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The Awareness of Awareness, Cover Stories, Essays

Dzogchen and Mahamudra retreat 2011

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Mon, Aug 22, 2011

1.Dudjom Rinpoche the great master of Dzogchen would often say : hundreds orthousands of explanations are given, there is only one thing to be understood, know theone thing that liberates everything----Awareness itself , your true nature.

2.Namkai Norbu another contemporary master of Dzogchen says this: Dzogchen doesnot belong to any religion, it is very nature of human awareness itself. No one ownsDzogchen and its naturalistic and experiential understanding is expressed in manytraditions. Our own root teacher was Swami Muktanada and he was Hindu ShaviteMeditation Master. He taught that meditation was becoming aware of awarenessitself. Western phenomenology is also presents methodology for becoming aware of

awareness.

3.The very essence of Dzogchen is to be aware of awareness itself.. Beyond wordsand letters ,there is a transmission that does not belong to any tradition which is verynature of human of awareness and this is the Buddha. This statement made in the 6thcentury by Bodhidharma indicates that although human beings easily andconstantly transmit their minds from one to another, from family to children, fromperson to person, from group to group from culture to culture, human beings are alsoable to transmit the very nature of their own awareness to each other .this awareness isthis field of light and of energy. This field is a field of gnosis direct lumenousknowningess and is the great compassionlove itself.

4.In the praxis of Dzoghcen if you to be able to suspend your mind even briefly, thissuspension frees your awareness to become aware of own self, and in this actionawareness becomes aware of its own nature. This nature this syunyata isspaceousness, or openness ,the great expanse and this nature is also light or radianceor lumenousity, and this nature is energy, or qi or shakti, and this nature is alsooneness and pervasive. This nature is the great affection or great compassion, whichis infinite in its horizons vaste and multidimensional.

5. In meditation and through meditation you learn through practice and happenstance to suspend your mind. The mind which is thinking, is feelings, is memory,

and is sensation and is fantasy. And within the freedom of the suspension, this epoche, your awareness focuses within its own self and reveals itself and shows itself andunconceals itself to you as your own self. You begin to experience awareness itself.as.the base of your experience. The base of your experience is no longer mind alone butthis field as non conceptual awareness, this field vast and infinite in its horizon. Thisbase goes beyond the boundaries of your body.

http://transmissiononline.org/issue/the-awareness-of-awareness/article/dzogchen-and-mahamudra-retreat-2011http://transmissiononline.org/covers/http://transmissiononline.org/issue/the-awareness-of-awareness/section/essayshttp://transmissiononline.org/author/rudy-bauerhttp://transmissiononline.org/author/rudy-bauerhttp://transmissiononline.org/author/rudy-bauerhttp://transmissiononline.org/issue/the-awareness-of-awareness/section/essayshttp://transmissiononline.org/covers/http://transmissiononline.org/issue/the-awareness-of-awareness/article/dzogchen-and-mahamudra-retreat-2011

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The natural mystic drama of your lifev begins unfolding with immediacy. Your life andthe mystic drama become one.

6.Dzogchen understanding and practice begins within awareness in order to dissolvesuffering ,the suffering of never ending lost , the suffering of an indeterminate and

unpredictable existence, the suffering of the abyss of emptiness and voidness, thesuffering of non connectedness, separateness and solipsism , the anxiety of nonexistence ,ever present death. The phenomena of disappearance and appearance isthe very essence of the field of awareness ,.ever present, timelessly present, comingand going, appearing and disappearingwithin timeless awareness.

7. The praxis is simple, suspend your mind, enter into awareness of awareness, holdingit, entering it, becoming it, aham ah I am becoming what I am. As you become awareof awareness the qualities of awareness manifest themselves in you, in yourexperience. The qualities are spaceousness or openeness, lumenousity or light,energy, and the oneness and compassion as pure love. As you establish your self in

this field as AND THE FIELD ESTABLISHES ITSELF IN YOU, YOU integrate yourmind and your body into this field of awareness. And so you begin to live withinawareness itself. You think in awareness, you feel within awareness field, you havememory, sensation and dreamsall within awareness .What is most amazing and thewonder of wonders is that is you begin experience not only within your own self thisfield but you begin to experience this field of awareness within everyone and in timeeverythinganimate as well as inanimate. What is in you is in the other. You begin toexperience non duality, or oneness within the duality of the world..

You integrate everything within awareness field and this awareness metabolizesexperience and frees you from the compulsivity of endless fixation . In time the light of

awareness becomes more and more visible in your self and within in this world. all ofwhich is the beingness of Being itselfthe translucidity of Being of all the beings.

8.More over your own awareness is multidimensional and the world you live in is ofthe same dimensions. These dimensions in Dzogchen are called Kayas. Thesedimensions become slowly but surely apparent and experiential. So within thedimension of ordinary appearance (nirmanakaya) you experience the energy and lightwithin yourself and others. This light and this spaceousness and this energy is thesource of non duality or oneness within appearances, this world of fles, the world of meand you.

9.In time You begin also to experience the dimension ofapparitionalness(sambhogakaya). This happens especially in dreams andin visions. InVisions, you experience the archetypical dimension of your own being which is Beingitself. Primordial energies, swirling vortexts of energy and light, archetypicalmanifestations all of these manfifestations are cosmological qualities of primordialawareness. Primordial Beingness expressed and symbolized as personafied deities.dakinis, devas..You experience them not outside of you but as the qualities yourown awareness , your own beingness of Being itself.

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10.And in time you experience the completely ineffable non conceptual , beyondall language and expression, the silent dimension of pure potential , potential space,the great void, the great openness out of which everything arises and dissolves,including your own self, your own awareness. This dharmakaya dimension is Creativityitself the great mother.

11.You begin to experience within your self as your self this pervasive immanence thatis the source and pervades all of existence. The world becomes more inside to insideand less externalized.less objectified, less reified. In this bliss, this great bl iss,thisbliss over comes all suffering.

Om ah hung, bodichitta, maha suka, jnana datu ah.

11.This unfolding of the field sometimes happens like this. More often then not a person

lives in their mind. The mind is a kind of boxa jewel box. And a person can live inthe functions of their mind, thinking, feelings, sensation ,memory and fantasy. Then oneday you the person become aware of their mind, and the personexperiences mindfulness.Soon the person discovers a space that is not their mind,and from that space the person can view their own mind. That is an amazingmoment. This is the beginning of liberation. This may continue for some time.

12. Then one day that person becomes aware of that space itself . One day the personbecomes aware of that intermediate space, that space in between, that transitional orliminal space . In that space of awareness , the person become aware of thereinnermost space and clearly realizes that awareness is not their mind. You and I are

not our mind, and we are this space of awareness ,this field of awareness.

Wonderfully The base begins to shift from our mind to our awareness. Moreover, toour surprise , to our unending surprise this awareness is field vast and its horizons areinfinite and unbound. Moreover you and I begin to learn to extendthis awareness field to each other within this field of immanance. In and throughthis mutual transmission we become stronger in the field and in the light of the field.Two awareness are truly better then one.

13. We begins to live in the energy and light of the field , We begin to sense theoneness of the field in ourselves and in others. We are entering the non duality of

oneness and we experience the translucidity within us and within of the world. Weexperience the sameness of equality consciousness.

14.Moreover the different dimension of this awareness this amazing awareness beginsto manfest to us, and we slowly but surely begin to feel and to glimpse themultidimensionalness of our own existence and the existence of others. You andI begin to experience ourselves as this unfolding field . We experience ourselves as

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this primordial awareness, un born and undying..and in these moments death itselfbegins to dissolve.

15.. Dudjome Rinpoche says by simply relaxing in this uncontrived ,open, natural state,we obtain the blessing of aimless, self liberation of whatever arises. Your karma is the

dharma, the map of liberation is you life just it is..

14.there is a great lama named Penam Rinpoche. He visited the states one time anumber of years ago. And he gave this talk on FIXATION. Penam Rinpoche would saynever separate from awareness, never separate from awareness,never separate.

15.Fixation can take you out of the awareness field., out of the spontaneity of the field,out of the sea of awareness, this magical seathe sea of love.

16. He points out that the very indeterminateness of the unfolding field of primordialawareness can bring forth the spontaneity of the awareness field and that one can live

and die within this spontaneous and syncrenistic unfolding. But the very spontaneityand syncrenistiy of the field can be overcome or undone by fixation. .Awareness can beloss because of fixation of our mind. There can be a fixation of thinking, a fixation ofaffective response, a fixation within fantasy, fixation within sensation, a fixationbecause of memory. Fixation creates mind or at least a very dense mind. Fixationcreates density and disolves translucidity, disolves spaceousness.

17.Fixation destroys the field and the fullness of the field. Within fixation you go back tothe beginning and become completely located within the box of your mind. You and Iand everyone will always have problems but not necessarily fixatedness. Whatever isfixated bring the fixation into the field of awareness and awareness will dissolve

fixation,metabolize the fixation. You can enter fixation and becomefixatedness because of the fear of the indeterminanteness of this world, the vastarray of unpredicableness, the vast array of lost, unending loss and to the degree youthink you will solve this root problems by fixation and effort endless effort you will onlybecome the fixation, never ending fixation. This is why the indeterminatess of reality,the impermanency, the contingency can not be dealt with by mind alone Within yourown awareness is resolution to the terror of this experience of non knowningness whatwill happen next.