19

Dzogchen: The Great Perfection

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE

MARCIA SCHMIDT

RON GARRY

What is Dzogchen and what is unique about it?

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: Generally speaking, the Vajrayāna includes all three of the yānas, or vehicles—Hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna. These subdivide further, so there are nine yānas in all.

In Dzogchen practice, you must begin with all the usual preliminaries—taking refuge, generating bodhicitta, and so forth. Then the main project of Dzogchen is to look directly at the nature of mind, rigpa. Rigpa is not our ordinary, everyday mind. It is not conceptual mind. It is the mind that is beyond concept, the mind that is free from subject and object.

Since rigpa, the natural state of awareness, is our innate nature, not the result of a process, there are many ways to enter the Dzogchen path. In fact, Dzogchen is the essence of all the paths and all the practices. It is called “the Great Perfection” because everything is there. It is the condensed meaning of all the paths and the essence of everything, samsara and nirvana both.

MARCIA SCHMIDT: As the pinnacle of the nine yānas, Dzogchen is a part of the total path, and you cannot extract any element of it and isolate it. It requires working directly with a master qualified in the Dzogchen tradition. It is through the kindness of one’s teacher, and through the kindness of all the lineage gurus, that one is able to enter the Dzogchen path.

Even though Dzogchen is sometimes referred to as a path of simplicity and doing nothing, that describes just the isolated moment of remaining in a nonconceptual awareness. We all would love to think that we can practice Dzogchen and be able to remain for long periods of time in the nature of mind. But for some reason we can’t.

So it is not a path for someone without diligence. There’s actually quite a lot to do to really be a Dzogchen practitioner. The complete path includes: purifying the obscurations—those things that prevent our mind from being in the natural state; gathering the accumulations, or merit—the many necessary positive circumstances that allow us to practice intensively; and working closely with a qualified teacher.

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: It is important to emphasize the role of the teacher. Do-it-yourself Dzogchen is impossible. You need the lineage, and since everything is interdependent, you also need many other causes and conditions. We must rely on this power of interdependence, not simply our own power.

However, when you practice Dzogchen, you do not get the rigpa from someone else, or from somewhere else. It exists within all sentient beings; it’s already present within us. We are buddha, but we are obscured by bad karma, by the negative causes and conditions that give us the illusion of subject and object, that cause us to experience impure body, speech, mind, and an impure world.

How does the teacher help us to experience the nature of mind?

RON GARRY: In my experience, traveling the path always involves working with my various states of mind, and that’s why it’s so critical to have a wisdom teacher. Quite often I might feel that I’m having an experience of awareness, but more likely my experience is connected with consciousness. It’s only through the blessings and the connection with my teacher that I’ll be able to come to an experience of awareness, my true nature, beyond consciousness.

Based on this, my focus is more on preliminary practices and the ngöndro practices of refuge, prostrations, Vajrasattva mantra recitation, mandala offering, and guru yoga. Through those practices, and through faith and devotion in my teacher, I feel I am protected from getting caught up in false states of spiritual experiences, like mistaking dull mind for rigpa.

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: The teacher’s role is to point out. There are many, many experiences that can be quite similar to or confused with rigpa. For example, the practice of formless or objectless śamatha—resting the mind without an object of meditation—can be similar to Dzogchen practice, to rigpa, but it is not the same. Similarly, one may experience a kind of dullness of mind that has very little conceptualization, which we call the base consciousness (ālaya). Many people think that ālaya is the essence of the mind, but that’s not really Dzogchen. So the teacher keeps pointing out the natural mind, so you can see very clearly the difference between conceptual mind and natural mind, between ālaya and rigpa, between objectless śamatha and rigpa.

MARCIA SCHMIDT: My teacher, Tulku Urygen Rinpoche, Mingyur Rinpoche’s father, taught that even though the words are the same, the meaning becomes more exalted as you go through the different stages. The vipaśyanā, or clear seeing, practice of the lower vehicles is actually a form of śamatha from the perspective of Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā. It is not the same, but people often think it is the same.

What is the difference between objectless śamatha and rigpa?

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: In objectless śamatha, the instruction is not to meditate and not to be distracted, but just to rest. But just resting alone does not become rigpa practice, because you don’t have recognition. The main difference between objectless śamatha and natural mind is recognition. You get that recognition from the pointing-out instruction of the teacher, and then you can cultivate it further.

To cultivate the recognition of natural mind, you can hold the gap between first and second thought. But if you wait for the gap, that is a big mistake, because you don’t have to wait for natural mind. Rigpa is always present. It is spontaneous presence. People are always thinking that to meditate on rigpa, natural awareness, means you have to extinguish thought and emotions. They think, “I . . . have . . . such . . . openness . . . and . . . spaciousness,” but what they have is strong grasping for spaciousness, openness, and rigpa. Their meditation becomes tiny, because they are focusing on having something to practice and something to abandon.

People think like that because they have been told that rigpa is beyond subject and object. Since thoughts and emotions are tied up with subject and object, they think they have to block them to experience rigpa. But rigpa doesn’t do anything with thought and emotions; it lets them be there. If you recognize natural clarity, then everything is transformed. Although something might look like an emotion, it is not a real emotion. That’s why rigpa is not impermanent. But of course, that’s why it’s not permanent, either.

RON GARRY: When you learn from a Dzogchen master, it speaks directly to your experience. Everything is a practice. Everything you learn points directly to your own experience—jealousy, envy, anger, and so on—and how to free yourself right on the spot. These teachings deal with the fact that you are a human being.

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: The authentic Dzogchen teaching has to be received with proper timing. Some teachings you have to receive first, and some teachings you have to receive later. If you receive the later teachings too early, that is not good for your practice. You will not get the real taste of the teaching. It becomes just an idea to try. If you receive the teachings step by step, then you can really feel the meaning of the teaching. You can get to the heart. The general idea of Dzogchen practice can be shared with everybody, but the real pith instruction is very secret and must be received through the lineage blessing.

What does “lineage blessing” mean?

RON GARRY: Lineage blessing means that Dzogchen is something living and it comes from a real-life teacher who is a living embodiment of that nondualistic awareness. They live it every day.

That is the source of everything. The fancy words are just indications, ways of communicating with us about that living essence. So when Dzogchen words get out into the general public, people start thinking that they have had that realization, and the power gets watered down. It’s just Dzogchen words coming from dualistic minds. Then there is no lineage anymore.

The authentic lineage is something intimate and direct for the student. It is about being in the presence of buddha mind. If the teaching isn’t coming from there, if it’s just on paper or it’s being transmitted by someone who is imitating, then even though it may be called Dzogchen, the lineage blessing has been cut at that point. People who are drawn to Dzogchen are drawn to it partly because of its live and very human quality. If we publish everything, it impersonalizes and dehumanizes the tradition. It is not a book on a shelf or a TV program. You need human interaction.

MARCIA SCHMIDT: You do not just receive the teaching from the teacher sitting in front of you at that moment of transmission. It comes from teachers stretching back thousands of years and their disciples, in an unbroken line.

The lineage is stabilized in the practice. Although all of the teachers may not be fully enlightened, they have a lot more realization than us to pass on. Tulku Urgyen used to say that having some recognition of rigpa is like having a candle in your hand, but if you have not stabilized that and you try to pass it on, you will hand the candle over to someone else and end up in darkness yourself.

Many people have heard of Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen. What distinguishes these two Tibetan practice traditions?

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: The meaning of the two is not different. They just come from different angles and use different terminology. For example, in Mahāmudrā we talk about ordinary mind and in Dzogchen we talk about natural awareness. Mahāmudrā is more focused on the meditation, from the experiential point of view, and on the minute details of stillness, movement, emptiness, appearance, and so forth.

Dzogchen has more emphasis on the view. You make the distinction between conceptual mind and rigpa at the level of the view, and then you have to practice. The meaning is not different, but there is a different angle and therefore different words and different styles.

MARCIA SCHMIDT: There’s a famous quote from Tsele Natsok Rangdröl that says, “Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen, different words, but not meaning. The only difference is Mahāmudrā stresses mindfulness, while Dzogchen relaxes within awareness.” For the practitioner, it has to do with the approach you take, and which path we travel will depend on the karmic propensities we have.

The path of Mahāmudrā goes through various stages. The teacher takes the student through them step by step and works within the context of the student’s experience to get closer and closer to the recognition of mind nature. Dzogchen starts right from the beginning to introduce the student to natural awareness, rigpa.

All of you have stressed the difficulty of Dzogchen and the need to go through a progression, a path. So is Dzogchen not really a shortcut in the way it is sometimes discussed?

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: It’s the very best shortcut! It’s the number one shortcut.

How can it be both a shortcut and a path with many stages?

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: Dzogchen gets right to the heart. It’s more direct than any other method. You need preparation and various kinds of support, but the practice itself is direct. Even if you have a shortcut, there still needs to be a road there to travel on. Otherwise, you can’t use the shortcut.

MARCIA SCHMIDT: Dzogchen is a shortcut because you’re taking the fruition as the path. Your nature can be pointed out and then you can recognize and use that nonconceptual state through all practices, through every stage along the way.

Even though it is revealed, we still have to go through the path. Yes, we’re told it’s the effortless great perfection, that there is nothing to do and that it’s your inherit nature. That’s true in the absolute sense. But in the relative sense, we’re not necessarily connecting with our absolute nature. We have lots of discursive thoughts; we have very little bodhicitta. So we have to be honest and ask ourselves, what’s going to change that? If we do that, we can receive the training and make use of these methods that have a very good track record. Then they will be a shortcut for us. But we can’t avoid the path.

Is rigpa exclusive to Dzogchen? Is it possible that a practitioner of another tradition may attain the quality of natural mind, rigpa?

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: Rigpa is within us twenty-four hours a day. It doesn’t matter who we are—human being, animal, part of a tradition or not. Recognition is the key. If you want to practice rigpa recognition according to Dzogchen, you need all the causes and conditions from Dzogchen. Otherwise, you cannot recognize rigpa according to Dzogchen. If you miss one component—no lineage or no real pith instruction—then there is no Dzogchen, and no recognition of rigpa according to the Dzogchen tradition.

Under what circumstances would a practitioner of other Buddhist traditions benefit from an intensive Dzogchen retreat?

YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE: People who are genuinely practicing in other paths, Theravāda and Zen, for example, have a very good foundation for engaging in Dzogchen practice. Many practices are shared in common. If they decided to take part in Dzogchen practice, that could be helpful for them, because the real Dzogchen is within the mind. In order to engage in Dzogchen practice, you don’t have to change your Buddhist path. Your Buddhist path would be brought to Dzogchen.