What, Descriptively, is the Awakened State?
excerpted from Entering the Mind
by C von Hassett
from the chapter The Ground
Awareness is self-luminous and is one with space. Seeing space, one sees the container for awareness, hence the container for the entirety and full complexity of our self. As you perceive, you do so only through space, from the emptiness of it, for the perceiving mind is of this same emptiness. And while awareness, for now, is rooted in the body, it nonetheless never leaves the boundless, sourceless space which gives rise to that which we see as the body of ourself.
The body, you’ll recall, is a near totality of space. Awareness is present throughout all of it. In this way, that which we call the body exists only in our awareness, not the other way around. As you sit in meditation, the ache in your foot, as much as the conceptual mind would like to tell you is happening in the foot, is actually occurring only in your awareness. You are aware of it. If you weren’t aware of it, there would be no ache. The throb in the foot here, the evening amber of light there, the dog dreaming, heavily breathing over there, the crickets out there, the galaxy aglimmer up there: all this occurs in no other place than awareness. It is night now, but the day dawns only in awareness.
We are a body of awareness, and that body, including its seeming sum of flesh, is nothing other than the natural expression of innate mind. Thus it is empty. How is it empty? Space is both point-zero and sum-total of our embodied selves, and we can find nothing of ourselves that cannot be analyzed right back down to the emptiness of space. It is in this very space where we observe the mind, where we see firsthand the oneness of the two. Mind and space are inseparably one.
Mind, the naturally occurring one, sees not so much the dog, not so much the stars, but itself in observance of these and all other appearances. Mind sees mind, and within it in great oneness is the appearance of our seated self, the stirless movement of intermittent thought, the setting in which we sit which perhaps permits for the vaulting view of the firmament above and the universe in its infinince beyond, all of which can only be found in the space of our awareness.
How does one arrive here, at this eminence in sight? You first recognize a mind that has no origin, location, no destination or cessation, and in this recognition you simply rest. You sit with it and observe, remaining mindful yet relaxed. In the stillness, all obscurations begin to naturally disappear, wherein the muddiness of mundane mind gives way to the clarity of its natural state. Awareness settles into the openness of itself, is at ease in that openness, in perfect balance, empty of all concepts, in allowance of all that appears.
It is often said, perhaps to the point of cliché, that appearances in mind — thoughts, things, places and people — are like reflections in a mirror. We plainly see, without any confusion, that appearances in the mirror are empty in that we recognize them for what they are: mere reflections. We also know, again without confusion, that whatever appears in the mirror is not other than the mirror, not separate from it, but wholly one within it. Say, for instance, the mirror catches in its frame a window, and outside that window is the glorious rising of the moon, all blood in its autumnal ruddiness. An owl in crimson rays sits lightly on a limb, its molten eyes in mirror of the night. The framing of the window, the fullness of the moon, the owl in lunar light: these in the mirror are not a multiplicity but of a oneness within. They are not seen as, nor would they be mistaken for yet another moon, yet another bird, yet another branch. As appearance they arise in oneness, of an essence that is singular and inseparable from the mirror’s glass. Because of this they are said to be of one taste, and they are seen to be just that.
We see this same oneness when resting in the natural state. We see ourselves amongst all else as a oneness within. All is of one taste. All in the openness is observed as emptiness since all that appears is of a single essence, the pure articulation of intrinsic awareness.
Awareness in this way finds parallel with the mirror.
The reflections we see in a mirror, reflections of form, are analogous, in terms of emptiness, to these same appearances we observe in mind. Whether observing the form of ourselves or the myriad forms perceived as other, from the perspective of the natural state it is all seen as bare appearance, thus none other than emptiness.
Our perception of emptiness, then, is unambiguously clear in as much as its essence is utterly seen, therein it is known.
. . .
Read more about Entering the Mind at enteringthemind.com
C von Hassett is a writer, editor, and the publisher of Riot Material magazine. He is a onetime professor of literature and a decades-long practitioner of Dzogchen, a radical if not revolutionary wisdom practice which points the practitioner directly toward the recognition of their own mind in its natural state — there but to awaken. His new book, Entering the Mind, is a richly poetic and deeply insightful exploration of that transformative practice. His first book, The Boundary Stone, is a narrative poem set in the embering afters of an apocalypse. Hassett currently lives with his wife and two dogs in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree.
