Understanding Empty Luminosity
When you see the ultimate, the nature of the mind or luminosity, you are completely liberated from the delusion of dualistic perception. And since samsara is nothing other than this delusion, you are fully liberated from samsara. When you directly realize the ultimate, is there a seer and seen? No, but in the beginning, it is necessary for ultimate prajña to look at the nature of the mind.
– Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche
It is necessary to understand the nature of mind to practice psychedelic meditation. The nature of mind has many equivalent names, such as empty luminosity, empty knowingness, awareness-emptiness, clarity-emptiness, primordial wisdom, primordial purity, the ultimate unconditioned, Buddha nature, and nondual awareness. The nature of mind is the three aspects of essence, nature, and compassionate energy. The empty essence is stainless primordial purity. The nature is luminous clarity, the spontaneous presence of knowingness. The all-pervasive compassionate energy is the responsive wisdom of loving and caring for all beings.
The most direct way to understand the nature of mind is to look for awareness, which no one thinks to do. Everyone knows that they are vividly, sometimes overwhelmingly, aware. Yet, when attempting to find, locate, or see this vivid awareness, nothing can be found, located, or seen. Awareness is utterly transparent and empty of any perceivable characteristic. This emptiness is the nature of mind. Awareness is emptiness. Awareness is emptiness, but not nothing.
Awareness is also knowingness. Awareness is a bare clarity or naked luminosity that can know anything. This luminous clarity can know the sense consciousnesses, thoughts, and emotions, and it can also know itself. Awareness is self-knowing and self-illuminating, like a candle flame, which illuminates objects nearby at the same time that it illuminates itself. Using a flashlight to see a candle flame is unnecessary because it is self-illuminating. Awareness can know itself and, in doing so, can know its nature, empty luminosity.
Emptiness and luminosity are not separate things but a natural union, the radiance of compassionate energy. Luminosity is emptiness. Emptiness is luminous. It is impossible to have one without the other. This union of emptiness and luminosity is the unconfined capacity for anything to arise as responsive compassion and love. Everything that arises within the radiance of awareness-emptiness is not separate from awareness-emptiness, so all appearances arise as the union of appearance-emptiness. Appearances are emptiness. Emptiness appears as everything. It is impossible to have appearances without them being emptiness because appearances are composed of awareness, which is emptiness. Appearances are vividly appearing yet empty of any actual existence. They are ephemeral, dreamlike, and ungraspable. It is impossible to locate appearances except to describe them in relation to other ungraspable appearances.
Empty luminosity is like a perfect mirror. Although many images appear in the mirror of awareness, none of the reflections can change or stain the mirror. This stainless, empty quality is our pure and awake nature, beyond conceptual confusion. Empty luminosity is the mirror of awareness, a vivid and stainless lucidity.
It is impossible to say that awareness exists because it is unfindable. It is impossible to say that awareness does not exist because it is a vivid and continuous experience. Awareness is beyond existing and beyond not existing. It is impossible to fit awareness into conceptual boxes of any kind. Awareness is nonconceptual and, therefore, beyond duality, which depends on concepts.
Since awareness does not exist as an object, it cannot be created or destroyed. It is timeless, unchanging, and indestructible. It has no outer characteristic that can be damaged or stained. Empty luminosity is stainless and primordially pure since beginningless time. Confusion does not make empty luminosity worse, and realization does not make empty luminosity better. Empty luminosity is beyond confusion or liberation. It is the ground of everything without exception.
Understanding the view of empty luminosity is the basis for nature of mind practice. When psychedelics fully dissolve conceptual mind, all that remains is naked empty luminosity. This dissolution process will transform a conceptual understanding of the view into the direct realization of empty luminosity. It is the complete dissolution of concepts, identities, and duality that makes psychedelic meditation such a powerful, direct, and swift path to the stable realization of nondual wisdom.
These sections go into more detail about the relationship between duality and rigpa.
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Distinguishing Sems from Rigpa – Sems is dualistic mind and rigpa is nondual awareness.
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Distinguishing Parts from Self – Parts are relative functioning and Self is nondual awareness.
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The Subtle Body – Healing trauma and stuck energy as well as the dualistic perception.
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The Mother Luminosity – Four ways to reveal unobscured primordial wisdom.