from Dzogchen/Advaita

[Guest guest]

>So - would you say that "Self" could be said to refer to this vivid

>experience of "totality of one's phenomenal world arising as the sheer

>lucency of Being"???? It does seem if one stays with the question "Who Am

>I?" this cuts through the model-building and proliferation of thought and

>one discovers or recognizes, conceptualization-freeness attending to

>brilliance, or just ever present, unchanging, unstained, unborn radiance.

>

>=======

>Dear Friends,

>Some wonderful questions Joyce :-)(in themselves answers)

>This question of Self (Being) and Emptiness (Self not existing)

>is resolved in the Buddhist adage:

>

>Emptiness is Form

>Form is Emptiness

>

>or in the idea of the trancendance

>of the conditions of

>Nirvana (extinction of egoic self)

>and Samsara (illusion of continuous self)

>into Dzogchen

>==========

>

>In Dzogchen, one recognizes any appearance (phenomena) as the "expression of

>"Self", intrinsic nature, made of the same "stuff" - not other than,

>non-dual, empty of permanent selfness, ever changing and suffering if one

>deluded as to what one is essentially (a resplendent radiance). The

>(Trekcho) practice is of this continual recognition. Seems as though the

>experience is the same, just many different words for it. Both Advaita and

>Dzogchen use the term "self-effulgence"...both say.."As waves, foam and

>bubbles are not different from water, so the universe emanating from the

>"Self" (primordial awareness) is not different from It." AS

>

>("effulgence" - a resplendent radiance.)

>

>=========

>This clear light (radiant being)

>or Buddha Nature (being without radiance)

>is primarily identical.

>The self that is percieved in all

>is both Empty of non being

>and Full of emptiness.

>This paradox of Self

>both empty (of the need to be)

>and full of being (empty of need)

>is just an expression of word limitation.

>=============

>

>

>

>"from Medard Boss re this Dzogchen view, "Another emotional mode is

>composed, joyous serenity. It can give human existence the kind of

>receptivity that allows it to see in the 'brightest light' the

>meaningfulness and connections of every penomena that reveals itself. Such

>a serenity is a clearness and openness in which a human being is emotionally

>connected to everything he meeets wanting not to have things in his own

>power but content to let them be and develop on their own. Because this

>composed, joyous serenity opens a human being to the broadest possible

>responsiveness, it constitutes happiness, as well."

>

>===========

>Receptive serenity

>or ever opening existence

>or non-discriminative awareness

>or [insert preferred description]

>will offer us insight.

>The practice of such a state

>is an aproximation of its eventual

>supecedence.

>For even Dzogchen is experiential.

>Never Mind :-(

>Or as we Lobsters say :-)

>

>"What do you want a mind for

>- back into the cauldron with you"

>

>Lobster

>Om HA Hung (so to speak)

[Guest guest]

I noticed that Pham D. Luan has posted "The Highest Teaching: Self or

Emptiness" on Harsha's web page.

 

"Whether ultimate reality is fullness of the Self or Emptiness has always

been a fascinating problem." etc.

 

Most of the postings I read here come from Advaita/Vedanta and the use of

the word "Self" in capital letters. I have been a Buddhist practitioner for

many years and have been most interested in this seeming "problem". What

would this Advaitan "Self" be? And I have also read the book "The Crystal

and the Way of Light" by Namkhai Norbu as well as other Dzogchen texts. My

main practice is Trekcho and while I have been posting from the Advaita

text Astavakra Samhita, most of which I find interestingly similar to

Dzogchen, I still have difficulty with the word "Self". Im guessing because

in English, this word seems to imply a lumpy static something rather like

mind's habitual ego dual self-referencing and not the dynamic of our

essential Being (the Primordial state as essence, nature and energy - the

"mirror" analogy" etc). In Dzogchen practice, everything relies on the

"recognition" (not theory) of primordial awareness, our Buddha or intrinsic

nature. When self-referencing "I" or "mine" appears, and it is only a

temporary appearance, this too must be the expression of Self or its energy

and intrinsic nature?

 

So, for the probably very few here who also find this interesting, Im going

to post a bit from "Meditation Differently" by Herbert Guenther. This book

is hard to find, and difficult to read, one keeps the dictionary handy, but

it is worth the effort.

 

"Dzogchen texts distinguish very clearly between mind/mentation as a low

intensity operation and "rigpa" which I (Guenther) render by

'ecstatic cognitive intensity', as the highest intensity of wholeness whose

dynamics expresses itself in a 'pristine awareness' and its multifaceted

nuances". (attachment to any mentation is seen as dullness) He then quotes

Longchenpa...

 

"The self-existing pristine awareness, undivided by concepts dealing with

objects, is a self abiding 'concentration'; its uncreated spontaneity is a

yogi's concentration; the inner calm and 'out of the oridinary' perception,

that comes by staring 'one-pointedly' at an object is the concentration of

worldly people who do not know better. The difference between the two kinds

of concentration is that the latter continues building up the tendencies

that hold a person prisoner in the world and the former does not. The self

abiding dynamics of the ecstatic intensity (rigpa) is (ones) mind intending

and suffused by the whole's pellucidity and consumation and it is called

'the superthought of Beings possibilizing dynamics'. One's cognitive

capacity that manifests itself in its concern for objects is called

'samsaric mind'; it arises in the dichotomic pattern of subject and object."

 

("pellucid" - admitting the maximum passage of light, transparent,

translucent from the Latin pellucidus...to shine through)

 

There follows instructions on Mahamudra or 'tuning in" (Gampopa) - "By

attending to this (tuning in phase) the mistaken notions about one's

phenomenal reality disappear and, dissociated from laboriously practicing,

one's ecstatic intensity (rigpa) becomes free from any

conceptualizing-propositional adumbrations. Without dismissing the

phenomena from one's intellect, the phenomenal presents itself disassociated

from the intellects negations and affirmations; the totality of the

phenomenal assumes a morally neutral character." no need to accept or

reject, mind reflects like the mirror (phenomena "self-liberates).

 

(adumbral - in shadow, to disclose partially etc.)

 

"Without there being the need to cut off positive and negative imputations

concerning the phenomenal by one's ecstatic intensity (rigpa) the totality

of one's notions about the phenomenal is determined as being the working of

the mind.

 

At that time there also comes a feeling of independence. One's intellect is

raised to higher levels and the psychic energy (shes-pa, knowledge) that the

phenomenal is one's mind's projections, is about to come to pass. Without

there being any need for model-building the phenomenal is sometimes seen as

enchantment, (dream) sometimes it is seen as nothing, sometimes (one

wonders) how the mind engages in its model-building. Through the

crucial(psychic energy) charge in the encounter of ones' ecstatic intensity

(rigpa) with nothingness (Empiness-no-self) the "stuff' one's psychic life

consists of, is fused with one's intellect and all dichotomies disappear

without leaving a trace. When one stays on in this shimmering light for a

long time, the no more model-building tuning in phase comes to pass; the

totality of one's phenomenal world arises as the sheer lucency of Being's

possibilizing dyanamics."

 

Lots more good stuff but Ive probably tried people's patience.

 

So - would you say that "Self" could be said to refer to this vivid

experience of "totality of one's phenomenal world arising as the sheer

lucency of Being"???? It does seem if one stays with the question "Who Am

I?" this cuts through the model-building and proliferation of thought and

one discovers or recognizes, conceptualization-freeness attending to

brilliance, or just ever present, unchanging, unstained, unborn radiance.

 

In Dzogchen, one recognizes any appearance (phenomena) as the "expression of

"Self", intrinsic nature, made of the same "stuff" - not other than,

non-dual, empty of permanent selfness, ever changing and suffering if one

deluded as to what one is essentially (a resplendent radiance). The

(Trekcho) practice is of this continual recognition. Seems as though the

experience is the same, just many different words for it. Both Advaita and

Dzogchen use the term "self-effulgence"...both say.."As waves, foam and

bubbles are not different from water, so the universe emanating from the

"Self" (primordial awareness) is not different from It." AS

 

("effulgence" - a resplendent radiance.)

 

"from Medard Boss re this Dzogchen view, "Another emotional mode is

composed, joyous serenity. It can give human existence the kind of

receptivity that allows it to see in the 'brightest light' the

meaningfulness and connections of every penomena that reveals itself. Such

a serenity is a clearness and openness in which a human being is emotionally

connected to everything he meeets wanting not to have things in his own

power but content to let them be and develop on their own. Because this

composed, joyous serenity opens a human being to the broadest possible

responsiveness, it constitutes happiness, as well."

 

 

Sarva Mangalam,

 

Joyce