Longchen Rabjam
"Old Man Basking In The Sun"
(Commentary by Keith Dowman, in Italics)
By forsaking any deliberate, patterned, physical, verbal or mental
action in which we have been immersed like
innocent children in their uncertain,
never-ending and pointless games in the playground, we may stretch out in the pure pleasure of immense relief
like an old man basking in the sun with no intention to do anything at all.
By the
label 'buddha', a synonym of 'gnostic awakening', I do not imply that any immaculate buddha
exists: whoever thinks
that buddhas visibly exist can
never find buddhahood in the spaciousness of reality. Whoever knows buddha as unmanifest can intuit
the nonactive mind;
knowing buddha as absent,
the original face of mind shines forth; never
appearing concretely, 'buddha' is all-embracing, and the essence of his
being shows!
Conversely,
in the gradual approach of the mahayana, through the diverse blessings of discriminate lifestyles,
the nonactive reality of the mind
is lost, and what lies within cannot be found at a distance.
Nonaction,
easily discovered and apprehended, for
the gradualists is no less than a terminal disease; yet it is the stake that tethers unwavering samadhi, timeless samadhi, that can never be lost or
distracted.
The singer of false hope
for contrived concentration provides morbid
inspiration for the casual approach: what
has always existed can never be lost or forsaken and it supersedes all remedies based on goal-obsession.
Yet
if this transmission of the supreme source were taught to followers of a
teacher of the causal approach, they would
denounce it from their limited viewpoint: 'Every product has a cause; every tree has a root.'
The
yogin who aspires to buddhahood through concentration spurns artless integration due to his very desire for samadhi; the
uncontrived natural state is universal reality, and buddhahood is inseparable
from that reality.
So 'buddha' is just a label, a verbal designation, and 'reality' is
nothing other than our own mind, which left as it is, is called pure being,
dharmakaya, where 'left as it is' means
unborn from the beginning, and where
'unborn' means unsought and unfound: nonaction
cannot be realized by any endeavor.
The image of an idle old man stretched out
basking in the sun covers nonaction as instruction for nonmeditation
and contrasts to the frenetic activity of super-achievers on the mundane stage or rather, to
babes in the playground of life acting out
their pointless games with body, speech and mind. All ambition is based on
discrimination and is a futile attempt
to change or recondition things. The nonaction of Samantabhadra in contrast is
relaxation into the natural perfection of nondual reality that is inn original disposition without stirring or
departing from it.
