A New Earth (Engaging with Enlightened Awareness Within)

Human beings “behaving like beasts of burden” is one of the oldest metaphors in Tibetan Buddha‑Dharma for how ignorance, craving, and clinging make us carry loads that were never ours, (in other words, this arises through habitually engaging in mistaken misidentification attachment). The following will consider three interwoven strands:

1. How samsaric conditioning makes humans act in ways that obscure their awakened nature,
2. How an enlightened society would look if awareness guided action,
3. How the Two Truths explain this tension between delusion and awakening.

1. How humans become “beasts of burden” in Dharma terms

The image appears in many Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna commentaries: beings bent under the weight of their own mental afflictions, driven by impulses they mistake for freedom.

The burdens we carry

• Attachment to bodily desires — pleasure, comfort, stimulation, status, appearance. These become reins that pull us around.
• Attachment to mental desires — identity, opinions, narratives, self‑importance, being right, being seen.
• Habitual reactivity — anger, fear, craving, jealousy, pride. These become the yoke.

In Tibetan terms, this is the activity of kleshas (nyon mongs) and karma (las). The mind that is not yet awakened to the true nature of reality follows karmic- (action of: body, speech and mind) patterns of cause, conditions and effect. *This is why engaging as early in one’s life in meditative action and meditation is such a foundational habit to develop). The tragedy is not that humans are sinful (negative) or flawed, but that they forget their nature and live as if they were pack animals driven by instinct.


Components of Mind

(A subsequent article will look at the components of mind: aggregates, elements and afflictive emotions (- which is why the wheel of suffering through the six mental states of delusion continues to turn since beginningless time until the present). A result of awareness not recognising its true empty-aware nature, until meeting with the favourable conditions for understanding and engaging in an awareness path to awakening. A human rebirth with its precious freedoms and endowments is one such condition, and to have the immeasurable blessed fortune of meeting with the dharma- study and practice of science of reality another.

Why this happens

• Ignorance (avidyā / ma rig pa): the root confusion that mistakes the constructed self for something solid.
• Dualistic fixation: “I must protect me from others.”
• Cultural conditioning: societies built on competition, scarcity, and fear reinforce the illusion.

From this perspective, humans aren’t “bad”; they are asleep, carrying loads they don’t realise they can put down.

In today’s world in this human realm, (which is a desire realm) engaging further in over stimulation-attachment which arises from the mistaken belief in the inherent existence of a permanent, unchanging self, which is merely an imputed label placed on body and mind.

In times of Kaliyuga as can be seen the intense self-clinging, (both outer and inner in the mind), brings forth great suffering, when mind is not otherwise introduced to, and schooled in awareness. The intense clinging leads to fighting and dispute. The clinging creates dualistic reality, (on the relative/ conventional level, self-clinging experience in the mind), which is different to the true nature of non-dual reality.

2. What enlightened action and an awakened society look like

Tibetan Dharma often describes an enlightened society not as utopian perfection but as a collective shift in perception.

Features of an awakened society

• Interdependence recognised as fact, not philosophy People act knowing that harming another harms oneself.
• Compassion as the default motivation Not sentimental compassion, but the fierce clarity of bodhicitta. (Engaging in practices of the awakening mind for the benefit of self and other, realising that ignorance (unawareness) and self-clinging attachment is the root of suffering and continued rebirth in cyclic existence).
• Ethics arising from awareness, not rules When the mind is clear, harmful actions naturally fall away. Ethics are there to remind us of our shared humanity with one-another; which is why we now have the opportunity we do. All sentient beings have seen our mother/ father in one life-form or the other since time without beginning, (time is a human concept).
• Collective humility A society that knows it is learning, not performing enlightenment.

This is close to what others in this age have termed a “new earth”: not a new planet, but a new way of seeing the one we already inhabit. The earth and all phenomena is actually spiritual in nature.

What enlightened action looks like in daily life

• Responding rather than reacting.
• Acting from spaciousness (and connected awareness) rather than fear. For example taking care of the natural law of phenomena in one’s indoor room and generating qualities to benefit others with active practice of loving-kindness, compassion and awareness wisdom arising from this ongoing warmness cultivation inside. Happiness is cultivated from inside the mind.
• Seeing others as subjects, not objects. An opportunity to engage in an awareness vehicle of practice, (cutting mistaken attachment to self-clinging as we go, (as transmigrators, through this life).
• Letting go of the need to win, dominate, or defend a fixed identity. The object is to wake up. Claim one’s inner awareness as we go and overcome one’s inner negative self-clinging attachments.
• Choosing generosity over accumulation. This antidotes our self-clinging load of repeated rebirth in samsara (suffering).

This is not passive. It is active non‑harm, active clarity, active compassion.

3. The Two Truths: why humans appear deluded yet are already free

The above question points to the heart of Madhyamaka and Dzogchen: the tension between relative truth and ultimate truth. The ultimate truth however is to be realised . First through introduction, seeds of this recognition planted in the mindstream, then through further familiarisation and practice (habituation) in a consistent vehicle of awareness practice leading to a direct perception of the true nature of reality.

Relative truth (kun rdzob bden pa)

This is the world of:

• duality
• cause and effect
• emotions
• identities
• social structures
• suffering and confusion

On this level, humans do behave like beasts of burden because they believe the burdens are real, solid, and personal.

Ultimate truth (don dam bden pa)

This is the world of:

• emptiness (śūnyatā)
• selflessness (anātman)
• nondual awareness
• luminous clarity (rigpa)
• the inseparability of appearance and emptiness

On this level, there is no burden, no carrier, no one to be enslaved, and no one to be liberated.

How the Two Truths work together

• On the relative level, we practise ethics, meditation, compassion, and wisdom.
• On the ultimate level, we recognise that the one who practises is empty, the practice is empty, and the result is empty.

This is not nihilism. It is freedom.

The Two Truths explain why:

• humans seem trapped,
• yet their nature is already free.

4. Bringing it together: why we fall into delusion and how we rise from it

The human condition in Tibetan Dharma is a paradox:

• We behave like beasts of burden because we forget our nature.
• We can create an enlightened society because our nature was never lost.

The path is not about becoming something new; it is about remembering.

The shift from burdened to awakened being

• From grasping → to spaciousness
• From self‑fixation → to interdependence
• From reactivity → to awareness
• From survival mode → to compassionate presence
• From duality → to nondual clarity

This is the movement from samsara to nirvana, which are not two places but two ways of perceiving the same reality.

5. A question to deepen your own exploration

When you look at your own experience, where do you most clearly feel the “beast of burden” conditioning — and where do you already sense the luminous, unburdened nature shining through?