Recognizing Our Own Mind
By Michael Erlewine
Reading, book learning, even teachings and intensives are only brushing the surface as to what is required to learn dharma or, for that matter, learn anything.
The stumbling block is always us, the fact that we are the ones who have to do the learning.
Other teachers and books can present the dharma, but when it comes down to where the rubber meets the road, the nitty-gritty, it all depends on our learning it.
Look around you. Just everywhere there are various dharma courses and teachings waiting to help us, even jockeying for our attention or trying to sell us something. As an older person, my phone rings all day long with people trying to get my attention and get me to sign up or subscribe.
My theme or reason for writing this article is with how it’s all up to us what we learn. We can have the finest teachers in the world and still be unable to understand them to the point of learning. There is an argument that all of the world of dharma instruction begs for our understanding, for our actual experience, and eventual realization. That’s what all the fuss is about.
In other words, when it comes to dharma, the world waits on our realization. And just like the old chestnut “No wine before its time,” there is no understanding before understanding, and thus the beauty of a tautology.
It is what it is.
And so, I’d like to discuss the problem of learning dharma to the point of any useful realization. It’s not as easy as we might imagine, yet it’s not beyond our capability either. It is right on the edge.
The amazing fact to me was, as my Tibetan dharma teacher pointed out to all of us, we are the unenlightened, and the fact that we have never, not in innumerable kalpas, never been enlightened. It’s NOT as with the original sin of the Christians, that we once knew but fell away and are trying to get back to some original state of grace. Buddhism has no Garden of Eden.
In other words, we never knew the nature of the mind, we don’t know now, and we have yet to recognize the true nature of our own mind, much less become enlightened. As Rinpoche pointed out “We are the stragglers, the ones in all the time there has been, who never got it.” That’s not an easy pill to swallow, IMO.
If we believe or even understand that, what’s the problem? How can we in this lifetime make an actual start toward enlightenment?. We’ve had all the time in history the world and time, apparently, and have not bothered or become able to become enlightened.
Again, I draw your attention to the massive amount of dharma teaching-information that surrounds us today in this modern world. There is nothing but advice being offered. There has to be a reason or reasons why this is so.
It’s not because there are no dharma teachers out there. Aside from the quacks, those teachers who cannot teach, and the massive commercialization of the dharma, real teachers do exist.
What we are short on, what are rarer than hen’s teeth, are the students ready to learn the dharma. Of course it is a two-way street, the students are not ready, and most teachers cannot get their student’s attention enough to point out what must be pointed out.
And this dharma instruction is appropriately enough, called the “pointing-out instructions,” yet most find it difficult connecting.
It’s not just a question of who is to blame, the instructors or the students, probably both. And however we wish to phrase it, the bottom line is that very little is getting through and connection is rare.
There is a bottleneck and if that blockage could be removed, we might have a lot more folks who have at least recognized the actual nature of their own mind enough so that they can work the mind.
It’s like driving a car and learning how to drive. When we learn to drive a car, we then can drive the car. When we become sufficiently familiar with the nature of our own mind then we are not afraid to use and work the mind proficiently.
Once we recognize that nature of our own mind, which is right in front of us all the time, we can see how to use it and the trajectory to enlightenment has begun.
[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]
EMAIL Michael@Erlewine.net Note: If you would like to have access to other free books, articles, and videos on these topics, here are the links: StarTypes.com.
As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.