Just a nyam?

Apprentice I had an interesting experience recently.  I sat in our dining room looking out into a glowering dark blue sky—practising the suspending of the senses.  Then I had a thought, ‘This is the natural state!’ Then I thought more about it . . .

Lamas Always a mistake.

Apprentice  . . . but I could not explain why I thought that.

Lamas Good. Explanations are conceptual mind and one has to be a Buddha to integrate rigpa with conceptual mind.

Apprentice All that is left from this ‘experience’ is some kind of ‘felt knowledge’ that this must be it. Maybe this was just a nyam.

Lamas Maybe—but also the ‘nyam’ can be ‘the moment later’, when the recognition dawns that it was extraordinarily ordinary and the words fail. You know  . . . we have given nyams a bad press in our teachings over the years, and so one is inclined to say ‘just a nyam’, but those who do not practise (or who do not practise sufficiently) never experience nyams. We say ‘only a nyam’ because a nyam is not the non-dual state, but one can experience the non-dual state momentarily, and the afterglow of that is called a nyam.  This does not detract from there having been a fleeting glimpse of the non-dual state.