All appearances are vast emptiness,
Open and utterly free.
With a happy and blissful mind
I sing this song of joy.
When one looks towards one’s own mind –
The root of all phenomena –
There is nothing but vivid openness and emptiness,
Nothing concrete there to be taken as real.
It is present and transparent,
Without outside, without inside –
An all-in-one pervasiveness
Without boundary, without division.
The wide-open expanse of the view,
The true condition of the mind,
It is like the space –
With no center, no edge, no goal.
By leaving whatever I experience
Relaxed in ease, just as it is,
I have arrived at the infinite plain
That is the absolute expanse.
Dissolving into the expanse of emptiness
That has no limits and no boundary –
Everything I see, everything I hear,
My own mind and the sky all merge.
Not once has the notion arisen
Of them being separate and distinct.
In the absolute expanse of awareness
All things are blended into that single taste –
While, relatively, each and every phenomenon is distinctly
Clearly seen!
~ Shabkar (1781-1851) ~
Buddha Mind 