Effortless Mindfulness: Awakening Glimpse by Glimpse

I was fortunate enough to begin my studies in Buddhist meditation when I was in high school, with a zen center nearby. Then in graduate school, I did a fellowship where I went off to Sri Lanka for nine months and studied in the university and monasteries, doing five day retreats, ten day and twenty-one day retreats. Then I went up north to meet a teacher whose name was Tulku Urygen Rinpoche, who is from the Mahamudra and Dzogchen tradition.

At that time he was giving these short, introductory glimpses. In ten minutes, he gave a short meditation with our eyes open, and I felt the same way as I did at the end of a twenty-one day retreat, in ten minutes. So as you can imagine, that fascinated me, and I said, “What is going on?” 

The Awakeness Is Already Here Within Us

And the explanation was that the awakeness that we’re seeking, the love, the connection, the freedom, is already here within us. It’s not something that’s developed or created, that needs to be studied or learned. It’s actually uncovered or glimpsed. The talk I’m going to give today is on the topic of effortless mindfulness, awakening glimpse by glimpse. 

Tulku Urygen Rinpoche said that he was giving these teachings because he had done three 3-year retreats in the Tibetan tradition, and he realized at the end of that that his uncle had given him this short pointing instruction when he was fifteen years old, and it was no different at the end of the three 3-year retreats than it was when he was fifteen. 

He figured people could recognize their true nature directly and immediately, because it’s already here within us. So this glimpsing practice is something that begins with the assumption that there is this awake consciousness, and that the suffering is caused by identification or attachment, which is true in all these different traditions. 

So what is identified and what is attached? Well, the awareness, the awakeness, gets identified with our small sense of self, with thought that becomes I think, therefore I am. And then we try to live from this small sense of self. 

And once we are in this form of ignorance, we start grasping and pushing things away, trying to solve these problems of: How do I get what I need? I feel unfulfilled. I feel anxious. I feel worried. I feel some lack. 

The definition of dukkha, which is suffering, is often translated as a feeling of perpetual dissatisfaction. This perpetual dissatisfaction, in this tradition, is the feeling of an existential lack or disconnection, and it’s caused by a simple case of mistaken identity.

If we could shift and allow this part of us– in this tradition, the small self or the ego center is not an illusion, it’s not an enemy. It doesn’t need to be fought or gotten rid of. It’s just a part of us. It’s an ego function that thinks it’s our identity. When it can step back, it becomes an important part of the team.

The Solution Of Awake Consciousness

We’re not just letting go, we’re actually going to the solution of awake consciousness, and then coming back to our human condition. This is the kind of non-dual expression of this Mahamudra Tradition. We go to the awake consciousness and then we include from the solution. 

Rather than trying to restrict ourselves and fix the problem, we step out of conditioning just for one second to three minutes and then come back to recognize they’re not two things. That the awakeness and the aliveness are simultaneously here. It’s often called “same taste.” They’re the same taste. 

In order to get a sense of this, the first thing is just to try on, with beginner’s mind, the premise that this awakeness that’s alert and clear and here is already available, already installed within us. And if we can just let go or detach from the small sense of self, we can not only be aware of this awakeness, but rest as it and then be aware from it.

So here’s the first glimpse we’re going to try together, if you’re up for it. Or you can just listen, if you like.

A Glimpse of Effortless Awareness

It’s an inquiry style glimpse or an invitation that first you’ll understand the words with your mind, and then I’ll ask you to look with awareness to find the already awake awareness that’s boundless, timeless, here and clear.

The premise is that this small self is always trying to solve problems, pushing things away, grasping, looking inside, looking outside. So here’s the inquiry: What’s here now, just now, when there’s no problem to solve?

Without going to memory or one moment into the future. What’s it like if the problem solver can just soften back and your awareness can open up, to be aware of itself, without referring to thought. To orient and just rest as the spacious and pervasive, clear, alert. already free. Thought free and yet responsive, aware. 

And then just resting as this awareness: what’s the relationship to the first vibration, sensation, thought, feeling, emotion, your body and the room? What if this awareness is primary and welcomes, includes, is interdependent with everyone and everything?

Just notice, even if it’s a glimpse, that there’s some relief or sense of openness. Some people feel like they drop from head to heart space or body.

There’s a lack of orienting to I think, therefore I am. And then there are different parts that can start to come up with thoughts or feelings, that if you don’t identify with them, not trying to make them go away, just letting them arise and pass, but finding your ground now, not in your body or your breath or your thoughts, or your even your mindful witness, but in this spacious, pervasive, embodied, fully awake and fully human presence.

See what you discover by doing this. This is the pointer. That this awareness that is identified and self-referencing can literally open like a bubble of awareness and find this field of open awareness that then is not just outside.

It’s like a cloud of sensation, a storm cloud we just keep trying to clean up with this small sense of self, and even with a mindful witness, we just watch it. But what if you could step out of the cloud into realizing, oh, I’m also the sky.

But then as the sky, you realize the sky is also in the cloud. It’s connected to every other cloud, and earth and water. And yet there’s a new awake consciousness that’s prior to thought. That’s what thought is made of.  And it can use thought as needed, because in Buddhism, thinking is considered the sixth sense. It’s not who we are. 

From the Self Center to the Heart-Mind

They talk about in Mahamudra, when the five senses come to this sixth sense, and it becomes the self center, it’s called the seventh afflictive consciousness. And so this is the root of suffering. And in Buddhism, insight meditation, Theravada, we recognize anicca, things come and go, and then annata, there’s no self. Then in the Mahayana, we recognize that emptiness of no self, that form that we took to be solid and separate, is empty. But then emptiness is also form.

In the non-dual traditional Mahamudra, we can say form is emptiness, but emptiness is awake. And then emptiness is also an awake form. So they mix, the reason they call it The Heart Sutra, into this bodhichitta, or heart-mind. It’s as if we’ve dropped and opened and included this subtler dimension that’s been missed because it’s invisible. 

Well, if it’s already here, why have we missed it? In one tradition they give four reasons. In this Shangpa Kagyü tradition, they say this awake consciousness, it’s so close you can’t see it. It’s what we’re looking from. It’s behind us, within us, prior to thought, so close you can’t see it.

It’s so non conceptual, you can’t know it with the mind. We know everything else through thought. But it’s so non conceptual, you can’t know it. And the third one is it’s so simple when you glimpse it that you can’t believe it. 

It’s just this relief, it’s just this clarity, it’s just this freedom. It’s just this ease, well-being. It’s not some big fireworks called awakening. It’s just freedom from suffering. 

In Zen, they call it ordinary mind. Awake mind is ordinary and with a big O, and it is the “huh, just this.” But that replacement of thought-based knowing to awareness-based knowing is what awakening feels like. But then the awareness is not a spaced out or detached or transcendent, it transcends and includes so there’s the ground of being, what Thich Nhat Hanh called interbeing, interconnection. 

Returning Your Eyes to the Natural State: Shifting from Head to Heart

In order to live from this awake consciousness, we have to have our eyes open. So I thought what I would do is share this pointer or this glimpse practice that is called returning your eyes to their natural condition and looking out of the eyes of the heart-mind.  

So you’ll notice that when we hear sounds, our ears are pretty naturally set up so that if you hear something, you feel you hear it at a distance. Sound waves travel and you feel like you receive sound. Sound comes to your eardrums, right? So if you’re hearing something, hearing is receiving just on a normal, everyday level. 

But when we see something–if I say, “Look at that,” it seems like, because our eyes are connected to our grasping mind and our small self identity, it’s as if the arrow is going this way, as if we’re looking like our hand is going out to see something. 

The way that biology works is light reflects off of objects and comes to your eyes. So the first pointer is just look at something and then rest back feeling hearing is receiving and seeing is receiving.

Let your eyes rest and float in their sockets so they’re not straining or needing to use attention to concentrate, but are more receptive and then feel as if you’re able to see this soft lens rather than pinpointing with concentration.

Then just notice that you can also begin to have awareness that is this whole field, beginning to open to the sides. So as you as awareness opens to the sides, you’ll notice your eyes don’t move, but your peripheral vision will start to open.

And you can smile and breathe in cool air, and then feel how awareness can open your view, even as it lets go of seeing and goes to the side to be aware of the space. And the awareness in which sound is coming and going. And somehow feel as if awareness can open your view all the way behind you. You discover that awareness has your back, that this awareness mingles with that field of awareness that’s behind you. It arises as your body and looks out of the eyes of your heart.

Feel as if you’re aware of this open view, and now just feel what it’s like to rest as this and realize the awareness is equally inside and out. As you take a little deeper breath, let out a sigh, feel like you drop from headspace to heart space. 

Feel this sense of the supportive awareness behind you, arising as your body in this cloud of sensation and kind of connecting in this inter being, in this bodhicitta eyes of the heart to everyone and everything.

You’re embodied more or open minded, open hearted, present. Not having to look up to thought to have direct perception. Feeling less contracted, more open and connected. 

See what it’s like when your eyes are returned, so they don’t have to go out and grasp. How you could go from here, stay dropped open and and just go and do the next task in your day. This is a beautiful meditation to do before you do an activity, and it allows you to enter what I call, bodhichitta, the awake loving flow, because it’s similar to what we do in our free time. 

Your Full Human Nature

We do what we do because it takes us out of our ego center into our body. Open eyed we go walk in nature, play sports, listen to music, be with animals, children. We drop, we connect, we feel, we act. We’re able to move, and we’re not in our self referencing small self. We’re in this awake, loving flow. So we know how to do it.

We just need to know that we know it and find a way to return, not just in the doorways of those flow activities that we love, and realize it’s not about that activity. It’s about you, that you have the capacity to be this awake, loving flow. This open hearted, compassionate, actively engaged, capacity to be with any parts of you, emotions and thoughts that arise. 

Because now that you found the solution, that which can bear what seemed to be unbearable, you don’t have to just deconstruct the ego and get flooded. You actually find that which has this naturally vast loving capacity. 

If a part of you is hurt or feels wounded, there’s an immediate feeling of interbeing, of being same-same. And there’s the ability to begin to allow those human parts that have been protected to be liberated. 

This awake, loving flow, this effortless mindfulness, is a way to access your full human nature and your full awake nature, any time of day. And when you learn to do this, you’re not just doing it on the cushion, but you literally can start to unhook, drop, open, include, and go about your day in a way that is more wisely and lovingly present.

I thank you for spending time and I look forward to hopefully meeting some of you.