samsara as an external objective field is delusion. Actually, the nature of mind is
never other than the natural perfection that is the suchness of things. Just as the
reflections of stars in the ocean can never be separated from the ocean itself, so all
positive and negative thoughts can never leave the nature of mind. When one is
settled in the relaxed, unfabricated space of mind’s nature, realization of the
thought-free dharmakaya will arise by itself. In the tantra The Supreme Source, it is
said,
Whatsoever appears is one in suchness,
So do not try to modify it!
With the king of unmodified sameness,
Spontaneity arises in the thought-free dharmakaya.After first settling into the unmodified space of pure presence, we will
experience the sudden arising of adventitious thought. This is what we call the
creativity of pure presence. If our attachment to this creativity seems to arise in the
form of causes producing effects, and we investigate, we find that there is actually
no connection between what we consider a preceding causal instant and a
subsequent effected one. This is because the face of awareness abides in
primordially pure natural perfection, in rootless and baseless spaciousness
(dharmadhatu). In the arising of the multifarious expressions of creativity, there is
actually no continuity because an instant is by nature fragmented. A radio wave
can circle the globe three times in one second, serially, through successive instants
of time; an instant of creativity, on the other hand, is an instantaneous unfolding,
not a process where time exists in or as an unbroken stream. Each fragment of
time, each instant, is incapable of activity because it has no extension. Activity, and
therefore karma, cannot occur in a single instant; it is possible only in a temporal
continuum, which is extended across time in a series of many moments.
Conceptions of substantial existence arise through the mistaken notion that such a
continuum is the case. But the past moment has ceased, a future moment can
never be found, and if we examine the present moment, we see that it has neither
substantial existence nor duration in any of its aspects, outer, inner, or
intermediate. We see that an instant vanishes as it arises, and it is thus the nature
of pure presence’s primordial timeless awareness, which is skylike spaciousness
(dharmadhatu).
Looking out from the subjective pole in the unitary field of seeming subject and
object, we see an apparent objective field: we mistake our own true face—
primordial buddha, primordially pure reality—as projected mental appearances.
The subjective aspect of the conditioned mind overwhelms the objective aspect
and seems to arise as the display of multiform appearances, but in reality this is
primal awareness enjoying its own self-manifestation. Just as the waves of the
ocean, however rough, always remain a part of the ocean, in actuality the
continuity of thought, laced by the five poisons, is the display of primal awareness,
primordially pure. This is the contemplation of the supreme incomparable
approach. In The Supreme Source, it is said,