The Instruction Manual for the Ground of Trekcho

By Vajra Yogini

Revealed by Chokgyur Lingpa

NAMO GURU DEVA DAKINI

The master endowed with samaya

Should give a worthy disciple

This meditation instruction on the ground of cutting through, the natural state,

According to the secret practice of dzogchen.

The disciples should arrange feast tormas for the dakinis,

Offer a red torma to the treasure lords,

And gradually perform the preliminaries for the instruction.

The master should then give the following teaching:

Place your body in the sevenfold posture of Vairochana.

Let the nonarising nature of your mind — this empty and luminous awareness, this primordially pure and spontaneously present essence — remain in the state of the fourfold resting of body, speech, and mind.

Don’t pursue what has passed before,

Don’t invite what hasn’t occurred,

And don’t construct present cognizance.

The fourfold resting is:

Rest your body like a corpse in a charnel ground, without preference or fixed arrangement.

Rest your voice like a broken waterwheel, in a state of stillness.

Rest your eyes like a statue in a shrine room, without blinking, in a continuous, focused gaze.

Rest your mind like a sea free from waves, quietly in the unfabricated and spontaneously present state of the empty and luminous nature of awareness.

Let your mind rest, totally free from thought.

The earth outside, the stones, mountains, rocks, plants, trees, and forests do not truly exist.

The body inside does not truly exist.

This empty and luminous mind-nature also does not truly exist.

Although it does not truly exist, it cognizes everything.

Thus, to rest in the state of empty and luminous awareness is known as the ground of cutting through.

Now, do thoughts occur during this state of stillness?

Is there stillness while the thoughts occur?

There are thoughts during the state of stillness,

And there are four ways of cutting through them:

Like a cat waiting for a mouse,

Look directly into the essence of the thoughts.

Like a brahman threading a needle,

Keep awareness balanced and look into the essence of the thoughts.

Like a watchman in a watchtower,

Look into the thoughts within the state of undistracted awareness.

Like an arrow flying from an archer,

Look into the thoughts within the state of one-pointed awareness.

Now, as for mingling stillness and thinking:

Stillness is to rest quietly in the state of empty and luminous mind-nature.

From within that state a thought suddenly occurs.

By looking directly into it, it completely disappears in the continuity of this mind-nature.

This is called mingling stillness and thinking in the continuity of mind-nature.

May this meet with a worthy and destined person.

TREASURE SEAL. HIDDEN SEAL. CONCEALED SEAL.

PROFOUND SEAL. SAMAYA. SEAL SEAL SEAL. KHATHAM.

This is a second copy of the yellow parchment discovered by the kind Kunga Bum in the Crystal Cave of Drag.