Samding Dorje Phagmo New branches: Tantric techniques: Fourfold division: Twofold division: Thought forms and visualisation: Yoga: The pointing-out instruction (Tibetan: ངོ་སྤྲོད་, Wylie: ngo sprod, THL: ngo trö) is an introduction to the nature of mind in the Tibetan Buddhist lineages of Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen.
In these traditions, a lama gives the pointing-out instruction in such a way that the disciple successfully recognizes the nature of mind.
Whether our thoughts and emotions are positive, negative, or neutral—that mind, in its essence, is totally free from all dualistic fixations.
[4] In the Dzogchen tradition, knowledge of the basis pointed out is called rigpa (Wylie: rig pa, Sanskrit: *vidya).
As scholar David Jackson describes, the particular Kagyu tradition of pointing-out instruction outside the tantras was popularized, if not originated, by Gampopa.
One of the special Great Seal (phyag rgya chen po: mahāmudrā) teachings for which sGam-po-pa was best known was his so-called "introduction to the [nature of] Mind" (sems kyi ngo sprod), by which the disciple was led to confront and directly recognize the nature of his or her mind.
Later critics such as Sa-skya Paṇḍita (or Sa-paṇ, as he was known for short) maintained, however, that all true Great Seal instructions were Mantrayana teachings that necessitated full, formal Tantric initiation into a maṇḍala.
[6] Jackson reports that, according to a number of Kagyu historians, Gampopa put particular emphasis on pointing out the nature of Mind.
Jackson writes rJe sGam-po-pa had discovered within himself the treasure of innate wisdom, and for him it was also essential to try to convey it to others.
As scholar Matthew Kapstein writes, the ... much contested doctrine sometimes called the 'mahamudra of the sutra tradition' (mdo-lugs phyag-chen) [...] was said to bring about direct insight into the ultimate nature of Mind, owing to the impact of an 'introduction' (ngo-sprod; see chapter 10) conferred by one's teacher, without the disciple's having first traversed the entire sequence of tantric initiation and yogic practice [...] [Gampopa and other Kagyüpa teachers] certainly wished to avoid suggesting that what they were teaching was a rehashing of the Chinese Chan doctrine, which after all had been condemned in the Kadampa tradition of the eleventh-century teacher Potowa (1027 or 1031–1105), a tradition with which Gampopa was himself closely affiliated.This ploy, however, was not fully successful.
Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251), for one, recognized very clearly that the Kagyüpa teaching drew some of its inspiration from such sources, and so he castigated its 'sutra tradition of the mahamudra' as what he termed, with apparent derision, 'Chinese Great Perfection' (Rgya-nag rdzogs-chen).
A lama gives the pointing-out instruction in such a way that the disciple successfully recognizes the nature of mind.
[citation needed] According to Dzogchen master Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, "Once one has received the pointing-out instruction there is the chance of either recognizing it or not.
[11] The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche characterizes recognition as follows: Receiving pointing-out instructions is similar to watching a movie preview.
They give us a sense of direction and motivate us to go further; however, it is up to us to extend our exploration so that we eventually come to a genuine realization of Mahamudra.
That flash is a transmission of the lineage, a wonderful blessing through which we are introduced to the deeper experience and realization of the Mahamudra path.
Those who manifest rigpa, pure awareness, by training through stages involving various practices with the energy-winds, tummo, and so forth are those who progress through graded stages, while those for whom everything happens at once achieve the same by relying solely on meditation on a nonconceptual state of mental consciousness without the practices of the energy channels and energy-winds.
In other words, the method of practice of meditating solely on the nonconceptual state of the mind is suited only for those of sharpest faculties.
Kaydrub Norzang-gyatso, in A Lamp for Clarifying Mahamudra to Establish the Single Intention of the Kagyu and Gelug Traditions, has explained that those for whom everything happens at once are persons who have trained extensively through stages either in previous lives or earlier in this life.
Such meditation does this by acting as a circumstance for triggering the ripening of potentials built up from previous practice with energy-winds and so forth, so that they automatically enter, abide and dissolve in the central energy-channel.