If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me.

So you must ask this question, put this question to yourself, whether your mind can be empty of all its past and yet retain the technological knowledge, your engineering knowledge, your linguistic knowledge, the memory of all that, and yet function from a mind that is completely empty. The emptying of that mind comes about naturally, sweetly without bidding, when you understand yourself, when you understand what you are. What you are is the memory, bundle of memories, experiences, thoughts. When you understand that, look at it, observe it; and when you observe it, see in that observation that there is no duality between the observer and the observed; then when you see that, you will see that your mind can be completely empty, attentive, and in that attention you can act wholly, without any fragmentation.

Writing necessarily refers to writing. The image is that of a mirror capturing only the reflections of other mirrors. [...] Yet how difficult it is to keep our mirrors clean. We all tend to cloud and soil them as soon as the older smudges are wiped off, for we love to use them as instruments to behold ourselves, maintaining thereby a narcissistic relation of me to me, still me and always me. Rare are the moments when we accept leaving our mirrors empty, even though we may laugh watching our neighbors pining away for their own images. The very error that deceives our eyes inflames them; still, we persist in trying to fix a fleeting image and spend our lifetime searching after that which does not exist. This object we love so, let us just turn away and it will immediately disappear. In the dual relation of subject to subject or subject to object, the mirror is the symbol of an unaltered vision of things. It reveals to me my double, my ghost, my perfections as well as my flaws. Considered an instrument of self-knowledge, one in which I have total faith, it also bears a magical character that has always transcended its functional nature. In this encounter of I with I, the power of identification is often such that reality and appearance merge while the tool itself becomes invisible.

(...) To take the world as real and one's self as unreal is ignorance, the cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought 'I am' is the polishing cloth. Use it.

# To know the emptiness of objects is to know emptiness free of appearance and free of coverings. That is the Middle Way from which the "subsequent" or conventional has been purged.

Emptiness empties the one seeing into what is seen.

The essence of the mind is empty, and the myriad conditions are all serene. It is like the great orb of the sun climbing into space—the refulgent brilliance gleams in illumination, purity without a single speck of dust. The realization [of this mind] is without new or old, without shallow or deep. Its explanation depends neither on doctrinal understanding, on teachers, nor on opening up the doors and windows [of one’s house to let in students]. Right now, and that’s it! To activate thoughts is to go against it! Afterward, [you’ll realize] this is the fundamental Buddha.

Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.

Liberate yourself from concepts and see the truth with your own eyes. — It exists HERE and NOW; it requires only one thing to see it: openness, freedom — the freedom to be open and not tethered by any ideas, concepts, etc. … When our mind is tranquil, there will be an occasional pause to its feverish activities, there will be a let-go, and it is only then in the interval between two thoughts that a flash of UNDERSTANDING — understanding, which is not thought — can take place.

Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. … The thing about this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no "mystery." All problems are resolved and everything is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya… everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely with Mahabalipuram and Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise. The whole thing is very much a Zen garden, a span of bareness and openness and evidence, and the great figures, motionless, yet with the lines in full movement, waves of vesture and bodily form, a beautiful and holy vision.

I must wash myself clean with abstract thoughts, transparent as water.

When the mind is free of any thought or judgment, it is still and acts like a mirror. Then and only then can we know things as they are. AWARENESS

[I]n the present moment, when (your mind) remains in its own condition without constructing anything, Awareness at that moment in itself is quite ordinary. And when you look into yourself in this way nakedly (without any discursive thoughts), Since there is only this pure observing, there will be found a lucid clarity without anyone being there who is the observer; Only a naked manifest awareness is present. (This awareness) is empty and immaculately pure, not being created by anything whatsoever. It is authentic and unadulterated, without any duality of clarity and emptiness. It is not permanent and yet it is not created by anything. However, it is not a mere nothingness or something annihilated because it is lucid and present. It does not exist as a single entity because it is present and clear in terms of being many. (On the other hand) it is not created as a multiplicity of things because it is inseparable and of a single flavor. This inherent self-awareness does not derive from anything outside itself. This is the real introduction to the actual condition of things. — Padmasambhava13

I'm trying to go through moral crisis myself to the highest degree that I can, to remove moral crisis from the visual vocabulary of the viewer, so that when somebody sees my work, the only thing that they see is the Sacred Heart of Jesus