What is wisdom in Dzogchen ?

[Jetsun]

Similarly, how do you feel when you listen to this talk by Insight Meditation Society teacher Rob Burbea, he uses plain and straightforward language: http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/6349/.

 

Do you feel there may be any significance to what he's saying, a correlate to direct experience, or merely intellectual? Do you feel these excerpts from the transcript may carry weight:

 

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/search/label/Rob%20Burbea

 

I will look a bit more into these guys when I have time, but for me the words aren't that important any more, when you meet a master or just a regular guy who is awakened in person there is a sort of entrainment of consciousness, so just being in their presence can be a type of pointing out instruction, which in my experience is far more direct and illuminating than any words written or spoken.

[Paul]

Calling my post 'bullshit' does not lend a sense of humor to the conversation.

 

The terminology of lineage isn't trite. I don't care if you don't like it. You were rude. So hell with you.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Paul

[ralis]

The terminology of lineage isn't trite. I don't care if you don't like it. You were rude. So hell with you.

 

You are not being rude? Are you someone who has been on here before and using a different name?

[Simple_Jack]

There is only one dharmakaya. If there were two or more, that would imply inherent existence.

There is no person. When the dharmakaya manifests something you are all persons, all the trees, all the clouds, the sky, the stars...

 

Similarly, how do you feel when you listen to this talk by Insight Meditation Society teacher Rob Burbea, he uses plain and straightforward language: http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/6349/.

 

Do you feel there may be any significance to what he's saying, a correlate to direct experience, or merely intellectual? Do you feel these excerpts from the transcript may carry weight:

 

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/search/label/Rob%20Burbea

 

...So often times we don’t really think about the nature of mind. It’s not something we give that much reflection to. Maybe, until we start meditating. And then, maybe we do. Because meditation is a lot about Awareness, a lot about Consciousness.

And at first, perhaps in the beginning years even of practice, the notion of the Mind, or Awareness, as the metaphor of a mirror might feel very apt. And obviously we obviously don’t think that there’s a mirror in us that if we cut open our brain we get to this mirror. But that sense of Awareness is somehow reflecting the world. We have that, even if it’s not a conscious notion, that notion somehow embedded in us: Awareness is something that reflects the world.

And in a way, we can see practice and the devotion to mindfulness and being present and bare attention as a kind of polishing of that mirror to see things as they really are, things as they truly are, to quote the Buddha. And the constant practice to let go of the entanglement in the story, the entanglement in the papanca (conceptual proliferation) and complication, the opinions that we layer onto experience, the pre-conceptions, the views, the images, the likes, the dislikes, all that whole baggage of veil that covers over the actuality of experience. When we have a sense of practice, just patiently polishing the mirror, so that the awareness can reflect things as they really are. And so sometimes, people use the phrase or word “Pure Awareness” and that actually means very different things used in different contexts. But that might be a meaning. Awareness is pure in the sense that it’s free of all that papanchizing complication story, etc.

Having that kind of model or metaphor, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, can bring with it a lot of clarity, a lot of vividness into the experience and I’m sure many of you have felt on retreat or as practice times goes by, the actual imprint of perceptions becomes brighter, more vivid. The actual grass seems greener, the lights seem more colorful, everything stands out, a beautiful aliveness because we’re metaphorically polishing that mirror....Again, practice is to be developed. I’m moving a lot of territories tonight, very quickly. Laying out again, possible ways of navigating through this. If one learns to cultivate that space and discover that space and hang out and then sustain and be familiar it, it’s possible that it deepens. It’s possible that the whole sense of it begins to deepen and objects, the phenomena that occur begin to feel as if they’re made of the same substance as the space of awareness. They’re made of the same substance as Awareness. So you might have heard analogies like waves in the oceans. Whatever happens, you, me, this, that, sounds, an event, whatever, it’s all just waves in the Ocean of Being, or the Ocean of Awareness. It’s all just the same substance taking different shapes. Incredibly freeing and useful perspective to open to.

Everything is just an impression in Awareness. And that in that sense, from that perspective we could say, things, the things of the world, all things, all phenomena, all observable phenomena are empty in the sense that they’re not different from empty. They’re empty of being something different from this vast insubstantial substance of Awareness. So things seem empty in that sense, they seem insubstantial, they seem not real in the sense of existing really outside of Awareness in the way that we usually think things do, usually perceive things. Have a whole different perception. With that too, as it deepens of course, there’s a sense of incredible oneness. All is One. And one has heard that in the teachings, different teachings, different traditions.

All is One. And sometimes we use the phrase Non-Duality, they use that in that sense as everything is One. So it seems to tie in very strongly. One has a real sense as this deepens of there being only One Mind. It’s not my mind, your mind, his mind, the dog’s mind, whatever. It’s One Mind. One Vast Mind that encompasses everything. And we hear about that in different teachings, some Buddhist teachings, some non-Buddhist teachings. One Mind, or Cosmic Consciousness, Awareness knowing itself. Everything is the play of Consciousness, but that Consciousness kind of is the Base, it’s somehow self-existent. That’s the Ultimate Reality. And so it’s very easy to have that view, very liberating. Very useful. And these views are not intellectual standpoints. I really like to stress this. They’re not intellectual standpoints. They are views that people come to through practice. So it’s not like someone is figuring out, “da da da da da”… It’s actually through deep and sincere care and practice. This is the practice that can easily, well not so easily, but eventually be come to.

With that Big Space Awareness, the Vast Awareness, it’s the place where most people would tend to stop their inquiry. It’s the most common place nowadays to stop the inquiry. But there’s a lot of assumptions there. A lot of assumptions....

One time the Buddha went to a group of monks and he basically told them not to see Awareness as The Source of all things. So this sense of there being a vast awareness and everything just appears out of that and disappears back into it, beautiful as that is, he told them that’s actually not a skillful way of viewing reality. And that is a very interesting sutta, because it’s one of the only suttas where at the end it doesn’t say the monks rejoiced in his words.

This group of monks didn’t want to hear that. They were quite happy with that level of insight, lovely as it was, and it said the monks did not rejoice in the Buddha’s words. (laughter) And similarly, one runs into this as a teacher, I have to say. This level is so attractive, it has so much of the flavor of something ultimate, that often times people are unbudgeable there. In the Dzogchen tradition, there’s a very beautiful saying – very simple but very beautiful. And it says, “trust your experience, but keep refining your view.” Trust your experience, but keep refining your view - there’s a lot of wisdom in that, a lot of wisdom....

In English we have a noun, “Awareness”, “Consciousness”, a noun, and nouns have a way of giving something a kind of sense of independent reality – it’s a clock, a thingy. It’s a thingy. And because Awareness or Consciousness is a noun, it seems to be a thing, a thingy. Pali apparently is more of a verb based language. When we think of what Awareness means, well it’s Awareness Of something, rather than Some Thing, some substance, it’s Awareness Of something. Putting it in verb terms, we could say it’s knowing. Consciousness or Awareness means knowing. Now, knowing needs a known, ok. For there to be knowing there has to be something that’s known. And if there’s a known, it needs knowing. So vice versa. Knowing needs a known, and a known needs knowing.

If I followed the not-self practice, or a number of other practices too, it’s not just that at all. If I follow that, I see that the known or otherwise the perceptions or objects are empty, because they don’t kind of exist by themselves. They depend on the identifying and clinging. And I don’t know how they really are, how much clinging reveals the real object. Then in a way the knowing, we could say, is leaning – it needs a known and it’s leaning on something that’s empty, it’s leaning on a vacuum. Do you see this? Knowing needs a known, the known needs knowing. If the known is empty, it’s leaning on nothing. It’s leaning on something that’s empty. We say that it’s groundless or unsupported. Awareness is unsupported, it’s groundless.

So tracing stages, we want to deliberately consolidate the insights, so – objects depend on the mind, so they’re empty, and the mind or consciousness or awareness depends on object so that is empty too, because it’s depending on something that’s empty. Anytime two things are mutually dependent, they have to both be empty. We can go into that but we don’t have time. This groundlessness, this emptiness, this lack of independent existence of Awareness, rather than being a kind of conundrum or a complication, is actually the insight that brings the deepest level of freedom. It’s not anywhere, and it’s not supported by anything, and it’s not anything that supports anything. Empty....

But one of the things I want to say is, it’s very easy in the Dharma after a long time of practice, to sort of hear this kind of talk and say, “well, I don’t want to quibble. Does it really matter? It’s all good, you say this, you say that, he says that, it’s all good. Let’s all be friends, and we can all be happy together.” And that kind of attitude again is very popular. I think it’s quite popular in the west. I think contrary to the self-image that we have, we actually don’t like debating with each other and wrangling out these points, we actually don’t like it. We prefer this kind of “it’s all good”, but there’s something that happens if I don’t grapple with these questions. When people in the Dharma look at me from the outside, and if my attitude is you know, “all this is the mind getting into complications and arguing”, if that’s what I say and it’s like I’m not gonna get into that, what it’s gonna look like, what it can look like from the outside is, “there’s someone really peaceful and wise and not engaging in da da da…”

But if I’m not grappling with these questions, although it might look like there’s some peace and freedom here, I don’t think that the deeper level of freedom will be arrived at. Like I said, I think it’s almost inevitable that at points in the unfolding of insights there’s going to be agitation. There’s going to be difficulty, there’s going to be frustration, there’s going to be confusion, there’s going to be a wrestling with these things. That deep freedom won’t be discovered unless we grapple with these stuff at some point in our practice whenever that is. And I hope it doesn’t sound intellectual tonight, it might have, I hope it didn’t. And that’s really not the point. What I really wanted to unfold is something we can see in practice through developing practice in the right ways.

There’s not one way of going about this but there’s ways that will unfold this. And what one sees is that different levels of freedom, unmistakably different levels of freedom open up in one’s experience. Different levels of freedom and release. And going through that, one sees, one understands this building process. Oh, goodness me, this whole structure of reality, what seemed to be a self, and a world and things, and time, and awareness, everything in space, everything I took for granted, is actually built. And I’ve understood that because I’ve gone through it and kind of unbuild it, and unbind it. And then one realizes almost in hind sight that one was either consciously or unconsciously giving things – the things of this world, subtle things and gross things, giving them an inherent existence, seeing them as possessing inherent existence. Ascribing to them an inherent existence...

 

You may be interested in the above.

[Paul]

You are not being rude? Are you someone who has been on here before and using a different name?

Get a clue. This is a buddhist thread. If you are here to deride buddhism, then hell with you. I don't know what you believe in, but I won't be going there to tell you your views are trite. I signed up and paid a fee. So no, I didn't pay twice.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Paul

[Simple_Jack]

Perhaps you would have been wiser to follow your own advice Paul instead of further illustrating the "wisdom" in your misunderstanding of Dzogchen.

 

Gatito, you're exactly like the hordes of neoadvaitans out there, criticizing the other for "not getting it". You are the ultimate neoadvaitan who's come to correct the understanding of an entire lineage.

On more careful consideration, you may realise that it's you who has misunderstood my analogy...

 

 

Gatito, you are the prototypical neoadvaitan represented by the brown bear in this video:

 

 

Neoadvaita is not hard to understand.

[asunthatneversets]

There is only one dharmakaya. If there were two or more, that would imply inherent existence.

There is no person. When the dharmakaya manifests something you are all persons, all the trees, all the clouds, the sky, the stars...

No that would be Brahman or purusha as presented in Advaita or Samkhya yogas.

 

The dharmakāya is not equivalent to or synonymous with those notions.

[Paul]

 

Another dharma king who considers that TTBs are swine.

 

Perhaps you would have been wiser to follow your own advice Paul instead of further illustrating the "wisdom" in your misunderstanding of Dzogchen.

 

I don't have a misunderstanding of Dzogchen. I have training in it from several realized beings.

[Paul]

On more careful consideration, you may realise that it's you who has misunderstood my analogy and you'd certainly demonstrate more wisdon than you have to date by letting it go.

 

The analogy is that upon seeing a rope in the shade, one can mistake that for a snake. Upon further inspection, one doesn't see a snake but a rope. The snake never appeared or disappeared. There never was a snake. It would be crazy to insist the rope is a snake. This is the Buddhist analogy for a sentient being's mistaken perceptions. You may not like it, but that's not my business.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Paul

[Simple_Jack]

 

Get a clue. This is a buddhist thread. If you are here to deride buddhism, then hell with you. I don't know what you believe in, but I won't be going there to tell you your views are trite...

 

There's a few years of lingering resentment on this board between Buddhists and the other members on this board who are still active. Ralis is going to end up spinning your wheels while neoadvaitans like gatito are going to tell you "you don't get it".

[Paul]

There's a few years of lingering resentment on this board between Buddhists and the other members on this board who are still active. Ralis is going to end up spinning your wheels while neoadvaitans like gatito are going to tell you "you don't get it".

 

That's pretty stupid since I don't give a rodent's anus about their ideas. I don't have a need convert people. If you come to my center to deride what we are talking about, you'd get kicked out. That's the appropriate response here too.

Edited July 9, 2014 by Paul

[goldisheavy]

Get a clue. This is a buddhist thread. If you are here to deride buddhism, then hell with you. I don't know what you believe in, but I won't be going there to tell you your views are trite. I signed up and paid a fee. So no, I didn't pay twice.

 

Don't underestimate ralis. Ralis doesn't concern himself with the outward appearances of Buddhism, but only with its very heart. Of course that's just my opinion, but I think it's more fun to stab myself with a fork than to dismiss ralis out of hand just because he doesn't speak using the "properly Buddhist" words.

 

The point is this. When we keep using the same word and over and over, we tend to forget what it means. The word becomes automated in our habtitual speach patterns. We lose consciousness of what it is we're actually saying when we say it automatically. And words do become automatic from overuse. Aborting automatisms is a big part of what Dzogchen is all about.

Edited July 9, 2014 by goldisheavy

[Paul]

Don't underestimate ralis. Ralis doesn't concern himself with the outward appearances of Buddhism, but only with its very heart. Of course that's just my opinion, but I think it's more fun to stab myself with a fork than to dismiss ralis out of hand just because he doesn't speak using the "properly Buddhist" words.

 

The point is this. When we keep using the same word and over and over, we tend to forget what it means. The word becomes automated in our habtitual speach patterns. We lose consciousness of what it is we're actually saying when we say it automatically. And words do become automatic from overuse. Aborting automatisms is a big part of what Dzogchen is all about.

The words of the lineage are precious. Masters are very careful to preserve their meanings and to transmit them precisely. They convey unique ideas that contextualize and clarify this easily misunderstood path. So I doubt very much any of you know what Dzogchen is about, let alone the Nyingthig, innermost heart. Arguing about "empty" is just mumbling first grade words. As in painting, you have to learn to paint with the rules before you break them. Edited July 9, 2014 by Paul

[goldisheavy]

Masters are very careful to preserve their meanings and to transmit them precisely. They convey unique ideas that contextualize and clarify this easily misunderstood path.

 

I am very careful in just that way.

 

 

So I doubt very much any of you know what Dzogchen is about, let alone the Nyingthig, innermost heart. Arguing about "empty" is just mumbling first grade words. As in painting, you have to learn to paint with the rules before you break them.

 

Take your pride in your lineage. Magnify it 1 million times. Now internalize it. What do you get? You get me.

[gatito]

The words of the lineage are precious. Masters are very careful to preserve their meanings and to transmit them precisely. They convey unique ideas that contextualize and clarify this easily misunderstood path. So I doubt very much any of you know what Dzogchen is about, let alone the Nyingthig, innermost heart. Arguing about "empty" is just mumbling first grade words. As in painting, you have to learn to paint with the rules before you break them.

 

It's my very carefully considered opinion that you wouldn't recognise a Master if s/he bit you on the arse (several times).

 

Masters speak from their own direct knowledge.

 

They don't need to parrot the words of those who were also speaking from Self-knowledge.

[asunthatneversets]

 

It's my very carefully considered opinion that you wouldn't recognise a Master if s/he bit you on the arse (several times).

 

Masters speak from their own direct knowledge.

 

They don't need to parrot the words of those who were also speaking from Self-knowledge.

Perhaps that is how it is in whichever tradition or view you are partial to, but in the buddhadharma and Dzogpachenpo there is no issue with upholding the principles of the system.

[Paul]

It's my very carefully considered opinion that you wouldn't recognise a Master if s/he bit you on the arse (several times).

 

Masters speak from their own direct knowledge.

 

They don't need to parrot the words of those who were also speaking from Self-knowledge.

 

"The teacher must not invent." --Choegyal Namkhai Norbu

[idiot_stimpy]

"The teacher must not invent." --Choegyal Namkhai Norbu

 

I guess the teaching is so precious because it has remained unchanged for so long.

[Paul]

"The teacher must not invent." --Choegyal Namkhai Norbu

 

I guess the teaching is so precious because it has remained unchanged for so long.

ding ding ding

[goldisheavy]

I guess the teaching is so precious because it has remained unchanged for so long.

 

Has it?

[asunthatneversets]

 

I guess the teaching is so precious because it has remained unchanged for so long.

Yes, unbroken lineages which have maintained the teachings for centuries. This means that you can today, receive the same instruction and practices which were given to aspirants hundreds of years ago.

 

The fact that integrity has been preserved for so long, passed down through the generations from the old to the new, is incredible. Truly invaluable.

[goldisheavy]

Yes, unbroken lineages which have maintained the teachings for centuries. This means that you can today, receive the same instruction and practices which were given to aspirants hundreds of years ago.

 

The fact that integrity has been preserved for so long, passed down through the generations from the old to the new, is incredible. Truly invaluable.

 

Historicity provides a false sense of certainty.

[gatito]

Perhaps that is how it is in whichever tradition or view you are partial to, but in the buddhadharma and Dzogpachenpo there is no issue with upholding the principles of the system.

 

I'm partial to whatever works and I've seen no evidence of that in contemporary Buddhism

[Paul]

Historicity provides a false sense of certainty.

 

LOL

[Paul]

I'm partial to whatever works and I've seen no evidence of that in contemporary Buddhism

 

LOLOL