Ever-Present Awareness Is Already Complete

In The Precious Treasury of Genuine Meaning, Longchenpa writes:

“Within the mind streams of all sentient beings, the wisdom of the perfectly pure buddhas resides in the manner of kayas and wisdoms.”

This translation points to the ground of our being, but the word wisdom can be misleading.

We ordinarily think of wisdom as something we acquire through study, contemplation, and meditation. But the Tibetan word for wisdom here, yeshe, or ye nas shes pa, does not refer to knowledge accumulated through experience. It points to an original or timeless presence.

Many translators translate yeshe as “primordial awareness," which is accurate, but the word primordial can suggest something ancient: a beginning in the distant past, or an original state that we have somehow lost.

That is not quite the meaning either.

The Tibetan ye nas carries the sense of what has been present from the beginning, but not merely from the beginning of time. It points toward a knowing that is not bound by the limits of time or confined by past, present, and future: the ever-present awareness of the perpetual now.

This awareness is not something left over from a distant primordial origin. It is present in this moment. Right here, right now.

For this reason, I would translate the meaning of this line:

Within the mindstreams of all sentient beings, the ever-present awareness of the perfectly pure buddhas is naturally complete as the kayas and wisdoms.

I changed 'resides' to 'naturally complete' as well, because this ever-present awareness does not reside merely as a dormant seed or future possibility. The kayas and wisdoms are naturally complete within the nature of mind, although they remain unrecognized.

The difference between a buddha and an ordinary being is not that one possesses this nature and the other does not. The difference is whether there is recognition of this nature or not.

The qualities of buddhahood are already complete as the three kayas.

The originally pure emptiness of awareness is the dharmakaya. It cannot be found as a substantial thing, located somewhere, or confined within any boundary.

Its spontaneously present luminosity is the sambhogakaya. Although empty, awareness is not blank or inert. There is the continuous unfolding of experience in all its variety as the radiant clarity of awareness.

Its unobstructed capacity to appear and respond is the nirmanakaya. Emptiness and luminosity are naturally open, responsive, and interconnected, expressing themselves in whatever forms are needed for the benefit of beings.

These are not three separate things hidden somewhere inside us. They are three inseparable dimensions of the nature of mind: empty in essence, luminous by nature, and unobstructed in expression.

Ever-present awareness is naturally complete in five aspects (usually called the five wisdoms): the awareness of the dharmadhatu, mirror-like awareness, the awareness of equality, discerning awareness, and all-accomplishing awareness.

These are not separate forms of awareness added through practice. They are five aspects of ever-present awareness itself, revealed as obscurations are cleared and recognition deepens.

I explored the three kayas and five wisdoms more experientially in the Prayer to Open the Secret Door to the Luminous Mansion of Timeless Awareness, which describes how these kayas and wisdoms are already evident within the immediacy of our own experience and how the same qualities appear as confusion when they are distorted by grasping and nonrecognition.

The traditional metaphor we use to describe the ways these are present is the sun behind clouds.

The clouds may be so thick that we cannot see the sun at all. From beneath them, the sky appears dim, and we may conclude that there is no light. Yet the clouds have never altered the sun. They only obscure our ability to see it.

In the same way, confusion, grasping, emotional affliction, and habitual patterns obscure awareness without ever contaminating it. Our buddhanature does not become pure when confusion clears. It was never impure or stained in the first place.

This is why the path is not a project of constructing a better self.

Through shamatha, the we learn to bring the mind to rest. We become familiar with stillness, openness, and the spacious quality of awareness. Through insight, we look directly into the nature of thoughts, emotions, and appearances and discover that they cannot be found as solid or independent things. They arise vividly, yet remain empty of any inherent nature.

Eventually, we begin to recognize that stillness and movement, emptiness and appearance, are not opposing realities. Both arise within the same knowing presence.

This is how the kayas and wisdoms begin to become more than philosophical ideas.

In the open, empty nature of mind, we recognize the dharmakaya. In the vivid and continuous unfolding of experience, we recognize the luminosity of the sambhogakaya. In the natural responsiveness of awareness, we begin to recognize the compassionate expression of the nirmanakaya.

The five wisdoms are revealed within this same experience. Awareness is open and all-encompassing like the dharmadhatu. It reflects appearances clearly like a mirror without being altered by them. It recognizes the equal nature of all experience while discerning each appearance in its variety. And it responds spontaneously to the conditions that arise.

At first, this insight may only appear briefly, like sunlight breaking through a gap in the clouds. Through practice, we return to it again and again. Recognition becomes familiarity with the ground and what was once glimpsed becomes the orientation from which we live.

The path of practice does not bring the ever-present awareness of the buddhas into our own experience.

It teaches us to recognize what has never been absent.