Insight Editions · No. 458
Vajra Heart Revisited
Teachings on the Path of Trekchö
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
A study guide to Vajra Heart Revisited: Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche on the ground, Trekchö preliminaries, shamatha and vipashyana in Dzogchen, Mahamudra and Dzogchen compared, Garab Dorje's Three Words, pointing out, sems and rigpa, the watcher, methods of liberation, the threefold sky, the four times, mindfulness, the view, the unity of Trekchö and Tögal and signs of practice, with his Guru Sadhana of Simplicity, Longchenpa's bardo aspiration and Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche's Drop of Nectar, in tables, diagrams and practice notes.
A study guide to Vajra Heart Revisited: Teachings on the Path of Trekchö by Kyabje Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, with root texts by Padmasambhava, Chokgyur Lingpa and Longchenpa; foreword by Tsoknyi Rinpoche; compiled with a preface by Marcia Binder Schmidt; translated by Erik Pema Kunsang and Marcia Binder Schmidt; appendix The Drop of Nectar by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche (Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 2019). 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
Dzogchen is "nothing other than the basic state of one's mind." Trekchö, cutting through, is to recognize that empty, cognizant awareness, train in short moments many times, and let thoughts free themselves as they arise, until the same recognition holds through the four times of day and the moment of death.
SCOPE
A compilation by Marcia Binder Schmidt of Kyabje Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's teachings on ground, preliminaries, Garab Dorje's Three Words, sems and rigpa, liberation, mindfulness and the view, with root texts by Padmasambhava, Chokgyur Lingpa and Longchenpa, Tulku Urgyen's own Guru Sadhana of Simplicity, and Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche's Drop of Nectar. Foreword by Tsoknyi Rinpoche; translated by Erik Pema Kunsang (Rangjung Yeshe, 2019).
KEY FIGURES
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche; Samten Gyatso; Garab Dorje; Padmasambhava; Vimalamitra; Longchenpa; Jigme Lingpa; Chokgyur Lingpa; the Third Karmapa; Tsele Natsok Rangdröl; Milarepa; Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche; Samantabhadra.
BEST FOR
Students who have received pointing-out and want the details of sustaining it; Mahamudra practitioners curious about how Dzogchen compares; anyone facing the watcher, the "I am undistracted" trap or doubt; and readers preparing for the bardo.
The Book on One Page
Vajra Heart Revisited moves from ground to path to fruition. After the preliminaries and a comparison with Mahamudra, it is organised around Garab Dorje's Three Words, then turns to mindfulness, daily life, the unity of Trekchö and Tögal, and finally a guru sadhana and a bardo aspiration that apply the same view to ritual and death.
The Argument in Brief
- The ground is undetermined. Samantabhadra recognized and was free; we strayed. Nothing in the ground was ever damaged, only covered, like gold in dirt.
- Same terms, superior meaning. Shamatha and vipashyana become nalbab and sorshug, resting in naturalness and sustaining freshness.
- Recognize your own nature. "What you need to see is that there is nothing to see."
- Decide on one point. The three kayas are complete in empty cognizance suffused with awareness.
- Gain confidence in liberation. Thoughts are drawings on water, freed upon arising (shardrol); meditating without liberating is shamatha.
- The dividing line is fixation. Sems strays onto the object; rigpa doesn't.
- Short moments, many times. Training is repetition, not prolonging or improving.
- Beware the subtle traps. The watcher, holding the view, and "I am undistracted", which Rinpoche calls a golden chain.
- It comes down to the view. The real test is confidence without fear at death.
- Even ritual and death are recognition. The guru sadhana and Longchenpa's aspiration apply the same Trekchö.
The single idea beneath the whole book: recognize the awareness that is already free, and let everything else liberate itself in it.
Map of the Chapters
| No. | Chapter | Payload |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foreword and Preface | Tsoknyi Rinpoche and the compiler on a humble master |
| 2 | History and Overview | Nine vehicles; ground, path, fruition; three ignorances |
| 3 | Ground | Lomaten; Samantabhadra; the last rupee |
| 4 | Trekchö Preliminaries | Rushan; nalbab and sorshug; a retreat day |
| 5 | Shamatha and Vipashyana | Same term, superior meaning |
| 6 | Words Are Like Rice Husks | The lightning gaze; two opposite errors |
| 7 | Mahamudra and Dzogchen | Appearances versus awareness; the tape recorder |
| 8 | Three Words | Garab Dorje's statements; space and the clap |
| 9 | Naked Awareness | Essence, nature, capacity; experience over theory |
| 10 | Pointing Out | Gold in dirt; four parts without three; short moments |
| 11 | Enhance the Recognition | Frozen versus freed; the Karmapa's song |
| 12 | Mind and Rigpa | Fixation as the line; the cup |
| 13 | Sems and Rigpa | The easygoing imbecile; mercury and water |
| 14 | The Watcher | Subtle duality; PHAT; the forkful of steak |
| 15 | Qualities of Rigpa | Five words; compassion begun deliberately |
| 16 | Methods of Liberation | Ice and water; shardrol; cut at the wrist |
| 17 | Threefold Sky | Only rigpa mingles three skies |
| 18 | Four Times | Day, dusk, midnight, dawn practice |
| 19 | Mindfulness | The golden chain of "I am undistracted" |
| 20 | Meditation and Post-Meditation | No sessions or breaks; Samten Gyatso's secret |
| 21 | It Comes Down to the View | Who built hell?; the patch |
| 22 | Trekchö and Tögal | Kadak and lhundrub; the collapsing movie |
| 23 | Signs of Practice | Clouds in the sky; devotion and compassion |
| 24 | Guru Sadhana of Simplicity | The root verse |
| 25 | Sadhana Commentary | Every step in its ultimate form |
| 26 | Bardo Aspiration | Longchenpa's verses |
| 27 | Bardo Commentary | Where the deities come from; four stages of dying |
| A | The Drop of Nectar | Nyoshul Khen's commentary for beginners |
Ways Through the Book
| Reader | Start with | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Newly introduced | Pointing Out (10) and Three Words (8) | Enhance the Recognition, Mind and Rigpa |
| Stuck or doubtful | Sems and Rigpa (13), The Watcher (14) | Mindfulness (19) |
| Mahamudra student | Mahamudra and Dzogchen (7) | Shamatha and Vipashyana, Trekchö and Tögal |
| Daily-life practitioner | Four Times (18), Meditation and Post-Meditation (20) | Signs of Practice (23) |
| Preparing for death | It Comes Down to the View (21) | Bardo Aspiration and Commentary (26, 27) |
| Ritual practitioner | Guru Sadhana (24) and Commentary (25) | The Drop of Nectar |
Ordinary meditation creates a calm state and tries to keep it. Trekchö recognizes what was never disturbed, then lets it be. One leads to "frozen" shamatha and the golden chain; the other to thoughts freeing themselves, which Tulku Urgyen calls "the difference between night and day."
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning here |
|---|---|
| Rigpa | Awareness: empty cognizance without fixation |
| Sems | Ordinary mind, which strays onto objects |
| Trekchö | Cutting through to primordial purity (kadak) |
| Tögal | Direct crossing; the display of spontaneous presence (lhundrub) |
| Nalbab / sorshug | Resting in naturalness / sustaining freshness |
| Shardrol | Freed upon arising |
| Four parts without three | The present free of past, present and future concepts |
| Essence, nature, capacity | Empty, cognizant, unconfined: the three kayas |
| Khordey rushan | Separating samsara and nirvana, Trekchö's preliminary |
| Ground luminosity | The fourth moment of dying, met by path luminosity |
How the Book Reads
Mostly oral teaching and questions, edited lightly, so ideas recur from new angles: gold in dirt, space, the mirror, short moments. Root verses from Padmasambhava, Chokgyur Lingpa and Longchenpa anchor several chapters; Rinpoche often laughs at himself and at "high" Dharma talk, and his examples are Nepali and earthy: rupees, donkeys, pee breaks, forks in steak.
Foreword and Preface
Tsoknyi Rinpoche remembers how his father taught: again and again, until students understood. Compiler Marcia Binder Schmidt explains why praising a perfect master feels awkward today, how Samten Gyatso authorized the young Tulku Urgyen to teach, and how this book became an unrestricted roadmap for Trekchö.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche's Foreword
Samten Gyatso made sure students understood the nature of mind: he would repeat, call them back and check. Tulku Urgyen taught the same way. Tsoknyi received pointing-out at fourteen in his father's small room at Nagi Gompa, and it was given "again, and again, and again, that day and the next day," through gesture, common language and examples rooted in Guru Rinpoche and Vairotsana.
"He remained in the nature of mind and (when he taught) it was like we were bathing together. Or... like we were making wine, pressing the grapes together. Every moment you got something." Mind nature is the root teaching; without it, later texts from Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche or Khenpo Namdrol become "somewhat heavy," just another intellectual pursuit.
Why Praise Feels Awkward
Schmidt names three reasons: masters of that caliber are rare, there is "much talk of abuse and misuse of power," and praise can sound like elevating oneself. Tulku Urgyen himself, in Blazing Splendor, likened his guru to delicious food and himself to what comes out after digesting it.
| Witness | What they saw |
|---|---|
| Tartang Rinpoche | Great kindness, loyalty, free of deceit: "his words and his heart were in harmony" |
| Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche | Trust that buddha nature is in everyone "like oil in each and every sesame seed," so he respected every being |
| Tarik Tulku | Though the Karmapa's guru, he always took the lower seat |
| The great masters | The Karmapa, Dudjom Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche held him as a root guru |
Tarik Tulku: "True humility is the sign of having gained experience and realization." Without it come conceit toward those below, jealousy toward those above, competitiveness toward equals, because the five poisons are still alive. Schmidt calls him "a hidden yogi, fully realized but low key and humble," whose secret showed only when he taught.
Samten Gyatso's Warning
Around twenty, Tulku Urgyen was told: "You appear to be someone who can give mind teachings... You could end up too blasé." Some people really do not know the nature of mind, and many whose "mind essence" practice is "remaining absentminded and unaware in the state of the all-ground." Still, "test your confidence on a few old men and women."
People leaving Samten Gyatso's room asked "How can it be that easy?" The boy answered, "Why do you think it has to be difficult?... Just let be!", parroting his uncle. Samten Gyatso predicted he would stay "both talkative and somebody who acts like it is really simple." Tulku Urgyen admitted, "maybe... I'm just fooling everybody," yet "this is really how it is!" All we need to do is totally let be and recognize our nature right now.
What This Book Is
- Origin: built on the earlier restricted Vajra Heart, now expanded because much has been openly shared elsewhere.
- Purpose: "an unrestricted Yeshe Lama for the path of Trekchö," written as questions and answers on pitfalls, key points and clarifications.
- Outline: follows Lamrim Yeshe Nyingpo, where rushan applies only to Tögal, and Trekchö's preliminaries are vajra body, four speech yogas, resting in the natural state, remaining in freshness; Jigme Lingpa's Yeshe Lama and Dudjom Lingpa's Neluk Rangjung class them as secret rushan.
- Contents: the Three Words Striking the Key Point as main practice; enhancement; bardo teachings from Longchenpa; Tulku Urgyen's ultimate guru yoga, with Nyoshul Khen's commentary, which treats it as a mind treasure with terma signs.
Late in life Tulku Urgyen requested the Longchen Nyingtig hearing lineage from Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, for joy in the teaching and to show younger lamas whom to seek out. Khen Rinpoche, whispering, needed a microphone; Tulku Urgyen, hard of hearing, needed an earphone: "transmitted from one who could barely speak to one who could barely hear!" The talks were given at Nagi Gompa to two to twenty-five people over fourteen years, translated by Erik Pema Kunsang.
History and Overview
Dzogchen sits at the top of the nine vehicles, but it is "nothing other than the basic state of one's mind." Tulku Urgyen frames it as ground, path and fruition, explains the three ignorances, and cites the Third Karmapa: mind is neither existent nor nonexistent.
Nine Vehicles, Three Teachers
| Teacher | Vehicles | Ultimate view |
|---|---|---|
| Nirmanakaya | Shravaka, pratyekabuddha, bodhisattva | Madhyamika |
| Sambhogakaya | Kriya, Upa, Yoga | Mahamudra |
| Dharmakaya | Maha, Anu, Ati | Dzogchen |
Ati has mind, space and instruction sections, plus the innermost heart essence. Dzog, per the Kunje Gyalpo: "Complete as one... within mind. Complete as two... samsara and nirvana." Chen: no method higher.
Gold Through Three Stages
Ground is pure gold; path is gold mixed with impurities being purified; fruition is pure gold again, now stable recognition. The only difference between beings and buddhas is "gold mixed with impurities and pure, untainted gold."
Ground is essence, nature and capacity, the three kayas. Beings strayed when these were obscured by three ignorances: single identity, co-emergent and conceptual. These are fleeting, so one can become "re-enlightened instead of primordially enlightened" through a qualified teacher's instructions. "The ground is primordial purity, the path is spontaneous presence, the fruition is kayas and wisdoms."
Neither Existent Nor Nonexistent
The Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje: "It is not existent, as even the buddhas have not seen it... not nonexistent, as it is the basis for both samsara and nirvana." Not fire and water on one plate, but the middle path of unity. In Dzogchen terms nonexistence is primordial purity, existence is spontaneous presence.
| Aspect | Essence | Nature | Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quality | Empty | Cognizant | Their unity |
| Kaya | Dharmakaya | Sambhogakaya | Nirmanakaya |
"This unity of being empty and cognizant is the state of mind of all sentient beings. As there is nothing special about that state, the practitioner should suffuse it with awareness." The path is to become stable in recognizing this unity of empty cognizance suffused with awareness.
Ground
A root verse on the all-pervasive sugata essence, then Tulku Urgyen on why the ground is lomaten, "undetermined," how Samantabhadra awakens or beings stray, symbol, meaning and sign, the analogy of space, and Samantabhadra down to his last rupee.
The Root Verse
"The ground to be understood is the all-pervasive sugata essence. Uncompounded, luminous, and empty... completely quiescent, like space." Through co-emergent and conceptual ignorance, "the six classes of beings appeared as a dream," yet "you have never moved, and will never move, from the original condition." So purify the temporary stains.
Undetermined, Not Ignorant
The ground is primordially free yeshe, flawless, but also lomaten: undetermined, like a tulku born but not yet named. It is not ma rigpa, since it is awareness wisdom; there is a different lomaten that is a vacant state of ignorance. In the spontaneously present manifestation of the ground, either Samantabhadra awakens through the six special qualities, or one falls into delusion through the three ignorances.
"I am the primordial buddha" does not refer to a person who attained enlightenment. Samantabhadra is "simply unmistaken wakefulness," from which all emanations unfold like the sun and its rays. For every one of the 84,000 emotions there is an equal number of sugata manifestations to tame it. "Dharmadhatu pervades all of samsara and nirvana," since all beings have consciousness, and its essence is buddha nature.
| Samantabhadra as | What it is |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Unobstructed empty cognizance, the nature of everyone's mind |
| Symbol | Paintings and statues |
| Sign | The vision arising in development stage or Tögal |
Offerings need someone in front, a product of skillful means; then one rests free of giver, offering and recipient. Means and knowledge go hand in hand.
Everything Happens in Space
All worlds form, abide and vanish within space; there is nowhere else. Likewise joy, sadness, offerings and visualizations happen within the expanse of rigpa, "devoid of the three concepts of doer, deed, and object." "No matter how our state of mind flaps around... the flapping and chasing take place nowhere other than in the state of rigpa." Stable in it, "everything is seen as children's play," the source of "the vajra jokes and the amazing declarations."
How It Appears and How It Is
"That is the way it really is. The way it appears is how it seems to be." We think a person was born, moves around, dies and is reborn, but that is only how it seems. Only when deluded do there appear to be myriad worlds and apparitions; in the nondeluded space of rigpa there is "no increase or decrease, no change whatsoever." Mist, fog, haze and clouds make space seem to change; in the same way, only dualistic thinking makes our essence seem to change. Rigpa is our basic capital, "primordially endowed with the perfect qualities, just like the sun or a wish-fulfilling jewel," and "progress comes through effortlessness, nonstriving." Tulku Urgyen even tests the listener: "Try to think of space. Can you think of space without it being anything except a concept?" What remains is "an empty, awake state; that's it."
"If you meditate, it is conceptualized; if you forget it, it is delusion. Practice uncultivated nondistraction." Rigpa is unformed like space, its qualities spontaneously present like a wish-fulfilling jewel. "Since we already have it, how could we produce it through effort?" Götsangpo: "the falsity of all the words of the 84,000 Dharma sections is exposed. Leave it like that; that's it."
"Right now, we are Samantabhadra, who is down to his last rupee." We are a trader gone broke, wasting buddha nature through bad business. Keep that one rupee and reinvest it, and it grows until we regain ownership of Samantabhadra: "We win; the eighteen hells lose." "Just joking, but actually, I'm not joking; among jokes, it is the truth." The ground is "your present rigpa; it's not back there in the past."
Trekchö Preliminaries
The preliminaries for cutting through, khordey rushan, separate innate wakefulness from innate ignorance in body, speech and mind. Tulku Urgyen ranks the practices, introduces nalbab and sorshug, tells of an eight-year-old who recognized rigpa, and gives a daily retreat schedule.
Separating Milk from Water
Rushan means separating samsara and nirvana in terms of body, speech and mind. Our flesh-and-blood body obscures the vajra body, our intermittent voice obscures unceasing vajra speech, and discursive thinking obscures vajra mind. Since ordinary body, speech and mind come out of the enlightened ones, we separate them "as if water and milk were mixed together." The distinction is made in the view itself.
| Rank | Practice |
|---|---|
| Profound | Ngöndro, ordinary development stage, ordinary meditation |
| More profound | Nadi, prana and bindu training |
| Most profound | Rushan, Trekchö and Tögal |
A short while of this practice is said to be more profound than a hundred thousand circumambulations or butter lamps.
Three Doors, Then Two Ways of Resting
- Body: the vajra posture.
- Speech: the speech yogas of HUNG.
- Mind: inquiry into arising, dwelling and ceasing; one finds that mind does not arise, remain or go anywhere, "seeing emptiness in actuality," as experience, not theory.
| Nalbab | Sorshug | |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | Arriving at the natural state | Sustaining its freshness |
| Role | Extraordinary shamatha | Extraordinary vipashyana |
| Practice | Resting evenly in what the inquiry revealed | Bringing it into daily activity without losing continuity |
Then come Garab Dorje's Three Words Striking the Key Point: recognize your nature, decide on one point, gain confidence in liberation. But recognition can happen during the preliminaries.
The third Ngaktrin, a previous life of Samten Gyatso, was playing at Lhachab Gompa when an old protector lama said, "Look into your mind." "How?" "Just let your mind look into itself." The boy, eight, saw it "empty and clear, wide awake without thoughts." Later a Palpung retreat master and siddha, he found every master's pointing-out no different, so he called the old gonla his root guru. What is recognized in the beginning is the same as what is recognized later.
Rest Your Tired Mind
Longchenpa's Resting in the Nature of Mind sums it up: "Rest your tired mind." After life after life of trials, take a break. Since rigpa is free of thoughts of the three times, no thought can take place and remain while recognizing it. It is like finally getting a long-term visa for Nepal after bribes and forms: "like the person who has completed his task."
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| Pre-dawn | Kunzang Tuktig sadhana |
| Morning to noon | Sadhana to the mantra, at least 108; then vajra posture, speech yogas, inquiry, nalbab or sorshug |
| After lunch and rest | Second session; dissolution, re-emergence, dedication; optional fulfillment and protector petition |
| Night | Dilgo Khyentse's short Vajrasattva |
Retreat is best, with fewer diversions; every session uses the three excellences. Length is personal: a month or ten days. "For the main part, every session is nothing other than recognizing mind essence."
Shamatha and Vipashyana in Dzogchen
Every vehicle uses the words shamatha and vipashyana, but "same term, superior meaning." In Dzogchen they become nalbab, resting in naturalness, and sorshug, sustaining freshness. Tulku Urgyen explains how each is practised, why activity strengthens vipashyana, and why the preliminaries can be more profound than the main practice.
Same Term, Superior Meaning
No buddhahood is disconnected from shamatha and vipashyana; when teachers slightly put them down, they mean only the conceptual kind, since "a conceptual act cannot be the cause of enlightenment." Conventionally one cultivates calm, then "pursues" insight by asking "Who is this meditator?" In Dzogchen, extraordinary shamatha is stillness free of thought, combined with recognizing it, so the two are automatically unified as awareness and emptiness.
A small child is the same person who later becomes a twenty-five-year-old, with "the same mind" but far more learning, courage and strength. The words shamatha and vipashyana are like that: same name at every level, but a huge difference in how far the qualities are manifest.
Emptiness Resolved, Not Assumed
The key preliminary is examining the coming, staying and going of mind. The result is not an assumption but definitive certainty: "from the aggregate of form to omniscience," everything is empty of self-entity. The pandita knows this intellectually; the yogi in the mountains experiences it.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Intellectual understanding | Emptiness as an idea |
| Experience | Rigpa resolved as beyond arising, dwelling and ceasing |
| Realization | Applied again and again: "Don't wander; don't be distracted!" |
Outer things are resolved too: appearances (nangwa) are nangtong, "appearing while being empty." "Anything that is real should not be able to be burned by fire," yet world and beings can all be consumed. Once resolved, you "don't need to create emptiness. Any made up emptiness is fake."
Nalbab: Resting in Naturalness
The vajra posture, speech yogas and inquiry "are tiring," so one rests. Rnal is "the unfabricated, natural state"; a naljorpa (yogi) takes it to heart. The Deyje parting advice of the four buddhas: "Be skilled in bringing body, speech, and mind to the natural state."
- Past thought is gone; don't follow it. Future thought hasn't come; don't invite it. The present thought, looked into, has no form, color or shape: rest evenly in that.
- Body at ease in the bodhisattva posture; speech silent, breath uncontrolled, "like a sitar where all the strings have been cut."
- Mind lets go of thoughts good (dharmic), evil (the three poisons) or indifferent (blank).
"Not seeing is the supreme sight, not finding is the supreme find." Not seeing mind as a concrete thing is seeing its nature.
Ordinary shamatha has no naturalness, because the mind is placed in peace. Naturalness (rang babs) is "resting without placing the mind," like a water mill whose water has been diverted. "Like water clears when left unstirred": muddy water left a few hours settles clear; engaging the three doors without knowing how to rest stirs it up again.
Resting in the Ground Itself
Letting the three doors "rest or remain as they naturally are in the ground itself" needs a word on ground. Of ground, path and fruition, ground here means "the state of primordial purity itself," so nalbab is abandoning body, speech and mind within primordial purity. Basic nature (gzhi thog) means the original state, which also means awareness, and the stillness it brings is "the unfabricated stillness," not a calm that has been arranged. Tulku Urgyen keeps repeating the pairing: Resting in Naturalness is the Dzogchen shamatha, and Sustaining Freshness is the vipashyana, "the clear seeing, the introduction to awareness." Freshness means "the original or virgin state of naturalness itself"; sustaining means keeping it through activities. Notice that the words shamatha and vipashyana are not actually used in the Dzogchen manuals; they speak instead of "sustaining a state of awareness and remaining without moving away from" it.
Sorshug: Sustaining Freshness
Vipashyana's strength grows only in activity; "if you only remain in the sitting posture... you don't fully develop" it. Without leaving naturalness, move the eyes in peaceful, wrathful, upward and downward gazes, move the limbs spontaneously, like the tai chi Rinpoche did then but not as learned exercises, and say all kinds of things. This clears the meditator's fear that walking, eating and talking will destroy meditation.
In ordinary shamatha, "the moment you move the gaze... your attention has a tendency to be distracted. The stillness is lost." That is exactly why sorshug starts with movement. Practice means resting in naturalness, which is awareness, and sustained freshness, so you never move away from it. "When you are feeling delighted, depressed, attached, or angry, you should just rest in naturalness, which is the state of empty awareness." At that time the grasped object outside and the fixating mind inside are both "spontaneously freed without any place or object." "Don't let fixation take over!" Rinpoche warns; "it is fixation, in any case, that ruins it for us."
Once stable, in crowds, whatever arises (desire, anger, praise, blame, joy, sorrow) is like firewood added to a blaze: it flares, "no harm caused toward the view," and clarity grows. Distraction is the worst enemy; if you wander away, then the essence is kind of lost. Zangthal names clarity; in rigpa, appearances are like reflections in a mirror, visible yet with nothing to hold.
Rigpa Unobstructed, Like a Mirror
Rigpa is "cognizant yet not obscured or blocked." Obscured means forgetting or becoming distracted: if you follow one thought after another, the brightness "becomes kind of covered, veiled," though never completely lost. When you are in rigpa, "whatever appears is like a reflection in a mirror; it is appearing, yet empty." The mirror and the reflection are not apart; the reflection has shape and color but no concrete substance to grasp, and while empty it is still visible. That is the unity of being empty and apparent, and it shows what "unobstructed" means: cognizance without fixation, nothing to hold.
Asked again how nalbab differs from ordinary shamatha, Rinpoche answers that it is "shamatha without support." After seeking the mind here and there, becoming really tired, you rest in exactly the resolution you reached, without thinking "This is how it is." Sorshug then simply means you do not deviate from that state. "Try and reflect on this."
Is One Introduced Already?
"Yes, one has, of course; why not?" Mahamudra's one-pointedness and simplicity still involve some conceptual mind; Dzogchen avoids the labels because "from the very beginning, the Dzogchen practice is without concepts." The Three Words are placed under the view, but nalbab is not to be abandoned for something higher. A Kham saying: "The bottom is showing from outside": with the door open, you see the innermost room from outside. "Sometimes the preliminaries are more profound than the main practice."
The same Ngaktrin recognized at an old monk's "Don't wander." Later no snow stayed on his roof. When a kind patron died beyond a pass blocked by ice walls two or three stories high, attendants begged him not to go. "It will be a breach of samaya." Next morning: "Last night I cleared the way"; "I practiced some tummo; I melted it into water." Introduction "doesn't always fit the traditional sequence."
Nalbab rests in emptiness resolved through experience; sorshug never departs from it in movement, gaze and speech. Together they are shamatha and vipashyana without concepts.
Words Are Like Rice Husks
A question-and-answer chapter on why ordinary shamatha binds, the great lightning gaze that frees "buddhas and beings," the trap of being too particular, why words are husks, how Mahamudra treats beginners kindly, and how thoughts seize their own seat.
Shamatha Holds on to Bliss
Shamatha means "abiding peacefully": the peace carries bliss, and abiding means fixation. One sits thinking "What a fantastic meditation I have!", afraid "if I move the body, the state will collapse." Bliss with attachment is duality, sowing seeds of the three realms. Vipashyana is "bare but wide open" (Paltrül Rinpoche), with no abider and nothing to abide in: the naked state of dharmakaya.
"By the great lightning gaze, both buddhas and beings are freed." "Buddhas" are good thoughts (relative devotion, compassion, shamatha); "beings" are bad thoughts and ego-clinging. In the first instant, there are neither.
Neither Too Loose Nor Too Particular
Some think "I must make my meditation a little more wakeful", which is intellect. Others decide "self-existing wisdom is without a knower" and suspect any knowing as conceptual. "Without any knowing... we would be unconscious." The knowing is self-existing, not manufactured. Better to remain totally loose in that very instant, as it is, not making it worse and not trying to uplift or improve it.
"Don't defame or praise it; don't exaggerate or denigrate it." And "we are not to blame if we slip into fabricating a little," since we have been "fabricating the unfabricated" since beginningless time. Even "Let go, rest loosely!" is only words; true letting go has no one letting go and nothing let go of.
Words Are Husks
Once stable, relying on phrases "can be quite damaging." "Words are just like rice husks"; they fall away as the view deepens, and later one sees "how much damage words cause." The view is "free from viewer and viewed." In Dzogchen: "Herd primordially free rigpa with innate mindfulness," like grazing cattle, then rest freely. Here mindfulness is without duality: rigpa sustains itself.
| Mahamudra | Dzogchen | |
|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness | Watchfulness, keeping guard; main part at first | Innate, nondual |
| Beginners | "Treats beginners very kindly" | Risk of no support |
| Method | "By fabricated mind, one is led to the natural state" | Noticing distraction is arriving at rigpa |
| Stages | Mindfulness with shamatha in one-pointedness, discarded in simplicity | Like striking a match: flame and strike together |
Chokgyur Lingpa's son refused to teach mind: "I am a person who made it to the roof of the house without using the stairs." A teacher should know which step to take first; "Were I to explain my view to you, it would not help."
Neither Prolong Nor Shorten
You must know when you are distracted; otherwise one thinks "I am completely without distraction," an artificial attitude that cannot destroy delusion. "If it's long, it's long; if it's short, it's short." In naturalness there are no thoughts of the three times, so the three poisons have nothing to adhere to, and "no crop grows if no seeds are planted."
If past, present and future thoughts are there, they give the poisons a place to adhere to and something to follow; when the three times do not exist, there is no cause to stray into the desire, form and formless realms. "The view is not something to be achieved from elsewhere."
Thoughts arise from you as rigpa's expression and, recognized, dissolve back into its space: self-occurring self-liberation. Without confidence in this freeing, recognition alone cannot destroy delusion. Trained again and again, thoughts weaken until phenomena are exhausted and rigpa has "seized its own seat of power."
Comparing Mahamudra and Dzogchen
Mahamudra and Dzogchen "differ in words but not in meaning." Tulku Urgyen sets out the one real difference, training with appearances versus training with awareness, then widens it into unity, the three kayas, and Guru Rinpoche's one-line summary of mind: "empty cognizance suffused with awareness."
Same Meaning, Different Emphasis
In Mahamudra, you are introduced to mind and train mixed with mind until nonmeditation; through one-pointedness and simplicity you exert lots of mental effort, peeling fixation away like layers of corn. In Dzogchen, you are introduced "from the very beginning" to nonmeditation, nondistraction. The mind and space sections are even introduced before the Mahamudra introduction, and the intent of the Kunje Gyalpo tantra matches Mahamudra's.
"Mahamudra and Dzogchen differ in words but not in meaning. The only difference is that Mahamudra stresses mindfulness while Dzogchen relaxes within awareness."
Rtsal sbyang, "training," means developing a skill, like physical exercise or schoolwork. In Mahamudra, forms will appear to the eyes and sounds to the ears; you "just recognize the watcher." Early on unpleasant sights and sounds may feel harmful, but their experiencer is mind, without which, like a stone or piece of wood, there would be no experience. All experience is personal experience (rang snang). In Dzogchen, whatever appears is "beyond benefit and harm," so you only rest in rigpa. "Appearances and rigpa are a unity": nothing needs blocking or keeping.
How Clinging Ties Us
You see an object and think "Oh, this is a tape recorder": "holding it to be there," fixation. Then "Oh, it's a good one": attachment. "Not good" is anger; "I don't care" is stupidity. These three tie us to samsara. A yogi also has eyes, but what is seen becomes empty perception (snang stong): "While appearing, they are empty."
"Don't divide appearances as being there and awareness as being here," the Kagyüpas teach; dividing them is what sentient beings do. Practising their unity is the meaning of one taste, and it is why things "become smooth, easy for the practitioner." Bringing onto the path means mingling with daily activity without losing continuity; if continuity is lost, practice has not been brought onto the path.
Introduction Comes First
A mother bird flies with her chicks until they can fly alone; training needs something already introduced. Merely imagining things empty, as in "the Hindu system" Rinpoche contrasts, is like a mountain stream frozen by ice-cold wind: the naturally free flow becomes stiff and solid. If you have not recognized mind nature, there is no skill to develop.
| Mahamudra | Dzogchen | Kaya |
|---|---|---|
| Unborn essence | Empty essence | Dharmakaya |
| Unobstructed manifestation | Cognizant nature | Sambhogakaya |
| Manifold expression | All-pervasive capacity | Nirmanakaya |
Appearance and emptiness are a unity "since the very beginning of primordial time"; Dzogchen calls it the unity of primordial purity and spontaneous presence, which "it is impossible to make" temporarily. Trekchö gives the view of primordial purity; Tögal shows spontaneous presence as self-display. Deities appear but "you cannot take hold of them," nor can the four elements harm them: "No matter how much you beat them with a stick, they would never feel any pain. Just joking!" Such a yogi becomes at ease, never "more and more narrow-minded."
Guru Rinpoche's Sack Turned Inside Out
If asked "What is mind? Tell me briefly," say: "It is the unity of emptiness and cognizance suffused with awareness." Sentient beings, pervaded by sugatagarbha, are empty cognizance suffused with ignorance; the yogi is empty luminosity with the core of awareness. In this statement, the essential meaning of one hundred lines is contained.
A Kham saying: "Tell all, like a sack turned inside out." Guru Rinpoche "has completely disclosed everything." The Mahaprajnaparamita agrees: transcendent knowledge is "inexpressible, inconceivable, indescribable, nonarising, and unceasing, the essence of space itself," the experience of self-cognizant wakefulness.
Mahamudra trains with outer appearances, Dzogchen with inner rigpa, but both arrive at the unity of appearance and emptiness. Either way, introduction comes before training.
Three Words Striking the Key Point
The heart of the book. Tulku Urgyen unpacks Garab Dorje's three statements: recognize your own nature, decide on one point, gain confidence in liberation. He teaches through space, a clap of the hands, the four parts without three, a blacksmith's hammer and a knife to the heart, ending with the meditation gods and why their calm never frees.
Garab Dorje's Condensation
Garab Dorje took the 6,400,000 Dzogchen tantras, and especially the fourth, innermost section, and condensed them into three statements. One master said, "All the thousands of books and scriptures are taught for the sole purpose of realizing these three words."
| Statement | Meaning | Level of the path |
|---|---|---|
| Recognize your own nature | Empty cognizance with a core of awareness, seen "in the very moment of looking" | Recognizing |
| Decide on one point | The three kayas are present in just that, "the sovereign nature of the three kayas" | Training |
| Gain confidence in liberation | "Meditation is not the most important, liberation is" | Stability |
The First Word: Recognize Your Own Nature
Buddha-nature is "the very basis or source from which all worlds and living beings... originate," empty in essence, cognizant by nature, with a capacity "endowed with a core of self-existing awareness." It falls into no category. To say it exists is wrong, since it is "not a concrete thing with distinguishing characteristics." To say it does not exist is also wrong, since it is the source of everything that appears. It even surpasses "beyond being and not being," because that, too, is only a concept.
"Can we say that space is? Can we say that space isn't? We can't." You cannot define space as a concrete entity, yet it accommodates the world and all beings. When asked to look at mind, students say "I don't see a thing," because mind is free of being something. But when Rinpoche claps his hands, they hear it, so mind is not nonexistent. The perceiving aspect eliminates nothingness; the empty aspect eliminates existence.
This unity is not something we can "make up intellectually," which is why it is called "the view beyond intellect," or thatness. Unlike space, which doesn't know anything, buddha-nature knows, and the empty essence and cognizant nature cannot be separated.
The Four Parts Without Three
The past thought has ceased; the future thought hasn't arisen; and if the present thought is recognized and not followed, it collapses. These are "the changing thoughts of the three times." The fourth is "the unchanging innate nature," a short gap beyond description, "the fourth time of timelessness." What you need to see is that there is nothing to see.
"That fact that there is nothing to see is clearly and vividly seen." "I don't see a thing" proves emptiness; that something sees it proves cognizance. "Would space see no thing?" It is "seeing in the very moment of looking": not reached slowly, not missed by searching too high or too low, not half seen. The thought afterward, "Oh, now I see that there is nothing to see," is not liberated. "The first moment is enough... It's right on!"
The Second Word: Decide on One Point
The empty essence is dharmakaya, the cognizant nature is sambhogakaya, and their unified, all-pervasive capacity is nirmanakaya. Once recognized, you decide that the three kayas of all buddhas are present in just that, with "nothing higher or superior" to decide upon. These are also the three vajras we are to achieve and the basis of every being's body, speech and mind. "It is our thinking that causes us to continue in samsara." The moment free of thought "becomes unceasing," and then "will there be any of the three poisons?" "Free from thought, yet everything is vividly known."
The Tibetan for buddha, sangye (sangs rgyas), means "purified perfection": dualistic consciousness and the five poisons purified, wisdom qualities perfected. All wisdom, compassion, powers and activity arise from this wakefulness.
The Third Word: Confidence in Liberation
Rigpa is "primordially free or 'pre-liberated'" in all beings, but thinking, while confused, is not liberated. Thoughts cannot be stopped or suppressed; knowing the essence of the thought frees it. The method is "Sustain the primordially free awareness with unfabricated mindfulness," meaning without a technique.
Meeting a familiar person. Having caught the scent of the nature once, you know a thought as soon as you see it, "like drawing on water." A knot tied in a snake. With more familiarity, "no need to apply any technique," the thought unravels by itself. A thief entering an empty house. "Nothing to liberate and there is no liberator"; the thief gains nothing and the house loses nothing. These can describe one person's progress or three capacities.
"If you know how to meditate but not how to liberate, then aren't you just like the meditation gods?" Their practice is shamatha, which blocks the path to buddhahood, reaching no higher than the peak of existence. The ordinary mind's "black continuity" or "black diffusion", mindlessly carried away without knowing who thinks or where thoughts go, "is definitely not the path of liberation."
The Hammer and the Heart
"Now, I have spoken like a simpleton," he says, but not seeing a thing proves emptiness, seeing that proves cognizance, and "empty space doesn't cognize." Rigpa is never really lost; we are not without it "for even an instant," but we are "carried away in 'black dissipation.'" Like the Kham mountain Ngomo Lang Tang, which seems always just ahead after a day's or two days' walk, his teaching returns to the same point: "like the squeak of a small sparrow... I squeak one evening, and on the following evening I make the very same squeak."
Visitors back from Uddiyana, Vajrayogini's land, said they saw "just some big boulders and a little pond." Gendun Chopel: "If you can't even see your unchanging nature, which you have never been separated from, how can you expect to perceive Vajrayogini's pure land?" Masters like Kyungpo Naljor, Tilopa and Naropa had visions there because they were established in dharmata. Mind's nature is rigpa as fire's is heat and water's wetness.
Recognize, Train, Stabilize
Recognition is like acquiring a flower seed: you must first know it is a seed. Training is giving it warmth and moisture: "repeating this short moment of recognition many times, again and again," supported by devotion to the enlightened and compassion for the unenlightened, "a universal panacea." "In the moment of love, the nature of emptiness dawns nakedly." Effort comes first, then it becomes effortless. Stability is when nondistraction lasts day and night. A candle flame or ember is the same fire that sets a mountainside ablaze; then "will we be ordinary human beings or divine?"
"Is the moment that you call 'your nature' something you need to make and then maintain in an unnatural way or is it something you simply leave unfabricated, as it naturally is?" Thoughts like "It needs to be a little different" or "Oh, now I've got it. Well, I had it!" are not unfabricated naturalness. Our nature is like the sun shining; in ordinary beings its rays turn into thinking that obscures the sun.
The Defect of the Meditation Gods
The dhyana devas meditate with concepts, so they cannot attain enlightenment. At the summit of existence they dwell on "endless like space... infinite consciousness... nothing whatsoever... beyond being and not being," but "all of this is just thinking." One is deluded down from there through the formless spheres, the seventeen form realms and the six desire-god realms. "It is a subtle thought that is able to produce the coarse ones."
| Concentration | Quality |
|---|---|
| First | Conceptualization and discrimination, like a blazing fire |
| Second | Joy and bliss |
| Third | No delight, but bliss |
| Fourth | Equanimity, but conceptual equanimity |
The buddhas' samadhi is "free from resting and not resting," free from placing and not placing. "Foolish people argue the existence of space, while the learned ones are free from arguing about it."
See that there is nothing to see, decide that the three kayas are complete in it, and let each thought free itself as it arises. Liberation, not mere calm, is the key point.
Point Directly to Naked Awareness
For sharp students, Dzogchen skips the long preliminaries and points out naked awareness directly. This short chapter defines essence, nature and capacity and warns that Dzogchen carries great benefit and great danger, depending on whether it is resolved through experience or through intellect.
Three Aspects of Mind
Mind is uncompounded: "nothing for the eyes to see, for the ears to hear, and for the hands to hold." "In the empty essence, dharmakaya." Yet it is not a void, or there would be no talk of buddhas and beings: "In the cognizant nature, sambhogakaya," meaning "perfect abundance." "In the manifold capacity, nirmanakaya": the unity of emptiness and cognizance, "all-embracing and unobstructed," a "compassionate variety" of self-display, not coarse external substance.
Great Benefit, Great Danger
Resolved through experience, Dzogchen is "very swift and direct," and enlightenment "in that very body and lifetime" is possible, since recognition is touching the fruition: taking fruition as path. Resolved intellectually, it becomes "conceptual nihilism": "nothing to meditate upon... If I meditate in the morning, I am a buddha in the morning." The student who walks around "with vacantly gazing eyes" thinking "I am never distracted!" has strayed into intellect.
For this reason, Madhyamika or Mahamudra, going step by step through theory, experience and realization, can be "much more beneficial," with reference points along the way. Shantideva: the mind holding "neither the concept of concreteness nor that of inconcreteness" is not conceptualizing.
Tilopa to Naropa: "Theory is like a patch; it will wear out and fall off." After death come panic, fear and terror, and "patchwork thought" cannot calm them. Hearing of a delicious meal without eating it, you cannot know the taste. The proof of having recognized the mind essence is that one feels no doubt, no matter how much one may try.
Jigme Lingpa: at stability, "no need for one hundred panditas," and "even when questioned by these scholars, doubt will not arise." When a qualified master meets a worthy student, "iron strikes flint, creating fire immediately." "Mind is like the shadow of one's hand, and awareness is like the hand itself," so no being lacks awareness. To introduce it is "to point out the absence of mental fabrication"; otherwise "it becomes an introduction to mere discursive thought."
Pointing Out
The longest chapter, and the one the book turns on. Tulku Urgyen gives the pointing-out instruction for the first of the three words: why we are confused (gold covered with dirt, a jewel in mud), what "four parts without three" means, the many doorways into recognition (devotion, compassion, shock, exhaustion, PHAT, looking at the thinker), and the training that follows: "short moments, many times."
Killing the Life Force of Confusion
Tsik sum means three words; ne is the key point, like the heart in the body. Just as a weapon to the heart severs the life force, awareness wisdom is the weapon that kills the life force of confusion. Without first recognizing the view, "there will be nothing to sustain through the meditation." And what is recognized is "not something to be searched for elsewhere," nor something "arising within your being that wasn't already there."
Gold Covered With Dirt
Gold in its original state is simply pure. That is Samantabhadra, the primordial buddha, who "didn't have the cause of confusion" and needed to clear nothing away: primordial enlightenment. We "did not know that gold was gold," so our nature became as if covered by defilement. Primordial enlightenment "has been lost" for us; what remains possible is re-enlightenment: cleaning the gold and ending up with pure gold itself, "not something that comes from another place."
| Aspect of our nature | Obscured by |
|---|---|
| Empty essence | Single-identity ignorance |
| Cognizant, luminous nature | Co-emergent ignorance |
| Unobstructed capacity | Conceptual ignorance |
Confusion is "a passing or temporary thing," and because it is temporary, it can be cleared away, like clouds from the sky. Buddha-nature, by contrast, is not temporary: it is present in every being "just as oil is present in sesame seeds." In the golden aeon there was a wish-fulfilling jewel; ours has "got dropped in a mud hole and was not noticed." Pointed out and recognized, it is rinsed and set on top of a pole with banners, where it grants every wish.
An unconventional, accomplished lama in Kham prostrated to anyone, joining his palms even to dogs and pigs. Asked "Haven't you gone a little crazy?", he answered, "Actually not. You are the ones who are crazy, not knowing what the enlightened essence is. I am not prostrating... to the dogs and the pigs, but to the enlightened essence that is within them." Our essence is "no different in quality or size" from Samantabhadra's, or a dog's, or a pig's.
Four Parts Without Three
Our essence is unconditioned, like space; the thoughts of past, present and future are conditioned, like clouds that move away. "The three times are merely concepts. There is no other conceptual thinking that is beyond or apart from the three times." Free of them is "the timeless time," the "fourth time of equality."
To find it, you "get to the immediate present," as when you hear a clap. The past has ceased and the future hasn't come, but there is still "involvement in what is known as the present." Sentient beings attach a new thought to the previous one, a continuous chain called samsara. Instead, "don't accept or reject; then the present vanishes as well." What remains is the naked state, rigpa. It "lasts for a few seconds, not longer," because of beginningless habit, but "this short moment is flawless," since "it has not been overtaken or corrupted by conceptual thinking yet."
Some fear that with no thinking they will be incapacitated. Mindlessness is when "somebody knocks you out": thoughts cease and knowing ceases too, and present experience is brought to a halt. Rigpa is "thought-free knowing": "You see whatever is present, right? You can still hear whatever sound there is." Even though thoughts have ceased, awareness doesn't cease. This is "the vividness of appearance."
Beyond Arising, Dwelling and Ceasing
Dzogchen first investigates whether a thought arises, remains or ceases. Failing to find any such thing, you establish that mind is "utterly empty, just like space." "Can you say that space comes into being, that it remains anywhere, or that it ceases to be?" Yet mind is still cognizant, and this unity is what is beyond arising and ceasing. Not seeing it, we get caught in "unaware thinking that arises, dwells, and ceases," always forging, forming and creating: "this is called samsara."
Essence and expression coexist, like flame and heat, sun and sunlight, ocean and waves, body and limbs, sky and clouds. "Where do the clouds exist? They do not exist anywhere outside space." Pleasure and pain rest on the empty mind; the moment we recognize what feels happy or sad, they collapse, and what remains "is called awareness wisdom."
A string stretched across a room blocks free space. Cut it in one second, and "the whole thing falls apart," leaving one space. Conditioned thinking is the string interrupting the unconditioned; the cut is trekchö, cutting through, the "unchanging wakefulness."
Doorways Into Recognition
| Doorway | What happens |
|---|---|
| Strong devotion | No thought is left behind; recognize mind at that instant |
| Overwhelming compassion | "So overwhelming that tears come to your eyes" |
| Shock or panic | A tiger or lion jumps out; before becoming oblivious, there is a moment of naked wakefulness |
| Exhaustion | After running up a mountain without rest, mind stops totally, but awareness doesn't |
| Looking at the thinker | Instead of what is thought of, look at what thinks: "not a thing" to find |
| The shout PHAT | "Like a flash of lightning or a thunder crack"; a gap before any concept |
"The moment conceptual mind ceases, the dharmakaya is nakedly manifest." Most people in panic or exhaustion become oblivious; the point is to recognize before that. When you look at the source of a thought, it has totally vanished, and "it is not because one is not very bright or unlucky." "It is not that there was a thing to find and one missed it. One actually found that there was not a thing."
Through Stillness and Through Movement
There are two basic ways: when the mind is still and when the mind is moving. And in either case, "the master can point out mind nature, but the student has to recognize it."
When PHAT is shouted, the mind is "totally naked," stripped of the five, six, twenty-one or eighty kinds of thoughts, "like a stainless crystal." After it, "the abiding and not abiding are destroyed," leaving a blank and free state to recognize as dharmakaya awareness. A recognized thought "will be traceless, as in the example of writing in space."
Trying to throw thoughts away or prevent them from arising is "simply another thought, and it will cause more obscuration." Thoughts are the natural expression of our empty essence; "if you try to suppress thinking, it increases." They must dissolve spontaneously. Equally, being "free from thought while being kind of dull and stupid" "is not called nakedness." The real thing is "free from any concepts but at the same moment wide awake."
Deciding Comes by Itself
The second word, deciding on one point, is not a decision you force because you are told to. "By recognizing one's essence, then naturally, the doubt will fall away." "One's mind cannot be resolved by somebody else." The quote: "Free from concepts, the original, fresh essence"; original means primordially pure, fresh means "not adulterated, covered, or spoiled." In that instant attachment, anger and stupidity cannot stay, just as "a hair will not be able to remain" in a flame.
Other Traditions, Same Pointing Out
- Mahamudra: essence, manifestation, expression (gshi, gdang, rtsal). "Basic wakefulness is utterly subtle... indestructible like the center of space," and "you are your own father."
- Madhyamika: transcend extremes, remaining "without formulating any construct" until wide open and bare like space.
- Prajnaparamita: inexpressible, inconceivable, indescribable; it transcends ordinary discriminating prajna.
- Machig Labdrön, to a demon: "Besides the empty movement of an empty mind, I don't see you as having any existence."
Complex explanations of how the basic state is and isn't produce all the levels of vehicles. But simply letting it be: "it is like that at the outset, simply leaving it like that is the path, and realizing fully just as it is, is the fruition, not three different things."
Earth, water, fire, wind and space do not cognize; forms and sounds "don't know anything." Mind is the one that experiences everything, and the same mind, unaware of its own nature, "creates samsara." Empty cognizance knowing itself is "the immaculate dharmakaya... not something to be created through meditation or forgotten through distraction." Salwa (gsal ba), cognizance, is the "ta" in shunyata.
Short Moments, Many Times
In the first few seconds, "the outer objects are not blocked. Mind within is not nailed down": "the great equality." "Do not reach out to what is perceived; do not focus in or concentrate on the perceiver." Co-emergent ignorance is the forgetting; conceptual ignorance is the thinking: "Once we forget, then we think." In the unforgetting moment, ignorance is purified in the ground. Thus, you train in short moments, many times.
"It is not that rigpa will come down from the sky and take possession of you." Nor is it a lightning bolt after which only rigpa remains, nor a visualization into which "the real rigpa comes in and dissolves," as in the development stage. "Leave present wakefulness without trying to improve it, without trying to alter it. That is sufficient."
At first we do need observer and observed: "There has to be the idea to recognize our nature. Otherwise, we will never notice." With stability, arrival happens without deliberate effort. It is like learning by heart: Rinpoche learned the Seven-Line supplication as a boy and now chants it "without any second thought at all." Then one can "take a rest... like a person who has completed his task." "It is not within our power to make the essence of mind. If we could, we should," but it is "the flawless dharmakaya itself."
Confusion is temporary dirt on gold. Cut the three times, recognize thought-free knowing by any doorway, don't suppress or tamper, and repeat short moments, many times until it is second nature.
Enhance the Recognition
After recognition comes enhancement: short moments, many times, then confidence in liberation, where thoughts arise from you and dissolve into you. Tulku Urgyen contrasts this freeing with shamatha's frozen calm in some very earthy images, and closes with the Karmapa's song on the Middle Way of unity.
Pointed Out and Recognized
A father leaves when you are an infant and returns when you are twenty-five. You won't know him "unless somebody points out and says, 'Here is your father.'" A fool lost himself in the marketplace, asking where he was. "Don't be stupid; you are right here." "Oh yeah, here I am." Recognizing your essence is just like that.
The moment should be short, since "there is no time for new thoughts to come in," and lengthening it makes it "merely a conceptual idea." But you need re-mindfulness, or you will never think of recognizing. Deliberate mindfulness at first becomes effortless with familiarity. "Leaving it short helps for nonmeditation. Repeating it many times helps for nondistraction."
Self-Occurring, Self-Liberated
Thoughts are "a projection or an expression of our own essence." "It arises from you and it dissolves into you," like drawing on water with a finger. They are never said to come from elsewhere and be freed in us. The Tsik Sum Nedik: "Self-occurring self-liberation, without interruption."
Ordinary shamatha, where you try not to think, leaves thoughts "kind of frozen." It is "the same as squeezing a fart inside... nothing to smell outside but the cause is retained within," and "like putting the awareness in prison." Shamatha: the thought has somewhat subsided. Vipashyana: the thought has been liberated. The difference is "constipated versus going to the toilet." Self-liberation is like a bubble: arising in water, dissolving in water.
Thoughts continue until one becomes an arya, and "even then, there are some"; thinking is only exhausted at buddhahood, like "an island of pure gold" with no ordinary stones. The difference between ignorance and awareness is the difference between night and day. A corpse has eyes but doesn't see; the mind sees through the senses, not by them.
"It is not existent since even the victorious ones do not see it. It is not nonexistent since it is the basis of samsara and nirvana. This is not a contradiction, but the Middle Way of unity."
Thinking mind is a thing is "as stupid as a beast or a cow"; thinking there is nothing is "even more foolish"; "Oh these two are a unity" is a third concept. The concept-free moment is the natural unity, self-existing, like a single bridge to cross a hundred rivers after they have flowed together. For enhancement: devotion to the Three Jewels, compassion for all beings, diligence, and giving up all other concerns, which brings you "back to square one, the primordial state."
Characteristics of Mind and Rigpa
How does rigpa differ from the all-ground, the eight consciousnesses, and ordinary cognizance? Through questions and answers, Tulku Urgyen draws the line at fixation, explains "seeming thought" versus real thought, and gives the practical test of seeing a cup without straying into it.
The Map of Mind
| Level | Character |
|---|---|
| All-ground (alaya) | "Just delusion... blank state, vacant": no thought, no awareness, the basis for samsara |
| All-ground consciousness | Cognizant, without thoughts, but with fixation |
| Mental cognition | Subtle thought activity |
| Defiled mental consciousness | Gross thought: passion, aggression, likes and dislikes |
| Five sense consciousnesses | Cognizant but nonconceptual: the first instant of seeing, before "Oh this is a wall" |
| All-ground wisdom (rigpa) | Senses wide open, mind unfocused, awareness uninhibited |
Shamatha only "gets back to the all-ground"; it is "the friend of the all-ground, the helper." The all-ground is limited; rigpa is unlimited. The difference is "wide awake versus blank and oblivious," and you can check it by yourself.
Rinpoche's root guru: "What is the use of sitting for a long time in the state of stupor... We have been there like that since beginningless time anyway, sleeping in the nest of the all-ground. Better to practice for a short moment, but completely wide awake." When Samten Gyatso entered a room, people could not bear to look at his eyes. In Kham they say bright, clear eyes show a yogi remaining in rigpa.
Cognizance With and Without Fixation
Both consciousness and self-existing wakefulness are "conscious and cognizant"; "there is no consciousness that is not cognizant," or nothing would be perceived. The cognizance of consciousness is with fixation, whereas that of self-existing awareness is without fixation. Awareness is the essence; dualistic mind its expression.
Two Kinds of Nonthought
- The nonthought of thinking is delimited, "total blankness, like being knocked out with a stick."
- The nonthought of awareness is unobstructed: fixation and attachment collapse, cognizance does not, "like a mirror, where many things can present themselves."
- Consciousness is like a dog: "it only notices what is exactly in front of it," one thought at a time. Rigpa can know the three times simultaneously, the basis of Guru Rinpoche's fifteen higher perceptions of past, present and future.
Even "rigpa" is used twice: in stillness, occurrence and noticing (gnas 'gyu rig gsum) it means just noticing whether mind moves; as self-existing awareness it is free of both stillness and movement. The difference is "as big as... the sky and the earth."
Seeming Thought
The essence is like the circle of the sun. Its expression, rigpa's knowing quality, is like the rays: cognizant without fixation, "vividly awake... but without holding on to subject and object" (Chöying Dzöd). The expression of the expression is deluded mind, which "apprehends objects where no real objects exist, and... an 'I' where no real 'I' exists." A seeming movement knows without dualistic fixation; a real movement always has an object.
Resting in rigpa, "there is the visual cognition of the cup taking place. Definitely you know it is a cup," but you have not fallen into dualistic fixation. If you learned the word, "cup" will come about, but you "don't go further" into "I like it... I want to get one." No karma accumulates. Objects appear in rigpa like images in a mirror; sems strays onto the object but rigpa doesn't.
Sems always conceptualizes, then discerns; rigpa does neither, and "when there is no straying into these two... the root of samsara is cut."
Rigpa and mind both know; the dividing line is fixation. Rigpa sees the cup without reaching for it.
Differentiating Sems and Rigpa
A practical chapter on telling ordinary mind from rigpa in the present moment. Tulku Urgyen deals with doubt, the great flashing gaze, the advice to be "an easygoing imbecile," the test of mercury and water on dust, subconscious gossip, the body as a guesthouse on the road to Bodhgaya, and how to shout PHAT. Taught in Malaysia, 1981.
Entertaining or Letting Go
Past thought has finished, the future hasn't come, so "there is only present thought." The whole question is "Am I entertaining the present thought or am I letting it go?" If let go, "there is no way to miss it; there is no way to screw it up." "The attempt to correct or improve is called fixation." Both Dzogchen and Mahamudra point out, and practise, the four parts without three.
Doubt Is Just Another Thought
"Is this the real thing?" is another present thought. Who is doubting? "Recognize in a flash, then the doubt vanishes," like a knot on a snake. "You don't have to blame yourself for that." Doubt is even better than being vacant and "calling that the practice." All the forms ("I'm not sure I really understand... or if I can really apply it") vanish the same way, as darkness cannot remain when the light turns on, as a hair cannot remain in a flame.
When Rinpoche taps the table, you hear it with no hesitation. Likewise, the intention to recognize and the act of recognizing are simultaneous: "There is no time to doubt." "The great flashing gaze" frees buddhas (good thoughts) and beings (bad thoughts), "like a flash of lightning." "Trekchö is a direct cut, not a sloppy, slow one."
The Fifth Dalai Lama said recognizing rigpa should be "as immediate as raising your gaze momentarily." Looking down toward the nose is shamatha; "raise your gaze, at that moment, there is nothing but rigpa." "The first and the second moments are clean, genuine"; after that, thoughts return, since we are "still encased in the physical body."
"It's best to be an easygoing imbecile. That is how you should be, an easygoing idiot. Recognize once and don't worry too much about it." Being too clever, too critical about fine details carries you away. "Oh I used to have the view but now it's gone" is "not really the correct view." That attempt, itself, is the obstacle.
Mercury and Water on Dust
"Try and remain in rigpa and make a thought." In stable rigpa, "even the attempt to make a thought is unsuccessful." Yet rigpa is not frozen: "Be like a small child. If you are happy, you laugh; if you are sad, you cry." Because it is unimpeded, appearances arise within it, which is what makes the unity of development and completion stages possible: deities manifest without leaving the essence. "Recognize a little bit once in a while and forget in between; that's how it is."
Subtle thought, "subconscious gossip," is like a small flow of water underneath a heap of straw: the top looks dry, but water runs below. You can imagine you are undistracted with background commentary running: "This is not really right." Remedies: pull rigpa out into the open, "relax inwardly but concentrate a little outwardly," or shout PHAT, with "not even a hair-tip of an observer."
"Keep mindful in the state of undistracted nonmeditation." This unfabricated mindfulness is none other than rigpa: nothing to cultivate, nothing forgotten, so "how can there be any doubt?" "Don't expect or believe that rigpa is something special or something amazing; it's not." But sems and rigpa don't coexist, "just like darkness and light." "Have you ever heard that the sky is controlled by the clouds?"
The Road to Bodhgaya
Travelling from Nagi Gompa to Bodhgaya, the road has ups and downs, rivers and gorges; "you will arrive if you continue... and do not stop off on the way." The body is "just a guesthouse": some lodgings good, some bad, so don't be governed by them. Through elements, channels and winds, the mind can be irritated even without an external cause. Still, "this body is a great advantage": no one in the hells, among hungry ghosts or animals recognizes mind essence, and a bardo consciousness lacks independent power.
"Turn your nose toward home"; for Rinpoche, home abroad is Nagi Gompa; for practice, home is yeshe: ye, primordially present, and shes, cognizing. Fettered by fixation, it becomes rnam shes, ordinary consciousness. "Your present mind free from fabrication is the real Samantabhadra, which has never been apart from you." Sems and rigpa are not two hands touching but the sun and the sunlight. And: "Don't hammer the point... Rigpa is like a good friend you already know."
How to Shout PHAT
A prepared PHAT, thought of and then shouted, "will not be able to cut thoughts"; in Kham they'd say "one has caught the smell of it." It should be shouted "in the very moment of thinking it." "Well, actually we are not to blame" for being prepared. PHAT, the syllable of prajna and upaya, cuts both coarse and subtle thought. A teacher may shout behind a student sitting with his back turned, leaving him "moon struck"; he should recognize, "without falling unconscious."
Let go of the present thought, look straight at whoever doubts, stay easygoing, and test yourself with mercury and water. Keep walking toward Bodhgaya.
The Watcher and the Watched
The watcher and the watched are the last and subtlest duality: the cognitive obscuration. Tulku Urgyen explains why beginners do have a watcher, how it is dissolved by resting freely and PHAT (the "precious word empowerment"), why holding the view is a fork in a steak, and how bliss, clarity and nonthought become either ornaments of the three kayas or the three realms.
Beginners Do Have a Watcher
Mahamudra and Dzogchen both say it should be "like space, free from both watcher and watched." But until they mingle, "sometimes it feels like there is a watcher and something being watched. It is like that, and why not?" Only Garab Dorje mingled them at once, "a sentient being when he sat down and a buddha when he stood up again." "All the Kagyü lamas" take years.
The watched is the thought "The master said there is something called the unity of cognizance and emptiness... There must be such a thing!" You mentally form something to watch, and the mind becomes the watcher: "I'm seeing it" or "I'm not seeing it." That is the duality.
Mindfulness should "occur by itself... due to the kindness of having practiced," and then remain freely. "Resting freely without meditating outwardly" is extremely important. Until then you watch "like a herdsman looking after the cattle," asking whether they eat and drink. "As long as you look outwardly, like a herdsman watching cattle, the view will be theoretical." When that collapses: "I have arrived at experience." This comes "slowly and gradually by being diligent."
Three Layers of Obscuration
Like sunlight drawing moisture into clouds that hide the sky, buddha-nature's own expression, unrecognized, obscures it at coarse, subtle and extremely subtle levels.
| Layer | Form | Freed by |
|---|---|---|
| Coarse | The three poisons | Recognizing rigpa |
| Subtle | Meditation experiences: bliss, clarity, nonthought | Not grasping them |
| Extremely subtle | Watcher and watched, the cognitive obscuration, also called "indecisiveness" | Resting freely; PHAT |
On the sutra path, the cognitive obscuration is purified only at the end of the tenth bhumi by the vajra-like samadhi. In Vajrayana it is purified through the four joys. The vase empowerment is appearance and emptiness, the secret is clarity and emptiness (nadi, prana, bindu), wisdom knowledge is bliss and emptiness, and the precious word is awareness and emptiness. The obscuration is actually met "at the borderline between the third... and the fourth." In Trekchö, the word is "PHATA, PHAT!"
"In the first two instants we are free of the watcher and watched. As time goes on, it slowly degenerates." So we shout PHAT, thinking and shouting simultaneously; a slow "Okay, here it comes; let's see what happens" "is not effective." Then "the ultimate is only svabhavikakaya," and what obscured dissolves into space.
The Fork in the Steak
"Mind essence is not only empty, it is also cognizant. I need to realize that": this subtle notion does not destroy watcher and watched. Watching is "like putting a hook in a piece of meat and holding on to it, so that no bird can fly off with it," or putting "your fork into your steak." "If duality does not become oneness, there is no enlightenment." As long as there is something being identified as the view and held in mind, subtle duality is definitely present.
"Totally give up this whole thing of watching mind essence as some thing that is empty cognizance, with you as the practitioner who is doing it... cast this to the wind." Once the natural state is established, you are "completely free, easy, and open." Before that, it is sometimes effortless and sometimes agitated, drowsy or "a subtle haze," like the ups and downs of the road to Bodhgaya. Recognition lasting a few minutes at most is not yet the natural state; one or two hours of "undistracted" meditation is usually shamatha, which is mind.
Empty, Cognizant, Unconfined
The view is "free of any intellectual positioning," unlike Mahamudra and Madhyamika, which hold on to sounds and words. Mind is "neither something that is only empty nor something that is only cognizant." The lack of blockage between them is capacity, tukje (thugs rje), "the undefined basis for experience."
- Only empty, like the sky: nothing would be known.
- Only cognizant: emptiness would be blocked.
- Anger as example: look into the one who is angry; seeing its empty essence, the angry thought falls apart, while everything is vividly taking place.
- The fifteen clairvoyances of the Buddha and Guru Rinpoche come from the cognizant side.
Dzogchen's fourfold freely restings (cog bzhag bzhi) apply here: "Do not meditate outwardly, do not fixate inwardly, and do not place at all; remain completely wide open." Self-existing wakefulness, rangjung yeshe, is "the source or the wellspring of all enlightened qualities": compassion as a mother has for her only child, wisdom, capability, and the pacifying, increasing, magnetizing and subjugating activities. "Rigpa is like a jewel."
"Where there is sems, there is no rigpa. When there is rigpa, there is no sems," like sunrise and darkness. Shamatha is based on accepting and rejecting: happy when the mind is still, unhappy when it moves. That "is definitely not the cause of true liberation." Rigpa training is "a step beyond accepting and rejecting." Habituated, desire creates the desire sphere, anger the form sphere, stupidity the formless realms.
"It all boils down to just one sentence: unfabricated naturalness; present, fresh wakefulness." "With no knowing, you are a corpse." Natural is like wood on the mountainside, not yet cut and crafted.
Bliss Without an Experiencer
When a recognized thought dissolves, bliss may come. "You should not get attached or fascinated." It is "not the bliss of the male and female together"; it is that "there is not even the word for suffering." "Within thought I discovered nonthought."
"As long as there is experiencing, there is fixation." Real bliss is "free from something experienced."
Expect a watcher at first; let it mingle through resting freely, cut it with PHAT, and stop holding the view like a forkful of steak.
Qualities of Rigpa
What does rigpa feel like, and what can it do? Tulku Urgyen describes invigorating rigpa under a clear autumn sky, the five words "empty, awake, vividly clear, bright, and steady," why development stage springs from rigpa, why compassion must be slightly fabricated at first, and stories of leaking teapots, mustard seeds and the first Karmapa's dry stick.
Invigorating Rigpa
To invigorate (hur phyung) rigpa is to remain one-pointedly so that it is energized, "self-contained and stable," not carried away by distraction or fixation. It is "like the facial expression of a wrathful heruka." You breathe out slightly, and eyes, prana and rigpa are one-pointedly aware, mingling mind and space like "a perfectly cloudless sky." The best season is late summer, early fall: after the rains the dust has been cleared away and "the sky in fall is very clear, perfect for practice."
"Empty, awake, vividly clear, bright, and steady." Rigpa is beyond mind, without stains (stupidity is a stain), naked beyond elaborations, and "beyond any type of blank vacantness." "It is a great fault to fall into oblivion when practicing."
Not Following After Objects
Mind holds subject and object both outwardly and inwardly; rigpa holds nothing. "The outer fixating mind follows after appearances and holds them. The inner grasping mind... has no openness." The test: an object appears in the field of rigpa, and you do not follow after it. "You can know, why not?" The classic image is again mercury, which mixes with nothing, against water on ashes, which cannot be separated.
The Source of Deity, Mantra and Samadhi
"No work can cover rigpa." If it could, deity, mantra and samadhi, which unfold from rigpa, could not truly be practised. Once stable, the four activities of pacifying, increasing, magnetizing and subjugating are carried out without flaw, and the four intents of recitation are forms of rigpa.
Without the completion stage, there really is no development stage: "the perfect development stage arises from the completion stage." Working from within rigpa, "the power of the deity gets stronger." Working from mind, "there are imperfections," the essence "has been thrown away," and "mind just grinds on." This is a way to check which you are in.
"Awakened mind can be compared to the sun. It is utterly lucid by nature and forever uncompounded. With nothing to obscure it, it is unobstructed and spontaneously present."
Rigpa is naturally self-luminous (rang lhang nge), like fire being hot and water wet. Its activity is "the seeming movement that is not movement." Sustaining the continuity simply means remaining undistracted, since "there is no subject to be sustained and there is no object being sustained." It is beyond sustainer and sustained.
Slightly Fabricate Compassion
Asked why compassion doesn't arise spontaneously, Rinpoche cites the guide texts: "In the beginning one has to slightly fabricate the compassion." Think: "This very precious and profound self-existing wakefulness, everybody possesses this, but they do not realize it, poor sentient beings." A Kham saying: "To retain a secret, one should keep one's own mouth shut." Telling others "Don't pass this along" makes it spread; start with yourself. Repeated, it becomes a habit, and later arises as automatically as a butter lamp clears darkness.
Signs of a Powerful Mind
"Mind is a great treasure of jewels", like a wish-fulfilling jewel, so its effects can show even on material things. Lumps rising in the flesh during the speech yogas, or skin that hurts and itches, may be genuine signs.
| Story | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Dzogchen Padma Rigdzin's HUNG | In the upper retreat where Chokgyur Lingpa wrote down Kunzang Tuktig, his HUNGs pierced the butter container and teapot, which "could not keep water afterward" |
| Phowa and drong-juk | Consciousness ejected by attention alone; in India, transferred into a corpse that "gets up and walks around"; the sign is amrita boiling in a skull cup |
| Mustard seeds and trö | "No up and down where the mustard seeds fall"; the mother goddesses' trö can land "all the way in America from Nagi Gompa" |
| The first Karmapa, Düsum Khyenpa | Seven enemies with stones; the cave roof fell on them. "I didn't even have the thought of harming those people." A dry stick planted bloomed at once |
"For the herukas there is no difficulty or ease." With great realization, protectors "will be fighting to be able to help you"; without it, invoke them as long as you want. "If one is selfish, things will not be successful."
Easy and Hard at Once
Recognizing involves "no physical work," yet habit makes us forget. Forgetting is co-emergent ignorance; a long train of thoughts is conceptual ignorance. They are "the original borderline between buddhas and sentient beings." "If this job were something very easy, all sentient beings would have attained enlightenment." Practise continually and gradually, not just for a few months.
Rigpa is empty, awake, clear, bright and steady, follows no object, and is the root of all deity practice. Start compassion deliberately; it becomes natural.
Methods of Liberation
The third word, confidence in liberation, explored in depth. Tulku Urgyen distinguishes ice and water, explains shardrol, freed upon arising, shows why all forms of liberation are cut at the wrist once rigpa is recognized, ranks Garab Dorje, Guru Rinpoche and Chetsun Senghe Wangchuk, and defines zangthal, openness, with a pane of glass.
Ice and Water
Confidence means "courage, feeling completely self-assured," and this confidence should be liberated. Sems and rigpa are both your own mind, as ice and water are the same water: Tibetan rivers freeze solid in winter and flow in summer. The difference is fixation and attachment. Fixation identifies: "it is an orange; it is an apple." Attachment means "either feel attracted or repelled." While these operate, awareness lacks zangthal (zang thal), openness; when they collapse, it is "like a pure crystal ball." Ordinary shamatha has no zangthal, being "too much fascination with the feeling of stillness."
Thoughts Until Buddhahood
Thinking never totally vanishes before buddhahood. Coarse thoughts go first, then subtle, and the subtlest only at complete enlightenment. Even a bodhisattva keeps a remnant, "just like the lingering smell of musk in a bottle after the musk oil itself has been removed."
Thoughts never arise from the four outer elements; they come from our own mind, whose essence is primordial purity. Recognize your nature and it is like a mirror: images "neither bring benefit nor harm," and "whether the image is white or black, the mirror itself will never really take on that color." The place a thought arises and the place it is freed are both rigpa: "Arising and liberation are uninterrupted."
"Thoughts cannot be obstructed; they couldn't arise if there were any obstruction." The unceasing knowing quality is capacity. And "when recognizing, there is no need to mentally formulate, 'Well, well! That's how it is!'"
Cut the Hand at the Wrist
"Freed upon arising," "self-freed (rang grol)," "directly freed (gcer grol)," "free from extremes": different names for the same thing, "like different facial expressions." All meet at one spot, like the nadis of the organs meeting at one juncture.
"If you cut off the hand at the wrist, all of the fingers are cut off. You don't need to cut each separate finger." Disconnect the water pipe up the mountain in one place and "there is no water anywhere below." "There are not different kinds of rigpa." In meditation, don't analyze the types of liberation; that belongs to post-meditation.
Three Capacities, and the Best of the Best
| Level | Example | What happens to thought |
|---|---|---|
| Lower: freed upon arising | Meeting someone you know | You try to recognize, almost simultaneous with thinking; watchfulness |
| Intermediate: self-liberation | Knot in a snake | Automatic, no remedy; innate mindfulness |
| Highest: beyond liberation | Thief in an empty house | "Not really thinking any more": the expression of awareness; "an island of pure gold" |
Garab Dorje, "the first human vidyadhara," received teachings from Vajrasattva: a sentient being when he sat down, a buddha when he stood up, with no "second thought" ever again. He was not like Vajradhara or Samantabhadra, who never strayed into the first thought; he must have been thinking before. Guru Rinpoche is the intermediate among the best; Chetsun Senghe Wangchuk "probably" the lower of the best.
Unless the essence of the thinking is recognized, it is not liberated. The Ka Ling Shitro: "Don't look after the thought; look into the thinker. When looking into the thinker, you don't find a thinker. That is called bringing thinking to exhaustion." A Mahamudra song: "Within thought, I discovered nonthought. Within complexity, I discovered dharmakaya."
Reversing the Twelve Links
A horse's rope tied to a stake: the stake is rigpa, the rope its expression. Follow the rope closer and closer and you reach the stake. Left alone, buddha-nature's expression creates samsara, "evolving in a progressive order." Looking into what thinks is reversing the order of the twelve links of dependent origination. Otherwise one is like a child chasing a butterfly who falls into the abyss.
Zangthal: Openness
Is openness primordial or produced? "Awareness is primordially open, free." But in a body of karmic ripening, fettered by thoughts, it "becomes tied or bound." "Whether you are bound by a golden string or a copper wire, either way you are still tied."
- Duality means outside and inside, which "is just a division made by concepts."
- All-pervasive means nothing left unpervaded: samsara and nirvana, the vessel and its contents, all inseparable.
- Mundane openness is unimpeded: a glass pane is open for the eyes but not for the hand. Rigpa's openness has neither obstructer nor obstructed.
"A blankness that is utterly open. A total openness that is indescribable."
Melt the ice of fixation; let thoughts be drawings on water. Recognizing rigpa cuts every kind of liberation at the wrist.
The Threefold Sky Practice
Mingling the three skies: outer space, the empty mind and the empty awareness. Tulku Urgyen's whole point is that only recognizing rigpa mingles all three; without it you mingle two skies, or worse, "three concepts." He explains the heart and the arm, why sky is best and ocean second best, and calls this practice "the ultimate phowa" for a Dzogchen practitioner.
Three Skies, One Meaning
| Sky | What it is |
|---|---|
| Outer sky | Empty space, "the openness right in front of you," unimpeded, not like a wall |
| Inner sky | The empty mind that every being has, or mind "would be like a piece of wood or a stone" |
| Secret sky | The empty awareness, the essence of mind |
"There are three words, but actually it is one meaning." Without recognizing the essence of mind, you will only have unified two skies, not three. Mingling two is what all beings do anyway: space outside, mind inside.
Rigpa is like the heart in the trunk of the body; mind is like the arms and legs: one thing from one angle, two from another. Distraction is looking out along the arm, "further out... to the hand": "will you see your own heart? No." Looking to where the arm joins the trunk brings you back. "Sentient beings look away, and the Buddha looks toward." The smart person finally says, "Oh, here it is."
Disown All Three
In the moment of rigpa, "there is no fixation on outer objects. There is no holding onto the mind, which perceives," so "the three skies are automatically mingled." Trying to build it, "I should mingle these two and then add rigpa," is "not 'mingling the threefold space', but instead 'mingling the threefold concepts.'"
"You don't need to take charge of space outside. You don't need to take charge of the space within. Just totally disown all three... as they are already mingled." Direct your eyes toward space, not the ground; leave the empty mind within rigpa. "Just look once and then completely relax, let go." "In unsupported space, place nonfixated rigpa."
Why Use the Sky
Space is "perfectly pure, empty, and totally unconfined," with no center, fringe or edge, transcending arising, dwelling and ceasing. Gazing into it helps rigpa be similarly unconfined; in means and knowledge, this practice is the means. And because baseless space has no reference point, it "completely destroys our sense of shamatha, fixating concentration." "Best is the sky; second best is an endless ocean," viewed from the shore.
Blue is only "the ornament of the sky", said in scripture to reflect the sapphire southern slope of Mount Meru. Higher up, the sky is black, and "no matter how many billion... aeons you fly, there is no end." Downward through the Golden Base, no bottom either. "If there is no above and no below, then how can there be south, east, west, and north?"
Within the gaze, "a shimmering configuration of light and something moving about" may appear; directing the gaze toward it "is beneficial."
The Inner and Secret Skies
The inner sky: mind has no place it comes from, dwells or goes to, so it must be empty. The secret sky is free of namtok (rnam rtog): rnam pa, the appearance of sense objects, plus rtog pa, holding onto it. "Dualistic mind is decorated with thoughts... rigpa is decorated or adorned with basic wakefulness." Sems falls under the three times; rigpa does not.
"Nobody asks the lama to please point out the mind." Everyone already has mind; the request is "Please show me mind essence." Mind is "nonexistent stupor"; rigpa is "self-existent wakefulness." The Kagyü phrase: "Nothing whatsoever, yet everything arises from it."
One Nonaction Outshines All Activities
The three poisons cannot be "bury, burn, wash away, or flush away." "Not even the smartest person in this world can handle the three poisons." Suppress them and they come back; patience won't uproot them. Only the empty essence and wakefulness annihilate them, since poisons always follow a conceptual thought. Hence "one nonaction outshines all activities."
Yeshe comes from shepa, knowing: "free from action and concepts, it still knows whatever there is to know," not "knocked out with a stick." It is "beyond being cleared and obscured, just like the flame of a butter lamp... uninterrupted like the flow of a river," but "the bandits of conceptual thoughts" have tied it up with sense objects. Stable in it, the three realms are "like playing around."
The Ultimate Phowa
"If you practice this very well, then when you die you will mingle with primordial purity." Sit outside, eyes toward midair, "without focusing on anything and without thinking of space inwardly." Don't think "I am looking into the sky." "Focus on no focus."
Should one gaze far for a long time? "First look away, then lead toward you; then it becomes all-pervasive. But actually, it is the same." Far, close and in-between are the same space. Left out there, space becomes "a conceptual object"; pulling it toward you avoids watching it as a focus. "This is a method; if you do not do it, it is perfectly all right." "Don't dwell on the appearance; rest in rigpa itself."
Recognize first; then the three skies mingle by themselves. Look once into open space, let go, and repeat in short moments, many times.
Equalize Buddhahood During the Four Times
A root text for practising around the clock, followed by Tulku Urgyen's commentary. The day is split into four periods like the four sessions of approach-accomplishment: sealing appearances by day, tummo at dusk, luminosity at midnight, clarifying awareness at dawn. Practised with the preliminaries, the tantras say enlightenment "doesn't take more than thirteen years."
The Four Periods
| Period | Root line | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| Daytime | "To seal appearances at daytime" | Trekchö: no fixation on perceived or perceiver; if unable, see all as illusory |
| Dusk | "To gather the senses naturally at dusk" | Tummo: ATUNG at the navel, HANG at the crown, vase-breath, blazing and dripping |
| Midnight | "To enter consciousness in the vase at midnight" | Luminosity and dreams: white A in a four-petaled red lotus at the heart, twenty-one A's dissolving into it |
| Dawn | "To naturally clarify awareness at dawn" | Dharmakaya posture, HA three times, the A rises "a bow's length above you" |
"The idea of that is to not waste any time, but to practice unceasingly." Practising through all four, you unite with the state of all the buddhas and become equal to it.
Sealing Appearances by Day
"Do not concentrate inwardly on the mind; rather, leave everything totally without fixation in the state of Trekchö." When neither perceptions nor perceiver are fixated on, both are sealed with rigpa: "the great equality." A normal person splits subject and object and chases what is perceived with "attachment, aversion, or indifference." The Chöying Dzöd says to "rest in the state that is beyond both placing and not placing."
"The most essential, of course, is the daytime practice, giving experiences the seal of rigpa." It means rigpa is "not distracted by deceptions or whatever occurs" and does not fall under the power of experiences: "pretty much remaining in nondistraction during the daytime."
Tummo at Dusk
From sunset until sleep, you do tummo, "the main pillar of the path" and the chief of Naropa's six yogas. Buddha-nature is encapsulated in the aggregates, elements and faculties, whose root is nadis, pranas and bindus. These come in normal and wisdom forms; using them is completion stage, which may be with or without concepts.
The body is made of red and white elements from mother and father. The ATUNG, a tiny flame four fingers below the navel, is the red: heat; the upside-down HANG at the crown is the white: bliss. Breath fans the flame up the central channel; it melts the HANG, which drips, "like putting drops of oil on a fire." Bliss and heat fill every channel and burn away habitual tendencies. "The essence of the heat is emptiness; the essence of the bliss is emptiness too." Then rest in rigpa without focus.
The red element is in essence Vajrayogini (Dorje Phagmo); the white, Chakrasamvara. Tummo can be adorned (visualizing yourself as Vajrayogini, "transparent... like a big tent of light" with the central channel as tent pole) or unadorned.
- Channels: roma and kyangma curve above the ears to the nostrils; all three meet four fingers below the navel.
- Chakras: crown 32 spokes, throat 16, heart 8, navel 42 (as given here), secret place 64.
- Three channels support the three kayas and bliss, clarity, nonthought: nonthought in the central, bliss and clarity in left and right.
- Tum means fierce: ATUNG is fierce female, HANG fierce male.
Three degrees of detail (elaborate, middling, very simple) roughly match Maha, Anu and Atiyoga. "Whichever of these three feels more comfortable, do that." Visualizing is "not imagining something new; it is reminding us... what is already present."
Tummo and all visualizations are machinery; Trekchö, the completion stage beyond concepts, is "the electricity that powers all machinery; without this, nothing will work at all." "Both are necessary for the machine to run." Even in Mahayoga, visualization unfolds within the samadhi of suchness. "The great wisdom abides in the body," and we "have plenty of fuel" in obscurations and negative karma for this fire.
Luminosity at Midnight
The vase is the body; consciousness is the knowing aspect. A brilliant white A at the heart lights the body, room, house and out "to the distance that an arrow can fly": manifest luminosity. Recognizing the one who visualizes is empty luminosity. Holding both while drifting to sleep turns dreams into luminosity.
The mind doing the visualizing, when looked into, "is empty; it is not a thing. It all appears but with no self-nature." Yet that emptiness does not block the visualization from unfolding, which is exactly why recognizing mind while visualizing is the unity of appearance and emptiness. The same holds for the four activities of ordinary sadhana: pacifying, increasing, magnetizing and subjugating are "definitely to be carried out while not leaving the state of rigpa," since "it is the expression of rigpa that fulfills these four activities." The midnight practice is simply this principle applied to falling asleep.
| Luminosity | Description |
|---|---|
| Dense or deep | From the moment of sleep, rigpa cuts thought totally; no dreams, unbroken rigpa until morning |
| Light | With eyes closed, one sees the house and surroundings "as clearly as if it were daytime" |
| Of experiences | Bliss, clarity, nonthought; "traveling to other worlds"; still temporary |
Imagining white light streaming from your heart is, by itself, conceptual. Likewise "merely thinking conceptually that you need to subjugate so and so" will not succeed. Look at the one visualizing: then it is the unity of development and completion, "the genuine state of luminosity."
Clarifying Awareness at Dawn
"The very moment you regain consciousness, sit up immediately." With a forceful HA, the A shoots through the crown and floats in space; rest in rigpa, "the real one, not the fabricated one." "We do not have to make the clarity." You can measure for yourself how long nondistraction lasts: "when forgotten, it is forgotten." The main purpose is to dispel absent-minded dullness. If agitated, bring the A back to the heart and lower your gaze.
Thirteen Years
Three of the four look like development stage, but within undistracted rigpa they are rigpa's expression (rig pa'i rtsal): "If there is sun, naturally there is sunlight." The Dzogchen saying: "Do not be distracted in daytime and do not sleep at nighttime," meaning sleep becomes practice. The Dzogchen tantras say that if one practices like this, to equalize buddhahood throughout the four periods, then it doesn't take more than thirteen years.
General preliminaries purify obscurations and gather accumulations. Trekchö preliminaries: vajra posture, HUNG yogas, examining origin, abiding and disappearance, nalbab and sorshug. Tögal preliminary: khordey rushan. Companion to both: abandoning the ninefold activities. Then the four periods, day and night, so "one does not waste any time whatsoever."
Seal the day with rigpa, burn obscurations at dusk, sleep into luminosity, wake into clarity. Every technique is machinery; Trekchö is the current.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the method for nondistraction, from effortful to effortless to dharmata mindfulness, where it turns into wisdom. Most of the chapter is a warning against the subtlest trap: thinking "I am undistracted." Tulku Urgyen calls that a golden chain, and the line between it and the first instant "the borderline between buddhas and sentient beings."
From Effort to Wisdom
The scriptures list six kinds of mindfulness. First you are a herdsman checking whether the cattle are eating or have been eaten by wild animals: effortful mindfulness. Slowly it becomes effortless, "vivid, wakeful, natural mindfulness without any need for force or struggle." At the exhaustion of dharmas beyond concepts (blo 'das chos zad), "recollection occurs as wisdom," with no distraction day or night.
"When rigpa has reached the natural space, analytical meditation naturally ceases. The watcher, the mindfulness, disperses, vanishing into emptiness. How delightfully free and easy it is in the space of nondual awareness."
In the meantime, "there is no way around being mindful." Right now "rigpa is totally without any strength... completely wild or untamed."
| Tradition | Term | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Dzogchen | Dran rig, wakefulness | Mindfulness and rigpa mixed |
| Mahamudra | Dran rtsis, watchfulness | Keeping track |
| Madhyamika | Dran shes | Mindfulness (dran pa), alertness (shes bzhin), carefulness (bag yod) |
Brought to her husband's home, a new bride is very careful: no anger, speaking softly, moving gently, doing everything nicely. That is bag yod, carefulness, on the Madhyamika path. "Definitely you should not be mindless, thoughtless, and careless."
In the Nyingma secret mantra, sights are body, sounds speech, thoughts mind: "the three things to carry" onto the path. Effort becomes spontaneous like a river, "slowly, peacefully flowing on without stopping."
Without Distraction, Without Meditating
"Be without distraction, but also be without meditating." Cultivated nondistraction, sitting holding the idea of being undistracted, is like an undigested Tibetan stomach medicine that becomes poison: "It is simply a thought."
Rang byung means "that which is in one's being already," not forced. Yeshe (ye nas shes) is primordial knowing: "We do not say 'primordial not knowing.'" It permeates "from dharmakaya Samantabhadra down to the smallest insect," primordially, not temporarily. What brings us down is meditator and meditated: "Ah, the lama has said there is something empty and cognizant; this must be it... now I must not lose it."
"It is free from being fettered and beyond being freed also." If it were tied, there would be a job of untying; but it was never fettered. People "try to make what is primordially known... into something that has to be newly understood, re-known," "to catch what does not need to be held." That is conceptual delusion, life after life. Yet as beings we are fettered by dualistic fixation (gnyis 'dzin), and "what is to be freed and the one freeing it are the same."
The Golden Chain
Effortful mindfulness (rtsol bcas 'du byed kyi dran pa) is the thought "Oh I wandered away"; in that very moment, let be in naturalness. "I am watching. I am not distracted" is fixation. Unbridled thoughts are an iron chain; "I am undistracted" is a golden chain. "Either way you are still tied." Cast away both "I am distracted" and "I am not distracted."
Then you "remain freely (cog bzhag)": the freely resting mountain, ocean and rigpa. If you think you are undistracted, you are still a sentient being. It is "the border between buddhas and sentient beings, like the line between light and darkness." "I was distracted. I shouldn't be distracted" is two thoughts; in the first, without accepting or rejecting, you arrive in awareness "like the light on the torch the moment it is switched on."
"Beyond the clouds of appearance is the sky of absolute meaning." Dropping both thoughts, there is "the dharmakaya of profound brilliance (gting gsal chos kyi sku)." Thinking you are undistracted is "like applying a patch." We speak of "wakefulness free from accepting and rejecting," never "with keeping and casting away."
"The first instant is like one thousand ounces of gold." Without the thought of being undistracted, it is "like not wearing any clothes... naked, exposed." The thought puts clothes on. "Look for yourself."
Like a Thought-Free Little Child
Trying to maintain the first instant longer is "maintaining it with concepts. Then it is no more cutting through; it is a slow cutting." "Having abandoned the thinker and what is thought of, rest like a thought-free little child." A child "sees the breast and thinks, 'Oh I want' and it sucks," with no plans, and never thinks "I am undistracted." The difference: we have been introduced. Without abandoning the five skandhas, "we will not obtain the five buddhas." "Simply sit like this," Rinpoche says, demonstrating; it is "by itself completely awake."
Notice "I was distracted" and drop straight into awareness, without adding "now I'm not." The first instant is a thousand ounces of gold; don't clothe it.
Meditation and Post-Meditation
Why does meditation "stay behind in the mountains"? Tulku Urgyen explains that Dzogchen has "no sessions or breaks," distinguishes post-meditation from ensuing wakefulness, explains why beginners still need sessions, and shares Samten Gyatso's secret: the busier things became, the stronger his awareness grew.
Meditation Left in the Mountains
A practitioner in mountain samadhi, almost free from confusion by day, goes down to the village and cries, "Oh no! My meditation is destroyed! I must have left it behind in the mountains!" The cause is failing to mingle practice with daily activities. The method is sorshug, the Dzogchen vipashyana taught in the preliminaries: remain unmoved from primordial purity and act without getting carried away. "It is fixation, in any case, that ruins it for us." "On the path of distraction, the robbers of mara lie in ambush."
"Oh, I am undistracted. Why should I look to see whether I am distracted or not? To check is fixation." "If you think like that, then everything is lost. Mindfulness is lost." Even undistracted people often keep fixating: "This is a carpet; this is a window."
The four daily activities (eating, lying down, walking about, sitting) fill our whole life, and each is to be mingled with the view. Vipashyana means "not only resting in the stillness... but also maintaining the clarity": "The moment you look into that which is still, you see it clearly and vividly."
No Sessions, No Breaks
In sutra and tantra, meditation is like space and post-meditation sees all as a magical apparition, like a dream or reflection. But that is "made up; it is a fabrication," with thoughts superimposed. "In Dzogchen, meditation and post-meditation are totally indivisible... the post-meditation is the meditation state itself." For those who cannot do this yet: short moments, many times.
When you are distracted, that is the post-meditation; when you are undistracted, that is the meditation.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Post-meditation | Rigpa is lost; you have acknowledged distraction |
| Ensuing wakefulness | Rigpa mingled with the path of action; equanimity not left while interacting with people, every thought spontaneously liberated |
| Wakefulness itself | Neither distraction nor nondistraction |
Asked about Paltrül's line, "Divide your meditation into sessions," Rinpoche agrees: as a beginner, without sessions and breaks "you will fall into carelessness." Sessions apply mindfulness, which trains the view toward "no session, no breaks."
Before Sickness Comes
Guru Rinpoche: "If you are unable to mingle rigpa with the daily activities, you will not attain stability." "Honestly, this life is very short and there are so many diseases," so train "in between being disease-free and having our lives cut short." Unstable, we are like a child not yet independent; stable, sickness and suffering are "an expression of rigpa, an ornament," and crowds, chatter and negative circumstances are all training.
In the winter before he passed, Samten Gyatso told Tulku Urgyen: "I really have no great qualities... except that my distraction has vanished... No matter how much work piles up, no matter who comes in to see me... the lucid quality only grows." Alone and idle, clarity "subsides somewhat"; "the more people, the more bustle... the more the strength of the awareness grows, just between you and me." He recognized at eight and mostly never gave it up.
A realized person can write scriptures and teach without leaving rigpa: "treatises overflow from within." The source is capacity, the unstructured basis for experience; a truly realized being "does not need to learn the alphabet," since all is "spontaneously known, even in one instant."
It Comes Down to the View
The sign of success is confidence without fear, even at death. Tulku Urgyen shows why hell needs both a place and a person, so twofold egolessness empties it, why intellectual confidence is a patch, and how "if the understanding of emptiness is all right, everything is all right."
Hell Needs Two Things
"Rebirth in the hells requires two things: the place and the one who takes rebirth." When duality has become oneness, "the hells have then been emptied."
| Egolessness | Of what |
|---|---|
| Egolessness of phenomena | The grasped external objects: the place |
| Egolessness of person | The inner fixating mind: the one reborn |
Realize both and hell has no basis. But mouthing it without having destroyed grasping "is completely useless."
In Kham they put patches on clothes, "not the clothing itself." The Kagyü teach that intellectual understanding is a patch that wears off. Without the view resolved, doubts come: "What will happen later in the bardo?... Will the yidam deity practice have been useful?" amid "overwhelming sounds, colors, and light rays." Real self-confidence is "the true measure, the test."
Four Sayings
- "Objects are perceptions; they have no true existence." Hell is "a mere perception."
- "The path is confusion; it has no reality."
- "Mind essence is the natural state; it has no concreteness." Primordial purity in Dzogchen, nonarising in Mahamudra: the same, different terms.
- "Mind is conceptual thinking; it is free from ground and root." Mind, sense doors and objects are continuously linked; egolessness breaks the link.
"Think about what we call hell." It should have a location; the torturers should have fathers and mothers; the fire must be made, the molten iron heated, the shamali tree grown by somebody. The sword-leaf forests, swamp of rotten corpses and fiery pit of embers are "created only by the habitual patterns of deluded experience." "Hell exists nowhere apart from you."
"If the understanding of emptiness is all right, everything is all right. If the understanding of emptiness is not all right, nothing is right."
An Infant on the Battlefield
Recognition without familiarity leaves you "like an infant in a battlefield," with thoughts arising as enemies. Beings of the six realms die "carried away by thoughts." Stable in nonconceptual wakefulness, "there will be no place to go and no one who goes, even if you were thrown down to the lowest vajra hell." "Even if the three thousandfold universe is turned upside down and the monster of the lord of death opens his mouth... not a hair of your body will move."
What it actually comes down to is the view. Self-confidence means never thinking "I am no good," yet without pride or conceit. "When Milarepa looked at sentient beings, he thought they were crazy. When sentient beings looked at Milarepa, they thought he was crazy."
Confidence at death is the real test. Twofold egolessness removes both the hell and the one reborn there; anything less is a patch.
The Unity of Trekchö and Tögal
Trekchö recognizes primordial purity (kadak); Tögal recognizes spontaneous presence (lhundrub); their unity is the svabhavikakaya. Tulku Urgyen explains why the deities need no creating, why "everything is empty" but not empty of kayas and wisdoms, the pitfalls of each practice, and, in answer to a question about Milarepa walking through rock, how confusion collapses like a movie.
Essence, Nature, Capacity
| Aspect | Dzogchen | Practice | Kaya |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essence | Primordial purity (kadak) | Trekchö | Dharmakaya |
| Nature | Spontaneous presence (lhundrub) | Tögal | Sambhogakaya |
| Capacity | Their indivisibility, the unobstructed basis for arising | Unity of Trekchö and Tögal | Nirmanakaya |
| Recognizing all three as your identity | Knowing mind essence | Pointed out by the guru | Svabhavikakaya |
Recognize the essence as primordially pure, its natural expression as spontaneously present, and that this presence is "devoid of a self-nature... an insubstantial presence." That is the unity of Trekchö and Tögal.
Visible but Intangible
Lhundrub is "rainbow light, major and minor bindus, and bodily forms of the deity." Deities are body, syllables speech, attributes mind; palaces, thrones and jewels are qualities; swords, hooks, vajra crosses and flames are activity. "Can you take hold of them?... You cannot."
Kriya, Upa, Yoga, Maha and Anu treat the deity "as something extraneous to us," to be created through visualization. Sutra has you think "from this piece of wood up to... omniscient enlightenment" is empty: the yoga of egolessness. In Atiyoga, "the deity is primordially present as our nature," "the short path." Karma Lingpa: "The deity is one's self; one's self is the deity."
Trekchö and Tögal are the support and the supported; completion stage is the emptiness, development stage the appearance. You recognize, train, stabilize. For Trekchö, "it is sufficient to just recognize the moment free from thoughts of the three times"; within that view, the key points of Tögal are applied, "then you see the deities."
All nine yanas say everything is empty, "but the fact that it is not empty of kayas and wisdoms is the dharma system of the Buddha." "If everything were utterly empty, there would be no kayas and wisdoms." The sambhogakaya is like a rainbow you can see; "can you grab it?" Our essence cannot be destroyed in fire. Unformed means empty; spontaneously present means cognizant.
The Three Kayas in Detail
Trekchö rests on the four times without three: "Don't follow the past; don't invite the future; then there is the ordinary mind of the present, which is naked, open, and direct." Connected to the four empowerments, the kayas and wisdoms are empty appearance, empty luminosity, empty bliss, empty awareness.
| Kaya | Body | Mind | Image |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dharmakaya | Body of space | Rangjung yeshe | All-pervasive like space |
| Sambhogakaya | Body of rainbow light | Five wisdoms with fivefold attributes (colors) | Like the sun and moon |
| Nirmanakaya | Vajra body of six elements | Wisdom of nature as it is | Like a rainbow acting for beings |
When the five kayas, fivefold speech, five wisdoms, five qualities and five activities manifest, it is "reaching fullness," followed by exhaustion of phenomena and concepts.
A Hair in a Flame
"Don't project, don't concentrate, don't hold in, don't send out." When a thought comes back "due to our bad habits... gently look toward what thinks. Doesn't the thought vanish by itself?" For an ordinary person, rigpa "is overtaken by its own expression" and dragged through three realms and six classes. For the practitioner, thought is a hair in a flame: "Does it have any power left?"
"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."
Can karma and disturbing emotions "remain in midair" in the sunlit space of this room? "This is maybe too easy? Since this is so easy, we find it hard to trust that." Beings don't have two minds, one good and one bad; mind gets confused into clinging and labeling.
"A yogi is like a small child in a temple": the child sees everything but forms no thoughts about what is what. But a child doesn't recognize itself; a yogi's feeling becomes empty feeling. "The objects don't hold onto the mind." Tilopa: "You are not bound by what you experience; you are bound by your clinging to it. So, cut through your clinging, Naropa." In a mirror, "the black form doesn't dye the mirror black."
Trekchö "cuts through the string of beads": past gone, future unformed, present unconceptualized: "a thorough cut."
The Pitfalls
Trekchö's worst pitfall is "to imagine emptiness, to think emptiness." Emptiness is "unimagined naked dharmadhatu," empty as fire is hot and water wet. Tögal's biggest pitfall is "to hope that something may happen and to fear that it won't": "This is not so spectacular" or "it is probably not really how it should be." Kham saying: "If the tulku doesn't screw up, he will naturally be realized."
Mahamudra climbs one-pointedness, simplicity, one taste and nonmeditation, each lesser, medium and higher: "the four times three levels," precious but "different levels of mental effort" for the gradual type. Dzogchen begins with nonmeditation, the naked dharmadhatu where Mahamudra ends. "Ultimately, it is the same, identical." "Isn't time merely our thinking?"
"In Dzogchen, the view is Trekchö, the meditation is Tögal, and both are automatic," with "not even as much as an atom" to imagine. Do the three postures and three gazes, leave the mind in rigpa. "Without imagining but also without forgetting... because mara lies in ambush when you forget." Effort comes first; later it is "like something you have learned by heart." Rinpoche admires the Western word "automatic."
Milarepa and the Collapsing Movie
Did Milarepa pass through rock because he saw phenomena as rainbow light? "No, it is not." Earth, water, fire and wind, flesh, blood and bones "lack concrete existence", like last night's dream of countries, houses and castles. If phenomena really existed, "the buddhas would have annihilated them in order to traverse freely." To a hell being, hell seems material.
"We can produce images with a movie... Through these we can create the third world war, but if the movie falls apart, there is no third world war. That is the meaning of the collapse of confusion." Milarepa "had attained stability in primordial purity", with no need for force. "If samsara had begun with some concreteness, it would be impossible to destroy it."
Rainbow Body and the Youthful Vase Body
Rainbow body is possible because of the primordially pure essence and spontaneously present nature. When the ground appearance manifested, "the eight gates of spontaneous presence" arose, seven pure and one impure (the six classes); we became confused. Reassuming primordial purity, "taking control of our own territory," one gains "mastery of rebirth and exit" and the great transformation body, or else is liberated in the youthful vase body, "wherein mind has dissolved yet is unobscured." Teaching moves from nonexistence (essence) to existence (nature) to their union.
Among the pure phenomena, sound is speech, colored light is body and light rays are mind, and they unfold as symbol, meaning and sign: "first the signs appear, then the meaning." In our impure state the order is reversed: "the dharmakaya free from complexities has been obscured by our body, the unceasing sambhogakaya has been obscured by our speech; and the nirmanakaya... has been obscured by our mind." The descent runs from "neither being nor nonbeing" through the four formless realms, the seventeen form realms (whose bodies are made of light) and down to the six desire realms of flesh and blood. The Kagyü masters say: "Mind essence co-emergent is dharmakaya; appearances co-emergent are the light of dharmakaya."
Samsaric phenomena are impure, yet "appear while being nonexistent," "appearance and emptiness beyond meeting and parting." The vajra is "not born, and it cannot be burnt or washed by water."
Recognize the pure essence; let its display appear without hope or fear. Don't imagine emptiness, don't chase visions, and don't forget.
Signs of Practice
Signs of practice include visions, lights and smoke, and experiences both pleasant and unpleasant, yet all are clouds in the sky of primordial purity. Tulku Urgyen names the true sign as a mind without fixation, endowed with devotion and compassion, and shows how "in the moment of love, the empty nature dawns nakedly."
Experience and Realization
Cultivating a deity may bring its vision or lights and smoke. Experiences (nyams) are "not actuality and are not dream, but somewhere in-between": bliss, or "today my meditation is really good!", or feeling depressed and irritated.
| Kind | What it looks like | How to hold it |
|---|---|---|
| Blessing signs | Lights, smoke, mirage | Not the goal |
| Pleasant (bde nyams) | Bliss, clarity, nonthought | Sunshine; only experience |
| Unpleasant (rtsub nyams) | Depression, irritation | Storms; still clouds |
| True sign | No fixation; devotion, compassion | "The best sign" |
"Within the sky of primordial purity, all these experiences are like mere clouds." The true sign of practice is that your mind is without fixation and endowed with devotion and compassion, as the sky is filled with the warmth of sunlight. Real accomplishment is to be "unharmed by the experiences of bliss, clarity, and nonthought."
Dullness and Agitation
Two hindrances temporarily harm practice, each divided in three:
Free of both, how long it lasts depends on habituation. The method is devotion upward and compassion downward; both are love (rtse ba), and in that love body, speech and mind feel overwhelmed. Looking inward then is "like a sun unobscured by clouds." "Experience is the great adornment of awareness," if without fixation.
Cognizance clears away nihilism; the empty aspect clears away eternalism. Their unity, suffused with awareness, is "the special quality of Buddhism." Fall into either extreme and grasping, holder and held follow.
Fabricated First, Then Natural
"In the beginning, you need a fabricated devotion." As awareness stabilizes, compassion arises at seeing beings unaware of "the Buddha in the palm of my hand," and devotion at "the perfection of all virtues, exhaustion of all faults." Upward devotion and downward compassion are "worth more than visualizing one hundred deities and reciting mantras." If you haven't recognized emptiness, compassion alone can guide you there, "like the summer warmth that melts the ice."
Imagine being chained while your mother is tortured before you: that overwhelming feeling is compassion, and "anyone can cultivate" it. Why is emptiness without compassion never taught? "It is like having water: it will also be wet."
Don't grade your sessions by bliss or storms. Watch for ease without fixation, and look into devotion itself to meet naked awareness.
The Ultimate Guru Sadhana of Simplicity
Tulku Urgyen's own short guru sadhana, written as "the simple Uddiyana" at repeated request. Every standard step of a sadhana is present, but each is the ultimate version: refuge is awareness, the deity is already present, and the mantra is a single AH.
"There is not even the word impure. Therefore, even I, Uddiyana, possess the nature of sugatagarbha." The guru is visualized exactly as he looks, "in the manner of unfabricated naturalness."
Five sections; three sattvas (samaya, wisdom, samadhi); one syllable, AH AH AH, in "the lamp of the empty bindu."
Read the verse slowly once, then let the commentary unpack it.
Commentary on the Guru Sadhana
Tulku Urgyen explains his sadhana line by line, calling it "fiddling around, patching together a guru yoga" joined to the true meaning. Each familiar element, refuge, protection circle, offerings, Seven Branches, recitation and dedication, is shown in its ultimate form, and the practice is offered as a prototype for anyone's guru yoga.
The Ultimate Version of Each Step
| Sadhana element | Ordinary form | Ultimate form here |
|---|---|---|
| Refuge | Three Jewels | "Primordially free awareness" as ultimate yidam and refuge |
| Bodhichitta | Resolve for beings | Awareness's expression arising as compassion |
| Protection circle | Expelling obstructers | Ignorance, dualistic fixation and habit self-liberated |
| Offering and consecration | Imagined clouds | All sights, sounds, tastes as display of wisdom |
| Development stage | Building a deity | Picture the guru "in whatever clothes I happen to be wearing" |
| Recitation | OM AH HUNG | AH joined to breath, then rest in rigpa |
| Dedication | Merit, giver, recipient | Total purity of the three spheres |
AH is "the unity of the nonarising and unceasing qualities." "The manifest aspect is spontaneous presence, and the ground itself is primordial purity." Since essence, nature and capacity already pervade samsara and nirvana, "it is not our construct or visualization." So, he says, "quite justifiably," even he has buddha-nature, "so there is nothing wrong in writing a guru yoga."
Samayasattva: the guru, "which is me." Jnanasattva: Vajrasattva in his heart. Samadhisattva: Samantabhadra in Vajrasattva's heart. "Perfectly and primordially present, without having to be visualized. Just simply imagine that they are already there."
The Invitation and Seven Branches
The ultimate "does not possess such attributes as coming or going," yet he is invited "as mere appearance." There are the real (dön dam) and the apparent (nang tshül); "please remain indivisibly" means nature and appearance are inseparable.
Homage by "the view of equal taste": "there are not two types of buddha-nature." Not recognizing, there is a difference. Recognizing, "the one that bows and the one being bowed to are not separate anymore." The moment we recognize our own buddha-nature, we are not different from Samantabhadra.
The offerings are not the bodhisattva Samantabhadra's imagined clouds but the dharmakaya Samantabhadra's display: elements, aggregates and sense objects are male and female buddhas and offering goddesses, covering outer, inner, innermost and thatness offerings. Confession is "within the expanse of the two purified obscurations," emotional and cognitive. Rejoicing plays on Maitreya: "Look truly into the true; when seeing truly, you are utterly free." Turning the wheel "of timelessness" is the fourth time: "It is not that there is a rigpa of the past, a rigpa of the present, and a rigpa of the future." The request to remain asks rigpa to stay unceasing, though it already is.
Seven branches clear seven mind poisons: ignorance, the five general poisons and avarice. A short sadhana with all seven complete equals "a long puja that lasts a whole day." In sutra, the three samadhis (vajra-like, courageous movement, illusion) match dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya; with the branches they accomplish the three vajras.
Recitation, Conclusion and Questions
Body has been accomplished; now speech. "The great all-pervasive blue" is the lamp of pure space; "the chains of manifest awareness" appear as an A, sky-blue "like Samantabhadra" (white is also okay). "The main thing is its sound." Vajra recitation: AH on inhaling, holding and exhaling. "The main practice here is to imagine it once and then rest in rigpa." In the conclusion, "the manifestations of the ground dissolve back into the ground itself."
Early morning: 21 breaths with a subtle, whispered AH, then 21 resting in rigpa. The day's 21,670 breaths "will be transformed into vajra recitation automatically." Repeat on lying down at night.
Is the guru in front or as oneself? "It is a self-visualization, not in front," because there is "no duality of one's buddha-nature here and another there." Recitation is done both with and without sound. Uddiyana is Sanskrit for Urgyen; he calls the author "not a human being but a dumb beast" and himself "a charlatan," yet the text is "a good prototype": "simply change the name."
Every ritual step can be done as recognition. Use your own teacher's name in the key line and rest in rigpa after each AH.
Longchenpa's Bardo Aspiration
Longchen Rabjam's aspiration "for the bardos of dying and of dharmata, which liberates through hearing." In nineteen verses it walks through death, dissolution, the peaceful and wrathful displays, the five lights and the four lamps, asking at each step to recognize what appears as one's own awareness.
| Stage | What appears | The wish |
|---|---|---|
| This life | Manifest Dharmata, Increased Experience, Reaching Fullness | "May the conditioned body be liberated into the body of light" |
| Dying | Breath stops, body and mind go apart | No delusion or clinging; rest in dharmakaya |
| Dissolution | Impure elements dissolve; five-colored lights | The vajra chain of five lights perfected |
| Wrathful display | HUNG filling the billion worlds; Yama's murderers | Hear it as empty awareness, like an echo; see yidams |
| Palaces of the body | Bone mansion, heart, throat, secret place | Wrathful and peaceful ones recognized; prana and mind enter the central channel |
| Bardo of dharmata | Five kayas and five wisdoms; lamp of the empty bindu | Merge into Samantabhadra; stability in spontaneous presence |
"May I recognize the key point that they are the HUNG sound of empty awareness and realize this empty resounding is like an echo." The thunder of terrifying laughter is to be liberated "as the unoriginated sound of empty awareness."
In manifest dharmata, the wish is to be "free from the conceptual remedy of fixated mindfulness" and to "remain in the nonconceptual state devoid of constructs." The closing lines ask for three kayas and "the welfare of others."
Recite it while alive so the bardo's lights and sounds are already familiar.
Commentary on the Bardo Aspiration
Tulku Urgyen reads Longchenpa's verses as both a wish and a pointing-out instruction for the bardo. He traces where each display comes from in the body, explains the white, red and black experiences of dying, and insists that the present recognition of rigpa is what counts at the moment of death, because only the unconditioned helps when the conditioned collapses.
From Dissolution to Light
The prayer is first to attain enlightenment quickly; failing that, to be liberated the moment mind and body separate; failing that, that gurus, yidams, dakas and dakinis "appear before my eyes" and lead one to the celestial realms. "Through the kindness of having practiced the dharma," may I not cling to this world or my body but recognize buddha-nature and attain stability.
Our bodies hold six elements: earth, water, fire, wind, consciousness and space. The impure elements dissolve; the five-colored lights do not. "At the beginning of samsara and nirvana, we became deluded by the five-colored lights," which became the outer elements and then the substance of our bodies. As they appear with the vajra chain in the sky, "we can be liberated into primordial purity."
Where the Deities Come From
| Display | Source in the body | What it really is | How to meet it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wrathful deities | Blazing Palace of Great Bliss in the bone mansion (the skull) | The great HUNG, mind syllable | Not as demons; realize the Heart Essence |
| Peaceful deities | Jewel Dome Palace of the heart | Spontaneous presence returning to primordial purity | Dissolve into the expanse of rigpa |
| Vidyadharas, laughter of AH HUNG | Wheel of channels at the throat | Natural melody of peaceful and wrathful ones | Recognize unborn empty awareness |
| Red and white elements | Bliss Sustaining Palace of the secret place | Undefiled bliss and emptiness (third empowerment) | Prana and mind enter the central channel |
The wrathful ones range from the size of Mt. Sumeru to a mustard seed. When mind and body separate, they swarm out "like a gathering in the main hall when there is a pee break; everyone comes out." A HUNG like a thousand thunderclaps is "the expression of my own awareness"; "no matter how much an echo resounds, it is not a real sound." Facing Yama's murderers, may there be no concepts of being attacked, slain or escaping.
"These deities are our own spontaneously present nature." They abide now in our aggregates and sense faculties; when they manifest outwardly, they dissolve back inwardly. In the ultimate Tögal, the hundred peaceful and wrathful deities will appear. The essence is primordial purity and the nature is spontaneously present, so everything that appears comes naturally from primordial purity.
The Bardo of Dharmata
Shes rig joins knowing (shes pa) and rigpa, "of one meaning" in Dzogchen. "Oblivion is nonrecognition." "If we recognize, self-liberation will happen."
"It is not really a matter of empty of self and empty of other." All of samsara and nirvana is complete within empty cognizance. Rangtong, "the lower point of view," takes self-awareness as empty while other phenomena are not really decided. Shentong decides all other phenomena are empty, "but self-awareness is not empty." Longchenpa asks to remain "in the other-empty state of exhausted phenomena."
"Conceptual remedy is movement, thought." The four visions: manifest dharmata, increased experience, awareness reaching fullness, exhaustion of dharmata. Then come the five wisdoms (mirror-like, equality, dharmata, discerning, all-accomplishing), the three outer lamps (empty space, empty bindu, self-existing rigpa as the vajra chain) and four lamps of mind essence (flesh heart, smooth nadi, distance water pullers, pure space).
At death, if one has been introduced, has recognized rigpa and can mingle, "that is the king of phowas." On "the sambhogakaya of unceasing nondual experience," Rinpoche jokes that "there was no space for Longchenpa to put more syllables": it means free from dual experience, since "as long as dualistic experience is retained, there is no enlightenment."
The Four Experiences of Dying
| Stage | What happens | Thought states that dissolve |
|---|---|---|
| Appearance (white) | Father's white element descends from crown to heart | 33 aggressive |
| Increase (red) | Mother's red element rises from below the navel to heart | 40 of attachment |
| Attainment (black) | Elements meet; ordinary people black out | 7 of stupidity |
| Full attainment | Ground luminosity, no thought yet not oblivious | All 80 innate ceased |
Ordinary people know only three stages: the blackout lasts three and a half days, then the mind wakes in the bardo. The practitioner recognizes the fourth, mother ground luminosity meeting child path luminosity, and is enlightened "as quickly as flapping a Tibetan sleeve three times." Chanting the Names of Manjushri: "One moment makes the difference; in one moment, complete enlightenment."
The same union of white and red "grabbed the consciousness out of the bardo" at conception: "In that moment of bliss and emptiness, the consciousness faints." So it is "extremely important to be able to not fall oblivious and to not grasp." Rigpa recognized now is "the same" as the ground luminosity.
Karma Without a Body
Where do karma and habits stick if mind is uncompounded? Look at a dream: the body "lies comfortably in the bed" while the mind roams, "terrified or blissed out." Habitual patterns have no material substance; otherwise there would be a physical body in the bardo. What we have there is a mental body (yid lus), not the illusory body (sgyu lus) of aggregates nor flesh and blood, yet habit makes us feel hunger, thirst, heat and cold.
"The deceased is terrified by the deities of his body", hearing "HUNG HUNG PHAT PHAT!" and thinking "Yamantaka has come to kill me." Like a donkey in a meadow who bolts when wind shakes the grass, "actually the grass is just something that can be eaten." These are the expression of primordial purity, "merely imagined" as threats.
"Unless we are able to destroy them right now, later on, after death, it will not be possible to do so, because our karmas and kleshas are too powerful." The test is everyday: when anger comes, look into its essence in the second moment; "the anger will not remain," and neither will habit or delusion.
Conceivable and Inconceivable
| Conditioned | Unconditioned | |
|---|---|---|
| Truth | Relative | Ultimate |
| Knowable? | Conceivable, explainable, like machines that fly and drive | Inconceivable, "the mind of emptiness" |
| Masters | Western scientists | Longchen Rabjam |
| Use at death | Collapses with aggregates and elements | "Nothing other than the unconditioned can help us" |
At awareness reaching fullness (rig pa tshad pheb) you see through everything, like standing on top of Shivapuri. Without stable samadhi you are in the valley: "when looking north, you cannot see south." Words can "only fractionally hint"; "there is no other way [than practice]."
The bardo is rehearsed today. Every recognition of thought-free, non-oblivious rigpa now is the same recognition that frees at the fourth moment of dying.
The Drop of Nectar
Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche (Khenpo Jamyang Dorje) condenses his longer Cloudbank of Nectar into a smaller commentary for beginners on Tulku Urgyen's guru sadhana. He sets it out under title, main text and colophon, and reads every line in two registers: the relative, implicitly understood, and the ultimate, actually stated.
Why the Guru
A tantra says: "The guru is the Buddha, the guru is the Dharma, and likewise, the guru is also the Sangha." Whoever imagines the guru at the crown, heart or palm "will retain all the siddhis of the buddhas of one thousand aeons." The luminous Great Perfection is realized "exclusively by means of your guru"; Longchenpa taught us to "pursue nothing but the blessings of the guru." "Simplicity" has two meanings: a sadhana free of elaborate words, and a sadhana for realizing the ultimate guru, the simplicity of natural awareness.
The Preliminaries
The general preliminary is to think from the bottom of your heart: this support for the freedoms changes "like a waterfall over a steep cliff"; death is uncertain; unlike materialistic hedonists, I will circle "like being on the rim of a waterwheel"; every samsaric world is like "an island of cannibals, a nest of vicious vipers, or a pit of burning coal."
| Specific preliminary | Relative (implicit) | Ultimate (stated) |
|---|---|---|
| Refuge | Guru and lineage in tiers, Three Roots "as in a market gathering" | Primordially free awareness, in which thoughts of the three realms are "like darkness that cannot continue in the light of day" |
| Bodhichitta | Wish to attain enlightenment for others | Composing oneself in unfabricated awareness |
| Boundary | Commanding and expelling obstructers | Obstructers are the deluded mind's solidified three poisons, self-liberated |
| Resplendence | Consecrating offerings | All that appears is Samantabhadra's offering clouds, like a white conch seen yellow by someone with jaundice |
"To be free from protecting something to be protected, that is the king of all protection circles." Like the fears of a dream that "subside effortlessly" on waking. This is "the great sight of no seeing," "abiding in the state of nondoing," "the great meditation of nonmeditation."
Three headings (title, main text, colophon); three sections of the main text (preliminaries, main part, conclusion); four specific preliminaries; three yogas (Body, Speech, Mind); three concluding activities (dissolution, dedication, auspiciousness).
The Yoga of Body
Ati Yoga sees all of appearance and existence as the ground of the sugata-element, the threefold mandala of empty essence, cognizant nature and all-pervasive capacity. Search for aeons and "there is not even the chance of finding the word impure." So there is no need to change and improve the guru's appearance "as in the case of the lower tantras"; you "bind the life-force by planting the stake of unchanging dharmata."
However he appears to disciples, Tulku Urgyen is "in reality Lord Manjushri", Sangye Yeshe of Nub, holder of the Dogyü Semsum of the Early Translations, and Guru Chökyi Wangchuk: "an incarnation of primordial compassion" reborn for the Dark Age.
The three sattvas are visualized without the fivefold true enlightenment of lower tantras: "one is inside of the other," yet "mutually transparent... bodies of pure light." Invited "merely in a seeming way," the deities arrive with vajra bodies dancing, vajra voices singing mantra, vajra minds delighting, and remain "just as when water is poured into water."
The Seven Branches, Ultimate Style
| Branch | Ultimate meaning |
|---|---|
| Homage (phyag 'tshal) | phyag: concepts swept away; 'tshal: facing self-knowing wakefulness |
| Offering | Subject and object nondual; arrays from Samantabhadra's expanse |
| Apology | No antidote needed; darkness vanquished "when the sun simply rises" |
| Rejoicing | Composing oneself in the Great Perfection; "the ultimate is realized through trust" |
| Turning the wheel | "Four parts without three," timelessness |
| Remaining | Rupakaya displays like the moon in disciples' lakes |
| Dedication | Toward the Youthful Vase Body, three spheres unconceived |
The ultimate Seven Branches implicitly include the relative ones, because it is essential to never separate the two levels of truth. The king of apologies: "Sit up straight and truly look. By truly seeing, he is utterly free." For a more elaborate style, line up amrita, rakta, torma, feast, lamps, "more splendid than the planets and stars," with the Narak Kongshak and supplications "as melodious as the flutes of the gandharvas."
Speech, Mind and Conclusion
Jap means reciting repeatedly and unceasingly. In Samantabhadra's heart is all-pervasive blue like purified lapis lazuli; in the lamp of the empty bindu, vajra chains appear as a white A, "as bright as the globe of the moon." Mind yoga is sustaining empty awareness; speech yoga is reciting AH "gentle and not forced... like a natural flow."
"You will perfect the four visions, at best in three years, second best in five, or at least in seven years," awakening in the expanse of the Youthful Vase Body.
Lower tantras, taking dualistic mind as path, dissolve world into palace and deity to undo belief in permanence. Here wisdom is the path, already free of eternalism and nihilism; displays dissolve "like dreams... or a magical show that fades away."
The dedication offers both "the timeless accumulation of wisdom" of the four parts without three and the conceptual merit of the three times, by not clinging to the three spheres: the beings dedicated to, the dedicator and the virtue. The auspiciousness asks that the sovereign ground wisdom of the three kayas, "which abides, in actuality, within yourself," blaze forth "with thousandfold lights of virtuous marks," and that rupakaya displays "overturn from their depths the realms of beings."
Reading only the ultimate lines can tempt a beginner to skip refuge, devotion and the branches as "conceptual." Nyoshul Khen blocks this: the relative refuge is "implicitly stated," the elaborate offerings are recommended to increase the two accumulations, and supplication is singled out to invoke the master's heart-samaya. The simplicity is in the view, not in doing less.
Colophon: requested by Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche and Ösel Dorje from Germany; Guru Rinpoche too "personally wrote my own sadhanas." Erik Pema Kunsang translated it on the Full Moon in May, 1999. The closing verses say recalling the guru's name outweighs "approaching countless buddhas for hundreds of aeons," and pray for "a gentle rain" of blessings "on the fields of the sugata-essence of all beings."
Hold both levels. Do the relative steps fully, and rest in recognition within each one.
Master Takeaways
Across twenty-seven chapters and an appendix, Vajra Heart Revisited keeps returning to one instruction: recognize, don't fabricate, and let it free itself. These are the points to carry from the page to the cushion and into daily life.
Twenty-Two Takeaways
- Dzogchen is your own basic state, not a ninth vehicle somewhere above you.
- The ground is undetermined: Samantabhadra recognized, we strayed, and nothing was damaged.
- Gold in dirt: confusion is temporary, so purification is uncovering.
- Shamatha and vipashyana become nalbab and sorshug: same term, superior meaning.
- Words are husks; experience is the grain.
- Mahamudra trains with appearances, Dzogchen with awareness; both reach one unity.
- "There is nothing to see" is the seeing.
- Empty cognizance suffused with awareness contains the three kayas.
- Liberation, not calm, is the key point of the third word.
- Fixation divides sems from rigpa: rigpa sees the cup without reaching.
- Short moments, many times, until it is second nature.
- Be an easygoing imbecile: trying to improve is itself the obstacle.
- The watcher is the subtlest duality; let it mingle, or cut with PHAT.
- Compassion starts fabricated and becomes natural.
- Thoughts are drawings on water, freed upon arising.
- Only rigpa mingles three skies; otherwise it is "three concepts."
- Seal all four times of day, and sleep into luminosity.
- "I am undistracted" is a golden chain.
- Distracted is post-meditation; undistracted is meditation.
- It comes down to the view: confidence without fear at death.
- Trekchö is the view, Tögal the meditation, both automatic; don't imagine emptiness or chase visions.
- The bardo is rehearsed now: rigpa today is ground luminosity tomorrow.
Frameworks in the Text
| Framework | Content | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| Ground, path, fruition | Gold, cleaning, gold revealed | 2, 3 |
| Three ignorances | Single-identity, co-emergent, conceptual | 2 |
| Khordey rushan | Separating samsara and nirvana in body, speech, mind | 4 |
| Three Words of Garab Dorje | Recognize, decide, gain confidence | 8 |
| Essence, nature, capacity | Empty, cognizant, unconfined | 9, 22 |
| Four parts without three | Present free of the three times | 8, 10 |
| Methods of liberation | Shardrol and its kin, cut at the wrist | 16 |
| Threefold sky | Outer, inner, secret | 17 |
| Four times | Day, dusk, midnight, dawn | 18 |
| Three mindfulnesses | Effortful, effortless, dharmata | 19 |
| Kadak and lhundrub | Trekchö and Tögal | 22 |
| Six hindrances | Three of dullness, three of agitation | 23 |
| Seven Branches | Seven poisons purified | 25, A |
| Four stages of dying | White, red, black, full attainment | 27 |
Tulku Urgyen makes recognition sound almost too simple: "Since this is so easy, we find it hard to trust that." A reader can take that ease two wrong ways: as permission to skip preliminaries, devotion and a teacher, or as a theory to hold ("rigpa is empty cognizance") in place of actual recognition. The book repeatedly blocks both: pointing-out comes before training, intellectual confidence is "a patch", "I am undistracted" is a golden chain, and the bardo exposes theory. It is also oral teaching, so terms like shentong or the four lamps appear briefly and without full context. Read it with transmission and a living teacher.
Common Misreadings
| Misreading | Correction in the text |
|---|---|
| "Rigpa is a blank, thought-free state" | Thought-free knowing is not being knocked out; awareness doesn't cease |
| "Good meditation means feeling bliss" | Experiences are clouds; the true sign is no fixation |
| "Stop thoughts to find rigpa" | Suppressing thought is an error; recognize its essence |
| "Keep the view in mind" | Holding it is a forkful of steak: subtle duality |
| "Tögal means producing visions" | Hope and fear are its pitfall; it is automatic |
| "Ultimate practice drops the relative" | "Never separate the two levels of truth" |
Practice Notes
- Recognize, then let be: don't suppress, tamper or improve.
- Repeat short moments dozens of times a day.
- When "I was distracted" arises, drop in without adding "now I'm not."
- Look into anger in the second moment; it will not remain.
- Morning and night: 21 breaths of AH, 21 resting in rigpa.
- Cultivate devotion upward and compassion downward, even deliberately.
- Recite Longchenpa's aspiration so the bardo is familiar ground.
A Day of Trekchö at a Glance
| Time | Practice |
|---|---|
| Dawn | Clarify awareness; vajra recitation of AH |
| Day | Seal appearances with rigpa; short moments, many times |
| Dusk | Tummo to burn obscurations |
| Night | Fall asleep into luminosity |
| Any moment | Recognize the thinker; let thought be drawing on water |
Who's Who
| Person or figure | Role |
|---|---|
| Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche | The teacher; author of the Guru Sadhana of Simplicity |
| Samten Gyatso | His uncle and root guru; busier meant better practice |
| Tsoknyi Rinpoche | Son; foreword |
| Marcia Binder Schmidt | Compiler and preface |
| Erik Pema Kunsang | Translator |
| Garab Dorje | Source of the Three Words |
| Longchenpa | Bardo aspiration; Chöying Dzöd |
| Milarepa | Example of collapsed confusion |
| Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche | The Drop of Nectar |
| Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche | Requested the guru sadhana |
Vajra Heart is the first collection of these talks; As It Is extends them into development stage; Rainbow Painting and Repeating the Words of the Buddha give the same view in shorter talks; Quintessential Dzogchen gathers root texts on Trekchö. Read together, they show one teacher pointing to the same awareness from every side.