Look Directly into the Nature of Your Mind
It is not that hard to realize the nature of mind. No matter what your present mind state—be it happy, sad, angry etc.—just take a moment and really look at your mind. You’ll realize that it is actually empty and can never be bound by anything. Suddenly you will feel totally at ease. So just turn within and focus directly on the mind itself—then you will know.
As for calm-abiding meditation, you just look directly into the mind without analysis. As Mipham Rinpoche said, “It is not necessary to look and analyze all the myriad phenomena that are external, just turn within, and only focus directly into the mind itself.” Rather than making great effort to research and write a great deal of theses on external things, it’s more meaningful to look inward directly, and you will gain some realization of your mind.
Additionally, there’s another quote from a great Indian master, Sarahapa, which says:
Completely depart from the thinker and the thoughts
Rest in the mindless state like a newborn baby.
It means be devoid of all conceptions on thinking subjects and the thinker, just rest in a mindless state like a newborn baby. Just use your own mind to watch your mind, then its true nature can be realized.
For example, no matter which state your mind is in—tensely concentrated, drowsy, or outwardly distracted—right at this moment when many kinds of thoughts arise, you should look at your mind. And just in this very moment, you’ll discover the conceptual mind to be self-liberated. This subject was dealt with by the great Mipham Rinpoche in his Beacon of Certainty, which he composed at the age of seven:
Just like looking directly into space,
One will derive profound certainty in the nature of one’s mind
Which though moving is empty.
It means that when we look up at the sky, the sky is empty. Likewise, when we discern our mind inwardly, although many kinds of thoughts arise, they are empty in nature, like the sky that is never impeded by anything. For example, when you feel angry, you can observe the nature of it and you will realize that it’s just like space, never obscured by anything.
You can try to stabilize your mind, look at it, discern it. With the mind observing itself inwardly, you will know. Whatever is going on there, no matter whether good or bad thoughts arise, you just naturally rest and look at it. It’s difficult to know what’s going on in the minds of others, but you definitely know what is going on in your own mind. Therefore, you just gaze right into the mind and see what its true nature is.
