Naam or Word.

Sikh Saint Kirpal Singh
Sikh Saint Kirpal Singh

Naam or Word

Excerpts from Naam or Word,
by Kirpal Singh

Manjusri’s Summation continued:

Nothwithstanding Ananda’s wonderful memory, he was not able to avoid falling into evil ways. He has been adrift on a merciless sea. But if he will only turn his mind away from the drifting current of thoughts, he may soon recover the sober wiseness of Essential Mind. Ananda! Listen to me! I have ever relied upon the teaching of the Lord Buddha to bring me to the Indescribable Dharma Sound of the Diamond Samadhi. Ananda! You have sought the secret lore from all the Buddha-lands without first attaining emancipation from the desires and intoxications of your own contaminations and attachments, with the result that you have stored in your memory a vast accumulation of worldly knowledge and built up a tower of faults and mistakes.
You have learned the Teachings by listening to the words of the Lord Buddha and then committing them to memory. Why do you not learn from your own self by listening to Sound of the Intrinsic Dharma within your mind and then practicing reflection upon it? The perception of Transcendental Hearing is not developed by any natural process under the control of your own volition. Sometimes when you are reflecting upon your Transcendental Hearing a chance sound suddenly claims your attention and your mind sets it apart and discriminates it and is disturbed thereby.As soon as you can ignore the phenomenal sound, the notion of Transcendental Sound ceases and you will realize your Intrinsic Hearing.
As soon as this one sense perception of hearing is returned to its originality and you clearly understand its falsity, then the mind instantly understands the falsity of all sense perceptions and is at once emancipated from the bondage of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking, for they are all alike illusive and delusive visions of unreality and all the three great realms of existence are seen to be what they truly are, imaginary blossoms in the air.
As soon as the deceiving perception of hearing is emancipated, then all objective phenomena disappears and your Intuitive Mind-Essence becomes perfectly pure. As soon as you have attained to this Supreme Purity of Mind-Essence, its Intrinsic Brightness will shine out spontaneously and in all directions and, as soon as you are sitting in tranquil Dhyana, the mind will be in perfect conformity with Pure Space.
Ananda! As soon as you return to the phenomenal world, it will seem like a vision in a dream. And your experience with the maiden Pchiti will seem like a dream, and your own body will lose its solidity and permanency. It will seem as though every human being, male and female, was simply a manifestation by some skillful magician of a manikin all of whose activities were under his control. Or each human being will seem like an automatic machine that once started goes on by itself, but as soon as the automatic machine loses its motive power, all its activities not only cease, but their very existence disappears.
So it is with the six sense organs, which are fundamentally dependent upon one unifying and enlightening spirit, but which by ignorance have become divided into six semi-independent compositions and conformities. Should one organ become emancipated and return to its originality, so closely are they united in their fundamental originality, that all the organs would cease their activities also. And all worldly impurities will be purified by a single thought and you will attain to the wonderful purity of perfect Enlightenment. Should there remain some minute contamination of ignorance, you should practice the more earnestly until you attain to perfect Enlightenment, that is, to the Enlightenment of a Tathagata.
All the Brothers in this Great Assembly, and you too, Annnda, should reverse your outward perception of hearing and listen inwardly for the perfectly unified and intrinsic sound of your own Mind-Essence, for as soon as you have attained perfect accommodation, you will have attained to Supreme Enlightenment.
This is the only way to Nirvana, and it has been followed by all the Tathagatas of the past. Moreover, it is for all the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas of the present and for all in the future if they are to hope for perfect Enlightenment. Not only did Avalokiteshvara attain perfect Enlightenment in long ages past by this Golden Way,  but in the present, I also am one of them.
My Lord enquired of us as to which expedient means each one of us had employed to follow this   Noble Path to Nirvana. I bear testimony that the means employed by Avalokiteshvara is the most expedient means for all, since all other means must be supported and guided by the Lord Buddha’s  Transcendental Powers.  Though one forsake all his worldly engagements, yet he cannot always be practicing  by these various means; they are especial means suitable for junior and senior disciples, but for  laymen, this common method of concentrating the mind on the sense of hearing, turning it inward by this Door of Dharma to hear the Transcendental Sound of this Essential Mind, is most feasible and wise.
O Blessed Lord! I am bowing down before my Lord Tathagata’s Intrinsic Womb, which is immaculate and ineffable in its perfect freedom from all contaminations and taints, and am praying my Lord to extend his boundless compassion for the sake of all future disciples,  so that I may continue to teach Ananda and all sentient beings of the present kalpa, to have faith in this wonderful Door of Dharma to the Intrinsic Hearing of his own Mind-Essence, so surely to be attained by this most expedient means. If any disciple should take this Intuitive Means for concentrating his mind in Dhyana Practice on this organ of Transcendental Hearing, all other sense organs would soon come into perfect harmony with it and thus by this single means of Intrinsic Hearing, he would attain  perfect accommodation of his True and Essential Mind.
Then Ananda and all the great assembly were purified in body and mind. They acquired a profound understanding and a clear insight into the nature of the Lord Buddha’s Enlightenment and experience of Highest Samadhi. They had confidence like a man who was about to set forth on a most important business to a far off country, because they knew the route to go and return.  All the disciples in this great assembly realized their own Essence of Mind and proposed henceforth to live   remote from all worldly entanglements and taints, and to live continuously in the pure brightness of the Eye of Dharma.