create blockages from one moment to the next.
It is surely true that, for ordinary people, thoughts run continuously, like ripples
on a pond, and if each is to be caught and rejected one by one, then even though
we practice for an eon, they cannot be eradicated. Whatever thoughts arise, let
them arise, and when they have arisen, do not cling to them, but let them
disappear, like a drawing in water. Letting the thought disappear into its own pure
presence is the Dzogchen mode.
3.2 THE SIN OF IGNORANCE OF THE CONTINUITY OF REFLEXIVELY LIBERATING THOUGHT
When we face the vicissitudes of happiness and suffering in business, farming,
politics, domestic life, and so on, when we lose the momentum of selfish
aspiration, it is enough to look into the nature of suffering and relax. It is not
necessary to destroy thoughts or obstruct them. We do not need to try to destroy or
to forget the thought of a heavy loss in business, for example. When we are
depressed about it, our friends may come to console us, telling us that there is no
need to worry because the neighbor has a much greater loss. In that way, they try
to calm us down. Or when we grieve at the loss of an only child, our friends might
console us by narrating the incident of such and such a person having lost all three
of his or her children all at once in the river and so on. This method of providing
consolation is considered to be effective in human society. But it provides only
temporary relief, not a permanent solution. When our best-intentioned consoling
friends leave us, many more thoughts arise, and if we watch carefully, we will see
that there are even more thoughts than before the consolation. We will think, for
example, of people who have never had business losses before or of people who
have never lost a child. So we start to worry again. Unable to see the nature of
mind or its suffering, we are simply transported to another place, where another
set of thoughts replaces the previous set. Such an exchange of thoughts provides no
benefit.
When during the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, a woman lost her beloved only
son, she was so sad that she stopped eating and was about to die. Her friends tried
hard to console her, but all in vain, so they asked her to visit the Buddha, who
perhaps could bring her son back to life. She was revivified by this idea and went
to see the Buddha. She paid homage to him and weeping asked him to bring her
son back to life. Buddha agreed to do so for her on the condition that she brought
him fire from a house in which no one had ever died. So the grieving woman went
from house to house throughout the kingdom but could find none that had not
seen death; realizing that she was not alone in her desolation, that everyone
without exception knows death, her sadness decreased. Then she went back to the
Buddha and told him that she could not find such a fire, and the Buddha taught
her about the impermanence of both the world and the beings in it. She was
consoled by his teaching, and her life was saved.