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SOURCE OR NO SOURCE?
"Therefore, the heart of the matter is saṃsāra and nirvāṇa’s seed, cause, gene, or element. An oral instruction of Abu’s (Patrul Rinpoche) says that this is the indispensable cause. This does not refer to an ordinary causal process involving something that is produced and something that produces. Rather, it is the indispensable cause in the sense that if there were no pristine cognition as the natural condition, there would be no source for the dyad of saṃsāra or nirvāṇa. It is analogous to how without space, there would be no arising of the environment and its inhabitants; without the ocean, there would be no waves; and in the absence of valuable objects, needs and wants do not arise. Likewise, if the ultimate truth—the natural condition—were absent, there would be no source for any of the phenomena of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. Therefore, it is called the indispensable cause.[9]"
[André: the above makes me slightly nervous, because I very much prefer the idea of sourcelessness / groundlessness / non-arising presented at the sutra level. However the following footnote makes me feel a bit more relaxed again.]
"[9] A supporting passage from Longchenpa’s Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmission reads: “Just as rays of sunlight are subsumed within the orb of the sun, all phenomena of the universe of appearances and possibilities are subsumed within their source, awakened mind. Suppose we then investigate this, examining the place from which samsara and nirvana (whose very essence is that of a dream) come, the place in which they abide, and the place to which they go. Since samsara and nirvana have never existed, they have never existed in any mode of coming, abiding, or going; or, conversely, since none of these three modes has ever existed, samsara and nirvana have never existed. And so, given that even what is termed ‘awakened mind as the supportive ground’ or ‘awakened mind as basic space’ has never existed as something with an identifiable essence, all things are none other than their true nature, which is like space; this is conventionally referred to as ‘things being subsumed within the true nature of phenomena.’ But it should be understood that subsuming and what is subsumed are without foundation or support” (Longchen Rabjam [2001], 123–124)."
Keegan Donlen
Hey André A. Pais,
i just wanted to give huge thank you to you. Your “Beyond awareness”
post on the atr website personally allowed me to recognize my
subconscious habit of fabricating a unitary awareness in the foreground,
and ended up dissolving any sense of awareness I had and I ended up realizing what the masters and you truly meant by appearances being self-luminous.
Your
writing in that post is probably the greatest I’ve read on this topic
due to how clear and direct it is. Words can’t express my appreciation
of it enough.
André A. Pais
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Keegan Donlen
wow, thanks, mate! Happy to hear it made some sense to you and helped
in any way. It was all mostly based on the writings of John Tan and
especially (for me) Soh Wei Yu. Nine bows to them!
It was also based on some personal reflections that
I guess I hadn't yet seen quite exactly expressed that way anywhere
else (AFAIK); curiously though, later found some similar pointers
(concerning the absence of pervasion) in a very traditional Buddhist
text (Mipham's commentary to Adornment of the Middle Way).
Anyway,
my writing got better in the meantime, I believe, and my insight more
refined -- I have no realization, though, guess you've beat me on that
one (kuddos to you! 
).
The point being: I have a photo album here on Facebook called Personal
Musings where I collect some reflections (curiously Beyond Awareness
isn't there, I think), just in case you want to check some other stuff
out.
).
The point being: I have a photo album here on Facebook called Personal
Musings where I collect some reflections (curiously Beyond Awareness
isn't there, I think), just in case you want to check some other stuff
out.Also,
have another photo album called TSK & Tarthang Tulku where I
collect some quotes and excerpts from my favorite spiritual book, in
case it might interest you.
Ok, end of announcements! 
Keegan Donlen
André A. Pais
and nine bows to you! Indeed, I haven’t really seen anyone express that
topic in the exact same way you did and emphasize the same points you
have and it definitely vibed with me. Do you know if that text requires a
lung as I’d love to re…
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Keegan Donlen
it's a sutric text, so I guess no lung or special authorization is
required, although a traditional Lama would still find it advisable.
Mipham's text is rather dense at times, but if it's your cup of tea, you'll have a blast with it.…
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For readers, this is the link to Andre's article: https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../beyond-awareness.html "Beyond Awareness: reflections on identity and awareness"
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Beyond Awareness: reflections on identity and awareness
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Soh Wei Yu
you've been getting into Dzogchen, how do you deal with the tendency
in post-tantric vehicles to subsume appearances into some kind of
ultimate source or ground? Does it strike you a bit like some
reification is about to happen, or do you feel that it is very much in line with madhyamaka?
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In Dzogchen, there is no truly existing findable source, but an empty and luminous potentiality.
don de nges par rtogs 'dod na
dpe ni nam mkha' lta bur btag
don ni chos nyid skye ba med
rtags ni sems nyid 'gag pa med
If one wishes to ascertain the meaning of that,
the example is to examine "space-like."
The meaning is nonarising dharmatā.
The proof is the unceasing mind-essence.
In the commentary on this last line, the Chos dbying mdzod is cited:
"The proof is arising as anything at all from the potential (rtsal).
At the time of arising, there is no place of arising and no agent of arising.
If one examines the mere name, 'arising,' it is like space,
including everything in a great, impartial uniformity.
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gad rgyangs wrote:
I dunno
Malcolm, the basis is more like the backdrop against which any
appearances appear, including any consciousness. Also, what sense would
it make to say "rigpa is one's knowledge of the basis" if that basis was
one's own continuum? the basis is pure no-thing as abgrund of all
phenomena. Consciousness is always a phenomenon.
Malcolm wrote:
I
prefer to put my faith in the guy whose father started the whole
Nyinthig thing.And what is says is verified in many Dzogchen tantras,
both from the bodhcitta texts as well as others.
The
basis is not a backdrop. Everything is not separate from the basis. But
that everything just means your own skandhas, dhātus and āyatanas.
There is no basis outside your mind, just as there is no Buddhahood
outside of your mind.
[Quoting gad rgyangs: Consciousness is always a phenomenon.] So is the basis. They are both dharmas.
Or as the Great Garuda has it when refuting Madhyamaka:
Since phenomena and nonphenomena have always been merged and are inseparable,
there is no further need to explain an “ultimate phenomenon”.
An 12th century commentary on this text states (but not this passage):
Amazing
bodhicitta (the identity of everything that becomes the basis of
pursuing the meaning that cannot be seen nor realized elsewhere than
one’s vidyā) is wholly the wisdom of the mind distinct as the nine
consciousnesses that lack a nature.
In the end, Dzogchen is really just another Buddhist meditative phenomenology of the mind and person and that is all.
gad rgyangs wrote:
Then why speak of a basis at all? just speak of skandhas, dhātus and āyatanas, and be done with it.
Malcolm wrote:
Because
these things are regarded as afflictive, whereas Dzogchen is trying to
describe the person in his or her originally nonafflictive condition. It
really is just that simple. The so called general basis is a universal
derived from the particulars of persons. That is why it is often
mistaken for a transpersonal entity. But Dzogchen, especially man ngag
sde is very grounded in Buddhist Logic, and one should know that by
definition universals are considered to be abstractions and
non-existents in Buddhism, and Dzogchen is no exception.
gad rgyangs wrote:
There
is no question of the basis being an entity, thats not the point. Rigpa
is precisely what it says in the yeshe sangthal: instant presence
experienced against/within the "backdrop" (metaphor) of a "vast
dimension of emptiness" (metaphor).
Malcolm wrote:
It's your own rigpa, not a transpersonal rigpa, being a function of your own mind. That mind is empty.
gad rgyangs wrote:
When all appearances cease, what are you left with?
Malcolm wrote:
They never cease....
gad rgyangs wrote:
In
the yeshe sangthal you dissolve all appearances into the "vast
dimension of emptiness", out of which "instant presence" arises. This is
cosmological as well as personal, since the two scales are nondual.
rigpa
is ontological not epistemic: its not about some state of consciousness
before dualism vision, it is about the basis/abgrund of all possible
appearances, including our consciousness in whatever state its in or
could ever be in.
Malcolm wrote:
Sorry, I just don't agree with you and think you are just falling in the Hindu brahman trap.
Sherlock wrote:
Isn't the difference between transpersonal and personal also a form of dualism?
Malcolm wrote:
The distinction is crucial. If this distinction is not made, Dzogchen sounds like Vedanta.
Malcolm wrote:
[Quoting
gad rgyangs: in the yeshe sangthal you dissolve all appearances into
the "vast dimension of emptiness", out of which "instant presence"
arises. This is cosmological as well as personal, since the two scales
are nondual.]
'The way that great transference body arises:
when all appearances have gradually been exhausted,
when one focuses one’s awareness on the appearances strewn about
on the luminous maṇḍala of the five fingers of one’s hand,
the environment and inhabitants of the universe
returning from that appearance are perceived as like moon in the water.
One’s body is just a reflection,
self-apparent as the illusory body of wisdom;
one obtains a vajra-like body.
One sees one’s body as transparent inside and out.
The impure eyes of others cannot see one’s body as transparent,
but only the body as it was before...'
Shabkar, Key to One Hundred Doors of Samadhi
Outer
appearances do not disappear even when great transference body is
attained. What disappears are the inner visions, that is what is
exhausted, not the outer universe with its planets, stars, galaxies,
mountains, oceans, cliffs, houses, people and sentient beings.
M
gad rgyangs wrote:
I'm
talking about the perception of the relationship between nothing and
something. The question of what jargon to use when talking around it is
secondary, although not without historical interest.
Malcolm wrote:
Rigpa is just knowing, the noetic quality of a mind. That is all it is.
Malcolm wrote:
Omniscience
is the content of a mind freed of afflictions. Even the continuum of a
Buddha has a relative ground, i.e. a the rosary or string of moments of
clarity is beginingless.
Origination from self is axiomatically negated in Buddhadharma,
Each
moment in the continuum of a knowing clarity is neither the same as nor
different than the previous moment. Hence the cause of a given instant
of a knowing clarity cannot be construed to be itself nor can it be
construed to be other than itself. This is the only version of causation
which, in the final analysis, Buddhadharma can admit to on a relative
level. It is the logical consequence of the Buddha's insight, "When this
exists, that exists, with the arising of that, this arose."
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Clarifications on Dharmakaya and Basis by Loppön Namdrol/Malcolm
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For those whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible.
For those whom emptiness is not possible, nothing is possible.
-- Nāgārjuna.
...
Malcolm:
This is completely inconsistent with the view of Dzogchen. The view of
Dzogchen is that there is no basis or foundation at all. Also the
doctrine of the two truths is absent in Dzogchen. Further, the view of
Dzogchen is that everything, including buddhahood is completely
equivalent to an illusion and therefore, uniform.
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Clarifications on Dharmakaya and Basis by Loppön Namdrol/Malcolm
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André A. Pais
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Malcolm
says that there are no 2 truths model in Dzogchen, but then claims that
everything is equivalent to an illusion. "Illusion" seems to bring back
the model of the 2 truths, because "illusion" only makes sense in
contrast with "real" -- and we are then back to the 2 truths.
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What makes you think Dzogchen is a affirming negation?
This
is not the case. Dzogchen does not have a view to support or
promulgate, and that is what affirming negations are for i.e. rejecting
one thing in order to prove one's own perspective. By asserting that
Dzogchen is asserting an affirming negation you are rendering Dzogchen
inferior to Madhyamaka.
If Dzogchen is an affirming negation, than this statement from the Unwritten Tantra makes no sense:
“Apparent
yet non-existent retinue, listen well! There is no object to
distinguish in me, the view of self-originated wisdom; it did not exist
before, it will not arise later, and also does not appear in anyway in
the present. The path does not exist, action does not exist, traces do
not exist, ignorance does not exist, thoughts do not exist, mind does
not exist, prajñā does not exist, samsara does not exist, nirvana does
not exist, vidyā itself does not even exist, totally not appearing in
anyway.”
Vimalamitra's final paragraph on this passage states:
"Since
neither of those exist [i.e. samsara or nirvana], since one understands
that there nothing apart from the originally pure vidyā [rig pa] which
apprehends the basis and the vidyā of insight which apprehends the
chains, it [vidyā] also does not exist. Since the essence of vidyā does
not exist, the vidyā of the perduring basis (the source of both energy
[rtsal] and qualities, and also the apprehender of characteristics) does
not exist.
Since
the wisdom appearances of people's own vidyā that are seen in personal
experience are not established as entities of any kind, it is the
appearance of the exhaustion of dharmatā."
Further, Vimalamitra states in The Lamp Summarizing Emptiness:
Now
then, the emptiness of dharmatā: natural dharmatā is the emptiness of
the non-existence of a primal substance. Thus, all appearances were
never established according to the eight examples of illusion. When
appearances spread, that basis of the emptiness of dharmatā does not
shift whatsoever, never transcending the emptiness of dharmatā.
Furthermore:
Everything arose from non-arising;�even arising itself never arose.
Dharmatā
in and of itself is empty without a basis, present at all times as the
single nature of the great emptiness of the basis, path, and result.
Furthermore, primordial emptiness is empty without beginning. [180]
Empty things are empty by nature.
Since
the emptiness of dharmatā is present without being contrived and
without being transformed in the basis, yogins are also liberated by
remaining naturally without contrivance and without transformations.
And:
"That
dharmatā emptiness dwells in a fortress and is captured in a fortress:
the fortress (that is like a circle of spears in the sky) encircles
(without a beginning or an end) dharmatā, i.e., existence is dharmatā,
non-existence is dharmatā, both are dharmatā and neither are dharmatā.
As such, [dharmatā] is surrounded by the names “clear and unclear”,
“empty and not-empty”, “existence and non-existence”, “permanence and
annihilation”, and so on. That lack of finding evidence itself is
dharmatā. Further, in reality nothing exists apart from dharmatā. That
being the case, that emptiness (as a mere representation, baseless, and
non-referential, being non-existent like a pretense) is understood with
scripture, accepted by reasoning, proven by argument, and captured in a
fortress. Be confident that dharmatā is the unmistaken true emptiness.
Therefore, to describe Dzogchen as an affirming negation does not make any sense at all.
N
Last edited by Malcolm on Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Clarifications on Dharmakaya and Basis by Loppön Namdrol/Malcolm
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