2025 Spring Term Monastic Retreat—Selflessness of Primordial Awareness, Enacting Compassion Beyond Self-concern

Upon contemplating and observing the primordial awareness, one finds that such awareness cannot be identified with any objects, but it is universal and all-pervasive. This practice must be undertaken on a regular basis to actualize the potential of our original face—attaining a state of selflessness of the individual and selflessness of the phenomena. Such realization can be attained through the contemplation of primordial awareness.

Without contemplation, Dharma practice becomes impossible, leaving merely intellectual knowledge. However, knowledge itself is a conceptual mind that discriminates and attaches. If we transcend mere intellectual knowledge, attachment-based cognition dissolves naturally. That being said, we must not get distracted by the tendency of generating discriminative attachments that perpetuate cyclic existence.

Within samsaric existence, relational identities remain fluid where parents become adversaries, siblings turn into enemies. All beings circulate as participants in cyclic existence, assuming various roles as spouses, enemies, or even as cockroaches or fleas. All forms are subject to change because the mind sets the motivations that generate corresponding karmic results in varying forms through reincarnations.

Our present actions determine our future states of being, whether we accumulate merits or not depends on the virtuous or non-virtuous impact of our actions to others. If we are self-centered and egotistical, considering only our own interests without compassion for others, this life becomes futile, yielding no spiritual benefit. Without encountering faith or buddhadharma, one cannot understand how to transcend the cycle of living and dying, not mentioning to solve the perpetual suffering.

Only through the study and practice of Dharma and authentic faith can these problems be solved. Therefore, one must cultivate loving-kindness toward all beings and phenomena, serving the collective selflessly. This service constitutes the karmic relationship between oneself and others. By engaging exclusively in altruistic activities, we are living the practitioner’s way of life—with compassion and loving-kindness. The priority is the welfare of others where oneself is insignificant.

Through continued analysis, we discover the absence of an inherent self in all phenomena. Why, then, grasp onto the concept of self, thereby generating non-virtuous actions and negative karmic connections with others? Our current practice of sitting meditation, emulation of the Buddha and bodhisattvas, cultivation of complete altruism without the slightest negative intentions can eliminate conflicting relationships and uncover the primordial awareness as all-encompassing, the non-duality of phenomena—all in oneness.

The awareness-nature cannot be realized without contemplation. Only through contemplative practice can one progressively immerse oneself in the primordial awareness and dissolve dualistic constructs. Remember, such awareness is of clarity and luminosity, with the essence of emptiness. These two aspects exist intimately as oneness, with the conditions of non-arising and non-ceasing, beyond opposition and affliction. Contemplating primordial awareness liberates one from afflictions and attachments, severing samsaric bonds and actualizing liberation.