Basic Assumptions
Although the origins of Dzogchen are lost in a hoary past, it appears to have come to light in the cultural nexus of the valleys of the Hindu Kush in present Pakistan and the contiguous plateau of Western Tibet. This was in the seventh and eighth centuries when the culture of Zhangzhung dominated the area. Here shamanism, Hinduism and Buddhism were mixed, but we assume that the Indie religious ethos permeated the culture. Simplistically stated, the people of this culture believed that living...
Intrinsic Clarity As SuperOpenness
Gnosis, the essential reality of total presence, with a 360 degree perspective, free of quantitative bias, unsubstantiated by language or logic, unsigned, neither eternal nor temporal, subject to neither increase nor decrease, without directional movement or pulsation, immaculate in the immensity of immanent hyper-sameness, it is seamless openness unconfined by space and time. Gnosis as the nature of mind lacks any substance or attribute, so it has neither spatial nor temporal extension. Lying...
The Natural Spontaneity of Concentrated Absorption
Pure pleasure left alone in vajra-spaciousness gives uncultivated, spontaneous, hyper-concentration with the yogin settled in uncontrived sameness, it shines forth easily, a constant, like a river's strong current. Gnosis naturally contains concentrated absorption, which is like a great river's flow, and when the yogin or yogini rests in the complete uncontrived satisfaction of the natural state, he or she knows it intimately. I reveal nondual, self-sprung, pure pleasure, free from the extremes...
The Origins of the Text and its Structure
According to the Buddhist Dzogchen tradition, the root guru, adiguru, of Dzogchen, Garab Dorje, received the 1,084,000 verses of Dzogchen scriptural poetry from the visionary being Vajrasattva whose embodiment he was. Everything relevant to the Dzogchen view was exhaustively composed in those verses that Garab Dorje was heir to and nothing can be added to that the multitude of commentators' work simply represents the old truths in contemporary language and in an order appropriate to the needs...