An Open Secret There is an essential point which I think you may be poised to discover for yourself; the Dalai Lama speaks of a secret “which lies hidden and obscured by conceptual thinking.” A lama would have penetrated this secret, so obviously it would be a perception which eludes our normal, conceptual cognitive framework. The Dalai Lama has spoken of two aspects of awareness, one being “natural” or “inherent” to us (for which he uses the Dzochen term, rigpa), the other being an (adopted) awareness that is secondary, the result of our conditioning, or learning. This latter (which he refers to as gross consciousness) is— for most people—normative awareness, which is basically superimposed on our natural awareness (rigpa). Our selective, menial consciousness (“gross” or “relative”) arises within, as it were, our visceral and universal consciousness (that which animates our body regardless of our individual conditioning). To narrow down the raft of terms, let us say that the selective, analytic aspect is “relative,” and the aspect which naturally is clear of relative concerns and conceptualized objects is our innate, universal or “absolute” (nonobjective, undifferentiated) condition, or awareness, or “mind.” To avoid potential abstractions, let’s say that the relative aspect of awareness, or “thought,” focuses attention on mundane matters, such as “what should be,” “what could be,” “what will be,” “what has been,” etc. The universal aspect of awareness is attentive always to “what is.”
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