GENTLY WHISPERED
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the mind's nature in clear awareness, the experience is impregnated with the distortion of a not-knowing, or of an absence, on the most fundamental level, of awareness. This most subtle and most fundamental level of confusion is technically termed ignorance or unawareness. This distortion obscures the direct experience of emptiness of mind so that, rather than the mind directly experiencing its own intangibility, the mind experiences the self. This I, the subject which is taken to be something ultimately real, is, in fact, merely a distortion of the true experience of the emptiness of mind. In a similar manner, the direct experience of the luminosity of mind is distorted or frozen into the experience of being something other. This object, the frozen or distorted other-than-self, is taken to be ultimately real, but, in fact, is a clouding of this direct experience of the luminosity of mind. A dualistic split thereby develops that recognizes subject/object and self/other as seemingly being ultimately separate and independent. In our confusion, we habitually reinforce this dualistic framework. The picture is further complicated by the unobstructed quality of mind, that awareness which tends to arise only in certain limited ways. If, in this dualistic framework, there arises a positive relationship between subject and object, such experience is usually expressed in terms of an attraction or attachment of subject to object, thereby giving a perception of something good and attractive. When something is perceived as bad, or when the subject takes the object to be something threatening or repulsive, then there arises a negative emotion of aggression or aversion. Ultimately speaking, subject, object, and the emotional response that results are wholly the activity of the mind. It is the mind which conceives of the subject. It is the mind which conceives of the object. It is also the mind which conceives of the split between the two. Although it is the mind which initiates attraction or aversion, somehow this is not perceived by sentient beings. Instead, everything is treated as though it were very solid. Subject is here, object is there, and the relationship between the two is separate and distinct. We believe each is existent in and of itself; we also believe that they are totally independent of mind. This is the delusion caused by the fundamental stupidity (or dullness) of