it. There is nothing with it. It is just "it". It is the experience. I don't like this word but we have to use something, so we say experiencing "it-ness." The it-ness of "it". Then we bite this (the sweet potato) and we experience the quality of "it". And we don't say this is better than this. But we experience continually the quality of the it-ness of it.

So how do we do that if we are really lazy and we don't practice and we don't do what the teacher says? Well, we could still do it somehow in our daily lives. If we are driving in our motorcar and things are coming into our minds and they are going from goody to baddy, goody, baddy, goody, baddy, goody, baddy. We could stop and come back to some reference point of non-duality. We could actually bring our minds back and have the small realization that there is no goody and there is no baddy, but the illusionary self has proclaimed it as such. So we unseat the illusionary quality that continually does that and undermine it in any way that we can. We know that purification practices can help as well. You could actually see things as they are. This is all it is. This is it. So you get to be introduced to the quality of that, that, that, that, that, that.

The quality of the illusionary self is extremely painful and is extremely difficult to give up. Even when you think you have seen through some aspect, another aspect arises to fascinate you. There is always the fascination of "you-ness". So all these particular levels, like this person (holding the onion) have to be peeled back and exposed, somehow. We are afraid because it could create real tension in our lives and real upset in our lives because we have to give up something. It's like a river going over lots of little rocks, but eventually the rocks get smoothed down and the river goes on out into the sea, which is the sea of the universe.

If you want a reference point you could use one of being a tube worm on a particular plane somewhere in the universe. The quality of the tube worm is that it doesn't hold onto anything, things just go through it. In some sense it's eating and breathing the universe, so it's not separate from it, but it also has not identified itself as being a tube worm. It is just "it". The tube thing is interesting because the tube has to experience just the 'tubeness' and no quality of liking this or that, but everything just going through. So you send your mind out and you bring it back, you send it out and you bring it back, but without any quality of "you-ness". That's a purification ceremony. It's also good to have a sense of humor.

Student - I was working through your statement in your book (referring to The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant) about taking refuge in confusion and trying to understand it.

Seonaidh -Well, basically what happened was that Trungpa Rinpoche continually presented me with situations in which there were possibilities to cut through whatever fantasies I had accumulated. As is obvious from the beginning of the book, those fantasies were based on being British, being a male, being self-sufficient, being un-self-sufficient, being a hunter, being a non-hunter. So every time the illusory quality of self was shown, one took refuge in self because of the real reality of sunyata (empty of self). The real reality of that is extremely "panic-attacking". Not only does one feel cutoff from one's conception of self, but even worse, that one has made the whole thing up. It was more comfortable to go back and take refuge in the confusion of oneself than to be in the situation where there is no reference point.

When we first read "form is emptiness and emptiness is no other than form" it is somewhat puzzling. But the real reality of this in our visceral life is extremely anxiety producing. Even if we try to fabricate the idea that we know what it means, then it's the idea that we run back to and try to rest in. We say, "Oh I get it", but actually you don't get it. As soon as you have said "I've got it" you haven't got it because somewhere in between that is a state that is "ungotten"-completely, which is very difficult in the beginning. One has small experiences of it and then larger experiences. Some of the arhats, for instance, had heart attacks when they saw it. They had heart attacks because they saw the ordinariness of it and the illusion of self come together at the same time, which created fireworks, an explosion.

Student - When you were talking about one mind, many minds, no mind I don't think I quite understood what this meant.

Seonaidh -Well, one mind is the quality of believing you have one mind; that you know what to do, you know how to do it, and you know how to arrange your life. You also know about your relationships and you know what makes you happy and sad and you know how to make choices. And from that point of view how to strategize, what to say to get what you want.

Then it might occur to you, "Where is mind?" So you may notice: "When I am anxious the people around me are anxious. When airplanes go into the two towers, lots of people get anxious."

So is there one mind or are there many minds? And the quality of the fishes that all turn at the same time. Where is mind? So that becomes the question. "Is the mind in the heart? Maybe we should think through the heart as in tonglen." You try to shift the quality of your reality. In deity yoga you become the onion and you become un-onion. You become one, you become two, you become the deity, then you become you. Then at some point you get the illusory quality of the self. Generally it is talked about as ego. So that is the quality of many minds-in action.

The quality of no-mind is the union of samsara and nirvana. Because the illusionary nature of self has been seen through, we also see that the self has created good things and bad things and we are confused about that. But then it is possible actually to experience or have reality about the non-quality of mind attaching itself to that. So when that happens, when there is no quality that 'this is this', then 'this' can be experienced as 'that'. Whew! (laughs) We are talking about "form is emptiness and emptiness is form" and you can always come back to that if you get confused.

There is an interesting line in The Heart Sutra that we have been saying for some time:

"Since the Bodhisattvas have no attainment, they abide by means of Prajnaparamita."

The mythology and the figures of her (indicating the deities on the shrine table) are reference points that show it. At the same time they don't show it. In deity yoga you take on the nature of the deity and then you become the deity, but if one were to hang on to it, or become the deity as a solid thing, you would be missing the point. All these deities, on some level, exist as that kind of energy, like a dust devil in the desert, but it is in the quality of "form is emptiness". That is why Padmasambhava was able to go to Tibet and subjugate all the local demons and deities. He was able to show them as form is emptiness, emptiness is no other than form.

Added by Seonaidh after reviewing this printed transcript:

Please remember to quote Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche from his book As It Is.
Referring to training in realizing the essence of mind Tulku Urgyen reminds us, "Short moments repeated many times".

Message to all sentient beings

written by Peg Junge

We are not alone in our attempts to see the unknown, to feel what has not yet been felt, to help where we have never thought to venture. Seeing this we could all group together to move further on our intentions. The veils separating us from 'all that is' are very thin and we all have had glimpses of the unspeakable infinite. What is to say those glimpses could not turn into stabilized circumstance?

The quick twist that moves open awareness to rejection or grasping strikes faster than an adder. Let us all use our patience, will and discipline to slow that routine. Let us breathe space and 'no time' into every every situation so that we can crane our necks in all directions with curiousity and wonder. See the tentacles go out and watch them retract in disgust or glue on needfully. We sentient beings are all the same and we can remind each other to do this. We can encourage each other to restrain the reaction long enough to see it happening. In this way we can enjoy the pulling toward and pushing away as motions of the universe.

There is nothing outside and nothing inside. Knowing this we can flow or remain stationary without doubt and hesitation. Thoughts of "this is not enough" or "this is too much" will cease to arise. The freedom of this state is unimaginable to the conditioned mind.

Our Buddha ancestors through the ages have explained well and completely the incremental steps sentient beings take in walling themselves in. It sounds completely natural, even like an unavoidable evolution. Knowing this we can unravel the snarl and return to the unfettered, uncontrived state. It is not unimaginable that we sentient beings could do this, even though we don't know how. If we knew how it wouldn't be how. If we knew what to do, in which order, it wouldn't be that either. We need only to relax into our natural state. The unraveling is as manifest as the enwrapping. Because of this we can be unreasonably, even irrationally optimistic about our complete enlightenment. Let those who think it impossible speak all they want. We can hear their voice as our voice and let our enlightenment be their enlightenment.