Dzogchen
Samding Dorje Phagmo Dzogchen (Tibetan: རྫོགས་ཆེན་, Wylie: rdzogs chen 'Great Completion' or 'Great Perfection'), also known as atiyoga (utmost yoga), is a tradition of teachings in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Bön aimed at discovering and continuing in the ultimate ground of existence.
Early Dzogchen was marked by a departure from normative Vajrayāna practices, focusing instead on simple calming contemplations leading to a direct immersion in awareness.
During the Tibetan renaissance era (10th to early 12th century), Dzogchen underwent significant development, incorporating new practices and teachings from India.
This period saw the emergence of new Dzogchen traditions like the "Instruction Class series" and the "Seminal Heart" (Tibetan: སྙིང་ཐིག་, Wylie: snying thig).
Dzogchen practitioners aim for self-liberation (Tibetan: རང་གྲོལ་, Wylie: rang grol), where all experiences are integrated with awareness of one's true nature.
Critics point to tensions between gradual and simultaneous practice within Dzogchen traditions, but practitioners argue these approaches cater to different levels of ability and understanding.
[5][7] The most of important of these are the "Eighteen Great Scriptures", which are today known as the "Mind Series" (Semdé) and are attributed to Indian masters like Śrī Siṅgha, Vairotsana and Vimalamitra.
[5][8] The later Semdé compilation tantra titled the All-Creating King (Kunjed Gyalpo, kun byed rgyal po) is one of the most important and widely quoted of all Dzogchen scriptures.
Germano calls the early Dzogchen traditions "pristine Great Perfection" since it is marked "by the absence of presentations of detailed ritual and contemplative technique" as well as a lack of funerary, charnel ground and death imagery found in some Buddhist tantras.
[9] According to Germano, instead of tantric deity yoga methods, early Dzogchen mainly focused on simple calming (śamatha) contemplations leading to a "technique free immersion in the bare immediacy of one's own deepest levels of awareness".
[10] Similarly, Christopher Hatchell explains that since for early Dzogchen "all beings and all appearances are themselves the singular enlightened gnosis of the buddha All Good (Samantabhadra, Kuntu Zangpo)", there is nothing to do but to recognize this inherent awakened mind, relax and let go.
[12][13] These new methods and teachings were part of several new traditions such as the "Secret Cycle" (gsang skor),[14] "Ultra Pith" (yang tig),[14] "Brahmin's tradition" (bram ze'i lugs),[14] the "Space Class Series,"[4] and especially the "Instruction Class series" (Menngagde),[4] which culminated in the "Seminal Heart" (snying thig), which emerged in the late 11th and early 12th century.
An important theme in Dzogchen texts is explaining how ignorance arises from the basis or dharmatā, which is associated with ye shes or pristine consciousness.
[22] Automatically arising unawareness (lhan skyes ma rig pa) exists because the basis has a natural cognitive potentiality which gives rise to appearances.
[26] According to modern Tibetologists, this doxographic schema actually developed in the literature of the Instruction Series (c. 11th century onwards) as a way to distinguish and categorize the various Dzogchen teachings at the time.
[28] Germano writes that the Mind Series serves as a classification for the earlier texts and forms of Dzogchen "prior to the development of the Seminal Heart movements" which focused on meditations based on tantric understandings of bodhicitta (byang chub kyi sems).
[30] According to Germano, the Space and Instruction Series are associated with later (historical) developments of Dzogchen "which increasingly experimented with re-incorporating tantric contemplative techniques centered on the body and vision, as well as the consequent philosophical shifts his became interwoven with.
It is profound, serene, unfabricated suchness, an uncompounded expanse of luminosity; nonarising, unceasing, primordial peace, spontaneously present nirvana.
'[44] Garab Dorje (c. 665) epitomized the Dzogchen teaching in three principles, known as "Striking the Vital Point in Three Statements" (Tsik Sum Né Dek), said to be his last words.
Worldly, impure and dualistic forms of consciousness are generally referred to with terms such as sems (citta, mind), yid (mānas) and blo (buddhi).
[47] According to Sam van Schaik, two significant terms used in Dzogchen literature is the ground (gzhi) and gnosis (rig pa), which represent the "ontological and gnoseological aspects of the nirvanic state" respectively.
These can be found in the String of Pearls Tantra (Mu tig phreng ba),[49] the Great Commentary by Vimalamitra as well as in Longchenpa's Treasury of Word and Meaning (Tsik Dön Dzö).
[60] In the larger Tibetan cultural area, it is the most elevated part of the human body—the skull or, its extension in the form of a turban-like headdress—that allows the religious practitioner to gain access to the source of vitality located in the heavens.
Both the head and the headdress have deep resonances with animals—particularly deer and sheep—which are central for the sky-gazing practice because of their ability to ascend and descend vertically to move in between various realms of existence.
[62] According to Namkhai Norbu, in Dzogchen, "to become realized simply means to discover and manifest that which from the very beginning has been our own true condition: the Zhi (gzhi) or Base.
Once a Dzogchen practitioner has recognized their true nature (and "do not remain in doubt" regarding this), the path consists of the integration (sewa) of all experiences in their life with the state of rigpa.
[72][71] Some exceptional practitioners are held to have realized a higher type of rainbow body without dying (these include the 24 Bön masters from the oral tradition of Zhang Zhung, Tapihritsa, Padmasambhava, and Vimalamitra).
Since Buddhahood is uncaused and transcendent of the intellect, these contrived and conceptual meditations are contrasted with "effortless" and "instantaneous" approaches in the works of Jigme Lingpa, who writes that as soon as a thought arises, it is to be seen nakedly, without analysis or examination.
[77] In response to the idea that the gradualist teachings found in the Longchen Nyingtik texts contradict the Dzogchen view of primordial liberation, Jigme Lingpa states: This is not correct because Vajradhara using his skill in means, taught according to the categories of best, middling, and worst faculties, subdivided into the nine levels from sravaka to atiyoga.
"[79] Therefore, though the instructions would be given to all student types, the actual capacity of the practitioner would determine how they would attain awakening (through Dzogchen meditation, in the bardo of death, or through transference of consciousness).
