Liberation from ignorance and suffering occurs when we recognize and abide in our true nature. That which recognizes is not the conceptual mind; it is the fundamental mind, the nature of mind, rigpa. Our necessary task is to distinguish, in practice, between the conceptual mind and the pure awareness of the nature of mind.
CONCEPTUAL MIND
The conceptual or moving mind is the familiar mind of everyday experience, constantly busy with thoughts, memories, images, internal dialogues, judgements, meanings, emotions, and fantasies. It is the mind normally identified as “me” and “my experience.” Its fundamental dynamic is engagement with a dualistic vision of existence. It takes itself to be a subject in a world of objects. It grasps at some parts of experience and pushes others away. It is reactive, wildly so sometimes, but even when it is extremely calm and subtle—for example, during meditation or intense concentration—it maintains the internal posture of an entity observing its environment and continues to participate in dualism.
The conceptual mind is not limited to language and ideas. Language—with its nouns and verbs, subjects and objects—is necessarily subject to dualism, but the conceptual mind is active in us before the acquisition of language. Animals have a conceptual mind, in this sense, as do infants and those born without the capacity for language. It is the result of habitual karmic tendencies that are present before we develop a sense of self, even before we are born. Its essential characteristic is that it instinctively divides experience dualistically, beginning with subject arid object, with me and not-me.
The Mother Tantra refers to this mind as the “active manifestation mind.” It is the mind that arises dependent on the movement of karmic prana, and manifests in form as thoughts, concepts, and other mental activities. If the conceptual mind becomes completely still, it dissolves into the nature of mind and will not arise again until activity reconstitutes it.
The moving mind’s activities are virtuous, non-virtuous, or neutral. Virtuous actions host the experience of the nature of mind. Neutral actions disturb the connection to the nature of mind. Non-virtuous actions create more disturbance and lead to further disconnection. The teachings go into detail regarding the discriminations between virtuous and non-virtuous actions, such as generosity and greediness and so on. This, however, is the clearest distinction: some actions lead to greater connection to rigpa and some lead to disconnection.
The ego bound by the duality of subject and object arises from the moving mind. From this mind all suffering arises; the conceptual mind works very hard, and this is what it accomplishes. We live in memories of the past and fantasies of the future, cut off from the direct experience of the radiance and beauty of life.
NON-DUAL AWARENESS: RIGPA
The fundamental reality of mind is pure, non-dual awareness: rigpa. Its essence is one with the essence of all that exists. In practice, it must not be confused with even the subtlest, quietest, and most expansive states of the moving mind. Unrecognized, the nature of mind manifests as the moving mind, but when it is known directly it is both the path to liberation and liberation itself.
Dzogchen teachings often use a mirror to symbolize rigpa. A mirror reflects everything without choice, preference, or judgement. It reflects the beautiful and the ugly, the big and the small, the virtuous and the non-virtuous. There are no limits or restrictions on what it can reflect, yet the mirror is unstained and unaffected by whatever is reflected in it. Nor does it ever cease reflecting.
Similarly, all phenomena of experience arise in rigpa: thoughts, images, emotions, the grasping and the grasped, every apparent subject and object, every experience. The conceptual mind itself arises and abides in rigpa. Life and death take place in the nature of mind, but it is neither born nor does it die, just as reflections come and go without creating or destroying the mirror. Identifying with the conceptual mind, we live as one of the reflections in the mirror, reacting to the other reflections, suffering confusion and pain, endlessly living and dying. We take the reflections for the reality and spend our lives chasing illusions.
When the conceptual mind is free of grasping and aversion, it spontaneously relaxes into unfabricated rigpa. Then there is no longer an identification with the reflections in the mirror and we can effortlessly accommodate all that arises in experience, appreciating every moment. If hatred arises, the mirror is filled with hatred. When love arises, the mirror is filled with love. For the mirror itself, neither love nor hatred is significant: both are equally a manifestation of its innate capacity to reflect. This is known as the mirror-like wisdom; when we recognize the nature of mind and develop the ability to abide in it, no emotional state distracts us. Instead, all states and all phenomena, even anger, jealousy, and so on, are released into the purity and clarity that is their essence. Abiding in rigpa, we cut karma at its root and are released from the bondage of samsara.
Stabilizing in rigpa also makes it easier to realize all other spiritual aspirations. It is easier to practice virtue when free of grasping and the sense of lack, easier to practice compassion when not obsessed with ourselves, easier to practice transformation when unattached to false and constricted identities.
The Mother Tantra refers to the nature of mind as “primordial mind.” It is like the ocean, while ordinary mind is like the rivers, lakes, and creeks that share in the nature of the ocean and return to it, but temporarily exist as apparently separate bodies of water. The moving mind is also compared to bubbles in the ocean of primordial mind that constantly form and dissolve, depending on the strength of the karmic winds. But the nature of the ocean does not change.
Rigpa arises spontaneously from the base. Its activity is ceaseless manifestation; all phenomena arise in it without disturbing it. The result of abiding wholly in the nature of mind is the three bodies (kayas) of the buddha: the dharmakaya, which is thoughtless essence; the sambhogakaya, which is ceaseless manifestation; and the nirmanakaya, which is undeluded compassionate activity.
Base Rigpa and Path Rigpa
Two types of rigpa are defined in the context of practice. Although only a conceptual division, it is helpful in instruction. The first, the base rigpa, is the pervasive foundational awareness of the base (khyabrig). Every being that has a mind has this awareness—buddhas as well as samsaric beings—as it is from this awareness that all minds arise.
The second is the arising innate awareness of the path (sam-rig), which is the individual’s experience of the pervasive awareness. It is called path rigpa because it refers to the direct experience of rigpa that yogis have when they enter the practice of Dzogchen and receive the introduction, initiation, and transmission. That is, it is not realized in experience until the practitioner is introduced to it.
The potential for path rigpa to manifest lies in the fact that our minds arise from the primordial awareness of the base. When the primordial awareness is known directly, we call it innate awareness, and this is the path rigpa the yogi knows. In this context, we refer to the primordial pure awareness as rigpa, and the rigpa that arises on the path as rang-rig. The first is like cream and the second like butter in the sense that they are of the same substance but something must be done to produce the butter. This is arising or path rigpa because we enter it, then leave it and fall back into the moving mind. It is intermittent in our experience. But rigpa is always present—the primordial base rigpa is presence, neither arising nor ceasing—whether we recognize it or not.