The context of the general teachings is one of talking to a sentient being who is experiencing uninterrupted bewilderment one thought or emotion after another like the surface of the ocean in turmoil, without any recognition of mind essence. This confusion is continuous, without almost any break, life after life.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the continuous turmoil of thoughts and emotions experienced by sentient beings, suggesting a lack of awareness of their true essence.
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's quote addresses the pervasive confusion and chaos experienced by individuals as they navigate through life. It illustrates how thoughts and emotions can create a tumultuous experience, akin to turbulent ocean waters, preventing recognition of one’s deeper mind essence. This state of bewilderment is described as ongoing and repetitive, reflecting the challenges of achieving clarity and understanding in both this life and beyond.
In practice
In a meditation workshop, a facilitator could use this quote to illustrate the nature of distracted thinking.
Don’t let any emotional thought concerning success or failure, fame or gain, overtake you, and don’t dwell upon them. Give up your personal shortcomings, such as foolish talk, distracting activities, and absentmindedness. Train in being totally gentle in all physical, verbal, or mental activities. Don’t ponder the flaws of others; think instead of their good sides.
Being aggressive, you can accomplish some things, but with gentleness, you can accomplish all things.
When remaining in awareness itself, every thought movement, no matter what kind, is like a drawing in air.
The basic nature of all conscious beings is 'self-existing wakefulness'. _x000D_ _x000D_ Self-existing meaning spontaneous or without effort and wakefulness meaning natural awareness. _x000D_ _x000D_ To ignore our basic nature, is to wander in fear and confusion, _x000D_ _x000D_ to directly realise our essential nature is to be Enlightened.
It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.
They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.
They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.
As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
For a time, I believed not in God nor Santa Claus, but in mermaids. They seemed as logical and possible to me as the brittle twig of a seahorse in the zoo aquarium or the skates lugged up on the lines of cursing Sunday fishermen - skates the shape of old pillowslips with the full, coy lips of women.
The greatest incitement to guilt is the hope of sinning with impunity.
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