Dzogchen

The discussion on the Buddhist roots of contemporary mindfulness practices is dominated by a narrative which considers the Theravāda tradition and Theravāda-based ‘neo-vipassanā movement’ as the principal source of Buddhist influences in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and related mindfulness-based programmes (MBPs). This Theravāda bias fails to acknowledge the significant Mahāyāna Buddhist influences that have informed the pioneering work of Jon Kabat-Zinn in the formation of the MBSR programme. In Kabat-Zinn’s texts, the ‘universal dharma foundation’ of mindfulness practice is grounded in pan-Buddhist teachings on the origins and cessation of suffering. While MBSR methods derive from both Theravāda-based vipassanā and non-dual Mahāyāna approaches, the philosophical foundation of MBSR differs significantly from Theravāda views. Instead, the characteristic principles and insights of MBSR practice indicate significant similarities and historical continuities with contemporary Zen/Sŏn/Thiền and Tibetan Dzogchen teachings based on doctrinal developments within Indian and East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism.

In this article, I would like to reframe our understanding of the role played by doxographies or classification of views (Skt. siddh¯ anta, Ch. panjiao bstract: In this article, I would like to reframe our understanding of the role played by oxographies or classification of views (Skt. siddhānta, Ch. panjiao 判教, Tib. grub mtha') in the uddhist tradition as it pertained to Tibetan attempts at defining and organizing the diversity of uddhist contemplative practices that made their way into Tibet since the introduction of Buddhism o the Tibetan plateau in the seventh century, all the way up to the collapse of the Tibetan Empire n the ninth century. In order to do that, this article focuses on one such doxography, the Lamp for he Eye in Meditation (bsam gtan mig sgron), composed in the 10th century by the Tibetan scholar upchen Sangyé Yeshé. The first part of the article will place Nupchen's text in the larger historical nd intellectual context of the literary genre of doxographies in India, China, and Tibet. The second art of the article will argue that Nupchen used the doxographical genre not only as a vehicle for rganizing and articulating doctrinal and contemplative diversity, but also as a tool for the onstruction of a new and original system of Tibetan Buddhist practice known as 'the Great erfection' (rdzogs chen). Finally, and as a small homage to the recent passing of the great religious tudies scholar Jonathan Z. Smith, I would also like to reflect on the importance that the issues of efinition, comparison, and classification—central concerns of Nupchen's as well as of Smith's orks—have in creating and articulating religious difference.

Over the past decade, through a mixture of optical character recognition and manual input, there is now a growing corpus of Tibetan literature available as e-texts in Unicode format. With the creation of such a corpus, the techniques of text analytics that have been applied in the analysis of English and other modern languages may now be applied to Tibetan. In this work, we narrow our focus to examine a modest portion of that literature, the Mind-section portion of the literature of the Tibetan tradition of the Great Perfection. Here, we will use the lens of text analytics tools based on machine learning techniques to investigate a number of questions of interest to scholars of this and related traditions of the Great Perfection. It has been necessary for us to participate in all portions of this process: corpora identification and text edition selection, rendering the text as e-texts in Unicode using both Optical Character Recognition and manual entry, data cleaning and transformation, implementation of software for text analysis, and interpretation of results. For this reason, we hope this study can serve as a model for other low-resource languages that are just beginning to approach the problem of providing text analytics for their language.

According to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition ‘The Great Perfection’ (rDzogs pa chen po), we can distinguish between two basic dimensions of mind: an intentional dimension that is divided into perceiver and perceived and a non-dual dimension that transcends all distinctions between subject and object. The non-dual dimension is evident through its intuitional characteristics; an unbounded openness that is free from intentional limitations, a spontaneous luminosity which presences all phenomena, and self-awareness that recognizes the original resonance of beings. Owing to these characteristics, the descriptions of this dimension exemplify an integrative way of speaking about primordial reality, which resolves the assumed dichotomy between kataphatic and apophatic discourses by pointing to a dimension that pervades all phenomena without being identified with any of those. In this article I intend to discuss the characteristics of the non-dual dimension and their implications for our understanding of human consciousness and the inherent co-emergence of positive and negative perceptions of reality.

This chapter situates the question of ethics and mindfulness in the context of a global crisis—a crisis that is at once ecological, social, and personal—and suggests that these dimensions of the global crisis contain a common and underlying crisis of being, a nihilistic despair that is symptomatic of an inability to come to terms with groundlessness and relativity. Informed by the methods of insight (vipashyanā) within the awareness traditions of Tibetan Buddhist Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen, the emerging trend of “compassion” within secular mindfulness discourse is critiqued and applied to the question of nihilism and the global crisis. Through normalizing and cultivating a familiarity with groundlessness and relativity, mindfulness practice can anchor itself to deeper intentions that can not only critique the way that mindfulness is currently being taught and practiced, but can also liberate the personal and collective resources necessary for global sustainability. By honoring the integration of groundlessness and compassion presented in the traditional “Mind Training” teachings, secular compassion trainings can facilitate a novel and emergent culture of groundlessness within secular society. In this way secular compassion training can become an authentic and powerful agent for personal and social change, forming the basis of globally sustainable ethical action, i.e., a groundless ethics of wisdom and compassion.

The Buddhist vision of liberation is intimately related with an experiential state that transcends intentionality, temporality and causality, owing to its non-directed, unchanging and unconditioned nature. As such, this vision reveals a novel mode of non-dual awareness, which is not divided into perceiving subject and perceived objects. In order to directly recognize this mode, several Buddhist traditions utilized diverse contemplative instructions that were meant to dissolve the intending tendencies of consciousness. This paper discusses one of these traditions – 'The Great Perfection' (Tib. rDzogs pa chen po) – which affirms an inherent experiential state that is open, luminous and all-encompassing. For the sake of realizing such a state, this tradition advocates a contemplative approach which emphasizes relaxation, spaciousness and non-intending. Through its view and practices, 'The Great Perfection' introduces a vision of lived experience that goes beyond the structures of intentional consciousness and entails a reassessment of our basic assumptions about human awareness.

This paper compares the analytic and experiential approaches to dreams in order to illuminate the intrinsic and necessary relationships between the two understandings. It describes how dream work reflects the bimodalness of symbolism, thought and ultimately human consciousness. An extended example of dream work reflecting both analytic and experiential modalities is presented.

Introduction to the thought and works of Longchen Rabjampa (1308-1364), the foremost exponent of the contemplative teaching of the Great Perfection (Dzokchen),  from The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion: https://wileycatalog.com/the-encyclopedia-of-philosophy-of-religion-4-volume-set-swo4D

This paper explores two practices performed by a Tibetan Buddhist group developed in Argentina three decades ago. The dance of vajra and the yantra yoga practice are spiritual techniques characterized by complex corporal movements, chants and visualizations. This study aims to examine the specific ways in which both practices create a religious habitus whose key settings are mainly based on a physical training developed within a ritually structured intersubjective context. The research examines how these practices are symbolically based on several notions related to the person, the body, the energy, and the cosmos as they challenge the Modern dualist conceptions and reveal themselves as powerful methods of subjectivation.

Longchen Rabjam or Longchenpa (1308–1364) was a Buddhist practitioner, teacher, and spiritual leader in the Nyingma lineage in Tibet. He is a prominent figure associated with Dzogchen and is credited with both synthesizing and clarifying its essential teachings. Dzogchen’s concern with the category of experience,
and in particular a kind of direct perception that points to nonreified vision, presents an intriguing problem for contemporary studies of art and culture.

We have two ways of knowing. Our mind knows forms, things, both subtle and gross. Faces, hands, buildings, trees, math formulas, mind knows subject and the mind knows otherness. The mind knows dualities, the mind knows me and you, us and them, and this and that. Mind knows time, mind knows the past, the present and the sense of the future. The mind knows things and entities, the mind knows beings, infinite numbers of beings and things. The mind knows difference. The mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through imagery, the mind has sense and the mind has memory. The mind knows dualistically.

There is an ontological difference between our psychological knowing of phenomena and our direct non conceptual knowing of Being, This is the difference between the cognitive knowing of our mind knowing phenomenological forms and the direct non conceptual knowing of our awareness knowing Being. The knowing of our mind is ontic and the knowing of our awareness is ontological. We can of course, by bringing our mind into union with our awareness field, experience an ontic ontological experience of our world of Being. We can experience the Being of phenomena. We can also experience the phenomena of Being.  We are psychological and ontological Beings. We are Ontic-Ontological beings.

El artículo indaga el lugar que ocupa la etnicidad y la imaginación religiosa en el origen y el crecimiento de la Comunidad Dzogchen Internacional, un centro budista tibetano con proyección global. A fin de contextualizar la problemática abordada, la primera parte del escrito repasa el origen del budismo y su expansión en Occidente, mientras que la segunda parte examina el recorrido biográfico de Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, el fundador de la Conunidad Dzogchen Internacional. La tercera parte, analiza la forma en que esta organización trascendió las fronteras territoriales originales en base a un proyecto utópico imaginado y explora las narrativas universalistas que apuntan a la desetnización de sus saberes y prácticas. Finalmente, la cuarta parte explora la manera en que esta denegación de la etnicidad se ve complementada por un movimiento opuesto y complementario en el cual se transmite o reinventa un complejo étnico-cultural tibetano territorialmente localizado.

This paper elaborates the bewildering confusion of the ancient union of the Archetypal Guru and the Archetypal Patriarchal Authority Institutionalized as The One who knows Absolutely and the corresponding master slave relationship collectively institutionalized. The bewildering confusion lessened as the change in focus being within the Transcendental Path to the focus being within the Path of Immanence.

Abstract : The present article is a slightly enriched English version of a paper originally published in French in 2018 under the title: "Histoire des manuels de pratique du dGongs pa zang thal," in the n° 43 (Etudes rDzogs chen-Volume I) of the Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines (pp. 196-255).

Este artículo explora la fenomenología de la conciencia como la naturaleza misma del tantra. El documento también aborda fenomenológicamente la naturaleza de la praxis tántrica. A través de estas fenomenologías se produce una convergencia de entendimiento sobre la naturaleza de la conciencia como tantra y tantra como la naturaleza misma de la conciencia humana. Gran parte del énfasis en este documento es el budismo tibetano y, esencialmente, el linaje y las tradiciones fenomenológicas de Dzogchen.This paper explores the phenomenology of awareness as the very nature of tantra. The paper also approaches phenomenologically the nature of tantric praxis. Through these phenomenologies there is the bringing forth a convergence of understanding about nature of awareness as tantra and tantra as the very nature of human awareness. Much of the emphasis within this paper is Tibetan Buddhism and most essentially the phenomenological Dzogchen lineage and traditions.

This article examines the translator, Rongzom's (fl. late 11th/early 12th c.), scholastic philosophical defense of early Dzokchen (rdzogs pa chen po) or "Great Perfection." As our earliest instance of religious apologia in Tibet, this examination contributes to a growing body of knowledge about the Tibetan assimilation of post-tenth century of Vajrayāna Buddhism and the indigenous response to the forces of cultural transformation shaping the late eleventh/early twelfth century Tibet. Traditional authorities and academics have identified Dzokchen as a Tibetan tradition of Buddhism that drew intense criticism at the time from renaissance agents. This paper explores the primary Tibetan response by describing Rongzom's philosophical defense of Great Perfection. As such, it illuminates the intellectual and ideological context of the milieu as it evinces Rongzom's innovation and mastery of Indian systems of logic, language, and epistemology in the Dzokchen approach to the Buddhist path.

This luminous text is a dramatic invocation to experience our human openness to the experiential knowing of our ever-unfolding experience of the infinity of Being. The infinity of Pure Being can be experienced within the phenomena of our own human beingness and within the phenomenological events of the Being of our world.

The similarities and differences between Mahāmudrā and Dzogch´en will be analysed by taking into account various aspects. Furthermore, in the analysis and comparison, the focus will be on Mahāmudrā of the Kagyu and Gelug tradition and of course, Dzogch´en. To place the investigation in context, first, a summary of the historical lineages will be given. After that, the essay continuous discussing the common elements of practice of both methods after which more details of each method will be developed by analysing their understanding of the Ground, Path and
Fruit. Particular interest will have those stages in which the concepts of Mahāmudrā and Dzogch´en become manifest, which are the last phases of the paths. With these elements, it will be possible to draw the conclusions about similarities and differences of Mahāmudrā and Dzogch´en and its relation to the Tantric meditation stages.

Scholar Jennifer Eberhardt brake-through research on implicit bias shows that racial prejudice has an unconscious aspect emerging from face-selective cortex and mirror behavioural differences formed at the earliest stages of sensory perception, with the consequence of a bias on recognising what has beed apprehended as own-versus other-race faces. This finding seems to reinforce the validity of our assumption in a previous work (Freddi, G. 2018): that the Buddhist concept of ignorance has a neurological correlate and can be described as a "biased mind" which is the basis for "negativity" and "positivity" mental and behavioural biases. In the Buddhist view ignorance is the primary cause of suffering and the Buddhist path is a process to overcome suffering by transcending ignorance. In other terms the therapeutical ambition of Buddhist psychology is to awake our mind to a level of awareness transcending our biases. If this scope is grounded in a rational, verifiable theoretical framework, the descending methodology could represent a tool for overcoming inter-individual and intergroup biases.

Rongzom Zangpo , the brilliant Dzogchen Master of the 11th Century ce Tibet taught that All Human beings are the profound field of awakening. In the language of Phenomenology, this means that all human beings are the profound field of Being. In this paper we will phenomenologically explore the profound human experience of awakening to Being. We will explore the phenomenology of the Direct Perception of Being and we will phenomenologically elaborate the  Metabolization  of Experience and the Power of the Transmission of the Field of Awareness which is the Field of Being. We will also elaborate the Traces of Metabolized Experience that are the energetic radiant field of Luminous Being that continues life after life and death after death.

At the Heart of Human Egalitarianism is our profound and innate human experience of Equality Consciousness. The experience  of Equality Consciousness and the corresponding experience of Equal Vision is the true ontological source of Human Egalitariaism

This paper focuses on the utilization of the transitional state of awareness so that a person's existential experience of the borderline situation can be transformed. The Particular ego-self deficits of the borderline situation are elaborated from an existential self -object relations viewpoint. The borderline concern is profoundly existential and ontological. The transitional space of awareness is the doorway into our embodiment of the field of Being which is the field of the Self.

Comprender la naturaleza del gurú puede ser desconcertante. Una fuente de este desconcierto es que muchas personas piensan que el gurú es una persona, el gurú no es una persona. La naturaleza verdadera y omnipresente del gurú puede ocultarse y el poder del gurú, limitarse, antropomorfizarse y politizarse. Para usar el lenguaje heideggeriano, la dimensión óntica se convertirá en el centro y la dimensión ontológica, forcluida. De hecho, el gurú no es una entidad, el gurú no es una cosa y el gurú ni siquiera es un ser. El gurú es el campo del ser. El guru es el campo de la manifestación del ser de la autorevelación. El gurú es el resplandor de la conciencia primordial. El gurú es la propia conciencia.

Abstract
Understanding the nature of the guru can be bewildering. A source of this bewilderment is that many people think the guru is person, the guru is not a person. The true and pervasive nature of the guru can be concealed and the power of the guru limited and anthropomorphized, and politicized. To use Heideggarian language the ontic dimension will become the focus and the ontological dimension foreclosed. In fact, the guru is not an entity, the guru is not a thing, and the guru is not even a being. The guru is the field of being. The guru is the field of Being’s manifestation of self -revelation. The guru is the radiance of primordial awareness. The guru is your own awareness.

The first time I entered the dharmakaya (infinite, timeless, formless awareness)-that I remember-was when I was drowning at age five. A friend of mine and I were floating in a tire inner tube in a river, and we slipped out of the tube. Neither of us knew how to swim. We were right by the ladder to a dock but every time I tried to grab onto its mossy slippery steps, my friend grabbed me and we both went down again. Whenever I bobbed up for air, I could see my grandmother staring into space on the riverbank, paying no attention. At first, I panicked. But then I began to feel enormous peacefulness, like everything was perfect and there was no cause for worry about anything at all. It was while I was in this state of complete surrender that a swim instructor noticed us, dove in, and came up with one little girl on either shoulder.

If “all roads lead to Rome” (or did so in the days of the Roman Empire), all paths do not lead to enlightenment – at least not to the same enlightenment. This, in any case, is the conclusion we must derive from reading gNubs-chen Sangs-rgyas ye-shes’ doxographical work, the bSam-gtan mig-sgron (Tibet, 10th century). In it he presents four distinct ways to reach enlightenment that encompass both sūtra-based and tantra-based doctrinal formulations: the gradual approach of the classical Mahāyāna, the simultaneous approach of Chan, the method of alchemical transformation of Tantra and the path of self-liberation, rDzogs-chen. These four different paths lead to distinct forms of fruition (’bras-bu; Skt. phala). It is the latter that will be the focus of the present article.

Donald Winnicott's radical existential psychoanalytic understanding of transitional awareness and transitional relatedness is an amazing and little used doorway for today's psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. In today's cognitive clinical culture we have become cognitions tampering with cognitions. Life as cognition. Existential Ontology Winnicott's creative understanding of our capacity for transitional awareness and transitional relatedness intertwines both our personal psychology and our innermost experience of our own existential ontology. Transitional knowingness intertwines both our mind and our primordial awareness field. Our field of awareness knows the field of Being since awareness is the field of Being. Transitional awareness intertwines both our mind and our psyche. Donald Winnicott's phenomenological understanding of the self radicalizes our sense of self from being a representational picture or cognitive affective schema or synthesis of disparate psychological part's to a fluid sense of self as a direct experiential felt sense of ongoing continuity of Being. Our knowingness though the medium of awareness, opens for us the direct knowing of the experience of Being. The experience of Being is for us our sense of natural spirituality. Our liminal transitional awareness field opens us into the immediate ongoing intimate experience of Being. This experience of Being is of Being within our very own self and of Being within our very own relational life-world. Ordinary Personhood We, as a most ordinary person, can experience the unfolding movement of the experiencing of Being within our own self as our self, and simultaneously, the unfolding experiencing of our own being as the being-ness of Being which is the Being of the world. As we experience the Being .

The phenomenon of ‘Knowing’ (Tib. Shes pa; Skt. Jñāna) has a crucial role in Buddhist explanations about the determination of individual realities. According to these explanations particular modes of knowing are connected to specific ways of perceiving and, even, constituting reality. As the ideal state of reality according to Buddhist doctrine is that of an unconditioned liberation, numerous traditions have examined and described the mode of knowing which characterizes such a state. Among these, we find several traditions that related such a mode with a claim concerning the innateness of an unconditioned state. This paper is meant to discuss some of these traditions, mainly ‘The Great Perfection’ (Tib. rDzogs pa chen po), a Tibetan non-dual tradition that asserted a mode of primordial knowing which is present in each moment of awareness. By discussing the intuitive qualities of this mode, we aim to show how an inherent mode of non-dual awareness can be explained through a comprehensive description of the basic aspects of lived experience.

Jansen, B. (2017). Naked Seeing: The Great Perfection, the Wheel of Time, and Visionary Buddhism in Renaissance Tibet. By Christopher Hatchell . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 471. ISBN 10: 0199982910; ISBN 13: 978-0-19-998291-2. International Journal of Asian Studies, 14(2), 226-227. doi:10.1017/S1479591417000092

Dzogchen, the Tibetan Buddhist teaching, translated as the Great Perfection, claims to provide a means to reach enlightenment in one's present lifetime. This is much faster than that claimed by basic Vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhist) teachings or by other forms of Buddhist practice. This paper provides background and descriptions on Dzogchen teachings, certain practices, and Western parallels. Western mythological and Kabbalistic counterparts are primarily in the endnotes.