The Host and its Guests

Imagine your awareness to be like an unchanging, borderless, crystal sphere of pure Awareness. That’s the “host”.

Thoughts, identities, images, colors, sounds, flavors, odors, sensations, emotions, perceptions and experiences of every kind appear and disappear within that crystal clear sphere of pure Awareness. Those appearances are the “guests”.

You could also consider the “host” to be a tv, in which ALL the tv shows are the “guests”.

The first human Dzogchen teacher, Garab Dorje taught:

“That which is changelessly present and aware, equally during the presence of thoughts (and all experiences) and during the absence of thoughts (and all experiences), is rigpa. Rigpa or pure Awareness remains equally unchanged during both conditions.”

The state and nature of the “host” is what’s being “introduced” in Dzogchen. The nature of the appearances (guests) have no special importance or significance in Dzogchen, as they are not more than being like the ever-changing, and ungraspable reflections that appear and disappear in a crystal clear mirror.

You are rigpa, the “host” and are never a “guest” (an appearance).

Gaudapada, the founder of Advaita Vedanta, expressed:

“The turiya (Awareness, rigpa) does not enter the daytime waking state, does not enter dream state, and does not enter deep, dreamless sleep; it remains “untouched” (asparsa) by the presence or absence of the three states.”

These two teachers gave away the whole secret of their traditions (Dzogchen and Advaita) in these few lines.

Your current, simple, ordinary awareness, is exactly the rigpa and turiya being pointed out.

Since it remains untouched and unchanged during any experience of every kind, it is beyond “cause and effect”. Because it’s beyond “cause and effect”, it hasn’t a cause and can’t be caused or produced.

And something which has no caused beginning, cannot have an end, since it never “began”.

No practice can transform some thing or state “other than this”, into this. The “sudden teaching”, is the only possibility, since nothing can become “gradually” what it already is. Awareness is already awareness.

It’s like a quantum leap from an imaginary state of consciousness, to what’s Real; just like waking from a dream. The dream character doesn’t “transition” into the waking state. The reflection never becomes the mirror.

The reflection and the mirror are never in actual contact.

Your ordinary awareness, the awareness that is cognizant of these little black letters, is exactly this rigpa and turiya being pointed to.

It’s very simple:

There are only two factors, the pure Awareness (which you always are) and the “thought constructs” and perceptions (the guests) which appear in your changeless Awareness.

Awareness has no thoughts or personal history or identity; just like a mirror doesn’t come with its own reflections.

Because Awareness is immaterial it can’t be affected by brain injury, drugs, Alzheimers or death. All those are conditions referring to “guests”. Mind, brain, body, intellect and concepts are all the “guests”.

Differentiating the hosting Awareness from its guests is the Way of Primordial Liberation called Dzogchen.

Garab Dorje also instructed that the teaching of Dzogchen begins with the “direct introduction to rigpa awareness”, with no preparatory stages, no initiations, no samaya and no guru yoga.

Dzogchen master, Longchenpa wrote:

“In this case what makes perfect sense in the Ati (Dzogchen) approach is the superior realization whereby one directly experiences the unobstructed state in its nakedness, without relying on anything whatso­ever.”

“Since one does not experience separation from the essence of Awareness even for an instant, to say that it is realized or perceived is merely to use a conventional expression... “

“Awareness abides as the aspect which is aware under any and all circumstances, and so occurs naturally, without transition or change.”

Quotes from Longchenpa’s Choying Dzod.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ6nS-kkoyE&feature=youtu.be

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Rigveda, Mandala 10, Hymn 129

I. Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

II. Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

III. Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminate chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.

IV. Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.

V. Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder

VI. Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?

VII. He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

May I become a protector for those without one,
A guide for those who have entered the path;
May I become a bridge, a boat and a ship
For those who wish to cross over.
May I be an island for those who seek one
And a lamp for those needing light,
May I be a bed for all who wish to rest
And a servant for all who want a servant.

-A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life

The way of bodhicitta is the heroic path. The parallels with medieval knightly orders should be obvious.

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?

for dogbot

From a post I wrote in 2011:

“When it is realized, that you are this pure observingness, in each and every moment of experience, that simply knows/perceives events, and is forever unchanged in all changes.., then timeless freedom and perfection manifests in each moment. You aren't your body, you aren't your mind, you aren't your sense of historical identity, but you are that Awareness present along with all those Awareness generated arisings...”

This text ends with the sentence “……. with all those Awareness generated arisings …”

Much controversy surrounds this notion whether the mirror itself generates all the reflections appearing in it or whether the reflections are not generated by the Awareness (mirror) which merely perceives them.

Samkhya would say that all phenomena whether as mental or as sensorily perceived, are “other than” the unchanging Awareness which perceives them.

Mahamudra would say the appearances are merely inseparable waves of Awareness itself.

Dzogchen would say that all appearances (mental and physical) are the projected energies (tsal) of Awareness (rigpa), like the sun and and its own rays of light, and that Awareness is always individual.

Madhyamaka and Prasangika “Buddhist emptiness teachings” would say that both “mirror” (observer) and “reflections” (all mental and physical phenomena) are merely empty, fictional concepts.

Zen wouldn’t even offer or conceive of an explanation being possible, hence revealing the entire “problem of existence” to be resolved and the “self” burdened by the problem, are merely intellectual exercises in futility; hence “no serious engagement with thought, beliefs and concepts” is itself liberation.

Advaita would say that there is only Awareness, not two existents.

Kashmiri Shaivism would say that the mirror is Awareness (Shiva) and all mental and physical phenomena are its energetic expression (Shakti) and that the localized, samsaric individual IS Awareness (Shiva) as a limited contraction of itself due only to its OWN
self-limiting and self-defining fictional concepts believed.

Japanese Tendai teaching of Hongaku would say there is only the Absolute Buddha Nature ( Suchness); where the relative (nature, prakriti) is itself the ever-perfect Absolute Buddha Nature with no secondary or lesser derivatives. Hence no need for transformation, only insight that you are NOW (and always have been) the Absolute Buddha Nature AS already a living Buddha but appearing AS an “ordinary human in samsara”, is required.

Please share which “view” fits best for you and why or what other different perspective you may agree with and why.

"The mahayana brings greater vision and greater action. Heroism, celebration, and excitement are all solidly a part of it. . . . You begin to like your environment and, as egoless as you may be, you begin to like yourself. The appreciation of the world outside is called compassion, and the appreciation of yourself is called maitri. Unless those two are working together, it is a dead end."

Chogyam Trungpa