Anam Thubten - The Magic of Awareness

It happens when we look at a newborn baby. It happens when we break the chains of our worldly beliefs. It happens when we meditate. It is a glimpse into the Buddhas world of enlightenment. Thubten, a uniquely worldly teacher, tells us that enlightenment happens in real life, not inside our minds in the world of concepts. He explains all this to readers in clear down-to-earth language. His tone is lively direct and engaging. The is no aura of higher status to keep people at arms length. He references the Buddha and respected Buddhist teachers in order to anchor his teachings in traditional Buddhism but the overall tone is consistently conversational. His message is simple. Enlightenment can happen at any moment in any place to any one. One can surrender to the beauty of a flower, the happiness of greeting a friend, or the joy of sitting in a park and watching children play. This is a very serious Buddhist text which is completely understandable and a joy to read.

Anna Jedrziewski, Retailing Insight

ABOUT THE BOOK

The paradox of awareness is very profound and yet very simple. It cant be described because it has no objective qualities and no limitation. Sometimes it comes naturally to the surface when we are fully in the present moment and no longer lost in thought or mental projections. Pure consciousness is neither high nor low, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither good nor bad. No matter where we are, no matter what we are doing, we always have an immediate access to that inner stillness. It can be experienced in an instant in all circumstances once we know how to pay attention to it. It is utterly peaceful and it is also insightful, so it sees through all illusions. Whenever there is a moment of being deluded, we can use that moment to practice settling in the very perfect sphere of the Buddha mind without trying to change anything. When we reside in that liberated mind, we find the very thing we have been seeking all along.

ANAM THUBTEN grew up in Tibet and undertook Buddhist training in the Nyingma tradition at an early age. He has been teaching in the West since the 1990s and is the spiritual adviser and Dharma teacher for the Dharmata Foundation.

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The Magic of Awareness

Anam Thubten

EDITED BY SHARON ROE

SNOW LION

BOSTON & LONDON

Snow Lion

An imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2012 by Anam Thubten

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thubten, Anam.

The magic of awareness / Anam Thubten; edited by Sharon Roe.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2910-7

ISBN 978-1-55939-392-8 (alk. paper)

1. Religious lifeBuddhism.

I. Roe, Sharon (Sharon J.) II. Title.

BQ5410.T575 2012

294.3444dc23

2011042227

Wonder,

Who has the magic to make the sun

appear every morning?

Who makes that bird on the elegant tree chirp?

Breath, pulse, music, dew, sunset,

The burning ambers of the fall.

There is unfathomable joy in all that.

Life is a stream.

It flows on its own.

No one knows why we are here.

Stop trying to figure out the great mystery.

The tea in front of you is getting cold.

Drink it.

Enjoy every drop of it.

And dance.

Dance until there is no more dancer,

It is the dance without dancer.

This is how great mystics dance.

Contents

THE MAGIC OF AWARENESS is Anam Thubtens second book based on teachings given at Dharmata Foundation, Pt. Richmond, California. A central theme is that enlightenment is always available, even in this very ordinary moment. It is something extraordinary that ordinary people can witness here and now, whenever we are ready. Spiritual awakening can happen to anyone at any time because it is not bound by culture or religion, and its possibility is our birthright.

Rinpoche speaks with startling insight, unflinching honesty, and a great sense of humor. He cuts to the essence, the heart of the matter, drawing from his personal experience of walking the spiritual path, and clarifies subtle, complex points directly, in easily understood language. Rinpoche invites us to fully awaken to the pure, unborn, self-enlightened, unbounded Buddha mind that is already present within us. True spiritual realization, he says, is the experiential understanding of this, and our lifes true purpose.

He encourages us to embrace real life rather than the one that exists in our head and is actually nothing more than an accumulation of stories from the past and anticipated, unfulfilled fantasies. Real life, he says, is much more rich and interesting, and it is unfolding right now, here in the present moment. He challenges us to embrace and enjoy it fully.

It is a pleasure and an honor to work with Rinpoche and to present now to a wider audience the profound, illuminating teachings of this devoted man who has dedicated his life to expressing in words and actions messages of authentic love, wisdom, and compassion.

Sharon Roe

CHAPTER ONE

T HERE IS A DIMENSION of reality in which we are nobody and we dont have anything; so there is nothing to lose. It sounds like a total failure since our ego is always trying to be somebody and to have this and that. Yet this turns out to be the highest truth, what is intrinsically so. This benevolent, extraordinary truth, the moment we see it and surrender to it, destroys literally every chain binding us.

There are chains in each of us, a chain of hatred, a chain of fear, a chain of beliefs, a chain of delusion, and so forth. Longchenpa said, Good concepts are like a golden chain. Bad concepts are like an iron chain. They all equally bind you in the end. So there are a lot of chains in each of us. They constantly torment us and give us unending struggles as well as comfort sometimes too, false comfort. Usually it is the concepts which are like golden chains that give us false comfort. Sometimes, when we become spiritual, we go around collecting belief systems, which simply add more chains in our minds. We collect golden ornaments, forgetting that these spiritual beliefs are just a bunch of golden chains that cannot offer us freedom and unconditional happiness. For this reason Buddha encouraged everybody to enter the enlightened path by taking the most important step which became known as taking refuge. The idea of taking refuge is to completely stop taking refuge in false comfort. False comfort can be ordinary or it can be spiritual, but we completely stop taking refuge in false comfort and turn our attention to an inexhaustible source of freedom. This is the infinite, the oneness, the highest truth, the basic ground of who we are.

A friend who has been meditating for the past two or three years said that she has gone through a very radical transformation. She has changed so much that her friends often dont recognize her. She has been so joyous that she often goes out dancing. She says she has become a dance maniac. She dances so joyously that people sometimes look at her and ask, Who are you? Maybe the chains in her consciousness are breaking.