The Haunted Dominion of Mind

　　by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

　　In old Tibet, practitioners went to charnel grounds, haunted places, and so on, in order to reveal how deeply their practice had cut to the core of their fears and attachments. The practice of cutting through our deepest attachments and fears to their core is called nyensa chödpa which means “cutting through the haunted dominion of mind.” It is not that I am encouraging you to go to these haunted places to test yourself, but it”s important for all practitioners to understand the view behind nyensa chödpa, because until we are challenged we don”t know how deep our practice has gone.

　　Shaken from Within

　　As the saying goes, “Practice is easy when the sun is on your back and your belly is full.” But when difficult circumstances arise and we are completely shaken from within, when we hit rock bottom, or when something is haunting us and we feel completely vulnerable and exposed to all our neurosis, then it”s a different story.

　　Challenging circumstances expose to us how much we have learned from the buddhadharma, how much we have learned from our meditation practice and the experience of our mind. But we don”t need to wait for challenging circumstances to uncover our hidden fears and attachments. We don”t need to wait for our bliss bubble to pop, for a dear one to die, or to find out we have a fatal disease. There is plenty of opportunity to practice nyensa chödpa right here in our own minds. There is plenty of opportunity because there is plenty of self-clinging.

　　The haunted dominion of mind is the dominion of self-clinging. It is the world of self and all the hopes and fears that come with trying to secure it. Our efforts to secure the self give rise to all the negative emotions. If we were not so concerned with cherishing and providing for the self, there would be no reason for attachment. Aggression, too, would have no reason to arise if there were no self to protect. And jealousy, which shows up whenever we think the self is lacking something, would have no impetus to eat away at our inner peace because we would be content with the natural richness and confidence of our own mind. If we had no need to shield all of the embarrassing things about the self that make us so insecure, we would have no cause for arrogance. Finally, if we were not so fixated on the self, we could rely on our innate intelligence rather than let our stupidity escort us through the activities that bring us so much pain time and time again.

　　So emotions themselves are not the cause of the problem. Yet until we reach down to the very root of our negative emotions, they will be there, standing in line waiting to “save” us from our fundamental insecurities. Unless we let go of grasping to the self with all its egotistical scheming to save itself in the usual manner, we will only continue to enforce a stronger and stronger belief in the solidity of the self. If the aim of practice is to free ourselves from our endless insecurities, then we must cut through self-clinging. Until we do, self-clinging will define our relationship with the world, whether it be the inner world of our own mind or the world outside of us.

　　From the perspective of the self, the world is either for us or against us. If it is for us, its purpose is to feed our infinite attachments. If it is against us, it is to be rejected and it adds to our infinite paranoia. It is either our friend or our enemy, something to lure in or reject. The stronger we cling to a self, the stronger grows our belief in a solid, objective world that exists separate from us. The more we see it as solid and separate, the more the world haunts us: we are haunted by what we want from the world and we are haunted by our struggle to protect ours…

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