The Fundamental Certainties & The Path Of Alignment
Earth is the nondual quality of solidity and intangibility.
Water is the nondual quality of permanence and impermanence.
Fire is the nondual quality of separateness and inseparability.
Air is the nondual quality of continuity and discontinuity.
Space is the nondual quality of definition and lack of definition.
Ego is the way in which we perceive. It is a process not a product. It is a style of being which evaporates into emptiness, as soon as we drop the use of that style.
I am therefore not going to use the word 'ego' again in our discussion. Too many bizarre philosophies have grown up around the word for it to be of any use to us. I am therefore going to use the term distracted-being. In terms of liberation from that state of unsatisfactoriness, I'm going to use the term liberated-being.
Our awareness is unrestricted by the considerations of self-defensiveness. We cease maintaining reference points, or investing in securing territory. Our attention is naked and direct, and we become free in a relaxed manner. This totality of commitment without attachment is known as whole-hearted presence.
Transcending Causality
This is why some people think that Lamas can absorb their negative karma or take it on or whatever. This is impossible. If it were possible for you to take on the negative karma of a killer, you would become a killer. You would become a killer because the karma of a killer is the wish to kill.
The 'legal system' of karma has no jurisdiction in terms of nonduality. When we realise beginningless enlightenment, the law enforcement agencies of karma evaporate. They boil away into space because they were our unenlightenment.
Where there is awareness and personal responsibility, there is no need for law. Where there is awareness and personal responsibility, there is no need for rules. Where there is awareness and personal responsibility, there is no need for moral or ethical values. Where there is a lack of awareness and personal responsibility, we rely on laws, rules, ethics, and morality.
Awareness means relinquishing the police state of karmic-vision and assuming personal responsibility. Karma is the sum total of our perception in all its excruciating intricacy.
Kindness Mind: The Power of the Awakened-Mind Warrior
The Warrior lives with this presence, the felt-presence of death. The warrior knows that death can come at any moment and lives in that knowledge. This knowledge is liberating. It enables us to be free to act in whatever way we need to act in order to protect others. The awakened-Mind warrior has the capacity to act without reference to personal safety. The awakened-Mind warrior has already given up all there is to give up. There's nothing to defend, so nothing is a threat.
The Linguistics of Liberation: Establishing Confidence in Actuality
As it is is actuality, and to 'take refuge' means to establish confidence in actuality. As it is is not somewhere safe. It is not a place to escape or hide away. Taking refuge in the three jewels—Buddha, dharma and sangha—means to rely on the Isness of the Buddha, the realised exemplar of actuality; the dharma, the expression of actuality; and the sangha, those who aspire to experience actuality.
The khandro is the mother of our experience and the vital nurturing energy that inspires our practice. The pawos are heroes who leap and stride through the battlefield of dualistic derangement in order to allow escape from the self-inflicted carnage of self-protectiveness.
