The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

156 THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYINGunderstand this relationship can overlook and even disdain therelative aspects of spiritual practice and the karmic law ofcause and effect. However, those who truly seize the meaningof Dzogchen will have only a deeper respect for karma, aswell as a keener and more urgent appreciation of the need forpurification and for spiritual practice. This is because they willunderstand the vastness of what it is in them that has beenobscured, and so endeavor all the more fervently, and with analways fresh, natural discipline, to remove whatever standsbetween them and their true nature.The Dzogchen teachings are like a mirror that reflects theGround of our original nature with such a soaring and liberatingpurity, and such a stainless clarity, that we are inherentlysafeguarded from being imprisoned in any form of conceptuallyfabricated understanding, however subtle, or convincing,or seductive.What, then, for me is the wonder of Dzogchen? All of theteachings lead to enlightenment, but the uniqueness ofDzogchen is that even in the relative dimension of the teachings,the language of Dzogchen never stains the absolute withconcepts; it leaves the absolute unspoiled in its naked, dynamic,majestic simplicity, and yet still speaks of it to anyone of anopen mind in terms so graphic, so electric, that even before webecome enlightened, we are graced with the strongest possibleglimpse of the splendor of the awakened state.THE VIEWThe practical training of the Dzogchen Path is traditionally,and most simply, described in terms of View, Meditation, andAction. To see directly the absolute state, the Ground of ourbeing, is the View; the way of stabilizing that View and makingit an unbroken experience is Meditation; and integratingthe View into our entire reality, and life, is what is meant byAction.What then is the View? It is nothing less than seeing theactual state of things as they are; it is knowing that the truenature of mind is the true nature of everything; and it is realizingthat the true nature of our mind is the absolute truth.Dudjom Rinpoche says: "The View is the comprehension ofthe naked awareness, within which everything is contained:sensory perception and phenomenal existence, samsara andnirvana. This awareness has two aspects: 'emptiness' as theabsolute, and appearances or perception as the relative."