Praise and Relaxation

Homage to the marvelous and ordinary wisdom that transcends the appearance or disappearance of anything at all!

Homage to the miraculous awareness that is both uncaused and without effect!

Homage to the “Stand Alone” which is neither produced, proliferated, nor subject to elimination by any activities of waking, dreaming, or deep sleeping!

Homage to that radiance which is neither revealed by practices nor obscured by ignorance, empty of both fullness and emptiness!

Homage to that unspeakable groundlessness, without basis or conditions, shine or darkness!

Homage to that without history or number, noun or verb, whose nature is ungraspable, whose presence ineffable, mindless sky-like transparency!

Within it there is neither within nor without, self or selflessness, beings or things, knowledge or energy, movement or rest.

Whatever state is imagined – liberation or bondage or any level of happiness or fearfulness – certainly does not apply, since there is no support for the arising or dissolution of emotion, thought, perception, sensation or consciousness.

If a body were to suddenly appear, tears would spontaneously stream down the face! Arms would lift themselves in praise of the Ati Guru, the Immediate Presence!

All homage to that one! All praise! All salutation! Not other, not the same, not different!

The activity of mind, judgment and interpretation – what a carnival side-show! A light still burns when the clowns bed down. The inextinguishable!

Look – a ghostly acrobat flies through the air! That is all the worlds, the totality of universal manifestation. Nowhere to land, a piece of smoke – that’s you!

All that is, was, or will be – relax! “I”, “you”, “the world” – no substantial existence. There is no victim, no perpetrator. Shanti. Shanti. Shanti Om.

Oh mind, why run around like an addict on the dope of willfulness, quivering at the display of your own rootless narrative?

In the midst of endless modification, you are what doesn’t change. Nothing to attach to, nothing to avoid. Relax!

Being or nonbeing, just let it go; let there be this, let there be that – unity or duality are toys in the attic. The house was not built, no fire consumes it, it is not a house, there’s no dweller within, no foundation, no deed of ownership.

In the same way that mind can’t hold onto a dream, it can’t grasp itself.

"Is" and "is not" don’t apply here either. In such happiness, how does searching for happiness make any sense? Relax.

Within such immaculate innocence, who is a friend and who is a stranger, who is the teacher and who is the student?

Break a bottle, space melts into space. Purity into Purity. Really, there is no bottle, no purity, no glassy space, no embodied soul, not even a trace, no nature, no story, no once and future glory. Glory to that!

There is no world, no holy teaching, no gods, no surrender, no religion or politics, no tribe and no gender, no smoke-ring path, no image to defend, no pretender or defender, no creation or destruction, no progress towards it or attainment of it. Relax!

Truth is not modified by spiritual practice, and yet there is practice. Life lives itself. Emptying the mind makes it no clearer. Chanting and yoga bring it no nearer. The Guru does not keep it wrapped up in scrolls. Jai Guru! It is, simply is, in Itself, by Itself.

There is no problem to be solved, no prize for a winning story. Close the book and exhale. There is nothing broken, nothing to fix. Oh mind, why struggle? Let what happens happen, yours is none of this!

Burn up all grasping at preferences; be kind to all you meet. If you could see who they really are, you’d fall down at their feet!

A word to the wise, “Behold -- it’s you.” No trace of any thing remains, yet this goes on forever. Homage to that! Birth and death – complete charades!

So too with time and timelessness, space and spacelessness – all fictions.

Beyond “I Am” – not a creature is stirring, not even the One. Not Guru, not God, not self or Self. Homage to That! If there is just this, who bows down to this? Beyond fuel and fire, not even ash – relax!

Desireless? Unconditional? Essence? Why truck with words to places words can’t go, where mind on mind’s wheels gains no traction? Don’t forget, You Are! All spacious equanimity, all selfless silent courtesy, all inconceivable grace! Yes, I’ll sing to That! We are that song, singing itself, wordless, soundless, silent. Silence.

Any idea about this is false -- any notion or fancy. Any concept that this is some possible state of attainment is false. Any concerted cognition that this just might be other than this, or once was, or will be, is false. Ignore thought.

Be this! You are not other. Homage to This! Homage to That! All is bliss – no, not even bliss, bliss which neither begins nor ends, the natural state of itself as itself. Don’t scratch your head – just relax!

What can be said? That there is no separation, no unity, not neither? No frame of reference, no reference to frame? No provisional explanation that is anything like a name? No name -- your name. Homage to you!

Fate and fortune have nothing on you. You have never existed, Homage to You! This understanding – You Are – is like space. And yet, what stirs in the womb of forgetfulness? Not even a trace! That’s your face! Yes, Homage to you!

What can be said? You are not the one suffering, the one fleeing, the one racing to far distant finishing lines. You were finished before you began. There is no line, nobody ran, nobody’s running now, nobody ever will. Don’t worry, relax!

What can be said? If waking, dreaming, and deep-deep sleeping are not what you are, how can a word be said? If there is no past, present, or future, how can a word be? Even so, “Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum”.

What can be said? Not even the impeccable recollections of imaginary cosmic Lords can identify you! Neither heaven nor hell exist in you – the wise might even call that heaven, but the wiser would not even speak. Homage to them!

 
What can be said? There is no formula to this. No scripture, no teacher, no science of this. No mantra nor secret initiation. Why complicate with symbols and ephemeral fabrications?  Even to say, “only awareness remains”, what value is that? What is so hard about just being still? And beyond being still, just being?

Nothing can be added or subtracted from the radiant sufficiency of Unconditioned Mind. There’s no place like Home! Still, words and teachings can’t reach it, nor can worshipping with smoke and flowers.

Forget everything you may have heard or thought about it. Forget everything. Forget forgetting. That’s worship! Welcome Home!

At Home, nobody’s lost or found, pure or impure, united or separated -- never other than, aware space itself. Even the most heartfelt submission to any otherness may be seen as arising from a subtle sense of division within a fading dream. Let it go. Wake up – You’re Home!

“Does the world exist, or not?” Rub your eyes! Is there any other Nirvana than this? That you Are? Body/mind/sensation, or no body, no mind, no sensation – what’s to cling to, what’s to let go? What has been lost, what found? What has been subtracted, what added? Bliss into bliss, light into light, Nirvana falls into Nirvana! Homage to that!

Free from the taint of Nirvana, beyond intelligence or design, neither wise nor foolish, neither silent nor speaking, neither reasonable nor argumentative, you am not the one in conflict, you am not a riddle to be solved, you are what is, simply is. Is there any other Paradise than this? Homage to this!

Identity, that carnival of anxiety, cannot raise a tent in you. No captive animals perform in you, no ringmaster, no ring, no juggling clown of ego. Still, enjoy the show! Here, there is no concentrated absorption in the body, subtle body, causal body, nor anyone to be absorbed. No heartbeat, no fixation, no great chain of causation, no open or closed door. Relax!

Oh mind, fear is born of imagination, but there is no imagination within you. Events in dreams do not touch you. You don’t change, only words do, and you are free of all words. Just so, relax!

There is no up or down in you, no right or left, no within or without. You, just as you are, are the Supreme Emancipation! Nevertheless, there is no liberation, because there is no bondage. Homage to you!

Beyond ideas of space and time, higher or lower, right or wrong, inconceivable peace pervades. Oh mind, abide in your own Source! This is the Natural State, this is the everything and the nothing! Relax! No lid, no jar, no space – this is Grace!

There is no permanently existing person. The incomprehensible chaos of un-caused causality from which the formation of the person-idea somehow evolved does not exist in you. Don’t worry, oh mind, be happy! Relax!

The whole infinite multiversal manifestation, all galaxies and realms, all gods and goddesses, all demons and angels, all creatures and elements, lovers and friends, deeds and dreams, history and myth, all space and time, visible and invisible: a projection of your own mind!

Recognition is liberation. Homage to That! If unrecognized, don’t worry – relax! Nothing to recognize, nothing to do, really -- nothing to become or un-become – relax!

Mind cannot explain itself. If it can be said, it’s not that. Silence is equally futile. Neither words nor silence – what is that?

The concept of some pilgrimage through time and space is false. There is no night or day in you. No sun or moon ascends and descends in you, no alternating light and shade.

Equanimity, absence of desire – these are paper flowers, decorations in your hair. Neither first nor last, neither Alpha nor Omega, not a thing, not a cursed or blessed thing, nor a casual or sometime thing, not a many-splendored thing, neither empty nor full, all emptiness, all fullness, all thingy-ness, liveliness, all splendid grace, essence of being, the wonder of futility, the eternal smile -- all horses without riders, all carts with no wheels, no driver, nor any destination home. To what never departs or arrives, Welcome Home! Relax!

Beyond mind, how can that even be said? All names, descriptions, theories of measurement, even saying it is indescribable, immeasurable – stories for children when time for bed.

The amazing marriage of life force and consciousness is performed in the chapel of cause and effect. Since you alone are, there is neither bride nor groom, witness nor service, preacher or vow. All go in peace. How about that!

How can the limited mind, which appears and disappears, which is origination-dependent, possibly discern that limitlessness in which it arises and dissolves? How about that?

Pain and pleasure are interpretations based on the faculties of sensation and cognition, memory and association, yet no such condition is true of you. “I” and “mine” do not apply to you. How about that!

Nothing to gain and nothing to lose – discrimination is fine for the objective world, but the objective world does not exist in you, nor you in it. How about that!

O mind, what use are your prayers, your mumbled incantations? There is no world before this, no world to come, no world, no “you” or “I”, no “true” and “untrue”, no family, no religion, no refuge, nor any place to flee within you. You alone are. How about that!

Dependent on no scriptural map, shrugging the shoulders and just walking on – that’s the way, don’t tarry! Done with hope and expectation, with the vanity of idealism – purity, righteousness, the exclusivity of special vision, the arrogance of choice or choicelessness – all these are cast off, dust in the wind. Palms open, immeasurable compassion – that’s the way, every day.

Neither happy nor sad, troubled or glad, you see through both sinner and saint, unity and diversity, mind and its play. It’s the Natural Way. What can one say? Homage to that!

What care do you have for the toys of this world, the phantom transitions of birth and death, the meditations and willful disciplines of the seeker? Not a thing exists. Nothing is happening. This is you own recognition.

The immense complexity and magnificent drama of the grand universal unfolding is not even a vanishing wisp of memory. Not even a fading dream.

Nothing has happened. There is no Dharma or Liberation, nothing to strive for, nothing to become, nothing to attain or release, nothing to do or not do. Homage to that!

If even the ancient Holy Books and luminous profound commentaries are superfluous (except perhaps as winter tinder), what value the words of redundant pundits who squint their eyes and torture their tongues to explicate them? Just walk on.

For those whose mind has ceased to linger in the relentless melodrama of attraction and aversion, whose transparent presence has become loving and compassionate, free of any clinging, any motive to cling, ever at peace, unmoved by the dream, that incomparable Maestro, the Guru, Awareness Unbounded, abides as their own Original Nature, the Natural State, at Home, as Bliss. Homage to that. All praise and exclamation!

There is no room for pride here, nor any emotional reactivity. No conflict, no struggle. Deep Peace, Mighty Kindness! Bearing the unbearable, recognizing the inherent perfection of “what is”, an Ocean of Mercy in the dry and desperate realms – all homage to the Liberator!

 

Who is that one?

Relax –

it’s you!