Notes for Dzogchen: Ten Key Terms by Malcolm Smith
LESSON 1 - ChatGPT Assessment(s)
Readings
Lesson 1 — The Basis (gzhi)
What is the essence of the basis?
Self-originated pristine consciousness.
Your mind by its very nature is not intrinsically contaminated.
Everybody's basis is right now in this instant in a state of awakening.
It can't be otherwise.
If there was a possibility of delusion in the basis, the basis could be deluded.
Self-originated pristine consciousness can't be something which arises in a transient way because it wouldn't self originated.
The nature of our mind is empty (tongpa), clear (salwa), and cognizant (rigpa). These three are characteristic of self-originated pristine consciousness.
The basis and the path are nondual.
The basis is the buddhahood we are trying to understand.
Because the dharmata of the unfabricated basis cannot be nominally designated, it cannot be defined at all. Since nothing prevents samsara from being designated nirvana (or visa versa), that being the case all designations are nominal. Since any name can be designated, names are empty. That being the case, names are empty of names, designations empty of designations because there is no reason for names. Names are arbitrary.
Often it's said everything arises from the dharmadata and everything dissolves back into the dharmadatu. In reality that's not actually happening.
The basis, our self-originated pristine consciousness, doesn't actually produce anything. Everything we imagine to be generated comes from ignorance (to be discussed later).
Dharmata is present because it is not absent.
To say "emptiness is there" is just another nominal designation.
[The appearance of the world is a false appearance because what is real doesn't come and go.]
Tantra without syllables
Cho chock
The condition of appearances is dharmata.
Cites Garab Dorje's teachings and need for shamata. Only direct introduction.
- Know one's face
- Directly encounter
No object needed in Dzogchen.
Distinction between concentration and meditation.
- In Dzogchen you never, ever take anything as an object meditation.
- Naked dharmata
- Essence is pellucid
- Practicing virtue and non-virtue are not relevant in Dzogchen.
- Nothing can harm your primordial state nor improve or enhance.
- From the point of the view of basis samaya, mandalas are not necessary.
BASIS AND THE PATH ARE NON-DUAL.
On other Buddhist paths you are have the basis then you are either rejecting or transforming that basis **(which is not pure).
This vidya can remove both virtue and misdeeds.
In order for our merit to be indestructible or imperishable it has to free of The Three Wheels:
- There can't be anyone dedicating
- There can't be any dedication
- There can't be any object of dedication
Vajrasattva Mantra
Longchenpa -- primordial liberation
The Three Realms
Self-originated pristine consciousness is beyond the three kayas.
The kayas are path appearances.
The three kayas don't exist in the result because they exist in the basis.
They arise out of the basis.
Kunjed Gaylpo -- I am the teacher of the three kayas. They arrive out of the basis.
The king who creates everything.