Total Liberation

Liberation exists only within our mind as is the same with bondage. Both are ideas, thoughts or concepts. If we explore one concept or thought and find it to be empty of any permanently inherent existence, then we have discovered what is true for all thoughts. Thoughts arise as a wave or vibration within our unchanging Awareness. As you examine the nature of any thought or image, you find it to be transparent and immediately changing. That is the empty nature of thought. At root all of our thoughts, images and concepts are empty in the same way, without exception. Our sense of self may seem different as it is re-enforced with feelings of emotion and physical sensations that give us a sense of personal solidity. But where does our sense of self appear if not in our mind? Anything that appears in our mind is thought, whether as images or concepts. Therefore our sense of self is made up of thoughts, concepts and images. And we already discovered that all thoughts, concepts and images are empty of any real existence beyond just being an imagined thought in our mind. So in this way we can come to understand that our self-identity is just a made-up thought construction appearing in our mind. When we were one year old we didnt have this self idea in mind. Over time the mind created or constructed this idea of being an individual self. It was and is now just an idea, a thought, concept or image. From this starting point we build our world as understood and expressed as more thoughts within our mind. We have an actual world of sensory experiences and we have what the mind thinks about these experiences. Our story about our life and our world is made up of our thoughts and we know the nature of our thoughts to be empty of any actual reality. All of our suffering comes from thoughts about our conceptual sense of self and our conceptual world of relationships. When we see that the substance of our thoughts is the same substance that a childs thought of Santa Claus is, we can gain a glimpse into the emptiness or transparency of our imagined life and world. Seeing that everything in our mind is empty of any true reality, we find that our Awareness before thinking arose was in a condition beyond the ideas of liberation and bondage. Liberation is just an empty thought appearing in our mind. Bondage is also just an empty thought appearing in our mind. Our sense of individual selfhood is also just an empty thought appearing in our mind. Any problem we have is just an empty thought appearing in our mind. Any emotional suffering we have is constructed from empty thoughts within our mind. The idea that there are individual beings is just an empty thought appearing in our mind, because the basis of there being other beings is grounded in the thought that we have of being an individual self. All such notions as good or bad, right and wrong, cause and effect, better and worse, self and other, distracted or present, ignorant and enlightened are equally empty of any meaning or reality outside of being only empty thoughts that appear in our mind. Of course all memories and thoughts about the future are equally empty thoughts as well.

However, we can notice the emptiness of our exterior world as well, as we see through the emptiness of our thoughts. For instance when a baby sees a rose for the first time it sees something. The rose appears as a sensory experience purely. There is no idea of flower. There is no idea of a rose. There is no idea of red. There is no idea of it smells like a rose. There is no idea of ownership of the flower. There is no idea of pretty. As we could strip further typical thoughts and concepts that we project when we see a rose to get an even more naked sensory experience of the rose, we would end up with something quite different than our normal experience of a rose. This very naked experience of the things our world, occurs in each moment of sensory contact. But then the mind immediately offers its total database of memories and stored information regarding all aspects of the experience. We have become numb to noticing how the simple experience of the rose has become a complete venture into mental labeling, judging and associating. Where is the pure sensory experience of the rose that is buried under all of that conceptual dross? It is through our conceptual processing that we alienate ourselves from the primal beauty that presents itself in each initial moment of sensory contact. This pure and uncontaminated primal sensory experience is the emptiness of the objects that we have sensory contact with. It is not that the objects when being understood as empty no longer appear, but rather they are empty of any conceptual elaboration. Can you imagine how fresh and beautiful our world of experience would be if always seen in this light? This is the vision that the masters of many traditions would have us experience. In the Buddhist Madhyamaka teaching, this is what they mean by emptiness of self and emptiness of things. The universe still appears but only as it actually manifests free of all conceptual overlay. But what of the self that has been seen to be just a conceptual construction? Is there an absence of any consciousness or beingness completely? In fact, there remains an awareness, that which is experiencing these various conceptualizations and sensory experiences. When we allow our experience of our awareness to be simply as it is without the conceptual overlay, we discover that our awareness has been the Buddha all along. Just as we discovered our world to be pristinely perfect and shimmering with delight when seen in its naked and non-conceptual is-ness, so too do we discover the utter perfection and brilliance of our own true nature when the mask of conceptual overlay regarding self has fallen away. This is Nirvana just seeing and knowing Reality as it is without the filters and imputations of mind. This is why the masters concur, that only through the cessation of conceptualization and thinking can we know the true nature of ourselves and our world of experience. That is called Nirvikalpa Samadhi. It is not that conceptualization must be suppressed, but rather through our awareness alone we can notice the naked state of pure presence that arises in each moment, just before the mind begins to aggrandize the pure sensory perceptions and the aware intelligence that is always present. The reality of pure awareness is always nonconceptual by nature. Residing in your own presence of naked awareness, you are always free. And to dance in the delight of that freedom, is further inspired by the luminous beauty that you nakedly see

Jackson