Although we cannot say for certain that it existed in the past, that it exists in the
present, or that it will exist in the future, what we are perceiving now as felt
knowledge, bright and aware, is called “perception.”
This perception is a projection of our mind—self-envisionment. If we know that
objects of dualistic perception are rootless and baseless, then they can be
recognized without attachment or reification as simply raw presence, pellucid
emptiness. The foregoing is called “the introduction to real luminous mind” or
“dharmakaya awareness.” If you think that this secret of mind is difficult to
understand by ordinary people, of course, you are right!
The principal objective of the three turnings of the wheel by our teacher
Shakyamuni Buddha is stated in The Sutra of Individual Liberation,
Abandon all vice,
Cultivate every virtue,
And tame the mind:
That is buddha-dharma.Shakyamuni Buddha taught many methods of taming the delusory mind. But left
to ourselves, we do not feel any compulsion to look back at and examine what we
call “mind” or any desire to discover its nature; for that reason a doubt about it
never arises. What feels happiness or sadness, guides us in life, is the source of all
modern scientific knowledge, and discriminates between good and bad—in short,
what sees, knows, expresses, and experiences all knowledge—is the ordinary
mind. If we turn back and look at it for a moment, examining it, we will find it to
be like a motor car without brakes, running at more than a hundred miles an
hour, an accident always imminent. The mind, in its deluded attachment to the
five sensory objects, is like a runaway vehicle, completely out of control. The
consequence of a serious motor accident is at worst that we die or at best that we
are injured; the consequence of an accident of an uncontrolled mind fuelled by
attachment, hatred, and ignorance is untold suffering in this life and the next. On
the other hand, if our motor car is serviced by good mechanics, and if we are
competent drivers, we will arrive at our destination without injury. Similarly, if
our mind is serviced at the service station of buddha-dharma by a lama skillful in
introducing the nature of mind, a lama who can effectively repair the mind, we
will live in complete happiness in both this life and the next.
To know the nature of one’s own mind—mind’s reality—is to see the face of
buddha oneself. If such realization is nothing else than the actuality of knowing
the natural perfection of seemingly concrete phenomena, then the purpose of
Shakyamuni Buddha’s many hundred volumes of sutra and tantra, in their
inconceivably varied and vast scope, is nothing other than the elucidation of this
very essence—what else could it be? The principal teaching of all the buddhas of
past, present, and future concerns taming the mind. It is difficult to know the
nature of mind but not impossible. Just as the butter in milk will not precipitate
out unless the milk is churned, just as the gold in its ore cannot be amassed unless
the ore is refined, just as we cannot access underground water unless we dig a
hole in the ground, and just as we cannot see the sun unless the clouds disperse, so