Method 73 · VBT · Reps Centering §73 · Book of Secrets, discourse 49
In summer when you see the entire sky endlessly clear, enter such clarity.
Mind cannot be cleared — it IS confusion by nature. Consciousness is the sky; thoughts are clouds. This technique shifts focus from clouds to sky, and the clouds thin on their own.
Concrete practice: Lie on your back outdoors and stare into an actual clear summer sky. Do not blink — even when eyes ache and tears come; blinking keeps the thought-stream alive. Forty minutes minimum; less does not penetrate.
Do not think about the sky (no poems, no concepts, no commentary). Instead stare outward as if searching for the boundary — push further and further. That outward movement is itself what breaks the inner wall.
What you see immediately reflects inside: the boundless sky dissolves your own sense of boundary. You enter the sky; the sky enters you. When outer and inner sky meet, the mind vanishes — past and future (which are the mind) disappear, and only the present remains.
Close the eyes only after oneness is felt (~40 minutes); you will then see the inner sky with lids shut. No need to continue staring.
No clear sky available: close eyes, shift focus from thoughts to the space in which thoughts move — the inner sky. Treat thoughts as traffic; watch the street, not the vehicles.
Be passive, feminine, allowing — nothing can be forced here. Aggression closes the door; the sky penetrates only when you stop attacking.
From Q&A (Q3): the more the mind grows the more confused it becomes, yet only a very mature, developed mind can even recognise its own confusion — and that recognition is what makes meditation possible. Develop the mind fully in order to lose it.
Where it reappears
variantBuddhism (Tibetan — Dzogchen, Nyingman/Bön) · Nam mkha' ar gtad — sky-gazing as a semdzin / pointing-out support for recognizing rigpaSame gesture: physically gaze into the actual cloudless open sky as a direct, non-metaphorical vehicle (not contemplating an idea of sky). Same locus: the empty open sky itself, free of center, edge, inside or outside. Same mechanism: looking into outer boundlessness and finding no boundary collapses the inner sense of a bounded self, and awareness mingles with space (mind and sky recognized as one). Same aim: the subject/object wall dissolves and consciousness is seen as sky-like, unbounded, present. Variant rather than equivalent because VBT 73 adds forceful non-blinking-until-tears and an active outward 'push to find the edge,' whereas the Dzogchen instruction tends toward relaxed open resting and recognition through non-finding — an intensity/framing twist within the identical technique.
variantBuddhism (Tibetan — Mahamudra, Kagyu) · Sky practice / mingling mind with space (Thrangu Rinpoche, Trungpa) — open sky-gazing to recognize the mind's natureSame gesture (gazing into open clear sky as direct support), same locus (the boundless sky itself, not an object in it), same mechanism (the sky's absence of center and boundary is mirrored inward, dissolving the felt boundary between inner and outer until outer and inner sky merge), and same aim (the bounded self collapses and the mind's own sky-like, boundless nature is recognized; only open awareness remains). The match preserves VBT 73's specific subtlety that the outer sky actively dissolves the inner wall, rather than serving as a poetic image. Variant: VBT's prescribed posture, unblinking endurance, and active outward searching are intensity twists on the same essential method.
equivalentJiddu Krishnamurti · Natural silence of the mind — not achieved by effortVBT #73: 'Mind cannot be cleared — it IS confusion by nature... This technique shifts focus from clouds to sky, and the clouds thin on their own,' adding 'Be passive, feminine, allowing — nothing can be forced here. Aggression closes the door.' K insisted silence cannot be manufactured by will or technique; it comes uninvited when thought is understood and one ceases fighting it. #73's mechanism — do not try to still thought, shift to the space in which thought moves and it subsides on its own; forcing only closes the door — is K's exact account of how silence arises. Distinct from #62 (choiceless allowing) in that #73 names the effortless, self-arising character of the silence.