Symbolization (Part 2) as the Purity of All Phenomena
By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Thu, Feb 23, 2012
Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Auhtor, Fran Callanan, Editor
1. In the Dzogchen tantric teachings, the view is the purity of all phenomena. The pure view is the all-encompassing purity of every creature and every thing. The pure view is of the inherent nature of purity of being. Primordially pure, all phenomena form a seamless tapestry woven from the qualities of enlightenment. All beings are of the arrangement of light. As Dudjom Lingpa states “ I, a practitioner of the great perfection, recognize all phenomena to be naked awareness.” Awakened awareness with awakened phenomena.
2. Dudjom Lingpa’s life story returns again and again to his direct perception of awareness through the appearances of his unfolding life experience, including apparitional experiences of dakinis, deities, demons, protectors, guru -- all symbolic interactions. His encounters with beings of the nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya and dharmakaya were interwoven in total oneness. His experience of these concurrent realms was, in a direct way, useful in actualizing and manifesting enlightenment, which manifested in him and through him during his life. Dudjom Lingpa lived in the symbolic realm and in the realm of the actual which must be differentiated from that of the imagination.
3. The natural awakened phenomena of his unfolding life experiences and the natural manifestations of the symbolic, translucent dimension in his life were experientially and completely interwoven into one narrative, one form. His living completely within the “beingness of being” gave Dudjom Lingpa access to the beingness of being manifesting as beings in all the different dimensions and realms within the sea of consciousness.
4. Dudjom Lingpa was able to live in transitional awareness, the intermediate area of experience; he lived within the awareness field throughout his life experience. For him, every experience -- good, bad, enjoyable, terrible, agonizing, desired or unwanted -- all phenomena were naked awareness, opening as energy and light. All were manifestations of the great compassion both as time and beyond time … timeless awareness.
5. Within and because of his stability of being in transitional awareness and his living within and through transitional relatedness, which is primordial awareness itself, arose the symbolic dimension, the symbolic realm. He experienced the transitional and symbolic simultaneously and seamlessly. Appearance and apparitional life were in oneness … interwoven seamlessly.
6.The powers and shakties of the archetypical dimension infused Dudjom Lingpa’s ordinary life with its many difficulties and great blessings. He lived in the realm of the shakti, the realm of the qi. The visionary thinly infused his most ordinary experience in most challenging ways.
7. Awareness itself is not a thought, sensation, memory, imagination or affect. The differentiation between awareness and mind in Dzogchen can teach us much about the symbolic realms. Symbolization manifesting from within transitional awareness provides support for us to enter, hold, sustain and live within transitional space. The void as awareness, unheld, uncontained and unsymbolized, can become experientially the horror of the void in its nihilistic negation, with concomitant states of falling, falling, falling. In such experience all meaning is stripped away, empty of energy, empty of light, empty of space itself. The self, arising out of symbolization, arising out of transitional space and relatedness itself, with signifiers of mirroring, provides stabilization and holding of the unbound experience. Symbolization arising out of the void provides direct understanding and sustenance to the wordless, non-conceptual dimension of existence. Symbolization is the light and translucidity of all experience both within the experience of emptiness and containing the experience of emptiness. Awareness metabolizes the experience of infinite awareness through inherent symbolization as translucidity and transparency. Within symbolization is the mysterious and ineffable, non-conceptual understanding of “what is.”
8. Symbolization has many different meanings. Symbolization within the mind differs significantly from the symbolization that takes place within awareness field. There are various signifiers of symbolization. There is the symbolization of the mind within thinking, feeling, sensation, memory, and imagination -- signifiers of mind pointing to meaning. There is symbolization that takes place within awareness, the translucidity of the three dimensions, the various realms. There is symbolization of mind and the symbolization of imagination. There is the symbolization from within awareness as awareness. Symbolization of awareness is the doorway into the kayas and the window through which the kayas manifest in our lives. Mind is a signifier of meaning, and in awareness the signifiers are invocations to perceive and to know. Perceiving and meaning are different dimensions of knowningness. Knowningness as mind and knowningness as direct perception … jnana.
9. Symbolization as bringing forth the experience of the kayas within our awareness field … the invocation of symbolization as nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya and dharmakaya.
10. The symbolization within awareness opens the translucidity of sambhogakaya, the translucidity of nirmanakaya, and the translucidity of dharmakaya, so that the drama of life is infused with all three simultaneously. Direct perception of the unfoldment of ordinary life becomes the unfoldment of nirmakaya, sambogaka and dharmakaya -- all simultaneously, in seamless oneness, “in one taste,” if you will.
11. Symbolization and the Signification or the Signifiers.
12. In the mind, the symbolization of mind is signifiers giving rise to the signified … the dimension of meaning.
13. In awareness, the symbolization of awareness the signifier is the invocation of the symbolization becoming embodied, present within us as place, encompassing place. The symbolic and symbolic action is the kaya … translucidity of experience and movement.
14. The symbolic dimension is knowing directly and non-conceptually. The mind can be utilized to think and conceptualize the unthought, but known experience. The knowingness of symbolization is paradoxically non-conceptual. You know the experience directly, and you experience understanding directly, but without concepts. And then your mind can be infused and conceptualize the unthought, but known experience. The knowing can also be known by seeing, hearing, feelings, and sensing. Languaging the unthought, but known, is ultimately a function of the samadhi of syllables, the growing mastery of the matrica shakti. Such use of language is multi-dimensional -- from the sublime, most subtle vibration as light and sound, through energy, and images and vocalizations ... tones and syllables reflecting infinity of experience ... wordlessness becomes words.