Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D., Author
There are many different forms of meditation and many different views.
1. In some forms of meditation, appearance is illusion and our experience is deluded. And there is no who in whoville, in fact there is no whoville. In others forms of meditation appearance is divinity, appearance is the absolute. The who of the who’s is whoness itself. For some the experience of non duality is the presence of the here and now. The experience of non duality within duality. As the Dakini says to Dudjom Lingpa You and I are indivisible. Such a views is our view There is the non duality of phenomena and the absolute, the indivisibility of phenomena and the ultimate, the oneness of phenomena and the noumena. Or as Swami Muktananda so often said god dwells within you as you and you can see god in other. The bliss of Samadhi is the bliss of the world.
2. The appearance of phenomena is not simply an effect of the absolute but is the absolute itself. Phenomena, the experience of appearance cannot be reduced to simply a reflection of the mind, an idea. In idealism beings become an idea of mind alone. And neither can appearance be reduced by the objectification of the mind alone, to beings becoming things alone. Often we are caught between appearance as ideas(idealism) and appearance as things(realism). I am thought, only a thought, hmm, I am thing only a thing. You are thought, you are thing. Or maybe you are just nothing, never was and never will. Everyone you love and ever will love, everything is rather stupid and illusionary, only ignorance and delusion pervades human experience. The only reality is delusion. Thought beings. Thought things. Nihilism.
3. Wonderfully and easily Becoming aware of awareness is the medium to experience reality beyond idealism and realism, beyond beings being only a thought and beings being only thingness. The path of becoming aware of awareness easily and naturally awakens the experience of the oneness of phenomena and absolute, the indivisibility of primordial awareness and our own awareness, the invisibility of primordial awareness and our own innermost subjectivity. Our own knownings is ultimately knowningness itself.
4. Through certain forms of Cartesian idealism whether in Buddhism, Hinduism or western thinking, the world is transformed into being as thought, as being of thought alone. Subjectivity is I as a thought. In certain forms of realism the world and beings are turned into fixed entities, things in a vaccum. Meaning is only constructed by mind alone. Everything meditated through language alone. Nothing is direct, there is no natural gnosis that you are born into. The world itself, and our being becomes an entity and object that can be possessed through the construction of our mind. Of course actuality is quite the opposite, true gnosis is love, pure love, we are born into gnosis, baby gnosis.
5. Actually nonduality can be experience within duality and duality can be experience within nonduality. Duality is simply the natural individuatedness of phenomena, the natural differentiatedness of phenomena, the natural singularity of phenomena. As the Dakinni says to Dudjom Lingpa YOU and I are indivisible. Awareness manifest in everyone and is everyone. The same awareness manifest the subject as well as the object of appearance. The world is the field of Being manifesting beings. The Beingness of beings is unceaseingly revealing itself as itself in and through beings. In everything the Beingness of being itself is becoming visible, the invisible is always becoming visible both within our self and within others. The primordial guru is our innate naked awareness illuminating our experience of divinity as our very experience. Our experience is the path of realization. Our experience of unfolding situation is the true mandala, just as it is. You and I are always incarnating the field of awareness, we always embodying the manifestation of the absolute within a our singular experience.
6. Each and every experience, each and every moment of phenomenal experience can be understood as the unfolding of the Ultimate, the Absolute within you, since you are very space of awareness wherein everything appears and disappears. Your Awareness is space, the space where appearance manifest and divinity unconceals itself. The place of space wherein Being becomes visible. This why it is useful to learn to suspend your mind and gaze into our awareness and gaze into the manifestation of your experience the field appears. If You stay in mind alone, alas you will think you are thought within the sea of thoughts or just thing among a herd of things.
7. As you gaze the radiance awareness manifest itself in your gaze and within the phenomena around you. You begin to live in an iconic world, a world of opening doorways….appearance becomes luminous, apparitional dimension opens, and pure awareness of clear light shines .
8. The great dzogchen master Rongzompa challenged Madhyamaka philosophy for the lack of realization of the inseparability of the two truths, the relative or conventional truth and absolute or ultimate truth. He and Longchenpa challenged the unhappy view of appearance being separate from vast emptiness of potential space of primordial awareness. For what is lost is the actuality of the absolute purity and equality of all phenomena, the purity of appearance and equality of all beings This is a lost of a sublime base of ethics. What is lost is radiance. The lack of radiance, the lack of the light, is ultimately the lack of understanding that the experience of radiance is the experience of phenomena as divinity. Since it is radiance of primordial awareness that manifest the world as nirmannikaya and the subtle realms as sambhogaka. Compassion itself is the unfolding of radiance. This is an unhappy lost, and vast gap for human experience in knowning what it is.
9. As it is said the the great Gudyargarba tantra ALL PHENOMENA ARE PRIMORDILLY AWAKENED.
THROUGH this aphorism the way of compassion is both taught and understood. Since the intrinsic nature of compassion does not waiver from the nature of phenomena, the manifest world known as the arrangement of light appears, and the way of phenomena is recognized. The teacher as Samantabdra arises as the five Buddha families and since their self originating wisdom minds (awareness fields) are indivisible, then the aphrorism phenomena are primordial awakened is expressed. Without moving from space, the dharmakaya teacher manifest the mandala of vajra space, the arrangement of self appears as the pure land of rich array.