Timeless Awareness

The experience of the Dharmakaya — true, pristine, empty awareness — is timeless. Here, both Samsara and Nirvana lose their conventional meaning.

The Dharmakaya, the Buddha mind that we all possess but fail to recognise, is awareness without being aware of any single thing. As sentient beings, we experience a mixing of this Dharmakaya with concepts of self, producing the Alaya or eighth consciousness. This Alaya is animated by the forces of karma and experienced within time.

Alaya is the blending of eternally timeless awareness (Dharmakaya or Alaya Wisdom) with objects, arising through deep habitual tendencies. Once the Dharmakaya is recognised as the empty luminous self, one realises one’s own Buddha nature and is said to have the view (Rigpa). Until this recognition, one remains trapped in Samsara (Marigpa).

Once Buddha mind has been pointed out, there is no longer any separation between meditation and non-meditation. One rests contemplating the Alaya as the interplay between Alaya Wisdom (empty awareness) and Alaya Consciousness (mental attachment to object-subject formation). This is called ‘the practice’.

As the mind settles into timeless awareness, serenity increases. The objects of the skandhas are seen to be apparent but not truly existent. Since each lacks intrinsic being (emptiness), they cannot be said to be either the same or different from one another. The mind settles into experiencing what it cannot comprehend, without any desire to grasp objects of perception.

Objects may appear, but without the mind racing toward them, a non-perceptual knowing arises — direct awareness of the Alaya. Thus, omniscience and other supernatural phenomena manifest through this ‘direct knowing’ of phenomena.

Without the mind striving to cognise, there is no creation of object and subject, and the division between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ mind dissolves. With this, the sense of self and other ceases, and as thought subsides, one’s experience transcends duality entirely.

When one stabilises and learns to dwell in this thoughtless, timeless awareness, one is said to have Buddha mind and becomes a Buddha.

“The nature of mind is clear light, free from duality, unborn, and unceasing.”
— Padmasambhava, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation