Yogacara, Dzogchen, Experience

[adinatha]

Is this really novel though? Hasn't Yogacara already covered this?

Nope. Yogacara accepts matter and mind conventionally as distinct and separate phenomena.

Samvrti means "hypocracy, obstructed, occluded" not "conventional." The Buddha never taught a shared consensus or linguistic reality. He certainly never taught an existent discrete material reality. The heart of the Buddha's teaching is the situation is not how it appears. One might take mind and matter to be separate phenomena. But a phenomena is a totally different notion than a fact. A phenomena is how something appears, not how it is in fact. The Buddha never taught a reality outside of phenomena. How things appear is how things appear to the mind only. For the yogi, facticity never goes beyond appearance. This is very well stated by the Buddha in the Third Turning Sutras and the Yogacara taught by Bhagavan. So there is no mind/matter dualism in the Sutrayana. For a yogi, consciousness is not a mere potential that emerges from matter. That is the classical western materialist and scientific view. Yogacara, sutras and tantras share the same view, that matter and consciousness are one thing, mind. The issue of vayu is the same. There is no wind apart from movement. There is not fire apart from heat. There is no earth apart from solidity or water from wetness. It is how these appear to the senses that makes them elements, not that they are the basic parts of matter. What makes it Yogacara is when in direct yogic perception you see what is most fundamental, pure awareness is at the base, and there are no phenomena there. In post-absorption, phenomena clearly emerge from consciousness and thereby appear in their true form as maya.

[Enochian]

I totally disagree that yogacara, sutras and tantras share the same view. Norbu explains somewhere why Dzogchen teachings differs from yogacara. I think maybe it was in Dzogchen Teachings.

[adinatha]

Atiyoga is the yoga of maya par exellence. Yogacara means the view that comes from the yogi's practice. Atiyoga is yoga. The differences between Sutra Yogacara and Ati is not view but method. In Yogacara you take the suchness of one skandha, like vedana, and don't get into the emptiness of the rest of skandhas or phenomena. This is also one way that the Sahaja Mahamudra practice is introduced. In Atiyoga, Sri Satguruji goes Pow! "Maya's this!" And then, without further investigation of the matter, an involuntary samadhi of the suchness of maya takes over, as if an ember were tossed into your scarecrow body and incinerates you from within. If the Buddha held back reality he would be guilty of stinginess; then, how could he have perfected generosity? Out of compassion, different methods were taught, because different strokes for different folks. But he never could have hid the ball; otherwise, how could he have perfected precepts? If he holds different views, how could he have perfected prajna? The Buddha always has one view, one taste of suchness. Main point. Direct yogic perception is the view that defeats doubts by the power of autonomic samadhis. So we're not talking about a point of view or an opinion. We are talking about your mind. It is beyond categories. Beyond is the meaning of Ati.

[Enochian]

Well Dzogchen has nothing to do with the mind, since mind is merely a vayu in the body. In fact I think Longchenpa says that the mind is an obscuration to omniscience.

Even Norbu says stuff like 'own's own nature' and avoids using the word mind.

On top of that Menngagde emphasises distinguishing rigpa and sems (mind) from each other.

Once you distinguish pristine rigpa from sems (mind), the view is like a elephant rushing to water, free from being bound by concepts, judgements, arguments or thoughts.

[adinatha]

Fine if you want to use that terminology go ahead. Then according to Yogacara you can call it "consciousness-only," and avoid the use of the word "mind." From the beginning, the Buddha taught purity and luminosity in consciousness. But Buddhism does not take the wind in the body to be a material object, or even any objective thing. Appearances are void-luminosity is what Ati reveals in direct perception of vidya. This terminology arises due to union of method and wisdom in Atiyoga. Togal makes use of pure channels and only the pure part of the afflicted ones. Here, you are separating afflicted mind from pure. You can say you are separating mind and nature of mind in the method of isolating void-luminosity. This is a preliminary, not the final realization. Ultimately all appearances are luminosity without regard to afflicted mind and nature of mind, because, then, everything is unafflicted. What is afflicted mind? Grasping a truth in appearance. What is luminosity? Everything is maya and no truth is grasped anywhere, where there is no bias for voidness or appearances and one is freely available to liberate other beings. Adibuddha is your timelessly present svabhava. Longchenpa also taught the essence of the three series in his Treasuries as one maya yoga. Truly Guru Prahevajra taught the "Three Vajra Verses" as one single method. What is a method anyway? It is a method to do what? To abolish you? To transform you? To liberate you? If you are already Adibuddha, what's there to liberate? You are pre-liberated. You simply must overcome your doubt. Method is only a doubt eraser. Is your doubt something you can point to? But your permanently luminous mind can be pointed out, and that is the ultimate method inseparable from the primal wisdom. Jai! Jai! Sri! Guru! Deva! Dakiniya!

[Malcolm]

Nope. Conventionally, Yogacara accepts matter and mind as distinct and separate phenomena.

Samvrti means "hypocracy, obstructed, occluded" not "conventional."

Vyavahāraḥ means conventional.

The Buddha never taught a shared consensus or linguistic reality. He certainly never taught an existent discrete material reality.

That's quite debatable.

The Buddha never taught a reality outside of phenomena.

Agreed, all phenomena are included in the six elements.

How things appear is how things appear to the mind only. For the yogi, facticity never goes beyond appearance. This is very well stated by the Buddha in the Third Turning Sutras and the Yogacara taught by Bhagavan. So there is no mind/matter dualism in the Sutrayana.

There is, at the conventional level.

For a yogi, consciousness is not a mere potential that emerges from matter. That is the classical western materialist and scientific view.

It is, in the same sense that scent emerges from a flower. For example, Sachen Kunga Nyingpo writes in his seminal Notes on the Ālaya "Mind and matter bear the same relationship as a scent and a flower."

Yogacara, sutras and tantras share the same view, that matter and consciousness are one thing, mind.

This may be true of sngags gsar ma, and certainly this is how Khyentse Wangchuck seeks to the resolve the issue (unsatisfactorily in my mind) in his commentary on the view of the inseparability of samsara and nirvana.

The issue of vayu is the same. There is no wind apart from movement. There is not fire apart from heat. There is no earth apart from solidity or water from wetness.

Agreed -- yet these are the basic constituents of the rūpaskandha, the aggregate of matter.

It is how these appear to the senses that makes them elements, not that they are the basic parts of matter.

Disagree. All material things possess these four qualities in some mix. Take notice, I am not arguing for these as ultimate realities.

What makes it Yogacara is when in direct yogic perception you see what is most fundamental, pure awareness is at the base, and there are no phenomena there. In post-absorption, phenomena clearly emerge from consciousness and thereby appear in their true form as maya.

Prior to analyzing phenomena as mind-only, mind and matter are conventionally regarded as a dualism even in Yogacara. Why, because the imputed nature is exactly the conventional world.

Also in standard Madhyamaka, on the conventional level mind and matter are regarded as distinct.

While the annutarayoga tantras move in the direction of dissolving the distinction between mind and matter, the substance dualism in Buddhism is only satisfactorily resolved in Dzogchen (but not by regarding all phenomena as mind-- which is a point of view rejected by Longchenpa incoherent).

In Dzogchen, mind and matter are regarded as seamlessly welded, not that mind has primacy over matter. Dzogchen texts even go so far as to reject the formless realm as truly formless.

This is why for example the Khandro Nyinthig states very clearly "Sometimes we say "citta", sometimes "vāyu",but the meaning is the same."Vāyu is just the element of air i.e. motility present in matter. This also accounts for rebirth. In the Guhyasamaja, for example, the ālayavijñāna is wedded to the mahāprāṇavāyu -- this union allows rebirth to happen.

Mind and matter are inseparable from a tantric point of view. Your view reduces the tantric view of mind and matter to the level of sūtra, in my opinion. I take the unpopular stance (according to standard Tibetan orthodoxy ala Sapan, et al) that the view of tantra regarding these kinds of issues is superior in every respect to that of sūtra, and Dzogchen even more so than tantra. The view and practice of tantra and Dzogchen has been crippled in Tibetan discourse by a need to justify everything according to sūtra.

N

[gregkavarnos]

Crippled by Sutra? If this doesn't start a bunfight nothing will!

[adinatha]

Vyavahāraḥ means conventional.

I'll need you to show me where the Buddha uses this language. I've never seen this in the Sutras.

Prior to analyzing phenomena as mind-only, mind and matter are conventionally regarded as a dualism even in Yogacara. Why, because the imputed nature is exactly the conventional world.

Perhaps in the Shastras, but you will not find this sort of analysis in the Tathagatagharba Sutras.

Also in standard Madhyamaka, on the conventional level mind and matter are regarded as distinct.

Perhaps by Nagarjuna. Madhyamaka negates existent externals.

While the annutarayoga tantras move in the direction of dissolving the distinction between mind and matter, the substance dualism in Buddhism is only satisfactorily resolved in Dzogchen (but not by regarding all phenomena as mind-- which is a point of view rejected by Longchenpa incoherent).

It is incoherent if you have a mind vs. nature of mind dualism view. But that is no where in the words of Bhagavan.

In Dzogchen, mind and matter are regarded as seamlessly welded, not that mind has primacy over matter. Dzogchen texts even go so far as to reject the formless realm as truly formless.

I never said primacy over matter. I'm saying the Buddha has always had this view of inseparability. But a yogi doesn't experience matter. Experience will always be in the domain of citt.

This is why for example the Khandro Nyinthig states very clearly "Sometimes we say "citta", sometimes "vāyu",but the meaning is the same."Vāyu is just the element of air i.e. motility present in matter. This also accounts for rebirth. In the Guhyasamaja, for example, the ālayavijñāna is wedded to the mahāprāṇavāyu -- this union allows rebirth to happen.

Sure that is how it is explained.

Mind and matter are inseparable from a tantric point of view. Your view reduces the tantric view of mind and matter to the level of sūtra, in my opinion. I take the unpopular stance (according to standard Tibetan orthodoxy ala Sapan, et al) that the view of tantra regarding these kinds of issues is superior in every respect to that of sūtra, and Dzogchen even more so than tantra. The view and practice of tantra and Dzogchen has been crippled in Tibetan discourse by a need to justify everything according to sūtra.

The explanation of tantra is more detailed and precise relative to its primary method which makes use of the body. That's not a view; that's a description of a method and its mechanics. That method is not more profound. It is more immediate. At the highest reaches of Ati, the guru points out, not a wind, not an explanation or mechanics, but an experience. Not an everyday conditional experience, but an unconditioned one, and then again, not a provisional one that must develop but a fully ripened one. At that point, all the teachings of the Buddha are one single teaching, all wheels are one wheel, and each wheel contains each other wheel. The guru is not pointing out a higher view than before, but a more immediate method than before for attaining the original Buddha's view right now. The Buddha himself never hid the ball. Sadhakas can't always look into the light all at once, so provisional methods are taught. To mistake a method and the explanation of that method for a view is not to see the forest for the trees. Or like holding to conventions as real, an obscuration.

[gregkavarnos]

Vyavahāraḥ means conventional.

I'll need you to show me where the Buddha uses this language. I've never seen this in the Sutras.

This "guy" is a scream!

[Malcolm]

Vyavahāraḥ means conventional.

I'll need you to show me where the Buddha uses this language. I've never seen this in the Sutras.

You have not been looking for it, this is why.

For example, the Samdhinirmocana sutra discusses conventions (vyavahāraḥ) extensively. Consult the Powers translation, Wisdom of the Buddha, and look up "conventions"in the index and you will find several discussions about what a convention is and how it is related to the three natures of yogacara, etc. This is apropo:

"Gunākara, if it is asked what the imputed characteristic of phenomena might be, [it is that] which is defined as a name or a symbol for the nature or feature of phenomena in order subsequently bestow a convention."

(see pg. 81 for Powers' rendering)

N

(no more book dancing for me today).

[Enochian]

This is all silly.

Once you distinguish pristine rigpa from sems (mind), the view becomes like a thirsty elephant running to water. There is no need to argue, judge etc.

All right and wrong views are self-liberated

[Malcolm]

This is all silly.

Once you distinguish pristine rigpa from sems (mind), the view becomes like a thirsty elephant running to water. There is no need to argue, judge etc.

All right and wrong views are self-liberated

These are nice slogans, but I am not certain you really know what they mean (since I don't know you, don't know who your teacher is, etc.).

[adinatha]

Vyavahāraḥ means conventional.

I'll need you to show me where the Buddha uses this language. I've never seen this in the Sutras.

You have not been looking for it, this is why.

For example, the Samdhinirmocana sutra discusses conventions (vyavahāraḥ) extensively. Consult the Powers translation, Wisdom of the Buddha, and look up "conventions"in the index and you will find several discussions about what a convention is and how it is related to the three natures of yogacara, etc. This is apropo:

"Gunākara, if it is asked what the imputed characteristic of phenomena might be, [it is that] which is defined as a name or a symbol for the nature or feature of phenomena in order subsequently bestow a convention."

(see pg. 81 for Powers' rendering)

N

(no more book dancing for me today).

"Son of good lineage, 'compounded' is a term designated
by the Teacher. This term designated by the Teacher is a
conventional expression arisen from mental construction.
Because a conventional expression arisen from mental construction
is a conventional expression of various mental
constructions, it is not established. Therefore, it is [said to be]
not compounded.

--Wisdom of Buddha

Okay so vyavahāraḥ is translated as conventional, but it has the meaning of artificial and fictitious, not a reality. A mere designation based on a mistake.

"When those sentient beings who do not have childish or
foolish natures, who have natures endowed with wisdom—
who recognize that these are grasses, twigs, pebbles, and
stones—hear and see these things, they think: 'This herd of elephants
that appears does not exist. These cavalry, chariots,
infantry, gems, pearls, lapis lazuli, conch-shells, crystal, coral,
wealth, grain, treasuries, and granaries that appear do not
exist. But, in regard to them there arises the perception of a
herd of elephants and the perception of the attributes of a
herd of elephants, the perception of wealth, grain, treasuries,
and granaries and the perception of their attributes. These
magical illusions exist.'

"Having thought, 'These visual deceptions exist,' they emphatically
apprehend and emphatically assert in accordance
with how they see and hear. Subsequently they do not make
the conventional designations: 'This is true, the other is false.'
They make conventional designations because they fully
know the object in this way. Later, they will not need to closely
examine these things

--Wisdom of Buddha

This gets to the crux. They exist as magical illusions. Artificial fictional words are blotched onto these deceptions. This is maya. A deception is not a reality at any level. Where is an illusory thing? Nowhere. Only in citt. What makes this more profound than a description of a method is that it relates to the ultimate teaching which is the yogi's direct experience of reality. Even if you want to say they exist at the conventional level, the conventional level the Buddha is talking about here is how things appear in perceptions. Again, citta, maya. What is the final appearance of Togal? Exhaustion of appearances. Of appearances. Maya yoga. The one vehicle.

How this relates to rebirth, because pinpointing in the anatomy where rebirth happens is hardly as profound and immediate as the direct experience of rebirth. A yogi doesn't experience a wind. A yogi experiences maya in his or her own mind. Why does rebirth happen? Because a mistake was just made, mistaking a perception of an appearance for a reality. That appearance was of "I" and "things." When a yogi knows maya yoga, at that moment, neither are reborn. This is the extremely supermost profound Ati. It is why for those yogis of highest acumen the appearances of Togal will immediately exhaust. Highest acumen as to what? Not grasping at appearances as real, even the spontaneous appearances of buddha mandalas.

From the ground of consciousness everything appears spontaneously like an explosion when hydrogen and oxygen touch, immediately releasing fire and water. This happens regardless of attachment. It is the nature of mind. At its base it is void. Bias to the void is what Sankyas, and hinyanas do. A bodhisattva is not bias, but has yet to stop clinging to spontaneous appearances as real. Adibuddha has no bias for appearances or void and also does not grasp at appearances as real. And because sentient beings are always popping up in this timeless primordial soup, there are always buddhas there too, present in their own minds. The buddhas in their minds are not reborn, the I in them is reborn. Every moment grasping repeats is rebirth. Every moment grasping doesn't is nirvana.

[adinatha]

This is all silly.

Once you distinguish pristine rigpa from sems (mind), the view becomes like a thirsty elephant running to water. There is no need to argue, judge etc.

All right and wrong views are self-liberated

That never stopped the Buddha from running his mouth.

[Enochian]

Adinatha,

Aren't you just saying something that is in every book by the Dalai Lama?

That there is a discrepency between every thoughtform and reality.

[Malcolm]

This gets to the crux. They exist as magical illusions. Artificial fictional words are blotched onto these deceptions. This is maya. A deception is not a reality at any level. Where is an illusory thing? Nowhere. Only in citt. What makes this more profound than a description of a method is that it relates to the ultimate teaching which is the yogi's direct experience of reality. Even if you want to say they exist at the conventional level, the conventional level the Buddha is talking about here is how things appear in perceptions. Again, citta, maya. What is the final appearance of Togal? Exhaustion of appearances. Of appearances. Maya yoga. The one vehicle.

I think you must be missing my point -- even in Yogachara, prior to analysis via the three natures, mind and matter are taken as conventionally real. They are also taken as separate and unique. The imputed nature is the triple realm and all external appearances.

How this relates to rebirth, because pinpointing in the anatomy where rebirth happens is hardly as profound and immediate as the direct experience of rebirth. A yogi doesn't experience a wind.

Maybe your yogis don't.

Anyway, your argument is a little mismatched to what I am talking about. I am not talking about ultimate truth.I am talking about the mechanisms described in Vajrayāna in general for how rebirth actually takes place. That requires, on a conventional level, that mind and matter must be inseparable. Cartesian dualism will not work in this instance.

You are reducing all of this to a sūtrayāna tenet system e.g. yogachara.

I don't happen to think Yogachara is very useful for understanding Dzogchen. That is my opinion.

N

[adinatha]

Adinatha,

Aren't you just saying something that is in every book by the Dalai Lama?

That there is a discrepency between every thoughtform and reality.

Actually I don't read much Dalai Lama. Again this is description. The Ati guru's pointing out direct perception is beyond explanations, and the samadhi is involuntary, without effort or examination.

[Malcolm]

Adinatha,

Aren't you just saying something that is in every book by the Dalai Lama?

That there is a discrepency between every thoughtform and reality.

Actually I don't read much Dalai Lama. Again this is description. The Ati guru's pointing out direct perception is beyond explanations, and the samadhi is involuntary, without effort or examination.

If you don't mind my asking, who is your teacher?

[Enochian]

Adinatha,

Aren't you just saying something that is in every book by the Dalai Lama?

That there is a discrepency between every thoughtform and reality.

Actually I don't read much Dalai Lama. Again this is description. The Ati guru's pointing out direct perception is beyond explanations, and the samadhi is involuntary, without effort or examination.

LOL you should read the Dalai Lama, because he says what you are saying in a much more succinct way.

That there are discrepancies between thoughtforms ("appearances") and reality.

[Josef]

Nothing significant to contribute but I just wanted to say that this is an excellent thread.
Keep it coming.