Forgot to mention... the above is a very good description of the
Maha insight and experience.
Had an interesting meeting with Thusness a couple of days ago,
and he brought up a point which accords with my own understanding
and experience as well.
There are two insights and experiences pertaining to anatta,
dependent origination and emptiness - the Maha experience
(integrating anatta with dependent origination) described above,
which Zen and Zen Master Dogen emphasizes, and the 'dependently
originated is empty of a locatable core and thus illusory,
dream-like' which Mahamudra and Dzogchen emphasizes.
We should integrate these two insights, then we will understand
these two traditions. A pure Zennist may not understand
Mahamudra, and Mahamudra person may not understand a Zennist
because their emphasis and practice is different. Thusness also
emphasized to me not to confuse these two distinct realization and
experience, don’t mix them up. It is important to have clarity
about them. He said he had the Maha sort of experience for about a
decade, but the ‘empty, illusory and thus self-liberating’ nature
only becameclear to him after he started reading Mahamudra texts in
2008. However it should be understood that it does not mean one
insight is less valuable than another, therefore we should
integrate them.
In two SMSes I wrote to Thusness:
“I am at the KMSPKS library. Their library is very big, all kinds
of dharma books, awesome place. I meditated there also, haha. I
realized even the thought to remove defilements is delusional since
defilements are also empty. The mere recognition of
appearance-emptiness liberates all trace of clinging.”
“I used to sit meditation with a goal and direction. Now, sitting
itself is enlightenment. Sitting is just sitting. Sitting is just
the activity of sitting, air con humming, breathing. Walking itself
is enlightenment. Practice is not done for enlightenment but all
activity is itself the perfect expression of
enlightenment/buddha-nature. There is nowhere to go. Defilements
can arise due to latent tendencies but without a slightest delusion
of a true existent whatsoever, there is no clinging at anything.
So, there is no trace.”
Thusness replied, “This is Dogen’s state and the essence of Zen,
but it is different from what you previously SMS-ed me. They are of
different insights.”
