Thoughts No Different from Ultimate Reality

In a pellucid ocean, bubbles arise and dissolve again;
Just so, thoughts are no different from ultimate reality;
So don’t find fault; remain at ease.
Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
Don’t grasp—release it on the spot.
* * * * *
Mind is beyond the extremes of birth and death
The nature of mind, awareness,
Uses the five senses,
but does not stray from reality.

—Niguma: “Mahamudra as Spontaneous Liberation”
as quoted in Miranda Shaw’s
PASSIONATE ENLIGHTENMENT: WOMEN IN TANTRIC BUDDHISM (1994)
p. 88

[continuing]

Who speaks the sound of an echo?
Who paints the image in a mirror?
Where are the spectacles in a dream?
Nowhere at all—
That’s the nature of mind.
—Tree Leaf Woman

An enlightened women’s mind becomes a clear mirror of wisdom, accurately reflecting whatever appears. It’s very clarity dissolves the dualism of ‘mind in here’ and separate, concretely reifiable ‘things out there.’

Her verse draws attention to the difficulty of pinpointing the source and locus of the phenomenal world.
Even the mind is not the creator or location of experience, for it is no more an independent generator of experience than the external world. No single thing or person produces the sound of an echo or paints the images in a mirror.
They arise through a complex interplay of causes, and enlightened insight brings an awareness of this delicate, subtle web of interdependence.

in Miranda Shaw’s
PASSIONATE ENLIGHTENMENT: WOMEN IN TANTRIC BUDDHISM (1994)
pp. 90-91