PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Studstill: Cybernetic Approach to Dzogchen 357goalessness). The two concepts (the Real and the goal) are linked since thegoal is nothing other than experiencing or knowing the Real (also identifiedwith knowing one’s true nature). The identification of the Real as goalentails a specific way of interpreting any aspect of one’s perceptual, mental,and emotional life that manifests duality—since the Real is unconditionedUnity, all forms of duality represent separation from the Real. If one’s goalis to realize the Ground, the concepts, behaviors, attitudes, etc., thatsupport duality must be eradicated. The goal, then, establishes a context fordefining a “path”: the active cultivation of certain attitudes (i.e., “virtues”)and the performance of certain practices and behaviors that function todeconstruct the duality and separation that opposes experiencing the Real.Dzogchen’s assault on the cognitive system begins with its preliminarypractices, which initiate the process of deconditioning the mind of itsdualistic constructs. Calming and insight practices make the practitioneraware of the nature of ordinary mind—an essential achievement given (1)the difficulty of seeing beyond one’s ordinary, taken-for-granted perspectiveand (2) the necessity of a firsthand understanding of the problem toaffect a final solution. Through calming the meditator acquires somecapacity to still the mind, upsetting the constructive and homeostaticfunctions of the internal dialogue, while tantric practice redirects one’sattention from the abstract attitude of ordinary consciousness to an aestheticallyrich, symbolically-mediated experience of the immediacy ofReality. Dzogchen view and practice completes this destabilization processby undermining dualistic constructions inherent in the path itself.According to Dzogchen, the Buddha is one’s own mind, and recognizingthis mind requires only that one “effortlessly” reverse the direction ofall one’s ordinary cognitive and emotional tendencies and settle into theimmediacy of one’s experience here and now. The result is an automatic orspontaneous recognition of Reality. Dzogchen’s view functions to encouragethis settling in the here and now (when everything is the gzhi, there isnowhere to go). But understanding the transformative value of the viewdepends on some appreciation for the larger Buddhist context that Dzogchenpresupposes. Inherent in the concept of nirvå√a is the view of ultimacy asOther. The Mahåyåna approach, on the other hand, undermines thatOtherness (epitomized by Någårjuna’s statement that samsåra is nirvå√a).Dzogchen would seem to be an extension of the Mahåyåna approach,expressed in more cataphatic language (and without the rigorous analyticalmethod of Madhyamaka). The important point to recognize, however,is that this identification is not an attempt to reduce the Ultimate to the levelof the mundane. Rather, Otherness and Identity stand as two conceptuallyirreconcilable poles, and it is the tension between them that generates thetransformative potential of Dzogchen contemplation. The Ultimate as hereand now encourages a “non-straying” from immediate awareness, counteringall evaluative dualism and deconstructing conditional constructs of