ATTITUDE TOWARD THE TEACHINGS AND TOWARD THE MASTER
When the disciple receives the teachings, first he listens, then he reflects, meditates, and experiences, and finally, he is liberated from the experience.
When you go to a retreat to receive teachings, what do you want? What are you looking for? Do you want to return home with many notes and recordings, photocopies, and other information, or do you want to leave with a qualitative change within you and in your life? I am not saying that obtaining information is bad; what I mean is that there must be a good balance between information and experience.
I have observed that many people go to retreats or seminars with the main objective, conscious or unconscious, of gathering information. That is not the true intention with which one should approach the teachings. The point is that you work with yourself and in relation to things that perhaps apparently have nothing to do with the specific topic of the retreat or with Buddhism, but that do have to do with your life. Perhaps receiving teachings can bring about a change in your life. On the other hand, it is important to learn and gather certain information.
THE DZOGCHEN TEACHINGS
When I was growing up, I learned in a very academic way. Imagine learning the Dharma* in university. In a retreat, I am the Master and you are the student; we practice; you hear the Dharma, but there are no exams; you leave with what you have obtained, and there is no type of evaluation. When I was in the Monastery, we learned like in any school and had exams. For example: when we studied a root text with its commentary, we had to memorize the root text, which consisted of 20 pages, and also the commentary, which could consist of two hundred pages. The root text covers the entire teaching from beginning to end, and when one reads the commentary line by line, one understands the text. When one is ready, one presents oneself before His Holiness the Abbot and the Lopon, prepares a good jug of tea, offers it to His Holiness, makes prostrations, gives him a khata, and tells him that one is ready, and then does the same with the Lopon. The next day, both meet in His Holiness's chambers, along with the geko, the monastery disciplinarian, who carries a rather long stick, which is not for hitting but is quite intimidating. One presents the texts to them, makes prostrations, sits down, and reads the text from the title to the colophon. I learned in that academic way, and I consider it important that you, as a student, learn the texts with all the details, but it is not necessary to collect them. Sometimes it bothers me to see students collecting texts as if they were information collectors; the point is to receive the teachings and connect with their essence.
What kind of person is suitable for receiving these teachings, and what kind of person is not? The unsuitable people are those who like to think all the time, who are dominated by their thoughts.
Sometimes we see people struggling with their heads; their hearts deeply desire to relax, but their heads do not allow it, and there is a real war between the heart and the head. The transmission of Dzogchen teachings does not suit people who are dominated by their heads. There is not only the mental, conceptual part; in addition, sufficient clarity is necessary.
It is necessary to understand the principle of the basis [kunzhi], the essence; the experience arising from the basis is that everything is equal, and this provides great flexibility. When there is not a strong connection with the basis, we are carried away by judgments: "it is right" or "it is wrong." People who are carried away by this duality are not suitable for receiving these teachings; nor are those who are very attached to specific facts, those who have certain very limited ideas about their lives, who are extremely closed-minded. I am referring to people who do not have an openness beyond what they can see, beyond the material things they can grasp, beyond what they can cling to: that does not go well with Dzogchen. The suitable person for receiving Dzogchen teachings is the opposite of all the above: an open, flexible person, not dominated by their thoughts, and who experiences devotion.
Now, how is this type of experiential transmission taught to suitable people? The teaching must be very concise, very clear, and very pure, so that it is not mixed with other types of explanations or thoughts. This also applies to the notes you take. When you write something, you are not necessarily writing what I say but what you hear; the words may be similar to what I say, but their meaning can be very different; therein lies a risk. To receive the teachings, it is necessary for you to be open and flexible and not to judge, filter, or nuance the experience through other thoughts or philosophies.
On the other hand, when the master is transmitting the teachings to the student, he is basing himself on his most essential experience and teaches from it; he does not say, "I believe," "I suppose," "I heard." What the master teaches is based on his own direct experience, not on conceptualizations.
Furthermore, it is necessary that neither the master nor the student be affected by emotions or circumstances; the teaching must be pure. For example, I may be teaching now, but if I didn't sleep well last night, I am teaching based on not sleeping well; or, on the other hand, if you heard snoring all night, or didn't like breakfast, you come with all this baggage to receive the teachings and are not clear to listen. If you do not come with clarity, nor does the master have it, the communication becomes something else, another type of experiential transmission: for example, the experiential transmission of breakfast.
The student must be prepared to receive the teachings. When you are prepared, the level at which the teachings are given and received is very different. There are some stories about the teachings according to which the master says only one word, for example, the syllable A, and in that syllable the entire teaching is contained. Or, his appearance in a dream may suffice. The point is that the capacity to receive teachings has to do with the authenticity or degree of preparation of the student.
One way to learn is to read, study, memorize. However, some masters of the Zhang Zhung Nyan Gyud* did not know how to read and yet achieved the "rainbow body." There is a story of a master who was reading a text in Tibetan, and sometimes he mispronounced it because he was from another region of Tibet; he realized this, so he asked his master for some teaching that did not require reading in Tibetan. Then the master gave him the introduction to Dzogchen. The master gave him that transmission because he saw that the disciple was prepared.
Regarding the disciple's lack of preparation, there is a metaphor expressed by the words Khabuc chab dol chen nó [Kha bub zhabs rdol dug can rnodl.
Khabuc nó means a vessel that is upside down. The student is like a jug, and the teaching is like nectar. The jug must be empty for the nectar to fit in it; and not only must it be empty; if it is inverted, that is an error: one can pour and pour nectar, and nothing remains inside, it all spills out.
Chab dol nó means that the jug is upright but has a hole; then one pours the nectar, and the next day there is nothing inside; no matter how much nectar is poured into the jug, nothing ever remains in it.
Chen nó means that the jug is in the correct position and has no hole, but it is not clean. When nectar is poured into it, it becomes contaminated, and that is not very good.
Listen, Reflect, Meditate, Experience, and Dissolve
When the disciple receives the teachings, first he listens, then he reflects, meditates, and experiences, and finally, he is liberated from the experience.
Listening: We often don't know how to listen; we are listening, but when we realize it, the teaching has already ended, and we remember nothing. Sometimes we don't listen precisely: what we hear is not even remotely close to what the teaching is. The level of listening you should have is that of a hunter searching for a deer; when he spots it, his breathing is careful; he walks slowly and cautiously and is very focused. Furthermore, it is necessary to listen with devotion and inspiration.
Reflecting and Understanding: Perhaps during a retreat, you don't have time to reflect on everything you hear there, but whenever you hear the Dharma, it is important to draw some conclusion and reflect on what you have heard. It is necessary to understand the meaning of the teaching. For example, can you say what rigpa means or what union means? First, you hear the definition, and then you understand the meaning. Once you have reflected on the meaning, you meditate on it.
Meditating: By meditating, we mean carrying out the practice by going to your deepest self.
Experiencing: As a result of meditation, you experience something within yourself. The experiences we can have are infinite. Generally, we say they bring blessings, clarity, emptiness. But do not try to understand what kind of experience yours is. Simply remain open to it, allow it to happen, because if you try to conceptualize it, you will only block it. So, be open to experiences, but do not let them influence you; simply try to continue experiencing with your attention.
Dissolving is detaching from the experience. In Dzogchen, the most important thing is to let go of the experience once it has been had.
Many academic problems arise between the first three points and the fourth: you listen well, you reflect well, but you don't have the experience; there is an enormous distance between them. This happens to many people, and it even happens in academic circles; it also happens in monasteries when one is studying to obtain the Geshe degree: it takes many years to learn all that information, and surely during those nine years of learning, one does not experience everything; but many people are not aware of this fact.
Regarding this learning process, there are several suitable metaphors. One refers to the words I say when I am teaching. I speak, and you listen: How do you listen to these words? If we put some glue on the wall and threw rice, it should stick there. What I say is the rice, and you are that wall with glue; this means that the moment I say things, they stick in your mind. The opposite would be like a dry wall: anything I throw bounces back to me, nothing sticks, and it shouldn't be that way. This is the metaphor regarding the listening part.
The second metaphor is related to meaning. I consider this system very important: word—meaning—experience—integration. This system consists of four stages, and the second is meaning. What you hear has a meaning, and it is necessary that you understand it. If you understand it, the experience will be like lighting a candle in the darkness. When you understand the teaching, it is like turning on a light bulb. When you don't understand, the same thing happens to you as to a blind person shown a piece of precious silk: the fact that the silk is shown does not light anything up for them. There was a person in the Dolanjí monastery who impressed me greatly: she had beautiful handwriting and wrote very fast; Yongdzin Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche* would teach something, and she would note it down. Then Yongdzin would ask, for example: "What are the five wisdoms?" and give explanations, and that person would keep writing; after a month, Yongdzin was talking about the exact same topic, and the person was still writing; she no longer remembered how many times she had written the explanation of the five wisdoms. This means she was writing but not listening. It is possible to write without understanding.
The transition from meaning to experience is like experiencing salt or lemon. When you experience lemon in a tortilla or in beer or in a dessert, you can clearly feel that different taste, and when the lemon is not there, you perceive its absence. It is not something you can doubt; you cannot doubt that taste: it is very clear when you try it. If you don't try it, you don't realize it. Another example is a child seeing a beautiful rainbow and not knowing what it really is; they know it is very beautiful, and they want to run to catch it because it is so beautiful. The same happens with those beautiful experiences in life that you want to grasp, or to which you want to cling, and at that very moment, you lose them. This is like my metaphor of taking a photograph of the rainbow: when people see a beautiful rainbow, they say, "The camera, where is the camera?" I say, don't look for the camera; if you have it with you, you'll want to take the photo, but perhaps you'll find that the camera has no film, or that the film is only black and white, or perhaps you'll see that you've already taken the last photo, or that you have no batteries, and by then the rainbow is gone. This is how we live our lives.
The biggest problem people face is related to this third point: they understand, but they cannot experience.
The fourth metaphor refers to integration. It is like an experience that cannot be traced, that leaves no trace. In a healing or purification practice, what are you purifying? Your karma, your karmic traces. These are traces that remain within you, like when you remove garlic from a cup and the smell stays in the cup: the trace is there.
One of the most beautiful texts of Dzogchen is "Cha tal je me" [Bya bral rjes med], which means "leaving no trace." It is being like a yogi who is beyond leaving a trace: every time we have an experience, we are liberated from it, and thus we are constantly free from our past and from these experiences.
In Dzogchen, it is very important to be free of these experiences. However, we love experiences. In the West, there is a strong tendency to cling to experiences and to recount them: "I saw this," "I felt that." While it is more common for people to understand without being able to experience, on the other hand, attachment to experiences is one of the greatest obstacles. When Tapihritsa* manifested to teach Nangzher Lodpo*, it was largely because one of the difficulties Nangzher Lodpo experienced was his strong attachment to experiences. When we lack clarity, it is very common for us to become victims of experiences. This implies a disconnection from the basis (kunzhi); when we are connected to the basis, experiences do not have so much importance.
The metaphor, then, is that the basis is free of these traces, just as when a bird flies from a rock: one sees no trace of the bird on the rock.
These four principles are very important for receiving the experiential transmission of Dzogchen teachings in a healthy and correct way. Likewise, it is important to open the heart with pure devotion and pray for help in understanding and experiencing the teachings.