Ground, Path, and Fruition

§rounc{, Patti, anc[:fruition A MANUAL OF THE TEACHINGS OF TSOKNYI RINPOCHE ON MIND AND MIND ESSENCE

BY LOTSAWA TONY DUFF PADMA KARPO TRANSLATIONS

T his book is not intended for public distribution due to the nature of the teachings contained in it. For enquiries regarding permission to reproduce this book or any portion of it, or to obtain further books, please write to the given address or contact the author via internet and e-mail. Copyright© 2010 Tony Duff. All rights reserved. No portion

of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher. Janson typeface with diacritical marks Designed and created by Tony Duff T ibetan Computer Company http://www.tibet.dk/tcc First edition, 17 January 2006.

Second edition, April 2010 ISBN: 978-9937-8244-8-4

Produced, Printed, and Published by Padma Karpo Translation Committee

P.O. Box 4957 Kathmandu NEPAL

Web-site and e-mail contact through: http://www.tibet.dk/pktc or search Padma Karpo Translation Committee on the web.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

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lX

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PART I: GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION OF MAHAMUDRA AND DzoGCHEN

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PART II: VIEW, MEDITATION, AND CoNDUCT OF MAHAMUDRA. AND DzoGCHEN

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PART III: GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION OF DzoGPA CHENPO

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GLOSSARY

189

SuPPORTs FOR STUDY

20 1

INDEX

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PREFACE

T he first Tsoknyi Rinpoche lived in the mid-1800's i n Nangchen, Eastern Tibet and was renowned as a particularly di­ ligent meditator who attained to a high level of realization. He was called Drubwang Tsoknyi, which literally means "Leader over all other practitioners"-we would say, "Practitioner of practitioners"-because of this. He and his subsequent incarna­ tions have been mainstays of the East-Tibetan Drukpa Kagyu tradition and are also holders of the Ratna Lingpa lineage of the Nyingma tradition. The current Tsolmyi Rinpoche is the third in the line. He was trained in the Drukpa Kagyu tradition under Khamtrul Rin­ poche from an early age and later studied and practised exten­ sively under Adeu Rinpoche, who is one of the foremost Drukpa Kagyu masters of the East Tibetan Drukpa Kagyu. The current Tsolmyi Rinpoche, like his predecessors, is considered to be an emanation of Ratna Lingpa, and has a special connection with the revelations of Ratna Lingpa. In addition to that, as one of the sons of the great master of the Nyingma Dzogchen tradi­ tion, Tullru Ugyen Rinpoche, he is also a holder of the Chogling New Treasure teachings and emphasizes them when teaching. Tsolmyi Rinpoche heads a monastery in Nepal in conjunction with his brother, Mingyur Rinpoche, has a very large nunnery in Tibet called Gechag Gonpa, a smaller nunnery in Mustang, and a foundation in the United States called "Pundarika Faun-

v

Vl

PREFACE

dation". Tsoknyi Rinpoche has travelled the world extensively since 1991 and has taught dharma to many people in many pla­ ces during that time. His disciples are currently building a seat and retreat centre for him in Crestone, Colorado, in the United States. Lotsawa Tony is an Australian who, at an early age, made a lifetime commitment to Buddhist practice. He went to Asia in 1972, while studying for a Ph.D. in molecular biology. He met the Buddhist teachings there and has committed his life to Bud­ dhist study and practice from that time on. Tony has an unusu­ ally broad perspective on study and practice. As a student of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa, he spent several years as a Gelugpa monk during the founding years of Chenrezig Institute, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Australia. During that time he received the complete teachings of the Kadampa system and practised extensively in retreat. Later, after receiving teachings from Khyentse Rinpoche, he moved to the United States where he spent twelve years studying and practising the Karma Kagyu, Nyingma, and Shambhala teachings under Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Tsoknyi Rinpoche, on a visit to the United States in 1992, came to Tony and asked him to come to Nepal, specifi­ cally to be his personal translator. Tony moved to Nepal shortly after that and, during many years of very close association with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, received the teachings of the Drukpa Kagyu and Nyingma traditions. Since his days as a monk, Tony has been deeply involved in translation work and has often been invited to teach the Buddha dharma at various levels and in vari­ ous places. Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Lotsawa Tony worked together closely during the whole of the 1990's and accomplished many major dharma works during that time. Amongst other things, Tsoknyi Rinpoche travelled the world each year, presenting Buddha dharma to Western students for about half the year. Lotsawa Tony went everywhere with him, translating. They were well known for their work together, with Tsoknyi Rinpo-

PREFACE

vii

che's brilliant presentations of Dzogchen dharma being passed on to the students through Tony's translation skills and clarity of explanation. This book is part of that work and is a good example of how beneficial their collaboration can be.

INTRODUCTION

Tsoknyi Rinpoche approached me, his translator, in 1994 an d explained that, although he had been teaching in the West for a few years, his students had not grasped the tenets of the teaching very well. He asked me to create a book of his teach­ ings that would show the tenets and asked specifically for a ground, path, and fruition presentation. I selected three sets of his teachings for the purpose. The first gave extensive ground, path, and fruition teachings from both Kagyu Mahamudra and Nyingma Dzogchen perspectives. The second gave extensive instructions on the path from both perspectives. The third gave an extensive presentation just of the Dzogchen path. The selections chosen and the arrange­ ments made of the teachings in them make the book into a manual both of the theory and practice of Dzogchen that can be used by students ofTsoknyi Rinpoche or others who are study­ ing and practising the same material. AB

with many other teachers who have non-Tibetan stu­ dents, Tsoknyi Rinpoche's teaching style has changed over the years. The teachings here represent the way that he taught when he first started teaching in the West. It is a very tradi­ tional style in which the full technical vocabulary of Buddhist thought is used to convey great meaning in a small space. Stu­ dents should not be put off by the technical terms. To the

IX

X

INTRODUCTION

contrary, it was Tsoknyi Rinpoche's wish that this book would help his students to become more conversant with the technical language and how it is used. I can say through personal experi­ ence of many years now that, when you learn this vocabulary and the way of using it, you end up with a mental guide that always comes back to you in meditation, suddenly giving you the instructions you need, all in the most correct and precise way. I have noticed that many Westerners do not get this particular profit from the teaching. It is a great loss. It happens because the translators often do not or cannot emphasize this aspect and the students are not pressed or will not allow themselves to be pressed to learn a rigorous technical vocabulary used in a rigor­ ous way. In short, it is good to pay attention to the technical vocabulary, learn it, and learn how it is used. The Value of Ground, Path, and Fruition

Ground, path, and fruition is a type of logic used to under­ stand a whole subject clearly. It can be applied to anything at all. \Vhen you use it, you look for the basic situation that exists and that is called the ground. You then look for the means to work with that ground, and that is called the path. The result that comes from using the method in relation to the ground is called the fruition. In Tibetan Buddhist teachings, ground, path, and fruition logic is the tool used to present the theory of a body of teaching so that the practitioners can comprehend the whole teaching properly. Ground, path, and fruition can be applied to any level of teaching and each teaching will have its own particular grou­ nd, path, and fruition logic. For example, there is the ground, path, and fruition of the Lesser Vehicle, of the Greater Vehicle, and the Vajra Vehicle1• And then, within each one of those,

1 Skt. Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana respectively.

The Buddha's (continued . ..)

INTRODUCTION

xi

there are many levels of presentation of dharma, and each one has its own, corresponding, ground, path, and fruition. For example, within the Lesser Vehicle there is the path of the shravakas and of the pratyekabuddhas. Each has its own ground,

\ . . continued) basic teachings, which were for the purpose only of a personal emanci­ pation, were called the Lesser Vehicle in ancient India. This was done to distinguish them from the more far-reaching teachings that were taught for the purpose of the complete enlightenment of a full buddha and which were thus called the Greater Vehicle. Followers of the Les­ ser Vehicle teachings have traditionally tried to drag down the Greater Vehicle teachings. In modern times, a habit has appeared amongst Western students of calling the Lesser Vehicle teachings "Theravada" . They get upset when these teachings are called the Lesser Vehicle teachings and insist that their school is "Theravada" not "Hinayana". In fact, the Theravada are one of the eighteen sub-schools of the Hina­ yana that appeared in India and were well known there. No matter what other name you give them, they are Lesser Vehicle and not Greater Vehicle teachings. There is good reason for stating this. The higher teachings of the Vajra Vehicle cannot be understood by avoiding the Mahayana. Some "Theravada" followers I have met hear the Mahamudra or Dzogchen teachings and then seem to think that they can maintain a Hinayana view and continue to be "Theravadins" as they so vigorously proclaim, while practising the Vajra Vehicle. That is simply not possible. One reason is that the view of the Vajra Vehicle is based on an emptiness not discussed in the Lesser Vehicle but only in the Greater Vehicle. Similarly there is the issue that the Vajra Vehicle is based in bodhichit­ ta, which is also not mentioned in the Lesser Vehicle but only in the Greater Vehicle. This book is a presentation of the ground, path, and fruition of the Vajra Vehicle from beginning to end. It cannot be understood through the ground, path, and fruition of the Lesser Vehicle but demands that one has studied, understood, and taken up the view of the Greater Vehicle. In that case, one has graduated to a Greater Vehicle practitioner and is no longer a Lesser Vehicle practi­ tioner.

INTRODUCTION

xii

path, and fruition and by studying it you come to know the details of that journey and how it works. In general then, when­ ever you want to gain a clear understanding of any level of the teachings of the Buddha, if you approach it by understanding its ground first, then its path, then its fruition, that will give you a way to gain a very clear understanding of that whole teaching. This is why Tsoknyi Rinpoche wanted a book on ground, path, and fruition for his students. The Path is Classified into View, Meditation, and Conduct

After the tenets of a system have been comprehended using the ground, path, and fruition logic, a person needs all of the practical instructions that go with the path section. These are the instructions on how to travel the journey from beginning to end. These instructions are often presented within the frame­ work of another set of categories called "view, meditation, and conduct". Just as ground, path, and fruition is applied to an en­ tire body of teaching as a way of summing it up for easy compre­ hension, so view, meditation, and conduct is a way of presenting the path component of ground, path, and fruition so that it can easily be comprehended. Mahamudra and Dzogchen

A number of systems of Mahamudra teachings came to Tibet from India. The most commonly known, coming from Shantipa, goes through a gradual path to enlightenment in a series of four yogas, called the Four Yogas ofMahamudra. This system starts with dualistic mind and ends with the fruition level practice. There is another system of Mahamudra which presents the fruition level directly. It is called "Essence Mahamudra". The teachings of the Dzogchen Vehicle have several levels of teaching. In Tibet, the Dzogchen teaching that was most practised was the innermost level of Dzogchen called "Nying -

INTRODUCTION

Xlll

thig". This innermost level has two sub-divisions, called "Thregcho" and "Tho gal" which translate into "Thorough Cut" and "Direct Crossing" respectively. Very few teachers will give the Direct Crossing teaching; it is the highest teaching available in the human realm and is not for everyone. The Thorough Cut teaching also is a very high teaching and was traditionally kept quite secret. It is this teaching that most non-Tibetan dharma practitioners hear of these days and then refer to as "Dzogchen". This book presents the teachings of Essence Mahamudra an d Thorough Cut Dzogchen. The Importance of Upadesha

"Oral instruction" 2 was a general term in India and Tibet for any type of instruction given verbally, spiritual or otherwise. Accordingly, "oral instructions" in the Tibetan Buddhist system does not necessarily refer to something special, as is often thou­ ght these days, rather, it simply means instructions passed on verbally. In our Buddhist tradition, there are many types of oral instruction, each with its own, particular name. The most special kind of oral instruction of all is called "upadesha" in Sanskrit and "man ngag" in Tibetan. The name is often trans­ lated as "oral instructions" but they are much more than that. They are, literally, the "foremost of oral instructions", "the oral instructions at the head of all others". They are the most special type of instruction that can be found anywhere because they have the capacity to actually change the student's mind and bring the student to the teacher's level. One of the features of Essence Mahamudra and Thorough Cut Dzogchen is that the teaching is given through this most special type of oral instruc­ tion called "upadesha" .

2 Tib. gdam ngag

XIV

INTRODUCTION

This book presents the ground, path, and fruition of Essence Mahamudra and Thorough Cut Dzogchen. In addition, to make the path instructions as clear as possible, it further shows the path using view, meditation, and conduct. However, that is still not enough because the path instructions for Essence Maha­ mudra and Thorough Cut Dzogchen are mainly shown through upadesha. Therefore, I have arranged the book to highlight the upadesha instructions for these practices as clearly as possible. Each teaching has been properly divided into ground, path, and fruition, and the path shown in each teaching has been pro­ perly divided into view, meditation, and conduct. Each of the view, meditation, and conduct sections sets out its information according to the profound upadesha connected with it. In addition, sections titled, "Path: Upadesha Instructions" have been added which contain the special upadesha of these systems, as taught by Tsoknyi Rinpoche. They have been arranged so that they augment the basic teachings exactly as is done when these teachings are given. The particular way that I have done it follows what I learned from Tsoknyi Rinpoche during the many years that I translated for him and his students. Because of it, I am sure that this book will be a real manual for anyone wanting to practise these teachings. I hope that it will be a further step towards non-Tibetan students being able to get a full grasp of these systems of teaching and the instructions that go with them. Two Upadesha Show the Path Contained in this Book

To give you an example of how useful upadesha are and how they can be taken and used to great advantage by a practitioner, here are two important upadesha that show the whole path of these two systems of teaching. The first says, " Recognize the view; Train up the liveliness;

INTRODUCTION

XV

Gain the finish." First you have to recognize the view not conceptually but in direct perception. This is done with the help of your guru, who introduces you to the view in direct perception and helps you to recognize it after that. You do have to recognize that view and become certain of it before you can proceed. To recognize the view means that you have recognized what is called "rigpa", your own mind of enlightenment. Rigpa is a key term in both Es­ sence Mahamudra and the Thorough Cut. It is the name for what you actually recognize when you recognize the view. These days, "rigpa" is often called "awareness" in English but it is much more than that. It is the dynamic, knowing part of the mind. It is the quality of knowing, the quality of seeing clearly. Rather than try to translate it, I always call it "rigpa". Some people think that "rigpa" is only used in the Dzogchen system. That is not so. Gampopa, the great forefather in the Kagyu Mahamudra system, gave nearly all of his teachings on Mahamudra to his disciples using exactly this word. For exam­ ple, he said to Dusum Khyenpa, the first Karmapa: "When self-knowing rigpa is a not-stopped clarity that is without birth or cessation, that is luminosity functioning in the mode referred to as "all dharmas are mind." These days in the Kagyu system another word is used for rigpa. It is "tha mal gyi shaypa". That term is used heavily in the teachings in here that were given to large assemblies of Kagyu­ Nyingma practitioners. However, the meaning is the same as for rigpa. Tha mal gyi shaypa was translated as "ordinary mind" by Trungpa Rinpoche's students, however, it is important to note that "ordinary" does not mean common in the sense of not special but specifically means common in the sense that it is your nature, it is the type of awareness that is the thread that is

xvi

INTRODUCTION

common to all of your experience. "Ordinary" is actually a mistranslation. When you first recognize the rigpa within you, the ability of that rigpa will not be so strong, so it has to be trained up. In other words, you have to train your ability at being enlightened. The training is done through the practices of meditation and conduct. If you work at that training, you will finally gain the end of the path. The end of the path is that your rigpa has become full-blown and is the same as the all-knowing wisdom of a buddha. At that time, you h ave all of the qualities of en­ lightenment. The second upadesha sums up the training. It goes, " First, recognize the view; Next, preserve the state with meditation; Finally, by-pass with conduct." This means that the training process consists of recognizing the view whenever it has been lost. That is immediately followed by preserving the state of the view that comes from that recogni­ tion. Preserving the state is how the practice of meditation is described and done in these systems and there are many instruc­ tions connected with it. A large number of them are given in this book. In all lower teachings, when your meditation is fin­ ished, you enter the conduct, which means that you do the various things that you are instructed to do when not meditat­ ing. Here, though, the final step is that, when you do lose the state and fall into distraction, you must leap over the dualistic mind of cyclic existence, by-passing it immediately by returning to the state of meditation again. That means you start the process over again at the step of recognizing the view. These two up a desha sum up, in a few words and in easy to remember formulae, the entire, main training of the path. But more than that, they contain the blessing of the lineage. When you hear this kind of instruction from your own guru, the words

INTRODUCTION

XVII

go deep and become a means by which you can be propelled right into the state, just by remembering the words. That is the power of the upade§ha style of instruction. Using the Upadesha in this Book

The upadeshas of the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist systems were often passed on in pithy verse or prose which easily goes into the mind and comes back when needed. You will find quite a few of these in this book. In each case, I have tried to translate them so that they retain the flavour and "punch" of the originals. You would do well to emulate the Tibetans and the Indians before them who committed these to memory. You might also consider posting them on the wall of your room. I suppose, in modern American style, you might post them on the door of the kitchen 'fridge, though, as mentioned below, these are secret and should not be shown to others who are not properly involved. Whichever method you use, ifyou are practising these teachings, try to make these pithy instructions part of your life; they will definitely inform and aid your practice! The Need for Secrecy In

general, the teachings in here contain the profound ins­ tructions ofMahamudra and Dzogchen practice. For this reas­ on alone, the book is not published on the bookstands. It is available only to students who have heard these teachings in person, which is the only way that these teachings should be presented, according to the seals of secrecy placed on them by the teaching itself. In particular, the profound upadesha of Mahamudra and Dzogchen practice are contained here. They are very special, very secret. If these instructions are bandied about, which is one thing that happens when books containing them are published in the open marketplace, the instructions in them lose their power for everyone and even the system of teaching loses its

xviii

INTRODUCTION

ability to bring students into the reality that it is designed to do. Therefore, as Tsoknyi Rinpoche clearly states every time he gives these teachings, you have the obligation not to disseminate the material in this book and not to discuss it except with others who have already had the oral teaching. It is in your hands. If you protect these profound instructions, they will keep their power for some time yet, and others will be able to benefit from them. If not, they will soon be lost. Further Study

Padma Karpo Translation Committee has amassed a wide range of materials to help those who are studying this and related topics. Please see the chapter "Supports for Study" at the end of the book for all the details.

May there be goodness! Tony Duff, Swayambunath, Nepal I 7th January, 2 006

PART I GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION OF MAHAMUDRA AND DZOGCHEN

MOTIVATION

Whatever dharma practice you are undertaking, it is import­ ant to start by developing a motivation. This is so because the outcome of practice depends on the intention behind it. And moreover, since our entire Buddhist teaching is based on con­ necting with mind, it is necessary to have a pure intention of mind. What kind of pure intention do you need? You should arou­ se the intention to meditate, listen to the dharma, and so on, in order to pacify the afflictions-passion, aggression, and delu­ sion-in your own mind-stream and then on the basis of having done that, in order to benefit other sentient beings. Accord­ ingly, since you are now going to listen to the dharma, you should arouse that kind of intention and then listen to the dhar­ ma.

3

THE GROUND

It is important, .before explaining meditation, to understand ground, path, and fruition. Whenever our teacher the Perfect, Complete Buddha turned the wheel of dharma, his teaching was always in connection with the mind. Accordingly, the explana­ tions of ground, of path, and of fruition in the Buddhist system are explanations given in relation to mind. We talk about the ground situation first because it allows us to understand our present situation. The situation for all of us sentient beings is that we have the sugatagarbha, the birthplace ofbuddhahood, in our mind-streams right now but, even though all of us have this essence of buddhahood within us, we are not buddhas. Why is this? The reason is that confusion has arisen in us and this confusion obscures our nature of enlightenment. Therefore, the first thing to understand about this confusion is-where it comes from, what it is, and so forth. There are various explanations of confusion in the siitra tradition, one according to the view of the Mahamudra tradi­ tion, and one according to the view of the Dzogchen tradition. Here, I will explain the latter two. Neither one says much about this from the point of view of emptiness because, when you look into what it is that becomes confused, they both maintain that emptiness is not the ground of confusion. The Mahamudra and

5

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

6

Dzogchen3 traditions are the same on this point that emptiness is not the main point of discussion when considering confusion for the reason that emptiness is not the ground of confusion. In

the Kagyu tradition of Mahamudra, except for a state­ ment from Gampopa which says, "From which ground does confusion occur? Confusion occurs from emptiness.4 " it is said that emptiness is not confusion itself, but that confusion comes from emptiness. So why would Gampopa say that emp­ tiness is confusion? He says that we have unified emptiness and clario/ in our mind-streams and that confusion arises due to this clarity not recognizing itself. He says that, while the factor of clarity is the actual cause of confusion, emptiness can be likened to the place at which the confusion occurs. He continued on by SaJlng, "At which point in time did confusion begin? Confusion occurs as beginningless sarp.sara. If you ask, "How is the confusion? " I t i s like a sleep and a dream." Confusion is like that. It occurs due to the clarity part of mind not recognizing itself. That, in brief, is how we should under-

3 Mahamudra and Dzogchen both are names for reality. They are also

names for two different systems that can return you to that reality if you practise them.

4 These are the opening words of his famous text, Jewel Ornament of Liberation. B ecause that text is essentially about the sutra teachings, it emphasizes emptiness. 5 Tib. gsal ba. See the notes in the glossary under "Clarity". In these kinds of discussions, "clarity" is nearly always a direct abbreviation of "luminosity" and should be understood as such.

THE

GROUND

7

stand confusion according to the explanation given in the Mahamudra tradition. In the Dzogchen tradition, there are two or three different ways of explaining how it is with confusion. All of them talk about a ground of confusion and what they speak of is "the indeterminate basis of everything, prior to the occurrence of buddhas or sentient beings6 ". From it, consciousness arises as follows: a wind naturally arises from the dharmata of the inde­ terminate basis of everything, and with that present, the lumi­ nosity, also called clarity, of the indeterminate basis of every­ thing which was previously inwardly-directed now becomes an outwardly-directed luminosity and the superficies7 of an out­ wardly-directed luminosity dawn. Because of that outwardly­ directed luminosity of the mind, buddhas and sentient beings both occur. At that point, if the clarity aspect recognizes its own appearances as itself, there is liberation as Samantabhadra and the other buddhas. If it does not, there is bondage into a sen­ tient being. Right at that point, if one's own face is recognized as such, it is the very beginning of nirvai).a and if not, it is the very beginning of sa:rp.sara. There is not a great difference in the ways that the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions present their views about the ground of confusion. Briefly stated, the Mahamudra tradi­ tion says that it arises from emptiness but is not saying that the emptiness itself is the ground of confusion. It says that confu­ sion comes out of the emptiness but what is actually becoming confused is the clarity factor of mind. When the clarity of mind does not recognize itself as the in-dwelling mind there is the confusion of grasping at the clarity as something other. 6 Basis of everything is a translation of the term "alaya". This teaching is a very special teaching of the Dzogchen tradition.

7 See the glossary

8

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

Now the main reason for talking this way is to understand that the point at which one becomes either a buddha or a senti­ ent being is exactly at the point of recognizing and not recogniz­ ing. When we do not recognize our own appearances as our own appearances, we accumulate the source of unsatisfactori­ ness8 , the karmas and afflictions, and, due to having accumulated those, we have the truth of unsatisfactoriness and we have happiness, suffering, and so forth. Fallowing that, all of the various superficies of external worlds and their sentient inhabit­ ants along with their coarse activities, shine forth. All of this comes due to the original non-self-recognition. When we do recognize it, buddhahood and all the appearances of the buddha realms come about. All of that comes due to the original self­ recognition. Thus, from the original indeterminate basis, both the ap­ pearances of buddhas and sentient beings come forth. At that point, there is a determinate situation either of a buddha or sentient being and the indeterminacy of the ground is no longer present in that being's mind. The reason for all this discussion is to get us to look into what we have in our mind-streams. We have there what is cal­ led the "actual basis of everything". What is this actual basis of everything? It is the original situation, the very essence of our minds. B ecause of it we meet buddha. It is the actuality of all dharmas. It is called "ground Mahamudra" and "ground Dzog­ chen" 9. We have this in our mind-streams and because of that,

8 Unsatisfactoriness, throughout this book translates " du}:lkha". Although du}:lkha is often translated as "suffering" that is not the meaning. It means that nothing is all right. That everything is somehow always not all right.

9 It is given these names because it is the very basis of our beings, the (continued ... )

THE GROUND

9

we have the cause of being able to accomplish buddhahood through practice on the path. B ecause we have the basis of everything, we can obtain buddhahood. If we did not have the basis of everything in our mind-streams, there would be no method whatsoever for us to become buddhas. So what has happened to us? For us, polarization has oc­ curred-we have become determinate as sentient beings. Hav­ ing become determinate as sentient beings, we have un-remit­ ting karma and affliction, and so forth. Because of having those, we have the obscurations of the path, the karmas and afflictions, which obscure the basis of everything. Thus we are at the path10 situation. Being on the path, what we need to do is to clear away the obscurations of the path. All paths used to clear away the obs­ curations involve view, meditation, and conduct; this is true of Mahamudra, Dzogchen, and Madhyamaka 11• What is the reason 9(... continued)

basis which is the reality referred to either by Mahamudra or Dzog­ chen. Because we have that as a basis, it is possible to use some me­ thod, to follow some path, which will bring the reality present in that basis from its current state as covered over potential into its full-blown state, which will be the fruition of a full return to reality.

10 This is how it is said in the teachings. We have the basis; everyone

does. We have fallen into confusion. In doing so, we have arrived on the path. You might say, "but that is only a path if you know and prac­ tise it!". However, the truth is that all sentient beings, because of the drive connected with the fundamental reality in their ground, do try to get out of their confusion. Mostly they go about it in the wrong way but they are still on the path of trying to get out from their confusion.

11 These are the three main names for reality and approaches to reality

within the Tibetan Buddhist system. Madhyamaka is the reality taught in Greater Vehicle siitra teachings whereas Mahamudra and Dzogchen (continued . . . )

10

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

for view, meditation, and conduct being involved in all of them? It is that these three alone are the method for clearing away the obscurations of the path. Now I have a question for you: where is ground Dzogchen? Is it on the inside, the outside, is it part of the environment of our external world or is it part of the internal world of us, the inhabitants? Just where is it exactly? Ans: Mind. Rin: When you say mind, what should we understand by that? Ans: Mind i s the possibility of being enlightened because of knowing one's nature or not being enlightened because of not knowing one's nature. Rin: Well, is recognizing the mind, mind, or is not recognizing the mind, mind? ! Ans: Both! Rin: Again, should we say that mind, just that thing mind, is ground Dzogchen or should we say that the mind when it is recognized is ground Dzogchen? Ans: The ground Dzogchen could either recognize itself in which case it would be enlightened mind or else not recognize itself in which case it would be the deluded mind. Rin: That is a good answer. So then what is the difference bet­ ween ground Dzogchen and fruition Dzogchen? Ans: There is no difference. Rin: If there is no difference, why do we have to talk about them separately? Ans: The ground does have to be recognized. Rin: At this point, have you personally manifested the ground, the path, or the fruition of Dzogchen? 1\ continued) ..

are the same thing taught in the Vajra Vehicle teachings. Putting all three together like this essentially sums up all approaches to reality.

THE GROUND

11

Ans: No, but I do have some confidence in the view that there is the great nature ofDzogchen and I am on the path and trying to stabilize that view which has not yet been real­ ized. Rin: VVhat is this view? Ans: The view is to know the true nature of mind or of all phenomena (which I would say to be the same) and that would be this awareness recognizing itself. I have the idea that this is free from the delusion of sa111s ara. Rin: If that is the case, have you manifested the fruition of the great perfection? Ans: No, that is why I am on the path! Rin: Does the view on the path have the fetter of dualistic grasping in it or not? Ans: No. Rin: Then, since there is no dualistic grasping in the fruition, where is the difference between the path and the fruition? Is it that the view and the fruition are the same? Ans: Yes. Rin: Then in that case you are not on the path now, you have manifested the fruition! Ans: Yes, in some sense that is probably so! But I would ima­ gine that the path would be some kind of illusory skillful means made in order to realize what is there anyway. So in fact, there is no difference between ground and frui­ tion. In fact, if we were at the superfactual level of truth, we would not have anything to debate over since there is no ground, path, or fruition at that level. At that level we do not need to concern ourselves with ground, path, and fruition. However, we are on the fictional level now, aren't we? And at the fictional level we need to talk about the things of ground, path, and fruition. While we are on the path there is a view to be realized, so I am asking whether or not that view has dualistic grasping in it?

12

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

I am

also asking what is the difference between that view of the path-the Dzogchen view which is to be realized-and fruition Dzogchen? I am asking this from the point of view of the path, not from the superfactual point of view. Why am I asking this? I have not been explaining about confusion from the perspective that confusion comes from emp­ tiness; emptiness to begin with is not confused and there is no extra confusion that comes into the emptiness, therefore it has to be said that confusion comes in connection with the process of mind. Accordingly, our current discussion is about whether mind becomes confused or not. The ground and path are not very far apart; the ground is defined in terms of something which has become obscured and the path is defined in terms of removing that obscurity. The fruition is defined as the situation obtained when the process of removing the obscurations has been finalized. In other words, when the obscurations of the path in their entirety have been dispelled, we speak of fruition Dzogchen or fruition Mahamudra and at the time of the path, when the obscurations have not been dispelled, we speak of ground Dzogchen or ground Mahamudra. When there are obscurations it is ground; when obscurations have been dispelled it is fruition. Now, while we are on the path, what is our principal obscu­ ration? Ans: The obscuration is the self of dharmas and the self of a person. Rin: What are we to understand by these two terms? Ans: Self of dharmas is a sense of perceiving things as objects which have a distinct self-reality of their own rather than a dependent reality; self of a person is that same thing but applied to our existence, our being. Rin: What is at the very root of these two things?

THE GROUND

13

Ans: Grasping at these things is one of the things that takes place. It is confusion concerning the real nature of these things. Rin: Where is the confusion? Can it be found? Ans: No! Rin: So there is no confusion, after all?? Ans: From the relative or fictional 12 viewpoint, confusion does exist. Rin: Then, where is it? Ans: It is not an object; it is in the fact of how I consider things. Rin: That is correct. It is in the mind. This is why our teacher, the Bhagavat Perfect, Complete Buddha, gave many teachings, all for the purpose of pacifying the mind, purifying the mind. All of the different experiences of happiness, suffering, afflictions, and so on occur in the mind so when the Buddha taught all of the different teachings to pacify them, he taught about mind. The whole point is that, whether the root of all these problems is self of phenomena or the self of the person, it is in the mind. Since these root problems exist in the mind, what is the principal method that we need to apply to clean up the mind? Ans: Well, we apply a certain meditation, such as shamatha, to realize these. Or we can apply some analytical research to try to find the ego and an entity of phenomena. Rin: So what is the principal thing that we need? Do we need to have the view, the meditation, or the conduct-what is the main thing? Ans: We need all of it! We need the meditation in order to get the view or we need to study in order to get the view. Then we meditate on it, contemplate it, and then we get

12 See Fictional Truth in the glossary

14

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

some confidence in the view. Then we practise more, and understand the view better, and so on. Rin: That is true. Therefore, I will explain the view in the next section. The main point of this discussion is the situation of the ground. This ground exists in the mind-stream of us and all other sentient beings. It is the birthplace of the buddhas; the actuality of all dharmas; it is ground Mahamudra and it is within us right now. On the path, the things that obscure it are to be eliminated; to eliminate them so that the actuality of the ground is realized, view, meditation, and conduct are needed and that is what I will talk about in the next section. How should we understand the ground situation? The original ground13 has no obscurations in it. However, at the time of the path, because of seeing things to exist where they do not exist, we are obscured and so, now at the time of the path, we will use view, meditation, and conduct, to manifest the actuality of the ground. This actuality of the ground is not something that was made by anybody. It is not something that the Buddha came and just proclaimed a theory about. It is something which has been there beginninglessly in all sentient being's mind-streams as the pure, undefiled, nature of their mind -streams. Shakyamuni Buddha himself meditated for six years using the method of manifesting the ground. Cultivating the com­ pletely pure view, he directly perceived the actuality of the grou­ nd, and thus arrived at the fruition. Upon obtaining this fru­ ition, which is the complete abandonment of all of the obscura­ tions of the afflictions and the obscurations to omniscience, coarse and subtle, he was a perfect, complete buddha. In obtain13 This means the ground that is there at the origin of our being and which has been primordially as it is.

THE GROUND

15

ing the fruition, he did not buy anything or get anything from anywhere else or from anyone else but simply brought forth the innate wisdom that belonged to him. Because of this, for us as followers of the Buddha's way, there is one singularly important thing, which is made known through the term "uncontrived". The term uncontrived points to the fact that the actuality of the ground is not something that was made up by the Buddha or anyone else but is something which has been there beginning­ lessly in every sentient being as their in-dwelling wisdom. The term "uncontrived" 14 is particularly important: it applies to the actuality of the ground, to the view when we are on the path, and to the fruition that we will manifest at the end. All three need to be uncontrived. Where does this uncontrived quality exist? It exists as the pure essence of our minds, the very entity of what our minds really are. Thus we can also say that actuality of ground Dzog­ chen exists as the uncontrived mind, the essence of mind. On the path, which is the path of realizing the view, by staying equi­ poised in the state of the uncontrived view, we go towards meet­ ing fruition Dzogchen. As I have said, I will explain extensively about the view in the next section; for now, please ask some questions regarding the ground. Sometimes in the Dzogchen teachings you hear statements like, "Everything is completely perfect already" 15• What does it

14 See the glossary 1 5 There is a problem with the common translation of Dzogchen as "Great Perfection". The term does not mean "perfection" but comple­ tion and this leads to the misunderstanding happening here. Dzogchen does not mean or say that things are perfect. It says and means that all things are complete within the sphere of reality. To understand that, you have to understand the ground, path, and fruition of Dzogchen. (continued . . .)

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

16

mean? This is similar to what I spoke about earlier. What we have to ask here is, what is a buddha, really? The actual ground is perfectly pure with no dross whatsoever. For example, when I hold up my watch you can see it clearly, just as it is and then, when I cover it with my robe, you cannot see it. It is like that for us when we become sentient beings in the three realms of sarp­ sara. Taking the aspect of sentient beings, we have karma, cause and effect, and have a nature that is full of unsatisfactoriness and the disadvantages of sarpsaric existence. We see that and then renunciation regarding sarpsara arises in us. Renunciation having arisen for us, we use prajfia which realizes lack of self to realize the view and through that we manifest the ground in its actuality. When we talk about everything being perfect already, we are talking about the fact of the purity of the ground. When talking this way, it has to be understood that the purity of the ground will come forth only after the obscurations of karma and afflic­ tions are removed and that, when they are removed, it is not that something new is obtained, but that the original ground is manifested without obscuration. It is just the same as my watch which, when made manifest by removing the covering of the robe, is not a new watch, but is the original watch which has now had its coverings removed. So this is the reasoning behind saying that it is pure, or perfect, to begin with. When we talk about why it is pure or impure, there is, just as I talked about earlier, the fact of becoming confused due to not knowing that self-appearances are self-appearances. Having become confused, we take the aspect of sentient beings and have karma with cause and effect, unsatisfactoriness, the disadvan-

1\ continued) Therefore, Tsoknyi Rinpoche goes over that once again as the way of answering. ••

THE GROUND

17

tages of cyclic existence, faith, devotion, then compassion arise for us in which case, realizing the view properly, we dispel the confusion of the path. For example, when I cover my watch with my robe you can no longer see it, and if you want to see it, you have to remove the robe. When you remove the robe, you will not discover a watch except for the original watch, in other words, you haven't discovered a newly-made watch. Just as the original watch was always there, likewise, the ground which has been there begin­ ninglessly remains there until buddhahood is attained. More­ over, just as, if you want to see the watch, you have to use a me­ thod, which is to remove the covering, likewise if you want to see the ground which has always been there, you have to use a method, which is that you have to practise the path. Saying that you are in fact a buddha so there is nothing to be accomplished, no path to be practised, is just like having the watch covered but deciding not to use the method of removing the robe to expose the watch. Thus, we do need to practise the path. Que: If you think too much about removing the robe, aren't you trying to convince yourself that the robe really exists? Won't you get too worried about the robe rather than just seeing right through the robe? Rin: If this building caved in on you, would you die or not? Ans: Well, if the building caved in on me maybe it would cut through my stubbornness and make me see the watch! Rin: All right, then how about if a bomb exploded here? Ans: I'd die! Rin: You would die. In the original essence of mind there is no birth, no death, and no ending of things but for you there is birth, death, and ending which are the coverings of the ground. You say that you don't exist but in fact there is existence for you! You are saying that there is no cover­ ing for you but at the moment you don't have directly­ perceiving pramal).a, and there is a covering for you

18

Ans: Rin:

Ans: Rin: Ans:

Rin:

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

because you do have birth, death, and ending and you do experience these as fictional truth. To make this clearer, let me ask you, if someone calls you a thief, would you get angry or not? Yes. So you do have coverings; in that case you would have the covering of anger. If you have passion, aggression, and anger then you are covered by the obscurations of the path; if you don't have these at all, then you are not cover­ ed by the obscurations of the path at all. Well, isn't it anger to want to get rid of our emotions? That seems strange! Well, let me ask the question in a different way. How do you have respect for the conventional truth-that if the roof falls on me I will die-without then at the same time feeding the conventional truth so that you continue to believe in it? Contemplating something does not necessarily produce solidified truth; it is by contemplation that we understand the correct view and come to realize lack of truth, isn't it? If you contemplate something in a wrong way, then you will create true existence but if your contemplation ac­ cords with the real, authentic way things are, then you will not create true existence. For example, when you get angry, look into your mind for the one who is being angry. If you search, you will not discover the person who is being angry, will you? When you do not find the one .who is being angry, it sho':Vs you the ground itself as something which has no true anger in it. There is a name given to deluded situations like 'this situation of being angry; we say that it is a case of appearances that seem to exist when in fact they do not exist.

STAGES OF THE PATHS OF M AHAM UDRA AND DZOGCHEN

Enlightened mind is just the uninterrupted experience of tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa without any gap. However, there is a path to it. The path in the Mahamudra system commonly practised in Tibet is laid out in four stages called the Four Yogas of Maha­ mudra. These four stages are a progression that starts with dualistic mind and gradually arrives at full enlightenment. The four yogas of this Mahamudra system are called: One-Point­ edness, Freedom from Elaboration; One Taste; and Non­ Meditation. In One-Pointedness, a stable shamatha is obtained. In Freedom from Elaboration, the essence of mind is realized with vipashyana, in other words, the entity of tha mal gyi shaypa is realized. Tha mal gyi shaypa is then developed further and further in One Taste. When One Taste is reached, you are not distracted and your whole experience occurs within the frame­ work of meditative equipoise. The practice of One Taste is characterized by "appearances arising in meditation". At that time, mind and appearances are increasingly understood to be not separate, that is, of one taste. In One Taste, all adverse cir­ cumstances and conditions become points of liberation. At this time the practitioner can pass without hindrance through moun­ tains, rocks, houses, and so on because appearances and mind

19

20

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

have become mingled into one taste. Increasing the ability to dwell in tha mal gyi shaypa through the practice of One Taste is passage through the bhumis. When one taste is complete, you reach the final part of the journey, the stage of Non-Meditation. During the path ofNon-Meditation, all appearances of dharmas become part of the dharmadhatu in fully manifest enlighten­ ment. On the path ofNon-Meditation, there is not a whisker of meditator or meditated upon, not an instant of distraction, not a moment of meditation in the meditation. All dharmas become fully manifest enlightenment; a buddha's dharmakaya is ob­ tained as the completion of the aims of oneself and rupakayas without end are manifested to fulfill the aims of others. This finalization is buddhahood. The thread running through all of that is tha mal gyi shaypa. Tha mal gyi shaypa of the ground is uncontrived, of the path is uncontrived, and of the fruition is uncontrived; by developing the ground state of uncontrived tha mal gyi shaypa more and more, by bringing it forth more and more purely, you progress to the stage of a buddha. Tha mal gyi shaypa is not mind, it is wisdom beyond mind. There is another system of Mahamudra that came into Tibet. This system is called Essence Mahamudra. The path of essence Mahamudra and the path of the Thorough Cut of innermost Dzogchen do not have the progression of the Four Yo gas of Mahamudra. Both of them are ultimate teachings that teach the unified state of non-meditation directly 1 6 • None­ theless, there is still a process for the practices. The process is: introduction to the view, followed by recognition of it, followed by training in it until final fruition it attained. 16

The other path in innermost Dzogchen, the path of Direct Crossing, is laid out in four, gradual stages. Sometimes a teacher will mention the progression through these four stages as part of the Thorough Cut path but they really belong to the Direct Crossing.

THE STAGES OF THE PATH

21

The path of Essence Mahamudra and the Thorough Cut both centre around recognition and meditation on the essence of mind. The essence of mind in Essence Mahamudra is called tha mal gyi shaypa and also rigpa. In the Thorough Cut it is called rigpa. The training of these paths, which is summed up with "First, recognize the view; Next, preserve the state with meditation; Finally, by-pass with conduct." is clearly seen in the sections following this.

THE PATH: THE VIEW-INTRODUCTION TO MIND AND MIND'S ESSENCE

I have already explained that our suffering and happiness, and also our ground and fruition in both Mahamudra and Dzog­ chen, are connected with mind. Accordingly, we can say that the root of all dharmas is mind, can't we? Thus we need to understand how it is with mind. There are two views: the view connected with mind 17 and the view connected with that which transcends mind. You can understand these as follows: What is the principal cause/condi­ tion that binds us into the three realms of sarp.sara? The princi­ pal fetter is that we have a mind. In our minds right now there is dualistic grasping, holding to I and other, and all the rest of the mental paraphernalia associated with them and these are the real causes of being bound in cyclic existence. Thus, right now, we do have mind and we do have the principal cause/condition of being bound in sarp.sara. What is the principal means by which we obtain nirval).a? The principal means by which we obtain nirva:ry.a is the wisdom that transcends mind, the in-

17 Tib. sems. Dualistic mind. "Mind" always refers to the complex situation of dualistic mind.

23

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GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

dwelling, naked wisdom. With this as a cause and by relying on understanding the view, gaining experience at meditation, and by-passing with conduct, we will become buddhas . So there is mind and there is wisdom that transcends mind . That can all be summed up by saying that mind has both an impure part and a pure part. The impure part is mind and the pure part is that mind's essence . We need to understand both. When we look into our general state of mind, we find that mind is something which is constantly churning out discursive

thought, don't we? With that discovery, the question arises, "is the mind one thing or multiple things? " For instance, we think thousands of different discursive thoughts, so are there thou­ sands of minds or not?

Every day we have many discursive

thoughts arising in our minds, so does this mean that there are that many different minds? Please respond. Que: Isn't the mind beyond one and many? Rin:

The pure part is, but I am not talking about the pure part now, I am talking about the impure part.

Ans: Then I think that you would have to say that the mind is one. Rin:

Please explain your view that mind is one.

Ans:

If it were many, then how could there be some kind of

Rin:

If there were many minds, then there would be a continu­

continuity in the fictional? ity; if there were one mind, there would be no continuity! Ans:

But wouldn't the continuity be the one mind?

Does someone else have an idea? Que: Couldn't it be like a flock of birds where a thought would be equivalent to a bird? Each of the birds is not the flock yet the flock isn't really a discrete entity, it is just a bunch of birds. Rin:

S o are you saying that there are many minds getting together to make one mind?

THE PATH: INTRODUCTION TO THE VIEW

25

Ans:

It appears to be that way.

Rin :

Is it the way it appears, that many minds are coming

Ans:

Well, I think it is neither. It is not really many minds

together to make one mind? because each one is not really the mind. And it is not really one mind because it is only composed of little, separate pieces . Rin:

Following on from that line of thought, can you think of two separate things in one moment of thinking?

Ans :

No .

Rin:

That shows that there is just one mind, doesn't it?

Ans: That shows that there is just one thought! Rin:

But that discursive thought is coming from the mind, isn't it?

In any one moment, what we call mind is just the

thoughts and thinking which it expresses . Mind is the thinker and the thoughts are what it thinks so they are not really distinct and we can say that mind is discursive thought. Thus, in any given moment, you cannot think each one of a number of thoughts and that shows there is only one mind. From this single moment o f thought, the whole process of confusion unfolds. And, just as you said, from the point of view of appearances, it seems as though there is one mind that really exists and is elaborating but in actuality even that one mind does not have any inherent existence. Therefore, when we speak of mind, we must say that there is one mind. Now this one mind does elaborate thoughts. It elaborates them one at a time, one after the other. For example, in one moment of mind, you have one thought, the thought of a flower. When that first moment of "flower" has ceased, in the second moment you might think, "It is a nice flower" and there is attachment to the flower. And then at a later date, when the flower has become old and withered, you might look at it and think that it is no good anymore and should be thrown outside,

26

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

in which case aversion has arisen. And then, in other circum­ stances you might see the flower but, not thinking of it as good or bad, you have entered the indeterminate state of ignorance regarding the flower. All of these events are in the mind so now what we need to do is to look at the essence of mind. What do we do when looking at the essence of the mind? We stop following after the objects of the mind. Up to now, we have followed after the various objects of this "one mind". We have followed after good objects and bad objects, and from the first instant of an object we have produced second, third, and so on moments of mind about the object. In this way, we are always involved in follow­ ing after the object of the initial moment so that we always have second, third, and so on thoughts about the objects of mind. Involving ourselves in trains of discursive thought about the various objects of the first instant like that, we have wandered around without beginning in the three realms of sa111sara. Thus, all of our suffering and happiness comes from this one instant of mind. When you do not follow after the object in that way, mind gains control over itself. What we need for that to happen is pure view. The authentic view is the pure essence of our minds. That pure essence is called ordinary mind, tha mal gyi shay pa, in the Mahamudra system and rigpa in the Dzogchen system. When using these words, we are not speaking of mind, we are speaking of the pure essence of mind: that which is completely free from all the fetters of existence and non-existence; the ordinary mind of now-ness; that which is not corrupted by compartmentalizing, not corrupted by confusion; that which is wakeful, vivid, non-stopped clarity1 8 •

1 8 See "non-stopped clarity" in the glossary

THE PATH: I DENTIFYING THE VIEW

Is there something about being in that first moment, about being in the essence of mind that is so different from our ordi­ nary experience that on that basis alone we could recognize it? Is there some kind of special appearance that happens when you arrive in that first moment, the essence of mind? Normal appearances are normal appearances. If they have grasping with them, then it is dualistic mind. If they have no grasping with them, it is the essence of mind. There is no special appearance that happens when you arrive in the essence of mind. However, right within the normal appearances, right in the present moment, there is tha mal gyi shaypa with its complete lack of subject and object, lack of I and you, lack of grasping, and lack of compartmentalizing 19 • In other words, that first moment is not another moment separate from our normal appearances. Our normal appearances which are connected with a contrived process of continually thinking this and that and the 19 Tib. grva nyams pa. A term meaning that the experience of the essence of mind has been corrupted due to the re-emergence of the functioning of dualistic mind which occurs as the pigeon-holing of all experience using concepts. The experience of the essence of mind is wide open and without any of that compartmentalizing activity.

27

28

GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

other is meaningless. We need to stay in the first moment which is without any of this contrivance at all. For beginners, we start by talking about the first moment and saying that it is rigpa. This discussion makes it seem as though appearances are excluded, somehow. However, the fact is that, within that first moment a consciousness that has no grasping but which still knows this and that-which knows things individually through labels, and so on-can arise. It is just a little difficult for that to arise at the very beginning of this practice. Therefore, to begin with, we say that whenever the first moment arises without any grasping in it, that is rigpa, and whenever it arises with grasping in it, that is not rigpa. A first moment of awareness is not special; it can be dualistic mind. However, staying within the self-clarity that is right there in any given moment of any awareness is what is important. On top of that discussion, it is important to understand that, when we talk about the first moment, we are talking about the sixth mental consciousness and saying that it has to stay right in the first moment. Generally speaking, whenever a conscious­ ness of the five senses, such as an eye consciousness, arises, it always arises as a first moment of awareness but it is a moment of sense-awareness, not of sixth consciousness awareness. As soon as the eye has a moment of consciousness it has done its work. Following it, either another first moment of sense con­ sciousness occurs or the sixth consciousness takes over. If the sixth consciousness takes over, it can either stay with the under­ standing of the object of the sense consciousness or start label­ ling the experience of the sense consciousness and making decisions about whether the perceived object is good or bad or whatever. We are not concerned about the sense consciousnes­ ses such as the eye consciousness because they do their work and immediately finish. However, what is important is that the ensuing sixth consciousness does not start up with its whole conceptual process about things being good and bad; instead it

THE PATH: IDENTIFYING THE VIEW

29

must stay within the first moment. Actually, i t i s more than just staying in the first moment that is required because that can be dualistic mind; what is needed is to remain within the non-stop­ ped clarity of its first moment which is never dualistic mind. Each person comes to know this experience for themselves. This happens in two ways. First, your guru has to introduce you to the essence of your own mind in direct perception and you have to recognize it. When you have recognized it, it is said that you have the view. Then you have to remain in equipoise on the view, training up the rigpa until it becomes the full-blown wisdom of enlightenment. Secondly, your guru has to teach you the view so that you understand it conceptually. When you are not practising equipoise on the view in direct perception, when you are not in equipoise on it, you will be able to think about it as you are doing now and develop a clear understanding of it. This is also called the view though this is not the view that you cultivate in meditation, this is a conceptual view that helps you to know your journey more clearly.

THE PATH: THE MEDITATION

The path starts by determining the view, which in Mahamu­ dra and Dzogchen is the pure mind just discussed. In order to manifest that pure mind, in order to bring it forth, you use the practice of meditation. In Mahamudra and Dzogchen medita­ tion is practised by resting in the view, which is that pure mind itself. In general, meditation consists of both shamatha and vipashyana. First, you need a stable shamatha-a mind which is abiding stable. I will not talk about the stages of shamatha practice here. On top of that shamatha, vipashyana is the insight that is used to realize the essence of the shamatha. The vipashyana which realizes the essence is called "prajfi.a which realizes lack of self''2 0 in the siitra Greater Vehicle, tha mal gyi shaypa in the Mahamudra tradition, and self-arising rigpa2 1 in the Dzogchen tradition.

20 Tib. bdag med rtogs pa'i shes rab 2 1 Tib. tha mal gyi shay pa, rang bung gi rig pa respectively. For practical purposes there is no real difference in the two. See "Tha mal gyi shaypa" in the glossary.

31

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GROUND, PATH,

AND FRUITION

The style of meditation in Mahamudra and Dzogchen is me­ ditation which is non-meditation. \\That is this non-meditation? How do we meditate without meditating? \Vhatever situation mind is in, whether there are discursive thoughts of good, bad, clean, unclean, and so on, if you drop all of these so that you are without even a whisker of the conceptual activity of mind, the nature of mind whatever it is will shine forth as non-stopped clarity and that is called self-arising rigpa. This does not need to be created or produced or purchased; when you let mind itself, just as it is, shine forth and stay in that, that is called self­ arising rigpa. Someone who me ditates using logical processes could never meditate on this, could never realize it. To do this, you need to reverse your outwardly-directed at­ tention inward and look hither towards the mind. This way of looking hither towards the mind means to rest self-settled in unhindered clarity. Having released all the bindings of passion, aggression, pride, and so on, abide in the state of this self-arising rigpa of non-stopped clarity, crystal clarity, like the sun shining in the sky. Not being caught by this and that but resting in the non-stopped clarity of whatever there is occurring in mind is called self-arising rigpa. Regarding this, J etsun Milarepa said, "In the gap between former and later thoughts Non-conceptual wisdom shines continuously." This is what he meant: Our former moments of discursive thou­ ght give rise to later moments of thought and we follow along after the thoughts so that we have first, second, third, and so on thoughts. If you strike gently but decisively at discursive thou­ ghts, you will see in the gap between discursive thoughts the self-arising rigpa, no-thought wisdom. You need to rest in equi­ poise on that. Self-arising rigpa is really like that; it occurs in between discursive thoughts. How do we go about looking at this? Having dropped all discursive thoughts, the tha mal gyi shay pa of now-ness is there.

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33

Do not think about the past; do not think about the future. D o not think, "Now I will do this. Now I will do that"; drop all mind's hopes and fears; cut the rope of thoughts and . . . there it is! Tha mal gyi shay pa is right there in just that; you do not have to create it. Within this state, all the various dharmas-visual forms, sounds, and so on-of the eight consciousnesses must be al­ lowed to occur but without the conceptual compartmentalizing, "It is this, it is that" and then they will all arise in non-stopped clarity as the clarity of the mind itself. When that happens, whatever thoughts rise up will dissolve back again into the thinker of the thoughts like waves dissolving back into the ocean of self-arising rigpa. You need to stay like that with the doors of the five senses not blocked off. That self-arising rigpa and tha mal gyi shay pa are the same thing. Do it like that. This is present in your mind-stream right now. There is no need to meditate on it. Why? Meditating involves concerning your­ selves with many different kinds of thoughts: "It is this, it is that . . . ". Drop all discursive thoughts whatsoever! Drop the investigator and the investigation completely and non-stopped clarity will occur. Stay in that for a minute or two. That is arrival of self-arising rigpa. Do it like that! When you do that, what will you experience? It is said2 2 , " Nothing whatsoever blankness, In the blankness, a transparency 2 3 of view; What is seen with transparency is inexpressible; Identify the dharmakaya rigpa! " 22 In Patrol Rinpoche's Feature ofthe Expert, Glorious King. The text is available in English in the Padma Karpo Translation Committee publication of the same name, ISBN 97 8-993 7-8244-3 -9, author Tony Duff. 23 See glossary.

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AND FRUITION

"Nothing whatsoever" means that the discursive thoughts of "It is this, it is that . . . " and so on which mind normally creates as we experience sights, sounds, smells, tastes and so on, are not there at all-there is nothing there at all, like an utterly clear sky-and you meditate in that state. Within that state, your own clarity, just like the sun shining forth in the sky, is there as unimpeded clarity. That is to say, without the subtlest covering of compartmentalizing, grasping, or discursive thoughts, your own clarity is there as non-stopped clarity. That state comes

or condition. That state will be able to abide of itself. That is call ed dharmakaya rigpa and also, about without need of cause the authentic view. Un-involved with an external fixated object and an internal grasping consciousness, we need to rest in between in the state of naked, empty rigpa. In that state of naked rigpa there is no succession of thoughts. When you rest in the state of naked rigpa, discursive thoughts do not occur one, two, three, and so on, one after the other. You need to be able to stay in that essence of mind. For beginners, this sort of non-stopped clarity cannot come for very long. However, there is nothing difficult to it at all. How could it be difficult for the essence of your own mind to shine forth as non-stopped clarity when all that is required is to rest evenly in something which does not require contrivance? We call it the uncontrived essence of mind because it is not something which needs to be contrived, altered from its native state.

The view is something which is not contrived so the

essence of mind also is not contrived.

In brief, when meditating, all hopes and fears must be drop­ ped. All hopes and fears; all thoughts of, "It is this, it is that"; all of mind's thoughts about the future and past, "I will do this, I did that" should be dropped. Let mind, whatever it is, arise and as it arises in its own way, rest in the non-stopped clarity how-

THE PATH: MEDITATION

35

ever it comes forth, the state o f naked rigpa. If that can shine forth for even a moment, it is self-arising rigpa and this self­ arising rigpa is the wisdom mind of all the buddhas. It is the cause of accomplishing the dharmakaya. Meditation is the practice of letting that come forth and staying in it.

THE PATH: A FORMAL SESSION OF MEDITATION

To meditate, please keep a good posture. If your body droops, your mind will become clouded; if your body is force­ fully erect, the airs will go into the heart and the mind can go up into the head. The neck should not be crooked too much nor straightened too much; the head should just be nicely erect. All together, your posture should be relaxed but firm. Now, please rest continuously in the pure view as I explained it previously-in what is called tha mal gyi shaypa or self-arising rigpa. How do you do that? Neither blocking off the five sense consciousnesses nor.:;.sending the internal awareness out to external, fixated objects, rest in the first moment, in the present awareness that arises as non-stopped clarity. Meditate by staying in an all-pervasive state: this is the state of not grasping at anything at all; it is meditation in the nature of emptiness, not covered by mental reference points. Wake up into rigpa which has an essence of emptiness, a nature of clarity, and compassion­ ate activity that is all-pervading! Wake up into tha mal gyi shay­ pa which has an essence of emptiness, a nature of clarity, and compassionate activity! When you are resting in this state, sometimes sadness and non-stopped clarity will come together. This is the basis of

37

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compassion. If you leave this sadness as it is within the un­ contrived state, it will be all right. Then sometimes an experi­ ence of bliss throughout the body and mind will occur. This also should be let be without grasping after it; you should rest in the non-stopped clarity of rigpa. If those things happen, it is said that you should rest in the view, so how should you meditate? Meditation means being without contrivance24 ; it means being without even a whisker of meditation yet without a moment's distraction. When you stay for one, two, three minutes in that it is called "tha mal gyi shay­ pa" or "staying in the meditative equipoise of tha mal gyi shay­ pa". When you cannot stay in that state of tha mal gyi shaypa but follow after fixated objects with passion, aggression, delu­ sion, grasping at a self, and so on then you have gone into post­ attainment in your session. So, if post-attainment occurs in your meditation session due to following the afflictions of mind, you should immediately recognize the view and, having returned to rigpa, stay in meditative equipoise again. And you must do that again and again: having followed after the discursive thoughts because of not being able to stay in the essence, you must immediately return to rigpa and stay there, then, when you follow after discursive thoughts again, immediately recognize and stay here in rigpa, and so on. In that way you must train at developing continuity. To do a meditation session, you need to incorporate what are called the three excellent factors: the preliminaries to begin with; the main part in the middle; and dedication at the end. When doing meditation, you need to keep to all three. We start with taking refuge. Visualize in the space before you your root guru surrounded by all of the conquerors and their sons of the ten directions like massed clouds. Feel their 24 That is, without alteration of the native state.

THE PATH: A FORMAL SESSION OF MEDITATION

39

presence and feel that they are regarding you with great love. First meditate on this for a couple of minutes without distrac­ tion; we will do the refuge supplication later (you can practise this with your eyes closed or open). Then, in the presence of the refuges visualized in the space before you, and surrounded by all sentient beings, think, "I and all sentient beings request refuge until attaining the precious stage of buddhahood". Then, the refuge objects surrounding the root guru melt into light and condense into the root guru. Then, again feel the actual presence of your root guru. Light radiates from the root guru's body and purifies all your obscurations of evil deeds made on the basis of body; light from the root guru's throat centre radiates and purifies all your obscurations of evil deeds made on the basis of speech; light from the root guru's heart-centre radiates and purifies all your obscurations of evil deeds made on the basis of mind. On the path we need the blessings of our root guru and that is the purpose of this practice. There are various colours for the lights in this practice by they are not all that important; the main thing is to have a strong feeling that the blessings really have descended. If there is no feeling, then there is no benefit at all; the process of visualization itself is nothing. If there is no feeling, it is no different than just seeing everyday objects. There is the danger that this practice could be like a daydream, just visualizing all sorts of nice things. You need faith and devo­ tion mixed with the feeling that the visualization is real and then you need to feel that you really have received the blessings. If you really do this, the hairs on your body will stand on end. Then your root guru, through his great, compassionate­ activity dissolves into light and merges inseparably with you. Your mind has become inseparable with the guru. You have been blessed with ultimate realization.

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GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

From this state, looking at all the sentient beings who have not been able to connect with their in-dwelling wisdom, com­ passion arises! Let your compassion increase. May all sentient beings have ease; may they be free from suffering; may they have the causes of ease; may they be free from the causes of suffering. Then, within that state, as you breathe out, transfer all of your merit and roots of merit of this and all your successive lives to all the sentient beings. Feel that they have actually received it. Then, as you breathe in, take all of their suffering and difficul­ ties into you and have it dissolve into the expanse of your sugata­

garbha. Now, dropping all hopes and fears of mind, all difficulties and uneasiness, rest in the state of tha mal gyi shaypa, in uncontrived mind, freed from all expectations and doubts. Drop all thinking. With a relaxed mind, rest in the innate state of non-stopped clarity, in the total openness free of the concerns "it is this, it is that", in tha mal gyi shaypa. Whatever there is, rest in just that. Be glad! Why? Because you have sugatagarbha, the basis from which you can become a buddha. This sugatagarbha does not have to be newly created in your mind at all; it only has to be recognized as the present moment. Please rest in the present awareness, tha mal gyi shaypa, non-stopped clarity. Mind not contrived, mind relaxed, cheerful, and at ease-please rest now in tha mal gyi shaypa. If you can rest with actual tha mal gyi shaypa shining forth, this is the very path that all the buddhas have travelled along. Do not be distracted from this tha mal gyi shaypa! Rest without using mindfulness connected with effort; rest in the state of

THE PATH: A FORMAL SESSION OF MEDITATION

41

mindfulness un-connected with effort! If your body becomes uncomfortable, meditate with the discomfort. When there are hopes and fears of "Oh! This is not tha mal gyi shaypa, is it? This is tha mal gyi shaypa, isn't it? " look right at the essence of the thoughts of expectation, look right at the essence of the fetters themselves, then rest in that. Unless you drop the thinker which has the discursive thou­ ghts of "It is this; it is not that; this is good; that is bad, and so on", there will never be an occasion for buddhahood. These hopes and fears obscure the essence of mind; they fetter the essence of mind. Letting go of all these, stay equipoised in naked tha mal gyi shaypa, naked rigpa. cl?

In this situation, just let go of all thoughts of past and future, all planning. Until you leave this hall, drop all discursive thou­ ghts of past and future. It has been said, " Not being veiled by objects of fixation and Not being deceived by the grasping mind, Naked, empty rigpa arisesThis is the wisdom-mind of all buddhas. " This i s the uncontrived. This essence of mind has been uncontrived without beginning, so now we need to rest in the uncontrived state. We need to meditate on what is; not on what is not.

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GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION

No matter what words are used, it is impossible fully to describe tha mal gyi shaypa; it has to be experienced. It needs to be experienced through meditation. Relax for a minute or two. Move your body about a little, if you need to. Let go of the meditation and do what you feel you have to do; shake your body, move your neck, roll your head around. Clear out all of the tense energy that has accumulated. When in meditation, you should not be all over the place. As soon as I hit the gong, enter immediately into tha mal gyi shaypa. Do not think about it at all-just cut right to it, BAM! Thinking about it will not help at all; you have been thinking throughout all of your beginningless lifetimes in sarpsara and it has not helped at all! Just let go of all of it; it will not help at all. Rest in the essence of mind, letting the nature however it is shine forth.

Rest in a very vast, spacious, thought-free state. If mind becomes excited, draw yourself back to peace; if it becomes dull, rouse the state of rigpa. Please try not to waver from the state of rigpa. We have obtained a precious human rebirth with its free­ doms and connections. Not only that, but we have followed the teachings of secret mantra. And again, on top of that, we have stayed in the state of tha mal gyi shaypa. We are extremely fortunate indeed! Since we have this excellent situation, we

THE PATH: A FORMAL SESSION OF MEDITATION

43

need to meditate and not waste the opportunity. Now, while we have a body with good organs, if we stay in ordinary conscious­ ness and do not connect with tha mal gyi shaypa, it will be very difficult to be in tha mal gyi shaypa as we are dying. 'i>

Leave mind uncontrived, spacious, at ease, without making anything new. If the body is straight, the channels will be straight, if the channels are straight, the wind will go straight, if the winds go straight, the mind will be straight. 'i>

Relax again for a little while. Relax well! All right, once again rest in the state of tha mal gyi shaypa, rigpa! Let the state of rigpa come forth in non-stopped clarity. If you do not practise, there will be no buddhahood. 'i>

Whatever discursive thoughts arise, stay at rest in non­ characterized, non-self. Discursive thoughts which arise within non-characterized, non-self self-liberate themselves. Discursive thoughts arise and this is of no account but if they arise and you make a connection with those thoughts, you accumulate the karma of the three realms of sarp.sara. When you make a con­ nection with object and subject you have gone into the karmic process. Whether you are an authentic dharma practitioner or not depends on whether you connect with meditation and whether that connects you with your mind or not. You are an authentic practitioner if your meditation results in your mental afflic­ tions-passion, aggression, and delusion-decreasing and your

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love and compassion increasing. As Gampopa said, our concep­ tual minds have to engage the dharma and then dharma has to become the path. Your minds have engaged the dharma, so now you have to ensure that dharma becomes the path; if you can do what I have just described, then that will happen. If you medi­ tate, dharma will become the path. If you meditate well, the path will pacify confusion. Finally, there will be no confusion because confusion will arise as wisdom and only as wisdom. Now we will meditate again. Clear your mind of all thou­ ghts. Drop them all. Keep your body straight. Drop all think­ ing. Start by making the intention to meditate for the purpose of diminishing your own afflictions and then benefitting all beings. Having made a pure motivation, visualize in the space before you the root guru surrounded by all the conquerors and bodhisatvas25 of the ten directions like massed clouds. They are all looking down upon you with great compassion. You and all sentient beings request refuge from the three precious jewels in this life and all future lives. All of the buddhas and bodhisatvas melt into light and condense into the root guru. Your root guru has become the embodiment of all the buddhas. Light radiates from the three centres of the glorious guru, strikes the three centres of your own body, speech, and mind, and purifies all of your evils and obscurations. Then the glorio-qs guru, with his great enlightened activity, melts into light and dissolves into you. Feel that your own mind and the enlightened mind of the glorious guru have met and mixed inseparably. The guru is complete within your mind. The glorious ultimate guru is com­ plete within your mind. Join with this very first moment, the state of tha mal gyi shaypa. Be object-subject free, perfectly clear.

2 5 This is the correct spelling according to the Tibetan tradition!

THE PATH: A FORMAL SESSION OF MEDITATION

45

When you meditate, sometimes there will be pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Sometimes your body will be uncom­ fortable. Do not be surprised by these. Keep your rigpa well­ tempered and meditate well. Meditation in Mahamudra is done by resting in the view. To practise meditation, first straighten your body. Let your body be self-settled, your speech be self-settled, and your mind be self-settled. In short, drop all the activity of mind. Drop all thinking-clear out your minds altogether. Drop all thoughts of past, present, and future. Let the breath be self-settled, let the mind be self-settled, and rest in that. When thoughts arise, don't be carried away by them, just experience the pure nature of your mind, rigpa, directly. You need to rest without altering what is there, without contrivance. Whatever occurs in that unaltered state, without following after it, rest in the state of mind's essence, non-stopped clarity. If thoughts arise, don't be carried away by them; look at the thinker of thoughts itself. We do not need to block off the objects of the senses; just experience them without any grasping and fixation. Non-stop­ ped clarity, no grasping! Do not look inward, look at the essence of mind. First, discursive thoughts will arise. When they arise, if you look at the essence of the ariser, they will be set free. When

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they have been set free, rest right there, self-settled, and for as long as another discursive thought does not arise, rest in not tweaking anything. Whatever occurs, good or bad, do not follow after it but rest in the essence of mind. In short, let the state of non-alteration arise. Without the dualism of a mind that has a place to abide and something which is abiding, rest in the state without subject and object that abides within itself. It should be vividly clear, non-stopped cl arity, crystal clear, right there. Whatever discur­ sive thoughts arise, look into mind's essence. Please drop all thoughts of the past, present, and future. Let the state of rigpa come as non-stopped clarity. Drop all thou­ ghts. First use the method of looking hither at mind then rest equipoised in the uncontrived state. Not seeing mind as a thing, as a form, or a shape, or a colour is the seeing of emptiness. Although there is emptiness, the · nothing-to-be-seen arising as non-stopped clarity is the factor of clarity. In the emptiness do not stop the clarity and in the clarity do not stop the emptiness; you need to rest in the state of clarity letting emptiness be there and in the state of emptiness letting clarity be there. This is what there is in the mind of now-ness. If the mind becomes distracted, use mindfulness to win back the state of the view.

THE PATH: A FORMAL SESSION OF �1EDITATION

47

The emptiness of mind's essence is dharmakaya. The clarity of mind's essence is sa:rp.bhogakaya. The unity of the emptiness and clarity is the nirma!fakaya. The three kayas are complete within the essence of the mind, within the ordinary mind (tha mal gyi shay pa) of now-ness. The total absence of something to be seen in the essence of mind-that it cannot be pin-pointed with "It is this, it is that"­ is emptiness. Within that state, the knower which arises as non­ stopped clarity is the mind's factor of clarity. The abiding with­ in the state of this clarity and emptiness inseparable is the nirmal).akaya.

Sometimes your body will hurt or be uncomfortable; do not follow after it and keep your practice strong. Keep the neck straight; do not let it be bent forward or back. cj;>

In brief, let go of all mental doings. cj;>

When you meditate, do it gently; do not force it or push it. Meditation means to rest in whatever shines forth from mind left as it is. Forcing the meditation with the idea, "I am going to meditate" is completely contrary to resting in the uncontrived state in which mind is left to express itself as it is. Uncontrived; not following after discursive thoughts and not involved with internal grasping mind; letting whatever mind is appear as non-

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stopped clarity; abiding by itself in itself-this is the meditation of non-meditation. If you can rest with the uncontrived state shining forth like that, then within it love, compassion, and devotion will come naturally and strongly. You will have more trust in yourself because you start to experience your own essence. As well as that, the qualities of the uncontrived essence of mind will arise.

In the Dzogchen tradition, this is called The Thorough Cut. The practice of the Thorough Cut is to cut to and then rest in the situation where past thoughts have stopped, future thoughts have not arrived, and the present awareness arises as non-stop­ ped clarity. The practice of Thorough Cut and the practice of tha mal gyi shay pa need the application of effort and perseverance. just meditating for an hour or two or a day or two will not help. To end the practice, the sacred factor of dedication should be cultivated. The dedication should be done in two parts, as explained at the end of these teachings.

THE PATH: INNER CONDUCT IS RETURN TO THE FIRST MOMENT

There are many names for this first moment: you can call it tha mal gyi shaypa; you can call it rigpa; you can call it suddenly­ arising rigpa; you can also call it co-emergent wisdom. There are so many names for it. All those names are designated according to its activity. In Dzogchen, one name for it is "time which is the fourth part without the three" meaning time without time, the time of self-arising rigpa. When we say time without time, we mean that it is outflowed time; it is time of the first moment which is then time without time. Rigpa does not continue for long for beginners. So we need to develop the ability to stay continuously in this first moment. Let this first moment, this not-abiding-anywhere, arise for you. You need to see how long you can stay continuously in the state of that first moment. How will we realize this kind of first moment? It is not something that can be realized on the basis of meditation. It is not something that you can discover through mind's process of apprehending experience through conceptual images. There­ fore, if you abandon all mental effort and let the natural state shine forth in non-stopped clarity, the nature that is the essence

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of mind comes along and that arrival of the nature that is the essence of mind is called self-arising rigpa. In short, resting in this actuality of mind is so easy. Resting in it does not require the slightest work of contrivance, no alteration needs to be done at all. There is nothing difficult about it at all. There is nothing to make up! It is easy! You simply rest in it and that is called tha mal gyi shaypa. Meditation done with the mind is not easy; you have to think a lot about all sorts of details, you have to visualize deities, and it is just plain difficult. If you think that that is meditation on the essence of mind, it is not! Just let go of all of that and just be there with whatever is there, just as it is. It is so easy! It is as easy as what is! No mental struggle or contrivance is required. "Tha mal" means not contrived, not altered ! It means staying in the state of letting the first moment rise. It means staying in the state that is unaltered, without contrivance. Actually, at first we need to be a little contrived because first we have to make a slight effort at the method of looking hither at the essence of mind. Having done that very gently, we rest in equipoise free of examiner and examined. We are non-medita­ tion yogins, aren't we? Actually, first we need to be meditation yogins and use the method of looking hither, then we need to remain equipoised in the state of no examiner and not some­ thing that is examined. When we say "all appearances arising in meditation" there are no times of meditating and not-meditating so there is no talk of looking hither and not looking hither. However, for us now we first need to follow the method of looking hither. Then, when we have entered the essence of that consciousness which was looking, we only need to stay in just that; there is no need to look again, and again, and again. When you cannot stay in the first moment, you arrive in post-attainment and the second, third, and so on moments are elaborated again, so you have to remember to look hither to

THE PATH: INNER CONDUCT

51

recognize the essence of the thought again. By doing that you will arrive in the first moment again and you should stay there in the non-stopped clarity which shines forth. Then mind will elaborate thoughts, one, two, three, again, so you have to look again at the essence and return to the first moment. That is how you have to cultivate the practice. It is like sounding a gong: at first you need to make a small amount of effort just once to strike the gong but after that the sound radiates clearly of itself; likewise you need a little bit of mindfulness to begin with in rigpa practice but after that you just let the experience continue on. While the sound of the gong is radiating, it is like being in the first moment and when the sound stops it is like having gone back into the subsequent moments of mind. So you need to cultivate it like that again and again. Experiencing that first moment, which has no afflictions in it, which is completely free from the elaborations of a subject and object, which is free from fixation and grasping, which is self-knowing, and which is self­ supporting, is what we need. You can call it tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa but that is what we need to depend on. There is meditation and post-meditation. After striking the gong, it is like being in meditation and you need to stay there; when the sound stops resonating it is like becoming distracted into post-meditation. When the gong has stopped resonating, you need to strike it again which is the same as having to recog­ nize rigpa again after you have gone into post-meditation. This process of returning to the meditation when you have slipped into post-meditation and realize that that is what has happened is the conduct in this kind of practice.

THE PATH: OUTER CONDUCT

Generally speaking, all three things-view, meditation, and conduct-are important. When you are involved in meditative equipoise, the view and meditation are important, and when you are not involved in meditative equipoise, when you are involved in activities, the conduct is important. If you say that you are practising Mahamudra or Dzogchen meditation and during your activities say that there is no self and do whatever you please, that is not all right. After all, the amount of time that you spend in formal practice is very small and the amount of time you spend not in formal practice is very large. If you think about life, half is night and half is day; you spend the night-time sleeping then spend the day-time going here and there, dressing, eating, washing, and so on. If you tally the amount of time that you practise, it might not add up to more than a few months of your lives. And then within that, the amount of time that you actually remain in the uncontrived state of tha mal gyi shaypa is very, very small. So it is important for all of you to be very careful about your conduct. For example, you might have a habit of meditating for an hour in the morning and pacifying the mind nicely but ifyou go off after that and involve yourselves in the afflictions and evil deeds each day, your whole life up to death will be the same

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pattern of goodness due to meditation early in the day being overcome by bad conduct later in the day and you will never progress. So, instead of doing that, after you have done your morning meditation, your conduct should be to be aware during the rest of the day. You should try to know when the afflic­ tions-passion, aggression, ignorance, pride, and delusion­ arise and, at that time, understanding that they only cause harm for yourself and others, return to tha mal gyi shaypa. Try to have that sort of conduct; if you do, it will result in the lessening of the afflictions. In short, as Buddhists, the whole point of your dharma practice is to tame your mind; dharma practice that does not tame your mind is meaningless. Dharma should be something that tames your mind and benefits others so, if you are practising dharma but your mind is not being tamed and you are not helping others then, dharma is not helping you at all-as the Conqueror Lingje Repa2 6 said, " If dharma is not practised according to the dharma, It creates the cause of long-life devas and lower rebirths." This is extremely important. For example, whether someone says that they are practising the dharma or not, whether some­ one says that they are practising secret mantra or not does not matter; the person whose conduct is taming their mind and lessening their passion, aggression, and ignorance is the person who is actually a practitioner. On that basis, you need to persevere at practice to develop a continuity of your realization. The way to persevere at medi­ tation is shown in the following story about Milarepa's disciple, Rechungpa, obtaining an oral instruction. At one point, after Rechungpa had stayed with Milarepa for many years, Milarepa 26 One of the early greats of the Drukpa Kagyu

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told Rechungpa that it was time for Rechungpa to go off and meditate. Milarepa said to Rechungpa that he had told him everything that needed to be said about meditation, that it was time to go, that they would not meet again in that life, but that he had one final oral instruction for Rechungpa before he went. The two of them had been living in caves on a very high moun­ tain and Milarepa said to Rechungpa that Rechungpa had always come up to greet him before so in this case Milarepa would go to see him off. Rechungpa was very curious about what oral instruction he was going to receive but Milarepa said, "No I won't say any more. First we will go off together". They went off on the path together and, when they reached a certain point, Milarepa said to Rechungpa that he would not go any further but that now he would give him the instruction. Rechungpa thought that he should offer a mal).�ala offering or do something special and became anxious but Milarepa said, "It doesn't matter, you don't need to do any of that". Then Milarepa stood up, pulled up his robe, and put his bottom up to Rechungpa. Rechungpa had a good look and saw that Milarepa's whole backside was like rock-completely solid. "That is my oral instruction for you", said Milarepa. "Now, if the son would like to become equal to the father, put your bottom on the ground as I have done and practise meditation and perseverance! I have practised meditation very intensely for many years and because of that I have brought forth the tha mal gyi shaypa in my mind­ stream and so have become a buddha. If you really want to have the same achievement, put your bottom on the ground and me­ ditate. " Milarepa said three times to Rechungpa, "Put your bottom on the ground and meditate". So it's the same for us; first it is important to recognize the view but then, once you are established in the view it is important to put your bottom on the ground and meditate! So whenever there is time, you should meditate. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, look at tha mal gyi shaypa! You can do that because tha mal gyi shaypa does not depend on anything; it is not something that you have

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to buy, it is not like clothes that you have put on, it is not some­ thing that you have to depend on like food and so on. Tha mal gyi shaypa is something that is in your mind so, if you recognize it again and again, that will be enough. Please put as much energy as you can into your practice. And try to pacify the three poisons of passion, aggression, and delusion. If that happens, then you are an authentic practitioner and you have made the free and connected precious human birth that you have obtained meaningful. All human beings have the basic aspiration of having a house to live in, and so forth so accomplishing that is not what it means to make a precious human rebirth with freedom and connection meaningful. If you can rid your mind of the poisons of the afflictions and benefit others through great love and compassion, then your precious human rebirth with freedom and connection has been made meaningful. As well as that you should endeavour as much as possible, either directly or indirectly, to help other sentient beings as much as possible; this is the conduct of a bodhisatva. And when you are helping others, you should not have any expectation of getting something back; just do it because it will help others. The main thing is to have at heart the intention to help others. When you help someone, you should not be looking to see whether the other person will then be able to help you; just being able to help the other person is enough in itself. So with a tame mind, a peaceful mind, a spacious and cheer­ ful mind, please meditate.

TH E PATH : UPADESHA INSTRUCTIONS

M EDITATION IS N OT RESTIN G ANYWHERE

Resting in tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa is not the same as the resting connected with shamatha practice. S hamatha practice is the practice of making the mind abide. Throughout beginningless lives we have had a mind which has been stirred up so this instruction directs us towards a mind which is abiding at ease. However, just this abiding alone will not take you to the level of a buddha; to realize buddhahood, the clarity factor of mind which is actually the knowing aspect of a buddha's mind must function as the vipashyana to realize the essence of the abiding mind. The feature of shamatha is that you create a resting place and something that is resting in that place. There are types of shamatha practice, for example in the One-Pointedness yoga of Mahamudra, that direct you to rest mind in mind. However, this is still a practice for calming down the turbulence of your mind and is not a final solution because it sustains the subject­ object duality. Only when there is no subject-object duality does tha mal gyu shayapa or rigpa arise.

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When there is just abiding and no insight, you have a dualis­ tic situation with subject and object. When there is a subject­ object situation real tha mal gyi shay pa, real rigpa does not arise. When there is not the duality of a subject-object situation, the real one can arise. Tha mal gyu shaypa and rigpa do not need a support, do not have conditions on which they depends; they are self-supporting. In self-arising rigpa there is no resting place and nothing resting there whatsoever. For example, a bird flying just flies through space without having a place of support and likewise the state of self-arising rigpa aris es and stays of itself. Since it is self­ arising there is neither resting place nor rigpa which is resting there.

RIGPA IS THE CURE-ALL

There is a distinct difference in the way that you work with obstacles such as drowsiness and dullness in shamatha-style meditation and meditations ofMahamudra or Dzogchen. There are some antidotes to be applied in the One-Pointedness level of practising Mahamudra. Other than that, in this kind of meditation on tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa where you are directly resting in the view of unified emptiness and appearance, there is no antidote other than the tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa itself. In this style of practice, it is not the sort of practice where you depend on applying an antidote to each kind of problem as it arises. As you are meditating, whatever occurs-drowsiness, excitement, or something else-the important thing is to inten­ sify the rigpa and stay within that; there are no specific antidotes that are applied to each thing as it arises. In this case, to apply an antidote is to apply the view. This is because you stay equi­ poised in the view and that view is tha mal gyi shaypa. Resting in that state is the antidote to the various experiences of drowsi­ ness, excitement, anger, pride, and so on.

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Cut teachings, there is an upde5ha that ex­

plains this. It says: " Rigpa is the single, sufficient antidote27"

Ifyou need an antidote to each thing, then you have to create it with the mind. Rigpa and tha mal gyi shaypa have no fetters in them but, as soon as you use mind to produce an antidote, you are using something that has fetters28• Rigpa and tha mal gyi shaypa are the one antidote that is sufficient for all circum­ stances. For example, if the mind starts to sink then, rather than following after the sinking and going outwards, stay here, in the state of rigpa. In other words, intensify the rigpa and that's it!

WHEN THE CLARITY PORTION HAS LOST STRENGTH , I NTENS I FY RIGPA

Rigpa is the cure all in the kind of meditation we are talking about. When the strength of the rigpa fades a little, dullness occurs. At that time, you do need to do something! In the practice of Essence Mahamudra and the Thorough Cut, the instruction is given: " Intensify the rigpa! " There are various ways to d o this, some with and some without leaving the meditation cushion. One way that involves leaving the cushion is to rest your gaze in the external space of an open sky and by resting in the external space you can draw forth the inner and secret space of pure rigpa. When you do this some­ times you can shout PHAT. You shout"PHAT" abruptly and at

27 This can also be translated as "Rigpa is the cure-all".

28 Because mind is dualistic mind and that has all the fetters of the mind of cyclic existence attached to it.

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the same time let your eyes rest in the space in the sky. When you shout PHAT it will help to cut the obscurations that are covering the pure nature of the mind. To do this, go up into the mountains, to the rocks and the forests, then look into the sky, and shout PHAT . When you do this, resting your eyes in the outer sky can draw forth the inner and secret clear state of rigpa. When you do this, it helps the liveliness of the rigpa quite a lot. It is better to do this by yourself; do not do it near other people. When you shout PHAT like that, immediately let go of everything, of all thoughts and hopes and fears, and the clear wakefulness will occur for a few moments. Shouting PHAT is very much like hitting a gong; you strike the gong one time then the sound continues. Likewise, you shout PHAT, drop every­ thing and then remain in the view that has been recognized. As with a gong which only needs to be struck once then left alone, it is sufficient to recognize the view once and then stay there without looking again and again. In the Dzogchen tradition, in the Thorough Cut practice, there is nothing else to do except rest in the state. Since it is a little difficult to do nothing but that, you can get up and do other things like prostrations to get the energy moving to arouse your awareness. Then you can sit down again and rest in the state, then you can offer some more prostrations, and then sit again in the state, and so on. When you do a Dzogchen retreat that is the way to do it. In short, when you rest in rigpa it is like an utterly clear sky-unstained by any thoughts of this and that it is crystal clear.

DOU BLE DELUSION

When you are dreaming there is what is called "double confusion"; you have the normal single confusion of a sentient being and on top of that you have the added confusion of being confused within the dream-state. In your normal waking state

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you have single confusion with all of the different afflictions of passion, aggression, ignorance, and so forth. An enlightened being does not have any of this delusion at all, either in the waking state or sleeping state, yet an enlight­ ened person does have the omniscient wisdom which knows all of the situations of all sentient beings.

O N E HUN DRED CHANCES FOR RIGPA

Sometimes tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa just comes without needing the effort of looking into a thought and sometimes it comes because you look into a thought that has arisen. Thus, discursive thought should not be viewed as a problem; it should be viewed as very useful. It is said, " If there are a hundred discursive thoughts, There are one hundred wisdoms of rigpa." For each thought that arises you look at its essence and abide there, so if there are one hundred different thoughts, then there will be one hundred different opportunities to experience rigpa. So use whichever one suits you. In short, as long as you end up in tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa, it is all right.

EXTEN DING THE TIM E OF RIGPA, DHARMATA' S M I N DFULN ESS, AN D S ELF-LI BERATION

The first-moment experience of tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa has to be prolonged in order for the meditation to develop. However, if you try to prolong that deliberately, you have immediately involved yourself in alteration of the state. While you are in the state you do not make any conceptual effort to stay there-you just stay there self-settled. However,

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when you have become distracted you do have to come back to it again; that is the conduct in this practice and it does involve conceptual effort. After you have done that and arrived again, you just stay there, with no further conceptual effort necessary. If you kept on putting conceptual effort into being in the state after you had arrived, it would be like striking a gong repeatedly at very short intervals. You would be striking the gong before the sound had died away and hence before the gong needed to be struck again. You strike a gong once and leave it as it is for as long as the sound continues to radiate. Likewise, in this practice, you look at the essence once then remain in that state until it disappears. 'When the sound of a gong has faded then you strike it again and likewise, with this practice, once you have become distracted, you need to look at the essence again. With rigpa practice there is a state of natural abiding that is not dualistic and which abides of itself. This state cannot be prolonged by conceptual means because it is self-abiding but, because of your practice of returning to it when you are dis­ tracted, the continuity of this self-abiding state naturally ex­ tends, becoming longer and longer. In the end, the rigpa reach­ es the point where it does not need to be invoked. It is as though a gong has been struck and now is resonating contin­ uously, without end! The innate ability of rigpa to abide is not the same as the mindfulness of shamatha. Mindfulness in shamatha is defined from the point of view of mind being present; it is defined as a mindfulness that holds mind in place. In vipashyana there is no dependence on mindfulness. For example in Dzogchen, mind­ fulness is spoken of as the dharmata's mindfulness, meaning that it is a state which self-abides. This is not a mindfulness that uses object and subject, it is a mindfulness that is free from subject and object. Rigpa is all-encompassing like space. Just like space, it does not go anywhere or come back from anywhere. Trying to hold

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onto space does not get you anywhere and trying to find a rest­ ing place in space doesn't get you anywhere either, does it? Rig­ pa, the dharmata, is similar to space and so cannot be grasped. There is nothing to be pulled back by mindfulness and no place to pull it back to; it exists just by being what it is where it is. If you think "I am going to take hold of space", how can you? What does space have that will let you take hold of it? Likewise, rigpa, the dharmata has nothing that would allow you to grasp it. Ifyou keep practising, it is possible to get to the point where discursive thoughts arise but, instead of them disrupting the rigpa totally and causing distraction into mind, the rigpa is strong enough that they naturally dissolve back into the space of the rigpa. This is called self-liberation. If your practice gets even better, the thoughts not only self-liberate but they do not cause even a ripple of disturbance to the rigpa; this is called self­ liberation which neither enhances or detracts from rigpa. Discursive thought comes and goes; it is the dharmata. The dharmata itself does nothing, nonetheless, the sixth mental consciousness will come up from the state of rigpa because these things have a connection. The sixth mental consciousness will come up and will self-liberate itself. However, if you start think­ ing about how that discursive thought is good and you grasp at it, then the sixth mental consciousness will not be able to self­ liberate itself. The sixth mental consciousness will come up from the state of rigpa and will subside again naturally as long as you do not engage it. If you do not engage it, you will not accumulate karma and you will not wander in the three realms of sarp.sara. You need to stay in the state of dharmata's mindful­ ness. There is no other kind of mindfulness spoken of in the Dzogchen tradition. In the Dzogchen tradition, mindfulness is the state without subject which abides of itself.

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THE TH I N GS OF THE SEN SES ARE NOT TO BE ABAN DON E D

When you rest in the innate mind of purity, you can still experience the objects of sense consciousness. There might be the appearances of the sixfold group but they can occur within a lack of dualistic mind. Why is this? When these appeara�ces o f the sixfold group occur vividly in non-stopped clarity, they must also be occurring within non-grasping. For us now, there are the appearances of the sixfold group but they are occurring within the context of dualistic grasping and in Dzogchen this is not all right. In Dzogchen, the appearances of the sixfold group are allowed to appear just as they are, without being corrupted by conceptual compartmentalizing, without being corrupted by confusion. You do not follow after the appearances of the sixfold group with an internal grasping consciousness, instead, you rest in the essence of the grasping mind itself. That is, you rest in the essence of what would be the internal, grasping mind and do not abandon the appearances of the sixfold group, letting them shine forth in their own place. In Dzogchen you have to rest in uncontrived rigpa like that; if you do not do that, then you have to block off the appearances of the sixfold group and that is a contrived, altered situation, isn't it? This is brings a discussion of one of the key points ofDzog­ chen. Especially, it is one of the key points of rigpa in Dzog­ chen. "Do not abandon the desirables of the world and its inhabitants; leave them in their own place. " This means that all the appearances of the five senses-the desirables of form, sound, smell, taste, and so on-are to be left uncontrived, just as they are. In doing this, the sixth mental consciousness is not allowed to follow after the five sense

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consciousnesses. The thing is not to follow after the objects of the five sense consciousnesses; if you know them with just one knower and do not follow after them, that is all right. This reality is something you will connect with in your own experience: face rigpa, the essence, then, for one or two minutes, the appearances of the sixfold group will appear vividly but without even the subtlest grasping and with non-stopped clarity. While it arises that way, that is rigpa. For example, when you see a flower, in the first moment you just see the flower without seeing it as good or bad. It is in the second moment that you have discursive thoughts of it being good, bad, and so on. Therefore, you need to be able to stay in the first moment all of the time. Rigpa means always being only in the first moment. We need to stay in the state that is a stream of those first moments. In the first moment there is no confusion but when the second moment comes, you have become confused, haven't you? In that first moment where there is no confusion at all, you are perfectly clear and the appearances of the sixfold group arise-forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and so on. These appear­ ances will arise within rigpa without needing to be blocked off. There is no need at all for the conceptual process that decides, "this appearance is appropriate, this is not appropriate". When you don't have those concepts you won't block appearances off and that would seem to be all right! This is one of the reasons why we are advised to sit with our eyes open, not shut, when we practise Dzogchen. We need to stay continuously in the state that is a stream of just these first moments. The first moment itself has none of the three poisons-passion, aggression, and delusion-in it whatsoever. It is free of support and supported and arises as the non-stopped clarity of the wisdom of rigpa that is free of mind. A continuity of this kind of first moment is what you need to preserve.

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To clarify this, in the case of shamatha practice you have to develop a stable abiding. \A/hen you do that, you can either use a support external to mind or you can use mind itself as the support. In either case, when the mind wanders off from its support you bring it back to the support whereby the distraction is reduced to increasingly subtle levels and eventually the mind abides stably. In vipashyana of the first moment, that is, in rig­ pa, there is no support and supported but it stays by itself within its own, very clear, state. In this case the senses of the sixfold group not being stopped at all and the inner sixth mental con­ sciousness not going after the objects of the sixfold group, the clarity will self-arise for a minute or two in an experience which is like the clarity of an utterly cloudless sky and you should remain in that. The way to meditate then, is to preserve a stream of those first moments. When there is subject and object, the mind has no freedom. This is so because in that case mind is occurring in dependence upon an object. On the other hand, rigpa does not depend on anything, just as empty space does not depend on anything, and is all-pervading. All outflowed dharmas do depend on a support. If you look well, you will see that there is not one thing in the world and not one inhabitant that does not depend on some­ thing. Now, anything that is dependent will have the nature of impermanence. Therefore rigpa, since it is not dependent, is not impermanent and since it is not impermanent, is not de­ pendent. Thus the emptiness of rigpa, like empty space that is all-pervasive, pervades all dharmas. This, we call wisdom free of mind; if it were mind, it would be a dependent thing but, being without mind it is something that is not dependent. Mind, being dependent, will accumulate karma and affliction. Rigpa, being free of all these things, is not an outflowed phenomenon and not having flowed out, it is completely free of all depend­ ency; it is the nature that pervades everything. Thus, equally, everything can, will, and is allowed to arise within it.

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U LTIMATELY, DEVELOPM ENT STAGE M UST BE UN I FI E D WITH COM P LETION STAGE

The visualization practices of development stage are con­ trived practices. In the end though, the contrived images of this level must be unified with the non-referential kind of knower that we have just been practising. Both Mahamudra and Dzogchen systems point out that there are two aspects to mind; the factors of emptiness and clarity. In these systems, you initially practise meditation with signs, that is, meditation which is constructed using the intellect. To do this, you visualize a deity and think about all the different aspects of the deity's appearance with thoughts like, "There is a vajra in the hand, there is this thing", and so on. At the end of deity practice, there is a short period for the completion stage of looking at the consciousness that has been visualizing the deity. This comes at the dissolution phase of the practice. At that time you recognize the essence of that visualizing consciousness as tha mal gyi shaypa or self-arising rigpa. However, keeping these two stages separate like that is not the point. You keep practis­ ing because of wanting to attain stability in the practice but at some point the development stage at the beginning and the completion stage at the end become unified due to your practice improving. At that time the developing stage arises as the liveliness of the tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa's luminosit) . When the two are unified, you would have an extremely vivid and precise appearance of yourself as the deity, but you would be meeting the real deity in the essence of mind. You would know that your body is the deity but that deity would be

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arising within a non-stopped luminosit:l9 of the rigpa that you were staying in. In the end, development stage should not be practised with signs; it should be free from signs30• The superfice31 of the development stage has to occur but should occur within the state of the tha mal gyi shaypa, the state of rigpa. The deity has to be meditated on as the liveliness of the clarity of rigpa32• In other words, appearance and emptiness must be unified which is the same as saying that the development stage and the completion stage should be unified. To do this, you first have to have a good ability with tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa. If you do not, then you will not be able to practise the deity and the essence of mind as an inseparable uni­ ty.

In the practice of a deity, at first you put a lot of effort into developing the whole visualization. That is plain development stage. Later, when you can recall the whole deity, you need to go to the next step of recalling the whole deity immediately within the context of rigpa meditation. An example of this is your own house. When you think ofyour house, you remember the whole thing at one time. Real development stage is like that. When someone writes a sadhana for development stage, the

29 See the glossary for this important term. 30 Tib. rntshan rna. Signs are the internal data structures of dualistic

mind. Free from signs means that the practitioner has divorced himself from the data processing of dualistic mind, in other words, there is wisdom, not dualistic mind.

31 See the glossal") under " Superficies". 32 The deity should not be a superfice of dualistic mind but should be coming out as a result of luminosity of tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa whose facility to express itself, the liveliness of that rigpa, has been trained to the point where it could express itself as the deity.

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details have to be written in sequential order but in fact the whole thing needs to come at once. Then, on top of that, to bring it all at once like that within a rigpa meditation is what is needed. Why do we have to practise the development stage within tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa? The development stage is the upaya part and tha mal gyi shaypa or rigpa part is the prajfia part. If you unify them, you will reach buddhahood very quickly. Another way to say this is that the fictional and superfactual truths will become unified. The superfice of the deity's appear­ ance is the fictional truth and the staying in the essence of that appearing mind, tha mal gyi shaypa, is the superfactual truth, so the two truths are being unified. In the Mahamudra system, co-emergent wisdom is often spoken of in relation to the practice of a yidam mal).cjala. Rigpa is not different from that. All the yidam mal).<;ialas arise within the space of rigpa. If you talk about it from the perspective of the Four Yo gas of Mahamudra, the yidam mal).<;ialas is a case of one taste: one taste in many and many in one taste. All dharmas arise within the state of rigpa. The whole of sa.rpsara and nirval).a is complete within rigpa. There is nothing separate from rigpa. If, for you, all dharmas arise from rigpa, you have found the single supreme essence of sa.rpsara and nirva­ l).a. That is good; it is real completion stage. Development stage and completion stage are two things which must be uni­ fied.

CERTAINTY AN D CON FIDENCE THEN ASSURANCE COM E THROUGH CONTIN U E D PRACTICE

If you really experience personally the essence of your own mind, you will discover certainty and confidence at first and assurance following that.

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Certainty is like this. Your friend might describe the taste of a fruit that you have not tasted before. The thoughts he gives you about the fruit will not bring certainty about the taste but when you actually eat such a fruit for yourself, you will have certainty about the taste of the fruit. In the same way, when you are able to experience meditation on the pure essence of your mind, certainty over what it is will arise for you. This will bring confidence to you. Even if the Buddha himself were to come and tell you that your experience was incorrect, you would remain confident because of your own certainty. Why? Be­ cause, after you have realized the primordial actuality of all dharmas, who could tell you that this, which is reality, is not true? The most important thing to us, as Buddhists, is to know the original state, the primordial situation of all dharmas, that is, to know reality. Therefore, after you have known the essence of mind, what you are at origin, no-one at all could tell you that that is not it, because you are seeing as real what is real. This state of experience which is reality does not depend on the events of mind, the afflictions, or any other circumstances at all; in other words, it does not rely on anything to support it. If it did rely on a support, then you could not have confidence in it but, since it does not rely on a support and can stand on its own, you can have confidence in it, can't you? The path to buddhahood is in your own mind. Once you have been introduced to your self-arising rigpa you will know peace within; you will understand that there is no external path. The path is within you; it is the path of recognizing what you have already, followed by the cultivation of that. When you have that kind of recognition, you ha\ e the pride of taking what is for what is. All appearances are the magical display of mind so, when you have recognized and then thoroughly trained in the essence of mind, you come to a level of realization where you have

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obtained complete mastery over your world. At that time, no external circumstances can harm you at all. At that time, you have the assurance of your realization of the essence of your mind. You have complete confidence based on the assurance that comes from having realized your own wisdom. When you have no control over your circumstances, you have no assurance of your abilities; when there is control over your circumstances there is assurance and with that you have confidence. In short, all phenomena are not other than your own mind, therefore, when you have realized the essence of mind, all dharmas are enlightened for you. In the Dzogchen tradition we speak of the assurance that goes with this level of realization like this: " I have no hope of going to a buddha field, I have no fear of falling into hell." Buddha fields and hell realms and the buddhas and sentient beings in them all are complete within the mind. So, if you recognize the actuality of your mind, then buddha mind is com­ plete for you. In the Dzogchen tradition this is known as "having assurance about the inner nature" and we speak of "yogins who have assurance about their inner nature" . I fyou really want t o graduate to the highest level o f realiza­ tion, you first have to recognize what you have as being what is, then you have to meditate. Without meditation it is not possible to experience this.

THE FRUITION

The ground of our being is the fundamental reality of all dharmas. This reality has always been so and continues always. It remains unchanged, even when we die. The actuality which is the ground of our being is something that we have to know directly. Now, on the path, it is covered by the two obscurations; the obscuration of the afflictions and the obscuration to omniscience. At the time of experiencing the path of seeing, which occurs when we recognize rigpa, we have a direct experience of the ground. We do have a direct experi­ ence of the ground at that point but we only see a portion of it and that partial but direct seeing of the ground is called tha mal gyi shaypa in Maha mudra and rigpa in Dzogchen. Thus, the ground is different from rigpa which is the wisdom of the path. Now since it is not complete, it needs to be cultivated with meditation. By meditating, we will gradually remove the obs­ curations so that we see more and more of the ground. In that way we will progress through the levels until the obscurations are totally removed and the ground is completely manifest. At that point the ground and the path and the fruition will become one thing. The actuality of the ground and the fruition are the same but they get different names depending on the circumstance. When our actuality is covered over we call it the ground and

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when the covers are removed we call it the fruition. However, that the ground is covered over does not mean that it is cor­ rupted; except for the fact that it is covered over, it is exactly what it is. The only difference between it and the fruition is that it is covered over by the obscurations of the path. When you remove those, ground and fruition become the same. This ground is in our minds. The pure ground is the real, very pure, original essence of our mind but at the moment it is not manifest for us because it is obscured by our obscurations. As fixation and grasping d ecr eas e, rigpa arrives and increases until it is completely manifest at which time our consciousness is called "rigpa alone", or "dharmakaya" or "graduated to the actuality of the ground" or "graduated to the actuality of the fruition". At that time consciousness has become one with all dharmas in the vast space of dharmata. Thus it is like one person who is being given many different names. In the Dzogchen tradition the progression along the path is described as the progression through dharmata become mani­ fest, experience increasing, rigpa reaching its measure, and dharmata exhausted. At the point of reaching the fruition (when all dharmas become exhausted into dharmata), consciousness is described as the fully manifest buddhahood of all dharmas being the expanse of dharmata or the buddhahood of the inner glow of the youth­ ful vase-body.

DEDICATION

Please dedicate the roots of merit which have come about here by explaining and listening to the dharma. Dedication should be done in two parts. Firstly, with your conceptual mind you need to cultivate thoughts like the follow­ ing, repeatedly. May all the roots of merit that have arisen due to our meditation become the cause for all sentient beings, as many as there are, to manifest the wisdom that exists in their mind-streams. May the roots of merit created here be the cause for the twofold bodhichitta to arise in the minds of all sentient beings. May the teachings of our teacher, the Perfect, Complete Buddha, forever shine like the sun in this world of ours. Accord­ ingly, may the holders of the teachings of the teacher, the Perfect, Complete Buddha live for a long time. May all the obj ectives of the holders of the teaching be fulfilled. May all epidemics, famines, strife, and adverse circumstances in this world of ours be pacified and, having been pacified may this world remain naturally in peace. May we in this life and the succession of all of our future lives gain a free and well-con­ nected human rebirth and on the basis of that may we benefit all sentient beings. Finally, make the superfactual dedication by meditating equipoised in the state of self-arising rigpa free of the discursive

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thoughts of the three-part cycle of the object, subject, and mak­ ing of the dedication.

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PART I I VIEW, MEDITATI ON, AND CONDUCT OF MAHAMUDRA AND DZOGCHEN

OVERVIEW

To start with, there are both causes and conditions needed for the practice of meditation. You have the extremely good situation of having obtained a free and well-favoured precious human body and, on top of that, of having met a good guru. That is a cause. The sort of condition needed to go with that cause is to meditate well; when that kind of cause is joined with that sort of condition, human life turns out very well. There­ fore, you need to meditate well. You are fortunate because, generally speaking, you have ob­ tained a precious human body and so have the time to practise dharma. In particular, you are fortunate because you have met a very good guru. Because you have obtained a precious human body and have met a good guru there is no need for me to go into any further explanation about causes and conditions for practising meditation. To understand the practice of meditation properly, you need to have a good understanding of the three situations of body, speech, and mind. There is no real need to explain the situa­ tions of body or speech since most of you here are old students of Trungpa Rinpoche and have heard many dharma teachings already. However, to speak briefly about the body, there are the Seven Dharmas of Vairochana. If you can keep your body in a posture which has the Seven Dharmas of Vairochana, the five

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main winds of the body will have good passage and also, it sets up a dependent connection for accomplishing a vajra body. To speak briefly about speech: speech has a connection with the winds so, if the winds are placed in a self-settled way together with the breath, it helps a little and also, if you practise vajra recitation, such as "Ol'y1 Al:I HU.lyi", it creates the cause of accom­ plishing vajra speech in the future. That brings us to the principal thing, mind. The situation of mind has a lot of key points and requires a lot of discussion. For instance, in Mahamudra, there is the term, "arising, dwell­ ing, and going " which is used in the discussion of where mind first arises, where it stays in the interim, and where it goes to in the end. Also, most teachers of Mahamudra discuss mind using the term "staying, moving, and awareness". All of you have already heard a lot of dharma teaching so you probably know of these things and I won't speak much about this. However, there is one point that is very difficult, the most difficult. Within the context of mind there is the particular point of the liberation of mind. You need to understand this well; if you do not understand it well, it will give you a lot of difficulty. To sit and meditate is not that difficult-to do shamatha meditation or to stay in meditation on emptiness is not hard-but to have liberation in the context of discursive thoughts arising-that is difficult. Your meditation must be capable of providing liberation while discursive thoughts are arising. This is so important that I will repeat this; your medita­ tion needs to be capable of providing liberation while discursive thoughts are arising. And again, your meditation needs to be capable of providing liberation while discursive thoughts are arising! ! With a good understanding of this point your medita­ tion will come along well. Other than that and without excep­ tion, as we say in Tibet, "Practice and the practitioner's mind have become two different things".

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We d o not have control over the arising o f discursive thou­ ghts. Discursive thoughts do not arise according to a schedule; they can and do arise at any time whatsoever. Exactly in accor­ dance with that, meditation needs to be something which can and does arise at any time whatsoever. In other words, given that the arising of discursive thoughts is un-scheduled, to have meditation which is liberating we need a meditation in which the arising of discursive thoughts comes together with the medi­ tation and the meditation comes together with the arising of discursive thoughts. This point of liberation that I am discussing will be under­ stood by the majority of people not through mind but through mind's essence. What is mind and how does it function? Mind is the coming together of three things: an outer object, an intermediary sense power, and a mental consciousness. What is the essence of that mind? The essence of mind has the qualities of emptiness, of clarity, and of the two unified-where unified means that they cannot be separated. Whenever someone recognizes those three qualities together, that is called the exp­ erience of rigpa or the recognition of rigpa. This term rigpa is very sacred, very important. So, there are these two things, mind and mind's essence. When you proceed under the influence of mind you are doing the work of cyclic existence, you are going along in sarpsara. When you proceed under the influence of rigpa, you are doing the work of going to buddhahood, you are going along the path to buddhahood. When speaking of a mind and its essence, it is exactly like one hand having two sides-outer and inner-which are sepa­ rated by a fine line, the edge of the hand. In that case, if we say that mind is outside, then to go to the inside, to mind's essence, is not far to travel at all. And, if you then ask who or what creates this line, the answer has to be recognizing and not-

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recognizing. When there is no recognition there will be a line; when there is recognition there won't be a line. In the end it comes down to recognizing and not recognizing. When you involve yourselfwith recognition, there are three topics-view, meditation, and conduct. What is the view? The knowing, the recognizing, right within one instant, of the mind's emptiness and clarity unified is called the view. When, in just one moment, emptiness, clarity, and the two unified are all there together, that is called rigpa. This is not saying that emptiness is recognized in one instant, clarity in another, and their unifica­ tion in yet another, rather, when all three-emptiness, clarity, and emptiness and clarity unified-are present simultaneously and within one instant, that is said to be rigpa. Now in that instant, how is the first quality, the emptiness aspect? The factor of emptiness is the factor of non-grasping and that non-grasping is experienced as unobstructed openness. The factor of clarity is crystal-clear lmowing within the factor of emptiness. The unobstructed, non-grasping part is the factor of emptiness and, within that, the crystal-dear knowing part is the factor of clarity. These two do go along together in a com­ pletely unified way, so the third quality is the unobstructed part and the knowing part going along together in a completely unified way. Here, when we speak of quality number one, two, and three we are not saying that they have a linear order one, two, three. Do you understand this? It is extremely important! Why? Because many meditators fall under the sway of emptiness and many others fall under the sway of clarity and, getting lost like that, on one side or the other, is a problem. Falling under the sway of emptiness means that you have be­ come stuck in emptiness. When you are stuck on the emptiness side, thoughts do not have a chance to come up. We need discursive thoughts because discursive thoughts are wisdom.

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However, when discursive thoughts come along with grasping that is not all right. What we need is discursive thoughts with­ out grasping because that is the factor of wisdom. If we are stuck in emptiness, there is no pathway for the wisdom to appear, is there? Being stuck in emptiness is not the same as having a view of nihilism. Here I am talking about how, in the context of meditation, you could become stuck in emptiness by remaining in a state of nothing whatsoever. If you get lost in emptiness, buddha's all-knowing aspect cannot come forth. If you get lost in clarity, then, because of not having emptiness, you cannot produce the antidote to ego­ grasping. As a result of going astray in one of these ways, the complaint is heard these days, "Oh, I've meditated for twenty years, but I'm still the same ! " People who have this complaint do not have the factor of liberation because having the factor of liberation means having emptiness and clarity unified. When you get caught on the side of emptiness by emptiness or when you get caught on the side of clarity by clarity, there is no emptiness and clarity unified, is there? When you do not have clarity occurring within emptiness and emptiness occurring within clarity, the liberation aspect is not occurring and all those problems will arise. Therefore, everyone has to look right at the first instant. There is a method to do this. As you sit there like that, various discursive thoughts arise-boom, boom, boom, boom-don't they? Turn and look at their essence: not having a fixed essence, they are liberated. Discursive thoughts naturally self-destruct. As they dissolve, you must develop the ability to rest in equi­ poise right there. To repeat, there is a method for the direct recognition of rigpa. What is it? Everyone, whoever it might be, has a lot of discursive thought going on-ding, ding, ding-don't they? Some notice this, some do not, nevertheless it continues on in

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an un-interrupted stream. At the point of noticing this, at the point of knowing it, you need to turn and look at its essence. Mind looks at mind; use that method. The mind needs to look at the mind. You need to do this very quickly! The essence needs to look at the essence. Mind looks at mind; that is the method. Then there is nothing to be looked at and no looker whatsoever. Use the method of looking hither and then, if you see nothing, rest within that. When that has arrived, just rest within it-don't go out there; don't dwell here; don't do any­ thing whatsoever. It is not a process of turning, turning, turning. It is very fast. Turn once and face the essence! The discursive thought will fall apart immediately. Then you must rest in that. For a while an­ other discursive thought won't come and while there is no second discursive thought coming, just stay there like that. Having arrived in this situation, what will you find? There is unobstructed-ness and no grasping which is the factor of empti­ ness and in that emptiness there is vivid knowing which is the factor of clarity. Moreover, in that clarity appearances can arise and those very appearances are empty. When it comes in that way, that is said to be rigpa. If you did not understand that, the following needs to be said. Normally, we have a sarp.saric mind, don't we? And when sarp.saric mind understands something there has to be fixation with it. However, in the case of rigpa, the knower occurs because fixation has been eradicated. This really is a very important point in vajrayana. The vajrayana says, " Do not abandon desirables, Look at them in their own place! " doesn't it? ! You should not abandon the desirables o f the five senses because of regarding them as bad or faulty-in not aban­ doning desirables there is buddhahood. The reason for saying this is that the knower of forms, sounds, smells, tastes-what-

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ever there might be-is, in itself, free of grasping. When you develop this view, vajrayana comes along; without this view, vajrayana cannot come along. Well, what view is required? When the essence of this mind is looked at, every appearance is known but there is no grasping and when that is obtained, there is what is called, "buddhahood without abandoning desirables". In normal conversation when we say, "desirables of the five senses" , grasping is immediately there. This is not a new idea. In the West, when desirables are mentioned, there is only the possibility of grasping arising; there is no possibility at all of desirables with no grasping. However, in Tibet, there is the notion of desirables and no grasping because the Buddha spoke of it. He taught that, in the context of vajrayana, there is the path of desirables with no grasping. In not abandoning desirab­ les, there is the path to buddhahood. If you do not understand this point, you have not understood the vajrayana. If you say, "I am a vajrayana practitioner and I have grasping", it is not all right; the Buddha did not speak in that way. It is not all right to have grasping and fixation in the context of vajrayana. On the other hand, if there are desirables and you have no fixation, that is fine. What is the reason for talking in this way? The whole discussion comes about because of talking about rigpa. Whether you understand it now or not, leave it in your mind like that and you will slowly, slowly come to understand it. I have not simpli­ fied this at all but have explained it according to the way things are. There are many reasonings and it is not easy-you need to understand: the emptiness quality; the clarity quality; the empti­ ness and clarity unified quality; that the emptiness and clarity occur together in one instant; and that you look towards the essence and that it should be there as soon as you look at it. First, understand these well, then later we will practise them.

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In doing this meditation, there is "looking hither", isn't there? In meditating, you look hither-mind looks at mind­ then rest in that. If your meditation goes outward, you are going to fall under the sway of appearances. That is not all right. Falling under the sway of emptiness also is not all right. Your meditation needs at all times to be pervaded by both emp­ tiness and appearance. If you understand this, there will be no difficulty; if you do not understand it, there will be some diffi­ culty so do it as I have instructed. The next step is to recognize. You look, then you recognize. The ri gp a that you recognize is something that you have. It is not something which you need to create afresh. If you recognize that you have it, that is enough. For example, someone who has gold but does not know that what they have is gold, does not use it. If that person recognizes the gold that they have, then they do not have to do anything else-they already have what they need. In the case of rigpa, other than recognizing or not recog­ nizing it, there is no meditation which needs to be done; medita­ tion of the sort where you create something afresh is not re­ quired. Rigpa meditation comes down to either recognizing rigpa or not. Therefore we need to look hither and recognize it. When you have recognized it, you stay in that state. That is the meditation. When you lose that state, you have lost the meditation and need to return to it. In Mahamudra and Tho­ rough Cut, there is a special meaning to conduct. It is that you immediately return to the meditation as soon as you realize that you have left it. To do that, you have to look, then recognize yet again.33 33 In this section, Tsoknyi Rinpoche summarized the causes and conditions needed for being able to travel this path to enlightenment. Following that, he gave a summary of the view, meditation, and conduct of this path. The view that you understand is the view that (continued ...)

THE VIEW: IDENTIFYING MIND AND MIND'S ESSENCE

It is necessary to determine the view using conceptual understanding in both Mahamudra and Dzogchen. One impor­ tant thing to determine is the distinction between mind and mind's essence. Mind is a process in which there is the external object which is fixated upon, the intermediary sense powers, and the various mental consciousnesses which know the external objects. In that process there is fixation and grasping. Mind's essence has its own essence which is emptiness, has a nature which is clarity, and has an all-pervading compassionate activity which is the two of them unified. A shorter way to say this is that mind's essence is empty, clear, and unified. Knowing those all together and at the same time is called rigpa. That is what we need.

33 (... continued) there are both mind and mind essence. The view that you practise is mind essence itself. To meditate on that view, you look, recognize, and stay in the state. To perform the conduct of that view, you return to looking, recognizing and staying in the state whenever you realize that you have left the state.

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The main point is to understand about mind and mind­ essence. If you understand about mind and mind-essence, then meditation will come easily; if you do not understand about mind and mind-essence, then meditation will be a bit difficult. As far as mind-essence goes, if it has those three qualities, then you can say that you are in rigpa. You can also say that you are within tha mal gyi shaypa because tha mal gyi shaypa also has those three qualities. In the Dzogchen tradition, the clarity aspect is emphasized and in the Mahamudra tradition, the appearance aspect is emphasized. Dzogchen talks mostly about clarity and emptiness, and Mahamudra talks mainly about appearance and emptiness. However, the meaning is the same because appearances themselves are the factor of clarity. Then, when you understand the difference between mind and mind's essence, there is the further important distinction of meditation and post-meditation. Meditation is staying in rigpa. Not staying in rigpa, that is, staying in mind is post-meditation. When you understand that distinction, there is a further distinction of distraction and non-distraction. Being in rigpa, is meditation and non-distraction, being in mind is not rigpa and is distraction. That is the basic picture that you need to understand for doing the meditation.

THE INTRODUCTION 34 TO THE VIEW: THE THREE QUAL ITIES OF RIGPA

Before you can do the meditation on rigpa, you have to recognize the view of the authentic35, which is rigpa. The teach­ er introduces you to it and then you recognize it. Once you have recognized this view, then you meditate on it. The medita­ tion is nothing other than remaining equipoised on the view, in other words, remaining equipoised in that state of rigpa. Prev­ iously, I spoke of "looking at the essence" and "looking at the essence of mind"; these refer to remaining equipoised in the state of rigpa. In the Dzogchen path of the Thorough Cut, we talk about rigpa. In the Mahamudra system they speak of tha mal gyi shay­ pa, co-emergent wisdom, and rigpa. These all refer to the same thing.

34 Tib. ngo sprod. Commonly called "pointing out" but the actual meaning is "introduction"; the guru introduces you to the nature of your own mind.

35 Authentic here is another name for reality in The Great Vehicle.

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What is the view, rigpa like? It has the three qualities of emptiness, clarity, and emptiness-clarity unified and these are together all at one time. A true recognition of the view, rigpa, will have all of those three things together at one time. If they are not, it is not a true recognition of the view. Then, what are emptiness, clarity, and emptiness-clarity uni­ fied? The factor of emptiness is the factor of unimpeded, great openness. This is also called all-encompassing, being totally spread out. In it there is no such thing as a front and a back, a top and a bottom; it is completely free from directionality. It has no beginning point and no ending point. It does not have birth, dwelling, or cessation. Any dharma which has birth, which has cessation, and which has dwelling is impermanent but this emptiness factor of mind's essence is not like that. If you really know this emptiness aspect, then you will really know liberation from the view of permanence. To be authentic Bud­ dhists, we must liberate ourselves from the view of permanence. Then there is the second quality which is clarity. Here, saying that it is the second quality does not mean that it is more or less important than the other qualities. When we speak of clarity we are speaking of the factor of knowing. Clarity is the factor of knowing. It knows, in a clear and unobstructed way, whatever appears-it operates to see forms, hear sounds, smell smells, taste tastes, and so on. If you really know this clarity aspect, then you will really know liberation from the view of nihilism. So, with a good understanding of emptiness you are liberated from the view of permanence and with a good under­ standing of clarity you are liberated from the view of nihilism. To be authentic Buddhists, to have the authentic view of Bud­ dhism, your view must be completely free from permanence and nihilism. In other words, you must liberate yourselves from the view of permanence and the view of nihilism.

THE VIEW: INTRODUCTION TO THE VIEW

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Where do faults come from? All faults come from not having unified emptiness and clarity. Most religions have a system based on the view of permanence and a few follow a system based on the view of nihilism. For them, problems arise because they have not understood unified emptiness-clarity. When a religion or philosophical system falls on the side of emptiness and so has a view of nihilism, the followers think, "Oh, everything is empty, nothing matters. This life is like a butter-lamp-when it finishes, that's it, there is nothing more. If I die tomorrow, it does not matter because everything is emp­ ty, there's no karma, there's no virtue, no evil deeds. Everything is emptiness and nothing more". Then in the case of a tradition which has the view of permanence, things are considered to be really true and the followers think, "Gods and heavens are real. They are true". On the other hand, when the unification of emptiness and clarity is properly understood, dependent, related arising is understood. Deities, heavens, and all of the things that might be in them are understood to be there but are known to have come about in dependence upon emptiness. Therefore, to avoid faults, it is necessary to understand the point of unifica­ tion. I also explained that, when you "look at the essence, rigpa", immediately, right in that moment, there will be emptiness co­ existing with appearance and appearance co-existing with emptiness. These two things come, both of them together, right in one moment. In any given moment there is emptiness and in that same moment there is appearance and the essence of that emptiness itself is appearance and the essence of that appearance itself is emptiness. When it comes about in that way, it is rigpa. For beginners, this is not something that comes in a contin­ uous stream over a period of time. At first it comes for one, perhaps several, instants and then is lost due to distraction. When it does come, stay there without grasping whatsoever, without dwelling on it whatsoever, and without blocking off the

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sense faculties at all. When this experience arises that is called rigpa. Rigpa is very sacred and of great significance. "When this is not understood properly it is called a mistaken path. Generally, the Buddhist path is made up of the two things upaya and prajfia. Making the mistake of not understanding rigpa is getting lost with regard to prajfia. The upaya side has many things to it, making feasts, reciting liturgies, offering prostrations, offering mai).c)alas, and so on and as long as you have good faith whilst doing those things, the upaya side is not lost. On the other hand, if you do not understand wisdom well, you are making a mistake on the side of prajfia. Therefore you need both upaya and prajfia. There are various ways of describing these three qualities of rigpa. The first two are always emptiness and luminosity. The third can come in various ways because their unification results in all of the buddha qualities being active. The emptiness part is just one thing whereas the clarity or luminosity part is many things because it includes all appearances. The clarity part contains buddha fields, visions of the deities such as Vajrayogini, and so on-it has no limit to it at all. The all-knowing aspect of a buddha, which consists of knowing things both in their depth and their extent, is the factor of clarity.

THE MEDITATION

How is rigpa meditation done? To do it, you must meditate using what is called "non-distracted, non-meditation". Non­ distracted, non-meditation. Non-distracted, non-meditation. Keep these words! What is non-distraction and what is non-meditation? Nor­ mally, when we think of meditation, we think that we need to meditate on a deity, need to do shamatha meditation, and so on, but all of those are meditations which require the involvement of mind, some kind of thought process. For example, when doing Vajrayogini practice there is the thought, "I am Vajra­ yoginf, I am pure", and so on. This is the general way in which meditation is done. However, it is a mistake to think that rigpa meditation is like that. While doing rigpa meditation it is mistaken to have thoughts such as, "Oh, this is rigpa, that is rigpa" because rigpa meditation is non-meditation. Neverthe­ less it is also called, "non-distracted" and this means that you need to stay in that state of rigpa without wavering from it. To explain this with an example: right now you are not meditating but you are distracted and that is not all right. Then, sometimes you are meditating but you are doing a meditation that is con­ structed with the conceptual mind and that also is not all right. Based on those two considerations there is the phrase, "non-dis­ tracted, non-meditation". We need to understand it that way.

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This is something that each person has to understand for themselves. Looking at the essence can only be done by looking at yourself; there is no other method. It is something that belongs to the category of personal experience. To give a reason for that, there is the verse, " Prajfiaparamita, inexpressible by thoughts or words, The entity of unborn, unceasing space, Is the domain of self-knowing wisdom. This is the great mother, Prajiiaparamita. " It i s the same a s rigpa. Therefore this i s extremely sacred and

important. This meditation is a meditation which can be done at any time at all. It can be done while you are going; while you are eating; while you are drinking; and so on. However, as you do whatever you do the mind sometimes rises up so at that time you need to have the mindfulness which knows that you are dis­ tracted. With that kind of mindfulness you can remain undis­ tracted. However, that kind of mindfulness is only used in post­ meditation; in meditation itself there is no need for that kind of thought whatsoever. In meditation, conceptual analysis and decision-making are not needed and are not all right. Discursive thoughts will come up for no reason at all. When they do arise, do not grasp at them. Discursive thoughts come unscheduled. When they do come, they are not something which can really be fixed in place anyway, so do not fixate upon them. If you don't fixate upon them, they will just roam free. Within rigpa, which is utterly spacious, there is the opportunity for thoughts to arise and to be left alone, without fixation. Here, the various sense faculties are not to be stopped; just let sights, sounds, and so on, arise without obstructing them at all. Then, if discursive thoughts do arise, just let them arise without

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stopping them and at the same time do not fall under their influence. That is the main practice. If discursive thoughts arise and you fall under their influ­ ence, then you are making the karma of sarp.sara. In that case, discursive thought arises, is taken as an object to be fixated upon, and the mind which grasps at it appears. Thus you have fixation and grasping and, based on the karma created by that, you wander in sarp.sara. So, when you are doing your practice and discursive thoughts come up, do not try to own them, just allow them free passage. That sort of thing is called, "not stopping the afflictions; giving them freedom". The afflictions are not stopped; they go to natural freedom and the reason that this occurs is that you are not dwelling in fixation. That being the case, no matter how much affliction arises, it is all right. The problem is grasping. When there is grasping, passion, aggression, and delusion occur. When there is no grasping, whatever arises is of no account, is it? As it says in the four lines of Gampopa: " Grant your blessings so that confusion dawns as wisdom." How can that be? It can occur when there is no grasping. How­ ever, when there is grasping it is not possible that it could dawn as wisdom, is it? So, in terms of looking at the essence, whatever discursive thought arises do not fall under its influence. Then, staying in the openness, rest in your own nature. Then, not meditating, don't be distracted. Right now, we are under the power of mind and what benefit is there to this? Whilst staying in rigpa, if a discursive thought arises and you say, "This thought is good, this thought is bad", that is just rational enquiry isn't it? Then, in the context of doing this kind of meditation, keep a cheerful attitude and a spacious mind; don't have a tight

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attitude. You need to have appreciation; appreciation for the fact that you have a free and connected precious human body, and that you have time to practise meditation. Have a cheerful attitude by keeping that in mind. If you have too much appre­ ciation, pride will come up. If pride comes up regarding your good circumstances then you need to remember that one day you will die and that everything is impermanent-you need to bring your mind down a little bit. So, if you are a practitioner, you need to have a cheerful attitude, a spacious mind, and a lack of pride. If you have those, it will come out really well, won't it? Normally, worldly people need a house, a car, money so that they can get on with their lives. Practitioners need a cheerful attitude, a spacious mind, and no pride to get on with building their practice. If you don't have a cheerful attitude, your dharma practice will not work out because there is no lightness to the mind. If your mind is not spacious then, just like a highway with too much traffic, your mind will keep bumping into itself and will not be able to proceed. If you don't have a spacious mind, you will keep stalling because of anger and so on. When you have a very small, tight mind your practice cannot proceed well. Therefore, you need a spacious mind. Then, even if you have the first two qualities of being cheerful and open, if you have pride, that will be a problem because you will sit there having the thought, "I already know about this; I already learned this before, so this is not very important". So those are the requisites for a practitioner and if you have them, hearing, contemplating, and meditating will go well for you. Therefore please cheer up. Please be without fixation and grasping. Please do not stop discursive thoughts. Even if you want to stop them, you won't be able to! So, even if discursive thoughts arise and stay there, do not grasp at them. If you do it that way, things will come out very well for you.

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Then, in terms of the five senses, you do not need to reject their appearances at all. You do not have to close your eyes or your ears, etcetera. The appearances of the five senses should be allowed to appear naturally. If sounds occur, it doesn't matter; if sights occur, it doesn't matter; if pleasant feelings of the body arise, it doesn't matter. Then, as for rigpa, it is said, "This completely open rigpa is the dharmakaya . . . " Look hither at the essence; there is nothing to see; rest equi­ poised in that. From within that, if you hear a sound, that's fine; if you see a visual form, that's fine; if a breeze comes and strikes your body and it feels pleasant, it doesn't matter; even if some mental suffering occurs, that doesn't matter-just let it go. These discursive thoughts come and go, come and go, but this is nothing, it is just the nature of the journey. In fact, it is just like a highway with a lot of cars going backwards and forwards on it-you could not hold onto the cars even if you wanted to­ and likewise, our mind has a lot of discursive thoughts coming and going all the time and you cannot hold onto them, either. The arising of discursive thought is just the natural quality of the mind. If thoughts arise it is not bad and if thoughts do not arise it is not good, either. If you get lost in grasping at them, that's no good; if you do not get lost in grasping at them, that is good. If you want to know what is good and not good, it is not whether thoughts arise or not, it is whether you grasp at them or not. Appearances appearing or not appearing is beside the point. If discursive thought arises and you think, "this is good" then in fact that is not so good. In brief, whatever comes up in the mind is all right; the point is to be completely free of fixation and grasping. For example, if you think, "I am going to kill Tsoknyi Rinpoche", that is nothing in itself but if you get involved in a heavy train of thoughts in which you fixate on those thoughts, then that is not

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all right. Apart from that, whatever comes up is fine. It is mind's quality to produce thoughts and it will produce some truly rotten thoughts and some truly wonderful thoughts-there is the whole of sarp.sara, isn't there? So the thought isn't the problem, it is owning the thought that is the problem. The way that thoughts work is that at first they are very subtle and then, if you keep developing them, they get thicker and thicker until finally they become something which you act upon. For exam­ ple, in the case of something that you do not like, at first there is a very small aversion to it which then, because you continue to think about it, turns into anger, which grows until in the end you strike out at the thing you do not like. So, let it go when it first appears; a real practitioner practises that way. Please keep your minds cheerful. Here we are in a world which is full of difficulties; if you do not keep your minds cheer­ ful, life can be very difficult. Whatever bad circumstances or obstacles arise, do not be taken aback, do not lose your footing, be fearless. However, just thinking, "I am not afraid, I am not afraid", does not help very much. Real fearlessness arises throu­ gh real understanding of the actuality of things. The first thing to make a connection with is that the root of all the dharmas of sarp.sara and nirvat).a is mind, the sarp.saric mind that I spoke of previously. Having connected with that, when you understand the way that that mind works, fearlessness will arise. In other words, the most important thing is to meditate on the essence of mind, rigpa. You need perseverance, too; the kind you need is spactous perseverance. Sometimes rigpa comes better when you do things like going to a nice place, eating good food, and so on because when you do those things you lose some of the tension in your mind. Later, when you are experienced at rigpa, doing things like that doesn't matter. For the beginner it is good to go to a nice place, up on a mountain and look out into space. Cool wind, good food, sun is almost setting, temperature is just right, trees are

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moving gently, you have your car to go back down with so you do not even have to worry about getting home-everything is perfect! Just go there like that and I am sure that rigpa will come well! At that time the sun is going down so somehow there is some energy; because of that energy there is sadness but it is not a bad sadness, it is good sadness. The day is ending so there is some energy which makes you feel sad but it is good sadness-sadness together with joy. Just sit there, let go of all the worries and just look into the space. That is the pleasant way. Sometimes try it that way and then sometimes try it in a scary way. In Tibet, sometimes people would go to a real charnel ground to do that. Here in the West everything is very nice at a cemetery; everything is all packed up in a box so there is no feeling of fear. In Tibet you can see one hand here and one hand there, some hair and some teeth; it is very scary to go there and even more so because such charnel grounds are many miles from the nearest village and there is no­ one to protect you if something does go wrong. So you should go to places like that. Then, if the circumstances do not affect you, it is a sign that your rigpa is quite stable, quite good. Here in the West you have amusement parks with very scary rides that go up and down and up and down. Go to places like that and try to catch your rigpa. If you go to places like that and you cannot control your mind now, how will you practise in the bardo? This is what practice really is! Of course you need to do pros­ trations and sadhana practice and all of those things but if you do not have this capability, then you have a big difficulty! Alright, we will try to do the practice! I will strike the gong and then you should meditate. At that point drop all of your concepts, even the concept of doing meditation. Just stay there. At the same time, do not push things away either. Do not think, "I'm not thinking" -that too is thinking! Have everything normal; breathing normal, eyes normal.

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The gong is an example of how to do this practice. To strike the gong you have to make some effort but having struck the gong and produced the ringing sound, the sound continues on naturally without any effort. Rigpa is like that; first you have to put in some effort to recognize it but after that, having recog­ nized it, you just stay in the state of rigpa. The state of rigpa is a natural situation which continues without needing to be manu­ factured. Do not try too hard but at the same time, do not be lazy. Just be relaxed, natural. If you do it, you will slowly understand. Ifyou don't un d er stand it now, it is not a big deal. Meditation should be discarded but you still need to persevere. Be very relaxed. You need to be at ease but still need to have your seat. ­

THE CONDUCT

When a beginner looks to find rigpa, the first step of looking is done with conceptual mind. After that, when you enter rigpa, there is a type of understanding within the rigpa itself and that understanding is called individually discriminating wisdom. That sort of knower is not in a conceptual state of mind at all. At some point, a thought will arise in the meditation and grasping will be there with it. At that point, you have lost the non-meditation and have entered meditation on cyclic existence. From there the conduct is to go back to rigpa. You never lose the chance to go back to rigpa. However, unless you are a very good practitioner, the knowledge itself that you are distracted will not bring you back to rigpa. Until you are experienced in the practice, the knowing that you are dis­ tracted has to be followed by a deliberate, conceptual effort to return to the essence. Beginners need to force this a little. After a lot of practice, by merely knowing that you are distracted, you can return automatically to rigpa.

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UPADESHA INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE PATH

STABi liZIN G RIGPA

First, you have to become a stable practitioner then you could have a stable rigpa practice. Correspondingly, there are instructions that go together with becoming a stable practitioner and another set of instructions on stabilizing rigpa. Two things that help to stabilize the practitioner are renun­ ciation and devotion. There is no limit to those and the more you have of them, the better. When, in the first of the four dharmas of Gampopa, it says, " Grant your blessings so that concepts turn to dharma;" it is talking about a level in which devotion and faith are very important. Those go together with practice at that level. Then, for stabilizing meditation in general, there is stabili­ zing which is done within the context of conceptual mind and stabilizing which is done outside the context of conceptual mind. Stabilizing in relation to conceptual mind is done with shamatha and other meditations like that. In those kinds of meditation, concept works, and works very well. For example, in shamatha practice, by a forceful kind of mindfulness, "I am not going to

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get carried away by thoughts", you can bring another concept forcefully to solve your first problem and that is all right. In rigpa practice that does not work because, in rigpa practice, if you bring up a concept to solve an apparent problem which has arisen within the practice, you have just destroyed your rigpa practice. The two things do not mix together. The differences between the two types of stabilizing come from the differences between mind and mind essence. Now, for stabilizing rigpa in particular, there are steps involved. The first step is that, if you want to make something stable, you have to know the thing that you want to make stable. Here, that means that you have to know the rigpa and that in turn corresponds to the step of recognizing the view. After you have recognized the view, then you can practise it and if you ask in that case, "Having recognized rigpa, how can I stabilize it?", there are some other instructions which need to be talked about, but that is for later, when you have gained some experience with rigpa, not now. D EVOTION TO THE GURU

Some practitioners say that the experience of rigpa mainly occurs within the context of remembering the guru, and so forth. This is a good point. We have some capability ourselves but the recognition of rigpa occurs in dependence on the guru's blessing. In this case, if there is good devotion-the vajrayana style of devotion-which in Tibetan is called m6gu36, this will turn into a very good understanding of rigpa. This kind of devotion of very difficult to explain. It is not the case that the devotion is over here and the rigpa is over there. The two things are very close together. Authentic devotion comes on the basis of rigpa. When you have some experience of rigpa, you begin to appreciate just how kind the guru is. Before that, when 36 Tib. mos gus

THE PATH: UPADESHA INSTRUCTIONS

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you have no experience, you just think, based on having read a book or something of that nature, that you should be devoted. Later, with some experience of rigpa, genuine devotion begins to occur. This devotion then returns to help your meditation. In this way your devotion and rigpa work together to help each other grow. Here we are talking about the very best kind of devotion. This devotion is unchangeable. You cannot cheat yourself over this kind of devotion because it comes out of your own experience. You begin to realize that if the guru did not teach you this rigpa, then maybe you would not get it. THE CAUSES AN D CON DITIONS FOR RECOGN IZING RIGPA

Whether rigpa comes or not does depend on the two accu­ mulations. Based on what you have accumulated in a previous life you have received a free and connected precious human rebirth in this life. And then, based on that and in dependence on entering hearing, contemplating, and meditating following the oral instructions of your guru, you have recognized rigpa. In this way, rigpa has been understood due to the two accumu­ lations but rigpa itself is not produced by the two accumulations. This rigpa has been with us since time without beginning but we did not recognize it. The recognition of it depends on the two accumulations. The obtaining of a precious human birth is due to the accumulation of merit. The understanding which arises in dependence upon hearing the guru's oral instruc­ tions is the accumulating of wisdom. Once you are in rigpa, the rigpa itself becomes the means to the fulfilment of the two accu­ mulations. The reason for this is that the recognition of the emptiness brings about the accumulation of wisdom and the recognition of the clarity brings about the accumulation of mer­ it. The third aspect of rigpa, the unity of emptiness and clarity, then results in the simultaneous accumulation of the two.

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VIEW, MEDITATION, AND CONDUCT

Following on from that, what determines whether you are distracted or in rigpa is not dependent on karma. First you have to recognize rigpa properly and that recognition comes about in dependence upon your previous accumulations of merit from former lives and your present application of effort. However, when you are in rigpa, you have independence. The reason for that is that rigpa itself has its own innate strength-it has the ability to stand on its own two feet. If you work at gaining expe­ rience in rigpa, the rigpa begins to have its own strength, so it is harder to go into distraction. In that case, things which would normally be distracting and which would pull you away from the rigpa begin to lose their strength because you are more con­ nected to the innate strength of the rigpa. Some people think that, having arrived in rigpa, they can be pulled out of it purely because of karma and that, having fallen out of rigpa, they can be pulled back into it purely because of karma. However, it is not like that because rigpa does not depend on karma. RIGPA SHOU LD COM E ON DEMAN D

Rigpa is something that should be there immediately, when­ ever you want it. You should be able to break your emotions right on the spot. You should hit them on the head, right then and there. If you need another method, it will not be direct and then post-meditation is not easy. So, in post-meditation, the only thing that you need is mindfulness which knows that you have become distracted. No other method is needed because, as soon as you know you are distracted, you have trained yourself to return to rigpa. And as far as effort and effortlessness goes, in doing this, if rigpa has arrived there is no effort required, and if rigpa has not arrived, then you need some kind of effort. If rigpa is something that comes when you want it, whenever you want it, then so-called post-meditation is quite easy. If it is something that does not come when and as you want it, then

THE PATH: UPADESHA INSTRUCTIONS

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post-meditation is something that is a little bit difficult. The reason for this is that, if your practice has reached the point that upon being distracted you are immediately able to return to rig­ pa, then post-meditation is easy. If you do not have that capabil­ ity, if your rigpa does not come immediately but needs some kind of preparation, then, when a problem comes, when an affliction arises, you might even think, "now I have to run off to my shrine-room to fix this problem".

SUMMARY

There is a difference between mind and mind-essence. Mind is that which has fixation and grasping and mind essence is that which is free from fixation and grasping. "When you have an authentic recognition of mind-essence that is called the view. When you meditate, you need to meditate within that kind of view, not within mind. After all, we have meditated throughout all of our lives, which are without beginning, on mind, so we do not need to meditate on mind any further! That which has an essence which is empty, a nature which is clarity, and has the two unified is called rigpa. The recogni­ tion of those three qualities together in one moment is called the recognition of rigpa. That is the view. That is the essence of mind. That essence of mind recognized as rigpa is part of buddha mind. In fact, buddha mind does not have various parts but, because of our conceptual mind, we do not understand it at all. Buddha mind is something which is without birth, without dwelling, and without cessation; it is something which is not defiled; it is something which is primordially completely pure. It is important to understand that buddha mind is not a destina­ tion which you are going to arrive at through a gradual process of making a journey, rather, when you recognize the essence of your mind, you see buddha mind. You do not make a journey to become a buddha, rather, in seeing the essence of your mind you

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become like the Buddha. Buddhahood is a situation in which the actuality of all dharmas is recognized and so, if you recog­ nize the actuality of all dharmas, then you too become a buddha. Thus the main method of becoming a buddha is to connect with your own rigpa and therefore the recognizing of rigpa is ex­ tremely important. In order to see rigpa, there are many upadesha. One is the instruction that I have given: " Don't look out over there; Look hither at the essence. " What does that mean? Your present mind i s going out, away from you, towards the various objects of the senses-sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and so on. Therefore the instruction is, "Do not go out". Instead of going out, you need to look hither; you need to face the essence. In this case, saying, "look hither" does not mean to look back at yourself, which would be the opposite of looking out, but simply to look at what is already here, on this side. It is as though you are holding a straight rod which you have bent away from you and, upon hearing that you should straighten it up, you have instead bent the rod back towards you. In doing so, you have gone too far. What you need to do is to leave the rod alone, in which case it will natu­ rally sit straight. Then, having arrived at the situation in which you are straight, so to speak, the instruction is, " Don't place the mind outside; Don't place it inside; Don't rest it in between." We need to abandon all grasping. To do that there is the upadesha: " Look hither at the essence."

S UMMARY

111

This instruction means to let the mind be straight rather than doing the usual thing of going out, away from itself. To use this method, look very gently at the essence and then just leave it at that. If, having looked at the essence and having let the mind straighten itself up, so to speak, you continue to look inwards, you will end up with a very tight situation. So, altogether, first look hither, then rest in the empty nature without looking out or looking in or settling in between, and stay there without grasping or fixating. Stay in that and, whatever occurs, whatever appearances come up, do not block them and do not grasp at them. In that way, whatever appearances there are will have emptiness with them and whatever emptiness there is will have appearances with it. When you do it like that you become known as "a yogin of vast spaciousness". If you grasp or fixate, it is not all right. Appearances can come up and there will be no problem at all if you do not grasp or fixate. As soon as grasping comes, you have lost it because you have become distracted and that is not meditation, it is post-meditation. Do it like that and then, sometimes, if you get thick and cannot do the practice, you can shout PHAT very strongly. To do this, forcefully exclaim PHAT, then rest your mind in non­ contrivance, neither sending it out, holding it in, nor settling in between, and not abiding at all. In recognizing this for oneself, certainty arises regarding rigpa. This is not a conceptual cer­ tainty, it is a certainty which is based on non-grasping and non­ fixation and it has its own innate strength. This needs to be done repeatedly and the duration of the experience needs to be lengthened. To do this, you do it again and again, looking and destroying, looking and destroying, looking and destroying. If you do not do this, mind slowly appears and you fall into distrac­ tion without knowing it. In that way you end up being dis­ tracted for a long time and this is not all right. Normally, out of one hour of meditation, you might be in real meditation for only ten minutes-the rest of the time you are either abiding or

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moving. So you do need to stay in the purity as much as you can but I think that this will be difficult for you for any length of time. If you are really in rigpa, it is very empty and very clear but there is not one speck of grasping. In real rigpa, grasping and fixation has been abandoned right from the root so there is absolutely none of that at all. And that is called naked rigpa. Under what circumstances can you say, "this is naked rig­ pa"? When there is grasping and fixation it is not naked rigpa; only when there is utter separation from grasping and fixation can you say, "this is naked rigpa". The example for naked rigpa is the sun shining in an empty sky. When the sun shines in a sky which is utterly free from clouds, the utter emptiness of the sky is very, very clear and brilliant. Actually, this is a bad example but somehow we cannot find anything better than that. You need to stay in that. I have talked about this point throughout and I have said it so many times that I suspect it is starting to hurt your ears. Nevertheless, this particular point is extremely important. As you know, there are the two levels of meditation called development stage and completion stage. Many people are doing development stage practice. If you do not know how to do your development stage practice properly, there is the danger that your practice will become solid, that you will grasp at the visualizations as real. This is dangerous because, Vajrakilaya for instance is very wrathful and has a lot of power, and if you grasp at it as being solid, then significant problems can occur. How­ ever, if you have the emptiness and clarity of rigpa and then let your development stage meditation arise out of that, there will be no danger and the practice will come along very well. This is an extremely important point; if you do not understand this, you cannot understand development stage practice. You have heard of unified development stage and completion stage, haven't you? If you do not understand about rigpa, then how can you do that? How will you unify the two? This really is

SUMMARY

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important isn't it? You have been told to unify development stage and completion stage practice but if you do not know rig­ pa, how will you unify the two? There is not really a lot more to say. Generally, a practitio­ ner needs perseverance, faith, and intelligence. If you have those and request empowerment, reading transmissions, and so on from a teacher, it will be all right. As to intelligence: this is a very fortunate time for you and, even if you cannot attain buddhahood in this life, you should have the definite idea that you can, gradually, attain buddha­ hood. If you think you will become a buddha in order to work for the benefit of all sentient beings, then you will definitely arrive at buddhahood. On the other hand, if you think that you will attain buddhahood in order to escape from sarp.sara because it is so difficult for you personally, then that will not get you to buddhahood. Then, as to faith: on the basis of having faith you can defi­ nitely receive the guru's blessings. Then, with intelligence and faith, you can definitely come to understand rigpa well. So, make many supplications to the great gurus and blessings will come. It is especially true in vajrayana that one of the roots of the practice is the method of blessings and in particular, for the Kagyu gurus, this point of blessings is one of the most important points. Then, remember and act as though all sentient beings have been your fathers and mothers. You need to act on the basis that they have been very kind to you. If you have the capability, help other sentient beings; if you do not have the capability, at least please do not harm them. It is said, " Above, have faith in the guru; Down below, have compassion for sentient beings, And in the middle, do your meditation."

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This is just like in the supplication to the Kagyu gurus that the Vajradhatu students recite each morning, where it talks about the devotion is the head of meditation, renunciation is the foot of meditation, and the specific practices are the body of medita­ tion. Please practise this well. Please dedicate the merit.

PA RT I l l GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITI ON IN DZOGPA (HEN PO

THE GROUND, PATH, AND FRUITION OF DZOGCHEN

We will start by discussing the Dzogchen dharma from an overall perspective by using the classifications of ground, path, and fruition. The Ground

The ground is the situation we have for ourselves at the base of our being. We have a mind but that mind has a core to it. That core is our ground. This core of mind is the basis of all existence. It is also the cause by which we become buddhas. Because of this, the ground in the sutra tradition is called tatha­ gatagarbha meaning "the birthplace of someone who goes to suchness" and in the vajrayana tradition it is called alaya mean­ ing "basic ground". The sutra tradition describes the ground, tathagatagarbha, as "appearance and emptiness unified". Here, "unified" means that appearance and emptiness are and always have been joined together. It is said that they are "primordially unified". This ground of appearance and emptiness unified is the actuality of all phenomena, including mind. It is the real nature of our minds. It is the buddha nature of our minds. It exists as the essence of our minds. This nature which exists as the

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essence of our minds does not have the faults of the afflictions in it at all. This essence of our minds is primordially pure. This essence exists in the mind-stream of every sentient being and because of that it is possible for sentient beings to obtain buddhahood. If we did not have it in our mind-streams, then it would not be possible for us to obtain buddhahood. Since we do have it, it is not something that we need to manu­ facture that is, it is not something that has to be newly produced. Rather, it is something we need to recognize. This is not something that we can obtain through a purchase nor is it something that we can produce on the basis of our efforts; the only way we can obtain this is to recognize it. The Path

The path has three parts to it which are called view, medita­ tion, and conduct. When you authentically recognize the actual state of things which is the ground, you have recognized the view of the path. "When you recognize the view of the path, you do not understand the whole ground but you see a portion of it directly. Once you have recognized the view like that then you need to practise the meditation and conduct of the path. "When you are on the path and you see a portion of the grou­ nd in that way, there is a particular name given to the experi­ ence. It is called "recognizing rigpa". As I just said, when you recognize the view you are not seeing the whole ground but you are seeing a portion of it and this recognition of a portion of the ground at the time of the path is called the "view of the path" or "rigpa". Thus rigpa is the view and rigpa is also part of the ground37• Having recognized the view, you have to cultivate it and that is what it means to practise meditation. Having recog-

37 It the wisdom that exists within us as the ground becomes partially manifest.

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nized the view you meditate for one year, two years, three years, four years, five years, six years and by doing so increasingly manifest the wisdom that exists in the ground. The Fruition

After many years of meditating, you could increase your wisdom to the point that you have manifested the wisdom in the ground in its entirety. 'Traditionally, this is said to be possible after twelve years in retreat. At that point, the ground itself has become the fruition. The Relationship Between Ground� Path� and Fruition

To give an example of how these three work together, there are two sheets of paper: one is on top of, and covering, the other. The sheet underneath is the ground, the sheet on top of that is the path, and the fruition is not yet visible. For us at first, the ground is underneath and completely obscured, just as the bottom sheet of paper is completely obscured by the top sheet of paper. When you recognize the view it is like moving the top sheet of paper away just a little bit in which case you are seeing a portion of the ground. That is called the view of rigpa. Prac­ tising the path slowly reveals the ground underneath just as pulling the top sheet of paper away slowly reveals the bottom sheet. By continuing to practise the path, the ground is even­ tually revealed in its entirety, just as the bottom sheet of paper is completely revealed by continuing to remove the bottom sheet. At that point the ground itself has become the fruition. Why do we say that the ground is underneath? Because it is obscured. And if we take the obscurations away, what is there? The ground is there. At this point where is the fruition? It too, is there with the ground. According to this example, the only difference between us and a buddha is the obscuration. All of us, including the Buddha, have the ground. However, we have not removed the obscurations whereas a buddha has

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discarded them. A buddha, having discarded the obscurations, has become the ground itself and so is enlightened. In that way, the removal of the obscurations is the only difference between us and a buddha. I would like to emphasize the point that to obtain the ground we do not have to manufacture or create anything what­ soever. The Buddha himself also did not create the ground to obtain his enlightenment. The reason that no-one needs to manufacture enlightenment at all is because it exists already in all of us sentient beings. The Terminology of Ground, Path, and Fruition

When we are talking about ground, we give the essence of mind the names tathagatagarbha or alaya; when we are talking about path, we give it the name rigpa; and when we talk about the fruition, we give it the name dharmakaya. It is very impor­ tant to understand this use of terminology. The thing being named is the same but you use a different term for it depending on whether you are talking about the ground, path, or fruition situation. Since it is one thing, why do we need to approach it through three different circumstances of ground, path, and fruition? Why is there this apparent addition of complexity? The reason for talking about the ground situation is because there is a time when the wisdom is like a seed, a seed of understanding. The reason for talking about the path situation is that there is a time when the circumstances for making the ground appear are being applied, just as the growth of an ordinary seed occurs when water, sun, and so on are applied to it. The reason for talking about the fruition situation is that there is a time when the wis­ dom has become completely and fully manifest, just as a seed becomes a fruit when it has been fully cultivated.

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How the Path Uncovers the Ground

While the seed is growing it is not that the ground and fruition are disconnected; there is still a continuation of these even while the seed is growing. The thing that is making the connection is rigpa. And in fact, the only method by which the ground and fruition can be understood is through the recogni­ tion of rigpa. The recognition of rigpa is the only method, the only path, by which the ground can be brought to fruition. The ground, primordial buddha nature, is full realization. However, we do not recognize it, so we must produce it. This is producing in the sense of revealing what is already there rather than newly producing something. In this case it is not the seed, the tathagatagarbha, that is growing, it is the rigpa, the knowledge of it, which is growing. This is a little complicated so if we use the example of the two sheets of paper again to simplify it, it goes like this: if I start to move the top sheet of paper away from the bottom sheet, is the bottom sheet growing or is the amount of covering becoming less? In ordinary par­ lance we can say that the bottom sheet is growing in size but in fact it is not changing, it is the amount of paper covering it that is becoming less. Yet another way to understand this is that, on the path, we can say that our rigpa is increasing but in fact what is happening is that our obscurations are decreasing with the result that more and more of the knowledge present in the ground as wisdom is apparent to us. It seems as though we have more rigpa when in fact it is just less and less obscured. The Obscurations

The obscurations that cover the ground are classified in different ways. They are usually divided into two types but if you start to enumerate them they become quite extensive-the total number comes out to eighty-four thousand! Usually the

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obscurations are removed slowly, one at a time by the path. However, one of the special features of rigpa is that it is capable of cutting those two obscurations completely. This means that when you stay in a state of rigpa there is the capability of being able to cut them both at once and all together.

THE GROUND

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche went to Germany to have an operation done to remove some stones from his gallbladder. As he came out of the anaesthetic, like everyone else, he slowly woke up and at first didn't recognize anyone at all. He doesn't remember talking to anyone either. But his mind was very clear and some words came, then some breath, then some more words. Here is what he said as he was coming out of his anaes­ thetic: "My whole body is in pain. Everything has the nature of suffering. There is not even a speck of happiness. Everything is bliss. There is not even a speck of suffering. Dualistic fixation needs to collapse otherwise hope and fear will not collapse. If dualistic fixation does not collapse, what is the use? Do you understand? Dualistic fixation has collapsed. Great equality that's the point. The great equality of sa:q1sara and nirval).a-that is the main point. Great equality without hope and fear." Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche asks, "Then what?" Tulku Urgyen, "There is nothing more." Afterwards, Tulku Urgyen did not remember what he said. His body and mind were not connected, so whatever was in his mind just came into his mouth. I think that, when he took the pre-

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anaesthetic drug, he went into meditation and was still meditat­ ing while they were operating. Then, as he was recovering, he was talking to himself in his meditation. Tullru Ugyen was talking about the actual situation, reality as it is. This reality is our basic situation. It is what we are at root and that is called the ground of being. The ground of our being is emptiness and that emptiness has a nature of luminosity or clarity. The appearances occur within the clarity. Thus the ground of our being is unified emptiness-appearance or unified emptiness luminosity. The very entity of mind is that it is empty. That emptiness has the quality of being like open space, with no obstruction within it. Luminosity is the nature of that emptiness. Then as far as this unified appearance-emptiness is concerned, it is an utter emptiness which totally permeates all phenomena. If you say it the way it really is, emptiness and the luminosity come exactly together. For the purposes of explaining it, somehow you have to put one word after another but this is conceptual process. In Tibetan it is very clear, it says, "while there is one there is the other", or, even more literally, "if one is existing, the other comes while that first one is existing". B ecause this emptiness permeates all phenomena, in reality, samsara and nirvana are equal; every appearance of samsara or nirvana is, from the perspective of the actual reality of the situation, equal because it is empty. There was an exchange between the Buddha and one man who came to see him: Buddha: If there is easterly direction, what comes after that? Answer: West. Buddha: And if there is West, what comes after that? Answer: North. Buddha: And after that? Answer: South.

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Buddha: And likewise, if there is something above? Answer: Below. In emptiness there i s n o above, below, south, east, west, north. If emptiness has directions in it, then it is not emptiness. Be­ cause of that, within Dzogchen, emptiness is described with the term "khyab gdal" which means something which is spread out to the point that it pervades everything-it is extended without limit. This limitless expanse is something that exists there primordially-it is not something that you have to create. In this emptiness, there is no time. What does it mean to say there is no time? If you have a situation where something dawns or starts, where something sets or finishes, where there is night, where there is day, where there is before, where there is later-all of these kinds of things-then you are talking about a situation in which there is time. And emptiness is something which does not have those kinds of things. Do you understand this? For example, when you are walking, you call this the front and this the behind. Why do you call it front and behind? We call it front and behind because of this body which is walking. But this is all created by dualistic mind. Likewise, all these things of up, down, front, back, before, later, and so on are created by dualistic thinking. And in emptiness, there is nothing like this at all. Emptiness is something which, right from the beginning, was never born, never created. If there is something which was never born, then it also cannot stay and likewise it cannot die or cease. For example, plastic was first made in the early 1 940's but prior to that there was no concept of plastic because plastic was something which had not been produced (or born) in the world. The ground is something which has no confusion in it but we do not see it for what it is. It is as though there is a patterned rope and, because it is dark, we see it as a snake. This is the way of confusion. In fact, the patterned rope does not have a snake

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in it. And likewise, in the ground, there is no confusion. \Vhen we have confusion, we are not seeing things in their depth, in their actuality, which is the ground. It is called confusion because we are seeing it to be different from what it actually is. You are not seeing what is, as it is. In the West, the way a scientist would talk about this is that a chemist for instance, is someone who is very skilled in knowing the substances that are available in the world. Because of that knowledge, and because he has learned about the methods and ways in which those substances can be combined, h e can take what is there and produce new things which hitherto have not been there at all. In a dharma way of talking, a chemist finds out about the basic substances which are available, which we would call causes, and then by applying various methods and ways, which we would call conditions, he produces new things, which we would call phenomena which have newly arisen in depend­ ence on causes and conditions. Moreover, the final result is something that is completely different from its ingredients so, the Buddha would say that the cause that produced the result is hidden in the substances used to produce the result. The Buddha continued his interchange mentioned above by saying, "All dharmas, due to the coming together of causes and conditions, arise as dependent, related arisings38." \Vhen you see a patterned rope but see it as a snake, that is due to the dependent relationship of causes and conditions. The rope is the cause and the fact that it is slightly dark, which is when this particular example is usually put forth, is a condition. Based on this cause and this condition, a snake appears to you. You then become afraid and run away! All dharmas are like that.

38 Dependent, related arisings is sometimes translated as interdepen­

dent origination. The interchange cited comes from the sutras. It comes from the Sutra in Response to Knfhyiipa 's Questions.

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S o a Buddhist, a person who follows the Buddha, should under­ stand emptiness, clarity, and dependent, related arising.

THE THOROUGH CUT PATH: VIEW, MEDITATION , AND CONDUCT SUMMED UP

The Dzogchen path has two main paths: the Thorough Cut and the Direct Crossing. In these teachings I will discuss the details of the Thorough Cut path using view, meditation, and conduct, first in formal meditation and finally out of formal meditation. Later, I will give a very brief introduction to Direct Crossing. The recognition of rigpa is the view. Staying within that recognition without distraction and without meditation is the meditation. The conduct is to leap over distraction and return to the view. Meditation here is not meditation on something using the conceptual mind. Meditation here is staying within the recogni­ tion of the actuality just as it is, of your own mind. For however many moments-one, two, three, four-that you can stay undistracted within that recognition of rigpa, that is meditation. You continue with that kind of meditation until you reach the stage of a buddha. Rigpa meditation is really no meditation at all. There is no meditation and you stay right within that. Normally, meditation

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means something that is constructed or created by conceptual mind; when you meditate that way you do this, you do that, you have to think this way, and that way, and so on. What we need is non-meditation. However, even though you might not be meditating, distraction is still not all right because whenever you are distracted, you are not in rigpa. For example, when you are out of a house you are not in it and likewise when you are distracted you are not in rigpa. Try to stay in the house of rigpa! Mter view and meditation there is conduct. The conduct is that, whenever distraction arrives and you have understood that you are distracted, you need to come back into the essence. There are two steps to it: the first is to know that you are dis­ tracted and the second is, having known that you were dis­ tracted, to go back into the essence. That is the job of conduct. Conduct is important: if you do not know that you are dis­ tracted, several hours can pass by without realizing that you are distracted. Conduct joins you to the path through the function of mind­ fulness and the kind of conduct that joins you to the path throu­ gh mindfulness with effort is called "conduct that is connected with a view". Here, view means that you have conceptual, dualistic mind operating. That conduct returns you to rigpa which is "conduct free from a view" meaning that it is free from dualistic mind. Altogether this comes out as a set of four instructions re­ garding rigpa practice which can also be turned into three. First, recognize the view; second, practise at maintaining the state of meditation; third, know that you are distracted; fourth, return from the distraction. Some people, on knowing that they are distracted, automatically go back into the rigpa. They do not need a new effort, it is automatic. For them, the fourth instruction is not needed. Beginners usually cannot do that, they need to switch into manual gear. If you need to switch into

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manual gear, then the fourth instruction is needed. However, if you keep doing that even when you do not need to, that is a problem. So some days it can be four things, some days three, some days two, some days one and some days nothing-you need the nothing! All of the above applies to formal meditation. What about when you are not formally meditating? At that time, you need all of the above because you do have to stay within rigpa. How­ ever, it is generally emphasized that you need "conduct free from a view" as you go about your business. In addition to that, in general, the other instructions given are that you also need love for all sentient beings and you also need to deal with what­ ever difficulties appear in your experience. The sign of the difference between an ordinary person and a practitioner is that a practitioner deals with their problems effectively. The ordi­ nary person has no method for their problems and does not know how to deal with them.

THE THOROUGH CUT PATH: THE INTRODUCTION TO THE V IEW

For us right now, knowing something occurs is a three-part process. This, briefly described, is as follows: firstly there is an external object of one of the six senses; secondly there is the intermediary sense power; and finally there is the knower which is one of the six sense consciousnesses of the mind. When gaining experience in rigpa, the view which is the essence of mind, we need not grasp at any of those three things whatsoever. There should not be any grasping at the external object of the senses, there should not be any grasping at the intermediary sense power, and there should not be any grasping at the mind, either. With rigpa there is no grasping at anything at all. Do it like this: " Do not grasp at anything outside; Do not grasp at any of the sense powers in the middle; Do not grasp at the mind itself, either." Do not grasp whatsoever at any of these three situations. What­ ever there is, you need to leave it just as it is, not making up nor altering anything. Then, while you are sitting like this, some­ times a little bit of discursive thought will pop itself up into the mind. At that point, look right at the essence of the thought's

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ariser, the thing that is giving rise to the thought. This does not mean look with your eyes; it means look with your mind. Right at the point when that discursive thought arises look where it comes from. If you look, automatically it will dissolve. When it finishes dissolving, rest right there. Then, also, do not grasp. Right there, do not create or alter anything. You might stay there like that for a few seconds-one, two, three, four, five­ and then all of a sudden, boom, again a discursive thought will arise. When it arises, again look at the essence of the thought's ariser and, again, it will dissolve. When you are staying in the essence which appears follow­ ing the ending of the discursive thought, what is the essence like? It has three qualities: the first is that, in essence it is empty, the second is that in nature it is clear, and the third is that it is pervasive compassionate activity. The experience you need to stay in is one which has all of those three qualities. Do you understand this? A discursive thought comes, you look at its essence, it disintegrates, and you arrive at this state. In this state there is no grasping whatsoever. The first quality is that this complete lack of discursive thought is unobstructed, vast spaciousness. This situation in which there is no alteration whatsoever, no grasping at and no fixating upon anything at all, no alteration being made in any way at all, like the sky com­ pletely free from clouds, is the essential quality of emptiness. The second quality comes along with this first quality. There is a knower of this wide-open emptiness, isn't there? And what does it know? It knows "this is emptiness" . There is emptiness here, now, but we do not see it at the moment; the knower that is being talked about here is the knower that does see emptiness. In other words, if you know emptiness, this knower is there. The third quality is that, while there is emptiness, all the various phenomena appear and at the same time those very appearances themselves are the essential emptiness. The unification of those

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two things, appearance and emptiness, is the third quality of pervasive compassionate activity. In short, do it like this: rest the mind easy; do not grasp or fixate at all; do not contrive mind; look at mind's essence; having looked you will see nothing; just rest in the not seeing. Here, there is nothing to be contrived by conceptual mind. You need to rest in a place which is completely uncontrived. Do not think about the past, do not think about the future, do not make decisions about things even in the present; free yourself from conceptual thoughts of the three times. So, what is there to do? Rest in an uncontrived state. When you involve yourself in contrivance, you produce conceptual thoughts of the three times. Recollecting what occurred previously, for example, "Oh, previously when I was in such and such place, I did this . . . " is following after thoughts of the past. Having thoughts such as, "After this retreat is finished, I'll go into town and have good food" is going forth to greet the future. And to have some kind of grasping and fixation so that you hold on to the present is called having a concept of the present. Abandon such concepts of the three times and rest in the essence of whatever occurs in the mind. You might be able to stay in this state for only one or two seconds. This state is called rigpa. It is the view of the Thorough Cut. In this state there is no passion whatsoever, there is no aggression whatsoever, there is no pride whatsoever; the obscuration of the afflictions is not there at all. This does not mean to say that these things are gone from your life, it means that in that particular state they are not there. You can call this state "expanse and wisdom unified to­ gether" and you can also call it "emptiness and clarity unified together". If you stay in that state, regardless of what you call it, what you have is a buddha's omniscient wisdom which sees the nature of things as they are. In fact, you have not completely

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realized the omniscient wisdom of a buddha but you have at least seen the particular omniscience which sees the nature of things. You have seen a corner of omniscient wisdom and from seeing that corner later you will get the fruition of seeing all of it. As I said earlier when discussing the ground, at this point you have seen a small piece of the ground and hence you have seen the fruition because the ground and fruition are, in fact, the same. There are various terms for each of the three qualities of rigpa. The essence is defined as emptiness, the nature is defined as clarity, and compassionate activity is defined as the two of them unified. In the unique terminology of the Dzogchen teachings, you would say that the empty quality is " alpha purity", the clarity is "spontaneous presence", and the two uni­ fied, meaning the alpha purity and spontaneity unified, is called "The Great Unified Wisdom". The traditional example is that rigpa is like a sun and its rays. The sun itself is empty but brilliant and these two things together come out as all of the qualities of enlightenment.

THE THOROUGH CUT PATH: A CORRECT COMPREHENSION OF THE VIEW

The view has to be recognized in direct perception, which was the point of the last section. The Dzogchen practitioner also has to develop a correct understand of the view. What is the view? The view is the presence of self-arising rigpa and, as I explained previously, it has the three qualities of an essence which is emptiness, a nature which is clarity, and a pervasive compassionate activity which is the emptiness and the clarity unified. Why is it that the real view is so sacred? The first reason is that the real view is the antidote to fixation and grasping. This is so because, of the three qualities of rigpa, the empty essence eliminates or destroys grasping. We need this because when we have grasping, we remain bound in sa1psara. The second reason is that the real view provides for the omniscience of a buddha's mind which has the two aspects of understanding the actuality of things and understanding things in their entirety. This parti­ cular quality of a buddha comes from the second quality of rigpa, the nature of clarity. In fact there are a lot of qualities to this rigpa but we could talk about one set of three that have great meaning. In rigpa

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there is dharmakaya, sarp.bhogakaya, and nirmal).akaya. In rigpa, the emptiness is the dharmakaya, the clarity is the sarp.bhoga­ kaya, and their unification is the nirmal).akaya. So in fact, those three kayas are complete within the mind. In brief, all dharmas, all phenomena whatsoever, are complete within rigpa. In this case, "complete within the mind" is a Dzogchen way of talking which means completely contained within the mind. If you understand rigpa, you will understand all phenomena. Why? Because emptiness pervades all phenomena and one of rigpa's qualities is emptiness. Just as the sky covers America, Kathmandu, and Australia, so emptiness covers all phenomena and, just as the sky is in touch with all those places, if you stay in emptiness, you will be connected with all things. Another example is the international telephone system: if you dial the international access code, you are linked to all countries via satellite and likewise, if you connect with emptiness, you con­ nect with all other phenomena, the minds of all other sentient beings, and even with the Buddha himself. This is important to understand because these days many people, thinking that there is no connection with others, ask the question, "if you stay in a cave you have no connection with others, so how can you help sentient beings?" But there is a connection. To use the telephone analogy, having the wire or the connection is like having the emptiness aspect and having the conversation, whatever it might be-love, compassion, dedi­ cation of merit-is the clarity aspect itself. In other words, the clarity part is the actual communication that gets carried via the medium of emptiness. So, whatever you are doing to provide benefit as you sit there in your cave such as dedicating virtue, expressing compassion, and so on, is communicated via the clarity aspect across the medium which is emptiness. This fact is the reason why we speak of: the purity of the three cycles in the superfactual truth; bodhichitta at the superfactual level; refuge at the superfactual level; and so on. So it is important to

THE PATH: CORRECT COMPREHENSION OF THE VIEW 1 3 9

stay in rigpa because it provides the means by which you can connect directly with others and thus help them. Following on from that, it is not all right to have emptiness by itself alone and it is not all right to have clarity by itself alone-there must be the third quality, the quality of being unified. When emptiness occurs with appearance and appear­ ance occurs with emptiness it allows for proper communication. It is like a walkie-talkie: if you have a one-way walkie-talkie, you cannot conduct a proper conversation but when you have a two­ way walkie-talkie you can do so without hindrance. Likewise, with either emptiness or clarity by itself some communication is possible but with the presence of the third quality, there can be communication which is very complete. Thus, we need to have the two things unified and so, as practitioners, we need to have the unification as part of our rigpa experience. How is it when you are in a one-sided emptiness? You are stuck in emptiness. Because you are stuck, nothing can function in your experience because you are not giving appearances a chance to arise. And, when there are no appearances coming, the wisdom of a buddha, the omniscient quality of a buddha, cannot come because you have pushed it away. Previously, I mentioned The Great Unified Wisdom and that is what we are talking about here. The kind of rigpa that we want to develop is the one which has that kind of quality. This does not mean that there are other kinds of rigpa but I mention it because you might think that being isolated in emptiness or being isolated in appearances is rigpa. That sort of isolation is not rigpa because rigpa has the qualities of emptiness and appearance unified. The experience of rigpa is unique; there are other experiences like it but none are rigpa itself. For example, having a meditation experience while strictly concentrating on the emptiness aspect or having a meditation experience while concentrating on the clarity aspect is not rigpa; only when the two are unified is it rigpa. Sometimes when doing rigpa medita-

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tion you will see only the emptiness part and sometimes you will see only the appearances part; in each case you might think, "Oh, there's rigpa" but in fact it is not rigpa. You need to see the unity. It is important to understand this intellectually and then, because rigpa is something within you, after that you can under­ stand it experientially. This emptiness and appearance is pri­ mordially unified within you; you are not making the unifica­ tion. It is not that both of these are hanging around in your mind stream somewhere and it is your job to put them together into one thing. Rather, from the very beginning they have existed as something which was not separated into two parts of a pair. Here, when I use the word unified, you probably have a feeling that there are two things matched together that could fall apart, but it really means that there are two things which never were separate from each other. Sometimes I say emptiness in the clarity and sometimes emptiness in the appearance. These mean exactly the same thing because emptiness is emptiness in each case and because the clarity part and the appearance part come down to the same meaning. Clarity is the knower and appearances are what it knows. Now, when we do not know this emptiness and appearance we stay in duality and in staying in duality we are confused. The definition of confusion is: "Not directly seeing the actuality of things" For example, you might see a patterned rope on the ground late at night and think that it is a snake. You see a snake because, based on not seeing what was really there, you made a mistake. VVhen you see things as they are you have no confusion; when you don't see things as they are, your mistaken-ness results in confusion. All of us are making that kind of mistake. If you don't recognize the essence, which is rigpa, then we say in English that you have ignorance but the way the Buddha said it

THE PATH: CORRECT COMPREHENSION OF THE VIEW 1 4 1

in his lan guage was that, when you don't recognize the essence, then you are not-rigpa-ing, that is, you are not being in rigpa. So you are either rigpa-ing or not-rigpa-ing, and if you are not rigpa-ing, we call that ignorance in English.

rigpa,

For all those reasons, the view is very sacred and significant.

THE THOROUGH CUT PATH: THE MEDITATION

Meditation is the practice of staying within the view. All the lower paths of Buddhist practice start with a view that involves dualistic mind. These all are called "views with signs39". In Dzogchen, the view to be practised is rigpa, which is a view without dualistic mental constructs. Therefore, It is called a "view without signs" . Since meditation is the practice of staying in the view, there are correspondingly two types of meditation: meditation with signs and meditation without signs. All Buddhist meditations on reality are included within shamatha meditation and vipashyana meditation. Shamatha me­ ditation is always a meditation with signs because it always operates within dualistic mind. Vipashyana meditation can be both with and without signs. When vipashyana is using some kind of logic to investigate reality, it is still "with signs". When vipashyana is seeing reality directly, there is no dualistic mind so it is called "without signs".

39 Tib. mtshan rna: these are the constructs used by dualistic mind in its process of perception.

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I . Meditation With Signs : Shamatha S hamatha meditation is connected with signs because con­ ceptual mind is active during shamatha meditation, that is, shamatha meditation includes a perceived object and a perceiv­ ing subject. S hamatha practice is a practice for calming the mind and making it abide one-pointedly. When doing shamatha medita­ tion, you train in holding the mind to one object. There are two mental factors that have to be developed to keep the mind on one obj ect: mindfulness and alertness. Mindfulness serves to keep you connected with the object of your meditation; mindful­ ness is the factor of mind that holds you there. Alertness serves to know that you have become distracted; alertness is the factor which watches for the possibility of distraction and knows when distraction comes so that you can bring yourself back.

For

example, you are a poor farmer and you have a house with a beautiful garden which you care for very much. You also have a cow which you love very much because it provides milk, and so on. The cow doesn't know what it is doing, so you have to hold it in place so that it doesn't eat the garden. To keep the cow quiet, you tie a rope to its neck, and to see whether the cow is getting away from its rope or not, you keep on eye on the situation. The rope that holds the cow in place is the same as mindfulness and your checking to see whether something has gone wrong is the same as alertness. S hamatha meditation is further divided into two types: shamatha which is performed with support and shamatha which is performed without a support.

a. Shamatha With Support S hamatha with support is practised by using something other than your mind as the basis for the practice. For example, you might have a particular liking for Guru Rinpoche's form, in

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which case you might put his statue out in front of you and then make your mind inseparable with that image of Guru Rinpoche. There are many ways of doing shamatha with support because there are many supports that can be used; you can use a statue, the breath, and so on. The Four Close Placements of Mindfulness also are ways of doing shamatha with a support. They are: close placement of mindfulness on the body, close placement of mindfulness on feelings, close placement of mindfulness on effort, and close placement of mindfulness on mind. These close placements of mindfulness lead to progressively higher stages on the path, including vipashyana practice and some teachers of the Thera­ vadin tradition actually call them that. However, a teacher will classify them according to the way he is leading his students and here I am classifying the first two, close placement of mindful­ ness of body and feeling, as shamatha with support. The first of the four, close placement of mindfulness of bod}, means to be mindful of your bodily situation. It can be mindfulness of a particular posture and it can also be mindful­ ness in the context of movement, such as walking meditation. In this first close application of mindfulness, as you do anything with your body, the practice is to stay connected with your body and to know what it is doing. Doing something but not having your mind there with what you are doing is the reverse of this practice. Here, in whatever you do, you are with what you do. For example, as you pick up a glass, you will know each move­ ment as it occurs. \Vhen you do this, you do not need to be tight. Also, you do not need to do any other kind of meditation or visualization. Rather, your consciousness just goes along with whatever you are doing. If you work in that way, putting your mind together with whatever you do so that there is never a disconnection, will eventually turn into wisdom.

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Close placement of mindfulness of feelings is a similar approach to close placement of mindfulness of body-you are there with yourself but, in this case, it is not the movements of the body that you are concerned with but the feeling-tone that is arising at any given moment. You are aware of each feeling­ tone as it arises and you know what it is. What is feeling-tone? Here, feeling is the tone of experience. There are three tones to our experience: pleasant, unpleasant, and neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just neutral. So this is the practice of being with yourself according to the reference point of the feeling which is occurring. It is very easy to give an example of this. For exam­ ple, you go to Singapore and go to a good hotel. Singapore is very hot but when you come into the air conditioning of the hotel it is very cool and feels very pleasant. Then you go back outside again and suddenly it is so hot again and so unpleasant. So you have pleasant and unpleasant. Then, in some places, it is not particularly pleasant nor unpleasant; the air is balanced, not hot and not cool, so there is no feeling of pleasant or unplea­ sant. Generally speaking, this neutral feeling, this feeling of equanimity is the best kind of feeling to have but in doing the practice of this mindfulness, the point is not to have a particular one of the three feelings but to be aware of which of the feelings is arising. b. Shamatha Without Support

S hamatha without support is practised by using your mind as the support. Here you are looking at the mind itself, the thoughts in mind, so there is no particular object, no support, for the meditation but at the same time you are using mindful­ ness and alertness to stay with your mind. In order for this to be a shamatha meditation and not just thinking, the two mental factors of mindfulness and alertness are needed. Normally when we do meditation, we do it in terms of having an external object of the five senses and an internal,

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knowing, subject. However, in this case of shamatha without support, we are looking at mind without any reference to the five senses; we are using the internal knower to look at what the mind itself is doing. If you look at the mind in this way, with mindfulness and awareness, the mind will abide in itself; in other words, there will be shamatha without a support other than of the mind itself. In the Mahamudra system, there is a particular way of doing this sort of shamatha meditation which has the feature that it can lead on to vipashyana of the view without signs. The practice is called "abiding, moving, and knowing" because the practice fo­ cusses on these three things. Firstly, we are talking about shamatha practice, so we are talking about something that is abiding and in this particular case, we are talking about mind which is abiding in itself, without an external support for the abiding. If mind is just abiding where it is, then that is good, that is fine, there is nothing more to be done, but if that mind usually starts to move a little bit, so we need to apply some effort so that it will come back to the abiding again. When mind starts to move a little bit, what is it that knows it is moving? It is the knowing part. Knowing knows, "Oh, I am distracted, now I need to come back again". When you do the practice of shamatha without a support you just look at your normal, dualistic mind as it goes about its business. It is not a practice of looking at rigpa, the essence of that mind as in the Thorough Cut. Furthermore, the practice of shamatha does not contain the methods for liberating thoughts, therefore, you do not liberate thoughts as is done in Thorough Cut practice. In this practice, you simply know that a thought has arisen while mind was abiding and, recognizing that a thought has occurred, let the thought go and let mind come back to its place of abiding.

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When you begin shamatha practice you do have a practice which involves labelling. You are taught to label thoughts as they arise. The hallmark of shamatha meditation is that you are pacifying the mind and because of that, shamatha meditation is still within the three realms of sarp.sara. Why? Because mind has not been abandoned yet. In shamatha you deal with what's called, "abiding, moving, and knowing" and of those three, the knowledge that knows you are abiding or moving is mind, not the essence of mind. This mind is very subtle but it is there and the practice of shamatha does not abandon it. In the rigpa medi­ tation of Dzogchen practice, this subtle mind is eliminated as well and the knowing quality is non-dualistic lmowing. That is why rigpa practice is called a non-meditation practice. It does not have any conventional meditation in it at all; it doesn't need it because it is simply remaining in the reality of mind as it is. S hamatha on the other hand, even when it is shamatha without support, is still a meditation; it is a practice that is cultivating and creating a mind. 2. Meditation Without Signs: Vipashyana

In the practice called "abiding, moving, and knowing", the word "knowing" is a translation of the Tibetan word "rigpa". Rigpa in general means mind knowing the situation clearly. In "abiding, moving, and knowing", it is knowing the abiding and moving within a dualistic mind. In the practice of the Thorough Cut ofDzogchen, it is the same knowing quality of mind, except that it is knowing the non-dualistic situation of the reality of mind. It does not lmow the abiding or moving minds but knows the essence of those dualistic minds. When it sees that essence, it is seeing the actuality of mind and that kind of insight is called vipashyana.

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a. The Actual M editation Practice of Dzogchen

The tantras explain that in Dzogchen there are two things, one is called Thorough Cut and the other one is called Direct Crossing40• The instructions on rigpa as the essence of mind are contained within the Thorough Cut section. To understand this practice of the essence of mind, you first have to understand that you have a mind and you have to under­ stand how that mind works. The point of explaining anger, attachment, jealousy, and all of these things is so that you know about your mind and how it functions. The point of explaining shamatha is that it too is mind and only functions within mind. Then you have to understand that there is an essence of that mind. Not to have dualistic mind is to be in the essence of mind and that is the practice of the Thorough Cut. The meditation of the Thorough Cut is summed up as "staying in the view". I have already introduced you to the view. The view is rigpa. Thus the meditation of the Thorough Cut is also summed up as "staying in rigpa". The method for doing that, according to Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche is: "do not look outward; look hither; rest". There are three things here. Looking out is something that we are doing already, so this is something that we no longer need to do. What we need to take up is contained in the second and third instructions. The meth­ od of resting is just like this: gently look at your mind, then rest. Do not expect that you will see something. Just look slightly and relax. It does not matter whether you see or don't see, whe­ ther you find something or not. Do not involve yourself in the concepts of hopes and fears at all. If you see the essence of mind, do not further it and do not obstruct it. If you see it, do not conceptualize at all. Separating yourself from all hopes and fears, completely drop all concepts of meditating and not medi-

40 Tib. thod rgal

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taring and, having faced the essence and seen a corner of it, rest, without any fixation whatsoever, in just that. You look at the essence then you see it. Having looked, what do you see? 'fhere is nothing to be seen whatsoever, there is no abiding whatsoever-this is the factor of emptiness. In this factor of emptiness there is knowing and this knowing is an unobstructed understanding in a non-stopped, complete open­ ness-this is the factor of clarity. "When you are practising, sometimes real rigpa will come along. "What is needed for it to be real rigpa is the unification of those two factors. "Uni­ fication" is to be understood like this: within a situation of no abiding at all and nothing to be seen whatsoever, all the various appearances arise and those very appearances themselves are the essence which is emptiness. In other words, all the different things might come but as long as there is no grasping it does not matter whether the appearances occur or not. The key point is to be without grasping. In short, the meditation practice of the Thorough Cut is the practice of cleaving through mind to the essence of mind and then staying within that state. Thorough Cut is talking about having sharpness when you do your practice. It is talking about something that has a lot of oomph! to it. The name means to make a decisive cut that goes definitely to the essence of mind. 3 . Resting in Shamatha Versus Resting in Rigpa

Mind means the comings and goings of mind within the framework of concepts. It is the mind of sentient beings, the beings who are in cyclic existence. This mind which functions as a conceptual apparatus has many parts and modes to it, including clarity and abiding. Mind can abide, that is, it can stay put. When we speak of shamatha it means that the mind is abid­ ing calmly because of staying focussed on thing without the

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discursive thoughts of passion, aggression, and s o on. T he clarity portion of mind is the part of mind that knows. In the case of sarpsaric mind, the clarity part has clinging41 which means that it gets glued to things. It also has the basic grasped­ grasping which causes duality. The amount of clinging and grasped-grasping is very small because the abiding mind is very peaceful-it has no anger or attachment or other major afflic­ tions occurring within it-but it is still there. The clinging and grasped-grasping are so subtle that you might not notice them, but they are still there. Note that we are talking about all types of shamatha here, not just talking about a faulty kind of shama­ tha which has gone a little bit dull; even supreme shamatha, which is the very best shamatha, will still have this subtle glue. S hamatha is a point at which many meditators go astray because it is a very nice place, a very blissful place to be but it still has the glue that we have spoken about in it. A meditator who is seduced by shamatha might think that there no mistake in his meditation because shamatha was described by the Buddha as part of the path, however, from the perspective of Dzogchen it is still part of sarpsara, and hence, ultimately speaking, a mis­ take. The supreme shamatha that I just spoke of does have a factor of abiding to it. It has this factor of abiding because mind ex­ periences the abiding as a safe haven and so wants to stay there. It seems safe because you find that you are abiding and you find that there are no distractions occurring which would pull you away from that. There is automatically in the mind a feeling of great safety; you have found a harbour. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact it is good to develop but still, one day you need to destroy it. On the other hand, in the Dzogchen tradition we speak of meditation in terms of "wide-open space". It is wide-

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open space because there is nothing getting in the way, no obstructions within. Within it, there is no abiding which could be an object and there is no subject there to experience, "this is abiding". Rigpa at the core is empty and this is what brings the quality of wide-openness just mentioned. Rigpa is forever without any abiding. It forever completely pervades all things. Since all things have that kind of empty essence to them, they are per­ vaded by an emptiness which has no birth to begin with, has no staying after that, and no cessation to it as a finale. Thus all dharmas are completely free from the process of birth, staying, and ceasing. Therefore, in the context of rigpa, there is no need for the support which is needed in shamatha, because when you are staying in rigpa you are staying in the empty essence which is completely wide-open space and which is forever all-encom­ passing. In shamatha, an external object used as a support is a coarse kind of support. A more subtle kind of support than this is mind taking itself as a support, as described above. The support in that case is the abiding; the abiding itself is its own support. However, when you are talking about rigpa there is nowhere to abide because the rigpa is all-pervading. In rigpa, the empty es­ sence's nature is to know; this knower is called clarity and it knows the lack of birth, staying, and cessation of all dharmas. The appearance and emptiness are unified because while there is the empty essence, appearances will dawn and, there being no grasping, these appearances will naturally fall apart of them­ selves. In brief, when gaining experience of rigpa, as opposed to mind, there is a factor of never abiding at all and this factor of never-abiding-at-all which is without any grasping whatsoever, is called the emptiness which is the essence of the mind's es­ sence.

THE THOROUGH CUT PATH: UPADESHA INSTRUCTIONS

TWO WAYS TO I M P ROVE RIGPA

Someone asked me once, "In this Thorough Cut, are we try­ ing to expand the experience of rigpa or is the momentary glim­ pse important? " Rigpa is not something that you can extend, it is something that you have to develop a habit of, you have to train in it. In fact, what you are training in is the removal of the obscurations in order to be able to see the rigpa which is always there. There are two methods of doing this. One method is to get involved in creating virtue and to set about accumulating a lot of merit. The other method is to look directly at rigpa. To make an example for this: I have paper and I need to cut it. To cut it I need to have a knife and then to actually cut it. Accumulating merit is like making the knife. Continuing to accumulate merit is like continuing to improve the knife but not using it to cut the paper. Using rigpa practice is like actually cutting the paper. As far as these two methods are concerned, you could put a lot of effort into creating or furthering the tool that you already have

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by working on the accumulation of merit but in the end you have to do the practice of rigpa which is the actual cutting. It seems as though all of us have quite a good knife: we have food, and clothes; we are not dumb; we can meet with teachers; we have some understanding, some feeling, and some devotion. We have this but we must use it right on the afflictions. In this world so many people get a chance to practise but they do not have the means; for example, in a village in Nepal there are people who do not have any faith, for whom food is difficult to obtain, and so on. Because they do not have a tool, because they do not have a knife, it is very difficult for them to do this prac­ tice. We should be cheerful because we do have a tool!

RIGPA CAN N OT B E EN HANCED B UT CAN B E I NCREASED

People often ask, "If you have had a glimpse of rigpa, is there a way to enhance that? " Each moment of rigpa is one moment of rigpa and those individual moments cannot be improved upon. However, it is possible to increase the number of moments recognized. The main way to do that is to do the practice of recognizing it again and again. Other than that there are a few methods that you can use. One way is to arouse very, very strong compassion for all of the sentient beings in sarp.sara then to look at the essence of the compassion. Out of that a very full-blown rigpa can arise. Since compassion and rigpa are together in the same mind, like the front and back of a hand, if the compassion is very strong, then the rigpa also will be very vast. You do not need to abandon the compassion, rather, stay there with it but without grasping at it. Previously I spoke of appearance and emptiness unified; in this case I am talking about compassion and emptiness unified.

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And then another way i s to arouse strong faith in the bud­ dhas and bodhisatvas and great devotion to your guru and then to look at that. However, these two things, compassion and devotion are difficult to arouse so there is another method-one which is much easier than these two. It is easy to get angry, it is easy to get jealous so, at those times, when there is very, very, strong anger or whatever, look right at the essence. You are al­ most ready to kill somebody and then . . . face that directly and look at it. I am not talking about role playing here; I am talking about real anger-you almost hit someone but if you look at the rigpa of it, then you will not fight them but will lose the anger. In

all of those circumstances mentioned above, if you look at the energy of the mind, rigpa can come along in a very full­ blown way.

HOW TO DEAL WITH THOUGHTS

There are two ways to approach rigpa meditation. You could rely on shamatha first and then move onto to actual rigpa practice, or you could go directly to rigpa without any use of shamatha practice. In shamatha, a practice which has concepts, a thought comes, you re c ogni ze it, and then you bring the mind back to the object of the meditation. In the Thorough Cut practice of rigpa, when discursive thought comes, there are two ways to deal with it. The first one is to recognize and liberate it simulta­ neously. The second is not to grasp at it when it does arise, in which case the thought becomes like a thief coming into an empty room. Discursive thought itself is only a problem when you make it into something special; if you just leave it alone by not grasping at it or fixating upon it, then it is just like a thief coming into an empty room.

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Should you find yourself thoroughly involved with the thou­ ght then cut it strongly with a short PHAT or a some similar method. In this case you break it and just stay there; if you break it and then try to come back after breaking it, you are creating something again. Some people are not sure whether they are distracted or not, the method for that is to break the meditation repeatedly. Meditate for one second then break it, meditate again for one second then break it again, and break, break, break. If you break this way a lot, the power of the fixation starts to get less and, even in that session, more mo­ ments of rigpa can start to come again. In fact, rigpa is coming all the time. It is always there so there is nothing to do. There is no meditation to do because it is there all the time. There is no need of mantra, no need to do anything in particular, no need to visualize something; it is just there.

THE PRACTICE CALLED " PARTIN G SAMSARA AN D N IRVANA"

There are gross thoughts which are easier to recognize but there can be an undercurrent of subtle thoughts which are hard­ er to deal with. To deal with them, you need to know a little bit about some of the special methods that go with the Thorough Cut. One practice used a lot is called Parting Sarp.sara and Nirval).a42• The background theory of the Thorough Cut is that, out of the pair sarp.sara and nirval).a, sarp.sara is conceptual, dualistic mind and nirval).a is non-dualistic wisdom, the wisdom which is free from grasping. In the single continuum of mind, there is 42

Tib. 'khor 'das ru shan

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both sarp.sara and nirvfu).a. It i s like a hand-there i s one hand but it has an inside and an outside. The inside and outside of a hand seem different but it is still one hand and in exactly the same way, sarp.sara and nirval).a occur within the one continuum of mind. The practice of the Thorough Cut is like taking a great big knife and just cutting the snake of solidified confusion. You take a machete to all the thoughts of the past and the future, to the whole complex of confusion about what is real and what is not, and just hack them down in one fell swoop. There is no visua­ lization. Do not think about it. Just cut it. Drop it. It is very energetic. It is not like having a nice meditation. There are many methods to help with this and one whole class of those methods is the one called Parting Sarp.sara and Nirval).a. In it, you get your body moving-active, walking, anything-and then stop and look, immediately, and in that moment completely cut through all of the thoughts-concep­ tual, intellectual, gross, subtle, whatever. You might walk arou­ nd for several minutes then immediately you sit down and go straight-BAM!-into rigpa. If anything comes up, you just annihilate it. You can shake your body violently or you can shout or whatever; just work for four or five minutes and sud­ denly drop everything. The point in this particular practice is to use a very sharp effort to separate sarpsara and nirval).a. Having separated them you do not have to keep jolting yourself. In the west there are a lot of amusement parks with all sorts of roller-coaster rides and so on, which basically are for the purpose of scaring yourself. These are perfect for this sort of practice; use them for this sort of practice rather than ordinary enjoyment. Rigpa does not get scared by these things but all the normal mental events that we have can be scared away by this method, even the small ones. If

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you use this method to arouse rigpa, the rigpa will stay and stay, and the small mental events will be scared off. In terms of the traditional methods of parting sarp.sara and nirval)a, practitioners would go to the jungle, take off all their clothes, and just jump, jump, jump, shout, shout, shout, and do crazy things to cause a real breakdown. Or they would jump into icy water. By these methods you can intoxicate all the small states of mind and really stay in rigpa. But just the actions are not enough; you do them to get to rigpa. If you do them and do not look at rigpa you are just creating suffering for yourself. In Dzogchen, you can intoxicate the thoughts so that they become completely drunk and then,; if rigpa comes it cannot get drunk, so you just stay there in the rigpa. There are four circumstances when rigpa can come to light very easily: when you get intoxicated; at the time of dying; at the time of sleeping; and when you are making love. But these are not easy for normal people. These four circumstances are special in the sense that they have the quality that the small thoughts that we were talking about before cannot come but it is not easy to recognize rigpa within those circumstances.

VI EW, M E DITATION , AN D CON DUCT

There is an upade§ha that explains the correct view, medita­ tion, and conduct of the Thorough Cut: " View is being free from grasping; Meditation is being free from clinging; Conduct is being free from all activity and effort." A person who was doing this fully would exhibit wisdom gone wild, like Drukpa Kunlek. According to the instructions there, meditation should be free from clinging. If you have the kind of meditation where

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thinking, "Oh, my meditation is going really well; I am really happy", and so on, then that is not all right. That is a case of having glue in your meditation. You can have the experience of rigpa but without the glue. When I say glue, I am trying to use a term which fits with experience rather than just using a dry technical term. The word clinging is actually a specific term which refers to a particular kind of attachment. Here, to say "attachment" is too weak. What you have done is that you have "glued" yourself onto something. So meditation is something which should be free from being glued onto something.

you are

How do you go about not being glued on? You can have emptiness, clarity-all of these different things-and that is no problem; it is having some kind of attachment to these things which is the problem. As an example of this, two people are dying. One person is your spouse and one person is someone who you do not know very well. How do you feel? Your com­ passion for both is probably about the same but there is an extraordinary amount of concern and worry for your spouse, isn't there? The compassion for both people is the same but the attachment to your spouse is stronger. Of the two, it is the attachment part that is not all right. Another way to say this is that the appearance is all right, the attachment part is not all right. As a further example, in our normal lives, when you miss your spouse, girl-friend, etc. why do you say, "I miss them"? Because you need them. You put yourself as Number One. Of course, in normal conversation people would never talk the way that I am talking now; they have a very polished way of talking which gets around the fact that they are really putting them­ selves as the most important thing. But we should have less attachment, more harmony, and more care. Attachment is a very narrow mind-it narrows your view. The instruction above says not to lose yourself in regard to appearances and not to lose yourself in regard to emptiness either. You lose yourself in regard to emptiness by having

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grasping at a self. When you do that, you have lost the view. You lose yourself in regard to appearances by involving yourself in clinging and wanting. When you do that, you lose the meditation. Normally you will not have a problem with clinging to emptiness; it is a flat experience. However, you will attach­ ment to appearances. And from the attachment you can have passion and aggression towards all the different kinds of appear­ ances that can occur. What you need instead of that is openness with things appearing inside it. That is the state of meditation.

DI FFERENT DEFIN ITION OF EQU I POISE AN D POST-ATTAIN M ENT

Normally, equipoise means formal meditation and post­ attainment means not being in formal meditation. However, in this practice, you can say that whenever you recognize the view, that is meditative equipoise. Normally, we say, "I am going to meditate for one hour" but in fact we do not spend the whole hour in meditative equipoise; we spend it in both meditation and post-meditation as well! But with the Thorough Cut, for however long you are within rigpa that is equipoise and the rest of the time, while there is no rigpa and you are following the various afflictions of passion, aggres­ sion, and so on, that is post-attainment. Rigpa is something that you can and should recognize at any time at all; whatever you are doing, look here at rigpa and rest in the state of rigpa. It is not something that requires sitting and formal meditation to be experienced. However, it is equally true that we cannot experience this authentically except for very short periods, therefore we do need to persevere at the practice of formal meditation on rigpa.

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FORMAL M EDITATION I S I M PORTANT

Sometimes people wonder whether the training in the Thorough Cut occurs primarily in the context of meditation practice then spills out into everyday life or whether it is primar­ ily a post-meditation training. The Thorough Cut is a practice that occurs at all times. It is true that, if you obtain a good experience of rigpa in meditation, then an effect occurs in post­ attainment. The effect is that the various afflictions of passion, aggression, and delusion are reduced or not present at all. How­ ever, this natural effect is not enough in itself. You have to do the training in everyday life, too. In other words, it is a mistake to say that rigpa is to be recognized only in meditation; rigpa should be recognized at all times. \Vhenever discursive thou­ ghts take over, whether you are in formal meditation or not, you should look at their essence. Rigpa should be recognized at all times, regardless of what you are doing. Despite this, it is also true that formal meditation on rigpa is important. If you do not do that, then it is not likely that your rigpa practice will develop.

TH E PRACTICE OF RIGPA I S NOW

Some people think that the main point at the time of death is to maintain rigpa. No! The main point is to do it now! You must make sure now that you can maintain rigpa, not at the point of dying. If you cannot deal with difficulties now, how will you deal with them at the time of death? If you practise the way I spoke of earlier, in the Parting Sarpsara and Nirvana practices, then perhaps this will help at the time of death. You need training. It is like the army: when they train, they carry really

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heavy things and run, they go all over the place and shoot, and do all sorts of difficult things so that when they really fight, they will have a chance of winning. In the same way, we need to train our minds now. In the West people have a big concept of needing a quiet place to meditate. That is true in the beginning but do not keep that concept forever. Do not always expect or hope that you will have a peaceful place to meditate. Keeping that idea for your whole life would not be all right. One time I stayed with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche when he was constructing a lot of new buil­ dings at Ngakyi Gonpa. There was a lot of noise and banging everywhere. One day, I said to Rinpoche, "You are going to start a three year retreat, so why are you making so much noise? Doesn't this bother you?" Rinpoche said, "It doesn't matter, this is nothing. If I am bothered by that, how am I going to cope with the bardo? " He was not bothered by it at all. He was giving teachings and meditating. In the West, you couldn't take it at all. This is a method. It helps to get rid of our concepts of want­ ing to meditate in a peaceful place, wanting to do our practice in a peaceful place. Those kind of concepts should be dropped, let go of. For beginners a little bit of solitude is needed but later it is not necessary at all. One of my teachers at Tashi J ong was Amtrin Togden. He is a great yogin who lived previously at Khampagar in Eastern Tibet. Khampagar is a very steep place in between cliffs. His guru, Khamtrul Rinpoche, put him in a high mountainous place for nine years. His practice developed well and everything was quite easy; the place had beautiful views and a lot of space and nothing changed much. He went to see Khamtrul Rinpoche and said that now he needed a horrible place to meditate because everything in his previous place was too good. So Khamtrul Rinpoche sent him to a small cave in a cleft between mountains.

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The sun never came into the cave and it was very cold and damp. It was near a big waterfall and about 1 4, 00 0 feet up. A place with a lot of bad smells and very damp. The wind roared down the cleft and made it impossible to light a fire. His cave was full of bird droppings. He stayed there for five years and his practice really improved. Now, any difficulty doesn't worry him. Whatever occurs is nothing to him. This is an excellent example for us to follow. We should keep this in mind.

THE PRACTICE OF THE THOROUGH CUT IN LONG RETREAT

In the context of a long retreat, you do continue to follow the instruction "look hither at the essence and then rest in that"? When there is discursive thought, look hither at the essence. When there is no discursive thought, there is no need to go out, no need to go in, just rest in the rigpa. Just recognize and rest. Otherwise the method is the same. Other than this method there is no other method. Why? Because you are recognizing your mind with your own mind; there is no other method or way, there is no other place to go. Other than recognizing your own mind, what else are you going to do? So again, to do repeat the instructions for the meditation practice, first of all you are out, right? So, you need to straight­ en it up, and you straighten it up just enough so that you can look at the essence of mind. Do not over-straighten it. Having straightened up just enough so that you can look at the essence of your mind, rest right there without going out, or in, or stay­ ing in the middle. Do not dwell anywhere.

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THE DIRECT CROSSING PATH

I have talked so far about the Thorough Cut. In Dzogchen practice there is both the Thorough Cut and the Direct Cros­ sing. In the context of Direct Crossing there are The Four Appearances. The first of the four appearances is Dharmata Become Manifest'. In this, the spontaneity of the ground is known through the appearances of what are called The Vajra Chains43• "Chains" means a lot of little things which are con­ nected together like a chain. When we talk about rigpa, we say emptiness and appearances but, as I said previously, another way to say this is "alpha purity and spontaneous presence". Alpha purity is on the emptiness side of having recognized rigpa and spontaneity is on the side of appearances. In Thorough Cut practice you are concerned with appearances and, in this prac­ tice, the appearances become obvious through the vajra chains. There is some kind of power or ability associated with them and so, by relying on them as path you can gain accomplishment. In Tibet many people did Thorough Cut for eight, nine, or ten years, and then they did Direct Crossing for another 8 years. If you do not have Direct Crossing, that is all right, it is not a problem, so you might say, "So why Direct Crossing?" and the answer is that by relying on Direct Crossing , you can accom43 Tib. rdo rje lug gu rgyud

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plish appearances more quickly but there is also some danger in this approach because, when you deal with Direct Crossing, you deal with appearances, and it is possible for grasping to be there within those appearances. These experiences of Direct Crossing are something that mainly come through the eyes, they are connected with seeing. The reason for this is that between the eyes and between the heart there is one particular channel called the "kati crystal pipe" . This channel is not like the ordinary channels; it is not something connected with the avadhuti44• It is not a physical thing but is something made of radiant light. Because this goes from the heart to the eyes, you have the reason why these practices of Direct Crossing are connected with eyes; it results in the appearances of sight. Out of all of the five senses, the eye is the one that is most clear so it has a special role. For example, just in normal life, when two people talk to each other they look at each other's eyes because that shows the mind; if you do not look at someone at all, then it seems strange.

�he central channel.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS: DEATH AND THE INTERMEDIATE STATE

At the time of death we talk about expanse and wisdom and expanse and rigpa. There is a verse about this that was com­ posed by Vairochana, a very great translator of the Nyingma tradition, " From the expanse, the mother, Comes rigpa, the child; Do not let the child out of mind and You will definitely meet with the mother." To begin with, in the body, there are four chakras and three channels which operate together. The chakras are at the top of the crown, (called the great bliss chakra), in the throat, in the heart, and below the navel. The three channels connect those chakras and carry winds and drops. They travel back and forth carrying messages between the various chakras. We are talking here about how the physical body and mind work together so we have to talk about how they are connected. Therefore we will talk about the essential drops. There are two main essential drops: one at the top which is called the pure essential drop and one below which is called "rakta" meaning blood. This is not something to practise; just understand it intellectually for now.

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While we are alive, the channels, winds, and drops, and mind all operate together in a way that works and keeps us alive. One hallmark of us being alive is the fact that the pure drop is kept up above and the rakta drop is kept down below-the two are held apart and not allowed to meet. While we are alive we also have five elements-earth, water, fire, wind, and space­ which are there on the basis of the channels, winds, and drops. When we die, each of the five elements dissolves one into another until they have completely dissolved: the earth element dissolves into the water element; the water element dissolves into the fire element; the fire element dissolves into the wind element; that dissolves into the space element; and then we die. There are two kinds of death-outer death and inner death. When the five elements have dissolved, outer death has occurred but final death has still not occurred because there is still some­ thing subtle connected with the body. The outer death is the fact that the five elements dissolve. Once those elements lose their power the whole inner structure falls to pieces as well. At that time, the chakras which were tight and operational become loose and non-operational. Before that, the chakras which were tight and operational were holding apart the pure one and the rakta but by becoming non-operational and weak, the pure one can start to travel downwards and the rakta can start to move upwards. Eventually the pure one and the rakta meet in the heart, and at that point, inner death occurs. Right at the moment when the pure one and the rakta meet, right at that moment, there is the appearance of dharmata. All sentient beings-animals, insects, worms, humans, gods-have the same experience right at the moment of death. This expanse of dharmata which arrives is the mother. Then the verse says that if you want to become a buddha at that time, do not lose your mindfulness of the child, rigpa. What does this mean? For example, you are in hospital and just

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about to die. At that time you must remember rigpa. Then, as you die, there will be all sorts of appearances as a result of the death process. At that time too, you must practise rigpa. If you can keep rigpa all the way through death and up to that point, then you will meet the mother and at that time you will defi­ nitely be liberated. To do this you have to remember moment by moment and not lose it at all. At this point all sorts of ap­ pearances will occur. Actually, these are the appearances of spontaneity. They are appearances of dharmata, of reality itself. If you can maintain your awareness in that way, then it is called taking buddhahood in the context of the bardo of death.

If you cannot remain in the intermediate state of dharmata, you continue on into the intermediate state of existence. There, the appearances of the peaceful and wrathful sarp.bhogakaya deities dawn. If you cannot relate to them, you continue onto into the next intermediate state, which is the state of birth into your next life.

TH E FRUITION

There are two ways in which mind can function: it can either operate by contriving or not contriving. At present, all of us are operating with a contriving mind, a mind that alters things from how they really are. This mind takes what is really there, makes it into a duality, then overlays that with conceptual labels. That whole process has obscured the ground of your being. The work of the path is to shrink the obscurations until they are gone. When you practise the path through to completion, the obscurations are totally removed. The ground that was obscured before is no longer obscured but fully manifested in your being. At that point, you have attained the fruition. At that point, your ground, path, and fruition are completely inseparable. To give an example: You are staying in a room which seems to have less space in it than your neighbour's room because you have a lot of things. Your neighbour is in his room which is actually the same size as yours but is more spacious because he has cleaned it out. There are several other rooms, as well. One day, an atom bomb drops down and destroys all of the artificial boundaries creating the rooms with their individual spaces. After that, you can no longer point to one space and say this is my space, this is his space, and so on. One is not bigger or smal­ ler than the other, either. In the same way, when you have reached the fruition level, all the walls and separations made by

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your dualistic, conceptualizing mind have been destroyed. Everything i s totally open and with n o contrived boundaries.

That is the fruition, fully complete buddhahood.

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SUMMARY

All P henomena Summed up in Dependent Relationship

All dharmas which arise are born dependently. Another way to say that is that their birth is something which occurs without the four extremes: they are not born from self; they are not born from other; they are not born from both; and they are not born from something which is neither. This process is called depen­ dent relationship or interdependent origination. As

Buddhists we accept only one kind of birth as valid and that is birth in a dependent relationship. If something is not born that way, it will be something which is truly, really, born and that means that it is going to be born as something which is truly established and that is not acceptable. As Buddhists, we accept that there is birth but we accept that there is birth only in the context of fictional truth. As Buddhists, we would not accept that there is birth in the context of superfactual truth. There are two kinds of dependent relationship, one is called

inner dependent relationship and the other is called outer dependent relationship. Outer dependent relationship is the way in which the word outside of a person's body and mind comes into being for example houses and materials. Inner dependent relationship is how you as a being come about. Fictional truth is when there is mistaken awareness knowing an object. It is a mistaken awareness because it is connected

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with confusion. Superfactual truth refers to the situation when the object of perception is an object of wisdom and the perceiver is wisdom. If your being is operating like that, then you are perceiving the superfactual truth. Wisdom means an type of knowing which is free from dualistic grasping. When you have destroyed the dualistic mind altogether, then you have wisdom. What is the most important thing in inner dependent relationship? Emptiness and clarity. I have said that while there is emptiness there is the knower, clarity, which knows appear­ ances. And while there is that clarity, there is emptiness. That situation in which you have emptiness and appearances appear­ ing in dependence on each other is called dependent relation­ ship. Summary of Ground, Path, and Fruition as Dependent Relationship

The Dzogchen system talks about dependent, related arising and the ground. There is the ground. A wind starts to move from that. Because of that wind, the appearances of spontaneity shine forth. They shine forth as five lights. These lights are the appearances of the ground itself but we do not recognize them as being our own nature. We feel that they are something other than us and, based on that, confusion comes. We have a kind of doubt, an uncertainty of the mind, and because of that there comes a more heavy delusion in which we are not sure about things anymore. Due to this delusion we slowly solidify the five lights until sarp.sara is fully produced. In other words, from alpha purity come the appearances of spontaneity and, not recognizing that the appearances of sponta­ neity are our own appearances, we become deluded. Having grasped at the five lights we slowly, step by step, grasp at the five elements-earth, water, fire, air, and space-and the three real­ ms spread out. Within the three realms we constantly create and finally build a whole world.

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When we d o not re co gnize the five lights as our essence, we develop them in our confusion into the five elements. Due to our confusion over the actuality of the situation we see some­ thing which is not really there; it is like seeing a snake where there is a rope. If you recognize the five lights, then that is wisdom. There are many different wisdoms but, in brief, there are the five wisdoms of dharmata, of equality, and so on. All of these appearances that came out of the ground, wheth­ er they are known through confusion or not, are the appearances of dependent relationship. There is not one phenomenon in this whole world which did not come about through a process of dependent, related arising. Virtue depends on evil and evil depends on virtue. B ecause of that, Kagyu lamas say that dependent relationship is something that is very significant and they give you methods of dependent relationship. For example, you might be told to go and do circumambulations around the Great Stiip a and that as you do your circumambulations you should arouse the aspiration to benefit all sentient beings. There are many methods like that. It is said, " Until the process of conceptual mind is completely exhausted, There will always be vehicles (for making the journey)." As Tulku Urgyen said in his missive from the hospital, dualistic fixation has to collapse because until it collapses there is still sarp.sara and still a journey to be made. Having a dualistic mind means having a conceptual mind and as long as there is a conceptual mind there is still a journey to be made. In terms of the path, the thing that is the most important is to destroy dualistic conceptual mind. That was ground and path, now, in terms of fruition, what sort of dependent relationship occurs? The two form bodies,

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the sa111bhogakaya and the nirmal).akaya, come from and arise in a dependent relationship with the dharmakaya. The Bhagavat Buddha who was born as the son of King Shuddhodana was the manifestation, the form body, of the Buddha. Summary of Formal Practice: Equipoise

For formal sessions of meditation, which is called equipoise, you need to know view, meditation, and conduct. For this, you have to be introduced to the view of the grou­ nd, which is the essence of your own mind, and which is known by various names in various meditation systems. In Dzogchen, it is called "rigpa". I have already introduced you to it. Meditation is resting within that view. In the Thorough Cut, meditation is defined as the time that you are staying within recognition of the essence of mind. It is authentic recognition as the mind essence being recognized has the three qualities of an essence of emptiness, a nature of clarity, and a unity of the two which is all-pervading compassionate activity. Those three things must all be there, complete right in one moment. To do the meditation, you need to face the view and then, seeing it, need to liberate yourself. It is said that the seeing and liberation occur simultaneously; seeing the essence of the mind and liberating those discursive thoughts is something that occurs at the same moment. This is very important. The style of meditation is called "non-distracted, non­ meditation". This style of meditation must come immediately you put yourself there. For example, when I strike the gong, the sound comes simultaneously with hitting it and likewise, you see and stay in rigpa simultaneously. If it is a gradual process, then it is contrived and that is not it. In this type of meditation, contriv-

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ance is not necessary. You see it and have arrived. Once you have arrived, it is there and needs no process of creation. So in this style of meditation, there are the two key points: simultaneously looking and being in rigpa and, having arrived, not needing to contrive, alter, anything. In other words, first you have to understand how to look and then, having under­ stood how to look, the next thing you need to understand is how to leave it alone. Your mind does not like to leave it alone; you arrive and then you destroy it because of not leaving it alone, because of grasping at it! Having arrived, don't fiddle with it! Because your mind will start fiddling, you will become dis­ tracted from that once again. When you understand that you have become distracted from it, you need to look and come back to rigpa again. The understanding and return is the conduct of the Thorough Cut. So, there are four things altogether in the practice of this meditation: Know how to look (to see the view); (when you have seen it) know how to leave it alone; know when you are dis­ tracted; and know how to come back to the view. All of that was instruction for formal meditation session. Summary of Non-Formal Practice

Now, about post-attainment. In D zogchen one of the unusual features is that the meditation should be done as the post-meditation. In other words, everything that I just said for a formal session of practice can be and should be done in what is more conventionally called post-meditation. For the beginner, knowing about view, meditation, and conduct as mentioned above is very important. Older practitio­ ners are supposed to know about these things, so for them there are two more things that are important: mindfulness and effort. If those two things are not there, what is going to happen?

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Nothing! If you know about the view and meditation but do not do something with that knowledge, it is just like a person who has a million dollars but is starving to death, isn't it? Therefore, } ou need to exert yourselves. How do you need to exert your­ selves? You need to look at the essence, right? Looking at the essence, you need to stay there. Then you become distracted, so you need to know that you are distracted. Then you need to look at the essence again. Having looked, you will stay there. Then you will become distracted, and so on. In

our modern times, finding the time to do anything at all is very difficult and finding time to do meditation is not easy. That being the case we need again, again, and again to recognize the essence of mind and stay there. As the situation outside becomes more clever, we as practitioners need to become more clever as well. Previously the outer situation was quite dull, so it was very easy to sit. Now it is getting smarter outside so we need to improve our method as well! Accordingly, it is very important that you recognize the mind essence again and again, immediately, immediately, whenever you are going, whenever you are staying, whenever you are doing anything. You must make time to do this. For instance, whenever you eat, try to remember. If you make a habit of remembering rigpa with certain activities that you have to do each day, then, because of habit, the things around that activity will continue to remind you to recognize rigpa in the future. For example, each day we have to eat and drink; the food itself can serve as a reminder for you to recognize rigpa while you are eating. Perhaps you cannot maintain the recognition throughout the meal but you can recognize several times and this will help. Whatever the cir­ cumstance might be, one should keep mindfulness as well. This is one of the key points of meditation. It is very easy to under­ stand that you need perseverance-everyone understands that as soon as they hear it-but to do it is another matter. You know that you need to do it but you don't! This is a fortunate

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time for you right now, s o please exert yourself. Then, when you go back to your own country, you need to double your efforts, because it is easy here and harder there. Summary of Retreat and Post Retreat

There is retreat and there is post-retreat. In the army, first you go to boot camp and learn how to fight then you go to the front lines and fight. In exactly the same way, you go into retreat and learn how to look at the essence of mind then you leave the retreat and get down to the business of fighting the afflictions-passion, aggression, and so on. However, your fighting is fighting without bullets! Why? B ecause there is emptiness and emptiness is something which has no essence to it; so your fighting is something that occurs without any subject and object whatsoever.

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR DAILY L IFE

Generally speaking we have a very fortunate situation. This is true-we have all of our sense faculties and they are in perfect order, and we have a precious human rebirth with its eighteen different attributes. So we need to train ourselves to be cheerful about that. If we were being cheerful about something we did not have, that would not be right but if there is something we have, and we practise being cheerful about having it then there is no problem with that. Since we do have a precious human rebirth we should rejoice in that fact. If we have something like that, that is precious but we do not rejoice in it, then there is something wrong with that! Many people have something but do not rejoice in it and because of that they suffer. Then there are some people who, even though they do not have a particular quality or circumstance, set about thinking they do have it-that is called pride. These two situations of being cheerful and proud are quite different; when you have something and because of that you are cheerful about it, that is fine but when you do not have something yet believe you do have it and so make yourself cheerful, that is not so good. You can know whether you do have something or not through using prajfia which individually discriminates.

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Sometimes you should examine your situation-just to see how it is. In the West there is a custom of returning home after work and relaxing. Perhaps you go out to your balcony, in the fresh air, and have a drink of wine, champagne, tea, or whatever. This time of day is very good. It happens about an hour before sunset. The sun is not so strong, the day is dying, and the whole energy is light, not so heavy-a very relaxing time. There are so many qualities in the mind at this point; sweet, sad, and all sorts of things. You can do a lot with this energy. The morning is not so good for this. At this time have a drink. It can be anything you like; water, tea, wine, champagne, or whatever. Make your mind very simple. Don't involve yourself in discursive thoughts. Just be with the environment for a while. At this kind of time there are colours, perhaps there are nice trees; just be with that. Even ordinary people really like this time because this kind of circum­ stance is very natural. For the ordinary person this increases their joy simply because it is natural. But for a practitioner there are two ways to approach it. The beginner who has not done a lot of practice can think, "Well, I was in Nepal a while ago, I met with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, I did a retreat there . . . " and then they can examine things a little and think, ""What was my experience, what was talked about, what do I need to do, how have I progressed?" They could think about it and analyze it a bit. There is no need for heavy analysis-just think a little, while letting the mind ride in this natural situation. For the person who has done a lot of meditation, this circumstance of the sun going down just before it sets has some kind of power. Some kind of capability comes because of that energy. The kind of mind that will come as a matter of course has a tinge of sadness and also a little bit of joy. And because of exactly this tinge of sadness, compassion comes up. Somehow you remem­ ber that you are alone and there is the sadness and there is love

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for others and a connection with all the other sentient beings is made.

The whole point is that if your mind is too dry, compassion cannot come; compassion needs some wetness or juice. Some­ times we call compassion the great passion, the great attach­ ment. Why do we say great? Remembering that there is one of me and there are all sentient beings we get the word great. Then, normally passion means, "Oh, I don't want to let it go" and so here also-you have a passion for these people, there is some glue. The Buddha himself did not reject one person due to discrimination; he embraced all sentient beings all at once. That is the real compassion. And that sort of thing will come into our minds. What do you do at this time? You need to have a mind which is looking towards the benefit of all sentient beings with­ out exception. Having a mind that looks towards the benefit of a few sentient beings is not the point, that is not real compas­ sion. Compassion in this case is compassion which is looking towards all sentient beings. A sentient being of course is not just a human being; sentient beings are humans, animals, gods, and so on-all the beings that exist in sarpsara. Here, you think that you will have compassion for all of these sentient beings until they finally become liberated from their various sufferings. Un­ til they have abandoned their sufferings they need a helper, so until they have abandoned their sufferings you should plan to be their helper. Whether you are able to help them or not is another issue; what you need to do is to have this kind of thou­ ght, "I will be the helper". It might be that you cannot help them now. It might be that even through a period of many years or lifetimes you will not be able to help them, nonetheless you will be able to help them at some time in the future-you will arrive at that state. We really must have this mind of a bodhi­ satva's compassion.

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Emptiness and compassi on are like the wings of a bird. Just as a bird cannot fly with only one wing, so it is essential to have both wings of emptiness and compassion to go to the stage of a buddha. Emptiness is the real remedy which can destroy our own ego-grasping and compassion gives rise to the activity which can benefit sentient beings. If you have compassion alone, you will not have destroyed fixation and you will not really be able to help sentient beings because you have not understood yourself properly. It is said that there are two aims. There are the two aims of benefitting oneself and benefitting others. Understanding emp­ tiness properly will bring about your own aims fully and com­ pletely; developing compassion will bring about the aims of others fully and completely. This is so because, as I just said, emptiness is the real antidote which overcomes grasping at a self and compassion is the mind which says, "I will definitely benefit all sentient beings". Therefore these two things, emptiness and compassion are extremely important. This is actually the root of Mahayana. Without emptiness and compassion, the vehicle itself cannot move. That means you as the bodhisatva cannot function; there is no way to go along the path. That is the theory, now here are some instructions on prac­ tice. Compassion is something which goes along according to your motivation and prayers of dedication. So, if you decide to meditate for one hour, begin by arousing the intention that you will meditate in order to overcome all of your own passion, aggression, and ignorance and in order to lead all sentient beings to the state of buddhahood. Before you start your meditation, develop this authentic state of mind. Then, do your meditation for an hour. Do that by looking at the essence which is emp­ tiness, clarity, and their unity, all-pervading compassionate activity. Recognize the view, preserve the state with meditation, and perform the conduct of repeatedly returning to the view.

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Through meditating, experience of the real meaning will come forth. First you listen to the teaching, then you contem­ plate it to understand it correcdy, then you cultivate that mean­ ing in your being, which is called meditation. In this world, a lot of people will listen and a lot of people will contemplate but not a lot of people actually go about cultivating or meditating. For example, in Western science there is a great deal of listening and contemplating but there is no meditation and so there is no real experience. Scientists know so many good things but they do not have experience in terms of their own mind-streams. Thus, those three things of hearing, contemplating, and meditating should not be separated out but must be put together. For example, when there is no meditation, there is no experience. Like that, in the West, you have psychotherapists who know how emotions work but they usually have the same problem as their patients because they do not meditate. "As long as conceptual mind is not exhausted, There is still a vehicle (for making the journey); As long as conceptual mind is not exhausted, The afflictions will not have been dispelled."

Please meditate well.

GLOSSARY

Actuality, gnas lugs: how things are, the way things are, how things sit in any given situation as opposed to how they might appear. Affliction, nyon mongs: this term is usually translated as emotion or disturbing emotion etcetera. However, the Buddha was much more specific about the meaning of this word. The Buddha said that passion, aggression, ignorance, and so on, were affliction, that is, they were something that afflicted you. Affliction is the correct translation for emotion. Alaya, kun gzhi: this term, if translated, is usually translated as all-base or thereabouts. It means a range that underlies something else; an underlying basis for something else. It is uses in several different ways in the Buddhist teaching and changes to a different meaning in case. All in all, it means a space of mind that underlies many other minds that come from it. Alertness, shes bzhin: one state of dualistic mind that specifically func­ tions to detect whether the mind has wandered from its object. It is almost always taught in conjunction with mindfulness as the two key functions of mind needed for the development of shama­ tha or one-pointedness of mind. Alteration, altered, same as contrivance q.v. Alpha purity, ka dag: a unique Dzogchen term meaning purity that is there from the first, that is, primordial purity. Assurance, gdeng: often translated as confidence, this term means more than confidence. This term means has the full meaning of

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assurance with the extra meaning that that contains compared to confidence. A bird, as it flies in space, has the assurance that it will not fall to the ground because of knowing that it has wings and the training it obtained in how to fly as a fledgling; the person who can liberate the afflictions in the state of rigpa has the assurance of liberation.

Bliss, clarity, and no-thought, bde gsal mi rtog pa: mentioned in this text as three temporary experiences that practitioners invariably meet in meditation. Bliss is ease of the body and/or mind, clarity is the experience of extraordinary clarity of mind, and no-thought is the experience literally of no thoughts happening in the mind. There is another understanding of these three not as temporary experiences to be eschewed but final experiences of realization. Clarity, gsal ba: this term is mainly used as an abbreviation of 'od gsal ba, luminosity, and should be understood to mean luminosity exactly. See "Luminosity" in the glossary. Clinging, zhen pa: dualistic mind that takes things that are not true, not pure, as being true, pure, etcetera and then, because of seeing them as highly desirable attaches itself or clings to those things. It acts a kind of glue that keeps you with the things of cyclic existence, such as thoughts. Complexion, mdangs: a special term of Mahamudra and Dzogchen which roughly stated refers to the surface of the rigpa and how it appears which is different from the actual entity of the rigpa, which is mere knowing. You could also say that is the lustre of the rigpa. Confusion, 'khrul pa: the Tibetan term means fundamental delusion's confusion of taking things the wrong way. This is not the other meaning in English of having lots of thoughts and being confused about it. It is much more fundamental than that. The definition in Tibetan is "confusion is the appearance to rational mind of something being present when it is not" and refers for example to seeing any object, such as a table, as being truly present when in fact it is present only as mere appearance which has occurred in a process of dependent, related arising.

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Contriuance, contriued, bcos p a : something which has been altered from its native state or the process of making that alteration.

Cyclic existence, 'khor ba: sarpsara: the type of existence that sentient beings have which is that continue on from one existence to another, always within the enclosure of births that are produced by ignorance and experienced as unsatisfactory.

Dharmakaya, chos sku: the mind aspect of a buddha which, in the Tho­ rough Cut system, is the fruition level of rigpa.

Dharmata, chos nyid: literally dharma-ness. A dharma is a phenome­ non so what it is at core, its actual reality is its dharma-ness, or its isness.

Direct Crossing, tho rgal: one of the two practices of the innermost level of Dzogchen practice. The other is Thorough Cut.

Discursiue thought, rnam rtog: this means more than just the superfi­ cial thought that is heard as a voice in the head. It includes the entirety of conceptual process that arises due to mind contacting any object of any of the senses. Discursive thought here translates from the Sanskrit original where the meaning is "conceptual thought that arises from the mind wandering among the various superficies perceived in the doors of the senses".

Elaborating, spro ba: to be producing thoughts. Equipoise and post·attainment, mnyam bzhag and rjes thob: often mis­ translated as meditation and post-meditation, "equipoise and post-attainment" is a correct rendering. There is great meaning in the words and that meaning is lost by the looser translation. Note that equipoise and post-attainment are used throughout the three yanas and that they have a very different meaning in Dzog­ chen than in lower vehicles.

Essence, ngo bo: a key term used throughout Buddhist theory. The original in Sanskrit and the term in Tibetan, too, has both mean­ ings of "essence" and "entity". In some situations the term has more the first meaning and in others, the second. For example, when speaking of mind and mind's essence, it is referring to the core or essential part within mind. On the other hand, when speaking of fire or some other thing, there is the entity, fire, and

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so on, and its characteristics, such as heat, and so on; in this case, it is not an essence but an entity.

Fictional Truth, kun rdzob bden pa: one of a pair of terms; the other is Superfactual Truth, q.v. The usual translation as "relative truth" is not the meaning at all of this key term. The term means the level of reality (truth) made up by the obscuration of an ordinary person's mind. Because this is an obscured version of actual truth it is fictional. However, it is true for the beings who make it up, so it is still called troth. Four Close Placements of Mindfulness, dran pa nyer gzhags pa bzhi: a set of four practices taught by the Buddha to develop mindfulness which, together with alertness, is the main cause of developing shamatha. They are mindfulness of body, feeling, livelihood (sometimes called effort), and mind. Ground, gzhi: the first member of the formulation of ground, path, and fruition. Ground, path, and fruition is the way that the teachings of the path of oral instruction belonging to the vajrayana are presented to students. Ground refers to the basic situation as it lS.

lsness: a translation of dharmata, q.v. Key points, gnad:it is not apparent from the wording but a "key point" is not a point of understanding that you have conceptually in your mind and take to meditation practice but is an issue belonging to the actual process of meditation itself. Meditation as a process has key points or issues within it and instructions such as the "three lines" are given so that the practitioner can connect a correct understanding which is derived from those instructions with those issues as they are actually present in the meditation itself. This is worth thinking over because the common under­ standing in English of "key point" is an instruction to be applied but that is quite incorrect; the instructions that you have are applied to your meditation in order to work the key points that are present as issues in the meditation itself. They are the buttons existing in the meditation for you to be press using the instruc­ tions, such as the three lines, that allow you to hit the buttons.

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Uueliness, rtsal: another key term in Mahamudra and Dzogchen. The term means the potential that something contains for it to pro­ duce or display some kind of expression. For example, a baby horse has the innate ability that will later come out as its liveliness of galloping and prancing as a steed. However, the term also is used in situations where the energy is actually happening, that is, it is not mere potential any more but is the energy at the time of it expression. The term that seems to fit correctly in English is"spunk" unfortunately not many people know this word well. It is the potential and the expression of dynamic display that something has within it. Luminosity, 'od gsal ba: the core of mind, called mind's essence, has two aspects, parts, or factors as they are called. One is emptiness and the other hand is knowing. Luminosity is a metaphor for the fundamental knowing quality of the essence of mind. It is some­ times translated as"clear light" but that is a mistake that comes from not understanding how the words of the Tibetan go to­ gether. It does not refer to a light that is clear but refers to the illuminative property which is the hallmark of mind. Mind knows, that is what it does. Thus, it has the property ofluminos­ ity which knows its own content. Both in Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist literature, the term is frequently abbreviated just to gsal ba, "clarity", with the same meaning. Mind, sems: conventional minding which occurs because there is ignorance. Mindfulness, dran pa: the ability to keep mind on an object of the sens­ es. With alertness, it is one of the two causes of developing shamatha. Non-stopped clarity, Non-stopped luminosity, rna 'gags pa'i gsal ba, rna 'gags pa'i 'od gsal ba: an important path term in both Mahamudra and Dzogchen systems. Tha mal gyi shaypa and rigpa have two parts: emptiness and luminosity. Both of these must come uni­ fied. However, when the practitioner does the practice, they will fall into one extreme or the other. This falling into one or the other is called "stoppage". The aim of the practice is to get to the stage in which there is both emptiness and luminosity together.

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GLOSSARY

In that case, there is no stoppage of falling into one extreme or the other. Thus non-stopped luminosity is a term that indicates that there is the luminosity with all of its appearance yet that luminosity, for the practitioner, is not mistaken, is not stopped off. Stopped luminosity is an experience like luminosity but in which the appearances have, at least to some extent, not been mixed with emptiness. The practitioner in that case has "alighted on", stopped off at, the appearances and become caught, at least to some extent, in them.

Post-attainment: see equipoise. Prajna, shes rab: a name for a state of mind that makes precise distinc­ tions between this and that. Although it is sometimes translated as "wisdom", that is not correct because it is, generally speaking, a mental event belonging to dualistic mind. Preserue, skyong ba: an important term in Thorough Cut. It means to keep something as it is, to nurture something in the sense of keeping it just so and not losing it. In the case of Thorough Cut it specifically means that you are not using any rational process or effort to keep it in place, rather you are following the instructions of your guru to allow thing to be as it is. This is also always applied to the state, q.v. and the phrase "preserve the state" is a key oral instruction in the Thorough Cut system. Rational mind, blo: the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions use this term pejoratively for the most part. In the D zogchen tradition, blo is the dualistic mind and hence is the villain so to speak which needs to be removed from the equation in order to obtain enlighten­ ment. This term is consistently translated as rational mind throughout this text since merely translating it as mind, which is the common approach these days, utterly loses the importance of the word. This is not just mind but this is the mind that creates the situation of this and that (ratio in latin) and which is always at the root of all sentient beings problems and which is the very opposite of the mind of rigpa. This is a key term and it should be noted and not just glossed over as "mind". Rigpa, rig pa: the key words of key words in the system of the Tho­ rough Cut. The equivalent in the Mahamudra system is "Tha

GLOSSARY

1 95

mal gyi shaypa" q.v. Rigpa literally means to know in the sense of "I see! ". It is used at all levels of meaning from the coarsest everyday sense of knowing something to the deepest sense of knowing something as presented in the system of Thorough Cut. The system of Thorough Cut uses this term in a very special sense, though it still retains its basic meaning of "to know". To translate it as "awareness" which is common practice these days is a poor practice; there are many kinds of awareness but there is only one rigpa and besides, rigpa is substantially more than just awareness. Since this is such an important term and since it lacks an equivalent in English, I choose not to translate it. However, it will be helpful in reading the text to understanding the meaning as just given.

Secret Mantra, gsang sngags: the name for the second of the two parts of the Mahayana school, that is, the vajrayana. Self-resting, rang bzhag: an important term in Mahamudra and Dzog­ chen which refers to the basic style of meditation in these sys­ tems. To self-rest means that the resting is not made up, forced or produced but allowed to happen of itself. Seuen Dharmas of Vairochana rnam par snang mdzad chos bdun: are the seven aspects of Vairochana's posture which used for formal meditation practice. The posture for the legs is the one called "vajra posture" or vajrasana. In it, the legs are crossed one on top of the other, right on top of left. The advantage of this posture is that, of the five basic winds of the subtle body, the downward­ clearing wind is caused to enter the central channel. The posture for the hands is called the equipoise mudra. The right palm is placed on top of the left palm and the two thumbs are just touch­ ing, raised up over the palms. The advantage of this posture is that the Fire-Accompanying Wind is caused to enter the central channel. The posture for the spine is that the spine should be held straight. The advantage of this posture is that the Pervader Wind is caused to enter the central channel. The posture for the shoulders is one in which the shoulders are held up slightly in a particular way. The advantage of this posture is that Upward­ Moving Wind is caused to enter the central channel. The neck and chin are held in a particular posture: the neck is drawn up a

1 96

GLOS SARY

little and the chin slightly hooked in towards the throat. The advantage of this posture is that the Life-Holder Wind is caused to enter the central channel. The tip of the tongue is joined with the forward part of the palate and the jaws are relaxed, with the teeth and lips allowed to sit normally. The eyes are directed down past the tip of the nose, into space. Placing the gaze in this way keeps the clarity of mind and prevents sinking, agitation, and so on.

Shamatha, gzhi gnas:one of the two main practices of meditation required in the Buddhist system for gaining insight into reality. It develops one-pointedness of mind. The completion of the practice is a mind that sits stably on its object without any effort. Essentially, it allows the other practice, vipashyana, to focus on its object unwaveringly. State, ngang: this is a key term in Mahamudra and Dzogchen. Un­ fortunately it is often not translated or is simply translated as "within". It has the full sense of "a particular state that the practi­ tioner is experiencing". There are many states on the path. The word is often used in the Thorough Cut without adjective to refer to the all-important experience of rigpa itself, whatever that might be at the time. Hence "the state", "preserving the state", etc. See also "Preserve". Superfactual Truth, don dam bden pa: one of a pair of terms; the other is Fictional Truth, q.v. The usual translation as "absolute truth" is not the meaning at all of this key term. The term means the level of reality(truth) which is superior to the ordinary person's mistaken kind ofreality and which is factual compared to the fic­ tional reality of the ordinary person. Superfice, superficies, rnam pa: in discussions of mind, a distinction is made between the entity of mind which is a mere knower and the superficial things that appear on its surface and which are known by it. In other words, the superficies are the various things which pass over the surface of mind but which are not mind. Superficies are all the specifics that constitute appearance, for example, the colour white within a moment of visual consciousness, the vroom of a motorbike within an ear consciousness, and so on.

GLOSSARY

1 97

Tha mal gyi shaypa, tha mal gyi shes pa: the path term used in the

Mahamudra tradition to indicate mind's essence. In Dzogchen, the equivalent term is "rigpa". Both words are used by practi­ tioners as a sort of code word for their own, personal experience of the essence of mind. These words are secret because of the power they are connected and should be kept that way. Tha mal gyi shaypa is often referred to as "ordinary mind", a term that was established by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche for his students. However, there are two problems with that word. Firstly, "tha mal" does not mean "ordinary". It means "com­ mon", something that is common to everyone. This is well attested to in the writings of the Kagyu forefathers. Secondly, this is not mind, given that mind is used throughout this book to mean the dualistic mind of beings in cyclic existence. Rather this is "shes pa", the most general term for all kinds of awareness or knower. In short, it is the kind of non-dualistic knower that is common to everyone. From a practitioner's perspective, there is little difference be­ tween the two terms. However, as Tsoknyi Rinpoche points out, "There is a deep point concerning what is explained in the extraordinary levels of Dzogchen as the complexion aspect of the rigpa45 and what is explained in Mahamudra as the luminosity aspect46 • Dzogchen says that real rigpa is to bring forth the deep state which is the luminosity part without the slightest bit of compartmentalizing-the actual original, naked dharmakaya-and there is a slight point of discussion over that. "There is that sort of discussion when these things are being explained but, from the perspective of an individual receiving the instructions and meditating, the instructions on Mahamudra could become the accomplishment of Dzogchen and vice-versa. That

45 Tib. rig pa'i mdangs cha 46 Tib. gsal cha

1 98

GLOS SARY

difference is explained in the texts but in fact it depends

on the individual.""

Temporary experience, nyams: when one practises meditation, various experiences occur which are simply part of the path and are not realizations, per se. These experiences are thus temporary experiences. Thorough Cut, khregs chod: one of the two practices of the innermost level ofDzogchen practice. The other is Direct Crossing. Thor­ ough Cut is a practice in which the main point is to cut decisively through to Alpha Purity. Transparency, zang thai: This term belongs to the unique vocabulary of Great Completion. It has two parts to its meaning: the first is that something is seen directly, in direct perception; the second part is that it is seen with full visibility because there is no obscur­ ing agent in the way at all. The term is used to indicate that rigpa is truly present for the practitioner. Luminosity when it is the rigpa of the enlightened side and not the not-rigpa, usually translated as ignorance, of the samsaric side, has transparency or, you could say, full visibility, as one of its qualities precisely because it has none of the factors of mind as such in it, which would obscure it. In this condition. For the practitioner, trans­ parency means that the rigpa is in full view because it really is rigpa without any of the obscuring factors that would make it opaque and not completely visible. Unaltered or uncontriued, rna bcos pa: the opposite of "altered" and "contrived". Something which has not been altered from its native state. Something which has been left just as it is. Vehicle of Characteristics, mtshan nyid theg pa: the Great Vehicle, Mahayana, has two sub-vehicles, the first is the vehicle of charac­ teristics, the siltra vehicle, and the second is the vehicle of secret mantra, the tantras. View, meditation, and conduct, Ita sgom spyod: a formulation of the teachings that_..<;ontains all of the meaning of the path. Vipashyana, lhag mthong: one of the two main practices of meditation required in the Buddhist system for gaining insight into reality.

GLOS SARY

1 99

It is the insight that directly sees reality. It is aided by shamatha which keeps it focussed on the reality.

Wisdom, ye shes: this terms translates the original Sanskrit, jnana. Jnana has many meanings but overall has the sense of just know­ ing. In the Buddhist usage it is very literal, meaning the most basic sense we have of knowing which is the knowing that is there from the beginning in the core of mind. Because of this meaning, the Tibetans translated it as "the particular awareness which has been there from the beginning". This has been translated into English in various ways but, as long as the meaning just men­ tioned is understood, that will be enough. In the tantras, there are many methods for bringing the students to this primordial awareness. Some of them bring the student first to something which is similar to the wisdom so there is the term, simile wisdom47; this is often translated as example wisdom but that is being literal to the extent oflosing the meaning. The simile wisdom is a similitude of the real wisdom, the actual wisdom which is shown in various ways, including by the fourth empowerment. Real wisdom48 is the opposite of simile wisdom; it is wisdom in fact, not the one which is just a similitude of the real wisdom.

47 Tib. dpe'i ye shes 48 Tib. don gyi ye shes

SUPPORTS FOR STUDY

I have been encouraged over the years by all of my gurus to teach what I have learned during a lifetime dedicated to the study and practice of Buddhism. Many of them have addition­ ally pointed to my skills as an educator and translator and asked me to write and translate. In recent times, they have been expressing the very valid concern that, while many general books on Buddhism have been and are being published, there are few books that present the actual texts of the tradition and even fewer that present all the details correctly. They, together with many Westerners who are involved with publishing Bud­ dhist works, have encouraged me to publish high quality transla­ tions of individual texts of the tradition which make a point of presenting the details of the tradition correctly. I have taken a comprehensive and long term approach to this work of helping non-Tibetans to understand Tibetan Buddhism and also to translate it. First, for any language, one has to have the lettering needed to write the language. Therefore, as a member of the Nalanda Translation Committee, I spent some years in the 1 980's making Tibetan word-processing software and high-quality Tibetan fonts. After that, reliable lexical works are needed. Therefore, I spent some years writing the Illumina­ tor Tibetan-English Dictionary, writing a set of treatises on Ti­ betan grammar, and preparing a variety of key reference works for the study and translation of Tibetan Buddhist texts. This was done during the 1 990's when I was also translating full-time

201

2 02

SUPPORTS FOR STUDY

for various Tibetan gurus and running the largest project in Asia for the preservation of Tibetan Buddhist texts. With that as a basis, translations can be done effectively. Therefore, since the year 2 000, I have focussed on translation and publication of books of important Tibetan texts. The work of providing accurate and insightful translations has been made possible partly by an extraordinary amount of teaching received in this life. During the 1 970's I was a monk of Lama Yeshe in his FPMT organization, where I spent ten years studying, practising, and teaching the Gelugpa system. During the 1 980's I stayed at the feet of the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa where I studied and practised all the Karma Kagyu and Shambhala teachings available in his Vajradhatu organization. Since then, I have been thoroughly involved with the study and practice ofMahamudra but mainly Great Completion in Nepal, India, and Tibet with the greatest Tibetan masters of these systems. I must say I feel very satisfied with this approach. I feel as though I have lived the life of a true translator, one who has accomplished the extreme amount of study needed even to be called a translator and one who has done everything needed in a complete approach to transmitting Tibetan Buddhism to the West. Under my direction, Padma Karpo Translation Committee has a broad interest in translating and publishing the works of both sutra and tantra. However, we have a particular interest in the teachings of Great Completion. The result so far has been this and another book of Tsoknyi Rinpoche's teachings on Thorough Cut49, a series of books on Longchen Nyingthig, and many books on the main practices of Thorough Cut and Direct Crossing. A5 further reading, we could recommend Hinting At Dzogchen, our publications such as The Feature of the Glorious, Expert King by Patrul Rinpoche, About the Three Lines by

49 Hinting At Dzogchen by Tony Duff and published by Padma Karpo Translation Committee ISBN 9 7 8-99 3 7-2 -0224-4.

SUPPORTS FOR STUDY

203

Dodrupchen III, Alchemy ofAccomplishment by Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, Hinting at Dzogchen by Tony Duff, Peak Doorways to Emancipation by Shakya Shri, and so on. We also have the only authentic translation available ofJigmey Lingpa's Wisdom Guru50 text, the important text of Longchen Nyingthig that covers all the practical details of Thorough Cut and Direct Crossing. We make a point of including the Tibetan texts that form the basis of any of our books in the books as a support for study. We go a step further and make the same texts available as free electronic editions that can be downloaded from our web-site; this is discussed further below. As a result, the Tibetan texts for this book are included at the back of the book and are available for download from our web-site. We have produced many books and texts all intended as supports for study. To make them as accessible as possible, we provide them not only on paper but in immediately download­ able electronic editions. Some are free and some for sale. All of them are available through our web-site, the address of which is on the copyright page at the front of this book. The paper editions are also available from major Buddhist book sellers. Electronic Resources

It has also been a project of ours to make computerized supports for study. This has several aspects one of which is the preparation of electronic editions of Tibetan texts. We input the texts in our input office using our own Tibetan software called TibetDoc. Tibetan texts are often corrupt so we make a special point of correcting them very carefully. Finally, we make them available through our web-site. Unlike many of the Tibetan texts that can be found on the web, our electronic

50 Ti b . khrid yig ye shes bla rna. This is made available only to those who are qualified to receive the text.

2 04

SUPPORTS FOR STUDY

Tibetan texts are highly reliable editions that can be used by non -scholars and scholars alike. Some larger collections of electronic texts, such as the complete Seven Treasuries of Longchenpa and the entire Root Volumes ofLongchen Nyingthig are for sale. Many, including all of Longchenpa's other works, are available for free download. The free texts have often been sponsored by a Westerner who pays for the input and correction work because of needing the text personally but who then offers the electronic edition to others via our web-site. All of our electronic Tibetan texts are read, searched, printed, and so on using our Tibetan software. The software comes in two versions, called TibetD Reader and TibetDoc respectively. The software can be used to set up a reference library of electronic texts and then do research in the library quickly and easily. Furthermore, the software incorporates many special features which make it useful for understanding the texts and even translating them. One such feature is that any Tibetan term in an electronic text can be looked up immediately in our electronic dictionaries. We suggest the Illuminator Tibetan-English Dictionary as the best dictionary for the purpose. It is an encyclopaedia of knowledge covering all traditions of Buddhism and can be used as a textbook in its own right. All of our wide range of computerized dharma was produced to assist practitioners with their studies. All of it is available through our web-site, the address of which is on the copyright page at the front of this book. All of it except the free electronic texts is also available from major Buddhist book sellers.

INDEX

abiding . . . 3 1 , 46-49, 5 7 , 5 8 , 62, amusement parks . . . . . 99, 1 5 7 66, 1 1 1 , 1 47 , 1 48, 1 50- 1 52 anger . 1 8, 5 8 , 96, 98, 1 49, 1 5 1 , 1 55 abiding mind . . . . . . . . . 5 7 , 1 5 1 actuality . . . 8 , 1 4- 1 6, 2 5 , 5 0 , 70, antidote . . . 5 8 , 59, 8 3 , 1 3 7 , 1 86 7 1 , 73, 74, 98, 1 1 0 , 1 1 7 , 1 2 6 , appearance . . 2 7 , 5 8 , 6 5 , 67-69, .

.

1 2 9, 1 3 7, 1 40, 1 48, 1 7 7 , 1 89

85, 86, 88, 9 1 , 1 1 7 , 1 24, 1 3 5 ,

actuality of the ground . 1 4, 1 5 ,

1 3 9, 1 40, 1 52 , 1 54, 1 59, 1 70,

73

1 90 , 1 94, 1 96

adverse circumstances . . . 1 9, 7 5 appearance and emptiness . 68, 8 8 , 1 1 7 , 1 3 5 , 1 52 , 1 54 affliction . . . . 9, 66, 9 5 , 1 07 , 1 89 afflictions . 8, 9, 1 3 , 1 4, 1 6, 3 8, appearances . . . 7, 8, 1 6, 1 8-20, .

.

.

44, 5 1 , 5 3 , 54, 5 6 , 6 1 , 70, 7 3 ,

2 5 , 2 7 , 2 8 , 50, 64, 6 5 , 70, 84,

9 5 , 1 1 8 , 1 3 5 , 1 5 1 , 1 54, 1 60,

86, 88, 92 , 97, 1 1 1 , 1 24, 1 34,

1 6 1 , 1 8 7 , 1 90

1 3 9, 1 40, 1 5 0, 1 52 , 1 59, 1 60,

aggression . . . 3 , 1 8, 3 2 , 3 8, 43 ,

1 67 , 1 68, 1 7 1 , 1 76, 1 77, 1 94

5 4, 56, 6 1 , 6 5 , 9 5 , 1 3 5 , 1 5 1 , appearances of dharmata . . . 1 7 1 1 60, 1 6 1 , 1 8 1 , 1 86, 1 89 appearances o f spontaneity

aims of oneself . . . aims of others . . airs . . . . . . . . . . alaya . . . . . . . . alertness . . . 1 44, .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . .

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7 1 , 1 76

20

. . 2 0, 1 86 appreciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 . 69, 7 1 , 1 89, 1 90 . . . . . . . . . 3 7 assurance . . . . 1 1 7 , 1 2 0 attachment . . 2 5 , 1 49, 1 5 1 , 1 5 9, .

.

.

.

.

.

.

1 46, 1 89, 1 92 ,

1 60, 1 8 5

1 93

authentic devotion . . . . . . . . 1 04 authentic dharma practitioner

all-pervading compassionate activity . . . . . 87, 1 7 8 , 1 86 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 alpha purity . . . 1 3 6, 1 67 , 1 7 6, authentic practitioner . . . 43 , 5 6 1 89, 1 98 avadhiiti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 68 .

.

.

.

205

206

INDEX

aversiOn . . . . . . . . . . 26, 98 193, 1 96, 1 9 8 , 1 99, 2 0 1 -2 04 awareness . . . . xv, 1 1 , 2 8, 3 7 , 40, Buddhists . . . . . 54, 70, 90, 1 7 5 4 8 , 6 0 , 147, 1 7 1 , 1 7 5 , 1 9 5 , by-pass with conduct . . . xvi, 2 1 1 97 , 1 99 by-passing . . . . . . . . . . . xvi , 24 bardo . . . . . . . . 99, 1 62 , 1 7 1 chakra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 69 bardo of death . . . . . . . . 1 7 1 chakras . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 69, 1 70 bhiimis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 0 charnel ground . . . . . . . . . . 99 blankness . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3 cheerful attitude . . . . . . . . 95, 96 blessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi, 1 04 child . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 69, 1 70 blessings . . . . . 3 9, 9 5 , 1 0 3 , 1 1 3 Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche . . 1 2 3 bliss . . . . . 3 8, 1 2 3 , 1 69, 1 90 clarity . . . vii, xv, 6 , 7 , 2 6, 2 8 , 2 9 , 3 2 -3 4, 3 7, 3 8, 40, 43 , 45-49, bliss, clarity, and no-thought .

.

.

.

.

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.

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.

.

.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 90

blocking off . . bodhichitta . . . bodhisatva . . body . . . x, xii,

5 1 , 5 7 , 59, 64-68, 8 1 -8 5 , 8 7 ,

.... 3 7, 9 1 8 8 , 90-92 , 1 0 5 , 1 09, 1 1 2 , 1 2 4, . . . . . xi, 7 5 , 1 3 8 1 2 7, 1 3 5 - 1 40, 1 5 0- 1 52 , 1 76, 1 78 , . . . . . . . 5 6, 1 86 1 8 6, 1 90, 1 9 3 , 1 96 3 7- 3 9, 4 1 -45 , 47, clarity factor . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 5 7 67, 74, 7 9 , 8 0 , 9 6 , 9 7 , 1 1 4, clinging . . . . 1 5 1 , 1 5 8 - 1 60, 1 90 1 2 3 , 1 2 5 , 1 45 , 1 46, 1 57 , 1 69, close placement of mindfulness .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

1 70, 1 7 5 , 1 7 8, 1 90, 1 92 , 1 95

body, speech, and mind . . .

.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 45 , 1 46

communication . . . . . 1 3 8, 1 3 9 7 9 compartmentalizing . . . 2 6, 2 7,

44,

.

.

buddha . . vi, xi, xii, xvi, 5 , 8, 1 3 17, 20, 40, 5 5 , 57, 70, 7 1 , 75,

3 3 , 3 4, 64

compassion .

.

1 7 , 3 8, 40, 44, 48,

85, 92 , 1 09, 1 1 0, 1 1 3 , 1 1 7 ,

5 6 , 1 1 3 , 1 3 8, 1 54, 1 5 5 , 1 59,

1 1 9- 1 2 1 , 1 24- 1 2 7 , 1 2 9 , 1 3 6-

1 84- 1 86

1 40, 1 5 1 , 1 7 0, 1 7 8, 1 8 5 , 1 8 6, compassionate activity . . 3 7, 87, 1 89, 1 9 1 , 1 92

1 3 4- 1 3 7 , 1 7 8, 1 86

buddha field . . . . . . . . . . 7 1 completion stage . . 67-69, 1 1 2 , buddha nature . . . . 1 1 7, 1 2 1 1 13 buddhahood . . . 5, 8, 9, 1 7 , 2 0, complexion aspect of the rigpa .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

4 1 , 43 , 5 7 , 69, 70, 74, 8 1 , 84,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 97

. . . . . . . . 94 conceptual compartmentalizing

8 5 , 1 1 0, 1 1 3 , 1 1 8 , 1 7 1 , 1 74, conceptual analysis 1 86

buddhas . 5, 7 -9, 1 4, 24, 3 5 , 40,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3 , 64

4 1 , 44, 7 1 , 1 1 7 , 1 5 5

conceptual mind . . 7 5 , 93 , 1 0 1 ,

buddha's mind . . . . . . . 5 7 , 1 3 7 Buddhist . . . vi, ix, x, xiii, xvii, 3 , .

1 0 3 , 1 09, 1 2 9, 1 3 0, 1 3 5 , 1 44, 1 7 7, 1 8 7

5, 9, 92 , 1 2 7, 1 4 3 , 1 89, 1 9 1 , conduct . . iii, xii, xiv, xvi, 9, 1 0,

INDEX

2 07

1 4 , 2 1 , 2 4 , 49, 5 1 , 5 3 , 54, 56, 62, 7 7 , 8 2 , 86, 87 , 1 0 1 , 1 1 8 ,

devotion

1 2 9, 1 3 0, 1 3 9, 1 5 8, 1 7 8 , 1 79,

dharma . . vi, vii, xi, xiii, 3 , 5 , 43 ,

1 86, 1 98

confidence .

.

1 1 , 1 4, 69-7 1 , 1 89,

.

.

.

1 7 , 3 9, 48, 1 0 3 - 1 05 , 1 1 4, 1 54, 1 5 5

44, 54, 7 5 , 79, 80, 90, 96, 1 0 3 , 1 1 7 , 1 2 6, 1 9 1 , 2 04

1 90 dharmadhatu . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 0 . . . 5-7, 9, 1 2 , 1 3 , 1 7, dharmakaya . 2 0, 3 4, 3 5 , 47 , 9 7 , .

confusion

.

2 5 , 26, 44, 60, 6 1 , 64, 6 5 , 9 5 ,

1 2 0, 1 3 8 , 1 7 8

1 2 5 , 1 2 6, 1 40, 1 57 , 1 76, 1 77 , dharmas 1 90

.

.

.

xv,

8 , 1 2 , 1 4, 2 0 , 2 3 ,

6 6 , 69-7 1 , 7 3 , 74, 7 9 , 9 8 , 1 03 ,

contemplate . . . . 1 3 , 1 8 , 1 87 1 1 0, 1 2 6, 1 3 8 , 1 52 , 1 7 5, 1 9 5 contemplating . 1 8, 9 6 , 1 0 5, dharmata . 7 , 6 3 , 74, 1 67, 1 70, .

.

.

.

.

.

.

1 87

contrivance

1 7 1 , 1 77 , 1 92

dharmata become manifest . 1 1 1 , 1 3 5 , 1 79, 1 89, 1 9 1 dharmata exhausted . . . contrived . 2 7 , 3 4, 40, 50, 64, dharmata's mindfulness . 67, 1 3 5 , 1 74, 1 7 8, 1 9 1 Direct Crossing . . . xiii, 20, co-emergent wisdom . 49, 69, 1 49, 1 67 , 1 68 , 1 9 1 , 1 98,

202,

89

203

2 8 , 3 4, 3 8 , 45 , 50,

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.

.

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.

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.

.

.

. 74 . 74 . 61 1 2 9,

cyclic existence . xvi, 1 7, 2 3 , 59, direct recognition of rigpa . . 8 3 8 1 , 1 0 1 , 1 50, 1 90, 1 9 1 , 1 97 discursive thought . . . 24-2 6, 3 2 , death . . 1 7, 1 8 , 5 3 , 1 6 1 , 1 6946, 6 1 , 6 3 , 8 3 , 84, 9 5 , 97, 1 3 3 , .

.

1 7 1 , 1 80

1 3 4, 1 5 5 , 1 65 , 1 9 1

dedicate . . . . . . . . 7 5 , 1 1 4 discursive thoughts . . 24, 3 2- 3 4, 3 8, 4 1 , 43 , 45-47, 6 1 , 6 3 , 65, dedication 3 8 , 48, 7 5 , 76, 1 3 8, .

.

.

.

.

.

1 86

76, 80- 8 3 , 94-97 , 1 5 1 , 1 6 1 ,

deity . . . . . . 67, 68, 9 3 1 7 8, 1 84 deity practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 distracted . . 1 9, 4 0, 46, 5 1 , 62, 9 3 -95, 1 0 1 , 1 06, 1 07 , 1 1 1 , delusion . 1 1 , 3 8, 5 6, 60, 6 1 , 9 5 , .

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.

.

.

.

.

.

1 6 1 , 176

1 3 0, 1 44, 1 47 , 1 5 6, 1 7 8- 1 80

dependent relationship . . . 1 2 6, distraction . 1 75-178

dependent, related arising . . 9 1 , 1 2 7, 1 7 6, 1 77 , 1 90

desirables . . . . . . 64, 84, 8 5 determinate situation . . 8 devas . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 development stage . 67 -69, 1 1 2 , .

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113

xvi, 20, 3 8 , 3 9 , 6 3 ,

.

6 6 , 8 8 , 9 1 , 9 3 , 1 06, 1 1 1 , 1 2 9, 1 3 0, 1 44

dream . . . . . . . . . 6, 60 drops . . . . . 1 69, 1 70, 1 7 3 drowsiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 8 drowsiness and dullness . . . . 5 8 Drukpa kunlek . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5 8 dualism . . . . . . . . . . . 46 .

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2 08

INDEX

1 2 3 , 1 77 dualistic grasping . . . 1 1 , 2 3 , 64, equipoise

dualistic fixation . . . . .

dualistic mind

.

.

1 94

.

1 9, 2 9, 3 2 , 3 8 , 50,

1 76

5 3 , 8 3 , 1 60 , 1 78 , 1 9 1 , 1 94,

. xii, xvi, 1 9, 2 3 ,

1 95

2 7 -2 9, 59, 64, 6 8 , 1 2 5 , 1 3 0, essence of emptiness . . . 3 7 , 1 78 1 43 , 1 47- 1 49, 1 56, 1 76, 1 7 7 , essence of mind . 1 5 , 1 7, 1 9, 2 1 , 1 89, 1 90, 1 94, 1 97

2 6 , 2 7 , 3 4, 4 1 , 42 , 45 , 46, 48,

dualistic situation . . . . 58, 1 48 50, 67, 68, 70, 7 1 , 8 1 , 98, 1 09, dualistic thinking . . . . . . . . 1 2 5 1 2 0, 1 3 3 , 1 48- 1 5 0, 1 65 , 1 78 , 1 80, dullness . . . . . . . . . . 58, 5 9 1 8 1 , 1 9 3 , 1 97 Dzogchen . . . . iii, v, vii, ix, xi-xv, evil deeds . . . . . . 3 9, 5 3 , 9 1 xvii, 1 , 5 -7 , 9- 1 2 , 1 5 , 2 0 , 2 3 , excitement . . . . . . . . 58 2 6, 3 1 , 3 2 , 48 , 49, 5 3 , 5 8 , 60, expanse . . 40, 74, 1 2 5 , 1 69, 1 7 0 62-6 5 , 67, 7 1 , 7 3 , 74, 7 7 , 8 7 - expanse and rigpa . . . . . . 1 69 8 9, 1 1 7, 1 2 5, 1 2 9, 1 3 6- 1 3 8, expanse and wisdom . . . . 1 69 1 43 , 148, 1 49, 1 5 1 , 1 5 8, 1 67 , expanse of dharmata 74, 1 70 1 7 6, 1 78 , 1 79, 1 89- 1 9 1 , 1 9 3 - expectation . . . . . . . . . 41 , 5 6 1 98, 2 02 , 2 0 3 experience increasing . . . . . 74 effort . . 40, 4 1 , 48-5 1 , 6 1 , 6 2 , external object . . 87, 1 3 3 , 1 46, .

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68, 1 00, 1 0 1 , 1 06, 1 3 0, 145,

1 52

1 47 , 1 5 3 , 1 5 7 , 1 5 8 , 1 7 9, 1 92 , eyes open . . . . .

.

.

.

. . . . . . . 65 .

1 94, 1 96 factor . . 6, 7 , 46-48, 5 7 , 82-84, eight consciousnesses . . . 33 8 8 , 90, 9 2 , 1 44, 1 50- 1 52 emotions . . . 1 8 , 1 06, 1 87 factor of abiding . . . . 151 empowerment . . . . . . . 1 1 3 , 1 99 factor of clarity . . 6, 46, 47 , 8 2 , 84, 88, 92 , 1 5 0 xi, 5 - 7 , 1 2 , 3 7 , 46, emptiness . 47 , 5 8 , 66-68, 80-88, 90-9 2 , faith 1 7, 3 9 , 92 , 1 0 3 , 1 1 3 , 1 54, .

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1 55

1 05 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 2 , 1 1 7 , 1 2 4, 1 2 5 , 1 2 7 , 1 3 4- 1 40, 1 5 0, 1 5 2 , 1 54, fearlessness . 1 5 9, 1 60, 1 67 , 1 76, 1 7 8, 1 8 1 , fetters

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.

. .

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. .

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. .

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98

.

.

.

.

.

. 2 6, 4 1 , 5 9

1 86, 1 9 3 , 1 94 fictional . . . . 1 1 , 1 3 , 1 8, 2 4, 69,

emptiness and clarity

.

.

. . 6, 47,

1 75 , 192, 1 96

67, 8 2 , 8 3 , 8 5 , 9 1 , 1 05 , 1 1 2 , fictional truth .

.

1 3 , 1 8, 69, 1 7 5 ,

1 76

1 92 , 1 9 6

first moment . . . 2 5 , 2 7-29, 3 7 ,

emptiness and compassion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 86

44, 49-5 1 , 6 5 , 66

enlightened being . . . . . . 61 five elements . . . . . . 1 70, 1 7 7 enlightenment xi, xii, xv, xvi , five lights . . . . . . . 1 76 , 1 7 7 5 , 1 9, 2 0, 2 9, 86, 1 2 0, 1 3 6, five sense consciousnesses . . 3 7 , .

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INDEX

209

65 five senses . 2 8 , 3 3 , 84, 97, 1 46 ,

65, 74, 82-8 5 , 87, 9 1 , 95-97,

1 47, 1 68

1 50- 1 5 2 , 1 54- 1 5 6, 1 5 8 , 1 60,

1 0 1 , 1 09- 1 1 2 , 1 3 3 - 1 3 5 , 1 3 7 ,

five wisdoms . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7 7 1 68 , 1 76 , 1 7 9, 1 86 fixation . . 4 1 , 4 5 , 5 1 , 74, 84, 8 5 , ground Dzogchen . . 1 0, 1 2 , 1 5 8 7 , 94-97, 1 09, 1 1 1 , 1 1 2 , 1 2 3 , ground Mahamudra . . . . 1 2 , 1 4 1 3 5 , 1 3 7 , 1 50, 1 5 6 , 1 77 , 1 86 ground situation . . . 5 , 1 4, 1 2 0 fixation and grasping . . 5 1 , 74, ground, path, and fruition . . . iii, 87, 95-97, 1 09, 1 3 7 ix-xii, xiv, 5, 1 1 , 1 5 , 1 1 7 , 1 1 9, 1 2 0, 1 7 3 , 1 76, 1 92 flower . . . . . . . . . . . 2 5 , 2 6 , 6 5 form bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 77 guru . xv, xvi, 2 9 , 3 8, 3 9, 44, 79, 89, 1 04, 1 05 , 1 1 3 , 1 44, 145, formal meditation . . 1 2 9, 1 3 1 , .

.

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.

.

1 60, 1 6 1 , 1 79, 1 9 5

1 5 5 , 1 62 , 1 94, 2 0 3

four circumstances . . . . . . . . 1 5 8 Four Close Placements of Mindfulness . . . . . . . . . . 1 45 , 1 92 four extremes . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7 5 freedom . . . . . . . . 1 9, 56, 66, 95 freedom from elaboration . . . 1 9 fruition . . 1 , i, iii, ix-xii, xiv, 1 , 5,

Guru Rinpoche . . . . . . . . . . 1 45 head . . . . . xiii, 3 7 , 42 , 1 06 , 1 1 4, 191

hearing, contemplating, and meditating . . . 96, 1 05 , 1 87 heart . . . . . 3 7 , 3 9, 56, 1 68- 1 70 hell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 9- 1 2 , 1 4, 1 5 , 2 0, 2 3 , 7 3 , 74, hope and fear . . . . . . . . 123 1 1 5 , 1 1 7 , 1 1 9- 1 2 1 , 1 3 6, 1 73 , hopes and fears . 3 3 , 3 4, 40, 4 1 , .

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1 74, 1 7 6 , 1 7 7 , 1 9 1 , 1 92

.

.

.

60, 1 49

fully manifest enlightenment

how to look . . . . . . . . 1 79, 1 8 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 0 human rebirth . 42 , 56, 7 5 , 1 05 , 1 83 future . . . 3 3 , 3 4, 4 1 , 44-46, 48, 7 5 , 80, 1 3 5 , 1 5 7 , 1 80 human rebirth with freedom and Gampopa . . . . xv, 6, 44, 9 5 , 1 03 connection . . . . . . . . 5 6 gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 9, 3 2 ignorance . 2 6 , 54, 6 1 , 1 40, 1 4 1 , Gelugpa . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi, 2 02 1 86, 1 89, 1 9 1 , 1 9 3 , 1 98 glimpse . . . . . . . . . . 1 5 3 , 1 54 impermanence . . . . . . . . . 66 glimpse of rigpa . . . . . . . 1 54 indeterminacy . . . . . . . . . . 8 glue . . . . . . 1 5 1 , 1 59, 1 8 5 , 1 90 indeterminate . . . . . . . . 7 , 8, 2 6 glued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5 1 , 1 5 9 indeterminate basis . . . . . . 7 , 8 gong . . . 42 , 5 1 , 60, 6 2 , 99, 1 00, innate state . . . . . . . . . . . 40 1 7 8 innate wisdom . . . . . . . . . . 1 5 good posture . . . . . . . . . 3 7 inner death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 70 grasping . 7, 1 1 , 1 3 , 2 3 , 2 7 , 2 8, inner dependent relationship .

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3 4' 3 7' 3 8' 41 ' 4 5' 4 7' 5 1 ' 64'

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7 5' 1 7 6

210

INDEX

3 1 , 5 8 , 148, 1 96, 1 98 ,

insight

1 99

luminosity

.

.

.

.

1 5 8, 1 84 7, 6 7 , 6 8 , 92 ,

xv,

intellect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7 1 24, 1 90, 1 9 3 , 1 94, 1 97, 1 98 intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 3 �adhyamaka . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 intermediary sense power . . 8 1 , �ahamudra . . . iii, ix, xi-xv, xvii, .

.

.

.

133

.

5-7' 9, 1 2 , 1 4, 1 9-2 1 , 2 3 , 2 6,

internal awareness . . . . . . . . 3 7 3 1 , 3 2 , 45, 5 3 , 5 8 , 59, 67, 69, international access code . . . 1 3 8 80, 86-89, 1 47, 1 90, 1 9 3 - 1 97 �ahayana . . . . xi, 1 86, 1 95 , 1 98 international telephone system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 8 mal).c;lala . . . . . . . . . . 5 5 , 69 Jewel Ornament of Liberation main part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 mantra . . . 42 , 54, 1 56, 1 95 , 1 98 Kagyu . . . v, vi, ix, xv, 6, 54, 1 1 3 , meditative equipoise . . . 1 9, 3 8 , .

.

.

.

.

1 1 4, 1 7 7 , 1 94, 1 97 , 202

5 3 , 1 60

Kagyu gurus . . . . . . . . . 1 1 3 , 1 1 4 mental reference points . . . 3 7 karma . vi, 9, 1 6, 43 , 6 3 , 66, 9 1 , merit . . . 40, 7 5 , 1 05 , 1 06, 1 1 4, .

.

.

.

9 5 , 1 06, 2 02

1 5 3 , 1 54

Karmapa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv method . . . . x, xvii, 9, 1 0, 1 3 , 1 4, 1 7 , 46, 50, 8 3 , 84, 94, 1 06, karmas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 9 1 1 0, 1 1 1 , 1 1 3 , 1 2 1 , 1 3 1 , 1 49, karmic process . . . . . . . . . . 43 1 5 3 , 1 56- 1 5 8 , 1 62 , 1 65 , 1 8 0 Khampagar . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 62 . . . . 3 2 , 54, 5 5 Khamtrul Rinpoche . . . . . v, 1 62 �ilarepa . . Khyentse Rinpoche . . . . . . . vi mind . 1 , i, xii, xiii, xv-xvii, 3 , 5 1 5 , 1 7-2 1 , 2 3 -2 9 , 3 1 - 3 5 , 3 7King Shuddhodana . . . . . . 1 78 48, 50, 5 1 , 5 3 -5 7 , 59, 60, 62knower . . . . 47 , 6 5 , 67, 84, 1 0 1 , .

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.

1 3 3 , 1 3 4, 1 40, 1 47 , 1 52 , 1 7 6,

7 1 , 74, 7 5 , 79-8 1 , 84, 8 5 , 87-

1 96, 1 97

89, 9 3 -99, 1 0 1 , 1 03 , 1 04,

label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 48 1 09- 1 1 1 , 1 1 7, 1 1 8, 1 2 0, 1 2 3 - 1 2 5 , labelling . . . . . . . . . 2 8 , 1 48 1 2 9, 1 3 0, 1 3 3 - 1 3 5 , 1 3 7 , 1 3 8 , 1 40, liberation . . 6, 7, 1 9, 6 1 , 6 3 , 80, 1 43 - 1 5 2 , 1 54- 1 5 8, 1 63 , 1 65 , .

.

.

.

.

8 1 , 8 3 , 90, 1 7 8, 1 90

1 68- 1 70, 1 7 3 - 1 8 1 , 1 84- 1 8 7,

Lingje repa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 1 89- 1 94, 1 96 - 1 99 liveliness . . . . xiv, 60, 67, 68, 1 93 mind essence . . . . 1 , i, 8 7 , 1 04, 1 09, 1 7 8, 1 80 look hither 3 2 , 50, 86, 97, 1 1 0, 1 1 1 , 1 49, 1 65 mindfulness . 40, 4 1 , 46, 5 1 , 6 1 63 , 94, 1 0 3 , 1 06, 1 3 0, 1 44looking at the essence . . 2 6 , 94, .

.

95, 1 80, 1 86

1 47 , 1 7 0, 1 79, 1 80, 1 89, 1 92 ,

1 93 looking hither . 3 2 , 46, 50, 84 love . . . 3 9 , 44, 48, 56, 1 3 1 , 144, mindfulness and alertness . 1 44, .

.

211

INDEX

1 46

.

. . .

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. . .

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.

.

. . .

14

.

mindfulness and effort . . . . . 1 79 obscurations o f th e path . 9 , 1 0 , mindfulness of body . 1 45 , 1 92 1 2 , 1 8, 74 mindfulness of feelings . . . . 1 46 obscurations to omniscience mind's essence . . . 24, 45-47 , 8 1 , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 8 7 , 8 8 , 90, 1 3 5 , 1 5 2 , 1 9 1 , 1 9 3 , omniscience . . 1 4, 7 3 , 1 3 6, 1 3 7 1 97 omniscient wisdom . . . 6 1 , 1 3 5 , moment of death . . . . . . . . . 1 7 0 136 moment of rigpa . . . . . . 1 54 one taste . . . . . . 1 9, 20, 69 mother . . . . . . . 94, 1 69- 1 7 1 one-pointedness . . 1 9, 5 7 , 58, 1 89, 1 96 motivation . . . . . . . . . 3, 44, 1 86 mudra . . . . . . . . . . 7 3 , 1 9 5 one's own face . . . . . . . . . 7 naked rigpa . . . . 3 4, 3 5 , 4 1 , 1 1 2 one-sided emptiness . . . . . 1 3 9 natural freedom . . . . . . . . 95 oral instruction . . . . xiii, 54, 5 5 , nature of clarity . . . 3 7 , 1 3 7 , 1 7 8 1 92 , 1 94 nature of mind . . . . . . . . 1 1 , 3 2 ordinary mind . . . . . . . 2 6, 47 neck . . . . 3 7 , 42 , 47 , 1 44, 1 9 5 outer death . . . . . . . . . . . 1 70 nihilism . . . . . . . . . 8 3 , 90, 9 1 outer dependent relationship nirmal).akaya . . 47 , 1 3 8 , 1 78 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 75 nirval).a . 7, 2 3 , 69, 98, 1 5 6- 1 5 8 outflowed . . . . . . . . . . . 49, 66 no meditation . . 86, 1 2 9, 1 5 6, outflowed dharmas . . . . . 66 1 87 outwardly-directed . . . . . . 7 , 3 2 non-distracted, non-meditation own appearances . . . 7 , 8, 1 7 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3 Parting Sarpsara and Nirval).a non-d�traction . . . . . . . 88, 9 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5 6- 1 5 8 non-meditation . 1 9, 20, 3 2 , 48, passion . . 1 8, 3 2 , 3 8, 54, 56, 6 1 , .

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50, 9 3 , 1 0 1 , 1 3 0, 1 48

9 5 , 1 3 5 , 1 5 1 , 1 60, 1 6 1 , 1 85 ,

non-meditation yogins . . . . . 5 0 1 86, 1 89 non-self . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 43 passion, aggression, and delusion non-stopped . . 2 6, 2 9, 3 2 -34, 3 7 , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 9 5 , 1 6 1 3 8, 40, 43 , 45 -49, 5 1 , 64, 6 5 , past . . . . 3 3 , 3 4, 4 1 , 45, 46, 48, .

.

.

.

.

1 3 5, 1 5 7, 1 96

68, 1 5 0, 1 93 , 1 94

Nyingma tradition . . . . . . v, 1 69 past, present, and future . . . 45, obscuration . . 1 2 , 1 6, 7 3 , 1 1 9, 46 1 3 5 , 1 92 patterned rope . . 1 2 5, 1 2 6, 1 40 obscurations . 9, 1 0, 1 2 , 1 4, 1 6, permanence . . . . . . . . 90, 9 1 1 8 , 3 9, 44, 60, 7 3 , 74, 1 1 9- perseverance . . . 48, 5 5 , 98, 1 1 3 1 2 2 , 1 5 3 , 1 7 3 pha� . . . . . . . . . 59, 60, 1 1 1 , 1 5 6 obscurations of the afflictions phenomena . . . 1 1 , 1 3 , 7 1 , 1 1 7 , .

.

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.

2 12

INDEX

1 24, 1 2 6, 1 3 4, 1 3 8 , 1 7 5 rest equipoised . . . . . . 46, 97 57, 58, 63 posture . . . 3 7, 7 9 , 1 45 , 1 95 , 1 96 resting place . . . . post-meditation . . . . 5 1 , 8 8 , 94, retreat . . . . vi, 60, 1 1 9, 1 3 5 , 1 62 , .

.

.

.

.

.

1 06, 1 07 , 1 1 1 , 1 60, 1 6 1 , 1 79 , 191

practitioner . . xi , :xiv, 1 9, 43 , 54,

.

1 6 5 , 1 8 1 , 1 84

rigpa meditation . .

68, 69, 86,

.

93, 1 2 9 , 1 40, 1 48 , 1 5 5

56, 68, 85, 96, 98, 1 0 1 , 1 0 3 , rigpa reaching its measure . 1 1 3 , 1 3 1 , 1 3 7 , 1 84, 1 92 - 1 94, root guru . . . . .

.

1 96 , 1 98 roots of merit . . .

praj:fia . . . . . . 1 6, 69, 92 , 1 83 Praj:fiaparamita . . . . . . . . . . . 94 pramaJ).a . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7 precious human body . . . 79, 96 preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 8 present . . . . x, 5 , 7-9, 2 7 , 3 3 , 3 7 , .

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. . .

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.

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74

3 8, 3 9, 44

. . . . . . 40, 7 5

riipakayas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 0 sadhana . . . . . . . . . . 68, 99 sadness . . . . . . . 3 7, 3 8, 99, 1 84 sarp.bhogakaya . . . 47, 1 3 8, 1 7 1 , .

.

.

.

.

.

178

sarp.sara . . . 6, 7 , 1 1 , 1 6, 2 3 , 2 6 , .

40, 45, 46, 48, 62 , 82 , 1 06 ,

42 , 43 , 6 3 , 69, 8 1 , 9 5 , 98, 1 1 3 ,

1 1 0, 1 2 1 , 1 3 5 , 1 6 1 , 1 7 3 , 1 90,

1 2 3 , 1 3 7 , 1 48 , 1 5 1 , 1 54, 1 56- 1 5 8,

1 92 , 1 98, 2 0 1

1 6 1 , 1 76, 1 77 , 1 8 5 , 1 9 1

present awareness . 3 7 , 40, 48 sarp.saric mind . . . . 84, 98, 1 5 1 preserve the state . xvi, 2 1 , 1 86 Sarnantabhadra . . . . . . . . . . 7 pride . . . 3 2 , 54, 5 8 , 70, 96, 1 3 5 , secret mantra . . 42 , 54, 1 9 5 , 1 98 1 8 3 self . . xv, 8, 1 2 , 1 3 , 1 6, 2 8 , 3 1 process o f confusion . . . . . . . 2 5 3 3 , 3 5 , 3 7, 3 8, 43 , 45, 46, 49prostrations . . . . . . . 60, 9 2 , 99 5 1 , 5 3 , 5 8 , 6 1 -6 3 , 66, 67, 70, 7 5 , 80, 8 3 , 94, 1 3 7 , 1 6� 1 7 5 , pure drop . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 70 1 86, 1 95 purity of the ground . . . . . . . 1 6 rakta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7 0 self of a person . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 real rigpa . . . . 5 8 , 1 1 2 , 1 50, 1 97 self o f dharrnas . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 Rechungpa . . . . . . . . 54, 5 5 self o f phenomena . . . . . . . . . 1 3 recognition o f rigpa . . . . 8 1 , 8 3 , self o f the person . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 1 04, 1 09 , 1 2 1 , 1 2 9 self-appearances . . . . . . . . . . . 1 6 self-arising rigpa . . 3 1 -3 3 , 3 5 , recognition o f the actuality .

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

3 7, 49, 50, 5 8 , 67, 70, 7 5 , 1 3 7

recognize the view . . :xiv-xvi, 2 1 , self-knowing wisdom . . . . . . . 94 3 8, 5 5 , 60, 89, 1 1 8, 1 1 9 , 1 3 0, self-liberate . . . . . . . . . 43 , 63 1 60, 1 86 self-settled . . 3 2 , 45 , 46, 6 1 , 80 refuge . . . . . . 3 8 , 3 9, 44, 1 3 8 sense power . . . . . . . 8 1 , 1 3 3 relative . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 sentient beings . . . 3 , 5 , 7-9, 1 4, renunciation . . . . . . 1 6, 1 0 3 , 1 1 4 1 6, 3 9, 40, 44, 5 6 , 6 1 , 7 1 , 7 5 , .

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.

INDEX

213

1 1 3 , 1 1 8 , 1 2 0, 1 3 1 , 1 3 8, 1 50,

1 7 5 , 1 76, 1 92 , 1 96

1 54, 1 7 7 , 1 8 5 , 1 86, 1 9 1 , 1 94 superfice . . . . . . 68, 69, 1 96 session . . . . . . . 3 7 , 3 8 , 1 56, 1 7 9 superficies . . . . . 7, 8, 1 9 1 , 1 96 .

.

.

.

Seven Dharmas of Vairochana

support . .

.

.

5 8 , 6 5 , 66, 70, 1 44-

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 9 , 1 95

Shambhala . . . . . . . . . . vi, 2 02 sinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 9, 1 96 six sense consciousnesses . . . 1 3 3 sixfold group . . . . . . . . . . 64-66 sixth mental consciousness . 2 8 ,

1 48 , 1 52 , 2 0 3

supreme shamatha . . . . . . 151 siitra . 5 , 6, 9, 3 1 , 1 1 7 , 1 2 6, 1 98 tantra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 02 Tashi J ong . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 62 tathagatagarbha . . 1 1 7, 1 2 0, 1 2 1 6 3 , 64, 66 temporary experience . . . . 1 98 sky . . . . 3 2 , 3 4, 59, 60, 66, 1 1 2 , temporary experiences . . 1 90, .

.

.

.

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.

.

.

1 3 4, 1 3 8

1 98

snake . 1 2 5 , 1 2 6, 1 40, 1 5 7 , 1 77 tense energy . . . . . . . . . . 42 space . ix, 3 8, 3 9, 44, 5 8-60, 62, the four extremes . . . . . . . . . 1 7 5 6 3 , 66, 69, 74, 94, 9 8 , 99, 1 24, the great passion . . . . . . 185 1 5 2 , 1 62 , 1 70, 1 7 3 , 1 89 , 1 90, 1 96 the three excellent factors . . 3 8 stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 the two accumulations . . . . 1 05 state of rigpa . 42 , 43 , 46, 59, the two obscurations . . . . . . 7 3 60, 6 3 , 6 8 , 69, 89, 93 , 1 00, thinker . . . . . . . 2 5, 3 3 , 4 1 , 45 1 2 2 , 1 60, 1 90 thinker of thoughts . . . . . . . 45 subject and object . . 2 7, 46, 5 1 , Thorough Cut . . . xiii-xv, 20, 2 1 , .

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5 8 , 62, 66, 1 8 1

48, 5 9, 60, 86, 89, 1 2 9, 1 3 3 ,

1 3 5 , 1 3 7 , 1 43 , 1 47 - 1 50, 1 5 3 , subject-object . . . . . . . . 5 7 , 5 8 1 5 5 - 1 5 8, 1 60, 1 6 1 , 1 6 5, 1 67, subject-object duality . . . . 5 7 1 7 8, 1 79, 1 9 1 , 1 94- 1 96, 1 98 , subject-object situation . . . . 5 8 2 0 2 , 203 subtle glue . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5 1 suddenly-arising rigpa . . . . . . 49 three kayas . . . . . . . . . . . 4 7 , 13 8 suffering . . 8, 1 3 , 2 3 , 2 6, 40, 9 7 , three poisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 6 1 2 3 , 1 5 8 three qualities . . . 8 1 , 88-90, 92 , suffering and happiness . . 2 3 , 2 6 1 09, 1 3 4, 1 3 6, 1 3 7, 1 7 8 sufferings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 8 5 three realms . 1 6, 2 3 , 2 6 , 43 , 6 3 , 1 48, 1 76 sugatagarbha . . . . . . . . . . . 5 , 40 sun . . . 3 2 , 3 4, 7 5 , 9 8 , 99, 1 1 2 , time . vi, xvi, xviii, 6, 1 2 , 1 4, 1 8, .

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1 2 0, 1 3 6, 1 6 3 , 1 84

1 9, 2 5 , 49, 5 3 - 5 5 , 59-6 1 , 6 5 ,

superfactual . . . . 1 1 , 1 2 , 69, 7 5 ,

6 7 , 68, 7 1 , 7 3 - 7 5 , 7 9, 8 1 , 8 7 ,

1 3 8, 1 7 5 , 1 76, 1 92 , 1 96

90, 9 1 , 94-97, 99, 1 00, 1 05 ,

superfactual dedication . . . . . 7 5 superfactual truth . . . . 69, 1 3 8 ,

1 1 1 - 1 1 3 , 1 1 8, 1 2 0, 1 2 2 , 1 2 5, 1 3 1 , 1 3 4, 1 46, 1 56, 1 5 8, 1 60-

214

INDEX

1 62 , 1 69- 1 7 1 , 1 7 8, 1 80, 1 8 1 ,

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1 84, 1 8 5 , 1 9 3 , 1 96, 2 0 1

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Vajradhatu . . . . . . . . 1 14 Yajrakilaya . . . . . . . . . . 1 12 . . . . . . 1 84 vajrasana . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 95 vi, 79, 1 97 vajrayana . . xi, 84, 8 5 , 1 04, 1 1 3 , . . . . . 48 1 1 7, 192, 1 95 . . . . . . 48 Vajrayogini . . . . . . . 92, 93 . . . . 69 view . iii, xi, xii, xiv-xvi, 5 , 9- 1 8, .

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tinge o f sadness . . . . Trungpa Rinpoche . . trust . . . . . . . . . . . . trust in yourself . . . truilis . . . . . . . . . . tullru . . . . v, 1 2 3 , 1 24, 1 49, 1 62 ,

2 0 , 2 1 , 2 3 -2 6, 2 9, 3 1 , 3 3 , 3 4,

177

3 7 , 3 8, 45, 46, 5 3 , 5 5 , 5 8 , 60,

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Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche .

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123,

62, 77, 8 2 , 83 , 8 5 -87, 89-9 1 ,

1 49, 1 62

1 04, 1 09, 1 1 8, 1 1 9, 1 2 9, 1 3 0,

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two aims . . . . . . . . . . . 1 86 1 3 3 , 1 3 5 , 1 3 7 , 1 4 1 , 1 43 , 1 47, two form bodies . . . . . . . . 1 7 7 1 49, 1 5 8- 1 60, 1 78- 1 80, 1 86, two truths . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 9 1 98 shamailia . 1 3 , 1 9, 3 1 , 5 7 , 5 8 , view of rigpa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 9 62, 66, 80, 9 3 , 1 0 3 , 1 43 - 1 52 , view without signs . . . . . . 1 47 1 5 5 , 1 92 , 1 9 3 , 1 99 vipashyana . 1 9, 3 1 , 5 7 , 62 , 66, shamailia wiili support . . . 144, 1 43 , 1 45 , 1 48, 1 96 1 45 virtue . . . 9 1 , 1 3 8, 1 5 3 , 1 7 7 shamailia wiiliout support walkie-talkie . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 46- 1 48 wide-open space . . . . . . . . 1 52 unhindered clarity . . . . . . 3 2 wisdom . . xvi, 1 5 , 20, 2 3 , 2 4, 29, unsatisfactoriness . . . . 8, 1 6 3 2 , 3 5 , 40, 4 1 , 44, 49, 6 1 , 6 5 , 66, 6 8 , 69, 7 1 , 7 3 , 7 5 , 8 2 , 8 3 , upaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69, 92 89, 92 , 94, 9 5 , 1 0 1 , 1 05 , 1 1 8Vairochana . . . . . . 79, 1 69, 1 95 1 2 1 , 1 3 5 , 1 3 6, 1 3 9, 1 45 , 1 56, vajra . . . . . . . xi, 1 0, 67, 80, 1 67 1 5 8 , 1 69, 1 76, 1 7 7 , 1 99, 2 0 3 vajra body . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 . . . . 69 vajra chains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 67 yidam . . . . . . vajra recitation . . . . . . 80 yoga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 v�ra speech . . . . . . . . . . . 80 .

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