Sound, Light, and Rays
The Six Lamps categorizes all phenomena as sound, light, or rays.
When the three objects of vision [sound, light, and rays] arise, if the moving mind realizes them to be self-vision, then one experiences the naked innate awareness through the visions, then one clearly realizes the unobscured base.
It also says:
When innate awareness is unified with light, all samsaric and nirvanic bodies manifest.
When innate awareness is unified with sound, all samsaric speech and the speech of the buddha arises.
When innate awareness is unified with the rays, all samsaric and nirvanic consciousness manifests.
If all phenomena, including the subjective sense of self, are recognized as an empty display of space and light, one is free. Then whatever arises is simply an ornament of pure being.
If phenomena, including the sense of self, are reacted to as if they were independent, separate entities or objects, one is lost.
When sound manifests in awareness it is fundamentally pure sound. In the first moment of experience, sound is not divided from the subject. When sound is taken to be an external object of a subject, it is misunderstood as having an independent existence. Then meaning is projected upon it. For example, when we are very young, we hear someone speaking but do not experience it as something separate from us.
Later, we learn the language and then project meaning into the sounds, but we believe that the meaning is external to us. Yet, when we encounter a foreign language, there is no meaning in it until we learn enough to project meaning into it. This is true for all sound; at first it is only sound, then we learn to project meaning on it. Sounds become words or a cat in the underbrush or a car in the distance. We hear an unknown sound and ask what it is. We get an answer, and the next time the sound arises we hear it less and think it more.
All concepts we are capable of thinking can manifest in speech. From this, samsaric and nirvanic speech arise. Samsaric speech is impure speech. It is not only speech that hurts, such as angry speech, or that misleads, such as deceitful speech, but also ordinary speech that supports a dualistic view. Nirvanic speech is the speech of the buddhas. It is said that the speech of a buddha is so powerful and pure that it will be understood even by people who ordinarily understand different languages.
When we abide in non-dual awareness, we understand language while maintaining a strong connection to the pure basis of sound.
For example, someone says, “I don’t want to see you ever again.” Usually, these words evoke pain or anger although in their essence they are simply pure sound. When we’re identified with a narrow self, we project meaning, feel rejected, and suffer.
When we abide in rigpa, we are not identified with a personal self and thus there is no suffering. The words are understood but they simply dissolve in awareness; they do not leave grief or anger in their passage. Their basic nature is pure and they dissolve back into that purity. Again, this doesn’t mean that we are unable to talk when abiding in rigpa—we are able to respond to experience appropriately and fully, without being completely driven by karmic habit.
Light is simply the elemental energy that I have been writing about. When we combine it with awareness it reveals form. We learn to understand forms in the same way that we learn to understand language. We project meaning onto the sensual experience of sight. We can see the form of the buddha and also see forms toward which we feel violent aversion or desperate longing. But fundamentally, our experience of form is an experience of light.
In the context of the above verse, the rays are beings and objects. In the same way that the light that fills the whole sky and the rays of the sun are the same light seen in different conditions, the awareness of sentient beings is pure primordial awareness manifesting as apparently individual entities.
If we are deluded about our own nature, we are deluded about everything. We are lost in samsara, wandering, guided by karmic dispositions. What we encounter is a projection of our own minds, but we believe it to be something independent that arises on its own. This dualism leads to attraction or aversion and the result is that the elements in our personal dimension become unbalanced.