There is a difference between the unification of the three spaces and the unification of the three lights. In the unification of the three spaces—the space in the heart, the space in the channels, and the space in appearance—awakened consciousness is present, but in the experience, the connection with the presence of space is more consistent.
It is very important to have an experiential understanding—not merely conceptual—of the inseparability of these three spaces. When Dzogchen teachings speak of integrating the mind with space through the practice of looking at the sky, they mean that the practitioner is trying to be present in the inseparability of these three spaces. The reason this practice is done by looking at the sky is not because the intention is to limit sensory perception exclusively to the consciousness of the sense of sight; it is possible to experience the inseparability of the three spaces through all the senses. The sense of sight is favored because it is the most important of the five sensory consciousnesses and because it is associated with the element of space.
Inner luminosity originates in the heart and passes through the two channels that connect the empty inner space of the heart with the empty outer space of the sky through the eyes—“the water gates of inner light”—and through them, the inner luminosity is projected into the outer space. In this way, the space of the heart, the space in the channels through the consciousness of the sense of sight, and the surrounding outer space are connected.
This is the union or integration of the three spaces; when we achieve it, we no longer feel limited by our body to a specific place: we are present everywhere in limitless space.
Regarding the unification of the three lights, light is presence, open awakened consciousness; this presence of light in the heart, in the channels, and in appearance is very vivid, and when these three lights or these three presences are united, that is called the unification of the three lights.
The unification of the three spaces is, so to speak, going towards space (the source), and the unification of the three lights is going towards light.
It is very important to have both experiences of emptiness and luminosity. In the teachings of the Zhang Zhung Nyan Gyud, there is talk of ma and bu, mother and son. The mother is emptiness, which is nothingness or everything. It is called the mother because everything comes from it. And the pure presence in this experience is called the son; the son is conscious, he knows, and is called son because he recognizes the mother. Recognition is consciousness.
We have emptiness and luminosity. What is emptiness? It is the same as luminosity. What is luminosity? It is the same as emptiness. In experience, you cannot separate one from the other; it is from both that energy manifests. When we say “both,” we are not saying that energy manifests from one or the other seen separately: energy manifests in the inseparability of luminosity and emptiness.
Dzogchen teachings explain that the movement of energy (tal) in the primordial state gives rise to light in the form of the five pure lights*, and when these increase, the “sound of light” arises. The five lights are the basis of the manifestations of the energy of clear light, in the form of sound, light, and rays. These are expressions of the energy of rigpa (open awakened consciousness). We understand that sound, light, and rays are manifestations of the energy of our own primordial state and the expression of our awakened consciousness when we perceive them in the state of presence, of rigpa.
When these three objects of vision—light, sound, and rays—manifest, if the changing mind realizes that they are manifesting and that this is a vision coming from ourselves, through these visions we experience the unoriginated, unborn, naked consciousness, and then it is when we clearly realize ourselves, we connect with the base that has no darkness.
In samsara, there is darkness, and we can think of six darknesses. For example, the first would be when you are among many lost people. The second is when you join that “club” and then you too are lost. The third is when you begin to perceive and judge all those things you do, because that comes from darkness: you are angry because you do not know yourself, and then anger begins to arise. Then, when you walk and see someone who provokes your anger—you get angry seeing how that person walks or talks or does things—then you want your experience of that person to cease. The way we conceive of ourselves is the way we integrate and then project ourselves, and thus, we see outside, in appearance, the same thing that is inside us, and we see that person as someone terrible who clashes with us; that is the problem. Perhaps the previous example is a bit exaggerated, but often we are intolerant of a person’s way of being and tell them: “If you would change this or that, then we could be together; otherwise, no.” It can be understood that the other person interferes with you, and then the flow of your experience is blocked: there is no space within you, and if there is no space, there is no light. If you want to have light, you must have space; therefore, the main thing is to cultivate the three spaces.
Trek chod and Tögal
Space and light are the same in essence, but not in appearance. It is as if we were to say that essence and nature are the same. Space cannot be separated from light, and light cannot be separated from space, but in our experience, the situation is a bit different: first we have to experience space to then experience light. In Dzogchen practice, you first have to develop Trek chod and then develop Tögal. The practice of Trek chod is the reconnection with space, and the practice of Tögal is the development of light. What we see as appearance is limited by our own mental conceptualization unless it is the pure visions we see through the practice of Tögal.
Dzogchen is a direct path, and the most advanced practices focus on the methods of Trek Chod and Tögal, which are exclusive to Dzogchen. Trek chod means “to detach by cutting.” It is a practice of contemplation with a unique pointing-out instruction and consists of remaining in the natural state. Tögal means “to work” or strive to achieve direct realization. It is not only about remaining in the state of contemplation, but also about working to integrate contemplation with the movement of energy in the form of light and visions. Basically, this involves the contemplation of light. (This work with light and visions is especially useful in the bardo when the three great visions—sound, lights, and rays—arise.) Through this practice, we can understand the differences and connections between the subtle dimension and its solid physical representation, which is our karmic vision.
In essence, your physical body is light, and not just light but the five pure lights. Why? Because its foundation is the five elements: our entire body is built on the basis of the five elements. That is why we speak of five organs, five parts of the intestines, five senses, five branches of the body: five fingers, five, five, five. Why five and not more? Because of the five elements. When consciousness realizes this base, it experiences light. When the mind experiences light, it has the opportunity to merge more and more with it. And as the mind that created this physical body is now merging with the light, it is returning to the pure source and to the light, and begins to experience the material world in a more lucid way, begins to experience situations and circumstances with greater flexibility, and thus begins to experience more and more light even in the physical body. Finally, when one fully realizes this, the body transforms into the rainbow body. This is called ja/u. It can be called enlightenment, the rainbow body. Rainbow body means body of light.
Dzogchen is probably the only teaching in the world that refers to the body of light.
When I spoke of the integration of the three lights, I referred to the light that comes from pure space, to light as the pure presence in the heart, and to light as the presence we project into samsara. Based on this, pure light is the presence at the base, and its external manifestations are what we call “visions of Tögal” or “pure vision.”
What are the visions of Tögal? In a darkness retreat, we go through different states of visions: we may start by experiencing our hell, our hungry ghost realm, our animal realm, our human realm, our demigod realm, or our god realm; all of that is called impure vision. After that, we begin to have pure visions—all the Dakinis (Khandros), all the deities, and all the rainbows—and that is called “visions of Tögal”; that is also light. Regarding impure vision, we have impure visions in life when we see and perceive things as impure; when two people see the same thing, it may seem very beautiful to one of them and may be terrible for the other, so the perception varies for each person. Imagine that the person who has the purest perception of something develops it until they perceive pure light in all directions. Try to do it, see if it is possible, try it. When in your life you perceive everything you see in a purer way and begin to see more beautiful and loving things, think that this is the path and that every day will become better. Imagine that it is already getting better right now. Imagine how far you can go. The reason we see things as pure is because we are connected to ourselves. The more connected you are, the more pure light you will see, the more confidence you will have. To the extent that you have less connection, you will manifest insecurity. Your problem with the world is your own insecurity.
Pure vision is connected with pure energy, and pure energy is connected with the base. A definition of Tögal vision is: experiencing vision while being connected to the base. To achieve this, you could conduct an experiment with your way of seeing things: when you open your eyes during meditation, you can see the whole, or you can see a specific thing. When you see a specific thing, who is seeing? The one who likes the flower? The one who dislikes movement in their visual field? When you see specifically, you make distinctions between what you like and what you don’t; when you see the whole, your perception is connected with the experience of the base, it is like a mirror. Depending on your perception, you can say: “My life is very heavy!” or “My relationship with so-and-so is very bad!” or, alternatively, you can say: “My relationship with so-and-so is wonderful!” There is then a difference between a situation that is open and flexible and one that is rigid and heavy; it all depends on your perception. If you feel complete, if you are connected to yourself and to this fullness, then you perceive things this way: complete and full. If you do not have that connection with fullness, then there is a gap, a sense of lack; you are not connected to yourself, you feel disconnected from yourself, and when you act, you are seeking this connection.
Practice of the three spaces and connection with presence (light, clarity) Chant Guru yoga three times.
Continue with the practice of the unification of the three spaces. Then, bring your attention to the heart; feel the space, try to feel that space.
Now, feel the presence in the space: there is a pure presence in your heart, perceive it. There is not only emptiness but also clear presence. Imagine there is a light in the heart; the presence is that light in the heart, and that light is the source of all qualities.
Remain there, holding the presence in the space.
Connection with oneself
Meditation helps us to allow experiences that connect us with ourselves, which is why we need to meditate. We seek these experiences because they are what bring us closest to who we are: they bring us closer to the base, to the essence, they bring us closer to Dharmakaya. There are other experiences that do not help us, they even distract us and hinder us. Let us think about the nature of a disturbance, for example, anger: when there is anger or rage, the connection is immediately lost. Reflect a little: what is it that makes you connected to yourself or disconnected from yourself?
Let us look and examine: how could it be that I am not really connected to myself? How could I not be me? There is no way one is not “me”; one always is who one is; one is who one is when sleeping, when awake, when thinking, when not thinking, when having problems, and when not having problems. But then, what is the experience of being disconnected? It is the perspective limited to a self defined as a very small being that actually exists for years and dominates our entire existence.
Dzogchen is recognizing that one is not that small self. A person is not just a lawyer; even if others consider them so, one does not have to believe it. One plays that role, one has to play it, and one can play it. If one plays, there is no suffering. The Khandro dances because she is happy, and her dance expresses that she is not afraid, it does not express that she is obsessed with dancing. Our suffering is largely related to the way we perceive ourselves, not to who we are. If you perceive yourself as the small self, you have greater suffering. If you can play and be less limited, your suffering will be less. Our limited self has come to occupy a central place in our lives and indeed often controls it, and this is due to the way we have been raised and educated. Consequently, you perceive yourself in terms of that small self that is very limited. Playing a role or a function in the world is not a problem in itself; but you do not need to identify with that role or function because, regardless of whether you experience yourself from the perspective of the small self or from that of the unlimited self, that role or function is only a part —not the totality—of who you are, and it is relative. Everything is always dissolving, everything is always moving, everything is always flowing, and to the extent that we can remain in that fluidity or connect with it, we will be connected with space. This is very important.
The big self does not represent a problem. It is not intrinsically big; it is only big in relation to the small self that we have created.
If a person has too much energy, too many experiences, there is a possibility that they will disconnect from themselves. It is typical that there are people who give a lot and feel that they are losing; this is not the proper way to give. If you give, you should not feel that you are losing, because then what you are giving is not a good gift. The same applies to love. There are people who say: “I tried to give a lot of love, but I was not reciprocated,” and they live it that way; this means they were giving more than they could give. The good gift is the one that comes from being connected to oneself. If you give your best without losing connection with yourself, there is no pain. So, when you give, you should not disconnect from yourself. This is valid in all situations. For example, when a person falls in love, they can identify so much with the other person that they disconnect from themselves. But it is possible to give a lot without disconnecting, and that is a very beautiful relationship. However, it is not so easy; it is a matter of balance between two poles: clarity and emptiness. This is how the teachings express it. Clarity would be the energy, what we give, and if we do not disconnect from ourselves, we do not lose emptiness. The moment you disconnect, suffering begins. When you are giving, loving, working, making things happen, if you are disconnected from yourself, suffering occurs. When your expectations are not met, you suffer much more if you are disconnected from yourself than if you are connected to yourself. The power of being connected to oneself is enormous.
And what is this being connected? Is it like a cable and a plug in an outlet? No, it is being connected to inner space, and if you are connected to this, then you are open to situations, because space allows for all situations; you are open to everything: success, failure. If we are not connected, we are only open to success and closed to failure. When failure arrives and opens the door and enters, then suffering arises. This is a very frequent problem. So, it is good to have a different way of seeing this; otherwise, you suffer. Yogis and realized practitioners are no different from us, but they see things differently. They know how to go beyond the small self, and from there, the perspective is very different. They can connect the small self with the big self, they have a friendly relationship with both, and they can jump from one to the other with great ease. For normal people, it is very difficult to jump like that: they can only see from the small self, and then the perspective becomes very small, the world looks very complicated. The situation of those who have realization is similar to the situation of a normal person; what is different is the perspective. It is not that when one achieves realization the world changes, but the perspective changes; it is not that when one reaches this point, they enter a club of enlightened beings, the world remains the same.
There are people who say: “But I have practiced for so long, what is happening? Nothing changes! I did this, I did that, and nothing changes, everything is the same.” And this is because doing, in itself, does not change things: it is the perspective that makes the change. If you are seeing the same thing in the same way, how do you expect to change? Such a change cannot happen. We are very attached to our way of seeing the world and have the contradictory idea of wanting to change it. It is not about what you do, but how you see things.
When talking about this space of connection with oneself, in Dzogchen there is less emphasis on Prajnaparamita*, and the reason for this is that it is considered that in space, everything is perfect. There is love, there is compassion; it is a space full of richness, which is beyond fear and hope, and that is how it is when we are connected with space. When the big self is connected with space, it becomes playful, it can act in the world; and when it cannot do what it intends, it does not suffer, because the attitude is playful. It is like when a child is playing and cannot achieve what they want with a toy: the child can get very frustrated in their game, but their parents can see that this frustration is not so serious.
When you have this connection with space, you know you have nothing to lose, and you can see, examine, what you have really gained. If you can see what you have really gained, you realize that you have nothing to lose. Therefore, it is an extremely powerful experience; on the other hand, the experience of being connected only to the small self is a very complicated and fear-filled experience.
Remember the story of the yogi who goes to the village, and seeing that there is a crowd because there is a festival, he is very afraid of getting lost; he decides to tie a red ribbon to his foot so as not to get lost, and then he enters the festival and goes from one side to another, and when evening comes, he realizes that he has lost his ribbon and begins to shout: “Has anyone seen me?” because he feels he has gotten lost. We all have red ribbons; one of the big red ribbons we have is our current project. If we lose our current life project, we feel totally lost because we are identified with that project, just as the monk identified with the ribbon. So, when we feel this experience of being lost, let us remember this story and remember that the yogi did not lose himself, he only lost the ribbon. He could not have lost himself because this is impossible: space cannot be lost in space, therefore I cannot lose myself; the ribbon, yes, I can lose it. Every time you feel this, remember the yogi and the ribbon and think: “I cannot lose myself because space cannot be lost in space.” Lópon Sangye Tenzin used to say that for him, pouring space into space was an enormous experience.
In practice, when you open your eyes and the inner space unifies with the outer space, it is the same as when a child recognizes their mother in the midst of a crowd: they recognize her immediately and without any doubt, and in that recognition, there is immense joy. The experience of the union of inner space with outer space is like that of the child, and it is joyful if you are connected to yourself. If in the experience you lose yourself, suffering appears (as when the child has lost their mother), and therefore you become a victim of the experience, and the experience causes you fear.
Unique Taste
When talking about the three spaces, I said that the three are a single space and that the main purpose of the practice is to connect with ourselves. Especially when you practice in the heart, you are connecting with yourself, and when you focus your senses outward, you are rather working with energy. The real meaning of the experience of space is when the subject, the experiencing self, disappears. It is not that we say: “Ah, how wonderful space is!” Space is fine, but the one who is thinking that space is fine is not fine, nor is it bad, but there is still a duality there. When you completely merge with space—when you immerse yourself in the womb of Dharmakaya, in the Universe, in essence—there is no longer a sense of “I,” duality disappears.
When we have the experience of being connected with Dharmakaya, two contradictory emotions such as those caused by the experience of a loss and by the experience of a victory can be the same; having or not having results in exactly the same. Sometimes we feel that if we don’t have something, we will lose everything, even our lives. How many things do we have around us, on which we are totally dependent? “If I don’t have this or that, I’m lost,” like in ranchera songs. In Dharmakaya, there is no difference between all these things; Dharmakaya is the place where everything becomes one, it is the essence; to use the famous Dzogchen term: it is the “unique taste.” That “unique taste,” that unity, exists only in that space. It is about being able to experience the “unique taste” through energy and through appearance.
In practice, try to feel space; in this space, the entire universe is connected, in space we are connected with Dharmakaya, the essence, the root, and we do not pray to reach that place: we are that place, we are complete.
UNIFICATION OF THE THREE SPACES AND THE THREE LIGHTS
It is the place where we are, we are simply there and we do not try to do anything.
In meditation, we can have a rich experience, but the moment something distracts us or moves, we can no longer remain in it: that “unique taste” dissipates, it does not remain. When we have doubts, meditation becomes unstable.
As I explained, the only place where the “unique taste” can occur is in the space of essence; in appearance, perhaps the “unique taste” cannot occur because the forms are different. Sometimes we try to do something and it doesn’t work, and then we suffer a lot, but other times we say: “Well, it’s okay”; our ability to say that is what measures how much “unique taste” we have regarding that experience. If the unique taste is present, when you say “it’s okay,” you are not saying it because you are losing energy and feel tired and depressed, it is not giving up; you say it because you truly feel it, because it is truly okay. Perhaps you have once desired something you could not obtain and said “it’s okay”; if that “it’s okay” was real, it means you remained connected to the base, that there was “unique taste” there. When it takes you a while to say “well, it’s okay” and you say it because you have no other option, that is not very good: in that case, the “unique taste” is not present.
When you eat and have many dishes in front of you, they do not have the unique taste; if everything, from the appetizer to the dessert, had the same taste, you would not return to that restaurant; the food must always have that different and good taste. However, in relation to the person eating, it is good to have that “unique taste.”
We might then ask if, when everything has the same taste, we run the risk of becoming people who no longer care about anything, who have no goals or ambitions: “If everything has the same taste and if everything is impermanent, then why struggle? What should we do with our ordinary lives? How can we avoid the feeling of losing the joy of doing things? If I don’t have to cling to what makes me happy nor reject what makes me unhappy, then where is the joy of living? If everything is perfect in itself, why do I have to try to change it?”
In the face of all these questions, the answer is one: there is a difference between what is and what we perceive. Some of those questions refer to what is; others refer to our perception. As things are, they are fine, and in that sense, you do not have to change anything. However, you do not always perceive it that way, and then you feel that you have to go somewhere or do something to change it; you do all this for yourself. Sometimes you see a person and think: “This person has every reason to be happy; they have health, youth, wealth, beauty, love.” This person has all that, but is not happy. To realize that they have everything, that person would have to get rid of some of those things, part of their wealth; then, looking back, they would say: “Oh, life was so pleasant before! It was so beautiful when I was...!” In this way, they would realize, albeit a bit late, that they had everything to be happy; but even so, it is good to realize it.
When the “unique taste” is developed, it does not mean that everything becomes uniform. For example: when you have a good experience and a bad one, what makes them equal is their source, their base, their essence, not their appearance. In appearance, one is good, and the other, bad. When the connection with the source is there, the appearance does not have much effect: when I feel sad, I feel sad; yes, I feel sad, but I maintain the connection; it is not that I stop feeling sad, but it does not have a negative effect on me; rather, that sadness will make me grow, because the connection is accommodating that feeling. It is like being able to cry in the presence of a good friend; your friend is a good friend, so you feel confident and cry. The fact that you have a good friend will not make you stop crying; on the contrary, you cry more. And hopefully, at some point, you will stop crying.