Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Author, Elizabeth Ebaugh, LCSW-C, Editor
Some years ago, a great Dzogchen master by the name of Penam Rinpoche visited the United States. During that visit he gave one talk. Throughout the talk he would say over and over again, never separate from awareness, never separate from awareness, never separate from the field of awareness. He taught that being free of fixation is the essence of Dzogchen Buddhism. Muktananda also spoke about freedom from fixation and how fixation destroys the capacity to experience the field phenomena. Fixation can take you out of the field of awareness and fixation can take you out of the experience of the spontaneity of the field. In a fixated state one cannot experience the sea of chi, the magical sea of synchronicity, the sea of love. When you are stuck in fixation you will experience tremendous angst, a type of terror, and you will feel tortured.
Within each phase of life problems will naturally and incessantly arise like relentless surges. You cannot escape them. However, one can have problems and be in the field of awareness. According to Dzogchen, fixation is the only obscuration. In a fixated state one experiences hiddenness, concealment of spaciousness, disappearance of awareness, obscuration of the light, and demeaning of the bliss of beingness.
The very indeterminateness of the unfolding field of experience, the unpredictability, the unbound openness, being on the edge of potentiality; brings forth the spontaneity of the awareness field. The vast ever present indeterminacy of the field brings forth spontaneous manifestation…and the very same indeterminateness can bring forth fixation. Fixation arises out of indeterminacy and spontaneity and creativity arise out of indeterminacy.
Fixation brings you into the mind alone. And mind alone leads you out of the awareness state. Therefore, the experience of primordial awareness can be overcome by fixation. We experience loss because of fixation. Fixation creates a very dense mind and destroys the spaciousness of the mind, the spaciousness of awareness. A density of a fixated state destroys embodiment and impairs the capacity for problem solving. Fixation destroys MAHA SUKA or bliss. In fixation your mind becomes a small box and the fixated state organizes your brain. As I said you will always have problems but you do not have to live with fixation.
Many confuse dedication with fixation. Dedication can be present in the field of awareness. Fixation cannot.
Being in awareness will lead you into boddhichitta mahasuka jnana dhattu ah. . .
The experience of primordial awareness can be overcome by fixation…. lost because of fixation….fixation creates the mind . . . and a very dense one. Fixation takes up the space of mind , and destroys the spaceousness of
awareness. Fixation objectifies you, everything and everyone you know and love..the idea fixee.
We will pause and enter another framing of this fixatedness.
I will present another way of understanding this phenomenon of objectification…fixatedness. This is the view of nature, of being, of beingness, of being itself. There is a difference and that is that being is NOT a being. Beingness of being is NOT a little being or entitiy. The beingness of being and the beingness of particular beings and of singular beings is not an object and cannot be objectified.
A human being can be an object for us but if we experience the beingness of that being there is no objectification. This happens so often in skillful means during the practice of extension and of passing through.
The beingness of being is Sunyata…..openness, emptiness, spacious, luminous, radiant, knowingness; pure and reified by and as being itself. All of the beings are the manifestation of the beingness of being itself although, being itself is not a being.
Being is the dharmakaya . . .being is not a something but a no thing. . . being is and is nothing . . . being is not a being. Being brings forth beings . . . being fills beings . . . being is openness, pure potential space, infinite potential, luminous. The beingness of being itself is the great compassion bringing forth everything and everyone. Being is the plane of immanence . . . dharmakaya is the plane of immanence. The beingness of being is the source pervasive plane of immanence. The sea of immanence. Being is the vajrakumara unborn, undying, pervasive.
The nature of beingness is Buddhahood, or Shivahood, divinity and the beingness of being which we can experience is true compassion and protection. This protection is expressed through extension; the protection of passing through events and situations, the infinte presentations of the beingness of being manifesting as beings and as situations. Your life is an unending series of the presentations of being; the play of consciousness, the sea of consciousness in the beingness of your own being. You can pass through experiences, events, in a manner that is not disassociated.
In the fullness of the field there will be no fixation of mind. There will always be problems but not fixatedness.
Passing through is the divine skill of nonduality within duality. Nonduality passes through duality into nonduality. Passing through is like a child jumping into the mother’s lap. Not just at death; the deathless state is always here and always now!
The pure radiance of awareness is unimpeded. So do not fixate this radiance of awareness in the mind . . . you will lose your mind.
Being in awareness of awareness, rigpa, is being in the oneness of the awareness field, authentically in awareness, fully in the awareness field, freely in awareness. Focusing on and within awareness is not the mind focusing on awareness. That will give you an ideation of awareness. The understanding of awareness is not conceptual and not ideational. This understanding can be symbolic. Focusing within awareness as awareness without reference, open, flowing, is the power of passing through, the power of oneness, the power of immanence, the plane of immanence pervading everything and everyone.
Fixation takes you out of awareness. Fixation on a problem, fixation of the mind, removes you from the field of awareness, from the sea of qi. . . from the gong . . .the power . . . from the sea of synchronicity . . . from the coherence of the field. Fixation removes you from beingness of your own being. Fixation leaves you in mind alone.
Pure awareness is unobstructed and unimpeded. Radiant spaciousness of awareness is unobstructed and unimpeded. There are many forms of fixations. Absorbtion in the beingness of being is not a fixation.
Affective fixation, mental fixation , fantasy fixation, memory fixation, sensation
fixation …fixation on loss…fixation on love…fixation on divinity…fixation on being
fixated. Fixation, as Penam Rinpoche says, is a problem. You can have lots of
problems without fixation, but fixation is a problem and people suffer from
fixation. The idea fixee. Fixatedness makes you very boring.
To be the field and to have your mind in the field, completely in the field and your body in the field, the luminous field, the vajra vase body that is the container of the great expanse, the great container, the great mandala…the palace and cremation grounds, you are able to hold your experience of the world, your world, your realms, your work, your love, your light as experience and experience as the light. You can extend the light of your own awareness and you can pass through events, persons and situations, you can pass through death. You are living in the the beingness of being as a being.
You live authentically as the field, the field of beingness manifesting beings and events around you and without you.
Authenticity is truly the most floating of all metaphors. Just as subjectivity floats, authentic has implications, just like the word feeling has…so the question arises.
What are you authentic to… to your mind, your idea fixee, what part of your mind are you in allegiance with. Your favorite dissociated ego state, authentic to abandonment, authentic to rejections, authentic to sadistic partners making others suffer for the sake of love, authentically masochistic partners, you suffering for the sake of love. Perhaps you are authentic to unending relentless fixated narcissistic entitlements or being authentically forever injured. Perhaps you are authentic to your affective states, authentically in the sea of rage personified, authentic to your fantasy world with its ranting narrative imposed over every event in your life and that of others… King George
Do you integrate all this drama into the drama of your awareness field or does this drama, play, the narrative have your complete allegiance and the primordial field, your awareness dimension just disappears one more time into oblivion forever. Or maybe it really never appeared at all. Is this so called personal authenticity actually inauthentic to your true self which is primordial unborn and undying awareness…vajra kumara
Does your redundant authenticity, deprive you of living in the beingness of being, that gives you the gift of itself, and its magical skills, such that you can pass through events, and people and live in the love of awareness since awareness is the great compassion, bodhicitta, maha sukha?
True desire is not mental and not in the mind. True desire can be within the somatic symbolic but is not mentalistic. Mental makes true desire impotent.
Do your affective states feed the dharma by being Integrated in the field of awareness and by doing so something wonderful happens in the sea of spontaneity.