CONFINED IN THE DARK, narrow cage of our own making which we take for the whole universe, very few of us can even begin to imagine another dimension of reality. Patrul Rinpoche tells the story of an old frog who had lived all his life in a dank well. One day a frog from the sea paid him a visit.
“Where do you come from?” asked the frog in the well.
“From the great ocean,” he replied.
“How big is your ocean?”
“It’s gigantic.”
“You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?”
“Bigger.”
“Bigger? You mean half as big?”
“No, even bigger.”
“Is it . . . as big as this well?”
“There’s no comparison.”
“That’s impossible! I’ve got to see this for myself.”
They set off together. When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces.
Most of my childhood memories of Tibet have faded, but two moments will always stay with me. They were when my master Jamyang Khyentse introduced me to the essential, original, and innermost nature of my mind.
At first I felt reticent about revealing these personal experiences, as in Tibet this is never done; but my students and friends were convinced that a description of these experiences would help others, and they pleaded with me and kept on insisting that I write about them.
The first of these moments occurred when I was six or seven years old. It took place in that special room in which Jamyang Khyentse lived, in front of a large portrait statue of his previous incarnation, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo. This was a solemn, awe-inspiring figure, made more so when the flame of the butter-lamp in front of it would flicker and light up its face. Before I knew what was happening, my master did something most unusual. He suddenly hugged me and lifted me up off my feet. Then he gave me a huge kiss on the side of my face. For a long moment my mind fell away completely and I was enveloped by a tremendous tenderness, warmth, confidence, and power.
The next occasion was more formal, and it happened at Lhodrak Kharchu, in a cave in which the great saint and father of Tibetan Buddhism, Padmasambhava, had meditated. We had stopped there on our pilgrimage through southern Tibet. I was about nine at the time. My master sent for me and told me to sit in front of him. We were alone. He said, “Now I’m going to introduce you to the essential ‘nature of mind.’” Picking up his bell and small hand-drum, he chanted the invocation of all the masters of the lineage, from the Primordial Buddha down to his own master. Then he did the introduction. Suddenly he sprung on me a question with no answer: “What is mind?” and gazed intently deep into my eyes. I was taken totally by surprise. My mind shattered. No words, no names, no thought remained—no mind, in fact, at all.
What happened in that astounding moment? Past thoughts had died away, the future had not yet arisen; the stream of my thoughts was cut right through. In that pure shock a gap opened, and in that gap was laid bare a sheer, immediate awareness of the present, one that was free of any clinging. It was simple, naked, and fundamental. And yet that naked simplicity was also radiant with the warmth of an immense compassion.
How many things I could say about that moment! My master, apparently, was asking a question; yet I knew he did not expect an answer. And before I could hunt for an answer, I knew there was none to find. I sat thunderstruck in wonder, and yet a deep and glowing certainty I had never known before was welling up within me.
My master had asked: “What is mind?” and at that instant I felt that it was almost as if everyone knew there was no such thing as mind, and I was the last to find out. How ridiculous it seemed then even to look for mind.
The introduction by my master had sown a seed deep inside me. Later, I came to realize that this was the method of introduction employed in our lineage. Not knowing this then, however, made what happened completely unexpected, and so more astonishing and powerful.
In our tradition we say that “three authentics” must be present for the nature of mind to be introduced: the blessing of an authentic master, the devotion of an authentic student, and the authentic lineage of the method of introduction.
The President of the United States cannot introduce you to the nature of your mind, nor can your father or your mother. It doesn’t matter how powerful someone may be, or how much they love you. It can only be introduced by someone who has fully realized it, and who carries the blessing and experience of the lineage.
And you, the student, must find and constantly nourish that openness, breadth of vision, willingness, enthusiasm, and reverence that will change the whole atmosphere of your mind, and make you receptive to the introduction. That is what we mean by devotion. Without it, the master may introduce but the student will not recognize. The introduction to the nature of mind is only possible when both the master and student enter into that experience together; only in that meeting of minds and hearts will the student realize.
The method is also of crucial importance. It is the very same method that has been tried and tested for thousands of years and enabled the masters of the past themselves to attain realization.
When my master gave me the introduction so spontaneously, and at such an early age, he was doing something quite out of the ordinary. Normally it is done much later, when a disciple has gone through the preliminary training of meditation practice and purification. That is what ripens and opens the student’s heart and mind to the direct understanding of the truth. Then, in that powerful moment of introduction, the master can direct his or her realization of the nature of mind—what we call the master’s “wisdom mind”—into the mind of the now authentically receptive student. The master is doing nothing less than introducing the student to what the Buddha actually is, awakening the student, in other words, to the living presence of enlightenment within. In that experience, the Buddha, the nature of mind, and the master’s wisdom mind are all fused into, and revealed as, one. The student then recognizes, in a blaze of gratitude, beyond any shadow of doubt, that there is not, has never been, and could not ever be, any separation: between student and master, between the master’s wisdom mind and the nature of the student’s mind.
Dudjom Rinpoche, in his famous declaration of realization, wrote:
Since pure awareness of nowness is the real buddha,
In openness and contentment I found the Lama in my heart.
When we realize this unending natural mind is the very nature of the Lama,
Then there is no need for attached, grasping, or weeping prayers or artificial complaints,
By simply relaxing in this uncontrived, open, and natural state,
We obtain the blessing of aimless self-liberation of whatever arises.1
When you have fully recognized that the nature of your mind is the same as that of the master, from then on you and the master can never be separate because the master is one with the nature of your mind, always present, as it is. Remember Lama Tseten, whom I had watched dying as a child? When given the chance to have his master physically present at his deathbed, he said: “With the master, there’s no such thing as distance.”
When, like Lama Tseten, you have recognized that the master and you are inseparable, an enormous gratitude and sense of awe and homage is born in you. Dudjom Rinpoche calls this “the homage of the View.” It is a devotion that springs spontaneously from seeing the View of the nature of mind.
For me there were many other moments of introduction: in the teachings and initiations, and later I received the introduction from my other masters. After Jamyang Khyentse passed away, Dudjom Rinpoche held me in his love and took care of me, and I served as his translator for a number of years. This opened another phase of my life.
Dudjom Rinpoche was one of Tibet’s most famous masters and mystics, and a renowned scholar and author. My master Jamyang Khyentse always used to talk about how wonderful a master Dudjom Rinpoche was, and how he was the living representative of Padmasambhava in this age. Therefore I had a profound respect for him, although I had no personal connection with him or experience of his teaching. One day, after my master had died, when I was in my early twenties, I paid a courtesy call on Dudjom Rinpoche at his home in Kalimpong, a hill-station in the Himalayas.
When I arrived I found that one of his first American students was there, receiving some instruction. She was having a very frustrating time, as there was no translator with English good enough to translate teachings on the nature of mind. When he saw me come in, Dudjom Rinpoche said: “Oh! You are here. Good! Can you translate for her?” So I sat down and began to translate. In one sitting, in the course of about an hour, he gave an amazing teaching, one that embraced everything. I was so moved and inspired there were tears in my eyes. I realized that this was what Jamyang Khyentse had meant.
Immediately afterward, I requested Dudjom Rinpoche to give me teachings. I would go to his house every afternoon and spend several hours with him. He was small, with a beautiful and gentle face, exquisite hands, and a delicate, almost feminine, presence. He wore his hair long and tied up like a yogin in a knot; his eyes always glittered with secret amusement. His voice seemed the voice of compassion itself, soft and a little hoarse. Dudjom Rinpoche would sit on a low seat covered with a Tibetan carpet, and I sat just below him. I will always remember him sitting there, the late sun streaming in through the window behind him.
Then one day, when I was receiving the teaching and practicing with him, I had the most astounding experience. Everything I had ever heard about in the teachings seemed to be happening to me—all the material phenomena around us were dissolving—I became so excited and stammered:
“Rinpoche . . . Rinpoche . . . it’s happening!” I will never forget the look of compassion on his face as he leaned down toward me and comforted me: “It’s all right . . . it’s all right. Don’t get too excited. In the end, it’s neither good nor bad . . .” Wonder and bliss were beginning to carry me away, but Dudjom Rinpoche knew that although good experiences can be useful landmarks on the path of meditation, they can be traps if attachment enters in. You have to go beyond them into a deeper and more stable grounding: It was to that grounding that his wise words brought me.
Dudjom Rinpoche would inspire again and again the realization of the nature of mind through the words of the teaching he gave; the words themselves kindled glimpses of the real experience. For many years, every day, he would give me the instructions on the nature of mind known as the “pointing out” instructions. Although I had received all the essential training from my master Jamyang Khyentse like a seed, it was Dudjom Rinpoche who had watered it and made it blossom. And when I began to teach, it was his example that inspired me.
The still revolutionary insight of Buddhism is that life and death are in the mind, and nowhere else. Mind is revealed as the universal basis of experience—the creator of happiness and the creator of suffering, the creator of what we call life and what we call death.
There are many aspects to the mind, but two stand out. The first is the ordinary mind, called by the Tibetans sem. One master defines it: “That which possesses discriminating awareness, that which possesses a sense of duality—which grasps or rejects something external—that is mind. Fundamentally it is that which can associate with an ‘other’—with any ‘something,’ that is perceived as different from the perceiver.”2 Sem is the discursive, dualistic, thinking mind, which can only function in relation to a projected and falsely perceived external reference point.
So sem is the mind that thinks, plots, desires, manipulates, that flares up in anger, that creates and indulges in waves of negative emotions and thoughts, that has to go on and on asserting, validating, and confirming its “existence” by fragmenting, conceptualizing, and solidifying experience. The ordinary mind is the ceaselessly shifting and shiftless prey of external influences, habitual tendencies, and conditioning: The masters liken sem to a candle flame in an open doorway, vulnerable to all the winds of circumstance.
Seen from one angle, sem is flickering, unstable, grasping, and endlessly minding others’ business; its energy consumed by projecting outwards. I think of it sometimes as a Mexican jumping bean, or as a monkey hopping restlessly from branch to branch on a tree. Yet seen in another way, the ordinary mind has a false, dull stability, a smug and self-protective inertia, a stone-like calm of ingrained habits. Sem is as cunning as a crooked politician, skeptical, distrustful, expert at trickery and guile, “ingenious,” Jamyang Khyentse wrote, “in the games of deception.” It is within the experience of this chaotic, confused, undisciplined, and repetitive sem, this ordinary mind, that, again and again, we undergo change and death.
Then there is the very nature of mind, its innermost essence, which is absolutely and always untouched by change or death. At present it is hidden within our own mind, our sem, enveloped and obscured by the mental scurry of our thoughts and emotions. Just as clouds can be shifted by a strong gust of wind to reveal the shining sun and wide-open sky, so, under certain special circumstances, some inspiration may uncover for us glimpses of this nature of mind. These glimpses have many depths and degrees, but each of them will bring some light of understanding, meaning, and freedom. This is because the nature of mind is the very root itself of understanding. In Tibetan we call it Rigpa, a primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge itself.3
Do not make the mistake of imagining that the nature of mind is exclusive to our mind only. It is in fact the nature of everything. It can never be said too often that to realize the nature of mind is to realize the nature of all things.
Saints and mystics throughout history have adorned their realizations with different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind. Christians and Jews call it “God”; Hindus call it “the Self,” “Shiva,” “Brahman,” and “Vishnu”; Sufi mystics name it “the Hidden Essence”; and Buddhists call it “buddha nature.” At the heart of all religions is the certainty that there is a fundamental truth, and that this life is a sacred opportunity to evolve and realize it.
When we say Buddha, we naturally think of the Indian prince Gautama Siddhartha, who reached enlightenment in the sixth century b.c., and who taught the spiritual path followed by millions all over Asia, known today as Buddhism. Buddha, however, has a much deeper meaning. It means a person, any person, who has completely awakened from ignorance and opened to his or her vast potential of wisdom. A buddha is one who has brought a final end to suffering and frustration, and discovered a lasting and deathless happiness and peace.
But for many of us in this skeptical age, this state may seem like a fantasy or a dream, or an achievement far beyond our reach. It is important to remember always that Buddha was a human being, like you or me. He never claimed divinity, he merely knew he had the buddha nature, the seed of enlightenment, and that everyone else did too. The buddha nature is simply the birthright of every sentient being, and I always say, “Our buddha nature is as good as any buddha’s buddha nature.” This is the good news that the Buddha brought us from his enlightenment in Bodhgaya, and which many people find so inspiring. His message—that enlightenment is within the reach of all—holds out tremendous hope. Through practice, we too can all become awakened. If this were not true, countless individuals down to the present day would not have become enlightened.
It is said that when Buddha attained enlightenment, all he wanted to do was to show the rest of us the nature of mind and share completely what he had realized. But he also saw, with the sorrow of infinite compassion, how difficult it would be for us to understand.
For even though we have the same inner nature as Buddha, we have not recognized it because it is so enclosed and wrapped up in our individual ordinary minds. Imagine an empty vase. The space inside is exactly the same as the space outside. Only the fragile walls of the vase separate one from the other. Our buddha mind is enclosed within the walls of our ordinary mind. But when we become enlightened, it is as if that vase shatters into pieces. The space “inside” merges instantly into the space “outside.” They become one: There and then we realize they were never separate or different; they were always the same.
So whatever our lives are like, our buddha nature is always there. And it is always perfect. We say that not even the Buddhas can improve it in their infinite wisdom, nor can sentient beings spoil it in their seemingly infinite confusion. Our true nature could be compared to the sky, and the confusion of the ordinary mind to clouds. Some days the sky is completely obscured by clouds. When we are down on the ground, looking up, it is very difficult to believe there is anything else there but clouds. Yet we only have to fly in a plane to discover up above a limitless expanse of clear blue sky. From up there the clouds we assumed were everything seem so small and so far away down below.
We should always try and remember: the clouds are not the sky, and do not “belong” to it. They only hang there and pass by in their slightly ridiculous and non-dependent fashion. And they can never stain or mark the sky in any way.
So where exactly is this buddha nature? It is in the sky-like nature of our mind. Utterly open, free, and limitless, it is fundamentally so simple and so natural that it can never be complicated, corrupted, or stained, so pure that it is beyond even the concept of purity and impurity. To talk of this nature of mind as sky-like, of course, is only a metaphor that helps us to begin to imagine its all-embracing boundlessness; for the buddha nature has a quality the sky cannot have, that of the radiant clarity of awareness. As it is said:
It is simply your flawless, present awareness, cognizant and empty, naked and awake.
Dudjom Rinpoche wrote:
No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category.
Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche said:
Profound and tranquil, free from complexity,
Uncompounded luminous clarity,
Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas;
This is the depth of the mind of the Victorious Ones.
In this there is not a thing to be removed,
Nor anything that needs to be added.
It is merely the immaculate
Looking naturally at itself.4
Why is it that people should find it so difficult even to conceive of the depth and glory of the nature of mind? Why does it seem to many such an outlandish and improbable idea?
The teachings speak of four faults, which prevent us from realizing the nature of mind right now:
1. The nature of mind is just too close to be recognized. Just as we are unable to see our own face, mind finds it difficult to look into its own nature.
2. It is too profound for us to fathom. We have no idea how deep it could be; if we did, we would have already, to a certain extent, realized it.
3. It is too easy for us to believe. In reality, all we need do is simply to rest in the naked, pure awareness of the nature of mind, which is always present.
4. It is too wonderful for us to accommodate. The sheer immensity of it is too vast to fit into our narrow way of thinking. We just can’t believe it. Nor can we possibly imagine that enlightenment is the real nature of our minds.
If this analysis of the four faults was true in a civilization like Tibet, devoted almost entirely to the pursuit of enlightenment, how much more strikingly and poignantly true must it be of modern civilization, which is largely devoted to the pursuit of the cult of delusion. There is no general information about the nature of mind. It is hardly ever written about by writers or intellectuals; modern philosophers do not speak of it directly; the majority of scientists deny it could possibly be there at all. It plays no part in popular culture: No one sings about it; no one talks about it in plays; and it’s not on TV. We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.
Despite this massive and nearly all-pervasive denial of its existence, we still sometimes have fleeting glimpses of the nature of mind. These could be inspired by a certain exalting piece of music, by the serene happiness we sometimes feel in nature, or by the most ordinary everyday situation. They could arise simply while watching snow slowly drifting down, or seeing the sun rising behind a mountain, or watching a shaft of light falling into a room in a mysteriously moving way. Such moments of illumination, peace, and bliss happen to us all and stay strangely with us.
I think we do, sometimes, half understand these glimpses, but modern culture gives us no context or framework in which to comprehend them. Worse still, rather than encouraging us to explore these glimpses more deeply and discover where they spring from, we are told in both obvious and subtle ways to shut them out. We know that no one will take us seriously if we try to share them. So we ignore what could be really the most revealing experiences of our lives, if only we understood them. This is perhaps the darkest and most disturbing aspect of modern civilization—its ignorance and repression of who we really are.
Let’s say we make a complete shift. Let’s say we turn away from looking in only one direction. We have been taught to spend our lives chasing our thoughts and projections. Even when “mind” is talked about, what is referred to is thoughts and emotions alone; and when our researchers study what they imagine to be the mind, they look only at its projections. No one ever really looks into the mind itself, the ground from which all these expressions arise; and this has tragic consequences. As Padmasambhava said:
Even though that which is usually called “mind” is widely esteemed and much discussed,
Still it is not understood or it is wrongly understood or it is understood in a one-sided manner only.
Since it is not understood correctly, just as it is in itself,
There come into existence inconceivable numbers of philosophical ideas and assertions.
Furthermore, since ordinary individuals do not understand it,
They do not recognize their own nature,
And so they continue to wander among the six destinies of rebirth within the three worlds, and thus experience suffering.
Therefore, not understanding your own mind is a very grievous fault.5
How can we now turn this situation around? It is very simple. Our minds have two positions: looking out and looking in.
Let us now look in.
The difference that this slight change in orientation could make is enormous, and might even reverse those disasters that threaten the world. When a much larger number of people know the nature of their minds, they’ll know also the glorious nature of the world they are in, and struggle urgently and bravely to preserve it. It’s interesting that the word for “Buddhist” in Tibetan is nangpa. It means “inside-er”: someone who seeks the truth not outside, but within the nature of mind. All the teachings and training in Buddhism are aimed at that one single point: to look into the nature of the mind, and so free us from the fear of death and help us realize the truth of life.
Looking in will require of us great subtlety and great courage—nothing less than a complete shift in our attitude to life and to the mind. We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do we will be in danger of madness. This is one of the last and most resourceful ploys of ego to prevent us discovering our real nature.
So we make our lives so hectic that we eliminate the slightest risk of looking into ourselves. Even the idea of meditation can scare people. When they hear the words “egoless” or “emptiness,” they think experiencing those states will be like being thrown out of the door of a spaceship to float forever in a dark, chilling void. Nothing could be further from the truth. But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise and frantic busyness. Looking into the nature of our mind is the last thing we would dare to do.
Sometimes I think we don’t want to ask any real questions about who we are, for fear of discovering there is some other reality than this one. What would this discovery make of how we have lived? How would our friends and colleagues react to what we now know? What would we do with the new knowledge? With knowledge comes responsibility. Sometimes even when the cell door is flung open, the prisoner chooses not to escape.
In the modern world, there are few examples of human beings who embody the qualities that come from realizing the nature of mind. So it is hard for us even to imagine enlightenment or the perception of an enlightened being, and even harder to begin to think we ourselves could become enlightened.
For all its vaunted celebration of the value of human life and individual liberty, our society in fact treats us as obsessed only with power, sex, and money, and needing to be distracted at any moment from any contact with death, or with real life. If we are told of or begin to suspect our deep potential, we cannot believe it; and if we can conceive of spiritual transformation at all, we see it as only possible for the great saints and spiritual masters of the past. The Dalai Lama talks often of the lack of real self-love and self-respect that he sees in many people in the modern world. Underlying our whole outlook is a neurotic conviction of our own limitations. This denies us all hope of awakening, and tragically contradicts the central truth of Buddha’s teaching: that we are all already essentially perfect.
Even if we were to think of the possibility of enlightenment, one look at what composes our ordinary mind—anger, greed, jealousy, spite, cruelty, lust, fear, anxiety, and turmoil—would undermine forever any hope of achieving it, if we had not been told about the nature of mind, and the possibility of coming to realize that nature beyond all doubt.
But enlightenment is real, and there are enlightened masters still on the earth. When you actually meet one, you will be shaken and moved in the depths of your heart and you will realize that all the words, such as “illumination” and “wisdom,” which you thought were only ideas, are in fact true. For all its dangers, the world today is also a very exciting one. The modern mind is slowly opening to different visions of reality. Great teachers like the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa can be seen on television; many masters from the East now visit and teach in the West; and books from all the mystical traditions are winning an increasingly large audience. The desperate situation of the planet is slowly waking people up to the necessity for transformation on a global scale.
Enlightenment, as I have said, is real; and each of us, whoever we are, can in the right circumstances and with the right training realize the nature of mind and so know in us what is deathless and eternally pure. This is the promise of all the mystical traditions of the world, and it has been fulfilled and is being fulfilled in countless thousands of human lives.
The wonder of this promise is that it is something not exotic, not fantastic, not for an elite, but for all of humanity; and when we realize it, the masters tell us, it is unexpectedly ordinary. Spiritual truth is not something elaborate and esoteric, it is in fact profound common sense. When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually “become” a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.
One of the greatest Buddhist traditions calls the nature of mind “the wisdom of ordinariness.” I cannot say it enough: Our true nature and the nature of all beings is not something extraordinary. The irony is that it is our so-called ordinary world that is extraordinary, a fantastic, elaborate hallucination of the deluded vision of samsara. It is this “extraordinary” vision that blinds us to the “ordinary,” natural, inherent nature of mind. Imagine if the buddhas were looking down at us now: How they would marvel sadly at the lethal ingenuity and intricacy of our confusion!
Sometimes, because we are so unnecessarily complicated, when the nature of mind is introduced by a master, it is just too simple for us to believe. Our ordinary mind tells us this cannot be, there must be something more to it than this. It must surely be more “glorious,” with lights blazing in space around us, angels with flowing golden hair swooping down to meet us, and a deep Wizard of Oz voice announcing, “Now you have been introduced to the nature of your mind.” There is no such drama.
Because in our culture we overvalue the intellect, we imagine that to become enlightened demands extraordinary intelligence. In fact many kinds of cleverness are just further obscurations. There is a Tibetan saying that goes, “If you are too clever, you could miss the point entirely.” Patrul Rinpoche said: “The logical mind seems interesting, but it is the seed of delusion.” People can become obsessed with their own theories and miss the point of everything. In Tibet we say: “Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off.” Let me tell you an encouraging story:
One great master in the last century had a disciple who was very thick-headed. The master had taught him again and again, trying to introduce him to the nature of his mind. Still he did not get it. Finally, the master became furious and told him, “Look, I want you to carry this bag full of barley up to the top of that mountain over there. But you mustn’t stop and rest. Just keep on going until you reach the top.” The disciple was a simple man, but he had unshakable devotion and trust in his master, and he did exactly what he had been told. The bag was heavy. He picked it up and started up the slope of the mountain, not daring to stop. He just walked and walked. And the bag got heavier and heavier. It took him a long time. At last, when he reached the top, he dropped the bag. He slumped to the ground, overcome with exhaustion but deeply relaxed. He felt the fresh mountain air on his face. All his resistance had dissolved and, with it, his ordinary mind. Everything just seemed to stop. At that instant, he suddenly realized the nature of his mind. “Ah! This is what my master has been showing me all along,” he thought. He ran back down the mountain, and, against all convention, burst into his master’s room.
“I think I’ve got it now . . . I’ve really got it!”
His master smiled at him knowingly: “So you had an interesting climb up the mountain, did you?”
Whoever you are, you too can have the experience the disciple had on that mountain, and it is that experience that will give you the fearlessness to negotiate life and death. But what is the best, quickest, and most efficient way to set about it? The first step is the practice of meditation. It is meditation that slowly purifies the ordinary mind, unmasking and exhausting its habits and illusions, so that we can, at the right moment, recognize who we really are.