Eleven Ways of Plying Your Wits

Using your wits in a thorough-going search
Means searching your mind for an essence of some kind
Existing or not, and the rest as they come up
Not finding these, it’s time to loosen up

Using your wits in examining specifics
You analyze for shape and hue and such
For rising, staying, going, and a base for it all
Not finding these, it’s time to loosen up

Using your wits in minute analysis
Means the agent of the search is analyzed
Analyze the searching mind for essence of some kind
Not finding these, it’s time to loosen up

By searching, examining, and analyzing well
You verify that mind is nature free
You’re sure that phenomena are only names
You deepen out and settle in reality

The essence of the settled mind itself—
By seeking it you realize what it is
Because it is a higher truth that’s seen
The proper name for it, vipashyanā

There is mind that’s settled in natural space
And there’s settled mind’s essence understood
With no essential difference between these two
Shamatha-vipashyanā go hand in hand

To sharpen up your native wit with clarity
When laxity and dullness are in the air
Give your mind a jolt of clarity
And trigger agitation as a way to keep your wits

To get your wits together in the state of nonthought
When mind projects and agitation agitates
Look with naked eyes into the essence of that
And loosen up right in the flow of natural space

To bring your wits to bear on equanimity
When dullness is no more and agitation gone
You settle in a space of open clarity
Your search, examination, and analysis are done

When you simply never get out of touch any more
With this yoga that connects with profound lifestyle
And your practice is connected up with everything you do
This is native sanity that never quits

Within a samādhi so deep as this is deep
Mind is so intensely brought to bear
Wandering will find no way of wandering
You will wander no more from your native wit

While teaching the Ocean of Definitive Meaning, Teaching Session 43 and Meditation Session 36, composed by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche. Translated and set to music by Jim Scott.