Tsoknyi Rinpoche Dzogchen Practice
Tsoknyi Rinpoche Dzogchen Practice
Started: 22.10.2000
beings. We should have the right to come and go as we please. This is because
of delusions and obscurations.
Shamata with object is known by people in the west because everything you do
is concentrating on objects, like at your job, driving etc. Abiding and staying,
mindfulness and awareness is the main three things that have to be present in
both Shamata with and without support. 25% abiding, 25% mindfulness and 50%
awareness (the main Manager). The most important is the awareness, off course
it is important to be relaxed, but we have to get rid of the dullness.
Tibetans fall asleep when they meditate, but westerners are to active, looking too
much outwardly. You must learn to relax. Its not really important to sleep, some
Tibetan masters doesnt sleep at all. When you sleep its like you get
unconscious and your mind completely collapses. Remember the 4 mindful
nesses - mindfulness of body, sensation, mind and samadi.
In Tibetan there is a word called nyam = experience, but changing. If you have
experiences like this, this is not enlightenment, so you have to let go of it. We
should never try to get this experience again. If you practice you will get
experiences and they come and go. We have to actualize this realization to be
able to conquer the habitual patterns it is not enough to study.
Sometimes mindfulness can be a little too much, and then it must be adjusted by
awareness. Most traditions stops with abiding in mindfulness - Shamata, but
Dzogchen has a way to pass this state.
The view:
The secret mind is right there, the view of no concept, you might try to
understand it with concepts. The real difficulty lies here, to understand that this is
the wisdom of our awareness. It is said that the wisdom of the view cannot be
conceived or understood, because it is beyond concept. But if you have great
merit, uncompelled devotion, compassion or intelligence it is possible to
recognize, or if the master gives you a shock of the five sufferings. Also at the
very end of an orgasm, you completely let go.
So, how to be able to let go completely of how we see things? We are talking
about mind and minds essence, its like ice and water. In minds essence there is
three qualities. We must try to gain some accomplishment in this life, so that we
can traverse to a pure realm or at least have a good rebirth in the human realm
and be born to benefit beings.
Mind is not something or nothingness, its not substantial and not non-
substantial. Seeing the empty essence and the empty essence of that.
To be able to rid us from all obscurations we have to apply the view.
The Shamata practice is not free for hope and fear, so therefore we should
practice the non-conceptual meditation of Trekch. Mind is when we get
attached to objects and then get more and more attached and thereby forgetting
to look for the true nature.
If we want to attain enlightenment we have to recognize the natural state, if we
go after all our projections and thoughts, there is no way that we can reach
enlightenment.
Its nature is empty, its essence is clarity, unceasing.
Even though you have these three qualities, you dont know how to look for them,
so how to find them?
There is four ways: Looking, seeing, letting be and freeing.
If you accumulate a lot of merit it will push you towards enlightenment or if its
trough developing devotion for the teacher / teachings and practice Guru Yoga.
So the best is for us to do a lot of mantra, practice and accumulations of merit.
Your looking is part of your method, the end of the looking and the beginning of
the seeing is together.
How to rest? Seeing is the view - non-conceptual view from the first second and
continued abiding in this Rigpa is the Meditation.
If we meditate that becomes a contrast, so without meditating and without not
meditating just abide in the natural flow of the view, leave it as it is and just rest in
this flow. Completely relaxed with clarity, if you become drowsy, you lose the view
and if you become agitated you relax back into the view. This is the meditation of
the three immoveable :
Meditation is open and spacious just like a vast ocean; Rigpa has a reflection,
liveliness. You cant turn Rigpa on and of, its always on. Its just you that is not
always able to experience it. This is the ground. You have a shallow and narrow
Rigpa and not a vast and open Rigpa; its just like this before you get acquainted
with the practice.
If the state of Shamata is stabilized, your mind is abiding there and there is no
movement, but if there is movement it is Rigpa. Many Dzogchen practiceners sit
in Rigpa a short time and then they grasp and try to hold on to clarity and space,
but its only if you practice and practice that this will change and then you can
prolong your abiding in Rigpa. Even in Rigpa there is thought, but these arise as
wisdom. In Rigpa you can think, but its thinking without grasping. Its like the
karmic Police; they cant find your footprints. Outer and inner experiences are
connected vast and un-originated.
Rigpa is like a foal, it has the power of the horse, but it will grow slowly in to a full
racing horse.
You should start practice with developing Refuge and Bodhicitta, then you do
your Yiddam - practice and do some mantras. Then you do Shamata with and
without support and then you start your Dzogchen - practice.
There will be clarity, bliss and non - thought. Rigpa is very normal, no out or in
or holding on to anything. Rigpa is not frozen there is movement. Dont try to
prove that this is Rigpa, just hang in there.!
Rigpa is close to stupid meditation, but there is clarity and awareness. You
completely let go and relax.
If the clarity is strong, it is possible to get stuck and if you are stuck in the clarity it
becomes a bit still and hard. If there is expanse then this is usually good, but
when there is bliss it also comes together with attachment and it is difficult not to
get attached.
There are two things to be observed and two to abandoned. What you must gain
and give up. What is to be practiced is Treckch and what is to be accomplished
is Tgal. Here we are generally talking about Treckch - cutting trough in general
what we have to give up. We have up to now explained the empty essence of the
Three qualities which is to be observed. In order to accomplish these
spontaneous qualities from within, we have to let go of the strong sense of self.
We have generally talked about how to cut the ego clinging. By recognizing the
empty essence of our mind, we cut this clinging to a self and the ego. to stop
ones emotions is not enough to reach liberation. All qualities unfold from that
natural clarity. Natural clarity is also part of Samsara and it can see the ego
behind. When this natural clarity looks and sees the inherent openness, it
becomes one with the emptiness. When one finally manages to free oneself from
ones emotions and obscurations faith arises. When you see the empty qualities
of your emotions, you learn to appreciate yourself and start to be able to
completely let go of them and thereby seeing that they are not real.
Then you feel happiness and no more fear of yourself or anything else. , this is
the first birth of the little baby of devotion. You really appreciate this practice and
the Dharma. That devotion will break the concepts again.
We should not ever let our spiritual emotions take us like Hare Krishna. We
should always have openness and awareness and not space out and never get
attached to our religious feelings.
When devotion is there you will see that your Rigpa becomes more juicy and
you can really feel the blessing from your masters and the Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas. When ego is no longer restricting the blessings from getting in to
you. But then again, for most of us devotion is also a mental construction, so
when we practice this, it will become a natural part of us, and not something that
we have to develop or aspire. The second thing that will unfold from within is
wisdom. It is not learned wisdom; its more inherent wisdom unfolding from the
natural clarity from within. When you can completely relax and open up to the
natural radiance from within.
Chgyal Rinpoche.
26/10-00
The main thing to understand is that we are intrinsically enlightened and our path
is just to things as they are to see this. All the traditions are teaching us that our
main problem is EGO. Ego is not real; it is the root of illusion. Everybody is
talking about that our main problem is aversion, attachment and so on, but the
main thing is that we have to take a wow with ourselves, that we will be able to
take both anger, blame, accusations from ourselves and others in a very good
way. If one person has done a three-year retreat and another has not, the one
that has done the long retreat should have no notion about that he has done this
afterwards. If he then feels that he has better understanding and that he is better,
then the other person, this is all EGO.
The most important thing is mindfulness, if one does not have this, one cannot
accomplish anything. There is no leveling, mind should just be in its nature and
thereby we gain clarity. If there is serious doubt, there is no confidence. Mind
should be easily with us, open and clear. Whatever one does, the main thing is to
keep this clarity. Whatever one has, as long as one does not cling on to them,
they are no problem for you. Clinging is basically just ignorance. Im an artist and
I just do what feels good in the moment and try not to cling on to anything. I dont
need to feel that I am anything big or especially good. I just pray to the
Buddhas that I will be able to benefit beings. We think that we are so many
groups of beings, like the Buddhas and our group and this and that group, but
the Buddhas dont see it like this. How can we develop devotion?
less you get free from it. When Rigpa is not clear there is ego, when it is clear
there is no ego, so its all-dependent on your practice.
Whatever we do, eat, sleep, work or play, it should always have the motivation of
helping others. When it comes to Guru devotion, you should feel that he is right
for you and that he is communicating to you. You must see his kindness and that
he is a real Guru. Guru is one that gives us the teaching, who helps us to change
our mind. Everything that enlightens us is from the Guru, not the books. The
main thing is to have peace of mind.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
29/10-00
The attitude of developing Bodhicitta, we have to try to train on until Samsara is
completely exhausted. Regarding to compassion we shall talk about the relative
and absolute. We have to train on meditating on compassion until our mind our
mind becomes compassion. You should train in a way such that you at last
meditate on relative compassion for 24 hours a day. There is many ways to
arouse this wonderful Bodhicitta, like Bodhicharyavatara or the text of Kundu
Rinpoche. You should practice and find out how you can accomplish this
Bodhicitta. You use this method to train, but finally you have to let go of the
method. Then traverse beyond the karmic system. So if you have to compounds
like a hammer (Bodhicitta) and a vase (anger), the hammer can break the vase
completely. Through this transformation you will start to like yourself and say Oh!
Thats how it is, and you will also like your friends in a new way, you will know
that they are not there to harm you. You will get confidence and you will feel how
wonderful things are as long as you have a free choice, and you will also rejoice
when you see others do well and understand things in a deeper way.
When you meditate the Dzogchen way, you will feel open, spacious, free and
happy. But then again you can also feel some sadness, because you want to
share your experience and help others to at chive the same.
Some people are a little bit afraid of themselves and their compassion, and then
it will not grow. If one friend is in hospital because of depression and you visit him
and you come there with a happy mind. He or she will maybe blame you since
you are not sad and maybe not crying. He maybe wants you to feel the same as
him, but then you will also end up in hospital. What is the use, you have to get
him to understand that he has a choice and that he has to do it himself. Off
course you can help, but not through indulging into the emotional states and
grasping.
So, a modern way to try to develop compassion could be to get a bottle of good
wine and then take your car and drive up in the mountains to an inspiring place
with good view.
Then you sit down and let your mind rest and maybe do some Shamata
meditation, first with object and then without. Then you open your bottle and pour
a good glass of wine and sit down and meditate on the four thoughts and
especially the sufferings of Samsara, Think about how crazy and bad it is in parts
of the world with war and famine and also the suffering of animals how they are
used and misused and slaughtered without any mercy and so on, while drinking
your wine.
Keep on like this and try to visualize how badly beings are suffering in this world
until you feel the tears coming in your eyes and you even finally start crying.
Then, when you think like this and feel compassion for them all, you wow to your
self that you want to develop into a being that can benefit them all. You pray to
your Master, the Buddhas and Bodhisattva that they all must help you to purify
and train your mind and to develop Bodhicitta. This might actually be the birth of
the little baby of compassion.
Then when have had some wine, you sit again quite relaxed and PHAT!! When
you get distracted. Then you sit without trying to change anything, be completely
natural, but without thinking, dont even think that Im meditating, and just sit,
when you get distracted, you do the same thing again. When you finish this
session, you should carefully drive home.
When you are watching a movie, you can relative and absolute. The movie that
you are watching is relative, you know its a movie, but still you enjoy it and it is a
kind of real. But the absolute is open, spacious and clear, so you realize that in a
way everything is like a movie.
So you have to develop compassion and not take things so serious. In action you
have the motivation that you want to help all sentient beings. You look at your
capacity and then you help out from that. You have to be skillful and not go
further then your capacity and understanding. Karma is concepts also, so by
staying in the non-conceptual state, you also destroy some karma.
While we are in this state, we dont create any karma either, so we have to work
lf in this way to purify to purify our self and others. If your mind is not purified and
a Buddha appears in front of you, you will maybe not even recognize this person
as a Buddha. It is just like the story of Geshe Checkawa and Buddha Maitrea.
Geshe Checkawa decided to meditate and pray to Buddha Maitrea to get his
blessing and teaching and to cut the story short, he gave up meditating four
times, each time after meditating three years without any sign of Buddha Maitrea.
When he finally left his retreat the fourth time he found a dog lying by the side of
the road with the whole back part torn of. When he looked closer he saw that
there where maggots eating of his flesh and he felt such a strong compassion for
the dog that he started crying. When he wanted to remove the maggots, he
realized that he might kill them if he pulled them of, so he closed his eyes and
stretched out his tongue so that they could get unto his tongue instead. In the
same moment the dog disappeared and Buddha Maitrea appeared in front of
him. Oh you, Checkawa cried out, why didnt you show yourself to me before?
Then Buddha Maitrea said to him, it was not before now trough this
compassionate deed that you did for the dog that your mind was purified. So first
you saw me as the dog and then, me and if you ask someone else they most
probably wont even see the dog.
So, to traverse on the path of Dzogpachenpo, one needs a lot of diligence and
many wonder how you can do that and still be in this natural flow. There is
diligence and perfection of diligence! So, you need the diligence when When
youre kicked out of Rigpa to kick yourself back to the clarity and Rigpa. Then
when you are back, no more kicking or pushing. If you do that, you will get
uptight and lose the view again. The worst thing you can do is to look at it as if
your practice is not good, then it will just get worse. You just have to sit through
it, until it changes and one day you can sit for 2 hours and you feel very happy
and have progress in your practice.
When you are doing the preliminaries (Ngndro) you have to cut, crush or kill
your laziness and just do it.
So what we are trying to do here is to recognize the natural state - the Dharmata,
through the skillful means. We try to see that the way our mind is now there is no
way to get freedom.
Even though you stay in one place, your mind travels all over the world. Mind is
like that; always going out, away form the natural state. Instead of following all
these thoughts, sounds and tastes, instead of doing this, we should look into its
essence. While looking into its essence, when you look at it without recognizing
this is consciousness, but when you do see the natural state, the minds essence,
then you relax there. Again we than go from looking to seeing.
There are so many emotions and thoughts and we keep on following them. Be
like a Snow-lion, dont attack the stones that are thrown at you, but the one who
throws them and then kill the thrower. Staying in a relaxed state of mind, look at
the mind that is grasping. When you sit in Rigpa and you loose it, then you in a
way pretend that you are in it, because you have a feeling what it is like. It s like
a woman with heavy perfume, even when she has left, the perfume is still in the
room. So when you have been in Rigpa, you just rest in the natural flow.
Its also similar to a butter lamp when it is in a room with open windows; its hard
to blow out. When the light pervaded the room, where did the darkness go.
Like Nyushul Khenpo, even though he was totally realized, he did tsok and
purification with Vajrasattva every day and confession. It is very important to
meditate on compassion and patience. With the method of Dzogpachenpo, its
easy to go wrong, because you no longer have to cut the emotions and thoughts,
so its easy to become selfish and addicted to happyness. When you really can
rest in the view, everything turns into a pure realm; thoughts become wisdom and
everyone become like deities. When you look at all phenomena as pure, you
have to respect them and the way they manifest.
The all-pervading suffering can only be seen by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
but we can only see the suffering of the suffering and the suffering of change.
Once you have attained enlightenment, the compassion is very strong and all
notions of suffering are gone because everything is enlightened. Accumulation of
merit is very important and fuels you towards enlightenment. Its like going to holy
places, doing your yiddam practice and accumulating prayers. Here we have
mostly only had the time to discuss the wisdom, but it is also very important to
learn about all these skillful means and learn how to apply them.
Linage Prayer:
If you know how it is to recognize the inner linage, then you connect with this
recognition of the nature and practice out from there and you immediately
connect with all the Buddhas. Its like you have them all on the phone and
practice compassion out from that.
In Dharmakaya, there is nothing like a substance, nothing ceasing, staying or the
like, so it is only expressed by a cirle. It is not possible to express, you can only
realize through yourself and with yourself.
In the Dzogpachenpo, everything is together as one. That what we all have in
our self is the Ground, the Buddhas mind. By essence empty, by nature
cognizant. Its a union of these two, that is the Great Perfection or
Enlightenment. There is some things called the common ground which is a union
of Samsara and Nirvana, At some stage this was disturbed and some saw the
empty cognoscente nature of this and became enlightened - the Buddhas. The
others like us saw the luminosity. They became curious and looked outside and
more and more the five senses manifested and all the phenomena to.
So the impartial state was moved and became ignorance. So we thought that -
OH, there is something out there! And then there has to be something over there!
And then there has to be something here thereby this duality was created.
An illusion is like you mistake a rope on the ground for a snake. Based on this
created surrounding that he is there and I am here, starts the whole dilution.
When this illusion collapses, this is enlightenment and when this happens it will
never come back. We need to destroy this fixation on the body and to be able to
do so; we have to look into our mind.
When Buddha thought, he thought on different levels for different beings. He first
thought the four noble thoughts, then about emptiness, then luminosity and then
the union of these two; the Maha Ati or Dzogchen.
Garab Dorje taught on the Tsik, Sum, Nedek, about view, meditation and
conduct. Our illusion is a product of all sentient beings common karma, but we
have our own illusion, and because we believe that it is true, we perceive it in our
dualistic way.
So in our process we look straight trough this and look into the nature. Why is it
good to do Shamata with object? Because we always have this notion with
subject and object. Shamata without support, is in a way to rest in the now ness,
you observe your abiding mind, this is the gatekeeper. You have to have
awareness in the background, otherwise you can loose you can loose this
manger and you maybe dont realize before 5 minutes has gone.
The thing about Shamata, is that you are stuck in the moment and you have not
realized emptiness, so you have to apply a method, which here is Shamata.
So this feeling of yes, now I can do it, I can keep it under control. Which actually
is like throwing fuel onto the fire, because you believe it is true! You think that
your suffering and phenomena is true. Without any in or any out - utter openness.
How is it that openness? Its empty, awake, luminous and simple. Here we have
mainly been talking about the wisdom technique and not about the two
accumulations, the five practices of a Bodhisattva, generosity, meditation etc.
The way to do this is just to turn your attention slightly inward, not to look deeply
inside, just to turn your focus from outward to inward in a very light way. The
moment of recognizing this state is the blessings of the linage.
Sogyal Rinpoche says: Dont stay to close and dont stay to fare. dont try to
look into it or to meditate upon it, just leave it as it is.
Remain natural without doing anything that is the practice of non-meditation.
Remain immovable like a mountain, let all your senses be open completely, but
without any focusing or grasping. When you allow things to happen naturally with
compassion and devotion, then all the good states of clarity, bliss and emptiness
will come by them selves. So the practice is many small glimts of recognition
until it all kind of opens up or falls apart.