What we are attempting to do in the practice of meditation is search for and discover our mind. So as explained here in our text [Secret Path of Unity by Sonam Zangpo], we search for the mind externally, outside ourselves. And then we search for the mind internally, within ourselves. When it’s said that we discover that the mind is not outside of us and the mind is not inside of us, it might be more proper to say that we discover that there is nowhere that the mind isn’t. We discover that no matter how far we think we’re looking away, how far we think away from our mind we’re going, we’re not going away from our mind. No matter how far outside ourselves we look for the mind, it’s still just the mind looking at and looking for the mind. No matter where the raven flies off the ship, no matter what direction it goes, no matter how high or how far it flies, it will always return to its origin. In fact in the case of the mind, it never actually leaves; it never actually goes anywhere, no matter where it looks. And this is what is meant when our text says: “When you discover that the mind is not outside you, nor inside you, then that discovery causes the mind to turn in on itself.” Because the mind is everywhere, then the mind has nowhere to go but itself.
Now our minds do indeed function in several ways. Our minds function using our six faculties to experience the six objects of those respective faculties. But our minds do not dwell exclusively within any one of those faculties, nor within any one of their objects.
The experience that none of these things are outside of the mind, that none of them are the exclusive dwelling of the mind, is what is meant when Rangjung Dorje [the Third Karmapa] wrote: “Confidence in the view is the resolution of doubts or misapprehensions about the ground, about the mind itself.” This resolution occurs when you recognize that everything is mind.
The best way we can meditate is to rest in that recognition without distraction. “Without distraction” means, finally, without any intentional focus or directedness or direction or idea. From the point of view of truly undistracted meditation, all other meditation is the entertainment of some kind of idea or some kind of concept about meditation. For example as soon as we think, “I am meditating very well! I am a great meditator!,” that’s not meditation, that’s thinking about meditation. So the point of meditation is to be free from ideas about meditation. And the best conduct is to act and live in such a way that it brings progress to all aspects of meditation.
[From a teaching on Secret Path of Unity by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]