PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

346Pacific Worldelse than in an individual’s body as experienced in the immediacy of itslived concreteness.” 150Being’s invariance extends to the world of phenomenal appearances.In Dzogchen texts, the sems (rooted in ignorance, duality and ego) is oftenidentified as the immediate cause of illusory phenomenal appearances.This “illusoriness,” however, does not mean that appearance is hallucination.Rather, ordinary appearances represent a fundamental misperceptionof Reality, especially the failure to recognize and experience the unbrokencontinuity between appearances and Ground. Dzogchen texts tend toassert that all phenomena are nothing but the gzhi. As Longchenpa puts it,“know everything thought or attended to be the substance of the unbornordering principle itself.” 151 Or, as the Kun byed rgyal po'i mdo states,“each individual [phenomena] is in some respect My nature, My identity,My person, My word, My mind.” 152 In other words, creation only“appears to be distinct from its origin.” 153 The “ontological ground” isboth “immanent and transcendent at once,” and “not essentially different”from its creations. 154Being, then, remains invariant both as an abiding presence immanentwithin all things and as the things themselves (the expressions of thatpresence). Even though Being has in some sense “gone astray” as mind andthe phenomenal world, It “has never parted from the vibrant dimension of[its] originary awareness mode”; what has been “built up” by mentation isstill considered “perfect and complete.” 155 Everything is, as Dzogchenteachers often express it, primordially pure and enlightened from thebeginning.Dzogchen PracticeDzogchen practice is a direct extension of its view. Since we, as well aseverything else, already are Being, to know Reality and attain buddhahoodis nothing other than being naturally and spontaneously present in a stateof “immediate awareness.” As Longchenpa advises, “Seek for the Buddhanowhere else than in … the pure fact of being aware right now.” 156 Thoughthe means of doing this may include the cultivation of specific types ofmental attitudes such as non-discrimination and non-attachment, generallyspeaking, Dzogchen “practice” is described as an effortless nonstriving,letting be, relaxing in the natural state, or even “doing nothing”(Tib. bya bral). Since one’s true nature is unfabricated and already perfect,“there is nothing to correct, or alter, or modify.” 157 And since the Groundis “spontaneously present from time immemorial,” there is no need to seekIt. 158 This implies the remarkable proposition that to do anything—such asa spiritual practice—is to stray from Reality. Why? Because seeking auto-