
The World is a Reflection of the Mind-Preface
“The World is a Reflection of the Mind”
is an insight of wisdom. In traditional cultivation, only those whose
cultivation and realization reach the highest level are able to have this kind
of wisdom and level of perception. Only those who truly understand this
principle will easily merge with the yoga apart from sophistry, and truly
manifest what we often call “Illuminating mind and seeing its true nature.”
For those people who are constantly
troubled by pain and suffering, this book has a wondrous function that other
books cannot replace. When our whole community has fallen into affliction and
anxiety, it is without a doubt dose of the good medicine of wisdom.
In the Buddhist sutras there is a verse
which goes like this: “If people want to completely understand all the buddhas
of the past, present, and future, they must observe the true nature of the
phenomenal realm, that everything is only a creation of the mind.” This is the
primal source of the wisdom of the present book. But talk is talk, and action
is action: sometimes understanding at the level of “truth” cannot represent a
firm grasp at the level of “things and events.” So the present book has its
meaning for existing and it value.
This book is a vivid exposition of
worldly phenomena for the world-transcending wisdom of Buddhism.Since it is the
vision and viewpoint of wisdom, it also has many ways of making close
connections with real life. Since it can alter our “minds,” it can also change
our “actions,” and then it can change our “lives.” Many people, because of the
ignorance of the “mind,” are ignorant in “action” and they end up having many
difficulties in “life” and die an untimely death. It is just as it says in my
full length novel Hunters’ Plain: “When the mind is illuminated, then the road
opens up.” It is precisely because their minds rise to a higher level and
wisdom appears, that many people who were originally sunk in difficulties at
lastrealize transcendence, and become people of accomplishment in our eyes. We
can pick out this kind of inspiration among many illustrious names, like the
achievements of Steve Jobs, who benefited from Zen. And Zen, in the system of
the Great Mudra, is the Great Mudra of the Mark of Reality. From the Zen
viewpoint, even the shadow of death cannot cover over the creative wisdom of
Steve Jobs, and we now still have the happiness of being able to enjoy the
series of Apple products.
Thus I have often said: “Life is created
by the mind. Your life is a reflection of your mind. The world that appears in
your eyes is also a reflection of your mind. Whatever kind of mind you have,
you will have that kind of life. Whatever kind of mind you have, you will also
have that kind of world. When your mind goes from being small to being large,
only then will your world go from being small to being large. Without a change
of mind, it is definitely impossible to have a change in your life. Therefore,
you can also call this book ‘a prescription for building a life.’”
Around me there are many people who have
changed their lives and fates by relying on the wisdom of this book. Among them
have been people suffering from fatal illnesses, those with serious depression,
those who did not want to go on living after they death of people they were
close to, those who had lost hope and were sick of the world. Many of them,
after coming into contact with my writings, through a change in their minds,
had their lives elevated to a higher level. Thus, some friends hoped that I
would be able to take this kind of wisdom to change minds and change lives and
communicate it in popular form, without religious trappings, and in this way
produce a book that enables people who do not necessarily have religious
beliefs to detach from suffering and attain happiness.
The wisdom in this book has its source
in traditional Great Mudra Buddhism, and the author is a lineage holder of the
Shangpa Kagyu Great Mudra. In my book
The Great Mudra of Light: The Heart of Real Practice (published by Central
Editions Press), I concentrated on introducing the Shangpa Kagyu School’s Five
Diamond Teachings of Niguma. In its procedure for completing [the mind of
enlightenment] there is “the method of the three branches.” What it conveys is
the wisdom of the present book:
“The excellent understanding of the Path
of the Master Teacher is understanding that all appearances are the Master
Teacher, and thus achieving a definitive perception, understanding that the
nature of inherent mind is the empty inherent nature, and thus achieving a
definitive perception.”
“The excellent understanding of the
Fundamental Buddha is that all appearances are the Fundamental Buddha’s Buddha
Father and Buddha Mother – they appear but have no inherent nature.” “[It is]
understanding that all that appears and all that is heard is all inherent mind,
and the nature of inherent mind is the empty inherent nature, and achieving a
definitive perception.”
“The path of [knowing that all things]
are like an illusion is definitively knowing that all appearances and thoughts
are all inherent mind, and definitively knowing that inherent mind is illusory
transformation. If we investigate the inherent nature of the six sense
faculties and the corresponding six sense objects, then we see that their
inherent nature is empty, is empty yet can manifest appearances; apparent
manifestations are not different from emptiness; apparent manifestations have
no inherent nature, and are like illusory transformations. If we eliminate
clinging and attachment to discriminating thought, then amidst manifestations
and emptiness without clinging, we enter into profound meditative
concentration.”
The contents of the present book are an
explanation and elucidation of this ancient wisdom in everyday language. It is
detached from names and forms, and directly points to the human mind, with the
power to penetrate the human mind.
We must recognize that clinging and
attachments are the source of pain and suffering, and if we have no clinging
and attachments, then we will have no pain and suffering. But many times the
reality of our clinging and attachments are just concepts and illusions.
We must know that everything before our
eyes will ultimately disappear. Countless material things, countless wealth,
countless people, countless complications, will all be dissolved away by the
waters of time until no trace of them remains; they will all dissolve away into
the eternal dark night like bursting bubbles.
Our past, our present, and our future
all will become memories. But our memories too are being swallowed up in the
maw of forgetting. The ones we are able to force ourselves to keep are bits of
memories like dreams or illusions.
Many times, our memories and our current
understanding of those memories determine our present and our future.
The only thing we can hold onto is only
own minds. Our minds determine our present moment. What we can hold onto is
just the present moment.
Because of the changing basic substance
of time and the myriad things, nothing we have can avoid “birth, old age,
sickness, and death.” Thus, the basic substance of the world is suffering –
this is the meaning of the Buddhist concept that “all defiled phenomena entail
suffering.” But just because human life entails suffering, we must have the
spirit that can enable our “bliss” – this is the meaning of the worldly
teaching of Buddhism. When we realize this point, we can be liberated from
suffering, and enter into pure bliss, and thereby realize the freedom of the
world-transcending meaning [of the Buddhist Teaching]. The bliss of worldly
phenomena is conditional; the bliss of the world-transcending is unconditional.
The bliss of the latter is in fact the breaking up of clingings and the
transcendence that come after we discover the true characteristic of phenomena.
This true characteristic of phenomena is
the subject matter of this book, and the title of this book encompasses it: the
world is the reflection of the mind. Concerning this, in my book The Deathless
Diamond Mind, there is a very graphic presentation of this, and friends who are
interested can read about it there.
When we genuinely read and understand
this book, and we can give rise to wondrous functioning, then we will truly be
able to “detach from suffering and attain bliss.”
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