The Great Secret of Mind

four discursive meditations that turn the intellect back upon itself (meditations on
precious human body, impermanence, karmic cause and effect, and karmic
retribution) and eventually leads them to the actuality of Dzogchen. He guides
them as if they were blind, providing each and every explanation, allowing them
to do the training. Sometimes when they go astray, he chides them, and when they
are successful, he praises them, and thus he checks their practical experience.
Unique to the Cutting Through phase of Dudjom Rinpoche’s The Intrinsic Nature
of Being is a tradition of instruction and training lasting six months. These days,
due to conditions in our times, this tradition is no longer followed; rather, the
students read the text cursorily and receive only a superficial understanding of it.
Taking what is superficial as a basis for practice, they fail to find the essence.
Though the lama that we serve need not be famous, he should certainly practice
what he preaches. It is very important that no matter what oral instruction we
receive from that lama, we comprehend it completely; otherwise there will be a
gap between the instruction and ourselves. There is no use in reading an
instruction text as if it were a Sunday newspaper because it is then mere hearsay,
imitating the lama as a monkey imitates a man, and there will be no fruit from the
meditation. To find a real rigzin-lama is vital.
When the lama identifies mistakes in our practice, we need to rectify those
errors, just as we straighten out what is crooked, bind what is cracked, or mend
what is broken. If we follow his instructions on removing obstacles, our practice
will produce results.
The rigzin Kunzang Sherab had four heart-sons—Shugang Badang, Jangang
Aphen, Tsangda Dorjethar, and Serwa Yeshe Senge—to whom he taught Dzogchen,
guiding them in their practice for a long time. One day he took them to the bank of
the Drichu River at Derge and asked them to sit cross-legged on the bank with him.
That evening the river had risen so much that there was fear of floods in the
village, and the lama finally left his seat and ran away. Three others followed suit,
leaving only Shugang Badang still sitting unmoving. Recognizing all experience as
a great lie, he sat on the bank of the river with pure presence unwavering from its
own natural state and not a single hair of his body was harmed: great assurance in
his practice emerged within him. The lama praised Shugang Bhadang highly and
scolded the other three disciples, showing them the crux of Dzogchen and asking
them to be like Shugang Bhadang. It was not that the lama ran away from the
flood out of fear, but rather he fled in order to check his disciples’ reactions.
These days some of us Dzogchen teachers just pretend to know Dzogchen, but
nonetheless we propagate it, as a practical experience, throughout the world. But
when we face difficulties like sickness, pain, conflict, and so on, we suffer like
ordinary beings. Some of us go mad, or if not mad perhaps we make offering to the
gods and demons: this shows the inherent fault of failing to assimilate the benefit
of practice. Just as past masters would say, “He may have entered the dogma of
Dzogchen, but he has not encountered the personal Dzogchen”—we may have
received the teaching, but we have yet to assimilate it. In short, only if our praxis
can be described as abiding in our own unmodified, uncontrived mind can we say
that we have assimilated Dzogchen. At that point we will have constant recognition