“One can impute emptiness logically when an independent reality of the self or of other phenomena is sought and not found. One also experiences it directly through meditation when the mind abides without ideas of existence or non-existence or both or neither. Meditators experience emptiness as a kind of fullness.

Emptiness allows for the unimpeded radiance of intrinsic awareness. In the experiential sense, then, it is not only a lack of something, but also a quality of knowing, or pristine cognition, a luminous quality that is the actual nature of the mind that can be experienced once the veils of concepts and emotions have been cleared away.

This experience is often referred to as clear light or radiance and also as "compassion." It is not something other than emptiness, for without emptiness it could not occur. It is the radiance-awareness that is the primordially pure basis of all manifestation and perception, the buddha nature.

This very nature of mind was always already there and is never corrupted or damaged, but only covered up by confusion. As such, it is the basis of spiritual practice, and also the goal or result. Buddha is not found anywhere outside of the intrinsic state of one's own mind. In the traditional breakdown, then, of ground, path, and fruition, the ground is one's own true nature, the fruition is the discovery of that, and the path is whatever it takes to make the discovery.

Kongtrul describes the identity of ground (basis) and fruition when he says:

The basis of purification is the eternal, noncomposite realm of reality that fully permeates all beings as the buddha nature.”

Sarah Harding

“What is the benefit of peacefully abiding, allowing the mind to remain still, in a natural state which is motionless? Until you are able to develop quiescence, you will not be able to control or suppress deluded mental afflictions. They will continue to arise and control the mind. The only way to get a handle on that and put an end to it is to accomplish quiescence. Once that is accomplished, all other spiritual qualities will arise from that basis, such as super knowledge, clair­voyance, the ability to see into the minds of others, to recall the past, and so forth.

These are mundane qualities that arise on the path but are developed only after the mind can abide peacefully. Qualities such as heightened awareness and clairvoyance must be de­veloped, because it is through them that one is able to understand and realize the fundamental nature of the mind.

As it says in the Bodhicharyavatara, one of the most important mahayana texts, "Having developed enthusiasm in this way, I should place my mind in concentration; for one whose mind is distracted dwells between the fangs of mental afflictions."

An individual who has been able to accomplish quiescence will no longer be overpowered by attach­ment to ordinary activities and contact with worldly people. The mind automatically turns from attach­ment and attraction to cyclic existence, because quies­cence is the experience of mental contentment and bliss which is far more sublime than ordinary attrac­tions that arise from confused perception.

When the mind is at peace, it can then be directed to concentrate undistractedly for indefinite periods of time. Quies­cence destroys delusion because mental afflictions do not arise when one is experiencing the equipoise of single-pointed concentration. People who have achieved quiescence naturally experience compassion as they view the predicament in which other living beings are ensnared. Pure com­passion arises as they begin to clearly perceive the nature of emptiness in all aspects of reality.

These are only a few of many qualities as taught by the Buddha which are the direct result of accomplishing quies­cence. Quiescence is the preparation and basis for the main practice which is the cultivation of the primor­dial wisdom of insight. These two meditations are complimentary.

The success that one has in develop­ing insight is dependent on the success that one has with developing quiescence. If you are able to de­velop quiescence only to a certain degree, then your experience of insight will be limited. However, if you are able to fully accomplish quiescence, then you will be able to fully perfect insight as well. If that is the case, then that is as good as saying perfect enlighten­ment will be realized.”

Gyatrul Rinpoche

The Madman Heruka from Tsang 1452-1507, was an author and a master of the Kagyu school of Tantrik Buddhism. Born in Tsang Tibet, he is best known as a biographer and compiler of the Life of Milarepa and The Collections of Songs of Milarepa. Tsangnyön Heruka was a Nyönpa "religious madman". He was ordained as a monk as a child, but at the age of 21 he renounced his vows and trained under various tantrik yogis from different schools. After Heruka left the monastery, he became a wandering yogi for the rest of his life, never staying in one place permanently. He was known to keep his hair long, carry a khatvanga and drink from a kapala (skull bowl). When local villagers saw his body covered in human ashes and blood with his hair adorned by human fingers and toes, they gave him the name 'Nyönpa' (madman). He later used the name Trantung Gyelpo "King of the Blood-drinkers" which he received from the deity Hevajra in a vision, "blood drinker" being the Tibetan name for the deity Heruka. These eccentric ways were influenced by an Indian sect of yogis called Kapalikas "skull-bearers", who practiced austerities as well as dressing in loincloths and human ashes and carrying symbols of the dakinis such as bone ornaments and skulls. Many monks questioned his behavior and way of dress but Tsangnyön Heruka Trantung Gyelpo was known to strongly defend his unconventional practice through rigorous argument and accurate quotations from scriptures. One day He appeared on a market place naked with brown sugar in one hand and feces in the other eating from both. Another day he was seen eating the brains of someone who had died of smallpox. It's said from this time on he was completely free from all misunderstandings and the dualities of samsara and nirvana became one and the same to him.

“If an ordinary man, when he is about to die, could only see the five elements of consciousness as void; the four physical elements as not constituting an I; the real Mind as formless and neither coming nor going; his nature as something neither commencing at his birth nor perishing at his death, but as whole and motionless in its very depths; his Mind and environmental objects as one – if he could really accomplish this, he would receive Enlightenment in a flash.

He would no longer be entangled by the Triple World; he would be a World-Transcendor. He would be without even the faintest tendency towards rebirth. If he should behold the glorious sight of all the Buddhas coming to welcome him, surrounded by every kind of gorgeous manifestation, he would feel no desire to approach them.

If he should behold all sorts of horrific forms surrounding him, he would experience no terror. He would just be himself oblivious of conceptual thought and one with the Absolute. He would have attained the state of unconditioned being. This, then, is the fundamental principle.”

Huángbò Xīyùn

“in the universal womb that is boundless space
all forms of matter and energy occur
as flux of the four elements,
but all are empty forms, absent in reality:
all phenomena, arising in pure mind, are like that.

just as dream is a part of sleep,
unreal in its arising,
so all and everything is pure mind,
never separated from it,
and without substance or attribute.

experience is neither mind nor anything but mind;
it is a vivid display of emptiness, like magical illusion,
in the very moment inconceivable and unutterable.
all experience arising in the mind,
at its inception, know it as emptiness!”
― Longchenpa

“The experience commonly called 'entering Nirvana' is, in fact, an intuitive realization of that Self-nature which is the true Nature of all things. The Absolute, or Reality, is regarded as having for sentient beings two aspects. The only aspect perceptible to the unenlightened is the one in which individual phenomena have a separate though purely transitory existence within the limits of space-time.

The other aspect is spaceless and timeless; moreover all opposites, all distinctions and 'entities' of every kind, are here seen to be One. Yet neither is this second aspect, alone, the highest fruit of Enlightenment, as many contemplatives suppose; it is only when both aspects are perceived and reconciled that the beholder may be regarded as truly Enlightened.

Yet, from that moment, he ceases to be the beholder, for he is conscious of no division between beholding and beheld. This leads to further paradoxes, unless the use of words is abandoned altogether. It is incorrect to employ such mystical terminology as 'I dwell in the Absolute', 'The Absolute dwells in me', or 'I am penetrated by the Absolute, etc.; for, when space is transcended, the concepts of whole and part are no longer valid; the part is the whole — I am the Absolute, except that I am no longer I. What I behold then is my real Self, which is the true nature of all things; seer and seen are one and the same, yet there is no seeing, just as the eye cannot behold itself.”

John Blofeld

The Animal Realm:

“Their classification is fourfold: those who have many legs, four legs, two legs, and those who are without legs. Where are they located? Ocean, plain, or forest. For most of them, the ocean is the place they abide.

What type of suffering do they experience?

The suffering of being used, the suffering of slaughter, and the suffering of being eaten by one another. The first is accorded to the domestic animals under the power of humans. As is stated:

«Powerless, they are tortured. Hands, feet, whips, and iron hooks enslave them.»

The second suffering is accorded to wild animals. As is stated:

«Some die for pearls, wool, bone, blood, meat, and skin.»

The third suffering is accorded to the majority, who abide in the big oceans. As is said:

«They eat whatever falls into their mouths.»

What is the life span of the animals? This is indefinite. The longest is one-quarter kalpa. As is said:

«Among the animals, the longest life span is one antahkalpa at the most.»”

Gampopa, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, Kagyu Lamrim

Gods, Eternalism, Nihilism and the problem with Sunyata (Emptiness); a Traditional Buddhist thought about.

People simple do not understand that does not matter what appears in the field of consciousness, the reality is Emptiness (Sunyata). Does not matter if billions of God's appear in your front and say that they are the truth, they don't. Truth is far more beyond than the existence of "God" in this simplistic form. Whatever occurs, if God's throw people into hell or heaven for their "sins", whether gods of many types exist and they are the "true gods" or not, it simple does not matter in any sense.

The nature of reality whom is emptiness is unchanged, all this gods are deluded if they think that they will live forever or thar just him are the "true god" and all others are "false". Even if a god throws a poor soul into the infernal realms thinking that she will stay there forever, or in paradise eternally with him, it doesn't make any difference.

And whether he believes himself to be the original god predecessor to all others, and that humanity is subjugated by other gods or by a particular enemy, does not matter. What he thinks he knows or doesn't know about what happened in reality, the history of existence, of chaos, of the universe, of the world; All these things are so uncertain and prone to error that it is impossible to take any possible fixed position for granted.

Whatever his story, if he thinks he came from the most distant people and is the most powerful, if he thinks the soul needs this instead of that, none of that matters in the end, because it's all as uncertain as a mirage. Whatever he thinks he can do or not do, that this or that is the right way; In the end they are all wrong.

They are just ordinary beings who no matter how powerful they are, no matter how understanding they are, perfect, complete, "beyond everything" or everyone else, in the end this is a matter of perspective based on the way they see reality based on in his karma and in the type of "thought-form", of energy corresponding to the particular realm in which he finds himself, in the particular experience connected to his particular inner world, he is not Reality by itself.

No matter how much they believe in it with all your might. In the end they are just creatures in Samsara like you and me, going through a period of existence of millions or billions of years, all the while believing themselves to be ineffable, when in fact they too will return to the lower realms. Because it's like this?

Simple. Because according to the Buddhist doctrine of Emptiness, even concepts such as Unity, Absolute, Perfection, God, Ineffable, The All, The Supreme, The Highest and etc; they are all empty of themselves. They are not the state of perfection, of complete and infinite, absolute, definitive knowledge. They depend on concepts that are opposite to them and that are Samsara as much as they are.

In that case, such divine concepts are only the realm of the devas, nothing more and nothing less. Reality is beyond any real substance, ballast, solidity, fixation, conceptualization; and this also includes both nihilistic concepts about nothing and eternalist concepts about everything.

Nihilism is an opposite view, it says the opposite to concepts related to the deva realm and lead to the infernal realms as it is ignorance.

In the end, it's like the wonderful Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche says: "the bad news is that you are falling without a parachute; the good news is that there is no ground."

To understand this it is necessary to understand and study Sunyata deeply, as in fact, it has nothing to do with the old divinatory concepts, although they seem to be. It's far, far beyond.