monktastic wrote:Earlier on in this thread, some seemed to agree that the only difference was the amount of time ("doesn't last"). Here it is admitted that it's time and ease.
That reminded me of this bit from Tsoknyi Rinpoche's Carefree Dignity, that talks about different capacities with relation to the result of practicing Dzogchen:
Karma is something formed; habit is something formed. You can think of karma and habitual frames of mind as being like atoms. No matter how tightly packed or dense a piece of matter is, there is still space in between each individual atom. Nothing is ever a solid mass, is it? Now imagine the space of rigpa in between the atoms. However hard or dense the matter is, at a fundamental level it is suffused with or interpenetrated by the space of rigpa. When you view it from this perspective, the conception of a solid mass just falls apart. Likewise, it doesn’t matter how uptight the karmic attitude is — it can always be dissolved with rigpa. Regardless of how tight a rosary is strung together, the beads are still separated by a little space. They are not truly joined, not fused together; in fact, nothing is truly joined together. Everything is empty, including karma. That is why karma can be purified.
If karma was something truly real and solid, there would be nothing to do. If karma was ultimate truth, it would be impossible to purify. What to do with a ten-rupee note that won’t lie straight no matter what you do? You have to use some method, right? One general method in Dharma is to try again and again to level it out through different ways over an extended period of time. You come back the next day and you flatten it out, and the day after that too. It rolls back up a little bit, but as you continue, it becomes more and more flat, until one day it doesn’t curl up again at all. That is one way. The Dzogchen method is like taking a steam iron: make a single pass over it and it stays totally flat. To be able to be like that, just once over and it’s done, one has to be of the highest capacity, like King Indrabodhi. His liberation took place simultaneously with his understanding of this nature. Those of us who don’t have that capacity “have to apply several methods. King Indrabodhi was someone for whom the seeing of mind essence and the dawning of complete and total liberation happened at the same time.
We’re not necessarily like King Indrabodhi. We become free for a short while, momentarily, but still we are not totally free. It’s like we’re holding the paper down a little in our practice. Then we get tired of meditating and we let ourselves get distracted. Still, the more you stretch the paper out, the smoother it becomes, right? We need to get more and more used to this state free of karmic habits.
There’s a problem with my analogy of smoothing the paper, because it involves an example of physically doing something. But when we allow the continuity of rigpa, we are not doing anything — we are simply allowing it. (Rinpoche rings the bell.) We can’t stretch or prolong the sound, can we? Superficial examples cannot completely illustrate the real meaning, they can only hint at it.
There is one more point I would like to make. When all objects of distraction dissolve into dharmata, into innate nature, there is no more foothold for distraction. At that point the sound continues on in an unbroken fashion. There is no need to hit the bell again; it just rings, ceaselessly. At that point there is no longer any concepts of meditation and post-meditation.
