Ed Gabrielsen

This is Part 5 in a series of commentaries on the text “Tilopa’s Song to Naropa,” or, as it is sometimes called, “The Song of Mahamudra.” I am going through the text and commenting on selected paragraphs. To read the entire text, and all my preceding commentaries, please go to my home page and look through the table of contents. Thank you for reading my work. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you be free from suffering. Sarwa Mangalam.

(Quotes from the original text are in bold italics. My comments are unbolded and unitalicized. With apologies for any errors or ommisions. Reader comments are welcome.)

As space is always freshly appearing and never filled, so the mind is without limits and ever aware. Gazing with sheer awareness into sheer awareness, habitual, abstract structures melt into the fruitful springtime of Buddhahood.

In winter, when the ground is covered with snow, rivers and lakes freeze. There is no movement in the water, no sound of babbling brooks, no rushing rapids, no cascading falls. The frozen ice is solid and unmoving.

But when spring arrives and temperatures warm, the snow and ice melt, and water flows once again. Rippling, splashing, rushing, dancing, the water moves. Instead of snow and sleet, rain falls from the sky, giving life to grass and trees.

In the same way, the mind becomes free of concepts. Frozen thought forms melt like streams in spring. Our habitual thought patterns seem to be solid, fixed and final, like ice. But upon investigation, if we look carefully, the illusory nature of the thought constructed world becomes apparent.

For example, anger, bitterness, and holding grudges are generated from frozen thought forms. This is aversion. There is a thought that arises, “He insulted me,” or, “She looks down on me.” “He is a mean person.” “She is an arrogant person.” When thoughts like this appear in the mind, anger is present. This feeling of anger is a great source of suffering. Actually, in this case, the entire mental picture is frozen. The idea of “me” is a frozen thought. The idea of “he” or “she” are frozen thoughts. Upon careful investigation, there is no inherent and unchanging thing called “me”, or “he” or “she.” These are simply illusions. They are empty of self, empty of enduring existence.

Memory, or “living in the past,” is another example of frozen thought forms. You wake up in the morning and it is a new day. But you are haunted by the past, by thoughts of the past. You remember the way things used to be. It seems so clear, like you could almost touch it. Perhaps you remember someone you loved, and how your life with that person used to be. Perhaps you remember a house where you used to live, all the flowers in the garden that you planted, the beautiful fragrances they brought to your open windows on early spring mornings. You close your eyes and feel the sadness and grief of times lost in the past. You wish you could go back to those wonderful times.

But these are simply thoughts. They are frozen thought forms that generate longing and desire. This is attachment.

Attachment, Aversion and Ignorance. The Buddha taught that these are the roots of suffering.

To unlock and melt these kinds of frozen thoughts, we can meditate on the truth of impermanence. See that everything changes, moment to moment. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is final. Sitting in meditation, allow the frozen thought forms to melt, and then rest your mind in the natural state. This is nirvana, the end of suffering. Nirvana literally means “extinction.” When the flames of attachment are extinguished, there is peace, the end of suffering.

The mind is without limits and ever aware. Mind, in it’s natural state, is like space, like the blue sky, completely open and free from constraints, limitations, and frozen thought forms. Sitting under the Bodhi tree, this is what the Buddha realized. He realized freedom from suffering through the experiential understanding of emptiness, the central insight available in sitting meditation.

All phenomena arise to awareness. And, at the same time, they are none other than awareness itself. As stated in the “Supplication to the Takpo Kagyu,” “Whatever arises is fresh, the essence of realization.” Each moment arises fresh and completely “on the spot,” as Chogyam Trungpa liked to say. To contemplate this moment by moment arising is to see the freshness itself. This is the realization of the extraordinary ordinary. Each passing moment is an expression of emptiness, the dream, the illusion, the continual play of phenomena, dancing in impermanence, nothing to hang onto.

Sarwa mangalam. May all beings be happy.