Highest Teaching: Self or Emptiness?

[Guest guest]

Dear Larry et al.,

 

<< LBIDD (Larry Biddinger)

 

Greg, I haven't gotten to Andrew's response yet but I would like to add

some thoughts I had today that fit into your comments. It seems to me

that the union of luminosity and emptiness (absolute emptiness)

corresponds pretty closely to sat-chit-ananda. I'm reminded of

Tsongkapa"s enlightenment experience. It looked the same as everyone

else's, advaita or buddhist. I think the question of highest teaching

comes down to eradication of attachment which the advaitin would say is

due to grace and the buddhist would say is due to the guru's blessing. I

doubt if that last step is really due to insight.

 

Maybe KKT has some thoughts on this. Nice to hear from you again KKT.

 

Larry

>>

 

KKT: Whether ultimate reality is fullness

of the Self or Emptiness has always been

a fascinating problem. It had been for long

debating between Buddhists and Advaitins,

and among Buddhists themselves

(Yogacara with the Mind-Only theory

and Madhyamika with the Shunyata

or Emptiness theory)

 

Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Ch'an

(Chinese Zen) but sometimes is regarded

as the real father of this tradition, in his

famous Platform Sutra said that "seeing

one's own original nature is enlightenment."

His view was condemned by other Buddhists

as heretic because orthodox Buddhism

believed in (absolute) No-Self. His Platform

Sutra was burned after his death :-)

 

In this post I like to present another

interesting view of Dzogchen which

arrives to conciliate the two apparently

opposite conceptions: Self and Emptiness

as Harsha-ji states:

 

<< Harsha:

My experience is that the Self as Sat-Chit-Ananda is Both the Fullness of

Consciousness and the Total Emptiness from which all things originate. The

two notions appear different only from the perspective of the mind which by

nature is caught up in diversity. In the Knowledge of the Self, You are the

Self. You are the Perceiver and the Perception and yet there is Absolutely

Nothing to Perceive. You are the Emptiness from which you are born. If we go

behind the feeling/awareness of the I AM, we can intuitively sense this.

Holding on to this intuitive sense of Emptiness which can be seen/felt in

the Present Beingness/Nowness and merging with it is a natural path for

some.

>>

 

KKT: In the following explanation, I

use many information from the book

"The Crystal and the Way of Light:

Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen" by

Namkhai Norbu.

 

The main objective of Dzogchen

(The Great Perfection) is to point out

for us to recognize our PRIMORDIAL

STATE or NATURAL STATE. This

Primordial State is complete and

perfected by itself from the very beginning.

Therefore, there is nothing to achieve,

to arrive, to become, to "do" or even

to transform (as in the Tantric Path)

or to renounce (as in the Sutric Path,

i.e. Hinayana and Mahayana)

 

This Primordial State has 3 aspects:

 

(1) Essence

(2) Nature

(3) Energy

 

For a better understanding of those

3 aspects, Dzogchen uses the example

of a mirror as a comparison to this

Primordial State.

 

The mirror is always pure, clear, limpid.

This voidness or emptiness of the mirror

is also the voidness or emptiness of the

mind. One could recognize this voidness

easily, for example, if one looks into

one's own mind, any thought that arises

can be seen to be void in the three times,

past, present, and future. That is to say,

if one looks for a place from which the

thought came, one finds nothing; if one

looks for a place where the thought stays,

one find nothing; and if one looks for a

place where the thought goes, one finds

nothing: voidness. This voidness or

emptiness is the ESSENCE of the

Primordial State. This voidness is not

some sort of 'thing', or 'place', but rather

that all phenomena, whether mental

events, or apparently 'external' actual

objects, no matter how solid they may

seem, are in fact essentially void,

impermanent, only temporarily existing,

and all 'things' can be seen to be made up

of other things, in turn made up of other

things, and so on.

 

Yet, even the mirror is void, reflections

continue to arise in it, just as all phenomena

- whether as mental events or as actual

experienced objects - continue to manifest

in the mind. Things continue to exist,

thoughts continue to arise, just as reflections

continue to arise in a mirror, even though

they are void. This capacity to reflect is

the NATURE of the Primordial State. And

the mind does not enter into judgment, it

simply reflects in the same way the mirror

does.

 

How phenomena manifest is as ENERGY.

This Energy is compared to the reflections

that arise in a mirror.

 

So we have the 3 aspects: Emptiness

(ESSENCE), Awareness (NATURE),

and Fullness (ENERGY) all together.

 

Don't forget that Dzogchen which exists

only in the Bon tradition (ancient Tibetan

religion prior to the introduction of Buddhism

in Tibet) and in the "old" Nyingma school,

was often comdemned by the 3 "new"

schools as heretic :-)

 

Note: Tibetan Buddhism has 4 main

schools: Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and

Gelugpa (HH Dalai Lama belongs to

the Gelugpa). In the Nyingma tradition,

Dzogchen is considered as the highest

teaching of Tibetan Buddhism (and of

all other religious traditions because

Dzogchen as a universal truth is not

confined only to Buddhism). Please

don't feel offence, just an opinion :-)

 

Following is a very beautiful song:

 

 

THE SONG OF THE VAJRA

 

Unborn,

yet continuing without interruption,

neither coming nor going,

omnipresent,

 

Supreme Dharma,

unchangeable space, without definition,

spontaneously self-liberating

 

- perfectly unobstructed state -

existing from the very beginning,

self-created, without location,

with nothing negative to reject,

and nothing positive to accept,

infinite expansion, penetrating everywhere,

immense, and without limits, without ties,

with nothing even to dissolve,

or to be liberated from

 

present beyond space and time,

existing from the beginning,

immense 'yin' (*), inner space,

radiant through clarity like the sun and the moon,

self-perfected,

 

indestructible like a Vajra,

stable as a mountain,

pure as a lotus,

strong as a lion,

incomparable pleasure

beyond all limits,

illumination,

equanimity,

peak of the Dharma,

light of the universe,

perfect from the beginning.

 

(*) Tibetan Yin, Sanskrit Dhatu dimension.

 

 

May all sentient beings recognize their Primordial State :-)

 

 

Namaste,

 

KKT