Tricycle magazine’s Daily Dharma quote (see below) addresses the nature of reality.

It all comes from the mind.

I’ve been interested in the mind and how to use it for a long time. Learning about the 12 states of attention (taught by Nelson Zink) helped me recognize how habitual we often are in how we use our minds — and how we can regain access to neglected states.

One of the characteristics of every state of attention is whether it is internal or external. Some people are more externally focused, while others attend more to their internal experiences. Internal/external are metaprogram sorts in NLP and pertain to Enneagram types as well.

One of the directions to wholeness is to seek more experience with the awareness that you use less often. When an externally referenced person begins to notice more of her/his internal experience, it can be mind-blowing!

Notice how often your mind attends to external matters and how often it attends to your actual experience. Are you more internally or externally referenced?

Tibetan Buddhism weighs in on these states:

The Root of Everything

The mind is the root of everything. In the Tibetan teachings, it is called kun je gyalpo, “the king who is responsible for everything,” or in modern translation, “the universal ordering principle.” Mind is the creator of happiness and the creator of suffering, the creator of what we call samsara and the creator of what we call nirvana. As Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche used to say, “Samsara is mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections; nirvana is mind turned inwardly, recognizing its nature.”

-Sogyal Rinpoche, “A Mind Like a Clear Pool”

Yes, nothing exists outside awareness. Therefore, the mind is the root of everything.

Wikipedia says samsara is “the continuous but random drift of passions, desires, emotions, and experiences.” In other words, suffering.

Nirvana, on the other hand, is said to be beyond suffering, the mind free of attachment.

These are new connections for me today. Thank you for that, Tricycle!