dissolve naturally. Whatever happens, there is no need for concern.
Once when the Dharma King of Derge, Tenpa Tsering, initiated the work of
carving the woodblocks for printing the Kanjur, he asked Palpung Situ Rinpoche to
lend him his edition of the canon for reprinting. This request did not please
several scholars, and they conspired to frustrate it. Assuming that, as a high lama,
he would firmly believe in omens, they arranged for him to observe some women
carrying empty vessels to fetch water in the opposite direction of his grand arrival
the next morning. When Rinpoche saw them, he did indeed feel it presaged a bad
omen, but suddenly he asked the monks who accompanied him to count the
empty vessels. There were eighteen, and when this was reported to Rinpoche, he
was delighted since the number eighteen is the auspicious number of the different
types of emptiness counted in the Middle Way metapsychology. He took this as an
excellent omen for the unimpeded work of printing the Kanjur. Because for
Dzogchen yogins bad situations become favorable, misfortune for them becoming
good fortune, it is said that not a single obstruction can impede them. All
phenomena are just labels.
In The Heart Sutra, Bhagawan Buddha said, “There is no path, no primal
awareness, no obtainment, no nonobtainment.” If there can be no obtainment of
happiness in perfect reality, how can there be any nonobtainment? Since
obtainment is the flip side of nonobtainment, if one of these is established, the
other naturally comes with it as potential. If we can see the gain or loss of
happiness and sadness as deceptive magical illusion, we are yogins and yoginis
who have gained the space of nonaction. If we can see the components of each
experience as conceptual labels and if whenever happiness or suffering arises, we
can examine the actual present state of mind and stay with it without grasping, we
will experience an awareness of great bliss that we have never experienced
before. When we feel exalted, this primal awareness of great bliss can subdue our
pride, and when we are miserable, it can undermine our suffering. Surely this
nonconceptual bliss will replace both our happiness and our sadness.
1.27 WHEN PURE PRESENCE IS SPONTANEOUSLY RECOGNIZED, ITS VEILS NATURALLY DISSOLVE
When we realize the reality of the mind free of dualistic perception, that is what is
called “buddha.” In The Treasury of the Dharmadhatu, Longchenpa says,
Simple recognition of the nature of being is labeled “buddha”
And with that realization, there is nothing to adopt or to abandon
Because everything is smoothed out into the sole reality—
On the Isle of Gold, everything is only gold.The moment that we realize the nature of mind, buddha-nature, the natural
perfection of being, there is no need to look anywhere else for it because we have
found buddha in our own bed. We know that from beginningless time in samsara
we have taken innumerable births and accumulated various good and bad karmas
from the twin veils of emotivity and unawareness; in this way, our karmic