The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

TWO STORIES 391
You don't have to feel like you have the buddha nature. That's not
the point. The point is trust, which is faith. The point is devotion,
which is surrender. That, for me, is the essence. If you can trust what
the master is saying, and study and try to bring the teaching back to
yourself in difficult times, and train your mind not to fall into its
habitual patterns, if you can just be with what is happening, with
bare attention, after a while you notice that nothing stays around
very long. Not even negative thoughts. Especially not our bodies.
Everything changes. If you leave it in its place, it will liberate itself.
In a situation like mine, when fear becomes so obvious to you,
and so predominant, and you feel like you are being swallowed by
the fear, you must take your mind in hand. I have realized that fear
is not going to kill me. This is just something that is passing through
my mind. This is a thought and I know that thoughts will liberate
themselves if I just keep my hands off. I also realize that's what happens
in the bardos, when and if you see a vision coming at you that
might be frightening; it's not coming anywhere other than from you!
All those energies we have kept damped down into our bodies are
being released.
I also discovered, early on, when I was training my mind, there is
a certain point, a certain line you must draw, and beyond that point
you cannot let your mind go. If you do, you risk mental problems,
you risk moroseness, you risk being a real downer for everybody
around you: that would be the least. But you could flip out. People
do flip out, get unbalanced by believing what their minds are telling
them about reality. We all do it, but there is a certain line beyond
which you cannot go... I used to have panic attacks. I thought there
was a big black hole in the ground in front of me. Since I have
allowed myself the privilege, and the grace of being happy, all the
time, I don't see black holes any more.
Some of you have been dearer to me than my family. Because
you allow Padmasambhava to come to me in just another way,
through your care and your concern and your love. You don't seem
to care that I have AIDS. No one has ever asked me: "Well, how did
you get it?" No one has ever intimated that this might be a curse on
me; except one old friend of mine who called me a week or so ago
and said, "Aren't you afraid that this is God's curse on you?" After I
stopped laughing, I said, "You believe that God has cursed the earth
and the human body is impure. I, on the other hand, believe that
blessing is the original starting point, not a curse." From beginningless
time, everything has already been accomplished, pure and perfect.
So what I do now is just rest in the radiance. It's everywhere. You
can't get away from it. It is so intoxicating that sometimes I feel like I
am just floating in the radiance. I am letting Padmasambhava, as he
flies through the sky of the mind, just let me tag along.
Now if I were sitting out there listening to this, I would say,
"Okay then, why aren't you healed?" People have asked me that. It's