Therefore, fortunate heart-son, practice the development stage of the yidam deity. Then consider your body as the yidam, apparent, yet empty;
Consider the outer world as a Pure Land, a celestial palace, and ALL beings as gods and goddesses.
In the center (sushumna) of your divine body, visualize the three channels and the chakras, the Ah and the Hung [syllables].
Holding prana in the vase, practice the Tummo meditation [consisting of the synchronization of pranayama and visualization), the main practice of the completion stage.
Abandoning the nine actions of the three doors, utilizing the postures [asanas] and crucial points of the sense doors, the sense-fields, energy and awareness, meditate on the Dzogchen practice of Thoegal.
The distance covered by a great ship pulled on land by a hundred men for a hundred days, can be covered in just one day when it is put to sea.
In the same way. a single day of meditation performed with real stability of mind brings more progress than a hundred days practicing the development and completion stages before stability of mind has been reached.
If you persevere in practice, your skandhas will be freed in a body of rainbow light in this very lifetime, in this very body.
External world versus continuum
According to Dzogchen teachings, energy of an individual is essentially totally formless and free from any duality. However, karmic traces, contained in the storehouse consciousness of the individual's mindstream (Sanskrit: citta santana; Tibetan: sems rgyud) give rise to two kinds of forms:
forms that the individual experiences as his or her body, voice and mind and
forms that the individual experiences as an external environment.
It is maintained that there is nothing external or separate from the individual. What appears as a world of apparently external phenomena, is the energy of the individual himself/herself. Everything that manifests in the individual's field of experience is a continuum (Sanskrit: santana; Tibetan: rgyud). This is the Great Perfection that is discovered in the Dzogchen practice.[29]
[edit]Causality and interdependent origination
In Dzogchen teachings the interdependent origination and any kind of causality is considered illusory: "(One says), 'All these (configurations of events and meanings) come about and disappear according to dependent origination.' But, like a burnt seed, since a nonexistent (result) does not come about from a nonexistent (cause), cause and effect do not exist.
"Being obsessed with entities, one's experiencing itself [Wylie: sems, Sanskrit: citta], which discriminates each cause and effect, appears as if it were cause and condition." (from byang chub sems bsgom pa by Mañjusrîmitra. Primordial experience. An Introduction to rDzogs-chen Meditation, pp. 60, 61)
This corresponds to the assertion in the Heart Sutra (Sanskrit: Prajñāpāramitā Hridaya Sūtra), that there is no karma, no law of cause and effect. The assertion was made by bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in a teaching for the great arhat Shariputra, given before multitude of beings, on request of Buddha Shakyamuni. After the teaching Buddha Shakyamuni greatly praised the wisdom of Avalokiteshvara's words and the beings present rejoiced.[30]
[edit]Guardians
All teachings have energies that have special relationships with them. These energies are guardians of the teachings. The energies are iconographically depicted as they were perceived by yogis who had contact with them. The dharmapalas most associated with Dzogchen are Ekajati in the Nyingma and Sidpa Gyalmo in the Bön tradition. The iconographic forms were shaped by perceptions and also by the culture of those who saw the original manifestation and by the development of the tradition. However the guardians are not merely symbols. The pictures show actual beings.[31]
[edit]Well-being and health
Dzogchen teachings maintain that the quality of lives of people is best when the internal elements are balanced.[32] The body is healthy when the elements are balanced.[33] They see the best way to balance the elements as abiding in the natural state.[34]
[edit]Practice
Up to and including tregchöd (see below), Dzogchen meditative practices are parallel to and often identical with those of essence Mahamudra.[2]
Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and other teachers provide different practical sets of instructions for the practice of Dzogchen. The central practice of Dzogchen teaching is Dzogchen 'contemplation' (Tib. ting nge 'dzin) which is rendered in English as "The View". "The View" when stabilized or unbroken, is the nondual perception of the Dzogchenpa, or Dzogchen practitioner. That is, a continuous 'contemplation' through all activity, waking and sleeping as a lived experience. According to some Dzogchenpa (in particular, Namkhai Norbu), Dzogchen is a 'practice', rather than a 'doctrine' or 'religion', and does not require the practitioner (Sanskrit: sadhaka) to be anywhere special; in fact, to be normally active while in a state of primordial or natural awareness is the ultimate practice of Dzogchen.
Having distinguished rigpa from sems,[35] silent and prolonged meditation (Tib. sgom pa) is also used to allow the obscurations (Sanskrit: kleśa) of the mind to dissipate like clouds dissolving to reveal the empty, luminous sky. Through meditation, it is possible to remove the conditioning of our bodymind (Sanskrit: namarupa) and to glimpse and work to stabilize rigpa.
[edit]Tregchöd and thödgal
Once the state of non-dual contemplation has been arrived at, one has to continue in it. This continuation has two levels of practice: tregchöd and thödgal (also sometimes spelled thogal). These are main practices presented in the Menngagde series (Oral Instruction Series) of the dzogchen teachings.[31]
In both the Bön and Buddhist Dzogchen traditions, sky gazing is considered to be an important part of tregchöd.[36]
Thödgal represents more a fruition than a practice itself. There are methods prepared in the event of a psychotic break to bring the practitioner back to sanity.[37]
In contrast to other kinds of tantric practices, there is no intentional visualization; rather, imagery appears spontaneously using secondary conditions such as darkness or light. Eventually a practitioner has experiences which are viewed as knowing the subtle energies of one's being. These have the qualities of earth, water, fire, air and space (see Classical element). Throughout the retreat, a practitioner is believed to be approaching an experience which is entirely unconditioned.[38]
Thödgal relies on esoteric anatomy including the avadhuti (also known as the center channel or sushumna in Hindu parlance) and heart chakra. Along with the fact that Dzogchen is based on a class of literature called the tantras, this indicates why Dzogchen is considered a tantric system as opposed to sutra systems such as Zen. This is not to say that Dzogchen is a part of general Vajrayana. Vajrayana is a path of transformation. Dzogchen, an independent vehicle in its own right, is a path of self-liberation.
[edit]Rigpa and Rainbow Body
Rigpa has three wisdoms, two of which are kadag and lhun grub. Kadag (primordial purity) is the Dzogchen view of emptiness. Lhun grub (natural formation) is the Dzogchen view of dependent origination. Throughout Mahayana, emptiness and dependent origination are two sides of the same coin. The lhun grub aspect has to do with esoteric practices, such as (but not limited to) Thödgal, that self-liberate the dependently originated human body into the Sambhogakāya (rainbow body phenomenon).[39] The symbol of Dzogchen is a Tibetan A wrapped in a thigle (see picture to the right). The A represents kadag while the thigle represents lhun grub. The third wisdom, thugs rje (compassion), is the inseparability of the previous two wisdoms.
In Dzogchen, the fundamental point of the natural state is to distinguish rigpa from sems (mind). The distinguishing of rigpa and sems from each other is emphasized by Jigme Lingpa and goes back to the seventeen tantras.[40]
Tibetan letter "A" inside a thigle. The A represents kadag while the thigle represents lhun grub.
The ultimate fruition of the thodgal practices is a body of pure light, called a rainbow body (Wylie 'ja' lus, pronounced Jalü.)[41] If the four visions of thogal are not completed before death, then at death, from the point of view of an external observer, the following happens: the corpse does not start to decompose, but starts to shrink until it disappears. Usually fingernails, toenails and hair are left behind[42] (see e.g. Togden Urgyen Tendzin, Ayu Khandro, Changchub Dorje.) The attainment of the rainbow body is typically accompanied by the appearance of lights and rainbows.[41]
Some exceptional practitioners such as Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra are held to have realized the Great Transferrence (Wylie 'pho ba chen po, pronounced Phowa Chenpo). The practitioner self-liberates the human body into the Sambhogakāya while alive. Having completed the four visions before death, the individual does not die at all, but his or her physical body gradually disappears for an external observer,[43] while being able to exist and abide wherever and whenever as pointed by one's compassion.
[edit]Dzogchenpa samaya: a practiceless practice of abiding or contemplation
Capriles (2003: p. 180) openly quotes Dzogchenpa Namkhai Norbu in the subtle but very important distinction of the activity of meditation from the effortless abiding of Dzogchen contemplation:
Chögyal Namkhai Norbu relates that once someone asked the famous Dzogchen Master, Yungtön Dorje Pel, what his practice consisted of, and he replied with the negative “mepa” or “there isn’t.” Then his startled questioner asked again, “Then you don’t meditate?,” to which the Master replied, “And when am I ever distracted?” This is the essence of samaya in Dzogchen teaching: not to meditate or to practice something with the mind and yet never to be distracted, for one remains uninterruptedly in the self-perfection of the single state of rigpa or Truth.[44]
In this denotation, dzogchen is a verb, and denotes the perfect process in the grammatical sense or alternately an infinitive verb, wherein the great continuum of 'one taste' (Wylie: ro gcig) or as Capriles renders it "single state" is the effortless 'contemplating' or abiding in the view of non-distraction from rigpa.
[edit]Apperception
'Apperception'[45] (Sanskrit: svasaṃvedana/svasaṃvitti; Wylie: rang rig)[46] is understood variously in different yana, buddhist schools, and practice lineages. These cosmetic differences are resolved in the practice of 'meditative trance' (Wylie: 'jog pa).[47] For it is in the direct experience and associated literatures of the deep contemplative traditions of Himalayan Buddhism (Tibetan Buddhism, Nepalese Buddhism, Bhutanese Buddhism, etc.) and Bon, particularly Dzogchen and Mahamudra, that apperception is key, e.g. Dark retreat (Tibetan: mun mtshams[48]).
In the language of Zhangzhung, 'rang rig' (Wylie) is 'nges de shin'[49] where 'shin' equates to 'shes pa'. The Zhangzhung lexical item 'shin' is found in many compounds (Martin, 2004: p. 158[50]) where it means: 'to know' and 'knowledge' to both nominal and verbal/process oriented lexical items.
Pettit (1999: p. 129) holds that 'apperception' (Wylie: rang rig) is key to Mipham's (1846–1912) system of epistemology and hermeneutics discussed in the DRG[51] and in Mipham's Commentary to the Ninth Chapter of the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra.[45]
Padmasambhava, Karma Lingpa, Gyurme Dorje, Graham Coleman and Thupten Jinpa (2005: p. 480) define 'intrinsic awareness' which is a rendering of the Tibetan Wylie 'rang-rig' and the Sanskrit 'svasaṃvitti' or 'svasaṃvedana' according to the precedent established in Indian Buddhist epistemology and in the writings of the lauded logicians Dignāga and Dharmakīrti that this technical:
...term svasaṃvedana refers to the apperceptive or reflexive faculty of consciousness, for which reason it is sometimes rendered as 'reflexive awareness' or 'apperceptive awareness'. However, in the view of the Great Perfection (rdzog-pa chen-po) and in the context of the present work [The Tibetan Book of the Dead], the same term refers to the fundamental innate mind in its natural state of spontaneity and purity, beyond the alternating states of motion and rest and the subject-object dichotomy. It is therefore rendered here as 'intrinsic awareness'. As such, intrinsic awareness gives the meditator access to pristine cognition [ye-shes; jñāna] or the buddha-mind [thugs, citta] itself, and it stands in direct contrast to fundamental ignorance ([ma-rig-pa,] avidyā), which is the primary cause of rebirth in cyclic existence (['khor-ba,] samsara). The direct introduction to intrinsic awareness is a distinctive teaching within the Nyingma school.... This practice is a central component of the Esoteric Instruction Class ([man-ngag-gi sde,] upadeśa[varga]) of Atiyoga, where it is known as Cutting Through Resistance (Khregs-chod).[52]
Williams, et al. (2000, 2002: p. 264) conveys an epistemological commonality held by Dharmakirti and Śāntarakṣita which holds that all is sentient consciousness:
There is also an epistemological argument found in thinkers like Dharmakirti and Santaraksita. How does consciousness know ‘external’ physical objects, when consciousness itself is of a completely different order from matter? Consciousness has a reflexive quality of knowing (svasamvedana), while matter has no such reflexivity. Clearly only things of the same basic order of reality can contact each other. Thus either all must be matter, or all must be consciousness. But if all were matter then there would be no experience at all. Since there patently is experience, all must be consciousness.[53]
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