..续本文上一页elves from it.

　　The movement of the entire universe

　　The many problems we see in the world today, and also encounter in our own personal lives, spring from the belief that the enemy or threat is “outside” of us. This split occurs when we forget how deeply connected we are to others and the world around us. To see the connectedness or interdependence of all things is to see in a big way. It reduces the artificial separation we create between the self and everything else.

　　For instance, when we hold tightly to a self, the natural law of impermanence looms as a threat to our existence. But when we accept that we are part of this natural flow, we begin to see that the entity we cling to as a static, immutable, and independent self is just a continuous stream of experience composed of thoughts, feelings, forms, and perceptions that change from moment to moment. When we accept this, we become part of something much greater—the movement of the entire universe.

　　What we experience as “my life” results from the interdependent relationship between the outer world – the world of color, shape, smell, taste and touch – and our awareness. We cannot separate awareness –the knower- from that which is known. There is little consistency in what we consider to be self and what we consider to be other. Sometimes we include our emotions as part of the self. Other times our anger or depression seems to haunt or even threaten us. Our thoughts also seem to define who we are as inpiduals, but so often they agitate or excite us as if they existed as other.

　　Generally we identify the body with the self, yet when we fall ill we often find ourselves saying, “My stomach is bothering me,” or “My liver is giving me trouble.” If we investigate carefully, we will inevitably conclude that to pinpoint where the self leaves off and the world begins is not really possible. The one thing we can observe is that everything that arises, both what we consider to be the self and what we consider to be other than self, does so through a relationship of interdependence.

　　All phenomena depend upon “other” in order to arise, express themselves, and fall away. There is nothing that can be found to exist on its own, independent and separate from everything else. That self and other lack clearly defined boundaries does not then mean that we are thrown into a vague state of not knowing who we are and how to relate to the world, or that we lose our discerning intelligence. It simply means that through loosening the clinging we have to our small, constricted notion of self, we begin to relax into the true nature of all phenomena: the nondual state of emptiness, which transcends both self and other.

　　Conviction

　　Cultivating a deep conviction in the view of emptiness is what the practice of nyensa chödpa is all about. Nyensa refers to that which haunts us: clinging to the self and all the fears and delusion this produces. Chödpa means, “to cut through.” What is it that cuts through our clinging, fears, and delusion

　　 It is the realization of emptiness, the realization of the truth. When the view of emptiness dawns in our experience, if even only for a moment, self-grasping naturally dissolves. This is when we begin to develop confidence in what is truly possible.

　　As we approach the haunted dominion with less fear, we may actually find some intelligence in the experience of being haunted: although we continuously try to secure the self, instinctually we know that we cannot. This instinctual knowledge comes from an innate intelligence that sees the dynamic, ungraspable nature of all things. It observes things arise and fall away, both happiness and suffering and the changes of birth, old age, sickness, and death. When we cling to self and other, our mind feels deeply confli…

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