Practicing the Dharma

Continuing our theme of Inner and Outer realities, I'll discuss this week how to practice 'Dharma' in pursuing true happiness. Naturally the mind is not willing to stop and look, to stop and know itself, which is why we have to keep training it continually so that it will settle down from its restlessness and grow still. Let your desires and thought-processes settle down. Let the mind take its stance in a state of normalcy, not liking or disliking anything. To reach a basic level of emptiness and freedom, you first have to take a stance. If you don't have a stance against which to measure things, progress will be very difficult. If your practice is hit-or-miss — a bit of that, a little of this — you won't get any results. So the mind first has to take a stance.

When you take a stance that the mind can maintain in a state of normalcy, don't go slipping off into the future. Have the mind know itself in the stance of the present. Right now it's in a state of normalcy. No likes or dislikes have arisen yet. It hasn't created any issues. It's not being disturbed by a desire for this or that.

Then look on in to the basic level of the mind to see if it's as normal and empty as it should be. If you are really looking inside, really aware inside, then that which is looking and knowing is mindfulness and discernment in and of itself. You don't need to search for anything anywhere else to come and do your looking for you. As soon as you stop to look, stop to know whether or not the mind is in a state of normalcy, then if it's normal you'll know immediately that it's normal. If it's not, you'll know immediately that it's not.

Take care to keep this awareness going. If you can keep knowing like this continuously, the mind will be able to keep its stance continuously as well. As soon as the thought occurs to you to check things out, you'll immediately stop to look, stop to know, without any need to go searching for knowledge from anywhere else. You look, you know, right there at the mind and can tell whether or not it's empty and still. Once you see that it is, then you investigate to see how it's empty, how it's still. It's not the case that once it's empty, that's the end of the matter; once it's still, that's the end of the matter.

That's not the case at all. You have to keep watch of things, you have to investigate at all times. Only then will you see the changing — the arising and disbanding — occurring in that emptiness, that stillness, that state of normalcy.