[From a teaching on Songs of Barway Dorje, Part 11 by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]
The first line of the second part says “If our various thoughts are not embraced by awareness.” The implication of this is that thoughts are going to continue to happen. Thoughts or the mind’s attribute; they are the mind’s ornament. They’re not going to stop, so we should not attempt to pin our practice or our spiritual development on some vain effort to stop thinking. That is not going to happen. Minds think. That’s what they do. So the only way to deal with thought — since thought is not only the mind’s ornament but also the source of our problems — is to embrace thought with awareness, which means recognition of the nature of thoughts.
The alternative is described in the second line. It says, “If our various thoughts are not embraced with awareness, we waste our lives by wandering in bewilderment.” Our thoughts fool us, they delude us, they bewilder us, when we remain unaware of their true nature. And so here what is being said is we have a choice: a choice to waste or not waste our lives. If we maintain an awareness that sees through thoughts, sees the nature of thoughts, we are not wasting our lives. But if we make no effort to do this, if we let our thoughts just dribble along and proliferate, then we are going to waste our lives.
