The Nature of Mind

by Kalu Rinpoce

The actual experience of the essential nature of mind is beyond words. To wish to describe it is like the situation of a mute who wants to describe the flavour of a candy in his mouth: he lacks an adequate means of expression. Even so, I would like to offer some ideas that hint at this experience.

The nature of pure mind can be thought of as having three essential, complementary, and simultaneous aspects: openness, clarity, and sensitivity.

OPENNESS

Mind is what thinks: "I am, I want, I don't want"; it is the thinker, the observer, the subject of all experiences. I am the mind. From one point of view, this mind does exist, since I am and I have a capacity for action. If I want to see, I can look; if I want to hear, I can listen; if I decide to do something with my hands, I can command my body, and so on. In this sense, the mind and its faculties seem to exist.

But if we search for it, we cannot find any part of it in us, not in our head, our body, or anywhere else. So from this other perspective, it seems not to exist. Therefore, on the one hand, the mind seems to exist, but on the other, it is not something that truly exists.

However exhaustive our investigations, we will never be able to find any formal characteristics of mind: it has neither dimension, colour, form, nor any tangible quality. It is in this sense that it is called open, because it is essentially indeterminate, unqualifiable, beyond concept, and thus comparable to space. This indefinable nature is openness, the first essential quality of mind. It is beyond illusory consciousness that causes us to experience mind as a "me" possessing characteristics we habitually attribute to ourselves.

But we must be careful here! Because to say mind is open like space is not to reduce it to something nonexistent in the sense of being nonfunctional. Like space, pure mind cannot be located, but it is omnipresent and all-penetrating; it embraces and pervades all things. Moreover, it is beyond change, and its open nature is indestructible and atemporal.

CLARITY

If the mind is indeed essentially open, in the sense explained above, it is not only open or void, because if it were, it would be inert and would not experience or know anything, neither sensations nor joy and suffering. Mind is not only open-it possesses a second essential quality, which is its capacity for experiences, for cognition. This dynamic quality is called clarity. It is both the lucidity of mind's intelligence and the luminosity of its experiences. 

To better our understanding of clarity, we can compare the openness of mind to the space in a room we are in. This formless space allows for our experience; it contains experience in its totality. It is where our experience takes place. Clarity, then, would be the light that illuminates the room and allows us to recognise different things. If there were only inert empty space, there would be no possibility for awareness. This is only an example, because clarity of mind is not like the ordinary light of the sun, the moon, or electricity. It is a clarity of mind that makes possible all cognition and experience.

The open and luminous nature of mind is what we call the "clear light"; it is an open clarity that, at the level of pure mind, is aware in and of itself; that is why we call it self-luminous cognition or clarity.

There is no truly adequate example to illustrate this clarity at a pure level. But at an ordinary level, which we could relate to more easily, we can get a glimpse of some of its aspects by understanding one of mind's manifestations- the dream state. Let's say it is a dark night, and in this total darkness we are dreaming, or experiencing a dream world. The mental space where the dream takes place-independent of the physical place where we are-could be compared to the openness of mind, while its capacity for experiencing, despite the external darkness, corresponds to its clarity. This lucidity encompasses all mind's knowledge and is the clarity inherent in these experiences. It is also the lucidity of what or who experiences them; knower and known, lucidity and luminosity are but two facets of the same quality. As the intelligence that experiences the dream, it is lucidity, and as the clarity present in its experiences, it is luminosity. But at the nondual level of pure mind, it is one and the same quality, "clarity,"called prabhiisvara in Sanskrit, or selwa in Tibetan. This example may be helpful in understanding, but bear in mind that it is just an illustration showing at a habitual level a particular manifestation of clarity. In the example, there is a difference between the lucidity of the knower and the luminosity of that subject's experiences. This is because the dream is a dualistic experience, differentiated in terms of subject and object, in which clarity manifests itself at once in the awareness or lucidity of the subject and in the luminosity of its objects. In fact, the example is limited, because fundamentally there is no duality in pure minds: it is the same quality of clarity that is essentially nondual.

SENSITIVITY

For a complete description of pure mind, a third aspect should be added to the first two qualities already discussed, which is sensitivity or unimpededness. The clarity of mind is its capacity to experience; everything can arise in the mind, so its possibilities for awareness or intelligence are limitless. The Tibetan term that designates this quality literally means "absence of impediment." This is the mind's freedom to experience without obstruction. At a pure level, these experiences have the qualities of enlightenment. At a conditioned level, they are the mind's perceptions of each thing as being this or that; that is, the ability to distinguish, perceive, and conceive of all things.

To return to the example of the dream, mind's inherent quality of sensitivity would be, because of its openness and clarity, its ability to experience the multiplicity of aspects of the dream, both the perceptions of the dreaming subject and the experiences of the dreamed world. Clarity is what allows experiences to arise, whereas sensitivity is the totality of all aspects distinctly experienced.

This sensitivity corresponds, at the habitual, dualistic level, to all the types of thoughts and emotions arising in the mind and, at the pure level of a Buddha, to all the wisdom or enlightened qualities put into practice to help beings. So, pure mind can be understood as follows: in essence, open; in nature, clear; and in its aspects, an unimpeded sensitivity. These three facets, openness, clarity, and sensitivity, are not separate but concomitant. They are the simultaneous and complementary qualities of the awakened mind.

At the pure level, these qualities are the state of a Buddha; at the impure level of ignorance and delusion, they become all the states of conditioned awareness, all the experiences of samsara. But whether the mind is enlightened or deluded, there is nothing beyond it, and it is essentially the same in all beings, human or nonhuman. Buddha nature, with all its powers and enlightened qualities, is present in each being. All the qualities of a Buddha are in our minds, though veiled and obscured, just as a windowpane is naturally transparent and translucent but made opaque by a dense coat of din. 

Purification, or the removal of these impurities, allows all the enlightened qualities present in the mind to be revealed. Actually, our mind has little freedom and few positive qualities because it is conditioned by our karma, or our habitual imprints from the past. Little by little, however, the practices of Dharma and meditation free the mind and awaken it to all the qualities of a Buddha.

A BRIEF MEDITATION

At this point it would probably help to do a short experiential practice, a meditation to try to improve our understanding of what this is all about.

Sitting comfortably. we let the mind rest in its natural state. we relax ourselves our tensions, and remain without strain, without any particular intention, without artifice. . . . we release our mind and allow it to be open, like space. . . . Spacious, the mind remains clear and lucid .... Relaxed, loose, the mind abides transparent and luminous.... we do not keep our mind locked up in ourselves .... It is not confined to our head, our body. the environment, o~ anywhere. Relaxed, it is vast like space and encompasses everything .... It encompasses everything, from the United States to India, the whole world and universe. It pervades our entire world.

We remain at rest, relaxed, in this state of openness, limitless, fully lucid, and transparent.

The openness and transparency of the mind, similar to endless space, are signs of what we have called its openness. Its free and clear awareness are what we have called its clarity.

There is also its sensitivity, which is the mind's capacity for all-experiencing in an unimpeded awareness of persons, places, and all other things. Mind can know all these things and can recognise them distinctly. 

Once again, without orienting "the mind," the subject-knower, either toward the outside or the inside, we remain as is, at ease and relaxed .... Without sinking into a state of indifference or mental dullness, our mind remains alert and vigilant .... In this state, the mind is open and disengaged. This is its openness .... Its lucid awareness is its clarity .... All the aspects it knows distinctly and unimpededly are its sensitivity.

An important obstacle arises as a result of habitually confining mind to body, which we perceive as being our body; we identify with this body, we fixate on it, and we lock ourselves up in it. To counteract this, it is important to relax all tension, all fidgeting. Tense and fidgety, the mind remains shut in. These tensions will end up causing physical pains and headaches.  

Let the mind remain at rest in its lucid vastness, open and relaxed.

We can begin to meditate in this way,5 but it is critical to pursue the practice under the direction of a qualified guide who will lead us on the right path. With his or her help, we can realise the emptiness of mind, of thoughts and emotions, which is the best of all methods for freeing ourselves from delusion and suffering. Recognising the nature of negative emotions allows them to be released; it is therefore essential to learn to recognise their emptiness as soon as they arise. If we remain ignorant of their empty nature, they will carry us away on their torrent, enslaving and overpowering us. They have control over us because we attribute to them a reality that they don't actually have. If we realise their emptiness, then their alienating power and the suffering they cause will vanish.

This ability to recognise the open, empty nature of mind and all its productions, projections, thoughts, and emotions is the panacea, the universal remedy that in and of itself cures all delusion, all negative emotion, and all suffering. 

Our mind can be compared to a hand that is bound or tied up, as much by the representation of our "me," of the ego or self, as by the conceptions and fixations belonging to this idea. Little by little, Dharma practice eliminates these self-cherishing fixations and conceptions, and, just as an unbound hand can open, the mind opens and gains all kinds of possibilities for activity. It then discovers many qualities and skills, like the hand freed from its ties. The qualities that are slowly revealed are those of enlightenment, of pure mind.