Matt Perry Clark:
Wonderful, this really captures the essence with great beauty and clarity.
A couple of things spring to mind. Firstly is the mysterious nature of this awareness. It keeps striking me again and again, what is this experience? What is this moment? It doesn’t make sense, I’m completely at home but my mind is totally vexed. I’m lost and I’m found, it’s just bizarre. That definitely needs to be emphasised.
The other thing that comes up after reading the text is the effortless nature of it. It’s so utterly simple, that’s what confounds the mind. Where is it? I want it! Lol! Mind just basically wants to be something and to get somewhere, but it doesn’t like this nowhere and nothing. Damn!
A beautiful text though, a very sweet pointing to the true nature. I’ve only become aware of these kind of direct path teachings recently after years of vipassana slog, it’s such a breath of fresh air. Thanks for the link, I’ll have a look around this site some more.
Is this this a teacher that you follow?
Okay, now we're getting somewhere!

So here's the deal. When we have an experience of "Presence" or "Natural Mind" or "The absense of greed, aversion, and indifference" --- oh whatever words are used --- it is so strikingly different than the narrow, petty, clastrophobic experience that we normally have. It is wonderfully open, luminous, clear, free, joyful, compassionate, appreciative, caring, friendly, accepting... it really is good.
This state is basically the completion of all spirituality.... and also, very very very ironically, the beginning.
This is the best way I can speak about it after 30 years of beating my head against the wall trying to figure it out and say it clearly... The deep paradox is that Presence is always available, we simply turn our mind to it; however, we never "have it" and so it can seem to slip away even though it is always available.
For many people, myself included, we can remember a moments in time in childhood or teenage years where there was a moment of everything being so simple and so intimate and so direct --- this glimpse of presence --- that it served as a mirror to how we felt about the nature of our own Self, simple and good. But it doesn't last long, we go back to the sense of being a struggling and divided self, on one hand being proud (and self centered) and on the other hand feeling inadequate (and wanting to learn and be of service). This dichotomy seems to create the necessary tension to go out and explore the world and develop...
Later in life, usually around the mid teens/early 20s, the sense of being a divided self can be quite strong. The ways of adapting to the world that we inherted without thinking (values/habits) are full of contradictions and are limiting, we're becoming adults but are very confused. During this time we can remember the simple sense of presence and want to figure out "a way" to get back to it. This is when people try different spiritual practices or drugs or extreme ritualistic stuff or therapy to get into an altered state that can access this basic state of present... And we do have moments where we drop into Presence again. And yes this can even come from someone pointing us to this basic "state" (which isn't a state, but let's call it a state for now.)
And we see the paradox: Presence is always available, yet always elusive if we get caught up in the verbal thinking mind and the sensual/emotional body. And the verbal thinking mind has momentum, is a habit, and the sensual/emotional body is so beguiling. So how on earth do we get out of this trap?
This is where the >process< of true meditation occurs. Unfortunately, while we can quickly jump to presence, it is a very unstable state unless we have done a lot of "cleaning up" through different therapeutic/meditative/investigative modalities. Basically, the mind is full of partially completed thoughts, feelings, battles and romances, and all of that stuff is floating around deep in our mind. We also have not fully developed as a psychological adult -- there are also basic patterns of repression and defense that are on autopilot.
So the big temptation is to say "I know Rigpa, I know the non-dual perspective, I know Grace, I know Presence" and therefore I don't have to do any work.
But here's the test: can you sit for a half hour a day and be Present? No problem, no tension, no frustration, no boredom, no claustrophobia, no fantasizing of being somewhere else? It doesn't mean we're bad people if not, it just points to the reality that there is more that can be done developmentally. (And remember, some people can kind of "turn off" for a half hour and they think they are spiritually advanced, but what do their friends and colleagues think? Does this person bring presence and compassion into the real world?Many "spiritual" people convince themselves of being far more perfect than the person everyone else sees in real life!

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Meditation provides a context for seeing the vividness and intimacy of experience (Presence) and the tension/resistance (Dukka) of the mind. In ideal practice, we are attentive to how these states come and go and we develop a very primal, pre-verbal appreciation for the openness and freedom of presence. Ironically, if we "try" to "have" presence, that's the function of the clinging mind and we fail. So we have to learn to >allow< the clear vividness of experience to arise. Also, ironically, eventually we see the non-Dukka nature of thoughts and feelings so they are no longer a problem, but in practice it feels like we are being bounced in and out of Presence, in and out of Dukka...
Which sound very simple, but it becomes complicated because whenever there is a relaxing, some part of our "self" feels vulnerable, and all this psychological stuff will come up. So the process is as much psychological --- in all of it's complexities --- as it is about Presence.
The conclusion of spirituality is an untarnished understanding of Presence. Early in practice, it feels like a "state", but when we look at it closely, the characteristics of state-ness cannot be found. Similar to mind: show me your Mind. Everything that you show me will be the contents of your mind, not your Mind. Show me your Self.
There are many statements about the nature of Presence or what is Mind or who I Am. No one says we have to figure it for ourselves. But if people want to explore it, through meditation or some other practice, we have to be prepared to have the rug pulled out from under us, time and time again, as our confused thoughts about Presence or Mind or I or Self are seen through.
This seeing though process that un-confuses Presence is mappable (e.g. progress of insight to stream entry, 4 paths for awakening -- and of course there are others) even though no map is needed to access Presence.
Hope this helps in some way!