Adeu Rinpoche's Articles on Lions Roar

Dzogchen and Mahamudra, the Great Perfection and the Great Seal, are powerful meditative systems for revealing the nature of mind, explains Adeu Rinpoche. While their methods may differ, their essence is the same. The meditation approach of Mahamudra as found in the Tibetan Kagyu tradition and the Dzogchen approach from the Nyingma tradition are identical in essence—you may follow one or the other—however, each has its own unique instructions. In each system, Mahamudra and Dzogchen, various methods are used to reveal the nature of bare awareness itself. When embarking on meditation practice in the Mahamudra tradition, a meditator is taught three aspects: stillness, occurrence, and noticing. Cultivating stillness means training in cutting off involvement in memories of the past or entertaining thoughts about what might happen in the the future; you refrain from constructing plans about the next moment. In the present, you simply and completely let go. You drop everything and settle into now. In the Mahamudra tradition, stillness refers to not churning out new thoughts or following thoughts about the past, present, or future. At first, you will notice that totally settling, without any involvement in thought, does not last that long. Due to the karmic force of one’s internal energy currents, new thoughts are continually being formed—thoughts grasping at subject and object, at pleasant and unpleasant. The activation of such patterns is known as occurrence. When one’s attention is quiet and still, there is a knowing of what there is. When one is involved in thinking about this and that, there is a knowing of what there is. In the context of stillness and occurrence of thought, this knowing is called noticing. These are the three aspects: stillness, occurrence, and noticing. The training in Mahamudra is this: each time you notice that you are thinking of something, disengage from it—suspend your attention. Pull back into being quiet and still, and simply remain that way. When you notice that you are thinking about something, again simply return to stillness. That is the training. By repeating this over and over, you will become more familiar and more experienced. This is how to progress. As you grow more capable, there will come a point when the occurrence of thought will no longer have such a strong hold on your attention. It will become easier to settle back in quietness. Eventually, every time a thought begins to stir, rather than getting caught up in it, you will simply be able to remain still, until the force of the thought occurrence weakens, as awareness grows and strengthens. The dividing line between stillness and occurrence will fade away. This is the point when you can notice the actual identity of mind’s nature. In other words, vipassana, or heightened meditative vision, begins. The great yogi Milarepa said, “In the gap between the past thought and the next thought, thought-free wakefulness continuously dawns.” This is the way it is, whether you recognize it or not. The difference is being able to recognize it; the opportunity to do so is there all the time. This is the training. In the beginning, as a thought vanishes, that is called stillness. As a new thought arises, that is called occurrence. Bringing attention to what is happening is called noticing. These three—stillness, occurrence, and noticing—have to do with becoming increasingly aware of the gap between thoughts. This aware quality grows stronger and stronger only with training. You cannot artificially increase this. Here, the difference between shamatha and vipassana is the difference between recognizing that which is noticing and the actual awake quality. According to Dzogchen, when your shamatha practice is simply remaining in a neutral, indifferent state without any thought activity whatsoever, this is known as the all-ground. It is simply a way of being free of thought involvement. Moreover, when attention becomes active within the expanse of the all-ground, that activity is known as dualistic mind. When the dividing line between stillness and thought occurrence fades away, and the strength of attention is intensified, rigpa, or pure awareness, is revealed. Depending on whether one is using the Mahamudra or Dzogchen approach, there are different terminologies, but the actual training is essentially the same. According to Dzogchen instructions, there are three points to remember. First, track down the dualistic mind or normal attention. Second, discover the mind’s secret identity, what dualistic mind has hidden away. Third, reveal its vanishing point. To track down means to investigate how the attentive quality of dualistic mind behaves, where it comes from, where it is right now, and where it goes. The second point, discovering mind’s secret identity, is actually finding out what mind is, namely, a seeming presence—there is no thing there. It is just some behavior that is mistaken for being a real thing while actually there is no thing there whatsoever. It is only when we investigate that we discover that this attentive quality is not a thing, that it has fooled us. It is called a nonexistent or seeming presence. The last point—revealing the vanishing point of dualistic mind—refers to the fact that the moment you look for this attentive quality and what it is made of, you discover that there is no actual thing. It simply vanishes every time you look. This is the Dzogchen approach: finding out what dualistic mind really is. This is how to discover and enter rigpa. To begin, we need to be clear about what dualistic mind is. Find out the identity of this wakeful quality that clings to reality by inquiring into the arrival, remaining, and disappearance of dualistic mind. Where did mind come from? Where is it right now? When it is no more, where did it go? This is the point when rigpa can be introduced or pointed out. In Mahamudra, the procedure begins with shamatha that is accompanied by certain experiences or meditative moods called bliss, clarity, and nonthought. Once one proceeds into vipassana in an uninterrupted way, so that the mind is no longer distractedly flitting here and there, but has some ability to sustain that meditative state, this is called one-pointedness, the first stage of Mahamudra. Continuing, you reach a level of progress known as simplicity, which leads into another state known as one taste, and finally you achieve a state known as nonmeditation, or literally, noncultivation. This means that there is no longer anything that needs to be brought forth or cultivated by an agent cultivating it. In other words, the primordial state of enlightenment is discovered. Mind’s essence is already enlightened. Though in the Dzogchen approach, this discovery is called being re-enlightened because we are already pre-enlightened, Mahamudra does not use these terms re-enlightened and preenlightened. However at the fourth stage of nonmeditation the meaning is basically the same. The Dzogchen path begins with rigpa being pointed out. This is like being shown the beginning of the road. One should not just stand there and wait, but must move forward. Sometimes people misunderstand and think it is enough to have received the pointing-out instruction and recognized rigpa in one’s experience, and that they have achieved all there is to achieve. This however is not sufficient. Recognizing rigpa is only the beginning of the Dzogchen path. We need to follow through and it requires a lot of perseverance. Giving the pointing-out instruction is like pointing to the ground and saying, “This is the road to Lhasa.” If you just stand there, you will never get to Lhasa. You need to proceed step by step along the road, putting one foot in front of the other. Similarly, having recognized rigpa, you need to train and progress along the path. Of course you could say that the perseverance is effortless, but this definitely does not mean that we should ignore the need for practice. It is said that there are two types of Dzogchen practitioners: the lazy type and the diligent type. For the lazy type there is the practice of trekchö, the training in primordial purity. For the diligent practitioner there is the tögal path of training in spontaneous presence. But in both cases there is still the need to practice. There are four stages of development in Dzogchen. The first stage comes with recognizing rigpa, which is sometimes called manifest dharmata, or innate nature—the natural state seen as it actually is. As you progress and your experience deepens, the second stage is called increased meditative experience. The third stage is awareness reaching fullness while the fourth is the exhaustion of all concepts and dualistic phenomena. This last stage is equivalent to the stage of nonmeditation in Mahamudra. As mentioned above, the ultimate state of enlightenment is being re-enlightened in the pre-enlightened original ground. The great Dzogchen master Paltrül Rinpoche often told his disciples, “You should leave room for progress. You should not think that you are already there and that there is nothing more to attain. Even though it is the state of rigpa, leave room for progress. Don’t be satisfied, it’s too early. There is still room for improvement in your practice.” What is pointed out according to the Mahamudra approach is the true state of original wakefulness as your ordinary mind. Once this has been pointed out to you, it is called mindessence. The instruction is: “Look into mindessence. Sustain mind-essence. This is the way.” According to Dzogchen instructions, what is pointed out is called rigpa, which is the intrinsic original wakefulness that is present within you. Once it is pointed out you recognize rigpa and sustain it. There is no real difference between these two teachings. Of course, there are some extra instructions in the two systems. It is like approaching Bodhgaya from the south or the north—both roads lead to the same destination. The...

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