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clinging. While you are in the boat, enjoy it, be thankful to it. When you get out of the boat, say thank you and move on.
The fifth sutra:
SETTLE IN THE NATURE OF BASIC COGNITION, THE ESSENCE.
If you drop the remedy, automatically you will start settling in your being. The mind clings; it never allows you to settle in your being. It keeps you interested in something that you are not: the boats.
When you don't cling to anything, there is nowhere to go -- all boats have been abandoned, you cannot go anywhere; all paths have been dropped, you cannot go anywhere; all dreams and desires have disappeared, there is no way to move. Relaxation happens of its own accord. Just think of the word relax. Be, settle, you have come home.
SETTLE IN THE NATURE OF BASIC COGNITION, THE ESSENCE.
And when you settle, there is pure awareness, with no effort, with no method. If awareness needs a method it is still not true awareness, not the essential awareness, not the natural spontaneous awareness. It is still a by-product of the method; it is cultivated, created. It is a by-product of the mind, it is not yet the truth.
SETTLE IN THE NATURE OF BASIC COGNITION, THE ESSENCE.
Now there is nothing to do. See, be, enjoy: only this moment exists. This now, this here, this cawing of the crows... and all is silence.
To know this serenity is to know who you are, what this existence is all about. This is samadhi, in the words of Patanjali. This is SAMBODHI, in the words of Gautam Buddha. This is bodhichitta, in the words of Atisha.
BETWEEN SESSIONS, CONSIDER PHENOMENA AS PHANTOMS.
Now Atisha is really very aware of the disciple. He knows that these experiences of settling into your being will be only momentary in the beginning. One moment you will find yourself relaxed into your being, another moment it will be gone. In the beginning it is bound to be so: one moment you are flooded with the unknown, with the mysterious, another moment it is no more there. One moment all is fragrance, and the next moment you are searching for it and you cannot find it, where it has gone.
Only glimpses will happen in the beginning.
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