Paltrul Rinpoche:
- 'Thoughts in the mind, the delusory perceptions of ignorance,
are pure within the expanse of dharrnakaya that is the wisdom of rigpa,
so within that expanse of uninterrupted clear light
whatever thoughts stir and arise are by their very nature empty.
So: “Leaving no trace, and innately pure. What joy !”
When you have become accustomed to integrating thoughts
into your path like this over a long period of time,
thoughts arise as meditation, the boundary between
stillness and movement falls away and as a result,
nothing that arises ever harms or disturbs your dwelling in awareness:
“The way things arise may be the same as before ”
'Patrul Rinpoche is saying that when you have mastered such experience, thoughts will still arise in all their variety, as they did before, but there is a vital difference— the way they are liberated'
Paltrul Rinpoche;
- 'At that juncture, the way that thoughts, the energy of
rigpa, arise as joy and sorrow; hope and fear, may be
similar as in an ordinary person, Yet with ordinary
people, their experience is a very solid one of suppressing
or indulging, with the result that they
accumulate karmic formations and fall prey to
attachment and aggression. On the other hand, for a
Dzogchen yogin, thoughts are liberated the moment they arise
At the beginning, arising thoughts are liberated upon being recognized, like meeting an old friend;
In the middle, thoughts are liberated by themselves, like a snake uncoiling its own knots;
At the end, arising thoughts are liberated without being of either benefit or harm, like a thief breaking into an empty house.
Mipham Rinpoche:
- 'Mere recognition is insufficient; you must develop its strength'
- The meditation state is when recognizing the state of rigpa, and lasts maybe one second, two seconds, or a little longer. When straying from that, it is called post-meditation. Many people they say, I spent half an hour, or one hour, in the meditation state, but this is not really true. What is true is that we spend 45 minutes or an hour training to be in the meditation state, but the genuine meditation state only lasts for a short while, once in a while.'- Pg 67
'Next, when saying meditation here, it means the training in that, which means to sustain its continuity, to sustain the continuity of the view [ngang skyong ba]We are not cultivating something through force or developing a thought which isn’t there, by catching hold of the view and then maintaining it. We are simply allowing the continuity of seeing the nature of mind to continue. At first it lasts for a second, then two
seconds, then three seconds, and so on.' - Pg 68
The impression given in this thread is that you like the ocean but dislike the waves.
If thoughts were to be shunned completely, the teachings on the grol lugs would serve no experiential or pedagogical value. The rigpa recognised on the path is not the fully ripened rigpa of the Fruition Kayas and this is why it can be said that for those on the path, thoughts are like 'food for emptiness'.
Karl Brunnholzl asks Thrangu Rinpoche;
- Q: Does such self-liberation assist one in gaining certainty in rigpa?
A: Yes, the two are like two sides of the the same coin - the more recognition the more self-liberation and vice versa: self-liberation is recognition and recognition expresses itself as self-liberation.
- 'Mere recognition is insufficient; you must develop its strength'