January 1, 2025 • 24 mins
Mahamudra and dzogchen are often spoken of as the “highest” practices of Tibetan Buddhism. How very exciting! Are they really? What does “highest” mean anyway? And what is the difference between mahamudra and dzogchen?
Milarepa, who received Mahamudra teachings from Marpa the Translator
Words or phrases you might want to look up:
- Dzogchen
- Mahamudra
- Chagchen
- Arhat
- Naropa
- Marpa the Translator
- Maitripa, Maitripada
- Rushen
- Sakya Pandita, Sapan
- Gampopa
- Trekchod (many spellings!)
- Togyal (also many spellings)
- David Jackson, “Enlightenment by a Single Means”
#Buddhism #Vajrayana #DoubleDorje #Dzogchen #Mahamudra
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Hello and a warm welcome to my good listeners, students of the Dharma and those who are just interested.
I'm Alex Wilding. This is the Double Dorje podcast, and today we're going to take a look at the super-deep-pinnacle teachings of mahamudra and dzogchen.
To be cautious, I will say again that I am not your teacher, let alone for teachings as high as this. But perhaps we can get some sort of handle on what they are about, what difference there may be between them, and how they fit with other parts of Tibetan Buddhism. Other streams of Buddhism as a whole, and indeed.
(00:49):
the spiritual life in general. That's a ridiculously big ask, but we can have a nibble at it.
Both the mahamudra and dzogchen systems present themselves as having the utter simplicity of direct realisation at their heart.
Both claim that the whole elaborate tantric system and procedure is not strictly necessary.
(01:15):
That it's all a skilful means that might help us not to lose our way in the trackless vastness of the clear light.
In practice, serious practitioners of either of these systems are very likely to do at least some - and probably quite a lot - of the more conventional types of practice. But the teaching that these elaborate means are not necessarily or strictly required changes the perspective really quite a lot.
(01:44):
It does, on the other hand, open the door to people who fancy their chances by dropping study, dropping ethics, dropping preparation and just sitting around, claiming to meditate on the true nature of the mind.
Now, if I had a penny for every random Internet sage who became enlightened or realised just like that, I would be a rich man.
(02:07):
The temptation is obvious, but avoiding the trap can actually be a little bit tricky.
Only today I saw on the Internet - well, I mean where else - a quote from Garab Dorje. That is to say, the 7th century, Garab Dorje, who is credited with bringing the dzogchen teachings to the human world, not the living one, who is an important holder of the Dudjom Tersar lineage,
(02:33):
and who lives in Bhutan.
The quote refers, amongst other things, to there being no commitments to keep, no empowerment to receive, and no particular conduct to adopt or reject.
Sharp eared - or sharp minded - listeners will perhaps have already noticed that there being no particular conduct to reject is a particularly dangerous or pernicious idea, if understood wrongly.
(03:03):
The point is, and it must be said, that there are also plenty of Internet people who will point this out themselves, they're not all dafties - the statement starts from the point of view of perfect realisation.
When you are there, there is nothing else to do. If we are so proud as to think that we are already there and that we have no use for the path, then we are in slippery territory. I think that's pretty obvious.
(03:31):
Regular listeners might already be wondering why I haven't yet got to what I'm just about to say, so here goes. Please if you possibly can press whatever like or subscribe button that you have. Sharing with friends or on your social media timelines is particularly helpful. And note that if you find you don't see the extra material
(03:52):
like the list of words that might be worth looking up, or any pictures that I usually put in the description, you will find that stuff on podbean where this podcast is currently hosted.
(04:14):
For historical reasons, there is something odd about the naming of these two systems that we use in the west.
You may have noticed that dzogchen is our English version of a Tibetan word, while mahamudra is our English version of a Sanskrit word.
Mahamudra does also have a Tibetan name, Chagya Chenpo - forgive my pronunciation -
(04:36):
shortened to chagchen, and that is indeed how Tibetans generally refer to it.
Chenpo is a direct translation of maha. They both mean great.
The other parts of the word are quite equivalent.
In fact, that bit is rather tricky to translate. It has several overlapping meanings, which is why it's most often either translated as seal, which is frankly not exactly illuminating when you first come across it, or it's left untranslated.
(05:09):
The authors of the early work publishing material on these things in the West felt that a Sanskrit name would be more accessible to general readers, and it's also a fact that there is considerable literature on mahamudra or great seal in sources in Indic languages.
On the other hand, there's little or no Sanskrit or Indian material on dzogchen.
(05:33):
Great perfection or great completion are fairly reasonable translations for that, although again, it's very often left in this quasi-Tibetan form of dzogchen.
Let's try to avoid that particular confusion right at the start!
Now, perhaps we could step right back for a moment, broaden the perspective, look at the really big picture. There are two fundamental competing narratives in much Buddhist teaching.
(06:06):
Sometimes the tension between these narratives becomes explicit and leads to real conflict, while at other times the two are interwoven in one teaching, one practise or one practitioner.
For the moment, I'm going to call them the cause narrative and the spontaneous narrative so that they at least have provisional names, and I'll say rather more about what I mean in a few minutes.
(06:30):
Some more academic authors have given these two narratives the rather long names of gradualist and subitist, or sudden enlightenment approaches.
My feeling is that these common and, let it be said, far from unreasonable labels, do put a little bit too much emphasis on time. Enlightenment appears to be instantaneous in one view, or necessarily takes a long, long time, perhaps aeons, in the other view.
(07:01):
Both of these extremes can be criticised for their own different reasons, and I think caused enlightenment and spontaneous enlightenment might be just a tiny bit more helpful.
Something very similar to these two narratives is found in many other spiritual traditions, some of which are quite distant from Buddhism.
(07:23):
Whether this is a fundamental, or some might say archetypal, human thing or not is a matter that I'll leave to the people who like dealing with grand overarching theories of human behaviour. My own brief and not exactly stellar dip into the academic world more than 40 years ago
(07:44):
involved a look at one of those overarching theories, and I have to say I found it wasn't exactly wrong, but neither was it very illuminating. But that's another story.
So, one of these narratives has it that enlightenment is brought about by following the path, that is by completing the two accumulations, one of which is the accumulation of merit and the other being the accumulation of wisdom. This involves lots of ethics,
(08:14):
lots of good deeds, lots of giving, endless patience, lots of study, lots of meditation on emptiness.
Eventually, when we've done enough of this, we reach the status of being an arhat or even a Buddha.
The other narrative says no.
Didn't somebody say something about all compounded things being impermanent?
(08:37):
Oh yes, it was the Buddha, wasn't it? That kind of enlightenment may be wonderful, but if it's constructed of merit and accumulated wisdom, it has to fall apart sooner or later.
This second narrative has it that awakening is based on the recognition or realisation of the pure, empty, limitless, trackless, and luminous expanse of the mind.
(09:03):
If we recognise that, then we've got it.
Staying with it is, however, so very, very hard, and we do all this other stuff to stay with that realisation. The other stuff is done from within that realisation. None of it is strictly necessary, but it is the one means that we have available.
(09:29):
There is also some competition between the supporters of mahamudra and the supporters of dzogchen. It will be interesting to have a little look at that too, but I must first make one thing clear. This potential tension between mahamudra and dzogchen is a completely different thing from the competition between the cause and spontaneous narratives.
(09:51):
In that context, mahamudra and dzogchen are very much on the same page. That is to say, on the spontaneous side of the argument.
Perhaps a quick thumbnail of these two will help us not lose our way completely.
Let's start with mahamudra, because its roots in the Indian background are more obvious.
(10:17):
Although that is where some of the confusion starts. Mahamudra, as we usually mean it these days, stands in a certain way outside the tantric scheme of practice.
But the word is also used in different and very, very tantric contexts. For one, there are points in the structure of the tantric path where a number of different types of mudra,
(10:42):
that is the karma mudra, often translated as action seal the knowledge seal, the dharma seal, and indeed others, are spoken of.
That particular usage is an entire rats' nest that I'm keen to avoid in this episode.
We must merely recognise that it is there.
The Mahamudra Knowledge-Holder is also found at a specialised point in the Nyingma version of the tantric path.
(11:09):
These usages are not at all the same, but they are both concerned with advanced stages in the manipulation of the channels, energies and drops of the subtle body. But again, that is something completely different, something I don't really want to be talking about today.
What is important to this topic is that for one reason or another, mahamudra became the name for a rather different system.
(11:34):
This kind of mahamudra proposed that this very same realisation, the one that can be reached as a result of the whole tantric performance, can also be approached through a direct path based on the essence of the mind.
Naropa, a famous figure from the 11th century, is often said to have been the main teacher encountered by Marpa the translator on his great quest for teachings.
(12:02):
In those days, travelling from Tibet to India, as Mapa did, was an extremely dangerous process and an awful lot of Tibetans who attempted it either died as a result of the dangers of the travel itself - the rock-falls, the bandits, the wild animals, or as a result of diseases encountered on the hot plains of India.
Marpa has an extraordinary life story, and you might well like to look into it.
(12:27):
The whole thing is a bit complicated, but Naropa was, through Marpa, the main source of the famous practices of the six doctrines of Naropa, which deal with inner heat, dream, clear, light and so forth.
But another of Marpa's teachers was perhaps equally important, although in a different way. That is, Maitripa, or Maitripada, who was the source from which Marpa obtained the mahamudra practises.
(12:54):
Like many of the adepts from that extraordinary period, Maitripa started out as a monk. A very good one, as I have been led to believe,
practising what was then the conventional style of both sutra and tantra.
Later in his life, he travelled to South India, where he encountered and adopted the transmission of mahamudra outside of tantra, which is the root of mahamudra as we usually speak of it today.
(13:23):
The sequence of meditation practises we have now, as taught very prominently by the Kagyu schools under the banner of mahamudra, is relatively easy to understand, if not to perform. It's set out with great clarity in works such as the 9th Karmapa’s Ocean of Definitive Meaning.
(13:45):
Leaving aside the initial study of Buddhist scriptures and philosophy, a student would begin their practical training in mahamudra with the preliminary practises, the ngondro that I said a few words about in episode 31.
That is to say, a period of time reflecting on the four revolting thoughts known as the ordinary preliminaries, and then the special preliminaries which are the 100,000 full length prostrations with refuge and bodhicitta prayers, purification, mantras, mandala offerings and guru yoga prayers.
(14:21):
The next step depends absolutely on the decisions of the supervising teacher, but it would be possible then to go on to the specific mahamudra teachings.
The student spends time cultivating the ability to rest his or her mind stably on an object of meditation and moves forward, step by step, to examine the mind and thoughts when it is at rest or when moving.
(14:50):
In point of fact, a lot of these techniques are standard Buddhist methods found in the sutras and considered by the tradition to be in a certain sense lower than the tantric practices.
So why is it said that in this case it is higher?
The key point is whether these apparently straightforward meditations are done in what we might call an ordinary way,
(15:13):
or whether they are done on the basis of a recognition, at least a preliminary recognition, of the nature of the mind.
This may be expressed by saying that the students have received pointing out instructions.
The practitioners experience should then unfold according to the four yogas of mahamudra. You can read about those, but there is not a lot of point in me talking about them here, because they are very much a matter of experience and can only usefully be discussed between a qualified teacher and a student.
(15:49):
Yeah, I seem to keep saying that a lot, don't I?
It's particularly telling, it seems to me, that the mahamudra teaching manual written in our 16th century by Dagpo Tashi Namgyal, the text we know as Moonbeams of mahamudra, begins by dealing with the two aspects of meditation (15:52):
the aspect of calm abiding, and the aspect of higher insight.
All very good, but nothing that is not found in more general parts of Buddhism.
(16:20):
Once the aspect of pointing out instructions, recognising the nature of the mind, has been dealt with, the author then proceeds with sections on calm abiding and higher insight all over again.
But this time the instructions are subtly different.
This is actual mahamudra, and that's why it's on a whole other level.
(16:45):
This might be the place to hand on a tip to any listeners who might be just setting out on this path.
My suggestion is that you don't go around saying that you are practising mahamudra.
That could be seen by some as a claim that you are a highly advanced practitioner - and eggs may be thrown at you.
(17:06):
Say, therefore, perhaps, that you are doing mahamudra preliminaries, or that you are studying mahamudra. That will be safer.
On the dzogchen side of the same mistake, I saw again just this morning, on an Internet forum,
someone talking about how their favourite way to practise trekcho, which is the calm abiding and insight part of dzogchen, is while walking the dog in the woods.
(17:33):
Now let me not knock it.
Getting into a peaceful, open, relaxed and even meditative state while walking the dog in the woods is without question, a great thing.
I used to do it quite a lot. I loved it, and it's probably quite beneficial for the walker's health and their practice.
But flaunting the level of one's practise and giving it a high label in public -
(17:54):
it's not a good look.
So we've turned our mind to dzogchen. The preliminaries there may well start with a version of the ordinary preliminaries and special preliminaries that I just mentioned. Four revolting thoughts, hundreds of thousands of this and that.
Dzogchen does have preliminaries of its own, however. These are largely unique to dzogchen and include exercises designed to make the student sharply aware of the sufferings of the six worlds of the cycle of existence, and to train their mind to focus on visualised syllables
(18:33):
in a fascinating variety of ways.
Again, you can look these up easily enough these days. Rushen is a word that will tell you that you are in this territory But there is not much point talking about them except with your personal teacher.
In the next stage, the dzogchen student undertakes the two main parts of the body, so to speak, of dzogchen practice.
(19:01):
The first, known as trekcho, as we just mentioned, or cutting through, is a practice of extremely relaxed attention to the nature of the mind.
The instructions for this are couched in a different terminology.
They make heavy use of the term rigpa.
Some say that this term means awareness. Some say no, that misses the point. I will say that I have seen some instructions that require a very close reading indeed to detect any difference from the step by step instructions for mahamudra that we spoke about a few minutes ago.
(19:38):
The second part of this body of practise is known as thogal, variously translated as surpassing the skull, which is a bit literal,
leap over, or direct crossing.
This practice is either carried out in a dark retreat or by means of sky gazing practises. It cultivates a range of optic phenomena, leading through a series of experiences known as the four visions. Yet again - sorry about this - nothing that I'm qualified in any way to talk about, and nothing that would be useful
(20:13):
to talk about outside of the teacher-student relationship.
This thogal practise is without question unique to dzogchen. I think all but the most small-minded adherents of either of these schools would agree that they have a lot in common, even though details, liturgy and terminology are different.
(20:34):
But if we all were to sit down at a table in the Double Dorje restaurant to thrash this out over a bowl of delicious vegetable momos, I can hear the mahamudra practitioner on my left claiming that dzogchen is entirely OK, but it does have that weird thogal stuff at the end. What's that about then?
The dzogchen practitioner on my right, however, is saying that mahamudra is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn't have the final rocket ship offered by thogal.
(21:04):
As is usual with these things that are beyond words, I've already said an awful lot without hardly beginning.
But before we leave the subject entirely, we must acknowledge that the view I have rather crudely characterised as that of caused enlightenment does have many adherents who do not say that the tantric path is a powerful adjunct to the practise, but rather that it is the one and only quick path.
(21:31):
A particularly famous critic of mahamudra outside of tantra was the Sakya Pandita, active in the early 13th century and often known simply as Sapan. Tibetans do that with names a lot! In his view, the quick tantric path necessarily involves the stages of generating the deity
(21:54):
through visualisation and liturgy, practises involving the breath, energy channels and ultimately sexual yoga.
I can't mention sexual yoga without stressing again that this kind of tantric sex, which many venerated figures say is something that extraordinarily few people are qualified for,
(22:16):
strictly requires coitus reservatus. If you leak the process fails. I will say no more on that subject.
The tantric meaning of mahamudra is associated with this stage of practise.
Sapana's critique focused on the way Milarepa’s student Gampopa was giving mahamudra instructions to students and wasting them by not having them do the whole elaborate tantric thing.
(22:44):
Sapana's thinking was that mahamudra outside tantra wasn't really mahamudra at all.
Of course it's complicated, and if you want to dig deeper, one possible place I'll suggest would be David Jackson's work, Enlightenment by a Single Means.
As a final point, while the supporters of both narratives feel that the difference is hugely important to their meditation and realisation,
(23:11):
there is often not so much to be seen on the outside.
People in the "caused enlightenment" camp will have their sudden insights and people in the "spontaneous" camp will not immediately fly into the sky. They too recite their mantras, practise calm abiding meditation, do their visualisations, make the offerings, perform guru yoga and, and, and, and, and…
(23:36):
much the same as anyone else.
Having got this far, I have a genuine fear that I may not have made anything any clearer, and I may also have been rather boring. Sorry about that! But perhaps I have given you a few clues as to how to dig further.
And finally, do remember to like, subscribe, tell your friends and all that stuff, and remember - whatever appears, just appears.
(24:06):
Mysterious, innit?
Bye.
Hello and a warm welcome to my good listeners, students of the Dharma and those who are just interested.
I'm Alex Wilding. This is the Double Dorje podcast, and today we're going to take a look at the super-deep-pinnacle teachings of mahamudra and dzogchen.
To be cautious, I will say again that I am not your teacher, let alone for teachings as high as this. But perhaps we can get some sort of handle on what they are about, what difference there may be between them, and how they fit with other parts of Tibetan Buddhism. Other streams of Buddhism as a whole, and indeed.
(00:49):
the spiritual life in general. That's a ridiculously big ask, but we can have a nibble at it.
Both the mahamudra and dzogchen systems present themselves as having the utter simplicity of direct realisation at their heart.
Both claim that the whole elaborate tantric system and procedure is not strictly necessary.
(01:15):
That it's all a skilful means that might help us not to lose our way in the trackless vastness of the clear light.
In practice, serious practitioners of either of these systems are very likely to do at least some - and probably quite a lot - of the more conventional types of practice. But the teaching that these elaborate means are not necessarily or strictly required changes the perspective really quite a lot.
(01:44):
It does, on the other hand, open the door to people who fancy their chances by dropping study, dropping ethics, dropping preparation and just sitting around, claiming to meditate on the true nature of the mind.
Now, if I had a penny for every random Internet sage who became enlightened or realised just like that, I would be a rich man.
(02:07):
The temptation is obvious, but avoiding the trap can actually be a little bit tricky.
Only today I saw on the Internet - well, I mean where else - a quote from Garab Dorje. That is to say, the 7th century, Garab Dorje, who is credited with bringing the dzogchen teachings to the human world, not the living one, who is an important holder of the Dudjom Tersar lineage,
(02:33):
and who lives in Bhutan.
The quote refers, amongst other things, to there being no commitments to keep, no empowerment to receive, and no particular conduct to adopt or reject.
Sharp eared - or sharp minded - listeners will perhaps have already noticed that there being no particular conduct to reject is a particularly dangerous or pernicious idea, if understood wrongly.
(03:03):
The point is, and it must be said, that there are also plenty of Internet people who will point this out themselves, they're not all dafties - the statement starts from the point of view of perfect realisation.
When you are there, there is nothing else to do. If we are so proud as to think that we are already there and that we have no use for the path, then we are in slippery territory. I think that's pretty obvious.
(03:31):
Regular listeners might already be wondering why I haven't yet got to what I'm just about to say, so here goes. Please if you possibly can press whatever like or subscribe button that you have. Sharing with friends or on your social media timelines is particularly helpful. And note that if you find you don't see the extra material
(03:52):
like the list of words that might be worth looking up, or any pictures that I usually put in the description, you will find that stuff on podbean where this podcast is currently hosted.
(04:14):
For historical reasons, there is something odd about the naming of these two systems that we use in the west.
You may have noticed that dzogchen is our English version of a Tibetan word, while mahamudra is our English version of a Sanskrit word.
Mahamudra does also have a Tibetan name, Chagya Chenpo - forgive my pronunciation -
(04:36):
shortened to chagchen, and that is indeed how Tibetans generally refer to it.
Chenpo is a direct translation of maha. They both mean great.
The other parts of the word are quite equivalent.
In fact, that bit is rather tricky to translate. It has several overlapping meanings, which is why it's most often either translated as seal, which is frankly not exactly illuminating when you first come across it, or it's left untranslated.
(05:09):
The authors of the early work publishing material on these things in the West felt that a Sanskrit name would be more accessible to general readers, and it's also a fact that there is considerable literature on mahamudra or great seal in sources in Indic languages.
On the other hand, there's little or no Sanskrit or Indian material on dzogchen.
(05:33):
Great perfection or great completion are fairly reasonable translations for that, although again, it's very often left in this quasi-Tibetan form of dzogchen.
Let's try to avoid that particular confusion right at the start!
Now, perhaps we could step right back for a moment, broaden the perspective, look at the really big picture. There are two fundamental competing narratives in much Buddhist teaching.
(06:06):
Sometimes the tension between these narratives becomes explicit and leads to real conflict, while at other times the two are interwoven in one teaching, one practise or one practitioner.
For the moment, I'm going to call them the cause narrative and the spontaneous narrative so that they at least have provisional names, and I'll say rather more about what I mean in a few minutes.
(06:30):
Some more academic authors have given these two narratives the rather long names of gradualist and subitist, or sudden enlightenment approaches.
My feeling is that these common and, let it be said, far from unreasonable labels, do put a little bit too much emphasis on time. Enlightenment appears to be instantaneous in one view, or necessarily takes a long, long time, perhaps aeons, in the other view.
(07:01):
Both of these extremes can be criticised for their own different reasons, and I think caused enlightenment and spontaneous enlightenment might be just a tiny bit more helpful.
Something very similar to these two narratives is found in many other spiritual traditions, some of which are quite distant from Buddhism.
(07:23):
Whether this is a fundamental, or some might say archetypal, human thing or not is a matter that I'll leave to the people who like dealing with grand overarching theories of human behaviour. My own brief and not exactly stellar dip into the academic world more than 40 years ago
(07:44):
involved a look at one of those overarching theories, and I have to say I found it wasn't exactly wrong, but neither was it very illuminating. But that's another story.
So, one of these narratives has it that enlightenment is brought about by following the path, that is by completing the two accumulations, one of which is the accumulation of merit and the other being the accumulation of wisdom. This involves lots of ethics,
(08:14):
lots of good deeds, lots of giving, endless patience, lots of study, lots of meditation on emptiness.
Eventually, when we've done enough of this, we reach the status of being an arhat or even a Buddha.
The other narrative says no.
Didn't somebody say something about all compounded things being impermanent?
(08:37):
Oh yes, it was the Buddha, wasn't it? That kind of enlightenment may be wonderful, but if it's constructed of merit and accumulated wisdom, it has to fall apart sooner or later.
This second narrative has it that awakening is based on the recognition or realisation of the pure, empty, limitless, trackless, and luminous expanse of the mind.
(09:03):
If we recognise that, then we've got it.
Staying with it is, however, so very, very hard, and we do all this other stuff to stay with that realisation. The other stuff is done from within that realisation. None of it is strictly necessary, but it is the one means that we have available.
(09:29):
There is also some competition between the supporters of mahamudra and the supporters of dzogchen. It will be interesting to have a little look at that too, but I must first make one thing clear. This potential tension between mahamudra and dzogchen is a completely different thing from the competition between the cause and spontaneous narratives.
(09:51):
In that context, mahamudra and dzogchen are very much on the same page. That is to say, on the spontaneous side of the argument.
Perhaps a quick thumbnail of these two will help us not lose our way completely.
Let's start with mahamudra, because its roots in the Indian background are more obvious.
(10:17):
Although that is where some of the confusion starts. Mahamudra, as we usually mean it these days, stands in a certain way outside the tantric scheme of practice.
But the word is also used in different and very, very tantric contexts. For one, there are points in the structure of the tantric path where a number of different types of mudra,
(10:42):
that is the karma mudra, often translated as action seal the knowledge seal, the dharma seal, and indeed others, are spoken of.
That particular usage is an entire rats' nest that I'm keen to avoid in this episode.
We must merely recognise that it is there.
The Mahamudra Knowledge-Holder is also found at a specialised point in the Nyingma version of the tantric path.
(11:09):
These usages are not at all the same, but they are both concerned with advanced stages in the manipulation of the channels, energies and drops of the subtle body. But again, that is something completely different, something I don't really want to be talking about today.
What is important to this topic is that for one reason or another, mahamudra became the name for a rather different system.
(11:34):
This kind of mahamudra proposed that this very same realisation, the one that can be reached as a result of the whole tantric performance, can also be approached through a direct path based on the essence of the mind.
Naropa, a famous figure from the 11th century, is often said to have been the main teacher encountered by Marpa the translator on his great quest for teachings.
(12:02):
In those days, travelling from Tibet to India, as Mapa did, was an extremely dangerous process and an awful lot of Tibetans who attempted it either died as a result of the dangers of the travel itself - the rock-falls, the bandits, the wild animals, or as a result of diseases encountered on the hot plains of India.
Marpa has an extraordinary life story, and you might well like to look into it.
(12:27):
The whole thing is a bit complicated, but Naropa was, through Marpa, the main source of the famous practices of the six doctrines of Naropa, which deal with inner heat, dream, clear, light and so forth.
But another of Marpa's teachers was perhaps equally important, although in a different way. That is, Maitripa, or Maitripada, who was the source from which Marpa obtained the mahamudra practises.
(12:54):
Like many of the adepts from that extraordinary period, Maitripa started out as a monk. A very good one, as I have been led to believe,
practising what was then the conventional style of both sutra and tantra.
Later in his life, he travelled to South India, where he encountered and adopted the transmission of mahamudra outside of tantra, which is the root of mahamudra as we usually speak of it today.
(13:23):
The sequence of meditation practises we have now, as taught very prominently by the Kagyu schools under the banner of mahamudra, is relatively easy to understand, if not to perform. It's set out with great clarity in works such as the 9th Karmapa’s Ocean of Definitive Meaning.
(13:45):
Leaving aside the initial study of Buddhist scriptures and philosophy, a student would begin their practical training in mahamudra with the preliminary practises, the ngondro that I said a few words about in episode 31.
That is to say, a period of time reflecting on the four revolting thoughts known as the ordinary preliminaries, and then the special preliminaries which are the 100,000 full length prostrations with refuge and bodhicitta prayers, purification, mantras, mandala offerings and guru yoga prayers.
(14:21):
The next step depends absolutely on the decisions of the supervising teacher, but it would be possible then to go on to the specific mahamudra teachings.
The student spends time cultivating the ability to rest his or her mind stably on an object of meditation and moves forward, step by step, to examine the mind and thoughts when it is at rest or when moving.
(14:50):
In point of fact, a lot of these techniques are standard Buddhist methods found in the sutras and considered by the tradition to be in a certain sense lower than the tantric practices.
So why is it said that in this case it is higher?
The key point is whether these apparently straightforward meditations are done in what we might call an ordinary way,
(15:13):
or whether they are done on the basis of a recognition, at least a preliminary recognition, of the nature of the mind.
This may be expressed by saying that the students have received pointing out instructions.
The practitioners experience should then unfold according to the four yogas of mahamudra. You can read about those, but there is not a lot of point in me talking about them here, because they are very much a matter of experience and can only usefully be discussed between a qualified teacher and a student.
(15:49):
Yeah, I seem to keep saying that a lot, don't I?
It's particularly telling, it seems to me, that the mahamudra teaching manual written in our 16th century by Dagpo Tashi Namgyal, the text we know as Moonbeams of mahamudra, begins by dealing with the two aspects of meditation (15:52):
the aspect of calm abiding, and the aspect of higher insight.
All very good, but nothing that is not found in more general parts of Buddhism.
(16:20):
Once the aspect of pointing out instructions, recognising the nature of the mind, has been dealt with, the author then proceeds with sections on calm abiding and higher insight all over again.
But this time the instructions are subtly different.
This is actual mahamudra, and that's why it's on a whole other level.
(16:45):
This might be the place to hand on a tip to any listeners who might be just setting out on this path.
My suggestion is that you don't go around saying that you are practising mahamudra.
That could be seen by some as a claim that you are a highly advanced practitioner - and eggs may be thrown at you.
(17:06):
Say, therefore, perhaps, that you are doing mahamudra preliminaries, or that you are studying mahamudra. That will be safer.
On the dzogchen side of the same mistake, I saw again just this morning, on an Internet forum,
someone talking about how their favourite way to practise trekcho, which is the calm abiding and insight part of dzogchen, is while walking the dog in the woods.
(17:33):
Now let me not knock it.
Getting into a peaceful, open, relaxed and even meditative state while walking the dog in the woods is without question, a great thing.
I used to do it quite a lot. I loved it, and it's probably quite beneficial for the walker's health and their practice.
But flaunting the level of one's practise and giving it a high label in public -
(17:54):
it's not a good look.
So we've turned our mind to dzogchen. The preliminaries there may well start with a version of the ordinary preliminaries and special preliminaries that I just mentioned. Four revolting thoughts, hundreds of thousands of this and that.
Dzogchen does have preliminaries of its own, however. These are largely unique to dzogchen and include exercises designed to make the student sharply aware of the sufferings of the six worlds of the cycle of existence, and to train their mind to focus on visualised syllables
(18:33):
in a fascinating variety of ways.
Again, you can look these up easily enough these days. Rushen is a word that will tell you that you are in this territory But there is not much point talking about them except with your personal teacher.
In the next stage, the dzogchen student undertakes the two main parts of the body, so to speak, of dzogchen practice.
(19:01):
The first, known as trekcho, as we just mentioned, or cutting through, is a practice of extremely relaxed attention to the nature of the mind.
The instructions for this are couched in a different terminology.
They make heavy use of the term rigpa.
Some say that this term means awareness. Some say no, that misses the point. I will say that I have seen some instructions that require a very close reading indeed to detect any difference from the step by step instructions for mahamudra that we spoke about a few minutes ago.
(19:38):
The second part of this body of practise is known as thogal, variously translated as surpassing the skull, which is a bit literal,
leap over, or direct crossing.
This practice is either carried out in a dark retreat or by means of sky gazing practises. It cultivates a range of optic phenomena, leading through a series of experiences known as the four visions. Yet again - sorry about this - nothing that I'm qualified in any way to talk about, and nothing that would be useful
(20:13):
to talk about outside of the teacher-student relationship.
This thogal practise is without question unique to dzogchen. I think all but the most small-minded adherents of either of these schools would agree that they have a lot in common, even though details, liturgy and terminology are different.
(20:34):
But if we all were to sit down at a table in the Double Dorje restaurant to thrash this out over a bowl of delicious vegetable momos, I can hear the mahamudra practitioner on my left claiming that dzogchen is entirely OK, but it does have that weird thogal stuff at the end. What's that about then?
The dzogchen practitioner on my right, however, is saying that mahamudra is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn't have the final rocket ship offered by thogal.
(21:04):
As is usual with these things that are beyond words, I've already said an awful lot without hardly beginning.
But before we leave the subject entirely, we must acknowledge that the view I have rather crudely characterised as that of caused enlightenment does have many adherents who do not say that the tantric path is a powerful adjunct to the practise, but rather that it is the one and only quick path.
(21:31):
A particularly famous critic of mahamudra outside of tantra was the Sakya Pandita, active in the early 13th century and often known simply as Sapan. Tibetans do that with names a lot! In his view, the quick tantric path necessarily involves the stages of generating the deity
(21:54):
through visualisation and liturgy, practises involving the breath, energy channels and ultimately sexual yoga.
I can't mention sexual yoga without stressing again that this kind of tantric sex, which many venerated figures say is something that extraordinarily few people are qualified for,
(22:16):
strictly requires coitus reservatus. If you leak the process fails. I will say no more on that subject.
The tantric meaning of mahamudra is associated with this stage of practise.
Sapana's critique focused on the way Milarepa’s student Gampopa was giving mahamudra instructions to students and wasting them by not having them do the whole elaborate tantric thing.
(22:44):
Sapana's thinking was that mahamudra outside tantra wasn't really mahamudra at all.
Of course it's complicated, and if you want to dig deeper, one possible place I'll suggest would be David Jackson's work, Enlightenment by a Single Means.
As a final point, while the supporters of both narratives feel that the difference is hugely important to their meditation and realisation,
(23:11):
there is often not so much to be seen on the outside.
People in the "caused enlightenment" camp will have their sudden insights and people in the "spontaneous" camp will not immediately fly into the sky. They too recite their mantras, practise calm abiding meditation, do their visualisations, make the offerings, perform guru yoga and, and, and, and, and…
(23:36):
much the same as anyone else.
Having got this far, I have a genuine fear that I may not have made anything any clearer, and I may also have been rather boring. Sorry about that! But perhaps I have given you a few clues as to how to dig further.
And finally, do remember to like, subscribe, tell your friends and all that stuff, and remember - whatever appears, just appears.
(24:06):
Mysterious, innit?
Bye.
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