The Great Secret of Mind

When chicken-hearted people travel at dusk through a place known to be
infested with snakes and catch a glimpse of a short length of rope on the road, they
may become very nervous, believing that the rope is a snake, and may even think
they see it move. Due to their strong tendency to believe in the substantiality of
appearances, they make mistakes in perception and are deluded. After September
11, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York, many
Americans were not able to forget it, and the incident remained in their memories
for months upon months. Many were plagued by insomnia because of this
incapacity to let it go. Whenever they heard the sound of planes or vehicles with a
loud noise, remembering 9/11, they became apprehensive. Similarly, in Pakistan,
after suffering a strong earthquake, people talked quietly for many months
because loud sounds triggered their fears of a repetition of the earthquake. When
they heard loud noises, they clung to each other. This behavior is due to the strong
imprint of traumatic incidents upon the mind. We sentient beings are attached to
traumatic events not only in the present but throughout beginningless samsara.
This attachment cannot be abandoned easily. But, as in the case of illness, no
matter how serious it is, if we encounter a good doctor who prescribes effective
medicine, gradually we can recover. Likewise, if we meet a rigzin-lama who can
guide us with the profound teaching of Dzogchen, in a short time our attachment
to dualistic delusion as substantial and true will dissolve. Day by day delusion will
vanish, and intrinsic awareness will become clearer and clearer to us. Finally,
delusion vanishes entirely, and we attain buddha in pure presence.
So whether it is daytime or nighttime, we need to realize that suffering arises
only because we cling to delusion as reality. If we can understand that what we
cling to as truth is actually delusion, without an atom of substantiality, that it is
self-envisioned illusion, we can thoroughly excise the notion that there is an
objective field of suffering “out there” and a subject who suffers “in here.”
Through this understanding, we can relax, and, in the spaciousness of pure
presence, where there is no way to conceptualize a place of suffering, we can
increase our confidence.
A few years ago, in the area around Koltri in Nepal, there was a great famine. A
man lived there with his wife and five children amid the severe suffering of near-
starvation. The man, trying to save his family, felt enormous responsibility for
them. After a few weeks, unable to earn enough to feed them, he went to another
place in order to work and to earn money. He worked hard in his new job, and,
after some weeks, set out for his home carrying thirty kilos of rice; but the rice was
stolen as he slept during the night. He was utterly distraught when he woke up the
next morning and found the rice gone. He was so distraught that he bought some
poison, and when he reached home, he told his family that they were going to
feast that night. He cooked rice gruel and put the poison in it and gave a bowl of it
to each of them; finally, he drank a bowl himself. All seven of them died. He had
believed that the best way of avoiding suffering was to poison himself and his
family. The man had no bad intention, but he was simply supremely unskillful.
Had he moved to a suitable place, he might have been able to beg for food and
save the lives of his family. From the president down to the lowest person on the