What is abandoned has no material attribute, and its antidote has no attribute, and
in that moment of arising, grandfather Saraha, laughing, found the space of
reflexive liberation.
When, on the basis of the lama’s instruction, we realize the profound import of
the view and recognize the nature of mind as pure presence, bright and
nonconceptualized, we will have experienced it and thus will have no need to
either describe it to others or discuss its ontological status. With an inner
conviction that what we call “our mind,” “the subjective knower abiding in
nonthought,” and so on, is meaningless, we will find born within us a deep
abiding confidence that in itself is sufficient. Concerning the production of this
profound confidence, we cannot realize the natural state of mind by any other
means than reliance upon a rigzin-lama’s blessing and oral instruction.
In the sutras of the Approach with Signs, which contain the highest Mahayana
view, many profound truths are established by direct perception and inferential
logic, but in the end they do not go beyond the intellect. Although we mouth the
words “empty” and “beyond conceptual elaboration,” such words remain mere
semantic expressions because the mind cannot conceive them. There is no release
from our dualistic bonds. If the nature of the mind is not seen directly in nondual
vision, however it is expressed, dualisms can be neither transcended nor resolved.
When we are holding a burning coal in our hand, unless we drop it, we cannot
prevent the pain, no matter how much we cry. In the sutras of the Approach with
Signs, in the Madhyamaka Prasangika school, and in the outer, inner, and
supreme yoga-tantra schools—in all approaches below the level of the secret
precept class of Dzogchen Atiyoga—propositions that tend to crystallize reality are
resolved successively and gradually because in those schools nondual perception is
not recognized as a valid means of proof. Due to the existence of higher and lower
approaches and faster and slower paths, there is a gradation in the profundity of
blessing. In The Treasury of the Dharmadhatu, Longchenpa says,
Until we realize—experientially—the field of self-sprung sameness,
We may verbally obsess with the term “nonduality”
And speculate confidently about what is nonreferential,
But such egregious thinking is dark and ignorant.In Dzogchen, first, at the feet of a rigzin-lama, we are introduced to the actual
experience of primal awareness. In light of this, all speculative concepts and
assumptions belonging to the Approach with Signs surely vanish, and we “see”
without any conceptual elaboration. If we fail to experience it directly, though
perhaps wise in the dialectics of Dzogchen, we are not even close to the natural
state of being, and we do not deserve the name “Dzogchen yogin.” As Drubchen
Pema Dewai Gyelpo says in The Rampant Lion,
If the authentic nature of being is not known,
Caught by the spirit of fundamentalism,
The pains of bigoted sectarianism well up,
And we are trapped in a net of karmic proclivities