Ati yoga

We have two ways of knowing. Our mind knows forms, things, both subtle and gross. Faces, hands, buildings, trees, math formulas, mind knows subject and the mind knows otherness. The mind knows dualities, the mind knows me and you, us and them, and this and that. Mind knows time, mind knows the past, the present and the sense of the future. The mind knows things and entities, the mind knows beings, infinite numbers of beings and things. The mind knows difference. The mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through imagery, the mind has sense and the mind has memory. The mind knows dualistically.

In the summer of 2013 at the Tibetan Center in Poolesville, Maryland the great Lama YangThang Rinpoche gave instruction on the practice of the great compassion, or as he described the practice, as being the practice of Absolute Compassion. The instruction was to extend the light of awareness into the world and into the cosmos. Extending the light of awareness into the present moment of a person, extending the light of awareness into the past time of the person and extending the light of awareness into the future time of the person. This truly is the great practice of the great compassion and everyone can practice this extension of the light of awareness. This very proactive praxis brings forth the light within us and fills us with the light of the field of awareness. It is great to practice this vast practice. Of course it takes a boldness of intention and passion of heart. Extending the light of our innermost awareness into the present of those we love, and into the past of those we love, and then extending the light into their future of those we love is self-liberating. The light of awareness illuminates experience, metabolizes experience, opens us into un-bound awareness, undoes fixated-ness, and brings forth luminous intensity. The light of awareness is pure potentiality. The same practice can be used with those whom we hate or dislike or whom disgust us. This practice of extending the light of awareness deepens our own experience of becoming aware of awareness. As we practice extending the light of awareness, awareness itself completely opens up for us and deepens our experience in depth and breath. In time we begin to experience the true secret of this praxis. Timeless awareness begins to be experienced by us and sustained by us. Timeless awareness is the

so clearly shows in his dissertation, between the 8 th and 14 th centuries there were illuminating phenomenological distinctions that were considered essential to understand the great perfection practice of awareness, becoming aware of awareness. These distinctions were primarily made by the Nyingma masters of meditation. The most basic distinction is between the mind of dualistic experience (sems) and the primordial awareness of naturalistic non-dualistic experience or primordial knowingness (ye shes) or (semde). This ye shes is non dualistic knowingness. Unfortunately, many Buddhist texts describe dualism as deluded and non-dualism as non-deluded. This language of delusion is highly prejudiced and is nihilistic in tone and devalues the oneness of the two truths (conventional and absolute reality). They devalue the indivisibility of appearance and awareness and moreover, challenge the validity of the foundational human experience of oneness and difference or duality within non duality. This negative use of language unhappily challenges the divinity of appearance and invalidates the human experience of the Nirmanakaya dimension which is ordinary life. The differentiation and distinction of mind from awareness prevents the bewildering confusion of mind and awareness resulting in the negation of either the experience of non-duality or the experience of duality. Much of the understanding about the difference between mind and awareness was presented in the unfolding of the seventeen Atiyoga tantras that brought forth the heart essence tradition (sying thig). These teachings and instructions are part of the instructional teachings of Dzogchen. These teachings are instructional in the forms of skillful means or praxis for bringing the experience of awareness of awareness into completion. This completion is experiencing the fullness of experience of personal awareness within the vast infinite and multidimensional field of awareness. The essential method is to experience directly and completely primordial knowingness as well as the manifestations of this primordial knowingness such as mind, innermost subjectivity and external phenomenal appearance. Mind, subjectivity and all appearance are the manifestation of primordial knowingness itself. Primordial awareness is the primordial and abiding pervasive condition. Our experience of non-conceptual knowingness or non-conceptual perception opens us to the direct understanding and direct non-conceptual experience that everything and anything is the manifestation of primordial or ground awareness. Primordial awareness is radiance openness or radiant emptiness. Primordial awareness is not simply emptiness alone but the oneness of openness and radiance spaciousness as light. The incompleteness of emptiness alone is recognized by the 14 th century Nyingma master Longchenpa. Awareness is the union of spaciousness and radiance.

This paper is an ethical discussion about how action emerges from and out of timeless awareness through us into time. Our understanding reflects and is based upon what has been described as the two ways of knowing. The most primordial way of knowing is knowing non-dualistically through awareness or what some call gnosis and others call jnana and still others direct perception. And the more common and ordinary way of knowing is knowing through our mind and the instruments of our mind such as feeling, thinking, sensation, memory and imagination. This knowing is the mode of knowing difference, singularity and dualistically. This is the mode of knowing me and you, us and them and this and that. This knowing of duality is the mode of knowing within appearance, knowing what is appearing both within and without, knowing both internally and externally. Now because of our wonderful capacity for the skillful simultaneous union of these two modes of knowing we can know duality from within non-duality and within duality we can know non-duality. This sublime mode of knowing reflects the simultaneous union of the two modes of knowing. This sublime mode of knowing reflects the very nature of creation which is oneness and difference. Through the simultaneous integration of the two modes of knowing we can experience both oneness and difference through our experience of appearance. Furthermore this sublime knowing is an action and so in respect to this knowing the Hindu Shavite masters would declare " knowledge is action ". This sublime form of knowingness manifests the action within duality while arising and emerging from within the dimension of non-duality. The action emerges out of non-duality into the dualistic experience and appearance. This simultaneous knowingness is the power of compassion. Compassion self-arises from within non-duality of gnosis or jnana and manifest within dualistic appearance and the experience of self and otherness. This is the power of non-dual timeless awareness entering into the drama of duality within time.

The lucidity of awareness is experienced directly through the doorway of our subjectivity as our own innermost awareness. As we gaze into our own interiority we can experience the unfolding of the manifestation of this field of radiance and this lucidity of awareness. The invisible field of luminous knowingness becomes experientially visible. Lucidity of Phenomena Experientially visible means seeing the flashes of light, sensing light, experiencing the presence of the radiance within us and beyond us. Experiencing the presence of the radiance means feeling the luminous experience of the light and the energy of the light in everything and anything, in anyone and everyone. As we experience the visibility of luminous knowingness within us as us, we are empowered to experience the manifestation of the lucidity within the appearance of all phenomena. Lucidity is not only within us but within all phenomena, all appearance has lucidity and all appearance is lucidity. All phenomena are the manifestation of primordial radiance. When we are experiencing the radiance of phenomenon, our inner light is meeting the outer light, and thus there is only one indivisible light. In truth there is only primordial luminous radiance that is manifesting our mind, our body and our innermost awareness, as well as the infinitely vast universal context of phenomena that we are placed within in time and in space. Our capacity to experience the radiance of the field of awareness within our own embodied subjectivity opens for us the ability to gaze into the subjectivity of all phenomena. By gazing into our own subjectivity there arises this intersubjective gaze that is direct and inside to inside. This intersubjective gaze allows us to experience the luminous openness of all phenomena and context. This intersubjective gaze opens the innermost openness of all phenomena. Subjectivity is the openness of our being to Being itself within all beings.

In this practice of becoming aware of our own awareness, the qualities of this awareness, of this field become more and more manifest...more known and more felt as a felt sense. The felt sense of the presence of awareness becomes embodied, becomes flesh, becoming luminous flesh. Awakened awareness! As the experience of awareness unfolds, and the qualities of awareness become experienced and become embodied, the quality of spaciousness or primordial openness unfolds. The quality of light, the quality of being light, the felt sense of light, the experience of radiance, the radiance of the field flows beyond one's body boundary. This quality of light and radiance can also be experienced as energy, as Shakti, as chi or as sublime vibrations. The undulation of the primordial pulsation, as bliss, as Maha Suka overcomes suffering in its fullness, completeness and enough-ness. This light as radiance manifests the bringing forth of the quality of compassionate resonance and knowingness as light. The quality of non-duality, of oneness, of indivisibility, arises, inside to inside, directly, as unmediated primordial boundedness, primordial at home-ness. The Self arises as well as Self-liberation. This unfolding process of embodiment of the foundational state manifests over time and through time as timeless awareness in time. In the beginning we may feel that we are holding the experience and holding this awareness. Then one day we begin to experience it as if we are entering into this awareness as the field above us and below us, in front us, behind us and through us. We enter the field and are surrounded by a sphere of awareness. We are in the qualities of space, light, energy and resonance. Then one moment in time, one day, we become this field of energy. We become the field of light. We become spaciousness. We become openness. We become resonance. We become non-duality within duality. Aham Ah. I am becoming what I am and who I am. Aham Ah. As this experience unfolds, we begin to feel these qualities not only as the qualities of our own innermost awareness as lucidity, as light, but we begin to experience the quality of the lucidity in phenomena, in the light of appearances. We experience lucidity in otherness, for example, lucidity in

Being within awareness as awareness and being with another who is within awareness is a most powerful skillful means to bring forth awareness within one's self and within each other. Two awarenesses are better than one, just as self regulation can be enhanced by co self regulation on the bodily dimension. Self-illumination is a co-emergent process between and within companions, compassionate companions. The lucidity within one's own awareness, as one's own awareness can experience the lucidity within the other's awareness as lucidity. It is true, awareness awakens awareness both in one's self and in the other. This is the secret of the tantra. The luminous energy within one's own body can resonate to the luminous energy in the other's body, deepening the mutual embodiment of light. Light is awareness and awareness is light. The attunement to awareness within one's own body can bring forth the attunement of awareness within the body of the other. The self arising of the awareness field in one's self resonates to the self arising of awareness within the other's body. The self arising of the energy or the chi or the shakti can bring forth the self arising within each other and can bring forth the sustaining of the energy field within each other. In essence, humanness is the manifestation of light, and the manifestation of primordial luminous energy, and the openness of the great space of compassion.

By becoming aware of awareness we can experience the innermost sense or the felt sense of spaciousness and self-illumination. Within this state of open awareness, the openness of spacious luminous awareness, we can enter the experience of the radiance of light as energy through the sublime, luminous vibrations. The experience of the unfolding of sublime awareness and the corresponding energetic manifestation of the self-arising of primordial awareness is self-liberation. These experiences of the sublime manifestation of luminous energy was described by the 14 th century Dzogchen master Longchenpa in his text Precious Treasury of The Genuine Meaning. This meditative experience often arises spontaneously in Dzogchen meditation practice. This experience of translucent energetic manifestation is also described in Chan Buddhism, Hindu Kashmir Shavism, and Yan Xin Qi Gong. This experience of energetic manifestation can be experienced within subtle forms of respiration. Sometimes the ongoing sense of subtle luminous respiration can be experienced even as there is a profound sense of breathlessness. Breathlessness used here means no breath or minimal breath. This experience of the ongoing sense of respiration without breath is very powerful and empowering. In this experience of vast stillness there is no breath and yet there arises from deep within, a most subtle respiration within the breathlessness. During this respiration of stillness, the body seems to breathe and be breathed by most subtle inner wind. The inner sense of stillness expands and extends throughout the entire body and beyond the body's boundaries. This stillness opens us into the dimension of potential space, the dharmakaya and pure awareness.