Insight Editions · No. 468
As It Is, Volume II
Teachings on the Completion Stage
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
A study guide to As It Is, Volume II: Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's completion-stage talks at Nagi Gompa on our inheritance of buddha nature, blessings, the iron rod technique, shamatha and vipashyana, transmuting emotions, bodhichitta, the highway of Dzogchen and samaya, daily life, doubt, the heart of training and retreat, nondoing, Dzogchen terminology, realization stories, a message for Death Row and his last public talk, in tables, diagrams and practice notes.
A study guide to As It Is, Volume II by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, translated from the Tibetan by Erik Pema Kunsang, compiled by Marcia Binder Schmidt and edited with Kerry Moran (Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 2000). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the publishers. Please read the original book, and practise with proper transmission.
CORE CLAIM
Buddha nature is our inheritance, already complete as empty essence, cognizant nature and unconfined capacity. The completion stage is to recognize it, train in short moments many times, and let every thought, emotion and doubt dissolve in that recognition, until rigpa is stable day and night and even death is "like returning home."
SCOPE
The second volume of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's talks at Nagi Gompa, mostly from 1994 and 1995, on the completion stage: blessings, the iron rod technique, shamatha and vipashyana, emotions, bodhichitta, samaya, daily life, doubt, retreat, Dzogchen terminology, realization stories, a message for a prisoner on Death Row, and his last public talk. Compiled by Marcia Binder Schmidt with Kerry Moran; translated by Erik Pema Kunsang (Rangjung Yeshe, 2000).
KEY FIGURES
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche; Samten Gyatso; Chimey Dorje; Tersey Tulku; Samantabhadra; Padmasambhava; Vairotsana; Longchenpa; Milarepa; Rangjung Dorje; Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo; Shakya Shri; Ani Lochen; plus tributes by Tarik, Tenga, Thrangu and Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoches and Tarthang Tulku.
BEST FOR
Practitioners who have received pointing-out and want plain, repeated guidance on sustaining it; anyone fighting doubt, strong emotion or distraction; householders planning retreat around work and family; and readers who want stories of realized masters told with humour.
The Book on One Page
As It Is, Volume II returns again and again to one instruction: recognize mind essence. It opens with tributes by five masters. It then moves through the inheritance and blessings, techniques for oblivion and calm, emotions and bodhichitta, the highway of Dzogchen and its samayas, daily life, doubt and retreat, terminology and stories, and ends with a message for the dying and a farewell talk.
The Argument in Brief
- You already have it. Buddha nature is "a billion times more valuable" than any wealth, and never lost.
- Blessings work through openness. Trust, diligence and insight; devotion is a ring for the buddhas' hook.
- Shamatha is not the goal. Calm is "the shallow peak"; recognition is seen the moment you look.
- Emotions are their own fuel for freedom. "The very root of emotion is your attention in motion."
- Short moments, many times. "Like collecting water from the eaves of the roof."
- Doubt is just a thought. Recognize the doubter.
- There is no thought in rigpa. Sherab frees itself; namtog begins only after distraction.
- Nondoing is the view. Don't project out, concentrate in, or dwell between.
- Retreat is meant to be practical. Meet the ideal half way; don't make it harsh.
- Renunciation is the real sign. Not experiences, not powers.
The single idea beneath the whole book: what you are looking for is what is looking, so recognize it, again and again, and let everything else dissolve in it.
Map of the Chapters
| No. | Chapter | Payload |
|---|---|---|
| P | Preface and Introduction | Completion stage; five masters' tributes |
| 1 | The Inheritance | Buddha nature as wealth; mind like space, with a difference |
| 2 | Blessings and Enlightenment | Trust, diligence, insight; not dead space |
| 3 | Iron Rod Technique | Pointing-out for oblivion; empty sensation |
| 4 | Shamatha and Vipashyana | Deluded by quietude; the four-line verse |
| 5 | Transmuting Emotions | One principle for five poisons; the tsenduk plant |
| 6 | Buddha Offsprings | Bodhichitta; sunlit space; old mother, old father |
| 7 | The Highway of the Victorious Ones | Two villains; scent of the kayas; samaya |
| 8 | Mingling Practice with Daily Life | King Ignorance; mercury and water |
| 9 | Doubt | Recognize the doubter; sherab and namtog |
| 10 | The Heart of Training | Vairotsana's lines; four sessions; retreat |
| 11 | Dining with Indra | Nondoing; sun and reflections; two roads |
| 12 | Dzogchen Terminology | Kadag and lhundrub; four empowerments |
| 13 | Realization Stories | Shakya Shri; dog's tooth; Chö visions |
| 14 | Death Row | Mind does not die; returning home |
| 15 | Daytime Stars | Last public talk; renunciation; the road to Bodhgaya |
Ways Through the Book
| Reader | Start with | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Newly introduced | The Inheritance (1), Buddha Offsprings (6) | The Highway (7) |
| Struggling with doubt | Doubt (9) | Dzogchen Terminology (12) |
| Stuck in calm | Shamatha and Vipashyana (4), Iron Rod (3) | Dining with Indra (11) |
| Emotional turbulence | Transmuting Emotions (5) | Mingling Practice (8) |
| Householder planning retreat | The Heart of Training (10) | Daytime Stars (15) |
| Facing death or illness | Death Row (14) | Realization Stories (13) |
Volume I emphasised development stage: deities, mantra, preliminaries. Volume II "is mainly on the completion stage": recognizing mind essence and sustaining it in daily life. The preliminaries are not dropped. In Volume II they become "the actual path" once practised with recognition, where a practice without recognition is "a painted candle."
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning here |
|---|---|
| Rigpa | Awareness: empty cognizance free of fixation |
| Sem | Dualistic mind, which mixes with objects like water with dirt |
| Rigpey yeshe | "The wakefulness of knowing" |
| Kadag / lhundrub | Primordial purity / spontaneous presence: Trekchö / Tögal |
| Sherab / namtog | Expression as insight (freed) / as thought (confused) |
| Rangshar rangdrol | Arising from yourself, freed into yourself |
| Nyamshak | "To place in evenness": equanimity beyond placing |
| Zangtal | Unimpeded openness, like a window or sieve |
| Digpa, dribpa, bagchag | Negative karma, obscurations, habitual tendencies |
| Three challenges | Outer (gods, demons), inner (illness), innermost (elation, despair) |
How the Book Reads
Talks with questions and answers, edited lightly. Rinpoche called his teaching "like the song of the sparrow, always the same!", and the same few images keep returning: space and sunlight, the mirror and its dust, water and mercury, the walk to Bodhgaya. He teases students, laughs at himself ("someone as simple-minded as me"), and tells vivid stories from Tibet: flying yogis, raining heads, a yak caught on a tree.
Preface and Introduction
Compiler Marcia Binder Schmidt explains that Volume II turns to the completion stage, drawn from talks of 1994 and 1995. Five masters then speak of Tulku Urgyen: Tarik Rinpoche on loyalty and humility, Tenga Rinpoche on his realization of exhaustion in dharmata, Tarthang Tulku on the Chokling lineage and Nagi Gompa, Thrangu Rinpoche on tukdam, and Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche in a long, frank portrait of a hidden scholar, craftsman and yogi.
The Preface
Volume I emphasised development stage; Volume II "is mainly on the completion stage." The editors tried to show "the intimate closeness and warmth" between Rinpoche and his students, and his "playfully skillful, direct and inspiring" style. "Out of respect for the seal of secrecy," some delicate points were edited out.
"The transmission of Dzogchen cannot be received solely from books." Nor can it be "extracted from the body of teachings from which it is the pinnacle, while discarding the rest." The book itself insists on instruction in person from a qualified master and lineage holder. Readers are asked to forgive repetitions: Rinpoche said his talks were "like the song of the sparrow, always the same!"
| Speaker | Angle | Signature image |
|---|---|---|
| Tarik Rinpoche | Friendship and samaya | An unbroken eggshell |
| Tenga Rinpoche | Lineage and realization | Exhaustion in dharmata |
| Tarthang Tulku | The Chokling lineage in exile | Light from Nagi Gompa |
| Thrangu Rinpoche | Signs at death | Clear sky, dust-free earth |
| Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche | Scholarship, craft, conduct | The candle of instruction |
Tarik Rinpoche: An Unbroken Eggshell
Tarik Rinpoche and Tulku Urgyen came from the same area of Eastern Tibet, but in an age with no airplanes, trains or cars they only met in the Kathmandu Valley. Too poor to make an offering, he still received the One Hundred Empowerments of Chö, and their samaya stayed "intact, just like a delicate but unbroken eggshell."
Though the 16th Karmapa venerated him "at the crown of his own head," Tulku Urgyen "always refused to preside as the head," taking a lower position than any other lama or ordinary monk, as a ngakpa. He had no conceit, no ambition for fame, no resentment, and "his words and his heart were in harmony."
True humility is the sign of having gained experience and realization. Without it we fall into conceit toward those below, jealousy toward those above, and competitiveness toward equals, because the five poisons still live in us, "even though someone may dress up as a renunciate or a yogi."
| Tarik Rinpoche's advice | Why |
|---|---|
| Don't regard the guru as ordinary | In Vajrayana "everything depends on your guru" |
| Supplicate, visualize him in the sky, mingle minds, receive four empowerments | You can "glimpse innate suchness... in a single instant," even after his passing |
| Remember his words and practise them | "The offering of practice" surpasses material offerings |
| Keep samaya through this life, bardo and next | "Devotion to the guru is the universal panacea" |
Tarik Rinpoche adds that displeasing the guru is "equal to committing the five most severe misdeeds," and that "the guru is considered more important than both the yidam deity and the Dharma protectors." He praises Tulku Urgyen's sons of the Tsangsar line, "said to originate from divine beings," and expects them to live up to their heritage. Their bond was "one of brothers," and "for me he was the main person I would rely on."
Even Buddha Shakyamuni passed away in Kushinagar, "only on the level of superficial reality"; Tulku Urgyen "remains in dharmadhatu and is all set to come back," depending on beings' interest and a vast amount of merit.
Tenga Rinpoche: Exhaustion in Dharmata
Tenga Rinpoche traces the line: Chokgyur Lingpa, emanation of Prince Murub Tsenpo, and Tulku Urgyen "consciously chose to incarnate" in his family. He studied general and esoteric knowledge, trained under his father and the 16th Karmapa, and practised at Tsurphu's retreat centre, Pema Khyung Dzong.
Through that practice "he realized the final of four visions of the Dzogchen teachings... 'exhaustion in dharmata'." On that basis the 16th Karmapa, who "could see the three times," accepted him as root guru and received Chokgyur Lingpa's termas "in their entirety." So did Shamar, Situ, Jamgön and Gyaltsab Rinpoches and Dabzang Rinpoche.
His passing at Nagi Gompa was "the temporary dissolving of his physical presence" to inspire disciples "who cling to permanence." Tenga Rinpoche counts him a special root guru for the Dzogchen Desum.
Tenga Rinpoche closes with a hope: that "before long we will have the excellent fortune to behold the golden countenance of a sublime new tulku," his life "as indestructible as a diamond."
Tarthang Tulku: The Light from Nagi Gompa
Chokgyur Dechen Lingpa (1829 to 1870), respected by Jamgön Kongtrül and Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, revealed "more than 250 of the texts" in the Rinchen Terdzo. The lineage passed through his daughter Semo Könchok Paldrön to her four sons, one of them Tsangsar Chimey Dorje, Tulku Urgyen's father.
| Quality | Tarthang Tulku's account |
|---|---|
| Lineage | Nyingma Kama and Terma; teachings from Karsey Kongtrül and Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö |
| Service | Assistant and counselor to the 16th Karmapa, including the Swayambhu dispute |
| Arts | Calligraphy, painting, sculpture, torma; history of Kham, Nangchen, Derge |
| Teaching | "Without peer" in meditation and initiation; gentle, penetrating clarity |
| Manner | Each person felt "he alone was the lama's favorite" |
Tarthang Tulku travelled with him extensively more than thirty years before, and later received the hearing lineage of the Gyu Chubdün (the Seventeen Dzogchen Tantras). "Unlike some learned masters, who seem to lecture whenever they open their mouths," Tulku Urgyen spoke so kindly that "no one hesitated to ask him questions." In the Kali Yuga, as troubles fell on Tibet, he "rose to the challenge," founding centres and making Dzogchen and the Chokling treasures widely available. Though not a mountain recluse like Milarepa, his mind "exhibited all the qualities" of such masters.
More than thirty monasteries now stand in the Kathmandu Valley, and Tarthang Tulku "personally trace[s] much of this activity to the light that radiated from Nagi Gompa." He once saw in a vision that the Dharma "could one day spread out from this tiny valley, revitalized and newly powerful."
Thrangu Rinpoche: Tukdam
"It is evident to everyone that he was unlike anyone else when it came to pointing out the nature of mind." Thrangu Rinpoche answers three questions.
Tukdam lasts to the same degree as one's samadhi in life: body heat stays, skin colour holds, the body remains upright. Ordinary people also meet the ground luminosity but don't recognize it. Signs of "a clear sky and dust-free earth" fit a master who kept "a concealed profile", saying "I'm nothing special, I'm not learned," and probably hid rainbows and light.
Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche: The Hidden Scholar
"Only a buddha like Shakyamuni can fully know another being." But the 16th Karmapa, Dudjom Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, the three most extraordinary masters of the century, all took Tulku Urgyen as a root guru. When Könchok Paldrön asked Khyentse and Kongtrül whether to become a nun or marry, both said: "You should take a husband; in the future it is through your bloodline that someone will appear to benefit beings." Her children included Samten Gyatso.
Many think he was only a Dzogchen yogi at Nagi Gompa. Orgyen Tobgyal calls him a great scholar: he read rare lantsa and wardu scripts as well as uchen and umey, knew grammar, poetry and the sciences, the Ngakso, Lamrim Yeshe Nyingpo and Guhyagarbha Tantra, most of the Lamrim root text by heart, and the Uttaratantra, Hevajra and Profound Inner Meaning. He fit "the title 'pandita of definitive meaning'."
He was also a craftsman: original statues with finer proportions, a Mahakala mask and Bernakchen mask at Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling, and Chokgyur Lingpa's crown re-created from memory. Yet realization's expression "don't always appear so clearly": his eyesight failed, as Dilgo Khyentse's words were sometimes hindered. In practical matters his advice made people say "Well of course!"
The Kagyü saying "Devotion is the head of meditation" describes him. He saw his own teachers as the Buddha in person; once connected through empowerment or instruction, "his trust was unwavering." He would give any wealth for a guru's wish and, Orgyen Tobgyal feels, "even... sacrifice his own life." A legal dispute for the Karmapa dragged on "half a lifetime," "only to his teacher's benefit."
He backed words with action, made "a decision free of doubt and never waver[ed]," and did not get "caught up in a web of concepts." Being learned is not only "the exposition lineage" of syntax and intent; there is also "the transmission of the real meaning." At Nagi Gompa, with Neten Chokling (Pema Wangyal), he "clearly laid out the logic of establishing emptiness. Everyone was amazed." During the first Ngakso drubchen at Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling he explained the tenfold meaning of mantra, the kayas and wisdoms and "the chakras of syllable clouds."
"When concreteness or inconcreteness does not remain before the intellect, at that moment there is no other mental form, and so, there is utter peace without conceptions." Many khenpos had explained it; "only Tulku Urgyen was able to prove the reality of these statements in a reasonable way. His logic established emptiness in actuality for me, while the other scholars merely established emptiness in words."
Like masters who bowed to old dogs saying "I take refuge in the buddha nature," he knew buddha nature is in every being "just like oil is present in each and every sesame seed." He was an expert chant master (umdzey), torma maker and knew mandala proportions and sacred dance. Placing a vase on someone's head, "people would feel it was something really special."
He touched heads with everyone, "even the poorest Nepali worker," and asked "How are you?": their happiness "far surpassed the joy of receiving thousands of rupees." Nobody tired in his presence, "unlike being in the presence of some politicians." Orgyen Tobgyal never heard a harsh word, yet "his very presence was powerful": you could not talk nonsense before him.
| Practice record | Orgyen Tobgyal's estimate |
|---|---|
| Retreat | About half his life; at least four three-year retreats; later life-retreat at Nagi Gompa |
| Transmissions | Most Nyingma Kama and Terma, all Kagyü teachings, the Sakya Lamdrey |
| Heart practice | Chetsun Nyingtig and Kunzang Tuktig |
| Realization | Dilgo Khyentse (1985): "culmination of awareness," one step before exhaustion in dharmata |
| Temples | More than any contemporary lama, without fund-raising letters; money spent by sunset |
He was the bodhisattva ideal of Shantideva "to the letter": humble, teaching everyone equally and "in the listener's own terms." "While I never saw him actually give away his head, arms or legs... I feel absolutely certain that he was a great bodhisattva." He had "the threefold gathering" and "the threefold blazing forth" that come from perfecting development and completion, and always gave full attention to the recipients.
To more than a thousand people, he gave pointing-out "nakedly and directly, leaving nothing out." He said: "The oral instruction is like a candle: you can see only for as long as you're holding it." It was unrivalled even by Khyentse, Kongtrül or Longchenpa, "yet I later met only a few people in that group who truly recognized their own nature."
Named Karma Urgyen Tsewang Chokdrub by the 15th Karmapa Khakyab Dorje and recognized as a tulku of Lachab Gompa; trained under his father, Samten Gyatso and the 16th Karmapa; four three-year retreats; to Lhasa and Gangtok in the 1950s to see Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö; settled in Nepal; life-retreat at Nagi Gompa; talks in this volume from 1994 to 1995; passed away 1996.
Orgyen Tobgyal and Dzongsar Khyentse felt a few hours of questions outweighed "many months and years of studying books." Those who say "I don't feel like doing all that chanting" prove "their lack of realization"; Tulku Urgyen never belittled group sadhana or karma. Orgyen Tobgyal calls for a plain biography "without adding or subtracting a single thing," "the good with the bad," because "even the Buddha appeared in an ordinary human body." He had kept silent amid sectarian boasting, but now "the sun has set behind the western mountains."
Five masters, one portrait: humble, loyal, learned in secret, direct in pointing out. Read the teachings that follow as the voice of that man.
The Inheritance
Our nature is the indivisible unity of being empty and cognizant, never lost, only unrecognized because mind always searches elsewhere. Tulku Urgyen explains mind and mind essence, why nothing but recognition stops samsara, and how "the son of a rich father naturally receives his inheritance": with trust and diligence, we can be re-enlightened.
Searching Elsewhere
We think, remember and plan, and attention moves towards an object and sticks to it. This is namtok: nam, the object; tok, the concepts about it. It runs on subject and object, perceiver and perceived, and with disturbing emotions and karma drives us from one samsaric experience to another. Yet "there is still the basic nature, which is not made out of anything whatsoever," empty and able to cognize.
"Unless you know the secret key point, whatever you do will miss the mark." The secret key point is that mind's nature is self-existing, original wakefulness. Right now we are like the dim-witted man lost in Asan Tol, downtown Kathmandu, wailing "I've lost myself! Where am I?" The pointing-out instruction tells him: "You are you!"
Mahamudra, the Great Middle Way and the Great Perfection all point to the same basic nature, the opposite of dualistic thinking. "First we need to recognize; next, train in that recognition; and finally, attain stability."
Vajra Body, Speech and Mind
The body, speech and mind of beings have the same origin as those of the awakened ones; they cannot come from earth, or stone, or matter.
| Vajra quality | Pure form | What we became |
|---|---|---|
| Unchanging | Vajra body | A physical body of flesh and blood |
| Unceasing | Vajra speech | Breath and words that appear and disappear |
| Undeluded | Vajra mind | Fixation on duality, arising and ceasing each moment |
Not recognizing, "we chase after one perishing thought after the other, like chasing after each new bead on the string." Line up all the sentient beings of the six realms and beg them to stop your thinking; not one could help. "Nuclear bombs can destroy cities... but they cannot stop the mind from thinking."
Thoughts are expressions of our natural face. "If we truly recognize buddha nature, in that very same moment, any thought will vanish by itself, leaving no trace." This method is already at hand in ourselves; it is not something we need to buy, bribe, or search for. It is called "the Buddha being placed in the palm of your own hand."
A Billion Times More Valuable
Put all the wealth in the world in one heap and recognition of buddha nature on the other: recognition is "a billion times more valuable." Every being has drunk more red-hot liquid metal in the hells than could fill an ocean; we only forget. When business profits we rejoice, at a loss we despair; buddha nature is a wish-fulfilling jewel, so "isn't it just incredibly stupid to throw away our fortune?" "I am not reciting this from memory. It is not a lie either."
"Although my mind is the Buddha, I don't recognize it. Although my thinking is dharmakaya, I don't realize it. Although nonfabrication is the innate, I fail to sustain it. Although naturalness is the basic state, I am not convinced. Guru, think of me."
Mind Is What Experiences
"Besides mind, nothing else perceives anything." Outer and inner elements mirror each other and are insensate; the five senses and their objects perceive nothing by themselves, as a corpse shows.
| Outer element | Inner element | Perceives? |
|---|---|---|
| Earth, soil, rocks; forests | Flesh and bones; pores and hair | No |
| Water under the ground | Blood and liquids | No |
| Fire, heat | Body temperature | No |
| Wind | Breath | No |
| Space | Openings and hollows | No |
| Mind | Only this experiences |
Nothing is more essential than mind, "except for one thing": its nature, sugatagarbha. It is identical from Samantabhadra down to the tiniest insect: "no difference in size or quality." One ground, two paths: buddhas recognized, beings didn't.
A sentient being is "someone who has failed to recognize the essence of mind" and is confused by his or her own thinking, which remembers, plans and worries for countless lifetimes. A buddha recognizes the essence itself and becomes stable in it: "totally stable in the state before dualistic thought occurs." The essence is primordially the same; only recognition differs.
Mind Is Like Space, with a Difference
Travel a hundred billion years in a spaceship and you won't reach the end of space; "how can something without limits have a center?" Wherever space reaches, there are beings, emotions, karma, and buddha nature. The difference: "space is not conscious", while our mind "feels pleasure and pain," the "ever-knowing, ever-conscious mind."
Mind put to work makes telephones, airplanes, trains through mountains, even nuclear bombs: "an inexhaustible treasure." But "have you ever heard of scientists becoming enlightened through science?" If mind were concrete, scientists would have figured it out. Mind used for something spins like the wheels on a car; only knowing its essential nature ends samsara.
Thinking is like the shadow of your hand: "just try and shake it off!" The operating system of samsara is the twelve links, headed by ignorance, which perpetuates the five skandhas through four kinds of birth. Insects on Shivapuri alone outnumber all humans. We stand at a fork in the road: negative karma "doesn't require much effort."
The Three Kayas in Recognition
In the very moment of recognizing, empty essence is dharmakaya, cognizance is sambhogakaya, their indivisibility is nirmanakaya, like water's liquidity or a flame's heat, and recognizing your natural face is svabhavikakaya. "Recognize your mind, and in the absence of any concrete thing, rest loosely."
A whole day of empty awareness corresponds to the bhumis; no break day and night is buddhahood. Thoughts are clouds, essence sky, cognizance sunshine. "You cannot paint mid-air." The Hevajra Tantra: "All sentient beings are buddhas, but they are covered by temporary obscurations." Milk yields butter; water churned a billion years never does.
"The essence of mind that is primordially empty and rootless is unlike holding the idea of emptiness in mind, and it is not the same as the sustained attempt to feel empty. Neither of these helps much." What helps is growing used to "this natural, original emptiness again and again." Stretches without conceptual thought come "without having to suppress the thinking."
Samsara is painful because it is impermanent; "there is nothing in the world you can do to avoid dying." But recognizing empty cognizance and realizing it "will enable us to cross the bardo."
We missed primordial enlightenment. But recognize, resolve that this solves samsara's basic problem, and practise diligently, and we are "just like the son of a rich father taking hold of his inheritance." If the mind died with the body, "that wouldn't be so bad"; but it continues, even dreaming all night.
Questions on Construct and Meditation
Constructed means "you have to think about something in order for that moment to be"; unconstructed "doesn't require any thought." "If you don't conceptualize this present moment of wakefulness, there are no three times." "Were it not for this present wakefulness, this body would be a corpse. And were this present wakefulness to pursue anything, that is called thinking mind."
The View Is Like Space
Mind is compared to space because "you cannot say that space arrived, space left." Dualistic mind does come and go, "like a cloud; it is formed and dissolves again." The view is our basic state, "unchanging like space," and unobscured by thought; it is obscured "when we start to formulate a concept about how it is." It defies notions of having or not having, getting or losing.
Hearing "meditate," we think we should imagine emptiness. "Can you imagine space?... that is a thought." "The supreme meditation is to not meditate. The supreme training is to keep nothing in mind." Rest free of imagining but "do not be distracted for even one instant": that is a 'space yogi'.
"Let your indescribable awareness remain undistracted in the naked state of basic space." It doesn't have to be imagined, because that naked basic space is already our nature. "Past has already gone. Now abandon the present and what is about to come. Then what is left?"
Imagining a buddha is hard: picture the face, then the arms, and the face is gone. "Development stage is kind of hard. Completion stage is incredibly easy!" Development is like physical exercise: "not useless." But in recognizing buddha nature, deity, mantra and samadhi are automatically present. Think "I am the deity", then recognize what thinks "I": the thought dissolves, and you are at the completion stage.
The inheritance is already yours. Recognize, rest loosely, don't imagine, and repeat until the gaps between thoughts join up.
Blessings and Enlightenment
Answering three questions, what is blessing, what is enlightenment, what is a yogi, Tulku Urgyen separates superficial blessings from the oral instructions for enlightenment in one lifetime. He grounds real blessing in trust, compassion and devotion, shows that the awakened state is not dead space, and defines the yogi by one thing: nondistraction.
Superficial and True Blessings
| Kind | What people ask for | Sign of receiving it |
|---|---|---|
| Superficial (conventional) | Protection cords, sacred medicine, rituals against sickness, spirits, bad business | "I got the blessings" when things improve |
| "Blessed by formless spirits" | Clairvoyance, divination, small miracles | A mind "like solid stone," helping only friends |
| True blessing | Oral instructions from a qualified master on enlightenment in a single lifetime | Compassion and respect arise spontaneously |
A precious human body comes only through incredibly great positive karma; it is "like arriving on an island of jewels." "If we just keep our hands crossed over our chest and go home, then what?" A human life without a spiritual path has aims "no different from those of an animal." "There couldn't possibly be any greater failure."
Trust, Diligence, Insight
Mistrust is a great shortcoming. Some see buddhas flying in the sky and say "They are just showing off," or pass a creature with its entrails falling out and shrug, "It's his own karma." Value even four lines of the Buddha's teachings: "How wonderful! This is incredibly precious!" Regard others as "my own parents, yet they suffer."
"We need to have trust that is so penetrating that tears come to our eyes, the hairs on the body stand on end, and simply remaining passive seems difficult." To trust the consequence of karma is the actual accomplishment of Dharma practice; authentic accomplishment means to be compassionate and devoted. Lip service is not enough; it has to be "a hundred percent sincerity."
Knowing a lot of teachings usually ends in conceit: "I have practiced so much, so many years of shamatha and samadhi." "If people who have a lot of practice behind them become only more miserly and stingy, it is proof that the teachings have not taken effect." Without much learning, trust in the Three Jewels, kindness and a sense of impermanence mean you are already blessed.
What Enlightenment Is
There are levels: arhat, mahabodhisattva, complete buddha, reached through the five paths and ten bhumis. The way is to unify means and knowledge, great compassion and insight into emptiness. Every being has been our mother, yet all are on "a totally mistaken path"; taking this to heart, "there is no way you can turn your back" and seek liberation alone. A buddha "doesn't just sit back and relax."
"In the moment of love, our empty essence nakedly dawns." Love is devotion upward or compassion for beings. With selfishness dropped, no concept can make emptiness "stray into some sidetrack": "the ultimate safeguard." Everyone wants happiness while thought, word and deed create further pain; seeing this, compassion becomes overwhelming.
| Vajrayana summary | Pair |
|---|---|
| Two obscurations | Emotional (desire, anger, dullness) and cognitive (subject, object, interaction) |
| Two accumulations | Merit (conditioned virtue) and wisdom (training in original wakefulness) |
| Two supreme knowledges | Whatever exists and the nature as it is |
| Two kayas | Dharmakaya and rupakaya (sambhogakaya of rainbow light, nirmanakaya of flesh and blood) |
Not Dead Space
Space doesn't go to hell by doing evil, nor get liberated; if the awakened state were like that, "there would be no point in pursuing it." But it is cognizant as well as empty, with wisdom, compassion and capacity fully present.
"If you pretend that your nature is already enlightened and don't progress along the path of removing the obscurations, then your enlightened nature doesn't become realized." Check the facts: do we have obscurations or not? If so, gather the two accumulations. But "if our nature wasn't already enlightened, we couldn't awaken to it no matter how hard we tried."
Hungry, you look at a plate and think "Mmmmm, I'm eating the food." You can do this forever; hunger stays. Put the food in your mouth and it is delicious. Meditation that only imagines is "a theory about taste." Saying "I am a buddha" doesn't make you one.
Unconfined Empty Cognizance
Empty means not arising, not dwelling, not ceasing, like the space around us. -ness is the knowing quality. "Empty means there is no thing to see. Yet there is a knowing... that sees that there is no thing to see." If confined to one side, it would be "either a void state or a conscious entity." Look for a billion years and you won't find a concrete thing.
| Aspect | Meaning | Kaya | If blocked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Empty essence | No form, sound, smell, taste, texture | Dharmakaya | |
| Cognizant nature | Can know anything; feels pleasure and pain | Sambhogakaya | |
| Unconfined capacity (tukje) | Energy, ability; also "kindness" | Nirmanakaya | "Obstruction of capacity": like being knocked out |
"If your aim is only to become mindless, just have somebody regularly hit you hard on the head." Tukje also means kind: "Please be kind" asks someone to activate their capacity. "Outside of mind, there is no other buddha" refers to the original fresh state, "not to the outdated state of being already involved in thought!"
Many people object that an empty mind could not know anything. "Don't ever think that mind is only empty; it is empty cognizance." Elements, flesh, blood, sights and sounds feel nothing; only mind feels pleasure or pain. Physicists speak of empty matter that still has energy: "There is nothing to see, but still there is energy there, an ability." Without knowing this, "we are not much different from a cow: we eat and we sleep."
Reminding and Letting Be
Recognition may last only a few seconds, so repeat it many times, applying "the shepherd of mindfulness." It is like flipping the light switch in his room: "Would the light come on by itself otherwise?" "Don't think the nature of mind is something amazing... Don't correct the immediate wakefulness." Thinking "Empty, empty" is a fabrication. First settle that mind is empty, then that it is cognizant, so you won't later waver.
Working, remember to recognize mind essence; continue working; remember again. "Once you have reminded yourself, simply let be in that." Don't hold the understanding or name it ("There it is, now I've got it"): a mirror doesn't name its reflections. Unbroken from morning to evening is a bhumi; unbroken day and night, "your mind is that of a true buddha."
In the moment of recognition the three poisons "have no power... they have lost." On the way to buddhahood they don't immediately disappear but "get weaker and weaker"; fully used to recognition, they "have no foothold any longer." Without training like this, "we will never be able to overcome our attachment, our anger, and our delusion."
What a Yogi Is
Padmasambhava: "One taste of empty cognizance suffused with knowing." For an ordinary being it is suffused with unknowing: attention latches onto "How nice" or "How ugly." The degree of nondistraction defines the stages. At noon you cannot separate space and sunlight; beings are "no further away from buddhas than this shaded area is from being sunlit."
"You never hear the term 'dharmakaya throne of meditation'." A medicinal seed never becomes poison; what we recognize from the start must be the same in essence as fruition: nonmeditation. In Dzogchen the fruit is "exhaustion of conceptual mind and phenomena." "Nondistraction makes the whole difference. Distraction destroys everything." A realized yogi moves through solid matter and is not burnt by fire.
In Dzogchen the first thing we are introduced to is nonmeditation, "insight free of... looker and a thing looked at." Begin with an entity to meditate on and the result will be conceptual too: "from where would the compassion of the buddhas ever appear?" Re-enlightenment is attaining stability in nondelusion.
A yogi is like a swan separating the milk of wakefulness from the water of ignorance. "While wearing clothes, you are not naked, right?" When the natural state is an actuality in living experience, people can say "the yogi arrived" as you walk in: "Your body is still that of a human being, but your mind is Mahamudra."
Judge blessing by the heart, not by miracles. Recognize unconfined empty cognizance, remind and let be, and treat nondistraction as the whole path.
Iron Rod Technique
A student finds thoughts dissolve in rigpa but sights and sounds remain. Tulku Urgyen answers with dark humour: if you want no experience at all, knock yourself out with an iron bar. Real practice keeps the five senses wide open while nothing is fixated, which is why appearances are a magical show. He closes by separating view from conduct: "view as vast as the sky, conduct as fine as barley flour."
The Pointing-Out for Oblivion
"There is no need to block experience. Simply avoid fixating on the experience and labeling it." If you really want no thought and no perception, "have your friend give you a hard whack over the head", or do it yourself: "Every time you wake up, take hold of the iron bar... You could get quite good at it after a while!" This is "the pointing-out instruction for the stupid state of complete oblivion," which only puts samsara on pause.
When thinking and perceiving both halt, the result is "utter oblivion", which "resembles the original cause of ignorance." The aim is to be "untainted by the perceiving mind and unspoiled by fixating on the perceived objects," while wakefulness continues. Any training meant to stop experience is the iron rod in disguise: "the ultimate stupidity!"
Empty Sensation
Prick yourself with a needle ("Do not use a knife; that's a little too risky!") and the thought "it hurts" follows the sensation. A corpse feels nothing; "if you want to be completely free from physical sensation, you need to die."
| Sense | In recognition | Not "vacant" |
|---|---|---|
| Eyes | Empty sights | Still seen |
| Ears | Empty sounds (resonance) | Still heard |
| Nose | Empty smell | Still smelled |
| Tongue | Empty taste | Still tasted |
| Body | Empty sensation | Still felt |
"Utterly awake, with the five senses wide open. Utterly open, with unfixating awareness." It is impossible to fixate while seeing the essence, yet there is knowing of whatever takes place. Zangtal is "precisely the opposite of an ordinary person's frame of mind."
Appearances Are a Magical Show
Longchenpa, Dharmadhatu Kosha: "When sentient beings look away from themselves, everything seems solid and concrete. When the yogi recognizes the utterly free state of rigpa, he knows that it is open like space, and the appearances of this world are a marvelous show." "If you want to know exactly what the nature of experience is, ask a drug taker": when it wears off, where are the hallucinations? "Where exactly did the dreams go the moment you woke up?"
"All these appearances are deceptive trickery. This relative reality is like a magical show. The rock behind my back is transparent." He passed through rock "not because he was so strong" but because "all fixation was brought to exhaustion." Such powers come only with stability in rigpa, "not by glimpsing the awakened state just once or twice."
An Indian magician conjured a palace and invited the Buddha and five hundred arhats to eat magical food. The Buddha ate as if he didn't know, dedicated the merit, and put a spell so it wouldn't dissolve. The magician begged forgiveness; the Buddha snapped his fingers and "the whole magical show collapsed." Samsara, nirvana, the path: all "like a magician's creation," as in the eight analogies of illusion.
Tilopa to Naropa: "Son, you are not bound by the perceived, but by clinging. So cut your clinging, Naropa." Once clinging is seen as rootless, "whatever you perceive can neither harm nor help."
Empty Things, Indestructible Emptiness
"I perceive this piece of wood here, so how can that be empty?" Because it can be burnt and its ashes blown away, it is already empty of inherent existence. Seven fires will consume the whole universe; "the empty space cannot be destroyed." Formation, remaining and disintegration prove emptiness. "Form is emptiness and emptiness also is form."
Things are empty because they can be destroyed. Mind's emptiness is empty because it cannot be: "can you burn it? Can you flush mind away? Can you somehow bury it underground?" "It's said that everything is empty, but the way of the Buddha is not to be empty of the kayas and wisdoms." Buddha nature transcends both being empty and not empty.
Nothing to See
Recognize the identity of that which wants "to do." "A thought-construct of emptiness is not useful. We need the natural emptiness." If the Buddha had said there was some "thing" to see, "you would be in trouble." It is not "like being possessed by a spirit"; in that same instant, the empty essence is seen, and "no thought remains." "Seeing no thing is the supreme sight."
Looking at objects you don't see mind, yet mind experiences them; so there is no need to chase it as an object. "Earth doesn't see water, water doesn't see fire." At the moment of recognizing, objects are of no consequence, and "there is no need to hold onto being the experiencer of a particular experience."
It is "like crossing a hundred rivers over one bridge," or one slash at a tree's root withering eighty-four thousand branches. "Knowing one frees all," but you can also "know a hundred while missing one." "Not knowing the thatness of mind, whatever you do is upside down."
Rigpa is like a mirror: it doesn't pursue reflections. It is the Dharmakaya Mother, Prajnaparamita, "not some sort of literal old lady." Short moments, repeated many times, until it is like reciting a mantra learned by heart: one initial thought, then "do you need to think twice at all?" The foremost level is from waking to sleeping, "without deliberately meditating at all, and yet being totally undistracted."
View and Conduct
Hope and fear seem unavoidable. "You need to distinguish between" view and conduct: they "should not simply be fused into one." The four mind-changings are all accepting and rejecting, "and there is nothing wrong with that." The ordinary mind is "black diffusion", an unbroken flow of negative thought.
| Error | What it looks like | Guru Rinpoche's warning |
|---|---|---|
| Losing the view in the conduct | Always accepting and rejecting good and evil | "You will never have the chance to be liberated" |
| Losing the conduct in the view | "Good is empty, evil is also empty... so what does it matter" | "You stray into black diffusion" |
| Correct | View free of hope and fear; conduct with hope and fear | "View as vast as the sky, conduct as fine as barley flour" |
"There is no equality until one leaves behind the impulse to accept and reject," since both are "two ways of grasping." But in conduct, "you must accept and reject; there is no other way." Accept the path of Dharma; reject the mundane patterns of life. The root of negative deeds is thought: attraction, aggression or dullness.
"Dharma mixed with worldly work is not the perfect Dharma, I'm sorry to say." Body and speech serve the mind; when mind is in the three poisons, deeds are evil. Combine view and conduct, but "don't mix them or lose one in the other."
Keep the senses open and the grasping off. Let the view be sky-wide and the conduct barley-fine.
Shamatha and Vipashyana
A student who stopped meditating finds distraction has increased. Tulku Urgyen clarifies: Buddhism never calls shamatha superfluous; what he criticised was mind-made peace taken as the goal. He contrasts ordinary and extraordinary shamatha and vipashyana, tells of a meditator frozen with a teakettle, warns of the formless realms, and comments line by line on a four-line verse on present wakefulness.
Why Shamatha Is Taught
"Cultivate shamatha; train in vipashyana." For a mind in "uninterrupted bewilderment," "like a drunken elephant or a crazy monkey," saying shamatha is unnecessary is "definitely not the correct way of teaching." Muddy water must clear before you see your face. Thoughts come only from empty cognizance: space and the elements don't think.
The general vehicles teach reliance on a support to counter our tendency to constantly fabricate; once attention steadies, "it is much easier to have pointed out that the attention's nature is empty cognizance." "But please remember that merely abiding... does not guarantee the recognition of the naked state." Train long enough and the mind will become quiet and still: "It will indeed, but that is not a liberated state."
Becoming quiet is "like a person learning how to sit down instead of roaming about bewildered." But watching him sit, you can't tell whether he is gentle and kind or crude and violent; that shows once his thoughts move again. Stillness reveals nothing of mind's true character, which is self-existing wakefulness.
All movement is empty movement. "Though an emotion is empty, it still seems to arise." To get carried away by a thought is the state of a sentient being; instead, recognize essence, nature and capacity, the three kayas, and remain in uncontrived naturalness for short moments, repeated many times.
"In one instant of remaining in unfabricated naturalness, a kalpa of negative karma is purified." In Tibetan, "training" and "meditating" sound alike: it is more familiarization than meditation. Seconds become half a minute, a minute, half an hour, hours, then the whole day.
Deluded by Quietude
"Being deluded by thought movement is not the only delusion; one can also be deluded by abiding in quietude." In shamatha there is an observer and an object observed, so "honestly, shamatha is also a training in blocking off emptiness." Any state that is a product of training is not liberation.
| Mind-made shamatha | Rigpa | |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Watcher and watched; something maintained | Free of watcher and watched |
| Ocean image | Waves forced flat, sediment still floating | No sediment remains |
| Latent tendencies | 80 innate thought states, 51 mental events not liberated | Self-liberated |
| Furthest result | Nirvana of an arhat, or the formless realms | Nondwelling complete enlightenment |
"The root of samsara is thought. The 'owner' of samsara is thought. Nevertheless, the very essence of thought is dharmakaya." Train in that essence, "the four parts without the three."
Shamatha "makes the mind used to and occupied with being quiet." It is "a product of a technique," a lot of effort spent fabricating a mind-made state, and "simply being able to remain quiet does not cause confusion to collapse." What Rinpoche criticises is "the idea that the stillness of mind free of thought is ultimately preferable or a goal in itself." Long stretches of complete tranquility are "not the same as true liberation." Earth mixed into water makes it dirty; "you don't attain enlightenment by shamatha alone."
Ordinary and Extraordinary
Pebble or breath as support involves duality. Dzogchen introduces the naked dharmakaya from the start, and "stillness is not absolutely necessary" only for the highest capacity. "It is not a general Dzogchen teaching to dispense with shamatha, not at all."
Ordinary shamatha and vipashyana: induced stillness followed by achieved insight. Extraordinary: "the shamatha and vipashyana that delights the tathagatas." Longchenpa's Treasury of Dharmadhatu: "The original nature, totally free of all thoughts, is the ultimate shamatha. Natural cognizance, spontaneously present like the radiance of the sun, is the vipashyana." "Similar words, different meanings."
In rigpa, intrinsic steadiness is shamatha and the awake quality is vipashyana. "Being free of thought while recognizing your essence is the indivisible unity." So when Rinpoche said "don't meditate," he meant mind-made meditation: "It was that kind of shamatha I told you to stop." In Dzogchen this is the recognition of rigpa; in Mahamudra, the innate suchness.
Seen the Moment You Look
"Seen the moment you look. Free the moment it's seen." When you find yourself looking at something seen, thought has arrived: apply "remindfulness," and the looker is dropped. (Rinpoche remains in rigpa as direct transmission.) There is total letting go and an unproduced awake quality, "like the radiant flame of a candle."
How far must your finger move to touch space? "At that moment, you are totally out of a job." Trying to keep or prolong it "only envelops it in more activity," which "we have been doing non-stop anyway, for countless lifetimes." Trekchö is like cutting through a string.
At a benefactor's house, a meditator carrying tea froze in the doorway, kettle in mid-air. Rinpoche's father said "let him be; if he drops the pot of boiling tea it would make a mess." At sunset he was gently called back: "What do you mean what happened? I am bringing the tea." He had experienced "nothing at all; it was totally vacant." A sustained serenity is not liberation.
"Don't meditate" doesn't mean frowning on years of training, which left "far fewer thoughts." To go beyond stillness, recognize the experiencer of the quiet: "the fixation on stillness disintegrates." "Shamatha taints the three kayas with work."
"Existence and peace, samsara and nirvana: we need to be free of both of these." Naked awareness is unimpeded, which is true freedom, and "not the mere absence of thought activity, as in induced serenity." Mind is "like a wish-fulfilling treasury": whatever you put it to, it produces, including a special thoughtfree state. The aspiration: "Not bewildered in samsaric existence, nor dwelling in the quiescent peace of nirvana, may we liberate all beings."
Safeguards: Three Excellences and the Formless Realms
Many regard the causes of the formless realms as true meditation. Dwelling on the idea of emptiness or clear quiet becomes habitual and seems effortless. You wake from "a long, beautiful stay," your body long dead: "I am not liberated in spite of everything, and all of this meditation was for nothing." That resentment becomes a cause for the lower realms.
The Buddha described a staircase: "Without jumping over any steps, proceed gradually to the end... just as a small child gradually develops its body." Some read "complete perfection" as Dzogchen. Even a fully enlightened buddha cannot avoid teaching nine gradual vehicles.
The Four-Line Verse
"Amazing: this unmade, present wakefulness is the true Samantabhadra from which you have never been apart for even an instant. While recognizing, let be in naturalness."
| Line | Commentary |
|---|---|
| "This unmade, present wakefulness" | (Rinpoche snaps his fingers.) Hearing happens because mind is in the body; a corpse hears nothing. Unmade is wood as a tree, not a table |
| "Is the true Samantabhadra" | Full mastery of the nature present in samsara and nirvana; your own present wakefulness realized |
| "Never apart for even an instant" | Like the sun and its rays; coemergent wisdom and ignorance like fire and smoke: rangjung yeshe |
| "While recognizing, let be in naturalness" | Beyond viewer and viewed; recognize, train, stabilize, like an infant growing to twenty-five |
Buddha nature is identical in Samantabhadra and a tiny insect; the difference is that a sentient being has no knowing of itself, so cognizance grasps at what is experienced. The paths and levels describe degrees of stability in recognition. "That is the whole teaching in a nutshell." After recognizing, we lose the continuity: "Losing the continuity, becoming distracted, is itself the state of delusion," and meditating on buddha nature as an object is "exactly what keeps us spinning through samsara."
Thamal gyi shepa, naked ordinary mind, is "neither worsened nor improved", the simplest term in Middle Way, Mahamudra or Dzogchen. "It is so close and it is so easy that most people find it impossible to trust that simply letting be is sufficient!" A gap appears between thoughts, and "sentient beings continuously close it up." Going beyond the three times is the "three gates of emancipation" of the sutras.
"Do not project outwardly, do not withdraw inwardly, don't place your wakefulness anywhere in between." Shamatha and vipashyana are "like learning the alphabet"; once meditation dissolves into your nature, it is "easier to see and easier to maintain."
"Never meditate, yet never lose it." Use shamatha as a foundation, never as the goal, and remind yourself, or "black diffusion" takes over again.
Transmuting Emotions
For desire, anger, jealousy, pride or dullness, "the principle of liberation... is exactly the same": recognize unconfined empty cognizance and the emotion dissolves. Tulku Urgyen sets out the three yanas' approaches through the tsenduk plant, explains why the deities are part of our nature, and answers questions on offerings to the four guests and the importance of aspirations.
One Principle for Five Poisons
"The moment of recognizing your mind is not an unconscious state, yet it is impossible for any normal disturbing emotion to remain within it." What is left is original wakefulness.
"When the thought of attachment towards a desired object occurs, do not suppress or encourage, but release into naked, aware emptiness. Without clinging to bliss, experience is awakened from within. That is called discriminating wisdom."
Theravada imagines the attractive person as a skeleton or rotten corpse. It works temporarily, but "it's like trying to dam up a river filled with dirty water": when it flows again, it is still impure. "Just like darkness cannot remain when the sun rises," no emotion endures in recognition.
"The empty cognizance is not something into which we have to transmute the emotion. The essence of the emotion is already this indivisible empty cognizance." Empty aspect, dharmakaya; cognizant aspect, sambhogakaya; indivisibility, nirmanakaya. An emotion is merely a motion of mind not knowing itself. "Knowing the three kayas as our nature, we are enlightened. Being overpowered by the three poisons, we roam in samsara."
If you haven't recognized, at least practise the three pure notions of deity, mantra and samadhi.
Desire and Renunciation
Even insects, dogs and pigs want pleasure. "Without any children, samsara would be emptied": a partner, then children who need food, shelter, clothing, schooling, "a constant source of worry and distraction." So the Buddha first taught monks and nuns, in the Pratimoksha, to avoid distraction. Ten virtues bring a higher rebirth but not liberation; hence Mahayana and Vajrayana, "the swift path."
"The essence of the five poisons is space and wisdom," another way of saying unconfined empty cognizance. All three yanas describe ways of dealing with emotions: abandoning, transforming, recognizing. The basis of negative emotions is thought; the essence of thought is dharmakaya. Everything is formed out of emptiness and dissolves into emptiness, so even earth, water, fire and wind "always were" empty.
The Tsenduk Plant
| Yana | Approach | With the poisonous root |
|---|---|---|
| Hinayana | Abandoning | Puts a big stone on the shoot |
| Mahayana | Changing | Pulls the shoot up by the root |
| Vajrayana | Recognizing | Uses it as medicine to cure disease |
"It is never taught on any level that one can be an enlightened buddha while remaining involved in disturbing emotions, never." The difference is method. Tsenduk is Tibet's strongest poison and one of the strongest medicines.
"To be able to transform poison into medicine, you definitely need pith instructions." Desire not embraced by any method "just perpetuates unwholesome karma." "Nobody has to teach a dog or a pig how to copulate... It is only human beings that seem to have to be taught." Recognition is "the single antidote", but only if actually recognized.
Deities, Impermanence and the Bardo
Some deny the deities, but they are "the qualities of spontaneous presence" within primordial purity, appearing in Tögal and the bardo. Maha and Anu teach that they abide in the body, "the mandala of the victorious ones."
The perceived is impermanent: all will burn in the great fire at the end of the kalpa. The perceiver, empty cognizance, is not. "If our nature were empty of kayas and wisdoms, the attainment of enlightenment would be nothing but a void... what would be the use of pursuing buddhahood, if it was impermanent and would only be lost again?" Space cannot be destroyed but "has no innate qualities."
The bardo consciousness keeps every aggregate except form; the five aggregates must become the five buddhas, form into Vairochana, only by realizing the three kayas. Without recognizing, "even if you had the tongue to chant the whole Tripitaka a million times in one day, you still wouldn't become enlightened."
Offerings to the Four Guests
| Guest | Who | How the offering is held | Invitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Respected | Three Jewels | From the bottom, raised as an ocean of sense pleasures | "Please approach" |
| Qualified | Protectors and guardians | Respectfully | "Assemble here" |
| Pitiful | All sentient beings | Held in the middle, given at an even level | |
| Obstructing | Spirits, karmic creditors | From the top, a finger in, thrown on the ground | "Come right here and take this!" |
Wisdom beings dwell in the Akanishtha of dharmadhatu, "immaterial, unmanifest," and appear by your mere thought. You don't imagine their clothes, just as a dinner guest comes dressed. Rahula and Ekajati may be invoked "from your natural abode," which means the cognizant nature indivisible from the empty essence.
Aspirations
Without aspiration, good karma ripens as fleeting pleasure. Many humans have the result of virtue but little spiritual interest. Visitors spend money and difficulty to reach Nagi Gompa because past virtue was "combined with pure aspirations." Practitioners are "as few as stars in the morning sky."
"I will never give up spiritual practice! I may not progress very quickly, but I will never turn back!" The Three Jewels will never fail you, "not in this life, not in the bardo, and not in future lives." The noble Sangha carries the buddhas' family line; the "resembling sangha" in red robes still deserves respect. Rinpoche teases: "As long as the mind continues to get involved there is no end to the number of vehicles."
Don't suppress, don't uproot, don't transform: recognize. Seal every good act with an aspiration and keep a steady pace.
Buddha Offsprings
Why short moments, many times? Because trying to prolong recognition makes it conceptual. Tulku Urgyen explains rangjung yeshe, the two sides of one hand, sunlit space, the dividing line between samsara and nirvana, and the "old mother and old father" of whom all buddhas and beings are offspring. He ends with a sharp case for trusting the Buddha's words before life runs out.
Short Moments, Many Times
"Recognition of buddha nature is not a 'thing' that we can hold onto and maintain." "If we try to prolong the moment, it only results in a state of conceptual mind. Short moments are free of conceptual mind." Rangjung means not the outcome of effort; yeshe is original wakefulness, never lost.
"The essence of all his Seven Treasuries can be captured in this phrase: 'short moments, many times.'" Short ensures "it is the real, authentic naturalness"; many times builds familiarity. Do not try to keep the state of naturalness; it will be self-kept as the natural outcome of your growing familiarity with it.
Uncontrived naturalness sounds like something to do, but "it is the opposite of doing." We have practised "negative meditation" of distraction life after life. The doubt "Is this it? Maybe not?" is why recognition lacks stability. Like pointing into mid-air, "you are already touching space, all the time."
"Because of our habit developed from countless past lives to always do something, the moment of nondoing... doesn't last long." That is "just how it is," and there is not much to do about it initially. "Rather than sitting for long periods only a few times a day, it's better to do short moments throughout the day." Ideas like "I must keep natural, now I must not fabricate" are "always mixed with a conceptual attitude." Relaxed and let go in the moment of recognizing, and when it slips, simply repeat it.
Space is the example because it is unmade, but "space cannot think." Our mind is "empty like space, but with a natural knowing." Yeshe "does not appear or disappear"; it is the same whether you are a buddha... or a sentient being. In beings, it is "overtaken by hope and fear... distracted, contrived, disturbed."
Two Sides of One Hand
| Image | Dualistic mind | Rigpa |
|---|---|---|
| Nagi Gompa electricity | Power cuts, load-shedding | Continuous like a river's flow |
| Glass | Obstructed | Transparent window |
| The hand | Back of the hand: samsara, not evident | Palm: three times seen like lines on your palm |
| Knowledge | Can't know tomorrow or other places | Complete clairvoyance |
"Sentient beings and buddhas do not have two minds; they are two sides of the same hand." Rigpa is intrinsic; every samsaric state is "superfluous, extraneous."
When there is knowing, all the qualities of the buddhas are fully present, "like when the light is turned on." When there is ignorance and conceptual thinking, "the original state kind of slips." "While we are in actuality not separated from rigpa for even one instant, it's the lack of knowing that makes the division." Intrinsic wakefulness and intrinsic ignorance are the two aspects.
Settling, Then Seeing Through
Settling is still mental activity, "trying to create a state of stillness." But it helps: when quiet, "recognize what is it that feels quiet." "When recognizing the insubstantial nature of the abider, one becomes free of abiding. That is the vipashyana aspect." Vipashyana "does not require any effort." "Shamatha keeps the mind employed... Leave the mind unemployed."
Both buddhas and beings are empty, cognizant and self-existing. The difference is "suffused with knowing" versus "suffused with unknowing." "Sentient beings are busy fabricating" through hope and fear; "Distracted is a sentient being; undistracted is a buddha." The essence is empty as fire is hot. We need not make it empty or cognizant.
"Right now I am explaining this to you so you can get the idea... The next step is for you to experience." Intellectual understanding is not enough: "you need to actually taste it, and finally realize it. Train till it becomes uninterrupted!" Otherwise we may think enlightenment is manufactured, "maybe a teacher gives it to us, or perhaps we produce it through many years of practice. It is not like that." The bottom line: mind essence is "empty, cognizant, self-existing, suffused with knowing." Nondoing itself is the training, "the opposite of our usual habit."
Sunlit Space
Even when we can't see the sun, "it has not left space." "Just like darkness cannot remain when there is sunlight, or a hair cannot remain in the fire," karma and emotions cannot remain in recognition. Not recognizing, the perceiving mind becomes the traveler through four kinds of birth.
As a child, Rinpoche lived near a pond where monks and nuns threw their cut hair after three-year retreat. Weeks later it was full of worms. He thought they grew out of the hair; actually it was birth from heat and moisture. Each worm has buddha nature and feels pain and pleasure; with teachings, they too would become buddhas.
The Treasury of Dharmadhatu: "The original essence is like the radiant sun, naturally luminous and primordially unformed." Buddhas and bodhisattvas have cut thought at its very arising and attained stability. "Caught up in dualistic grasping at the perceived and fixating on the perceiver, we become sentient beings." By not hoping or fearing, we arrive at the original essence; the wisdom of equality is that natural luminosity, "free of accepting and rejecting."
The Shallow Peak of Shamatha
Without proper guidance one may say: "Wow, I can stay still for long, long periods... I even have clairvoyant powers... There is nobody who has reached as high a state as I have." Even "I'm enlightened!" "Infatuation with temporary attainments is not true realization." "It is not all right to let simplicity be fettered by complexity."
Buddha nature seems to arise, dwell and cease: it seems to come into this body, dwell somewhere you can't pinpoint (brain, heart, fingertips), and cease at death. A tantra: "Although the essence of all buddhas is beyond arising, dwelling and ceasing, it acts as if it arises, dwells and ceases."
The Dividing Line
Samsara is the six classes; nirvana the buddhas and buddhafields. The three vajras pervade both; in suffering they are experienced as the three poisons. "If we sleep, we dream... Since the buddhas never fell asleep, they are not dreaming."
| Sense contact | Reaction | Poison |
|---|---|---|
| Beautiful object, sweet sound | We like it | Desire, attachment |
| Ugly object, harsh sound | We dislike it | Anger, aversion |
| Neutral | We ignore it | Dullness |
"The dividing-line between samsara and nirvana is basically between knowing and not knowing." "Right now we are at the dividing point." Dharmakaya like space, sambhogakaya like sunlight, nirmanakaya like a rainbow: "Without space, how could the sun shine?"
Medicine, science, engineering, cars, airplanes, law: "the old story of samsara." At death they give "not even as much as a hair-tip of assistance." The Kangyur and Tengyur would take over a hundred years to master; condensed, "recognize your own nature. That's it." "Sift all teachings like flour" and nothing is superior.
Old Mother, Old Father
The empty quality is Samantabhadri, the Great Dharmakaya Mother (also Vajra Varahi, Jetsün Tara). The cognizant quality is Samantabhadra (also Vajradhara, Vajrasattva), "our old dad." Their offspring are all buddhas and the beings of the six realms. "Unfortunately, we have not stood by our mom and dad."
Mahamudra, Dzogchen, the Great Middle Way, Prajnaparamita lead home, like reaching Bodhgaya from four directions. There is no Kagyü, Sakya, Gelug or Nyingma enlightenment: "different words, same meaning."
Do We Dare Trust the Buddha?
We don't see buddhafields above or lower realms below; "does that mean that they don't exist?" Using our ignorant state as the valid measure "doesn't add up to much." "Did anybody ever return from lower realms? The answer is yes!" The Buddha saw it clearly.
Some say "I haven't made up my mind what path to follow, I need to think about this for myself." "If we could just think about it a hundred percent ourselves... then why wouldn't all sentient beings be enlightened?" The Buddha was clairvoyant with unimpeded wisdom: "that should be sufficient." Rinpoche admits: "Honestly, there is not much other choice."
"I will take my time, I will think about it slowly." Years scrutinizing, then finding a teacher, and "we may find we are already fifty years old." Half the rest is sleep. "Please let me have a slightly longer lifespan... Unfortunately, our life won't listen." Paltrül Rinpoche: "When young, we were controlled by others... as adults, we chased desirable things... Now that we are old, our strength is gone... Alas, alas, what to do?"
After birth, sickness, aging and dying comes "the pain of being helplessly lost in the bardo," and in the lower realms "not even one single moment of pleasure." "We may know this quite well right now, but don't we still fool ourselves?" Like voyagers on an island of jewels we stand with our arms crossed.
We will depart "as cleanly as a hair is drawn out of butter," helpless in the bardo. The three poisons, "when consented to, take the life of liberation." "The lord of the three poisons is our mind, and the servant is our body and voice."
Recognize briefly, often, without grasping. Trust the Buddha's report and start now; life won't wait for your deliberations.
The Highway of the Victorious Ones
"Uncontrived ordinary mind is the highway of all the victorious ones." Tulku Urgyen describes perseverance like a river, the two ignorances, the "whiff" of buddha nature caught in pointing-out, and the great equality in joy and sorrow. He then explains samaya, the four king-like samayas of Dzogchen, digpa, dribpa and bagchag, "baby rigpa" and the view of no viewing.
Perseverance Like a River
"Is there ever any second when the Ganges River does not flow?" Nobody pushes or pulls it. Or a taut bowstring: never tighter, never slacker. Not struggling hard one day and giving up the next.
"Undistracted means not forgetting. Nonmeditation means not contriving, not imagining." The steadiness comes from not being distracted, and that is not something we have to force, because it is nonmeditation. "Recognize" literally means "meeting your nature head-on."
"How is it possible to exert oneself without fluctuation?" Because there is no doing of deliberate meditation to tire of. "If you keep at it, at a certain point your training becomes like the steady, unbroken flow of a river." Recognizing is stressed so much because without it you are always caught up in thought: for it, against it, or indifferent.
The Two Villains
Without recognition, attention runs in "black diffusion," "like a great muddy river," chasing "the tail of thoughts." "Without buddha nature, you would have no chance whatsoever."
| Ignorance | What it does | Remedy |
|---|---|---|
| Coemergent ignorance | "Simply forgetting our natural state": losing track | Recognize again |
| Conceptualizing ignorance | Forming thoughts about what is now experienced | They "vanish without a trace" in recognition |
"These two nasty demons fool all sentient beings," yet they come from nowhere but our own lack of knowing, "just like your own shadow."
"Until that happens, try remaining in natural awareness. Isn't it true that after a moment the two ignorances arrive? Again recognize, and they vanish." In the moment of seeing no "thing" to see, "you no longer need the duality of something seen and someone that sees." This unity is nonmeditation because it is not created; nondistraction is added, and the moments of rigpa last longer and longer.
"Nothing whatever, but everything arises from it. To this meditator who experiences an unceasing play grant your blessings so that I realize the inseparability of samsara and nirvana. Grant your blessings so that my meditation is free from conception." "Nothing whatever": not a speck of dust of concept. "Everything arises": cognizance, like a bright mirror.
Don't Pre-Meditate the Nature
"Don't ever think, 'All right, I'll recognize, but it has to look a certain way'", or "The nature of mind must be more special than this," or "Now it is cognizant! Or is it?" The guidance texts say: abandon all preconceptions the moment you recognize.
"Can we make up mind essence? Is it an entity that can be imagined and then kept in mind? Try to imagine that which is utterly empty; it is impossible, right?" Likewise cognizance. Meditation that imagines mind essence becomes "one's invention."
A bird once caught in a children's trap stays on guard: it lands, takes one bite and jumps up in fear. Practice can be like that: "Oops, this is not it... the buddha mind must be totally different from this." That apprehension drives a constant effort to create something other than immediate empty cognizance.
Catching the Scent
Teaching moves from expedient and definitive meaning to the pointing-out instruction. A carnivore must first catch the smell of the deer. "Once we smell it, we do not have to speculate so much about it anymore." Before the scent, analysis is fine.
Emptiness, cognizance and their unity are original: "It is not that we need to create the unity through practice." The training is not losing track. It becomes automatic like chanting the Düsum Sangye supplication, "imprinted in the all-ground." "You do not need to congratulate yourself every single time, 'Wow, now I recognize the unity.'"
The scent of dharmakaya: no thing to see. Of sambhogakaya: still there is knowing. Of nirmanakaya: the two are indivisible. "Just keep on sniffing it, like tracking down prey in the mountains. It's quite wonderful, isn't it?"
Great Equality
"This single nondoing outshines all deeds." The 84,000 emotions all need a doer and a deed; "you cannot relinquish one thought by grasping onto another." One axe-stroke at the trunk brings the whole tree crashing down.
When things go well people get "so overjoyed that their hat falls off their head." When they go badly, they weep miserably. Recognizing, "what's the big deal?" Samsara becomes "quite delightful, with a sense of great equality." "This recognition is thus your best friend in both joy and sorrow."
Samsara has a fickle nature: "Second by second, everything changes. In this essence, though, there is no thing that changes." "Life is not that great if you have to remain as a totally samsaric person."
Samaya
The Yeshe Kuchog: don't drink water in the same valley as a samaya violator. "Honestly, though, we do not know who is a samaya corrupter." The Buddha: "Only I and someone like me can know another." Masters immune to weapons died on contact with a samaya violator. Anyone who meets a true practitioner won't go to the lower realms.
An old man told a lama: "When you talk about the benefits of the Dharma... even this old sinner will probably be safe... But when you speak of the effects of evil deeds, I will surely go to hell. In fact, I wonder if even you might not be in trouble!" Repair is possible: the hundred-syllable mantra with recognition melts defilements "like snowflakes falling onto a hot stone"; without it, snow on cold water freezes into ice.
| Samaya | With oneself | With the guru |
|---|---|---|
| Body | Own form as the yidam | Don't injure his form; value his body and how he feels |
| Speech | Chant mantra | Don't disobey or belittle his words |
| Mind | Recognize mind essence | Don't displease his mind |
These include all the hundred thousand sections. Turning against the master who gave deity, mantra and samadhi is "an immense display of ingratitude."
The Four King-like Samayas
| Practice | Samaya | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Trekchö (kadak) | Nonexistence ("devoidness") | Empty essence, unconstructed, pure like space |
| Trekchö | Pervasiveness | Undistracted continuity, "arching over or encompassing all" |
| Tögal (lhundrub) | Spontaneous presence | The apparent aspect (nangcha) unfolding from pure space |
| Tögal | Oneness | Indivisibility of kadak and lhundrub, of space and wakefulness |
When rigpa is uninterrupted, one "transcends the borderline between keeping and breaking the samayas." "The moment we are caught up in dualistic mind, there are definitely samayas to keep and samayas that can be broken... Until that point, however, there definitely are samayas to keep. Please don't misunderstand this point."
Digpa, Dribpa, Bagchag
| Term | Meaning | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Digpa | Misdeed: stealing, lying, killing | Creates negative karma |
| Dribpa | Obscuration, veil | The walls of this room |
| Bagchag | Habitual tendency, most subtle | The dream: intangible yet experienced |
None can essentially obscure our nature: "The very instant you recognize... it is again seen as being totally and utterly pure." Then we get caught again: "There is no point in pretending otherwise!" Mindfulness is "like putting a hook in a piece of meat"; watchfulness is subtler; awakeness subtler still. Sem is involvement in the three times, rigpa uninvolvement.
"Empty" here means "primordially unformed, not made out of any cause or condition." "Cognizant" means "while being empty, the capacity to know is spontaneously present." "Undivided" means the two "have always been an indivisible unity." When letting be, "you do not have to unite and fuse together emptiness and cognizance: they are already a unity."
Hit the Anvil
Kham saying: "Swing the hammer around in the air, but hit the spot on the anvil." All of Sutra and Tantra strike one point: "undivided empty cognizance suffused with knowing." Not knowing is like a man who throws his wish-fulfilling jewel behind him and makes wishes before a fake gem.
"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. When not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."
"The level of recognition we are at now is called baby rigpa." It is real rigpa but "not capable of conducting itself or functioning fully." It must grow to seventeen, eighteen or nineteen, independent: stability. "For that to happen, we need to train repeatedly."
View of No Viewing
"See the view of no viewing. Train in the meditation with nothing meditated upon. Carry out the conduct of nondoing. Achieve the fruition in which there is no thing attained." From shravakas up to Anu Yoga there are principles to grasp and results to achieve; Ati only acknowledges what is present. "Why imagine being empty what is already empty?" Abandon the ninefold activities: "Being free from deeds and doings, you have arrived at nondoing." Like a sutra's closing "Hereby... is completed," in recognition all vehicles are perfected.
"Great Perfection means that our nature itself is already fully perfect." We don't make the empty essence pure (it is primordially pure), don't make it cognizant (it is spontaneously perfected), and don't fabricate the all-pervasive capacity. "Honestly, how could you possibly create the empty essence or cognizant nature?... Train in this effortlessness!"
Catch the scent, then keep sniffing. Steady as a river, keep samaya while dualistic, and let baby rigpa grow by repetition.
Mingling Practice with Daily Life
In the Sutra system, sessions are like space and breaks like magical illusion. In Mahamudra, Dzogchen and the Middle Way, there is no essential split: "being undistracted is the session; being distracted is the break." Tulku Urgyen covers the toddler learning to walk, King Ignorance and his ministers, clearing a forceful emotion in a second, and why rigpa is like mercury.
Sessions and Breaks
| Sutra system | Mahamudra, Dzogchen, Middle Way | |
|---|---|---|
| Session | Free of constructs, like space | Lasts until one is distracted |
| Break | Like the eight analogies of illusion; remind yourself "This is nothing but a dream" | Distraction itself |
| Method | Two trainings, one for each | One training whether sitting, walking, eating, talking, lying down |
The eight analogies: magic, echo, mirage, reflection, city of gandharvas, dream, rainbow, moon in water. A magician's people, creatures and buildings are experienced but nonexistent: "all our daily reality is like that."
"I am not saying that this view is good while the views of the lower vehicles are bad; but there is a difference in the extent to which the view is mixed with concept." "This is probably emptiness" and "This is all a magical illusion" are still concepts. Clinging to a concept is "like a bird that flaps its wings and tries to fly but cannot, because it's bound by a chain."
Any long stretch of meditation now "cannot be anything other than an imitation." Like school, all training is difficult first, then easier. "The view is rigpa, the meditation training is rigpa, and the conduct is rigpa." "The chief characteristic of samsara is distraction."
"Our minds have been under the power of dualistic grasping and fixation for so long that we have taken the nondual for a duality." We have trained in the opposite of recognizing in all our past lives; now "we must change this habit into the habit of recognizing mind essence." Habitual tendencies are like covers; they can be removed. Once stable, "space and awareness have mingled."
Many Names, One Meaning
| Tradition | Name for present wakefulness |
|---|---|
| General | Rangjung yeshe, self-existing wakefulness |
| Mahamudra | The view of Mahamudra |
| Middle Way | Ultimate truth |
| Prajnaparamita | Transcendent knowledge |
| Dzogchen | "The immaculate dharmakaya of empty awareness" |
"Do not reconnect anything to the present wakefulness. Do not accept or reject. Do not affirm or deny." Words are needed: "If you just sit and make wordless gestures like a mute, we would not get the point!"
Saraha: "Abandoning the thinker and what is thought of, experience like a thoughtfree child." The ordinary mind: "This is a cup. There is a lid. There are a lot of designs on it. There is a little tea left." The yogi recognizes the mind that sees the cup: "When concepts of both subject and object fall apart, samsara has ceased."
"There is no awakening through doing." Your own mind fetters you by attaching concepts to whatever is perceived. The ordinary view is "the incessant creation of thought, day and night." A small child has few concepts but doesn't see its nature, or has no confidence in it; that is the difference from a yogi.
Learning to Walk
At that point "you can sit together with Buddha Samantabhadra in the dharmakaya palace of Akanishtha." Benefit for beings is automatic: "you don't have to make the sun warm and brilliant." Glory (shri, palden): dharmakaya for oneself, rupakaya for others.
"A thought is simply the extroverted expression of knowing." Recognizing what thinks, "there is no way for a thought to remain, just as a drop of water cannot remain in mid-air." So no suppression, no correction, no hope or fear: "the confidence of the view is free of hope and fear." Don't ever expect anything spectacular; honestly, there is nothing more amazing than this recognition of rigpa in which no thought can remain.
"A true yogi is someone who is happy when sick and delighted when dying," because at death wakefulness soars like a garuda into the dharmakaya kingdom. "Right now, sentient beings have captured the kingdom of stupidity!"
King Ignorance
| Rank | Who |
|---|---|
| King | Ignorance |
| Five ministers | The five poisons |
| Deputies | 21 unvirtuous mental events, 80 innate thought states |
| Subjects | 84,000 disturbing emotions |
"We all live in his kingdom, and think it is just great!" At death mind goes on "like a hair pulled out of butter." Khampa proverb: "It doesn't help to join your palms in reverence while you are falling over backwards."
"Along the path of distraction, the Mara bandits lie in ambush." "The real Mara is this mind being distracted." "Obstructers are your own thoughts." Without "the watchman named mindfulness," recognition stays a short glimpse. Without reminding, "we are actually zombies... all sentient beings are like walking corpses." (Rinpoche laughs.)
There is ultimately no other solution than short moments repeated many times, sitting or walking. As familiarity grows, the moments last longer and the gaps of non-recognition become "shorter and shorter, fewer and fewer," until "one continuous, unbroken stretch of original wakefulness": complete enlightenment. "This mindfulness or 'remindfulness' is the very heart of Dharma practice."
Clearing a Forceful Emotion
"The very root of emotion is your attention in motion." Recognize where it moves from, and anger or desire dissolves at that instant, not forever but completely in that moment. Repeat, and the tendency weakens.
"Within thought, I discover nonthought. Within nonthought, I discover original wakefulness." Rub a dusty mirror with a needle tip and a bit of mirror shows; the more you rub, the clearer. Once learned for one thought, it is like "etcetera" in a puja text: you don't reread every line.
Does it work on very strong emotions? "The solution works regardless of the strength of the particular emotion." We're "just getting our bearings." "Touching horns": seeing no thing is agreeing with the Buddha, who said "Emptiness has no form, no sound..." "Do not extend it intentionally; do not cut it short either."
Mercury and Water
Water poured on dirt becomes mud; mercury "remains intact, pristine." Rigpa is not caught in object, sense organ or perceiving mind: "immaculate dharmakaya." Imprints that don't dissolve (like the memory of a song) mean we lack stability, or have "a resemblance of rigpa that is mixed with dualistic mind."
In every sentient being there is mind, and its essence, known or not, is rigpa. Sem, like water, has no innate stability: poured on earth, it seeps in completely. A true yogi abandons the dualistic frame of mind while allowing rigpa to remain when sem falls away.
The great female master touched every head with the same words: "May you recognize the essence of mind." Never "May you recognize mind." Semchen (sentient being) is one caught in sem; rigpa dzinpa (vidyadhara) one who masters rigpa.
Make every activity the session. Recognize the mover of each emotion, rub the mirror again, and let rigpa stay unmixed like mercury.
Doubt
A student asks how to deal with doubt, and Tulku Urgyen answers with one move repeated in many forms: doubt is just another thought, so recognize the doubter. Along the way he covers the light bulb and the darkness, the walk to Bodhgaya, meeting the three kayas by searching for arising, dwelling and ceasing, space versus emptiness, and the key distinction of sherab and namtog within rigpa.
Doubt Is Another Thought
"Until you reach the first bhumi, you are still an ordinary person and you will sometimes experience doubt." It takes many shapes: "Am I mistaking what isn't for what is?" or "Maybe there is something better, something unchanging, that I still need to discover." Some doubts go on for days: "Maybe I should go to India, anywhere else but here."
"Is there any doubt that is separate from thought? It is simply another thought." Rather than intellectual answers or a separate antidote, "use the doubting itself as its own remedy." Recognize the nature of that which doubts, the identity of that which thinks. Then doubt cannot remain "like some sort of lump suspended in mid-air."
"We create thoughts, and we create the remedy. The ultimate remedy is to not fabricate anything at all." Nor think "I don't want to be bothered by doubt": "That is merely another thought."
| Approach to doubt | What happens |
|---|---|
| Argue it out intellectually | More thought, more samsara |
| Apply a separate antidote | A made-up remedy for a made-up problem |
| Push it away | "Merely another thought" |
| Recognize the doubter | No thing to see; doubt vanishes, confidence grows |
Light and Darkness
Rigpey yeshe, "the wakefulness of knowing," is like a lit bulb: "You cannot have unknowing where there is knowing." You don't throw out the thought and bring in rigpa; "That would be just another fabrication." "The looser you are, the easier it is to see your nature. The tighter you are, the more hidden it gets."
The road goes uphill, downhill, level. "If you do not give up and continue walking, you'll reach there at some point." The body of five aggregates and twelve sense-bases is in constant flux; regardless, "keep on training" in "undistracted nonmeditation, without even as much as a dust mote to meditate upon."
"Short moments, many times; like collecting water from the eaves of the roof." (Rinpoche snaps his fingers three times.) A beginner's recognition lasts a few seconds, and that is not a problem. Long shamatha sessions flicker between agitation and dullness.
"Transcendent knowledge is beyond thought, word and description. It neither arises nor ceases, like the identity of space. It is the domain of individual, self-knowing wakefulness." "Even scientists cannot figure it out." He teases: "It would be easier if buddha nature would talk to you and say 'This is what I am, right here; have no doubt about me.' But buddha nature doesn't speak to you!"
Meeting the Three Kayas
Thoughts are momentary: a new one forms, the previous vanishes. Rigpa is "totally unceasing; it is not blocked by any of the three times." Dzogchen stresses a key preparation: resolving arising, dwelling and ceasing.
| Search | Discovery | Meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Where does thinking come from? | No source, "nonarising" | Dharmakaya |
| Where does it remain? Inside, outside, in the world? | Nondwelling | Sambhogakaya |
| Where does it go? | Nowhere | Nirmanakaya |
"Space is empty, while mind is emptiness." The "-ness", like the "-ta" in shunyata, "always refers back to the quality of cognizant wakefulness." Proof of knowing: a corpse's eyes don't see; "Isn't it certain that it is only mind that can know?" Cognizance is not "a radiant 'thing'" but "a quality of being vividly wide awake."
"So: exactly where is your doubt, anyway? Please tell me its location." Perhaps "there should be some entity called mind, maybe a round lump somewhere, and I missed seeing it." The capacity is blocked only by being knocked out with an iron bar; "Ironically, sentient beings are doing something very similar to that by training in being mindless." Samantabhadra's aspiration: "Untainted by mindless gloom." Rigpa is like the Ganges and the sun: never stopped, "never forsaken you for even an instant."
Nothing to See
"If we asked a hundred different people what they see when recognizing mind essence, each and every one of them would have to say there is nothing to see." People get disappointed, assuming they missed something. A shravaka asked "What does suchness look like?"; the Buddha: "Look at space."
"To think, 'Now it is empty, it is empty' - such formulated emptiness is totally useless." "One may be intelligent and still miss it by misconstruing emptiness." Affirming "Now I got what is meant by unity" and taking that for the training is "merely fooling yourself with thought." "If we think of something in order to make it so, it is the same as holding hands with samsara."
Eventually: "like arriving on an island made entirely of gold": you look for ordinary stones (thoughts) and find none. Until then, "be diligent and persevere, not in meditating, but in being undistracted." "Meditate, meditate - that idea has fooled us from the beginning."
The 84,000 emotions boil down to 51 mental events in the aggregate of formations. Streams converge under one bridge: seeing that what thinks is dharmakaya vanquishes all of them at once. Qualities aren't "milked" by "macho striving"; "Our meditating covers up what is spontaneously present."
"That which sees itself is awareness." Without it, "there would be no knowing that there is no thing to see." Rangjung Dorje: "The fact that there is nothing to see is vividly seen as it is." The Buddha: "When mind looks into mind, not seeing is the true seeing." Machig Labdrön to the demon: "Even I don't see you. Even the buddhas of the three times don't see you."
Sherab and Namtog
Rigpa is not oblivious; its natural expression (rang-tsal) moves as sherab (insight) or namtog (thought). "The expression moving as sherab is liberated. The expression moving as namtog is confused."
"I cannot emphasize this enough - there is no thought during the state of rigpa!" "A hair cannot remain in a flame." Thinking begins only after marigpa sets in. Recognizing almost simultaneously with the thought is "arising from yourself and being freed into yourself," which makes rigpa seem almost continuous. "You do not have to ring the bell again to have the sound continue."
"Don't meditate; don't get distracted. Don't be too fond of being in doubt." Doubt is a thought: recognize the doubter, see no thing, and keep walking to Bodhgaya.
The Heart of Training
Four lines by Vairotsana hold "the heart of all view, meditation and conduct." Tulku Urgyen unpacks them through dharmadhatu as basic space, day and night as one sky, and Samantabhadra as Changeless Light. He then gives a working day: the three excellences, the four sessions that equalize buddhahood, frank advice on retreat with a family, how to run a Trekchö gomdra, and the three essential points of rigpa.
Vairotsana's Four Lines
"Within the inconceivable naked state of dharmadhatu, place ineffable awareness undistractedly. If a thought arises, it arises out of yourself and dissolves into yourself. There is no basic view, meditation or instruction superior to this."
The author's root guru taught these lines at the retreat center above Lachab Gompa in Nangchen, while giving Yabka and Yumka empowerments, termas of the first Jamgön Kongtrül. Explaining that Kongtrül was an emanation of Vairotsana, he wept for 20 or 30 minutes, began again, broke down again. "I had never seen this happen before; he never lost himself in devotion like that." The empowerments ran into mid-afternoon.
Ying is dhatu, the naked state of basic space: "unconstructed, with no beginning, no present and no end... beyond cause or condition." "We have never been apart from unconstructed space, not for even one instant." Not knowing this is marigpa; knowing it with natural cognizance is rigpa.
| Aspect | Symbol | Kaya |
|---|---|---|
| Basic space | Samantabhadri | Dharmakaya |
| Wakefulness of knowing | Samantabhadra | Sambhogakaya |
| Acknowledging their unity | The couple in union | Nirmanakaya |
One Sky, Day and Night
Unrecognized, "dharmata gets overtaken by dharmas": perceived objects, a perceiving mind, thoughts, emotions, karma. Recognized, "conditioned dharmas dissolve into dharmata."
Two terms, one basic space, sometimes dark, sometimes light. By day, darkness is latent; by night, light is latent. So rigpey yeshe "does not disappear or is irretrievably lost; it is only latent during dualistic mind." For the Primordial Buddha there is no duality of samsara and nirvana; for us, "there is definitely day and night."
"If a thought arises, it arises out of yourself and dissolves into yourself": like drawing on water, the drawing and its dissolving are simultaneous, like a bird's track in the sky. "No view superior to this": recognizing rigpa is view, meditation, conduct and fruition in one sweep. Nyamshak, the word for meditation, means equality, composure: no accepting or rejecting.
"When observing objects, they are seen to be the mind, devoid of objects. When observing the mind, there is no mind, as it is empty of an entity. When observing both, dualistic fixation is spontaneously freed. May we realize the luminous nature of mind." "Luminous" means empty yet cognizant: "unconfined empty cognizance suffused with knowing."
"Giving up doer and deed, rest in nondoing." Can you find where space came from, abides, or goes? That is "nonaction." Yet if mind were only empty, there could be no pleasure and pain, buddhafields or hells; their possibility "proves that mind is both empty and cognizant." "It is all like a dream. We have not yet woken up from the deep sleep of ignorance."
Once fully stable, "samsara has totally vanished into nirvana and there is neither distraction during day nor confusion during night. There is only one - the oneness of rigpa." The basis for equanimity is present wakefulness, without which "we would be corpses." "It is not your mind from yesterday or from last night, tomorrow or next month. It is this very moment, right now. Where is it? Can you find it?"
Pressing the Switch
Recognizing is like turning on the light: "It doesn't come on unless you press the switch... This is exactly what sentient beings never do." A glimpse not acknowledged "turns into the indifferent state of the all-ground." Your immediate, natural, present wakefulness is itself the true Samantabhadra. His name, Changeless Light, means "rigpa lives in a house of light," a mansion of the five buddha families.
A Day of Practice
- Refuge in the Three Jewels: the heart of Hinayana.
- Bodhichitta, "May all sentient beings... be brought to complete enlightenment!": the heart of Mahayana.
- Body as deity, voice as mantra, mind recognized: OM MANI PADMA HUNG, the Vajra Guru mantra, TADYATHA OM MUNI MUNI, or simply OM AH HUNG SVAHA, "the essence of all sugatas."
- Dedicate the merit every day, every evening, every morning.
"Do not follow up the present thought with a new one. This is what all sentient beings do." Without adding, "the link is broken" and "that moment is free of the three times."
| Session | Name | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Day | Naturally sealing experience | Breath slightly exhaled ("a sitar with the strings broken"); mind like a water-wheel with the flow diverted; watch "as an old man watches the play of children" |
| Dusk | Withdrawing the senses | Tummo: short A (red, heat, Vajra Varahi) below the navel, inverted HANG (white, bliss, Chakrasamvara) at the crown; blazing and dripping burns away karma; body "like a crystal ball" |
| Night | Retaining wakefulness in the vase | Sleeping-lion posture; red four-petalled lotus at the heart with an inch-high AH lighting "the whole valley"; fall asleep in rigpa: "capturing the luminosity during deep sleep" |
| Dawn | Reviving natural awareness | Sit up, shout "HAH!"; the A shoots through the crown into the sky, then grows into space: focus without fixation |
"Don't force or push during any of these. Everything is gentle and relaxed. Because mind itself is emptiness, it cannot be forced." A slight initial effort advances effortlessness.
The night practice in detail: right hand under the right cheek, left hand on the thigh, legs stretched parallel. The AH lights the body "to the distance of an arrow that has been shot from a bow," and further while mind remains in rigpa: "completion stage with attributes." At first you do fall unconscious, yet "it's like a wide-awake state occurs from within the deep sleep." Development stage is focus with fixation; Dzogchen's is focus without fixation. Practised in all four periods, "you are never apart from the buddhas."
Retreat with a Family
A student regrets he cannot stay in retreat. "It's actually good to feel frustrated. The next thing is to act upon that feeling."
The ideal is "a 'child of the mountain'" with wild deer as companions. Realistically: six months in, six months out; a retreat every three months; or two months intensive, then work and make money. "If you abandon them, they will feel sad." Still, "it is not impossible to do retreat."
Solitude cuts off half the distractions. The Buddha left his kingdom "with no more attachment than if they were a glob of spit." For beginningless lifetimes we have linked sense organs, objects and cognitions; "there is hardly as much as one instant during twenty-four hours" of uncontrived naturalness. Mahamudra: the threefold solitude. Dzogchen: abandon the ninefold activities.
Running a Trekchö Retreat
"The outer form of the training should be adapted to the time and place." Without a master present, be your own teacher: recall the guru's words, study the manuals, and test experience until certain, so that "even if you meet with a hundred panditas and they say you are wrong, you will have no doubt."
"Without meditating upon something 'over there', rest freely. Without holding tight to 'something here', be all-pervasive. Without dwelling on anything in between, remain in total openness." The result is zangtal, unimpededness, like the window onto the whole valley or a sieve that holds no liquid.
As told by Chimey Dorje, attendant to the second Chokling Tulku: sixty meditators sat outside in rows, with thin threads strung before and behind their necks; nodding broke the thread: "Hey you, you broke the thread!" Red sindhura powder under the eyelids caught blinking. Even there, they kept sessions, not dawn-to-dusk sitting.
A retreat that demands sitting from morning to evening means "most people will get fed up and leave that kind of practice behind." Discipline and total letting be go together; strain is not training.
Rest within basic space, let thoughts draw themselves on water, structure the day with three excellences and four sessions, and meet retreat half way rather than not at all.
Dining with Indra
The view is nondoing: don't project out, don't concentrate in, don't dwell between. Tulku Urgyen sets Shantideva and Nagarjuna against permanence and nihilism, traces mindfulness, watchfulness and awakeness through three great views, and returns to the sun and its reflections to show the line between sentient being and buddha. He warns about charlatan PHATs, recalls flying Kagyu yogis, and ends teasing a student into choosing lunch with Indra over the Lord of Death.
Aiming at the Sky
"When you aim a rifle at a target that is called a reference point. How are you going to aim at the sky?" Even "This is rigpa being sustained" is a reference point that "covers the nakedness."
Shantideva, the final Middle Way view: "When concreteness or inconcreteness does not remain before the intellect, at that moment there is no other mental form, and so, there is utter peace without conceptions." Ju Jamyang Drakpa glosses these as existence and nonexistence. Nagarjuna: "To hold the idea that it exists is to be as deluded as an animal, but to hold the idea that it is nothing is to be even more deluded."
| Point | Instruction | Avoids |
|---|---|---|
| Freely resting | Don't imagine something "there" | Projecting outward |
| Pervasiveness | Don't tie down something "here" | Concentrating inward |
| Unimpededness | Don't dwell on a state between | Conventional shamatha |
"If you tell somebody: 'Don't go outside, don't stay inside, and don't remain in between, either!' what is that person going to do?" Nothing. Give up doer and deed, and what remains is their true nature, Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri, "who have nothing to do at all." The view is nondoing, which means it is not a 'thing' to be done.
Permanence is believing some entity lasts forever; nihilism, that there is nothing at all. "If one falls into either of these two extremes, fixation on some concept is occurring." Holding the thought that rigpa is an ongoing entity or that it is inconcrete, "both are concepts." "Ultimately, as long as we try to imagine, visualize or meditate, we still tie ourselves down."
Three Great Views
"The path of effort leads to effortlessness." Beginners cannot help some deliberate effort, named differently by each tradition.
| View | Name for the effort | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Middle Way | Mindfulness: alert, careful, finally free from four limits and eight constructs | Attentive care |
| Mahamudra | Watchfulness | A herdsman watching cattle drink and graze |
| Dzogchen | Awakeness: "mindfulness is rigpa, rigpa is mindfulness" | A light that shines by itself |
"It is dualistic mind that reminds you to recognize, but the seeing of no thing to be seen is rigpa." "A yogi can distinguish the difference between these two, while a beginner cannot." So "in the beginning it is indispensable to be 'remindful'." The switch and the pressing seem to be two things; the light, once on, needs nothing.
Sun and Reflection
Being lost in expression is "like confusing sunlight for sun." The sun shows in hundreds of thousands of ponds, but "all these appearances are only reflections." The water is the three realms; the six classes of beings are reflections roaming on it. "If you face away from the sun, following after its reflection in water, you can continue to do this for one billion aeons."
Empty quality like space, cognizant quality like sunlight: their unity is "sunlit space, like daytime sky." Realizing it is "the awakening in the ground." "Recognizing is nirvana; not recognizing is samsara." Searching elsewhere is "tracking the footprints in the jungle while the elephant is inside your house."
"A true yogi is someone who cuts the movement of attention in this first stage." "Before attention moves towards an object, there is recognition. Then there is no need to be caught up in the falsehood." "Without straying into mental movement, how can any samsara be created?" "We already have the real sun in ourselves"; it is just that "they possess buddha nature, but do not acknowledge what they already have." "The genuine view lies in the manner of looking." "If you lost yourself, how would you ever find yourself by looking in another place?"
The PHAT and the Fraud
A forceful PHAT collapses thoughts of the three times. Most people go blank; without recognition that is the unaware all-ground, "from which nothing but samsara unfolds." Mindlessness lacks like and dislike but still holds the third poison, stupidity.
With long hair tied up and eyes gazing vacantly, they said "Everything is the magical display of mind! Can't you see that?" and shouted PHAT to "introduce rigpa." "If the master is a fraud and the student is not ready, shouting PHAT is nothing other than taking a snapshot of dualistic mind!" (Rinpoche knocks on his wooden table.) Unless stable, this table is not experienced as empty. Real emptiness shows at death as rainbow light.
When Padmasambhava and his twenty-five disciples left Tibet, "not a single corpse" remained; at Yerpa, eighty siddhas attained rainbow body. Kagyu masters flew, unfurling their shawls like wings. Seltong Shogom, a disciple of Gampopa, vanished from a cave above the Nangchen king's residence; dakinis built a sand stupa so high a fifteen-story temple was needed to reach it. His five hundred disciples left fifty or sixty footprints in rock, facing west in the morning, east in the afternoon. "This is not merely a story."
The Sitar and the Bird
Ananda: "If I focus, I get really tight... But if I relax, I forget." The Buddha: "How did you get the perfect sound from each string?" "Neither by tightening it nor by loosening it, but by keeping a perfect balance." "Well then, you already know." Try to grab hold of space for long: "Is there any other result than a tired hand?"
A student, embarrassed at how long he goes without remembering, asks for tricks. Rinpoche mimics a small bird pecking grain and looking up again and again, afraid of hawks. "The 'black diffusion' of confused thinking... is much more dangerous than those hawks." "If you don't get yourself onto dry land, who else is going to get you out of the water?"
Two Roads
| Worldly work | Samadhi |
|---|---|
| Gather wealth | Nothing to hoard |
| Keep it | Nothing to keep |
| Increase it | Nothing to increase; let go at the moment of recognition |
| Helps this life only | Ends suffering for all future lives |
"No amount of capital can buy you enlightenment and liberation!" Patrul Rinpoche: "Give up, give up everything; that is to work for the welfare of beings." Stable in "the unemployed state of mind essence," "Wherever you go, the sun of happiness shines."
Upward: dine next to Indra, and beyond him to nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya buddhafields. Downward: the ox-headed and goat-headed minions of the Lord of Death, worrying "Where are they going to take me after this!" "Right now you are at the fork in the road." Ignoring Dharma with a human body is like "reaching the top of the mountain only to throw oneself into the abyss." Indra vs Buddha: "the little finger with the thumb." "I am teasing you. Yet, while teasing, there is some meaning."
The author's uncle: "Never compare yourself with someone above you, because you will never be happy... Take a lower example." Compare yourself with beggars "with one stick and one backpack" and you are always content. "Poor people have the trouble of being poor, wealthy people have the problem of being rich."
Our Own Best Remedy
How to cut a thought on arising? Recognize mind essence: sem disappears, the poisons vanish, rigpa remains. Could "a hundred thousand nuclear bombs" stop sentient beings thinking? "Luckily you don't have to do that." Thought is the expression of your own essence, so seeing the essence dissolves it: "we are our own best remedy." Not recognizing unfolds desire, form and formless spheres; recognizing unfolds the three kaya buddhafields. Hippie hallucinations, dreams of wealth or being killed: all magical displays that vanish on waking.
"If you train well and become more stable, you will not have much trouble in this life... Be carefree." Projects are like dreams; an ordinary person is "overwhelmed and depressed when things go bad, and totally carried away by excitement when successful." "In the moment of recognizing mind essence, you do not have to think that everything is dream and illusion: it is already cleared up." Deluded experiences are like clouds: once they disperse, the sun's qualities, primordially present, manifest.
Rest without a target, tune the string between tight and slack, look up like the bird, and choose the upward road today. Recognize the sun, not its reflections.
Dzogchen Terminology
Tulku Urgyen explains the single sphere of dharmakaya, Trekchö and Tögal, primordial purity and spontaneous presence, and nyamshak as "equanimity beyond placing and not placing." He recalls a dry exchange with Dzongsar Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, unpacks the four empowerments, and reads a four-line Mahamudra pointing-out verse. His point: these short words matter, but they are not the meaning itself.
One Sphere, Seemingly Two
"Seen from the Buddha's perspective, samsara, nirvana and the path are all the single sphere of dharmakaya." Grasped as two, there seems to be a place and a "me" born into it. Its unconstructed nature rules out even the concept of oneness. "As long as duality has not become oneness, there is no enlightenment."
| Term | Meaning | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| Kadag, primordial purity | The empty, all-pervasive, spacelike dharmakaya | Trekchö, "cutting through" |
| Lhundrub, spontaneous presence | Its natural expression, spontaneously present | Tögal, "direct crossing" |
| Their unity | Expression appearing with no self-nature | "The unified state of a vajra holder" |
"Within the all-pervasive space of dharmakaya, sambhogakaya manifests distinctly, like the light of the sun, while nirmanakaya, manifesting like a rainbow, acts for the welfare of beings."
Nyamshak means "to place in evenness." Adopting and avoiding is "an exercise in hope and fear," not equanimity. The meditation state begins at recognition, taken as the starting point, "rather than waiting or searching for something that will slowly dawn." When the view is recognized, the training is simply to continue recognizing the view. He rephrases it as "equanimity beyond placing and not placing."
Mipham Rinpoche, in the Aspiration of the Great Perfection of Manjushri: ground, path and fruition, and view, meditation and conduct, are "like three lines drawn in the sky." (Rinpoche draws in the air.) "Once you look afterwards, where are those three lines?"
Mipham again: "Within the essence, original wakefulness which is primordially pure, manifests the nature, a radiance which is spontaneously present." Recognizing, we see no "thing": that is primordial purity; inseparable knowing is spontaneous presence. So we don't seek the three kayas "somewhere out there in the future." This moment is our basic "working capital": recognizing halts the causes for further samsara right there and then.
Whispered Through a Copper Tube
In India, "single sphere of dharmakaya" was whispered through a copper tube into the student's ear; spirits and elemental forces would simply faint at it. "Nowadays... human society has been almost saturated with the Dzogchen teachings."
"I wonder, is this the awakened state? This must be it." "Do not do that!" Self-existing wakefulness is not an external deity dropping into you; it is when your own subtle thought patterns fall apart. Abhidharma calls word-meaning blends "thought that apprehends the intermingled sound and meaning": "that act of apprehending is not the meaning itself." Still, kadag and lhundrub are "extremely important" words.
The author asked whether the Dzogchen Desum terma, "the size from your hand to your elbow," was complete. "When I look at it, I don't see anything missing at all... Do you know exactly what is missing?" "No, I am merely a stubborn intellectual." "Just because it is short and concise doesn't mean that anything is missing."
"Everything stands and falls with the moment of recognizing mind essence. At that moment, you instantaneously meet the three kayas." Vajrayana introduces this with "incredibly skillful means," using implements and rituals to point at our actual situation.
The Four Empowerments
| Empowerment | Ritual | What is introduced |
|---|---|---|
| Vase | Vase to the crown, a drink of nectar | Skandhas, elements, sense-bases already divine: "the vajra body being the mandala of deities" |
| Secret | Sacrament from the skull cup | Speech and channels |
| Wisdom-knowledge | Symbolic | Nonduality of bliss and emptiness |
| Precious word | PA + TA = PHAT | Mind essence, cutting through thought |
"What we are being empowered to realize is nothing other than what we already are to begin with." The fourth was "never really concealed"; attention was "occupied with other things."
A Four-Line Pointing Out
"Innate stability is like a needle, not like a hair." A hair bends in the wind, however thick; a needle does not. Rigpa is "untainted by fixating on outer objects, and unspoiled by focusing on the knower within." Dzogchen words: awake, vibrant, crystal-clear, fully present.
From the tantras: "Amazing, natural awareness is beyond thought. Vividly clear, there is no obscuration. Nakedly manifest, there is no delusion. Wide awake, there is no subject and object." Samantabhadra taught these, and he is not "an old, old man who lived a long time ago." Asked, the student agrees: awake, an actuality, no thought can stick. "Samsara needs your thoughts to be recreated."
Kadag and lhundrub are one: recognize, then continue recognizing. "There is a big difference between thought and rigpa!"
Realization Stories
Pointing at a photo on the wall, Tulku Urgyen begins telling stories: Shakya Shri lost in samadhi while peeing, two siddhas who were "not sick at all" with their intestines in their laps, and Jamyang Khyentse's clairvoyance slipping out. He also tells of an old woman's dog tooth that yielded relics. The stories lead into teaching on devotion as a ring for the buddhas' hook, the seven vajra qualities, rainbow body, "the innate stronghold of immortality" and the three challenges, with his father's Chö encounters with raining heads and dancing skeletons.
The Lord of Siddhas
At Kyipuk Hermitage, in a one-story hut in a meadow, Shakya Shri went down one afternoon to pee, finished, and "lapsed into the state of samadhi, free of any thought," squatting half an hour with eyes wide open. Attendants: "Rinpoche, you'd better come up now; it's getting dark." "Well, yes, the stars are now bright in the sky." His disciple Tersey Tulku, the author's uncle, told the stories.
When the Bhutanese king sent thirty bags of rice with a porcelain bowl hidden in one, nobody knew which. Shakya Shri pointed: "No, no, it is in this one." "Once fixation falls apart, clairvoyance is unimpeded."
Not Sick at All
| Master | Illness | Response |
|---|---|---|
| The first Sabchu Tulku, disciple of Situ Pema Nyinje, Jamgön Kongtrül, Jamyang Khyentse | Stomach one open sore, intestines in his lap, hands tied with a white scarf to stop scratching | "There is an old monk sitting on this bed... He seems to be suffering quite a bit, but I am fine." |
| Lama Tenje, Kham siddha | The same disease | "It looks like there is something wrong there, but I am quite fine." |
Asked where he'd be reborn, Tenje had his disciple Tendar carry him seven steps west, snapped his fingers: "May my realization take birth in your stream of being." "This is my tulku, even before I pass away." He died at sunrise next day, "going home to the dharmadhatu buddhafield of Akanishtha." From the snap onward, Tendar never wandered from rigpa.
"Why can't the buddhas do that for all of us?" "Maybe because the buddhas don't have disciples like Tendar!" Others' mirrors were not that dust-free. A realized mind's spotless mirror reflects what all beings in the valley think: that is clairvoyance.
He rarely admitted clairvoyance, so Khenchen Tashi Özer tricked him: "Isn't it troublesome for these people down in the Dzongsar village to be so occupied with all these different thoughts?" "Yes, it is so troublesome." It slipped out. Another day he cried "Oh no! How terrible!": far off, a yak was sliding into a ravine, caught on a tree, two old monks calling his name, then traders with ropes came. Days later the monks arrived and told the same story.
Devotion as a Ring
"When the sun rises in the sky, does its light reach into north-facing caves?" Devotion "creates a ring upon which the compassionate activity of all buddhas can catch, just like a hook." "Thirty people have thirty ideas, like thirty yaks have sixty horns."
A trader kept forgetting his mother's request for a Buddha relic, even after she threatened to kill herself. Near home he pulled a tooth from a dog's skull, wrapped it in brocade, and was met with banners and conch shells. She made offerings daily; relics appeared from it, and at death a white ray of light took her to the buddhafields. "It was the power of devotion." Even if not white, "there may be a black one still leading in the right direction." (Rinpoche laughs.)
To recognize mind essence is not difficult; it is so easy. But even if you are not able to train in that, if you can just have devotion to the buddhas, if it is genuine devotion, then I swear that you will not be deceived. He swears "by my skull."
The compassionate activity of the buddhas is unfailing; likewise the profound samadhi is unfailing. With mastery of deity, mantra and samadhi, there is "no question about attaining enlightenment at the moment of death." With simple devotion, one is guided to the pure lands "in as little time as it takes to stretch out one arm."
Solid Matter
"This thing here, (Rinpoche knocks on the table), doesn't it seem real and solid?" That is the solidifying power of karma, shared by beings of the same species.
The end of an aeon, when everything disintegrates, proves all phenomena are empty. "If they were real, they would be indestructible." From the first bhumi, yogis walk on water and are unharmed by fire.
Düsum Khyenpa, the first Karmapa, alone at a ceremony, made three replicas of himself: vajra master, shrine master and assistant. Old Milarepa, too tired to climb: "It's better if the top of the mountain comes down here!" It did; he stepped on and arrived first. "As a yogi, you are in charge."
"That which perceives everything is mind. Mind is empty." Any perception is personal experience within our own mind. Yogis see everything as the eight analogies of illusion: "visible emptiness, audible emptiness and the play of original wakefulness." At buddhahood this is rangnang yeshe kyi khorlo, "the wisdom-wheel of natural experience." Since all personal experience is empty, "mastering personal experience" becomes possible: such a yogi is not harmed by the four elements, while an ordinary person "can be buried under earth... drown in water... burned in fire, or blown away by the wind."
Rainbow Body and Immortality
| Ordinary | Dissolves into |
|---|---|
| Body of flesh, blood, bones | Rainbow light |
| Intermittent speech | "The king of melodiousness," buddha voice |
| Restless thinking | Buddha mind |
| Five aggregates / five elements / sense-bases | Five male buddhas / five female buddhas / male and female bodhisattvas |
| Five poisons | Five wisdoms |
Total stability is "capturing the innate stronghold of immortality": "If there is no taking birth, how can there be any death?" "Even when someone as simple-minded as me thinks about it." Buddhas act as if born and dying for those who hold permanence.
Rainbow body mirrors the dissolution stages of dying: as impure mind dissolves into rigpa, "the impure aspects of reality start to dissolve into the pure essences." For buddhas it is "like having arrived on an island of pure gold," with no ordinary earth or stone anywhere. With partial stability, "the 'illusory city of the physical body' does still perish," and at that moment there is liberation into true stability.
The Three Challenges
| Challenge | Form |
|---|---|
| Outer | Tricks of gods and demons (mamo, tsen; eight classes), seen "more like a film or television" |
| Inner | Bodily imbalance, disease |
| Innermost | Elation and despair: unexplainable sadness, even feeling about to die |
"Either you are overtaken, or you take charge." An inexperienced monk may think a seductive demon is a wisdom dakini. Under the bodhi tree, Garab Wangchuk's armies and beautiful maidens failed; the Buddha's gaze turned them into "shriveled old women with tattered clothing."
At a charnel ground between two cliffs, live human heads fell "like a hailstorm," one striking his crown, others moaning "I died of rotting lungs." He kept practising; they shrank and vanished, and his attendants slept through it. At Drag Yerpa, white-bearded monkeys bit him and shrank to rats. Elsewhere, dancing skeletons, skin demons that caused gut pain, and swinging bundles of hair. "When I was small, I heard quite a few scary stories from my father!"
A hermit drew a charcoal cross on a sheep stomach at his window, and next day found it on his own belly. A later hermit stabbed it in anger and stabbed himself, and died. A lama who scorned Gyalpo Pehar got a vision of "Padmasambhava" telling him to smash his precious bell; he did, and "Padmasambhava" disappeared and was never seen since!
Fixation falling apart shows as unconcern in illness, clairvoyance and mastery of matter. Without that yet, devotion is the ring, and rigpa is how to take charge of challenges.
Death Row
In response to a request on behalf of someone on Death Row, Tulku Urgyen recorded a short message that holds the whole teaching: trust above, compassion below, recognize the mind that does not die, stop the twelve links at their root, and meet death as returning home.
"The most benefit comes from trust in the Three Jewels above you, and compassion for your parents from past lives, which are all sentient beings of the three realms, below you." "It is your mind that experiences pleasure and pain."
"What is this mind? In essence, it is empty; by nature, it is cognizant. Its capacity is the unity of the two." Not recognizing is ignorance, the first of the twelve links, followed by formation, dualistic consciousness and the rest, up to aging and death, "like a wheel incessantly spinning." A master would say: "When your attention is extroverted, you fall under the sway of thoughts. Let your attention recognize itself." Recognize "the identity of that which feels happy, that which feels sad."
"The body dies, but mind is not some 'thing' that can die." If it could, there would be no rebirth. Empty is dharmakaya, knowing is sambhogakaya, their unity, like water and wetness, is nirmanakaya. Thinking "cannot be burned, flushed away or blown up"; it is its own antidote.
The Tibetan word for world is "the 'sphere of possibilities'. Nothing is impossible here." "The Buddha said, 'Mind is emptiness; train in that.' This is true peace."
In the moment of seeing, "boundless aeons of negative karma and obscurations are purified. Joy and sorrow are evened out in the great expanse of equanimity." "You do not need to try not to think."
Give away everything to the buddhas, even your body, attached not even to an atom. Think: Death is not anything that can cause harm. It is like returning home. Like a mirror held to the sun, "there is no distance at all." "That is all I have to say."
Daytime Stars
Given on the final day of his last public teachings at Nagi Gompa, October 30, 1995, three and a half months before he died, this talk calls the listeners "daytime stars," rare as stars at noon. It weighs fame and wealth against lasting value, defends pointing out mind essence before the preliminaries, and sets realistic expectations: renunciation, not fireworks, is the sign of progress. It ends with the long walk to Bodhgaya.
The Eight Chariots
Nyingma, brought by Vimalamitra, Padmasambhava and Vairotsana, plus seven Sarma schools: the Eight Chariots of the Practice Lineage. "Because of the way they practiced, they could not help attaining realization." The teachings are "tried and proven."
Beings who don't practice are "as countless as the stars at nighttime." Those interested "are as rare as stars in the daytime." "I am happy for you," not because "you have come to hear... this old man up here at Nagi Gompa," but because you sincerely want to practise.
Seemingly smart people succeed at "hoarding wealth and fame" and subduing enemies, but "they are not successful when it comes to the decisive point."
Thunder and Corpses
Fame is "as well-known as the sound of the thunder in the sky" and just as "loud and empty." Milarepa: "A scary, awful corpse is nothing other than this present body once you breathe out and don't breathe in."
Seeing Milarepa fly, people said "He has been starving himself for so long, now he is being blown away by the wind!" Milarepa, reading them: "There is nobody who is happier, more content and freer than I am... Look at these people; they are totally deluded!" "An interesting irony."
| Fleeting | Lasting |
|---|---|
| Fame, wealth, influence, power | Liberation and enlightenment |
| "No use in the bardo" | Happiness that lasts |
| "Bad business": you can lose everything | The most profitable venture |
"For the sake of food and clothing, people cast away what is of lasting value." "Appearances are seductive and mind is fickle." Space can't be made; sunlight isn't made; they are never apart: our empty essence and cognizant nature, "the very heart of all the eighty-four thousand aspects of the Dharma."
Dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya are also the three vajras: vajra body, speech and mind. The Buddha's "No form, no smell, no taste, no sound, no texture, no mental object" describes how our mind is. Its nature is an ability to know; in a buddha, omniscient wisdom. "In this world, there is only one thing that can know, experience and comprehend, and that is the mind of a sentient being."
Opening the Door First
Open the door and daylight reaches the innermost shrine. Critics may object; "with all due respect, I feel that it is not incorrect," citing "At the end of the Dark Age, the teachings of Secret Mantra will blaze forth like wildfire." Pure attitude multiplies a practice a hundredfold; pure samadhi, a hundred thousandfold.
"If you have a painting of a candle, can it somehow generate light in the room?" Refuge, bodhichitta, Vajrasattva, mandala, guru yoga are truly themselves only free from the threefold concepts, which takes the true view.
"A master is like a fire: if you stay too close, you get burned"; at a distance, warmth and brightness, and little chance to break samaya. "Renunciation will naturally grow forth from your training in mind essence, all by itself." "I did not invent this teaching... I have not studied a lot, nor have I done any significant amount of meditation practice." He is repeating enlightened beings.
Twenty Years and Nothing
"I have practiced for twenty years... Nothing has happened." Sporadic practice "makes nice imprints" but no deep change. Some want powers from above or to be "drugged on Dharma practice," with eyes turned heavenwards. Bliss, clarity and nonthought are "very subtle forms of the three poisons"; with clear dreams, demons pose as buddhas' messengers. Renunciation is the true sign of accomplishment, blessing and realization.
"We have been in samsara for countless lifetimes... How can we expect to be totally transformed within a few years' time?" Habitual patterns, the three poisons and dualistic fixation stay latent, recreated "from time without beginning." That is why the preliminaries matter: they purify these habits so the intrinsic three kayas become evident. Never forsake practice because "I didn't benefit at all"; nurture "For the rest of my life I will never give up the practice of the Dharma!"
Sleep one hour a night, stay undistracted the rest, and "within fifteen years you will be fully awakened... There is no doubt about that!"
The Road to Bodhgaya
"Never give up the Dharma!" Walking from Kathmandu to Bodhgaya means mountains, valleys, rivers. "May I equalize life and practice." Stop halfway and "you might end up in dusty Raxaul at the Nepali border, and never reach Bodhgaya itself."
"In whatever you do, try again and again to let be in uncontrived naturalness." The editors note that he passed away three and a half months later.
Be a daytime star: want what lasts, open the door first, judge progress by renunciation, and keep walking to "the Bodhgaya of true and complete enlightenment."
Putting It Together
The fifteen talks come back to one recognition from many angles. This section pulls together the takeaways, the frameworks, the misreadings to avoid and practical notes for applying Volume II in a working life.
Ten Takeaways
- Buddha nature is an inheritance, not an achievement: empty, cognizant, unconfined.
- Recognition is the starting point; training is to continue recognizing.
- Short moments, many times: repetition, not prolonging.
- Thoughts, emotions and doubts all dissolve when the thinker is recognized.
- No thought remains in rigpa: "a hair cannot remain in a flame."
- Shamatha alone is a shallow peak; don't be deluded by quietude.
- Nondoing: no target out, in, or between.
- Devotion and bodhichitta open the door for blessings.
- Retreat is realistic: half way is better than not at all.
- Renunciation, not experience, is the sign of progress.
Frameworks
| Framework | Parts | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| Essence, nature, capacity | Dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya | 1, 9, 14 |
| Three excellences | Refuge, bodhichitta, dedication | 4, 10 |
| Four sessions equalizing buddhahood | Day, dusk, night, dawn | 10 |
| Three points of rigpa | Resting freely, pervasive, unimpeded | 10, 11 |
| Three great views | Mindfulness, watchfulness, awakeness | 11 |
| Arising, dwelling, ceasing | Meeting the three kayas | 9 |
| Four empowerments | Vase, secret, wisdom-knowledge, word | 12 |
| Three challenges | Outer, inner, innermost | 13 |
The book says plainly that Dzogchen "cannot be received solely from books." Its instructions assume pointing-out by a qualified master. Its miracle stories belong to a devotional tradition, offered as inspiration, not as historical claims open to checking. The fifteen-year guarantee assumes one hour of sleep a night, a standard few will meet. The talks are oral and repetitive by design: Rinpoche wanted one point to sink in.
Common Misreadings
| Misreading | What the book says |
|---|---|
| "Emptiness means blankness." | Mindless spacing out is the unaware all-ground; rigpa is knowing |
| "I should imagine emptiness." | "Formulated emptiness is totally useless" |
| "Rigpa must be held steady." | Don't extend it, don't cut it short; "like the fading sound of a bell" |
| "Bliss and clarity are realization." | Very subtle forms of the three poisons |
| "Skip the preliminaries." | Do them with recognition and they become the actual path |
| "Retreat means leaving family." | Two months in, then work; don't abandon dependents |
Practice Notes
- Remind, then let be. Dualistic mind reminds; rigpa sees no thing to see.
- Look up like the bird. Fear of distraction keeps you remembering.
- Tune the string. Not tight, not slack, as Ananda's sitar taught.
- Doubt? Ask where it is. Then recognize the doubter.
- Compare downward. Tersey Tulku's advice for contentment.
- Dedicate every session, morning and evening.
A Day with Volume II
| Time | Practice | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Waking | Shout "HAH!", send the A into the sky, recognize | Ch 10 |
| Morning sit | Refuge, bodhichitta, OM AH HUNG SVAHA, recognize, dedicate | Ch 10 |
| Work | Short moments; recognize the mover of each emotion | Ch 8 |
| Dusk | Tummo, gently | Ch 10 |
| Sleep | Lion posture, AH in a red lotus, fall asleep in rigpa | Ch 10 |
Who's Who
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Samten Gyatso | Root guru; wept teaching Vairotsana's lines |
| Chimey Dorje | The author's father; Chö practitioner |
| Tersey Tulku | The author's uncle; disciple of Shakya Shri |
| Shakya Shri | Lord of Siddhas, Kyipuk Hermitage |
| Ani Lochen | "May you recognize the essence of mind" |
| Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo | Hidden clairvoyance; the yak |
| Dzongsar Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö | "I don't see anything missing" |
| Vairotsana | Four lines on dharmadhatu |
As It Is, Volume I lays the development-stage groundwork; Vajra Heart Revisited gives Trekchö in detail; Repeating the Words of the Buddha is the concise primer. Read this volume as the bridge: recognition carried into a working day, a retreat calendar and the moment of death.