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The meditative mind is silent. It is beyond thought…. The meditative mind is the religious mind—the mind that is not touched by the church, the temples or by chants…. Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.

—J. KRISHNAMURTI, MEDITATIONS

ENLIGHTENMENT IS THE GOAL;

MEDITATION IS THE WAY

You are the Buddha. You are the truth. Then why do you not feel it? Why don’t you know it through and through? Because there is a veil in the way, which is attachment to appearances, such as the belief that you are not Buddha, that you are a separate individual, an ego. If you cannot remove this veil all at once, then it must be dissolved gradually.

If you have seen through it totally, even one glimpse, then you can see through it at any time. Wherever you are, whatever presents itself, however things seem to be; simply refer to that ever-present, spacious openness and clarity.

—KALU RINPOCHE

As we practice meditation, we are peeling layers off our persona. Peeling and peeling toward the center, letting go and unmasking layer after layer of the many faces we present to the world and ourselves. We are not our thoughts, but then who are we? Who is the person who is trying to meditate? Who is the experiencer, experiencing our experience? Is it our mind, our body, our soul, our spirit? This is the big question: the question of identity.

Most meditators bring with them a shared aspiration: to directly experience things as they are, in the present moment. Now is the only place we can ever be. Both memories and plans take place in the now. In meditation, we come home again and again to this exquisite present, waking up to the truth of who and what we are. We know that we can’t cop out, so we just have to keep showing up again and again. We breathe; we practice mindfulness; and we unpeel layer after layer. Going deeper and deeper. Seeing through our mental states, continuously letting go, unmasking and unmasking; peeling after peeling until ultimately we arrive at our original, unprocessed, natural state, our genuine being. That is Buddha-nature, our true nature—the natural mind. Awakened is the Buddha within.

To just be—to be—amidst all doings, achieving, and becomings. This is the natural state of mind, our original, most fundamental state of being. This is unadulterated Buddha-nature. This is like finding our balance.

BIG MIND/SMALL MIND

To help us understand that we are not what we are thinking, Buddhist teachings make a distinction between what is called Big Mind, or Natural Mind, and “small mind,” or ordinary, deluded mind. Small mind, or deluded mind, is the buzzing, unpredictable, frequently out-of-control ordinary mind. This is our finite mind, our limited conceptual mind; our ordinary, rational, discursive, thinking mind. The deluded mind has so many impulses and needs; it wants so many things. It’s frequently confused; it’s subject to mood swings; it’s restless. It gets angry; it gets depressed; it becomes hyper. Some ancient traditional texts refer to this small mind as “monkey mind,” where it is pictured as an untamed mustang or an adorable but chaotic little monkey jumping from tree to tree, looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places.

What is meant by Big Mind is the essential nature of mind itself. This is what we call Buddha-nature, or natural mind. This is our true nature—the pure boundless awareness that is at the heart, and part, of us all. The Buddha described it as still, clear, lucid, empty, profound, simple (uncomplicated), and at peace. It’s not really what we usually think of as our mind at all. It is the luminous, most fundamental clear light nature of our ground of being. This is Rigpa, the heart of enlightenment. This is our share of nirvana here on earth.

Dzogchen teaches that all we have to do to become enlightened is to recognize and rest in this natural state of mind. In Zen they call this original mind. This is raw, naked awareness, not something