The Praxis of Presence

To the karmically arrived individual, Buddhism is a path and a portal that leads directly to the realization of Buddha mind essence: intrinsic awareness. The path as such is not a religion or a philosophy. It is simply living in awakened awareness.

Being Buddhist is taking refuge in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the noble Shanga. Buddha is your inherent awakened awareness. The Dharma is the inner wisdom teacher, the luminosity of this awareness. And the noble Shanga is the community of those sustaining recognition of the primal awareness of pure being.

From the path perspective, Buddhism is simply the praxis of presence, naked unelaborated awareness, involving no causality, the abode of all the buddhas of time past, time present and time future.

Beyond Action and Non-Action

In the realization of our true nature,
Pure and total presence in awareness...


There remains nothing to be done,
Nothing to be added or removed,

Having realized this perfect,
unchanging presence...


Remaining alert, relaxed and present
Free from fabrications and elaborations...

Expressions of body, speech and mind,
Take place as a display
of enlightened awareness...
Even a single conscious breath,

For such yogins and yoginis there is only,
The primal awareness of pure being,

Transcending compulsive egoic doing.

Expressions of wisdom and compassion
Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas,


  Naturally arise ... 

In the samaya of daily life 

 

 

The Perfect Present

The Present Perfect

Having entered the present, via any of the 84,000 available portals, you will have actually transcended this ‘moment’, free and clear. This is because presence is timeless, free of attachments or clinging. It’s the reality continuum of nowness.

This is most certainly the esoteric meaning of the ‘eternal life’ that is referred to in Judeo-Christian traditions. Eternal, in present understanding, is not implying a mystical ‘after-life’ existence, but a continuity of awareness in a timeless dimension: empty like space, yet luminously clear, manifesting the universe of appearances and possibilities, objects, forms, thoughts and emotions.

The perfect present is then the Suchness of just what is in the continuously renewed immediacy of the eternal now. As such, the ineffable perfection of this manifest display is great wonderment. There is no dualistic attachment to reifying concepts, nor anxious clinging to our conditioned opinions. Free and clear, we simply relax and enjoy the magnificence.

Portals of Presence

A Dharma portal is a gateway to the direct experience of the essence of mind which is pure and total presence in immediate awareness. It is not at all what we may be thinking about at any given moment.

When we are lost in our thoughts, experience reveals, we are often totally distracted and truly, as the saying goes, entirely ‘absent minded’. We are certainly not present.

Presence is being in the experiential flow of the moment, without grasping at sensory impressions or clinging to our interpretations and judgmental labels. Presence really isn’t even confined to a moment at all. It’s in the continuity of awareness itself, which is timeless.

This Dharma-log will explore some of the portals of presence. It is said that there are at least 84 thousand. It’s unlikely that we should be able to consider more than just a few. However, through collaborative contributions more portals could be discovered.

Meditation can be, but unfortunately, is not always a portal of presence. Simply being attentive to immediate awareness, however, if we could call this meditation (or is it non-meditation) opens the living experience of presence; alert, relaxed, undistracted awareness.

Presence itself is a continuously renewed immediacy. Sensory impressions and thought forms adventitiously arise and yet always vanish into the stillness from which they arose. How marvelous this is to behold! Try to see!

From this vista, gazing out across the infinite expanse, we learn that the totality of our experience is transient and impermanent. The only continuity is the presence in which our experience manifests.

This presence is always and ever imminent, empty yet manifesting the universe of appearances and possibilities. It is the very essence of pure being.

This Dharma portal leads us to the direct recognition of the primal awareness of pure being. Having been introduced we need only familiarize ourselves with this infinite expanse. This is presence.