31/05/2026
So we have been looking at the mind. We are looking at the flow of thoughts. Now, while we are observing the thoughts and the awareness is very strong, then the thoughts begin to slow down; it’s like the film, the film begins to go slower and slower and then one recognises the individual frames rather than the projected movie. Likewise if our awareness is clear and steady, the thoughts begin to slow down and can be recognised as thoughts linked together. And it can happen that when our awareness is very clear, the stream of thoughts parts for a moment and there is a gap between the last thought and the next. When there is a gap, the observer directly merges with that which is underlying the thought, that is the clear light nature of the mind.
In that moment, that usually lasts just for a short time, there is the direct intuition and realization of the nature of the mind: non-dual, non-conceptual, unconditioned beyond thought. We can’t think about it but we can experience it. So in this kind of meditation, the idea is to get as many flashes as we can of these moments of non-dual vision and to prolong those moments. As one mind naturally rests in this unborn awareness more frequently and for longer duration until eventually we would remain in that state of wakefulness the whole time. It’s a level of awareness which has no boundaries. There is no self and another. The sky has no center and the sky has no circumference, it is boundless. Now the sky is all pervading, not just above us but everywhere. It is space. Without space, we couldn’t have anything because space is everything. Everything comprises space with just a few protons and neutrons swirling around. If there is no space, nothing could exist.
- Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
(From a teaching on the Six Paramitas: Wisdom, now available in the Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo Archive)
Photo: Hamburg, Germany. May 2009
