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NONDUAL MYSTICISM:

A SHORT ESSAY ON DZOGCHEN AND MAHAMUDRA

It is now in the present century, that for the first time, the West is finallybeginning to learn something in depth about the ancient mystical teachings andpractices of Buddhist Yogacara. Yogacara means to practice yoga, or in otherwords, to practice meditation, stilling the mind, searching inwards so as toacquire self-realization. This is the "practice tradition" at the heart of theBuddhist religion. Where ever Buddhism exists, there are those who committhemselves to this tradition - to the genuine "practice" of Yoga-meditation.

Here, the concept "practice" stands in contrast to "scholasticism". It means topractice a spiritual path, rather than study and debate philosophy. It means topractice yoga-meditation rather than trying to understand the meaning of life byusing discursive reasoning.

In Thailand and Burma, monks have for centuries taken themselves off to theforest, living simple ascetic lives, so as to devote themselves to contemplativepractice. Likewise in Ceylon. Similarly, amongst Buddhists in China and Japan,we can see how various "practice tradition" movements have emerged in theform of what is now known as Ch'an meditation or Zen. An exemplar of the"practice tradition" in Tibet was the great yogi Milarepa, and it is from the latterthat the Ka'gyu Order, now headed by His Holiness the Karmapa, descends tomodern times.

Today, we follow the "practice tradition" of Buddhism than comes under theguidance of the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Urgyen Thinley Dorje. That is, we followthe tradition of yoga as taught in the Ka'gyu Order of Tibet.

By "practice tradition" we mean a tradition that is focused on the practice ofspiritual conduct and meditation, where the individual aims to attainEnlightenment in his or her present life. Believing that the discursive intellect, onits own, is not capable of reasoning a way to true Enlightenment, the Yogin is awoman or man who turns to yoga-meditation so as to experience directly thenature of the mind.

Yogacara does not mean a particular set of views or religious beliefs. It does notimply a specific philosophy, such as the Middle Way View of Nagarjuna(Madhyamaka) or the Mind-only doctrine (Cittamatra), nor a system of thoughtlike Vedanta or the scientific speculations of someone such as StephenHawkings. Though anyone may benefit from pondering the nature of existenceand studying the thought of philosophy and science, and although we do studythe above systems of thought, "Yogacara" strictly means to do meditation or

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various spiritual exercises that will lead to direct experience of the nature of themind in and of itself. To know mind in the yogacarin sense is far more than astudy of psychology - it means to directly experience one's own mind, fully andin all its aspects, including its deepest self-reflexive nature.

In Buddhist India and Tibet the culmination of the long development ofcontemplative yoga practice led to two close systems of practice: the one knownas "Mahasamdhi" or Dzogchen, and the other called Mahamudra. These are twobranches of one original yoga system, introduced from India many centuries ago.Mahasamdhi means "absolute wholeness", or all-inclusive completeness.Mahamudra is a term referring to the "Great Seal" of Nonduality. Both describethat final state of realization in which the duality of apparent existence, thedifferentiation of subject (consciousness) and object (world), collapses intooriginal wholeness.

Dzogchen or Mahamudra is a "tantric" teaching concerning absolute Reality. Inpractice, this tradition says that absolute Reality (dharmata) can be known, butonly through coming to experience the fundamental nature of one's mind. Whatis mind? Can we experience it?

We can perfectly well see that every sentient being has consciousness. We cansee that consciousness is the perception of an object. There is no consciousness,without being conscious of something. What is consciousness conscious of? Toguide the enquirer to an understanding of this question, it is pointed out thatvisual-consciousness is that which is conscious of visible phenomena. Through

vibrations making an impression on the organ of sight, the eye, visual-consciousness is made aware of colour, light and form. The same goes forauditory-consciousness, tactile consciousness, and so forth. So "consciousness" isa state of mind that always is conscious of something. To recognize this, is to seethat consciousness does not observe itself, because its very nature is to bepreoccupied with observing something other than itself. At least this isapparently so.

Besides the actual five "sense-consciousnesses," associated with seeing, hearing,smelling, tasting, touching, we can also speak of a mental-consciousness (mano-vijnana). Mental-consciousness is that which is aware of mental phenomena,such as our thoughts, feelings, desires and instinctual impulses, etc. When inWestern psychology, and when in common western speech, we refer to the term"Consciousness", we are from a Buddhist perspective generally referring to themano-vijnana. But we should take account of the other five consciousnesses aswell. Indeed, we can assume that within the human brain there are thus sixcentres of consciousness.

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But there are also, apparently, mental processes that go on, of which we are notconscious. In western psychology we say that these processes occurunconsciously, or subconsciously. Likewise, in Yogacara terminology, we speakof a process of mentation that is called the klista-manas, "obscured mind" or the"unconsciousness." A fundamental aim of Buddhist yoga practice is to remove

this "obscuration" and bring to light this significant region of the human mind.The traditional yogi or yogini learns to penetrate into the unconsciousness(klista-manas) through the practice of one-pointed concentration and the ninestages of Shamatha meditation. Just as the darkness of a shadow vanishes beforethe light of a lamp, so it is said that the klista-manas exists not in the mind of theenlightened Arhat.

When the veil of the klista-manas is penetrated, the meditator experiences a vastnew wealth of awareness. This deep and refreshing state of oceanic awareness isthe unified field of consciousness (alaya-vijnana) of which each individual

sentient being is, as it were, a finite spark. To experience unified mind is to gain asense of communion with the very ground of existential consciousness in its owntrue nature. It is to know evolving "mind" (citta) in its fullest and most universalsense.

Nevertheless, to gain this experience, it has to be understood what mind orconsciousness is. As emphasized above, we have to understand that"consciousness" (vijnana) is a mental function concerned with perceivingsomething other than "itself". This means that the world of experience isapparently divided into subject and object. To be conscious of an object, to "see"

something, is to separate the consciousness which "sees" from the apparent objectwhich is "seen." And this division of subject and object is a function inherent toconsciousness itself. Thus, in a sense we might say, this is what makes"consciousness" what it is. Amazingly enough, if you think about it, this meansthat consciousness could not exist on its own, if no "object" were to exist. Thussubject and object are mutually interdependent.

To know mind in its own nature - (to directly experience mind and arrive atawakened realization) the process of consciousness has to undergo a reversionin its very basis. This means that the continuous function of perceiving an objecthas to stop. The duality of observer and observed, of subject and object, has tocollapse. In doing so, when there occurs a reversal of the basis in the depth ofbeing, there then emerges an innate but previously not experienced, self-reflexiveawareness (svasamvedana). For the yogin, this event comes as a stunningbreakthrough. Strangely enough, however, nothing has actually changedself-reflexive awareness is realized to have been there all along, from the verybeginning. Recognizing this, we are made aware that self-reflexive awareness isprecisely a unique state of knowing (jnana) innate to all intelligence. In other

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words, it is an absolute condition of intelligence "to know." "To know" this ISwhat intelligence (vidya) actually is. Bare knowingness is nondual. It just isintelligence.

In the ancient Dzogchen Tantras, which for generations have been kept as actual

"secret treatises" in the temple libraries of the yoginis and yogis of the Himalayasand in Tibet, it is revealed how, through meditation and insight, one may cometo experience bare Intrinsic Intelligence, in its own essence. Indeed, the Dzogchenor Mahamudra system in particular, shows us that our own essential nature or"ultimate identity" is neither the body nor the consciousness, but rather, animmaculate and original Intelligence, which in the Tantras is described as beingParam-adi-Buddha, the one supreme Absolute Intelligence itself. OriginalIntelligence the very ground of all existence is said to be entirely empty ofipseity; a self-luminous uncreate Clear Light of innate Knowingness, that isunlimited or unimpeded in the ever spontaneous manifestations of its endless

love. The yogini and yogi who, through the methods of Mahamudra meditation,awakens to the intrinsic nature of mind, immediately realizes just this profoundstate of Absolute Totality (dzog-pa chen-po). To experience this is to make lifemeaningful. To experience this is to know that no one "disappears" when theydie. It is to know the ultimate divine beauty of one's Essence. That knowing isperfect peace.

The purpose of the "Guru" (Tib: bLa-ma, the Master) in this Tradition is to pointthe spiritual seeker towards an immediate recognition of this "wholeness," whichis our own root identity as bare Intelligence, and then to teach the yogacara

methods concerning how to stabilize in one's consciousness, so that liberationmay unfold naturally. The Master introduces one to one's own mind, by givingthe pointing out instructions that describe what the actual nature of the mind is.The uniqueness of Dzogchen or Mahamudra is the rapid way in whichmeditation can lead to an experience of Enlightenment in this very lifetime.

An important step to understand the Mahamudra View is to distinguishbetween the nature of relative mind (citta) belonging to the worldly experience ofconsciousness and appearance, and that original uncreate state of bare, nondualIntelligence (known as Vidya), which is the essence or ground of what mind is, inand of itself.

The Master Shantideva, 7th century author of the Bodhicaryavatara, says:

The absolute is beyond Consciousness; that which is within the realm ofConsciousness is known to be always relative.

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It is the all-inclusive Intelligence (vidya), empty of subject and objectdifferentiation, that the Master attempts to point out to the seeker, andrecognizing the meaning of that is what is called "acquiring the View of AbsoluteWholeness." Mysterious as it may sound, this very recognition allows mind toundergo the fundamental reversion of its basis, so basic for realization, whereby

mind's inherent nature becomes revealed nakedly. Abiding in a state of attention,which merely holds to the View, without falling into linear thinking,forgetfulness or distraction, is the meditation. Sustaining that calm abiding stateallows natural evolution to unfold into eventual Liberation.

As the great yogi-master Patrul Rinpoche used to say:

"The essence of mind, the very face of Intelligence, is introduced [to the seeker] atthe very instant that conceptual consciousness is let go of.

To approach the teachings of Mahamudra there are certain preliminarymeditation practices. One of our great teachers, the late Kyabje Dilgo KhyentseRimpoche, emphasized the importance of these preliminaries (Ngn-dro) whenhe said:

Without the preliminaries, or foundation practices, the main practice [ofmeditation] will not resist deluded thoughts, and carried away by circumstancesthe mind will be unstable.

Therefore those who come to the Dharma Fellowship seeking instruction in

Mahamudra, are introduced to the teachings in a step-by-step process. Theymust begin with the preliminaries, the Purvaka Exercises, so as to lead them intothe profound methods of Buddhist Yoga safely and carefully.

As the seeker becomes more confident in performing meditation, and as aspiritual foundation is laid, he or she may then be introduced to the Tantric yogamethods of our school. With time, the Four Transmissions of Tilopa areexplained consisting of Chandali-yoga (or what is sometimes called,Kundalini), the Illusory-body meditation, Clear Light, and Karmamudrapractices. Such a spiritual path, with its attendant exercises, leads deep into theheart of Mahamudra. Then rapid unfoldment can happen in earnest.

This is meant to be a very brief outline of what Dzogchen or the MahamudraYogacara way is all about. Forgive us if we have left much out, or been less thanclear in trying to explain this most difficult-to-describe, profound Path ofNondualist Mysticism.