The Great Secret of Mind

bhikshus by demonstrating three things: the superiority of the authentic world
beyond, the falsity of the worldly ego, and that through familiarization with
egolessness, the body is purified.
“Bhikshus, you must meditate on selflessness! Thereby you will abandon
clinging to a self or an ego. When such clinging is abandoned completely, you will
attain nirvana! Like the mother smearing bad-smelling ointment on her breasts, I
instruct you to meditate on all phenomena as insubstantial, without self. Like the
mother washing away the smell and telling her son that earlier, when the
medicine had not yet dissolved, she could not let him suckle, but now he could
drink, so too in order to divert the mind of the world into the teaching, I taught
absence of self. But now I teach the existence of buddha-nature. Bhikshus! Don’t
be afraid, like the infant, but rather, like the infant after he had examined her
breasts, drink the milk! You, bhikshus, should now assume that we all possess
buddha-nature, and, after investigating it, meditate upon it and cultivate it with
diligence.”
Buddha-nature is not something that is newly generated through cause and
effect, for it is spontaneously present in all sentient beings. The potential of pure
being and primal awareness likewise does not need to be conscientiously
generated, for it arises naturally, just as heat arises from fire and light from the
sun.
The paths of sutra and tantra are similar in realization, but different in method.
According to the sutras, to attain buddha, even brilliant individuals need to
accumulate merit for three countless eons. Those tantrikas who believe
themselves on the path of primal awareness and those on the path of the inner
and outer yoga-tantra may accomplish buddha in sixteen or seven lifetimes, or in a
minimum of three lifetimes. But from the point of view of Dzogchen, such yogins
and yoginis are not really on the path of primal awareness because their views are
not yet free of subtle apprehending marks, not yet released from time, and their
meditation is still sullied by subtle goals that inhibit their encounter with the
natural face of the dharmakaya. For these reasons, they cannot transcend the
meditation. They may realize that their conduct is like a reflection in water, but
since it contains the snake-knots of judgmentalism, such conduct cannot remove
those deficiencies. In the view of the Dzogchen yogins and yoginis of Cutting
Through and Direct Crossing, through which buddha is gained in one lifetime,
they have not gone beyond the path of the intellect.
The nature of Dzogchen is such that nothing arising in consciousness is rejected,
nothing is accepted, and everything is treated impartially. Whatever is perceived,
nothing at all is done to it; thereby all experience whatsoever is known as nondual.
Here, all views have been utterly forsaken and completely released in the matrix
of luminous mind, self-arisen primal awareness. Unmoving from that space we
remain in nonconceptual meditation. The propensities of rejection or acceptance
are intrinsically released and what is called “ultimate, decisive conduct” arises,
which, in short, is free from any focus, elaboration, or effort.