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Essays listed in chronological order starting with most recent. For archives, please see previous volumes below.
Writer's pictureRudy Bauer

Dzogchen and Mahamudra retreat 2011


1.Dudjom Rinpoche the great master of Dzogchen would often say :”  hundreds or thousands of explanations are given, there is only one thing to be understood, know the one thing that liberates everything----Awareness itself , your true nature.”

2.Namkai Norbu another contemporary master of Dzogchen says this: Dzogchen does not belong to any religion, it is very nature of human awareness itself. No one owns Dzogchen and its naturalistic and experiential   understanding is expressed in many traditions. Our own root teacher was Swami Muktanada and he was Hindu Shavite Meditation Master. He   taught that meditation was becoming aware of awareness itself.  Western phenomenology is also presents  methodology for becoming aware of awareness.

3.The very essence of Dzogchen is to be aware of awareness itself..  Beyond words and letters ,there is a transmission that does not belong to any tradition which is very nature of human of  awareness and this is the Buddha.  This statement made in the 6th century  by Bodhidharma  indicates that although human beings easily and constantly   transmit their  minds from one to another, from family to children, from person to person,  from group to group from culture to culture, human beings are also able to transmit the very nature of their own awareness to each other .this awareness  is this field  of light and of energy. This field is a field of gnosis  direct lumenous knowningess and is the  great compassion…love itself.

4.In the praxis of Dzoghcen if  you to be able to suspend your  mind even briefly, this suspension  frees your  awareness to become aware of own self, and in this action awareness becomes aware of its own nature. This nature  this syunyata is spaceousness, or openness ,the great expanse and  this nature  is also light or radiance or lumenousity, and this nature is  energy, or qi or shakti, and  this nature is also oneness and pervasive. This nature  is the great affection or great  compassion, which is infinite in its horizons vaste and multidimensional.

5. In meditation and through meditation you learn  through  practice and happen stance  to suspend your  mind. The mind  which is thinking, is  feelings,  is  memory, and is sensation and is fantasy. And  within the freedom of the suspension, this  epoche , your  awareness focuses within its own self and reveals itself and shows itself and unconceals itself to you as your  own self. You begin to experience awareness itself.as .the base of  your experience. The base of your experience  is no longer mind alone but this field as  non conceptual awareness, this field vast and infinite in its horizon. This base  goes beyond the boundaries of your body.

The natural mystic drama of your lifev begins  unfolding with immediacy. Your life and the mystic drama become one.

6.Dzogchen understanding and practice  begins within  awareness in order  to dissolve suffering ,the suffering of never ending  lost , the suffering of an indeterminate and unpredictable existence, the suffering of the abyss of  emptiness and  voidness,  the suffering  of non connectedness, separateness and solipsism , the anxiety of non existence ,ever present death. The phenomena of disappearance and appearance is the very essence of  the  field of awareness ,.ever present, timelessly present, coming and going, appearing and disappearing…within timeless awareness.

7. The praxis is simple, suspend your mind, enter into awareness of awareness, holding it, entering it, becoming it, aham ah “I am becoming what I am.” As you become aware of awareness the qualities of awareness manifest themselves in you, in your experience. The qualities are  spaceousness or openeness,  lumenousity or light, energy, and the oneness and compassion as pure love.  As you establish your self in this field as  AND THE FIELD ESTABLISHES ITSELF IN YOU, YOU  integrate your mind and your body into this field of awareness. And so  you begin to live within awareness itself. You think in awareness, you  feel within awareness field, you have memory, sensation and  dreams…all within awareness .What is most amazing and the wonder of wonders is that is  you begin experience not only within your own self this field but you begin to experience this field of awareness within everyone and in time everything…animate as well as inanimate. What is in you is in the other.  You begin to experience non duality, or oneness within the duality of the world..

You integrate everything within awareness field and this awareness metabolizes experience and  frees you from the compulsivity of endless fixation .  In time the light of awareness becomes more and more visible in your self and  within in this world. all of which is the  beingness of Being itself…the translucidity of Being of all the beings.

8.More over your  own awareness is multidimensional and the world  you live in is of the  same dimensions. These dimensions in Dzogchen are called Kayas. These dimensions  become slowly but surely apparent and experiential. So within  the dimension of ordinary appearance (nirmanakaya) you experience the energy and light within yourself and others. This light and  this spaceousness and this energy is   the source of non duality or oneness within appearances, this world of fles, the world of me and you.

9.In time You begin also to experience the dimension of apparitionalness(sambhogakaya). This happens especially in dreams andin visions.  In Visions, you experience the archetypical dimension of your own being which is  Being itself. Primordial  energies, swirling  vortexts of energy and light, archetypical manifestations all of these manfifestations are  cosmological qualities of primordial awareness. Primordial Beingness expressed and symbolized as  personafied   deities. dakinis,  deva’s..You experience them   not outside of  you but as the  qualities your own awareness , your own  beingness of Being itself.

 10.And in time  you  experience the completely ineffable non conceptual , beyond all  language and expression, the silent dimension of pure potential , potential space, the great void, the great openness  out of which everything arises and dissolves, including your own self, your own awareness. This dharmakaya dimension is  Creativity itself …the great mother.

11.You  begin to experience within your self as your self  this pervasive immanence that is the source and pervades all of existence. The world becomes more inside to inside and less externalized….less objectified, less reified. In this bliss, this great bliss, thisbliss over comes all suffering.

Om ah hung, bodichitta, maha suka, jnana datu ah.

11.This unfolding of the field sometimes happens like this. More often then not a person lives  in their mind. The mind is   a kind of box…a jewel box. And a person can live in the functions of their mind, thinking, feelings, sensation ,memory and fantasy. Then one day you the person   become aware of their   mind, and the person experiences  mindfulness.Soon the person   discovers a space that is not their  mind, and from that space the person can  view their  own  mind. That is an amazing moment.  This  is the beginning of liberation. This may continue for some time.

12. Then one day that person  becomes aware of that space itself . One day the person becomes aware of that intermediate space, that space in between, that transitional or liminal space . In that  space of awareness , the person  become aware of there innermost  space and clearly  realizes  that awareness is not their  mind. You and I  are not our mind, and  we are this space of  awareness ,this field of awareness.

Wonderfully The base begins to shift from our mind to our awareness. Moreover, to our  surprise , to our  unending surprise this awareness is field vast and its horizons are infinite and unbound.  Moreover you and I  begin to learn to extend this  awareness  field  to each other  within this  field of immanance.   In and through this  mutual transmission we become stronger in the field and in the light of the field. Two awareness are truly better then one.

13. We  begins to live in the energy and light of the field , We  begin to sense the oneness of the field in ourselves  and  in others. We are entering the  non duality of oneness and we  experience the translucidity within us and within  of the world. We experience the sameness of equality consciousness.

14.Moreover the different dimension of this awareness this amazing awareness begins to manfest to us, and we slowly but surely  begin to feel and  to glimpse the multidimensionalness  of our  own existence and the existence of others. You and I  begin to  experience ourselves  as this unfolding field .   We experience ourselves as this  primordial awareness, un born and undying..and in these moments death itself begins to dissolve.

15.. Dudjome Rinpoche says by simply relaxing in this uncontrived ,open, natural state, we obtain the blessing of aimless, self liberation of whatever arises. Your karma is the dharma, the map of liberation is you life just it is..

14.there is a great lama named Penam Rinpoche. He visited the states one time a number of years ago.  And he gave this talk on FIXATION. Penam Rinpoche would say never separate from awareness, never separate from awareness,never separate.

15.Fixation can take you out of the awareness field., out of the spontaneity of the field, out of the sea of awareness, this magical sea…the sea of love.

16. He points out that the very indeterminateness  of the unfolding field of primordial awareness can bring forth the spontaneity of the awareness field and that one can live and die within this spontaneous and syncrenistic unfolding.   But the very spontaneity and syncrenistiy of the field can be overcome or undone by fixation. .Awareness can be loss because of fixation of our mind. There can be a fixation of thinking, a fixation of affective response, a fixation within fantasy, fixation  within sensation, a fixation because of memory. Fixation creates mind or at least a very dense mind. Fixation creates density and disolves translucidity, disolves spaceousness.

17.Fixation destroys the field and the fullness of the field. Within fixation you go back to the beginning and become completely located within the box of your mind. You and I and everyone will always have problems  but not necessarily  fixatedness.  Whatever is fixated bring the fixation  into the field  of awareness and awareness will dissolve fixation,metabolize the  fixation. You can enter fixation and become fixatedness  because  of the  fear of the indeterminanteness of this world,  the vast array of unpredicableness, the vast array of lost, unending loss and to the degree you think you will solve this root problems by fixation and effort endless effort you will only become the fixation, never ending fixation. This  is why the  indeterminatess of reality, the impermanency, the contingency can not be dealt with by mind alone  Within your own awareness is resolution to the terror of this experience of non knowningness what will happen next.

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