Insight Editions · No. 391
Vajra Speech
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's A to Z of pith instructions for the Dzogchen yogi
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
An Insight Edition of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's Vajra Speech: about 170 alphabetical pith instructions on recognition, training, devotion and stability, regrouped into thirteen runs with maps, tables and diagrams.
A study guide to Vajra Speech by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, compiled by Marcia Binder Schmidt, translated by Erik Pema Kunsang, edited with Michael Tweed (Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 2001). 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
Every teaching, from the four thoughts to Togal, serves one act: recognizing mind essence, empty and cognizant, in short moments repeated many times, supported by devotion, compassion and purification.
SCOPE
About 170 short entries arranged A to Z, from Accomplishment to Yogi, collected from Rinpoche's oral answers, translated by Erik Pema Kunsang and compiled by Marcia Binder Schmidt with Michael Tweed (2001).
KEY FIGURES
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920 to 1996); Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri; Padmasambhava; Milarepa; Saraha; Gampopa; Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche, quoted in the preface.
BEST FOR
Practitioners who have received pointing-out instruction and want a pocket reference for doubts, and anyone curious how a Dzogchen master defines his terms in a sentence or two.
The Book on One Page
Vajra Speech is a dictionary of pith instructions. Its editors hope readers can "turn to any page for inspiration" and use it "to clear up your doubts." Under the alphabetical surface runs one steady argument about recognition, training and stability.
The Argument in Brief
- One path. Rinpoche taught Prajnaparamita, Middle Way, Mahamudra and Dzogchen as "one unified path" aimed at the natural state.
- Recognize, do not create. Rigpa is already present in everyone "from Samantabhadra down to the tiniest insect."
- Short moments, many times. Long sessions get "spoiled by conceptual mind."
- Support is not optional. Devotion and compassion are "like your head and your feet"; effortlessness is no excuse to skip purification.
- Stability is enlightenment. Recognize, perfect its strength, stabilize, "and you are a buddha."
The editors' warning frames the whole book: it presumes you have already been introduced to effortless meditation.
How This Edition Is Arranged
The source is alphabetical: about 170 headings from Accomplishment to Yogi, each a few lines to a few pages, with no chapters. This edition keeps the original A to Z order but groups the entries into thirteen runs, so each chapter covers a stretch of the alphabet and draws out the themes that cluster there. Short entries are merged where they make one point; long ones such as development and completion, enlightenment, mindfulness, retreat and samaya get their own sections. Where the source repeats an entry, it is treated once.
Three threads run through every run and are worth watching for:
- Recognition. Nearly every entry ends by pointing back to mind essence, whether the subject is death, deities or diet.
- Support. Rinpoche never lets the view stand alone: devotion, compassion, purification and samaya come back again and again.
- Time. Practice is measured in short moments repeated, and fruition in stability, not in single breakthroughs.
Map of the Entries
| No. | Entries | Payload |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Accomplishment to Bodhichitta | True signs; aim; apology; bardo |
| 2 | Buddha to Cognizance | Closed fist; butter in milk; "-ness" |
| 3 | Conditioned to Deities | View and conduct; possession; the real deity |
| 4 | Demons to Development | Four maras; mirror and tangka |
| 5 | Devotion to Dzogchen | Head and feet; bowstring; three methods |
| 6 | Eight Analogies to Errors | Empowerments; Bodhgaya road; golden chain |
| 7 | Essence to Futility | Old man and children; yaks; seed and flower |
| 8 | Great Bliss to Means | Stone and air; knowing and not knowing |
| 9 | Meditation to Ordinary Mind | Looseness; mindfulness; nonmeditation |
| 10 | Path to Recognize | Preliminaries; pure perception; teachers |
| 11 | Relative to Samsara | Retreat; rigpa; sadhana; samaya |
| 12 | Sessions to Three Vajras | Space; stability; samadhis; precepts |
| 13 | Training to Yogi | Familiarization; view; swan |
Accomplishment to Bodhichitta
The book opens with what counts as progress. Rinpoche's answer is unspectacular: no fixation, plus devotion, compassion and pure perception, "just like the sky is filled with the warmth of sunlight."
Accomplishment and Aim
All accomplishment comes through recognizing "the thatness of mind." Without that, "whatever we do is upside down." Two quieter signs also count: trusting karma, and being unharmed by bliss, clarity and nonthought. "Do not attach any importance to temporary experiences, none whatsoever."
The Tibetan for aim literally means "the way you point your nose," and also one's birthplace or homeland. "So, turn your nose toward home." Home is self-existing wakefulness.
All-Encompassing Purity
This is the Vajrayana perspective, but it "does not mean to think that something truly impure is pure." It is training in what is. Without it, visualization becomes "brick-laying," mere mental labour. When rigpa is realized, the five elements are the five female buddhas and the five aggregates the five male buddhas.
Evil deeds have one good quality: they can be purified through heartfelt apology and resolve. Do it before three years pass. A sincerely mended samaya is "like a dent in a golden vessel."
Appearance, Increase, Attainment
At death, after the outer breath stops but the inner energy still moves, three experiences pass "just one, two, three."
| Phase | Experience | Thoughts that cease |
|---|---|---|
| Appearance | Whiteness; father's white element descends from the crown | 33 aggressive states |
| Increase | Redness; mother's red element rises from below the navel | 40 desire states |
| Attainment | Blackness; the two meet at the heart | 7 states of stupidity |
The ordinary person blacks out. A practitioner familiar with rigpa meets the ground luminosity.
Attitude, Bardo, Birth and Death
"Without pure attitude, all paths lead in a perverted direction." Without a real change of heart one becomes "an insensitive practitioner" whom Dharma cannot cure. Of the six bardos, what counts most is "the present instant of recognizing rigpa." Train in seeing experience as unreal, but above all: "Whether the world turns upside down or inside out, it does not matter: just lean back and rest in rigpa."
Superficial blessings: protection cords, sacred medicine, a ritual, and "I got the blessings" when business improves. True blessings: oral instructions on how to become enlightened in a single lifetime, received from a qualified master.
Bodhichitta
Means alone or knowledge alone will not bring enlightenment. "Emptiness, unembraced by compassion," strays into self-interest. Relative compassion is the path; ultimate compassion is the fruition. Compassion arises naturally in awareness, but "in the beginning it is necessary to fabricate slightly."
Reading the Opening Entries Together
Taken as a group, the first entries set the measure for everything after. Progress is not visions or feelings but less fixation and more warmth toward others. Purification is always possible, and the sooner the better. At death the same question returns: has the practitioner grown familiar with what will appear as the ground luminosity? The bardo teaching therefore collapses into daily practice: recognize now, and the later bardos need no special filing system. Rinpoche says there is no need to pigeonhole each bardo experience; what helps is the habit of resting in rigpa whatever happens.
"Whatever I experience is unreal" is the training in the bardo of this life. Bodhichitta then supplies direction: without it, even a correct glimpse of emptiness can turn into a private comfort instead of a path for all beings.
Buddha to Cognizance
These entries define the goal. A buddha is not an outside being: the word means "purified perfection," and "the real buddha is the nature of our mind."
Buddha and Buddhahood
Sangye: dualistic consciousness purified, wisdom qualities perfected. A buddha is free of both existence and peace. The qualities are not his own but "the qualities of the buddha nature fully manifest."
There is only one buddhahood: "undivided empty cognizance suffused with knowing," the same for Sakya, Gelug, Nyingma and Kagyu. The awakened state is "free of thought, yet vividly awake."
Buddha Nature
Deshek nyingpo: just as butter is the essence of milk, realization is the essence of all buddhas. Each of the nine vehicles practises it with finer understanding. "This essence is so simple and easy that sometimes it is hard to trust!" Depicted outside as a blue buddha, it is called Samantabhadra. Shakyamuni appears so that someone can tell us, "Recognize your mind!"
The Buddha did not call mind empty or void but emptiness. The suffix, like ta in dharmata, refers to being cognizant. So: "space is empty and mind is emptiness." Luminosity is "a lucid knowing," not "some brilliant light like a light bulb."
Capacity
Capacity is "the unblocked basis for experience to take place." It is what lets the empty and cognizant mind know and manifest at all.
These entries assert rather than argue. That suits a reader with a teacher; a newcomer gets conclusions without the reasoning behind "-ness" or one buddhahood, which other traditions explain differently.
Competitiveness
A short entry warns against anger and rivalry inside Dharma practice. Rinpoche cites Gampopa: if Dharma is not practised as it should be, it can become a cause for lower rebirth. Spiritual effort used to cultivate resentment and comparison only feeds the problem it was meant to cure.
When reading these definitions, test each against your own experience of the moment. Rinpoche's point under Buddha nature is that the essence is simple enough to doubt; the entries work when they send you back to look at your own mind, not to collect more terms.
Conditioned to Deities
From the unconditioned to conduct, confusion and the real deity, these entries keep one distinction in view: what is made and what is already so.
Conditioned and Unconditioned
The conditioned is conceivable and can be explained; the unconditioned is inconceivable and only hinted at by words like primordial purity and spontaneous presence. Mastery of the conditioned helps now, but "when we arrive in the bardo, the aggregates and elements collapse, then only the unconditioned can help."
Conduct and Confidence
Begin slowly: better than starting brilliantly and becoming jaded, which can ruin others' faith. View, meditation, conduct and fruition are "like the special chemicals that clean dirt from gold."
"The view is free from hope and fear. The conduct is with hope and fear." Confidence before realizing the view is "only an intellectual patch."
Confusion
Delusion is like possession during a seance: beings, taken over by ignorance and 84,000 emotions, have been "dancing around" for aeons. But the possession is self-created. Recognition is "like the spirit leaving," the "collapse of confusion." Samsara is "a repeated momentary incident," and "the confused state of mind can be its own best remedy."
Dualistic consciousness is like a dog: "it only notices what is exactly in front of it." It cannot know past, present and future at once. The wakefulness of rigpa can.
Continuity and Dakini Script
To maintain continuity does not mean to prolong recognition, which would be conceptual. It means not losing it. A terton alone decodes dakini script; even a spelling mistake stays in his experience until he corrects it, so "a genuine terma is always correct."
Deities
People expect a deity to appear after enough mantras. That externalizes it. "Recognize what it is that imagines all this" and you meet "the real deity," the unity of emptiness and cognizance. Recognition "captures the life-force of thousands of buddhas."
To accomplish a deity, know what it is: names, colours and attributes differ, but every deity is the unity of primordial purity and spontaneous presence. "In this way, development and completion are also contained within Trekcho and Togal."
Duality and Fixation
Self-existing wakefulness has no duality whatsoever; seeming duality appears because we fixate on experience as something other. That, Rinpoche says, is "the whole reason why we strive so diligently in meditation to recognize mind essence." When dualistic fixation is destroyed, deluded experience falls apart and conceptual activity collapses. What is left is unconfined nondual awareness, already present the moment rigpa is recognized. The problem is not access but habit: sentient beings do not know how to look.
This is why the entries on conduct and confusion lead straight to the deity. The real deity is not an object at all but the empty cognizance that imagines objects.
Demons to Development and Completion
The longest early entry is on the development and completion stages. It sits between a list of four demons and the reminder that the only real demon is conceptual thinking.
Four Demons
| Demon | What it does |
|---|---|
| Lord of Death | Cuts life short |
| Aggregates | Prevents the rainbow body |
| Disturbing emotions | The three poisons block liberation |
| Son of the gods | Distraction and procrastination |
"The real demon, however, is our conceptual thinking." Recognizing mind essence defeats all four.
What Development Stage Does
Its main purpose is "to destroy our clinging to the accepted belief in a solid reality." It is "like awakening from the dream state," manifesting what primordially exists. For people with too many thoughts, it uses thinking "without gathering karma."
Development stage is not "pretending that a piece of wood is pure gold." It is "an imitation that resembles what is already present in us." Development is spontaneous presence; completion is primordial purity; the two are indivisible.
The Mirror and the Tangka
"The real development stage should unfold within the samadhi of suchness, like a reflection appearing in a bright mirror." When a tangka is reflected, the mirror stays bright. Without completion stage, development becomes construction work, like carving clay or wood. Rinpoche asks: "Can a tangka be reflected in a piece of wood?"
Rinpoche says a perfect development stage "is impossible without being introduced to awareness." That sets a high bar. The entry admits imitation has value but gives the beginner little method beyond "visualize to approach that absolute state."
Why the Stages Still Matter
Rinpoche's account of development stage is generous to the beginner in one respect. It is a remedy for people with many thoughts: instead of fighting thinking, it gives thinking a pure object, so that the mind keeps busy without gathering karma. The visualized palace, deity and retinue are "like awakening from the dream state", a rehearsal of seeing things as they already are.
The four demons frame the same point from the other side. Death, the aggregates and the emotions are serious, but the most familiar demon is the son of the gods: distraction and procrastination, which postpones practice until it is too late.
Devotion to Dzogchen
Rinpoche is blunt about anyone who says they need only rigpa. "Never say, 'Only rigpa, only rigpa, I do not need devotion or compassion.'" Then come entries on diligence, distraction, emotions, dreams and Dzogchen itself.
Devotion and Compassion
"It is not enough to only think rigpa." One must gather the accumulations, purify karma and receive the guru's blessing. Devotion reaches upward to the lineage from Samantabhadra to one's own guru; compassion reaches down to the six classes of beings. "These two... are like your head and your feet."
Rinpoche's exercise is stark: imagine your mother before you, and enemies arrive and harm her while you are bound. "How would you feel? That is called compassion." Through its virtue "emptiness will dawn within your being."
Devotion starts fabricated, then becomes natural as awareness stabilizes: "Sentient beings are unaware of this most precious thing, which is like the Buddha in the palm of my hand."
Dharma Practice and Diligence
Practice means nurturing trust, diligence and insight, the last coming from hearing, reflecting and meditating. Diligence is a bowstring, slack until strung and then evenly taut, or a river "unceasing and unforced." "The difference between buddhas and sentient beings is diligence." A disciple, where Rinpoche comes from, is someone who gives up everything for enlightenment in this life.
Emotions
"The very root of emotion is your attention in motion." Three traditional methods handle emotions.
| Method | Vehicle | Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Abandon | Hinayana | Avoid and renounce |
| Transform | Vajrayana | Change poison to wisdom |
| Recognize | Dzogchen | See the emotion's nature directly |
In the third, "we do not have to transmute the emotion into empty cognizance. The nature of the emotion already is this indivisible empty cognizance." Darkness cannot stay when the sun rises.
Distraction, Doubt and Dream
While distracted we do not know it; only afterwards: "Oh, I was wandering." Doubt visits everyone "until you have truly established the natural state." Not recognizing is dreaming, and Samantabhadra "never fell asleep to begin with, so how could he have any dreams?"
- Open yet sealed: the word is heard "as far as the wind pervades," but the pith instructions are secret.
- Dzog means finished: "there's nothing further; it's done."
- Naked awareness: no clinging to emptiness at all.
- Fruition view: free of any conceptual formulation.
Dzogchen's Open Secret
Rinpoche notes that all buddhas teach Dzogchen, but it was taught openly only in Shakyamuni's era. Its name spreads everywhere, yet the instructions stay sealed in the relationship between teacher and student. That is why so many entries in this run return to devotion: the instructions are not hidden behind words but received through blessing and trust.
Dzog, finished, is the key word. Nothing further needs adding: "it's done." The practitioner's job is not to improve awareness but to stop covering it with clinging, including clinging to emptiness as an achievement.
Eight Analogies to Errors
These entries move from illusion and empowerment to emptiness, enemies and a long entry on enlightenment, then end with the commonest error: distraction.
Eight Analogies and Four Empowerments
Experience is like a mirror's reflection, the moon in water, an echo, a rainbow, a dream, a gandharva city, a mirage and a magic show. Seeing this is how a yogi passes through solid matter.
| Empowerment | Vehicle | Level |
|---|---|---|
| Vase | Mahayoga | Elaborate |
| Secret (own body) | Anu Yoga | Unelaborate |
| Wisdom-knowledge (another's body) | Anu Yoga | Very unelaborate |
| Precious word | Ati Yoga | Extremely unelaborate |
Emptiness and Enemies
Read emptiness as "empty cognizance." Taken as "a big blank void," it slides into nihilism, "a serious sidetrack." There are three enemies: outer (hostile views of Dharma), inner (dualistic thoughts) and ultimate: doubt and the concept of an antidote. Devotion and compassion are the enhancement practices.
Enlightenment
We can awaken because our nature is the enlightened essence, like gold ore that yields gold when smelted, where wood would not. Enlightenment requires directly experiencing the empty, cognizant mind and growing used to it: "Simply understanding what enlightenment is does not enlighten you."
"The road to Bodhgaya is not level": passes, rivers, precipices. "Do not lose courage," keep relaxing into awareness, and you arrive. "If we do not set out on the road, we will never arrive." Removing temporary defilement makes us "re-enlightened instead of primordially enlightened."
It "can indeed be pointed out; it can indeed be recognized; and it can indeed be trained in." When it is complete, phenomena are rainbow light, or simply the space of primordial purity.
Errors
"Mara lies in ambush along the path of distraction." Once you have recognized awareness, the most important point is not to wander off.
When you notice "I was distracted," do not add "I shouldn't be distracted." In the moment of noticing, neither accept nor reject, and you arrive directly in awareness, "like a flashlight the moment it is switched on."
Three Kinds of Awakening
The enlightenment entry also names three levels: arhat, great bodhisattva and buddha, reached through five paths and ten bhumis. Rinpoche treats the system as real but secondary to direct recognition. Awakening is like waking from sleep: what is seen was never absent, and nothing in the sleeper had to be built.
The chain image completes the run. Distraction is an iron chain and self-conscious nondistraction a golden one. Both bind. Freedom comes from the bare moment of noticing, left alone.
Essence to Futility
These entries are about experience: how to regard it, where it comes from, and why the four mind-changings still matter for a Dzogchen yogi.
Essence and Experience
The essence is "like the original sun shining: naturally radiant and unformed." We share the same essence but our manifestations are "separate and distinct." Rinpoche separates intellectual understanding, experience and realization; the actual practice is just "Don't wander, don't be distracted!"
"What we call a hell is merely a perception." Objects "vividly appear as long as the mind apprehends them." When fixation dissolves, "'reality' loses its solid, obstructing quality," which is why accomplished yogis are not harmed by fire or water.
Pleasant and unpleasant experiences are "mere clouds within the sky of primordial purity." Regard them "like an old man watching children play: free from hope and fear."
Expression, Fault and Feast
When rigpa's expression is not recognized it splits into perceiver and perceived; when it recognizes itself it arises as prajna, true prajnaparamita. On faults: "Be your own teacher" and treat others' purity as "none of my business!" Tsok means gathering: of deities, of humans with pure samaya, and of abundance. It is "the king of all offerings."
Fixation
Fixation thinks earth is just earth. It falls apart when one sees earth as Lochana, water as Mamaki, fire as Pandaravasini, wind as Samayatara and space as Dhatvishvari. Hells need a place and someone to be born there; "when duality has become oneness, how can there be a place to take birth?"
The Four Mind-Changings
| Thought | Rinpoche's image |
|---|---|
| Precious human body | "The stronger the emotions, the stronger the wisdoms," like a fire with more wood |
| Impermanence | "Is there anybody who has time to die?" |
| Karma | Results ripen slowly, so "we walk around like stupid cows" |
| Suffering | Yaks: handsome from afar, sickly up close, lice under the fleece |
That is why the Buddha called samsara "an ocean of suffering, not an ocean of bliss."
From a distance, samsara looks like a herd of fine yaks. Up close, the same animals are sickly, with lice and scabies under the fleece. Rinpoche's contrast is the whole of the fourth thought in one picture.
Freeing, Fruition and Futility
With awareness present, every thought is "like a drawing in air." Ground and fruition do not differ except in manifestation: a flower's colours are already in the seed, yet the seed is not the bloom. Futility is real insight: "I fooled myself."
Phenomena and Primordial Purity
Phenomena manifest in both pure and impure forms. Impure phenomena are ordinary experience in this world; pure phenomena are what appears when there is no dualistic clinging. With familiarity in the unconfined state of dharmakaya, all phenomena appear without any self-nature.
When we attain stability in primordial purity, Rinpoche says, "we take control of our own territory." Nothing in appearance and existence has "even a hair tip of concrete existence," and all of samsara and nirvana appear from the space of primordial purity. This sits behind the fixation entry: the elements are female buddhas not by decree but because their essence was never concrete.
Great Bliss to Means and Knowledge
These entries mark the line between samsara and nirvana, between stone and air, and between knowing and not knowing.
Bliss, Habit and Ignorance
Great bliss is "unconditioned bliss totally free of even the word 'pain'." Habitual tendencies are best understood through dreams: nothing tangible, yet everything experienced.
"If these two were purified, we would be buddhas." Do not divide appearance as there and awareness as here. Intellectual understanding is "like a patch; it will wear off."
Karma: Stone and Air
Sentient beings' thoughts are like carving in stone: each leaves a trace, so karma and habits accumulate. A true yogi's thoughts are like drawings in air: apparent movement, no dualistic clinging, no karmic accumulation. This is "unceasing, self-occurring self-liberation."
The moment of recognition "totally interrupts the karma and obscurations, for that moment," purifying the past and stopping new creation. Complete stability eliminates them entirely.
Knowing and the Lama
"The difference between samsara and nirvana lies wholly between knowing and not knowing." What is to be known: the three kayas are complete in your own mind. Lama: la, the life force, and ma, the mother, of all beings; or la, "unexcelled." The root guru is the one who introduces the unborn dharmakaya of your own mind.
Letting Go and Liberation
Letting go has no one letting go and nothing let go of. In the mirror of awareness, thoughts of any colour leave nothing on the glass; they are harmless "just like the play of children." Both confusion and liberation occur in the expression, never in the essence.
| Level | What it is |
|---|---|
| Higher births | Humans, demigods, gods |
| Liberation | Rebirth in a buddhafield |
| Buddhahood | Complete enlightenment |
Means and Knowledge
Knowledge recognizes the potential; means (visualizing, praising, conceptual practice) facilitate it. In Sutra, emptiness and compassion; in Mantra, completion and development. Separated, it is like trying to finish any worldly job without both.
"In this life, only the pursuance of buddhahood... is meaningful." Rinpoche states it flatly, as a measure for any activity.
The Lama's Role
These entries make the teacher central without making him an external saviour. The root guru is defined by one function: introducing the dharmakaya of your own mind. Everything else he offers, blessing, ritual and advice, serves that introduction. The knowing and not knowing entry adds that the dividing line between samsara and nirvana lies inside each practitioner, so the lama's work ends where the student's own recognition begins.
Meditation to Ordinary Mind
This is the practical core: meditation, mindfulness, naturalness and nonmeditation. Rinpoche distils "one hundred essential points with one sentence: it is undistracted nonmeditation."
Meditation and Meditator
There is "not even as much as a hair tip to create or imagine." "The best looseness makes the best meditation." What drags us down is meditator and meditated: "Ah, the Lama said there was something empty and cognizant... Now I must not lose it" is a fabrication. At all times "there is merely something to recognize, not something to meditate on."
Three Levels of Mindfulness
- Middle Way: deliberate effort is mindfulness.
- Mahamudra: watchfulness, "like a herdsman" watching whether the cattle drink or graze.
- Dzogchen: awakeness, where "mindfulness is rigpa; rigpa is mindfulness."
Mindfulness is like a hook in meat so the dog does not run off with it. For a beginner, "without the mindfulness of reminding, there is no recognition." Deliberate mindfulness becomes effortless: "The path of effort leads to effortlessness." Then sem, the mind caught in three times, gives way to rigpa.
Misdeeds, Moments and Motivation
Thoughts and fixation are momentary, so they can be cleared away. The body of elements and channels brings moods "even without an external cause," but on the road to Bodhgaya, "if we do not stop anywhere, eventually we will arrive." Motivation is vast (all beings have been our parents) and profound (the universe is a palace, beings are deities).
Naturalness and Nondistraction
Naturalness is "without technique, without artifice," like ringing a bell: once struck, the sound continues by itself. Contrived nondistraction, sitting with "I am not distracted," is like a Tibetan stomach medicine that turns poisonous if undigested.
Nonmeditation means not contriving; nondistraction means not forgetting. Together they bring "the steady, unbroken flow of a river." "Once we become distracted, the continuity is lost."
Obscurations, Obstacles, Openness
| Route | Method |
|---|---|
| Long path | The ten virtues |
| Shorter route | Deity, mantra and samadhi |
| Fastest | Recognize mind essence, the wish-fulfilling jewel |
Obscuration (dribpa) is like the walls of a room. Obstacles are outer (elements), inner (channels and winds) and innermost (duality). "The greater the difficulty the better the opportunity for practice." Waiting for good conditions is "to be possessed by Mara." Obstructers are your own thoughts. Zangtal, openness, is "like the ocean in which no sediment remains."
Ordinary Mind
Tamal kyi shepa: "neither worsened nor improved," the simplest term across Middle Way, Mahamudra and Dzogchen. The unceasing wakefulness present in every being "is the true Samantabhadra."
Primordial Freedom in the Senses
Under openness Rinpoche describes a state in which the five senses are wide open and nothing settles, like an ocean without sediment. This is not a trance. Sights, sounds and thoughts continue, but none of them hardens into a fixed object. The ordinary mind entry gives the same point its humblest name: nothing to improve, nothing to spoil, present "from Samantabhadra down to the tiniest insect."
Rinpoche reverses the usual logic of obstacles. Distress is the best time to practise, and waiting until conditions improve is a trap. When a mood arrives without cause, recognize the one who feels it and keep walking toward Bodhgaya.
Path to Recognize
These entries place us on the path, praise the preliminaries, define pure perception and the qualified teacher, and arrive at the key verb: recognize.
Path and Perseverance
We are at the path stage, so purify and gather before expecting the fruition view. Buddhas "recognized the state of the ground as being pure gold"; our gold is covered in mud. Carry sights as deity body, sounds as speech, thoughts as mind. Perseverance is the Ganges: "Is there ever any second when the Ganges does not flow?"
Pointing-Out and the Preliminaries
The pointing-out instruction is "your present wakefulness pointed out as it is." The precious word empowerment shows that mind nature "was never really concealed," only overlooked.
- Pure attitude multiplies practice's effect 100 times.
- Pure samadhi multiplies it 100,000 times.
- So combine the preliminaries with recognition of mind essence.
"Compared to the main part, the preliminaries are more profound." With a firm foundation "we can easily construct many hundreds of stories on top."
Pure Perception
Pure perception "is not a way of convincing oneself that things are what they are not, but rather training in seeing things as they truly are." Even dogs and pigs have the enlightened essence and the elements and aggregates that are the buddhas. Samantabhadra is the foundation of both pure and impure. Protectors "will be scrambling to help" a realized practitioner.
The Qualified Teacher
| Holds | Called |
|---|---|
| Pratimoksha vows | Virtuous guide |
| Plus bodhisattva trainings | Spiritual teacher |
| Plus Vajrayana and samadhi | Vajra master |
A true vajra master has liberated his own stream of being and can liberate others through compassion.
Qualities, Realization, Recitation
Rigpa's qualities: nonexistence (purity), existence (presence), and their union. "When misdeeds are purified, realization occurs automatically." Recitation has approach, accomplishment and activity, like petitioning a king, receiving authority, then sending emissaries.
Recognize
"Recognize" means "meeting your nature head-on." Thoughts arise from you and dissolve into you. Delusion dissolves "the very moment you recognize the identity of that which is deluded."
"Give up the thinker and what is thought of." But, Rinpoche adds, giving up everything does not include giving up recognizing: "Give up doing, but do not give up nondoing."
Phenomena as Celestial Palace
The pure perception entry has a light moment. Rinpoche imagines seeing one's ordinary house as a celestial palace and its occupants as deities: "How amazing that would be!" The point is not fantasy. Because Samantabhadra is the foundation of pure and impure alike, training in pure perception is closer to the truth than habitual perception, which is the real distortion.
Relative to Samsara
Middle entries cover truth, renunciation, short moments, retreat, rigpa and the long entries on sadhana and samaya, ending with how samsara ends.
Relative, Renunciation, Revulsion
The real is your essence; the seeming is your thoughts. Recognize the real and the seeming collapses. Renunciation, the sense that time is running out, "is the true sign of accomplishment." Revulsion is like a jaundice patient served fried food.
Short Moments, Many Times
"There is no other method." Recognition lasts only a moment anyway; repeating builds familiarity, and short keeps it "unspoiled by conceptual mind." "If we remain for a long time, it is only our intellect prolonging it."
Retreat
Ordinary people spend "hardly as much as one instant" in 24 hours in uncontrived naturalness. Solitude cuts pointless activity; Mahamudra speaks of threefold solitude, Dzogchen of abandoning the ninefold activities.
Some retreatants "spend time interior decorating and making cave improvements. They end up owning the cave." They forget the line: "By abandoning activities, you approach the nature of nondoing."
Rigpa
The word rigpa has two uses: noticing stillness and movement, and self-existing awareness. The gap between them is "as vast as the distance between sky and earth." Samantabhadra "is not a person who appeared sometime in the ancient past"; Samantabhadra is rigpa recognized. "Even scientists cannot figure it out," yet "you can know your own mind."
Sadhana and Samantabhadra
A sadhana manifests the threefold mandala of deity, mantra and samadhi. It is not to "fill their stomachs with offerings" but to purify ourselves. Read the lines with the mind left natural, and the three samadhis occur. Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri are "our old father" and "our old mother": cognizance and emptiness, not "an old blue man and his old lady."
Samaya
| Level | Keeping samaya means |
|---|---|
| Best | Never departing from the view: "nonkeeping great keeping" |
| Next | Deity, mantra, and compassion-emptiness |
| Lowest | Not harming the guru's body, obeying, not upsetting him (Rinpoche laughs) |
| Dzogchen | Four king-like samayas: nonexistence, all-pervasiveness (Trekcho); oneness, spontaneous perfection (Togal) |
Breaches pass through four stages; after three years unmended, repair is no longer possible. When view fails, patience guards samaya: do not answer rage, abuse, blame or blows in kind.
Samsara
"Thought is the root and creator of samsara." Samsara as a whole has no end, but each individual's can end. A buddha is the sun in a clear sky; a being's mind is its reflection on water.
Starting a Retreat
Practical detail appears even here: a retreat traditionally begins with a feast and a torma offering to the local deity. Threefold solitude of body, speech and mind corresponds to the three vajras. The retreat entry's real target is activity itself; the cave decorator shows that busyness follows us into solitude unless we recognize it.
A Note on Sadhana
Rinpoche is sharp about avoiding practice: someone who neither recognizes mind nor does any sadhana but simply eats and sleeps lives "like a dog or pig." A single sadhana, he adds, embodies the Mahayoga tantras, the Anu Yoga scriptures and the Ati Yoga instructions. Read with the mind left natural, the liturgy itself carries the practitioner through the three samadhis.
Sessions and Breaks to Three Vajras
These entries cover daily life, calm and insight, space, stability, thoughts, and a run of threes: kayas, poisons, precepts, roots, samadhis and vajras.
Sessions and Breaks
Sutra trains a space-like session and illusion-like breaks; in Dzogchen both are space, since "thinking that phenomena are like illusion is a mental fabrication." Postmeditation means straying into rigpa's expression. Mingle the view with eating, lying down, walking and sitting.
Shamatha and Vipashyana
Ordinary shamatha produces stillness; ordinary vipashyana looks for the meditator, and both are conceptual. In Ati, stability in nondual awareness is shamatha and its cognizant quality is vipashyana. "Do not think that these two are discarded."
Space, Sleep, Stability
Sleep is the minister of "the king of stupidity." A glimpse of rigpa is like light morning sleep, almost awake. Ying and rigpa, basic space and awareness, are indivisible, and both inside and outside are beyond arising.
Words are rice husks, cast off as the view deepens. Sustaining means allowing continuity with no one sustaining. Terma lies hidden in rock, lakes and space; tertons can "dive into lakes" and "take objects out of solid rock."
Thoughts and the Threefold Sky
Thoughts are "bubbles in water." "The indifferent state of absent-mindedness is a greater enemy" than wild thoughts. "Samsara needs our thinking to perpetuate itself." In threefold sky practice, outer sky is the example, inner space the empty mind, innermost space nondual awareness.
The Threes
| Set | Members |
|---|---|
| Three excellences | Bodhichitta at the start; main part beyond concepts; dedication at the end |
| Three kayas | Dharmakaya, space; sambhogakaya, rainbow light; nirmanakaya, flesh and blood |
| Three precepts | Pot (pratimoksha), milk (bodhisattva), butter (samaya) |
| Three roots | Guru for blessing; yidam for siddhis; dakini and protectors for activity |
| Three samadhis | Suchness, illumination, seed |
| Three seats | Tathagatas as aggregates and elements; bodhisattvas as senses; gatekeepers as times and views |
| Three vajras | Forms, sounds, awareness |
Suchness and illumination are the mirror and its brightness; the seed is the reflection. "If you practice like that, I can guarantee that within this one lifetime you can accomplish both the common siddhis and the supreme siddhi."
The source text repeats the Three Samadhis, Three Seats, Unmistaken Qualities and Three Vajras entries twice in this part. The content is the same; the guarantee of one-lifetime siddhis rests, as Rinpoche says, on already being introduced to Trekcho.
Kayas and Unconfined Capacity
Even while we wander, the essence of our minds is the three kayas, an incessant presence, "not something that sometimes occurs, vanishes, and comes back." Dharmakaya is defined as "dissolved yet unobscured": dissolved means free of all disturbing emotions, unobscured means original wakefulness. It is not empty of the cognizant quality.
The unconfined entry explains why. The unity of emptiness and cognizance has an unconfined capacity; if it were blocked, "we would be a total blank." Conceptual thought confines, but the expression of awareness is unimpeded, which is how sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya can manifest at all. Sustaining freshness is the Trekcho name for mingling this awareness with daily activities "without being distracted and without clinging," going beyond the common habit of staying undistracted while still fixating.
Training to Yogi
The book ends with training, Trekcho and Togal, view, visualization, yidam and the yogi, a portrait of what the whole path produces.
Training
"The training is simply to remain undistracted", which is simply to not forget. "In the moment of recognizing, it is seen. In the moment of seeing, it is free." Rinpoche puns on the near-identical Tibetan words: "It is more a matter of familiarization than meditation."
Trekcho, Togal, Two Accumulations
Trekcho acknowledges that the essence is empty; Togal recognizes that its display is spontaneously present. Neither is produced by practice. "Without cutting through with Trekcho, you can't directly cross with Togal." Merit with concepts is the ngondro; wisdom without concepts is resting in the natural state.
Unity, Vajra, Vajrayana
"Don't project space as being there, don't grasp awareness as being here!" If asked what mind is, say: "the unity of being empty and cognizant." Vajra means unconditioned, unburnable. The Age of Strife suits Vajrayana: stronger emotions, greater potential.
View
- Resting freely: do not project outwardly.
- Pervasive: do not concentrate inwardly.
- Wide open: do not place attention in between.
"Then there is nothing to do. You have arrived at nondoing." With confidence, "even if a hundred panditas said you should doubt it," you stay certain.
"Knowing one thing liberates all."
Visualization, Wisdom, Yidam
Visualize vividly once, then rest; visualize in flashes, the whole form at once, or "when you think of the head, the bottom disappears." Deities are not pleased by praise; the ritual is for our benefit. Realizing a yidam needs emptiness, compassion and freedom from hope and fear. Yidam practice is "like adding oil to the fire."
The Yogi
A true yogi recognizes again and again, so the gap between thoughts grows longer. Like the swan that separates milk from water, the yogi separates wakefulness from ignorance. When it is real, people say "The yogi has arrived": "Your body is still that of a human being, but your mind is Mahamudra."
"A yogi does not find it sufficient to merely have recognized." Without training, recognition's strength is never perfected. Train until the fruition of the three kayas.
Wisdom and the Single Sphere
Wisdom (yeshe) means primordial knowing, "an original wakefulness that is not dependent upon an object." It is primordially free from distraction; "if you are confused, wakefulness is gone." The single sphere of dharmakaya names the same thing: single because it is not a duality, whereas ordinary thinking is never a single unity. Thoughtfree wakefulness keeps both halves: free of concepts, yet the knowing quality is not lost.
These final definitions close the circle opened by Aim. The home the nose turns toward is this wakefulness, and the yogi is simply someone who has stopped leaving it.
Master Takeaways
Read straight through, Vajra Speech is less a dictionary than a single instruction seen from 170 angles. These are the points that recur.
Twenty-Two Takeaways
- Turn your nose toward home: self-existing wakefulness.
- True signs are no fixation plus devotion and compassion.
- Evil's one virtue: it can be purified.
- In the bardo, lean back and rest in rigpa.
- Real blessing is instruction, not protection cords.
- A buddha is the open hand; a being, the closed fist.
- Mind is emptiness, not just empty.
- Losing conduct in the view is the worse mistake.
- The possession is self-created.
- Development stage reflects; it does not carve.
- The real demon is conceptual thinking.
- Devotion and compassion are head and feet.
- Emotion is attention in motion.
- Notice distraction and stop there, like a flashlight.
- Experiences are children at play.
- Stone or air: the difference is clinging.
- Best looseness, best meditation.
- Undistracted nonmeditation sums it up.
- Preliminaries are more profound than the main part.
- Short moments, many times.
- Samaya is kept best by the view.
- Familiarize rather than meditate.
Frameworks in the Text
| Framework | Content | Ch. |
|---|---|---|
| Dissolution stages | Whiteness, redness, blackness | 1 |
| Two blessings | Superficial and true | 1 |
| "-ness" | Space is empty, mind is emptiness | 2 |
| View and conduct errors | Two ways to lose one in the other | 3 |
| Four demons | Death, aggregates, emotions, son of gods | 4 |
| Mirror and tangka | Unity of the stages | 4 |
| Three methods with emotion | Abandon, transform, recognize | 5 |
| Four empowerments | Vase, secret, wisdom, word | 6 |
| Two chains | Iron and golden | 6 |
| Three steps | Understanding, experience, realization | 7 |
| Two ignorances | Coemergent and conceptual | 8 |
| Three mindfulnesses | Mindfulness, watchfulness, awakeness | 9 |
| Three routes | Virtue, deity, recognition | 9 |
| Three teachers | Guide, teacher, vajra master | 10 |
| Samaya levels | Best to lowest; four king-like | 11 |
| Recognize, train, stabilize | Child to adult | 12 |
| Three points of rigpa | Free, pervasive, open | 13 |
Vajra Speech is extracted sayings without their original contexts: no dates, places or questions are given, so the reader cannot tell who was being answered. The A to Z order scatters connected teachings and the source duplicates several entries. Claims about yogis passing through rock or guaranteed siddhis are stated as fact. The editors themselves say it assumes prior introduction; read alone, it can feed the intellectual patch it warns against.
Who's Who
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche | The speaker |
| Erik Pema Kunsang | Translator |
| Marcia Binder Schmidt | Compiler |
| Michael Tweed | Co-editor |
| Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche | Quoted in the preface |
| Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche | Named in Orgyen Tobgyal's quote |
| Samantabhadra, Samantabhadri | Dharmakaya father and mother |
| Padmasambhava | Example, with Milarepa, of a body unobstructed by matter |
| Saraha | Quoted on giving up the thinker |
| Gampopa | Quoted on Dharma gone wrong |
| Milarepa | Example of a yogi unobstructed by matter |
Connect It
The Ultimate Dzogchen interview expands several of these entries (mindfulness as a switch, theory as a patch that falls off). The Commentary on the Preliminaries supplies the practices Vajra Speech calls "more profound" than the main part.