PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Studstill: Cybernetic Approach to Dzogchen 347matically imposes a condition on one’s experience, and therefore representsan inherent betrayal of the nature of Reality itself. According toDudjom Lingpa (he attributes the statement to Hungchenkara, heard invisionary experience), “to think of the goal as gaining freedom in someother place or realm … is to think that the pervasive, extensive panoramaof space is an object or agent of coming and going. What an extremelybewildered and deluded state of mind!” 159 Since one already is the Ground,“aiming at something” through an activity or practice is like “the sunlook[ing] for the light of the glow worm.” 160In general, the conditions inherent in structured contemplative practices—orin even trying to “look for” something—are considered a limitingand obscuring influence. 161 The immediacy of awareness is “beyond allmental constructs and fixation” 162 while structured contemplative practicessimply “feed … [the sems] with the mental discursiveness (rtog pa) forcreating its own delusion (’khrul ba) still further.” 163 As one early Dzogchensource puts it, “The activities of accumulation of merit, both physical andspiritual, the practice of contemplation, and purification of samsaric traces,all are a ‘fixing stake.’” 164 Being goal-oriented, such practices perpetuate adualistic frame of reference by specifying a “doer” on the way to somedestination; all promote the localization of consciousness within the“bounded domain” of egocentric mentation.Understanding what Dzogchen means by “letting be” or “doing nothing,”however, depends on understanding the mind in its ordinary condition(usually through some type of structured meditative or contemplativepractice). As discussed in part one above, experience is shaped by unconsciousand conscious beliefs that define an essentially conditional anddualistic relationship to life. In a subtle or not so subtle way, the backgroundassumption of every moment is that there is something, somewherebetter than the here and now. Driven by this assumption, theordinary mind tends to be engrossed in an internal narrative and abstractedout of the immediacy of felt sensation. The mind tends to grasp andidentify with passing thoughts and emotions in an almost frantic effort tocapture a “somewhere else” that corresponds with our concepts andconditions of acceptance, safety, and survival. In this way, the ordinarymind is a deeply habitualized and generally unconscious process of constant“dis-locating” from the present moment. In the terminology ofDzogchen, sems has “through its activities … obscured its own real nature(sems-nyid) from time immemorial.” 165This understanding of mind is the basis for appreciating the cognitiveand experiential significance of Dzogchen’s view and practice. The conceptof gzhi encourages a perspective on the world that stands in direct oppositionto the ordinary point of view and the dualistic concepts that supportthat view. Rather than the conditional “good” of ordinary experience, theGood as gzhi is unconditional, entailing that there is nowhere to go and