Expressions of Practice: During spiritual practice, students will habitualize themselves to corresponding views and methods, resulting in corresponding insights, experiences, and states of realization. Expressing these is what we call "expressions of practice."
“The habituation of views" means repeatedly contemplating a particular view, which then evokes certain experiences. "The habituation of methods" refers to repeatedly practicing a specific technique, such as Vajrasattva, Mahamudra, or Mere Emptiness meditation, which then produces corresponding insights, sensations, and states of realization.
Insights are the fusion of intellectual understanding and experiential realization. For example, if we learn the concept "like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow" and repeatedly meditate on it until we genuinely experience it, we gain insight. When we then express this understanding in our own words, we're sharing our insight. Deep insights, such as those from enlightenment experiences where "the bottom of the bucket falls out" and naked awareness is revealed, can also be expressed as insights. We might want to articulate this experience without using textbook language, instead describing it in our own words - this too is an expression of insight, reflecting genuine realization.
Experiential sensations are the various subjective feelings that arise during practice.
States of realization refer to objective and relatively stable direct perceptions achieved through practice. For instance, a practitioner who consistently experiences emptiness in all situations, with little fluctuation, has achieved a state of realization. If the experience of emptiness is fleeting - disappearing after sleep or a phone call - it's merely an experiential feeling. Feelings will vanish.
Some terms and phrases are used to express insights, experiences, and states of realization. For example:
● Relaxing body and mind
● Abiding in meditation
● Focusing attention on the lower dantian
These are expressions of practice. “Relaxing body and mind” tells us how we should go about meditation. "Abiding in meditation" is about how to rest in meditation. "Focusing on the lower dantian" is also a technique that helps you gain meditative concentration. The key of these expressions of practice is to just do it, to put it into your practice.
Other expressions of practice include:
● Viewing everything as a dream
● Neither pursuing nor rejecting thoughts
● Not fixating on any single point
● Experiencing lightness of body and mind
● Dissolving afflictions
● Feeling peace and joy
● Perceiving phenomena as dream-like illusions
● Recognizing thoughts as they arise and letting them go
● Mind like a clear sky
● Mind like a clear mirror
These are all expressions of practice, achievable without great difficulty. However, expressions of practice can often overlap with expressions of realization. For instance, if I say "my mind is like a clear sky," meaning I maintain a thought-free state of mind, it's an expression of practice when I cultivate this during meditation. But if I say the same thing after meditation, describing my ongoing state of mind, it becomes an expression of realization. If I encounter various situations without making judgments, letting them pass like clouds in the sky, both during and outside of formal meditation, it becomes an expression of realization.
Therefore, whether a statement is an expression of practice, realization, or view depends on the context and the speaker's experience. It's important to distinguish between these categories.
Excerpted from: Cognition and Expression Part Three
