Focusing the Light of Awareness on Our Own Cases of Mistaken Identity

An Excerpt from Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's April 2023 Teachings

Within these ancient Bon teachings, and particularly in the dzogchen teaching, the truth is spoken of as being a pure space, a pure light, a pure energy. That is the truth. And who we are is also pure space, pure light and pure energy. Now if you look at what personal truths you create and your perception of your truths and how they affect you, then it's clear, that's not good news, right? So what we are trying to do here is to foster a change in perception.

Let me give you a couple of examples. First is the situation where two people fall in love and eagerly get married, but then over time they find themselves ending it all in an ugly divorce. It's the same two people, in the same relationship, and at the beginning its beautiful, but by the end it becomes very painful and ugly. In the beginning each person sees the other's best qualities, yet by the end they see only the worst in each other. And of course both parties will have their stories, including their families' stories, so there will be no end to the stories.

But what is the truth here? They would say, well it is not working out. Why? Because we are so different. That means given what I identify with now, I cannot deal with this other identification I have as a partner. Or with a little bit more compassion they could instead say, we respect the differences between us, and we love each other regardless of those differences, but we are not able to deal with what we identify with now. And that's the truth. It's a perception, right?

Or consider a more personal example: the perception and the self-image of someone who is anorexic. No matter how thin they are, their perception is always that they are fat. And it will greatly affect their health. However, it all starts with a perception, the image of one's body. That perception for them, though, does not represent the actual truth of what the body's condition really is, rather only how they are perceiving it. So again, it's a matter of perception.

The main point is that the personal reality that we create in such a solid way, actually, there is no reality like that. And the only way that you can be free from what you have created is to know that what you have created is not that real. That's the difficult part. It is easy to talk about philosophy, and talk about what is the right thing to do, or what is the wrong thing to do, and about how people should live, who's living in the right way and who's living in the wrong way. We are happy to talk about everything except our own personal world. Whatever reality that we really do create ourselves, we won't change that. The changes we are willing to talk about lie outside of that!

We are not able to see that we are not actually shifting anything in our own personal world. We don't see that we are not even able to question it. We are not even trusting our strength enough to question it and be free from it. Very often what we do is just leave it alone and work on everything else lying outside of it. Have you noticed that? And when you are able to come inside of that boundary, then that's called real personal work. Right? It's not a philosophy, it's personal work, because you are working within the boundary of the personality of yourself. That's the beauty, that's the gift, that's the strength of these teachings, these practices.

In the monastery as monks, we have a lot of time; 30 years of our time there is spent debating about whether the pillar is empty of inherent existence or not, or whether the glass is empty of inherent existence or not, and we forget about whether my own identity is empty or not; we don't talk so much about that, especially in epistemology. So I have wanted more and more to speak in a way that makes sense to you, and I'm happy to do that. And that's what we are doing here this morning.

We know that people can make problems out of anything. Have you seen that, where some particular problem that someone's having makes no sense to you, and yet it makes complete sense to them? Where clearly in principle there should not be a problem there? And all of the Buddhas and enlightened beings would agree with you. However, that person is experiencing it as a problem, and it's a genuine experience for them. That's the beauty of sometimes being able to hear other people's pain, because you will naturally feel compassion for them. Even though they may be angry with you, you feel compassion toward them, because that pain is exactly what they're feeling. They didn't mean anything bad toward you, they're just expressing their frustrations and they don't know how to express them in any better way. And they become the object of compassion, not the object of another anger.

Now consider the reverse, you yourself are feeling strongly that a particular situation is a problem for you. Just imagine then that other people and all of the enlightened beings are saying, Oh wow, now look at this person! Why is this person making so much of a problem out of that situation? It seems like nothing! And some will say, Wow, your situation is not bad at all. In fact, I would like to be in your problem situation. So not only will there be people who don't see it as a problem, there are also people who would love to have that seeming problem of yours. But for you it's disturbing your sleep. It took away your smile and your ability to simply enjoy the day, and the simple gifts of life are taken away from you due to this problem that others would love to have, right? [laughter]

In the same way, and more personally, the identification with our physical body is clearly so much stronger than it is with any external object. So looking at our own body identification, some people might identify as a weak person. Just that simple perception. Do you know someone who identifies with their weakness? It's a deep sense of identity. But those kinds of identities do not have to be there; your identity with your body, with your sickness, with your well-being, with your health. Nevertheless, they are there. So when you're conscious of that, rather than trying to rename or reshape or reformat that file, our practice leads to deleting the file so that you can create a new file, right? In that way your image of any outer or inner problem can be transformed into spacious luminous dynamic energy, the healthy qualities of the sources of all of those problems.

As you can see, I am always trying to bring the various aspects of the teachings back into relation with identity. This is the big thing I really feel is important to address in our journey. Compassion is important, too, but in a way it is probably less necessary to address, because it's easier to understand, easier to relate to, easier to feel and easier to encourage in each other.

So to conclude I will say that our being aware of our experiences and our perceptions of how we see the world and how we see ourselves, and having the ability to question those perceptions every single day, is called being a practitioner. Does that make sense? It's the ability to genuinely ask, and genuinely question, and have genuine doubt about the way we are seeing a situation, the we are seeing ourselves, and particularly when it is causing conflict and pain and suffering in our life and in others' lives. Those are good reasons to ask questions. When you're causing suffering in others and in yourself, when you are becoming drained, when you are getting sick and when you are losing your health, then it's an important question to ask. The way that I see the world, the way that I see myself, is that really the way it is? Through this process you will come to know, it is not!

That doesn't mean that overnight you will change everything. No, you will not. It's a process. It might be difficult. But it's a great gift, a great opening. And in every single situation it will protect you more. It will open you more. It will give you strength to let go more. The moment you see that it's not that real, it will be able to give you that strength. The result is not that you will lose all interest and become irresponsible; it's not like that. Rather, the interest is to live, to live without worrying. The interest is to give without expectation. The interest is to love without being too attached. The interest is to become more full, not less full. You see, our identification is what is feeding our ability to live more fully. That's why we are working on that. Okay? I hope it makes sense.