A Mother and Child Reunion
By Michael Erlewine
Thrangu Rinpoche taught:
“There is also a very practical use for the realization of co-emergent thought. When we experience great joy and pleasure and become strongly attached to it, or when we experience strong pain and are quite miserable, we give birth to disturbing emotions. These are painful and cause hardship and our minds become very unbalanced. At times like this, the teaching on co-emergent thought is particularly valuable. If we look directly at the pain we are experiencing and at the disturbing emotions, they will be pacified. And if we look directly at strong attachment, it will diminish. This is the real purpose of understanding and being able to practice this co-emergence of thought.”
End of Quote.
According to Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, co-emergent thought refers to the inseparable unity of thought and the nature of mind itself in the context of Mahamudra and Vajrayana Buddhist practice.
This concept points out that thoughts are not inherently separate from or incompatible with the mind’s true nature, which has been described as the indivisible unity of emptiness and clarity. Instead, thoughts are connate, and arise co-emergently, with this fundamental nature, meaning they are expressions of the mind’s inherent luminosity and emptiness.
Thrangu Rinpoche explains that when one looks directly at the nature of a thought in meditation, as taught in Mahamudra, a non-dual practice, one discovers that there is no substantial “thinker” (Me, Myself, and I) or separate entity behind the thought.
The thought itself is empty of inherent existence, yet it appears vividly within the mind’s clarity. If we can recognize this, thoughts cease to be obstacles to meditation and instead become part of the meditative state.
Rinpoche emphasizes that the ‘root’ of meditation consists in recognizing the nature of thought, rather than suppressing or eliminating it — trying to not-think. Once a thought’s nature is seen as empty yet cognizant or clear, thought itself reveals the mind’s true essence, often described as the “unity of empty cognizance” or “indivisible emptiness and clarity.”
Rinpoche has given elsewhere a metaphor of a child searching for their mother while already in her lap, which illustrates how the nature of mind (and thoughts) is always present, yet unrecognized until directly perceived through meditative insight.
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[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]
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As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.
