dharmasnonabiding

3. Living in dharma as practice đŸ˜Œ

The following reflection goes straight to the heart of what many Tibetan masters warn about: the difference between practicing Dharma and practicing “the idea of Dharma.”

The core point/ the purpose of Dharma: Dharma is meant to cut through delusion, not decorate it.

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1. The essential point: Dharma is an antidote, not a dressing

In Tibetan Buddha Dharma, the teachings are explicitly described as medicine for the mind. Medicine is not meant to be collected, admired, or used to reinforce identity. It is meant to cure the disease of clinging in the mind.

  • Clinging to self
  • Clinging to views
  • Clinging to spiritual identity
  • Clinging to experiences
  • Clinging to “being a practitioner”

When Dharma becomes another layer of identity—“I am spiritual,” “I am a meditator,” “I am a Buddhist”—it stops functioning as medicine and becomes another form of samsara.

This is what is referred to as spiritual materialism.

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2. Why Western culture makes this distortion easy

Western society is built around constructing, maintaining, and displaying a self. Identity is a product. Lifestyle is a brand. Even spirituality becomes something to “curate.”

***So when Dharma enters this environment, it can be absorbed into the same pattern unless one is very careful.***

Examples:

  • Turning meditation into a performance
  • Treating teachings as intellectual collectibles
  • Using Dharma language to reinforce ego
  • Seeking “special experiences” instead of liberation
  • Mistaking calmness for realization
  • Using Dharma to avoid emotional (or mental and emotional) work, (spiritual bypassing)

This is why teachers emphasize renunciation, not as rejecting the world, but as rejecting the habit of selfing.

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3. The actual counter-practice: returning to pure awareness

“Upholding the teachings of recognising and ultimately realising the naked non-dual empty awareness.” This is the heart of the matter.

In Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen, the antidote to conceptual proliferation is:

  • Recognizing the nature of mind
  • Resting in non‑fabricated awareness
  • Seeing thoughts as empty appearances
  • Not adding anything extra

This is what is meant by cutting through (Tib. khregs chod).

The practice is not to create a new identity, but to see through the one that was never solid to begin with.

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4. Why “thorough investigation” is essential

Here this is pointing to something subtle but crucial: Without deep investigation, Dharma becomes a philosophy. Without practice, it becomes a hobby. Without realization, it becomes dressing.

Investigation means:

  • Examining the nature of self
  • Examining how thoughts arise
  • Examining how clinging forms
  • Examining the emptiness of all phenomena
  • Examining the mind that examines

This is what leads to the unmistaken View.

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5. Degeneration happens when Dharma is used to reinforce samsara (unknowing, unaware, confused clinging to concepts in the mind)

When Dharma becomes:

  • a lifestyle accessory
  • a comfort blanket
  • a way to feel superior
  • a way to avoid discomfort
  • a way to accumulate “spiritual experiences”

…then the teachings lose their liberating power.

This is what the texts call degeneration of the Dharma—not because the teachings change, but because the mind relating to them is obscured.

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6. The real benefit: effort toward genuine awareness

“The efforts that one makes in this brings like benefit.”

Even small moments of genuine awareness—moments where the mind stops fabricating—have immense power. It is the true treasure/ habituation that one must generate as practice in the mind. It’s a two fold benefit (altruistic action)

Every time one:

  • see a thought as a thought
  • release a clinging
  • rest in awareness
  • recognize emptiness
  • drop the story
  • return to presence

…you are aligning with the true purpose of Dharma.

This is how liberation unfolds: not through adding, but through subtracting. Bringing all experience onto the path of practice to be liberated in awareness of its nodual nature.

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Closing remarks

The following investigations and exercises will encompass the aspects of practice of—cutting through conceptual thinking, resting in awareness, and working with liberating clinging to self, through proactive aware action of mind in dharma practice (inner aware practice method).


(to be continued…)