Dzogchen teaching.
This is the way that the famous fourth Dzogchen Rinpoche, Mingyur Namkhai
Dorje, was introduced to the view that led to his attainment of the consummate
level of reality, higher than the sky. At the age of twenty-five, he sought full
ordination and studied all the five fields of cultural knowledge. Then he began to
administer his 280 monasteries, and his sanctity and knowledge spread far and
wide. In order to seek empowerments, transmissions, and explanations, he went
with fifty monk attendants to Dokhok to see Do Drubchen Jigme Trinle Woser, who
was a heart-son of the rigzin Jigme Lingpa. When he met Do Drubchen, the lama
gave him a skull cup full of pure alcohol and told him to drink it. As an ordained
bhikshu, he was forbidden to drink alcohol, but ordered by the lama to imbibe, he
had no choice, and without hesitation he consumed it in a single draft. Instantly,
he was intoxicated. When he returned to his entourage, some high lamas and
tulkus were critical of his drinking alcohol, but they thought that, after all, it was
only a temporary lapse. When they found that Rinpoche was still not sober the
next day, they were surprised, and even more surprised when they realized that,
through that single skull cup of alcohol, Rinpoche was to be intoxicated for the rest
of his life. He saw all the phenomena of samsara and nirvana and the path from
one to the other as magical illusory envisionment and mental projection.
Sometimes when he was called from his room, he simply walked into the wall,
showing the front half of his body on the outside wall. This was seen by many
people. He had unlimited psychic powers, had no attachment whatsoever to the
appearances of this world, and had gone beyond to the Dzogchen place where
reality is consummate.
When rigzin-lama and fortunate disciple meet, an understanding of the nature
of things is not left to deductive logic but is experienced as pure presence itself.
That is the supreme uniqueness of this path. The omniscient Jigme Lingpa said in
The Chariot of Omniscience, “To accomplish pure presence as dharmakaya, there is
nothing to prove. Here is effortless transference into the great primal awareness
that is ultimate freedom.”
The accomplishment cannot be attained by reason. It is inexpressible and cannot
be presented logically. In Ascertaining the Three Vows, Ngari Panchen says,
Only through the blessing of the rigzin-lama!
Any other method is ignorance!Like a finger pointing at the moon, the method is symbolic. We cannot define the
method exactly, as in Do Drubchen’s introducing Mingyur Namkha Dorje to pure
presence.
The teaching of Dzogchen and the character of a rigzin-lama are beyond
definition. As can be inferred from the examples above, do not presume that a
significant encounter can be met with easily. Such lamas are as rare as a blue
moon. The disciple must be super sharp in mind and have a strong karmic link
with the lama. Just like an astrologer’s student who intuits the key points of
reckoning and has no need to compute each and every calculation, there is no use
in making a disciple strive long and hard when simply by being shown the