The World is a Reflection of the Mind-Preface

The World is a Reflection of the Mind-Preface

“The World is a Reflection of the Mind” is an insight of wisdom. In traditional cultivation, only those whose cultivation and realization reach the highest level are able to have this kind of wisdom and level of perception. Only those who truly understand this principle will easily merge with the yoga apart from sophistry, and truly manifest what we often call “Illuminating mind and seeing its true nature.”

For those people who are constantly troubled by pain and suffering, this book has a wondrous function that other books cannot replace. When our whole community has fallen into affliction and anxiety, it is without a doubt dose of the good medicine of wisdom.

In the Buddhist sutras there is a verse which goes like this: “If people want to completely understand all the buddhas of the past, present, and future, they must observe the true nature of the phenomenal realm, that everything is only a creation of the mind.” This is the primal source of the wisdom of the present book. But talk is talk, and action is action: sometimes understanding at the level of “truth” cannot represent a firm grasp at the level of “things and events.” So the present book has its meaning for existing and it value.

This book is a vivid exposition of worldly phenomena for the world-transcending wisdom of Buddhism.Since it is the vision and viewpoint of wisdom, it also has many ways of making close connections with real life. Since it can alter our “minds,” it can also change our “actions,” and then it can change our “lives.” Many people, because of the ignorance of the “mind,” are ignorant in “action” and they end up having many difficulties in “life” and die an untimely death. It is just as it says in my full length novel Hunters’ Plain: “When the mind is illuminated, then the road opens up.” It is precisely because their minds rise to a higher level and wisdom appears, that many people who were originally sunk in difficulties at lastrealize transcendence, and become people of accomplishment in our eyes. We can pick out this kind of inspiration among many illustrious names, like the achievements of Steve Jobs, who benefited from Zen. And Zen, in the system of the Great Mudra, is the Great Mudra of the Mark of Reality. From the Zen viewpoint, even the shadow of death cannot cover over the creative wisdom of Steve Jobs, and we now still have the happiness of being able to enjoy the series of Apple products.

Thus I have often said: “Life is created by the mind. Your life is a reflection of your mind. The world that appears in your eyes is also a reflection of your mind. Whatever kind of mind you have, you will have that kind of life. Whatever kind of mind you have, you will also have that kind of world. When your mind goes from being small to being large, only then will your world go from being small to being large. Without a change of mind, it is definitely impossible to have a change in your life. Therefore, you can also call this book ‘a prescription for building a life.’”

Around me there are many people who have changed their lives and fates by relying on the wisdom of this book. Among them have been people suffering from fatal illnesses, those with serious depression, those who did not want to go on living after they death of people they were close to, those who had lost hope and were sick of the world. Many of them, after coming into contact with my writings, through a change in their minds, had their lives elevated to a higher level. Thus, some friends hoped that I would be able to take this kind of wisdom to change minds and change lives and communicate it in popular form, without religious trappings, and in this way produce a book that enables people who do not necessarily have religious beliefs to detach from suffering and attain happiness.

The wisdom in this book has its source in traditional Great Mudra Buddhism, and the author is a lineage holder of the Shangpa Kagyu Great Mudra. In  my book The Great Mudra of Light: The Heart of Real Practice (published by Central Editions Press), I concentrated on introducing the Shangpa Kagyu School’s Five Diamond Teachings of Niguma. In its procedure for completing [the mind of enlightenment] there is “the method of the three branches.” What it conveys is the wisdom of the present book:

“The excellent understanding of the Path of the Master Teacher is understanding that all appearances are the Master Teacher, and thus achieving a definitive perception, understanding that the nature of inherent mind is the empty inherent nature, and thus achieving a definitive perception.”

“The excellent understanding of the Fundamental Buddha is that all appearances are the Fundamental Buddha’s Buddha Father and Buddha Mother – they appear but have no inherent nature.” “[It is] understanding that all that appears and all that is heard is all inherent mind, and the nature of inherent mind is the empty inherent nature, and achieving a definitive perception.”

“The path of [knowing that all things] are like an illusion is definitively knowing that all appearances and thoughts are all inherent mind, and definitively knowing that inherent mind is illusory transformation. If we investigate the inherent nature of the six sense faculties and the corresponding six sense objects, then we see that their inherent nature is empty, is empty yet can manifest appearances; apparent manifestations are not different from emptiness; apparent manifestations have no inherent nature, and are like illusory transformations. If we eliminate clinging and attachment to discriminating thought, then amidst manifestations and emptiness without clinging, we enter into profound meditative concentration.”

The contents of the present book are an explanation and elucidation of this ancient wisdom in everyday language. It is detached from names and forms, and directly points to the human mind, with the power to penetrate the human mind.

We must recognize that clinging and attachments are the source of pain and suffering, and if we have no clinging and attachments, then we will have no pain and suffering. But many times the reality of our clinging and attachments are just concepts and illusions.

We must know that everything before our eyes will ultimately disappear. Countless material things, countless wealth, countless people, countless complications, will all be dissolved away by the waters of time until no trace of them remains; they will all dissolve away into the eternal dark night like bursting bubbles.

Our past, our present, and our future all will become memories. But our memories too are being swallowed up in the maw of forgetting. The ones we are able to force ourselves to keep are bits of memories like dreams or illusions.

Many times, our memories and our current understanding of those memories determine our present and our future.

The only thing we can hold onto is only own minds. Our minds determine our present moment. What we can hold onto is just the present moment.

Because of the changing basic substance of time and the myriad things, nothing we have can avoid “birth, old age, sickness, and death.” Thus, the basic substance of the world is suffering – this is the meaning of the Buddhist concept that “all defiled phenomena entail suffering.” But just because human life entails suffering, we must have the spirit that can enable our “bliss” – this is the meaning of the worldly teaching of Buddhism. When we realize this point, we can be liberated from suffering, and enter into pure bliss, and thereby realize the freedom of the world-transcending meaning [of the Buddhist Teaching]. The bliss of worldly phenomena is conditional; the bliss of the world-transcending is unconditional. The bliss of the latter is in fact the breaking up of clingings and the transcendence that come after we discover the true characteristic of phenomena.

This true characteristic of phenomena is the subject matter of this book, and the title of this book encompasses it: the world is the reflection of the mind. Concerning this, in my book The Deathless Diamond Mind, there is a very graphic presentation of this, and friends who are interested can read about it there.

When we genuinely read and understand this book, and we can give rise to wondrous functioning, then we will truly be able to “detach from suffering and attain bliss.”