Toward “Recognition”

TOWARD RECOGNITION

My teacher Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche had given what are called the “pointing out instructions” once before at the yearly ten-day Mahamudra teachings, but try as I might, I had failed to grasp what it was that was actually being pointed out, and so my experience remained largely conceptual. I was not able to actually practice Mahamudra because I had not yet had a glimpse of the true nature of my own mind, which, as mentioned, is a prerequisite (by definition) for Mahamudra practice.

Then at the ten-day Mahamudra teachings at KTD Monastery in 2005, while studying a text by Karma Chagme Rinpoche called “The Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen,” Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche again gave the pith instructions, what are called the “pointing-out” instructions, the instructions by and through which a receptive student may be able to recognize (or glimpse) the true nature of the mind. These instructions were part of the actual text by Karma Chagme Rinpoche, which my teacher was presenting and commenting on.

Analytical Meditation

Of course, I had heard all the words before. I had been repeatedly exposed to what is called the Analytical Tradition, the analysis of the Pandita, which is often introduced by asking the student to actually look at his or her own mind and answer simple questions like “Is the mind the color red?” or “Is the mind the color blue?” This kind of talk had always been a super yawn for me, because it was obvious to me that the mind was not red or blue. What was this all I about? I could never understand why something as profound as Buddhism could resort to such simple questions.

So, I had heard this kind of presentation for years and in many formats, and I always told myself privately that ‘this’ particular kind of teaching was probably not for me. Either I didn’t get it at all or it was too easy. I couldn’t tell, but I knew the mind was not the color red or blue. Perhaps some academic pundits delight in answering such questions, but it was the best I could do to politely ignore the temptation to be condescending of this approach. Is the mind red? Of course it is not red. The mind is not red or any other color! I not-so-patiently waited until this section was over, so that we could hopefully get to some of the good stuff, something that would actually grab me.

But in Rinpoche’s presentation I WAS intrigued to learn that in Tibet, when this approach was presented, monks would be given a question such as “Is the mind red?” and then asked to go off and think about it for three entire days and nights, then come back and give their answers, after which they would be given a similar question, but perhaps with the color ‘green’, and this would go on for something like three months. Hmmm.

Hearing this troubled me, for monks (not to mention rinpoches) are not foolish people. What on earth was this all about I wondered, this asking: what color is the mind?

And this is no secret teaching; this same analytical approach has been taught all over India for centuries. Anyway, I stopped trying to wait this section out and began to pay more attention to what Rinpoche was presenting. It took a while, but my take-away from all of this questioning stuff was that rinpoche was asking us to actually stop thinking conceptually about this and simply go and look at our mind and see for ourselves if it was red or green or whatever the question was. And that very slowly began to sink in.

Looking At the Mind

I meant no disrespect, but I had never before followed Rinpoche’s request to actually look at the mind to see if it was red or blue because I felt the question made no sense to me. Yet I was also starting to pick up on the fact that Rinpoche was asking us to get off our mental duffs and actually make an effort to look at and search our own mind, right there on the spot.

I had of course always assumed I already knew my own mind. After all, I was a dharma practitioner and it was ‘my’ mind, but now I was hearing something just a little different. Perhaps my habitual familiarity with my mind had not included actually looking at the mind itself, although I automatically assumed I had already done that long ago, back when I first learned to meditate.

And so, very slowly at first (and not without some struggle), I began to make efforts to stop looking outward at what was going on around me and instead turned and tried to look inward at the mind itself. This was not easy.

Of course, I was already familiar with the little chatter-box inside my head, whoever it is that plans out my day for me, saying things to me like, “It is almost time for lunch” or “You have a dentist appointment tomorrow,” and so on. I believe it’s called the Self. Whoever that inner person is, it is not really me, and I didn’t like him or ‘it’ very much. It is annoying and way too much of a nag. And it yammers on ceaselessly. So, I began to at least differentiate myself from that uptight narrator in my head. That talking voice was no friend of mine, just not my kind of people.

And Rinpoche was asking that we look at whoever (or whatever) it is inside of us that is looking at all the stuff happening outside in the world. I guess that would be “Me, Myself, and I.” Now, this was a whole lot more difficult than just putting some distance between me and my internal narrator. When I tried to look at “who” in there was doing the looking at the outside, it or “I” just would not hold still. It was like those little scotty-dog magnets that repel one another I used to have as a kid. Every time I try to look at the ‘looker’, the whole thing would flip around. It was very tiring to even try. You can try it right now for yourselves: just look at who is reading this page. Try and find the ‘who’. I believe I wrote this poem back then and presented it to Rinpoche and our sangha at a question & answer session.

LOOKING AT ‘LOOKING AT’

I’m looking at “looking at.”

I’m not looking at what “looking at” is looking at.

No, I’m just looking at “looking at.”

That is: I’m Trying to.

You see: When I’m looking at “looking at,”

It’s not “looking at” I’m looking at,

Because:

What I’m looking at is also doing the looking at.

So:

Am I “looking at” or the looking at?

What was happening through all of this was that I was very gradually beginning to exercise ‘mind muscles’ that (to my knowledge) had never been exercised before in my life. And they were soon the equivalent of very sore or very stiff muscles at that — hard to move around. I had never done this kind of thing before and it amounted to giving myself a mental Charlie Horse. It cramped up my mind, and was very awkward, but it ‘was’ a new experience.

The whole thing was a little like trying to erect a large circus tent in the middle of my mind, struggling to push up massive tent poles to stretch and raise the canvas until I had some mental room to just look around in there. And it was hard work, for these mental muscles had perhaps never been exercised before.

And as silly as it seemed to me, I even began looking to see if my mind actually was red or some other color, whether my mind was located in my head, my heart, or my belly, and so on. Of course, the answers were all negatives, just as I had always thought, but in the process I was actually up and walking around in there, getting to know the place a bit. And so, it went. Was that what Rinpoche wanted us to do?

Where before I had kind of mentally slept through this kind of questioning, now I was at least going through the motions — getting some exercise. I was also following the instructions from my teacher, which I had so conveniently ignored up to that point because I thought these questions went without asking. Instead, I was asking them again, doing what Rinpoche was requesting us to do. And that little bit of exercise began to open doors for me.

It went on like this for days, as rinpoche very carefully led us into actually looking at our minds. And I was finally following along. These simple exercises, along with the fact that apparently by this time I had done enough practice over the years or somehow managed to accumulate enough merit (or whatever it was that I had needed) so that I actually was able to recognize or get the ideas as to the true nature of my mind. And it was not what I had expected. There was no lightning bolt, more like an exclamation point! Needless to say, it was nothing like I had led myself to believe all these years.

Of course, my expectations were whatever I had managed to distill from books and the teachings, mixed with the tales of other practitioners and then sealed with my personal take on things, in other words: a jumble. Like most of us learning this, my preconceptions had managed to thoroughly cloud and obscure an otherwise cloudless sky. Here it is worthwhile to backtrack and take a closer look at what I had expected.

THE POINTING-OUT INSTRUCTIONS

It is said in the Mahamudra teachings that the main and perhaps only function of the guru is to point out to the student the true nature of the mind. After that it is up to the student. “The Nature of the Mind,” this phrase immediately raises expectations reminiscent of the realm of Zen koan dramas. One thing I never had managed to understand is that recognizing the nature of the mind is not the same as enlightenment (whatever that is), so let’s start there, and this is important:

What is meant by the phrase “recognizing the nature of the mind” as I understand it is more like being able to finally see the actual problem I was having with meditation all along, like: I had no idea what this type of meditation was, and that was embarrassing to even think about.

And, having some glimpse of at least what recognition might be, I then saw that the nature of the mind is not something beyond my current reach (as I had always implicitly assumed), but rather more like very simply seeing how the mind actually worked, seeing that the mind (my mind) was in fact quite ‘workable,” as in: “Hey, I can do this!” I finally could see a little into how I might work it. And being a clever guy, this was a very practical revelation. So, this is what seeing the true nature of the mind is all about for me, a new take on practice, not some euphoric rush of bliss.

Perhaps the most important result of this conceptual recognition is that the responsibility for getting enlightened immediately switched from books, texts, and my teacher to me and my practice. What I saw or recognized made “me” responsible, and only me. I had involuntarily responded at last, taken a spiritual breath! That had never happened before. I was always looking for someone or something on the outside strong enough to affect me and somehow enlighten me. It doesn’t come from outside!

As obvious as it sounds now, I could see that was not about to ever happen, and I could now see why. Only I could enlighten myself. It was my job, not someone else’s. In pointing out the nature of the mind to me, and my getting the gist of it, Rinpoche had completed his responsibility to me and succeeded in making me fully responsible for the first time. I responded! I took a breath! Yet with that responsibility also came the insight into how this mind training business could or should be done.

When I originally read in the classic texts about “seeing the nature of the mind,” I assumed and expected some grand fireworks-like display and that I would be immediately transported into some transcendental state of illumination. You know: “enlightenment” or something like it, whatever I had imagined all these years.

Expectations are seldom ever our friend and almost always obscure the actual path and the reality. It might be better to say the teacher points out the nature of ‘how’ the mind works rather than simply say the teacher points out “the nature of the mind.” The ‘nature of the mind’ seems so mysterious, and the actuality is anything but that. In my case, the less that is left to the imagination, the better. My imagination has filled me with preconceptions and impossible expectations all my life.

In other words, at least in my recognition, the ‘Aha!” experience was not “Aha!, this is finally some enlightenment,” but rather a simple: “Aha! I get it now. So, this is how the mind works; even a beginner like me can do that! This is actually workable, something I can actually do.”

It is often cited in the Buddhist teachings that eons of darkness can be ended by the lighting of a single match. It is remarkable how in an instant my years of expectation vanished and were replaced by something simply practical that finally made real sense to me. How absolutely encouraging!

The “pointing out” instructions didn’t in any way mark the end of my practice and my graduation to some higher “bodhisattva-like” level (like I had always wondered or imagined), but rather to the end of my imitating what it is I thought practice was supposed to be, and the very beginning of actual useful practice. Finally, I got the general idea of how to work with my mind and understood in a flash that I had been mistaken about this all of my dharma life, like perhaps 30+ years!!!

For the first time I saw simply how the mind works and that there was no reason that I (just as I am, warts and all) could not just do it. And that WAS a new experience, to somehow be at the same level with reality — to see it clearly. It was up to me to figure out just how to work with this new information and to put the time in. Perhaps most important of all, I suddenly had the enthusiasm and energy to make it work that I had been missing. No more boredom and laziness when it came to practice.

And while the fact was less exotic than what I had mistakenly expected, it was perhaps (if my opinion counts) the first tangible result of many years of practice, and it was not just a passing experience, but a simple realization as to what had to happen next, like: when you realize how something works, you just get it. You don’t forget, because it is not a simple experience, but a realization. That quite ordinary insight was a form of recognition, and it was permanent.

In reality, for me this was a huge result after about 31 years of meditation of the “sounds-like-this” variety, years during which I sincerely went through the motions, but with little result that I could see. I had been rubbing the sticks and getting some smoke but no fire. Suddenly, there was some heat and also fire. While not what I had expected, this was what I had always dreamed about having happen: visible progress.

[Photography by me of the Mighty Muskegon river as take from the trestle bridge on the ‘Rails to Trails” section at North-End Park in Big Rapids, Michigan.]

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As Bodhicitta is so precious,

May those without it now create it,

May those who have it not destroy it,

And may it ever grow and flourish.