The Fivefold Teaching of Dawa Gyaltsen

These Five Lines are the essence of a heart teaching by Dawa Gyeltsen, an eighth-century Bön meditation master. Dawa Gyeltsen was the twenty-fourth of a famous, unbroken lineage of masters of the dzogchen teachings of the Zhang Zhung Nyen Gyü, and his teaching is from a cycle of oral transmission of the Great Perfection known as Nyam Gyü Dzogchen Kyamug.

Like Authenticity of Open Awareness, Dawa Gyeltsen’s fivefold teaching helps to guide the mind toward the authentic experience of rigpa. Yet his instructions are less an exercise in intellectual discourse and more a doorway to actual experience. Reflecting on each of these five simple lines in succession can guide you directly to the essence, to the root of your self, to the clear and blissful experience that is the nature of mind.

In applying the fivefold teachings as a practice of the mind, you aim to recognize each of the five principles one after another.

VISION IS MIND

How do we follow Dawa Gyeltsen’s advice, which begins: “vision is mind”? Vision includes everything we perceive, but as an entrance to this exercise, I suggest you call up a vision that bothers you. You might begin with your “famous person,” also known as your “karmic friend” or “karmic guest”—the one person who seems as though he or she was put on this earth to create problems for you. Most of us have a famous person in our lives.

While sitting in meditation, invite this person into your awareness. Look deeply at your experience: what exactly is this famous person composed of? Look directly at the person’s character, at his or her energetic or emotional presence. Consider that at the time this person was born, he or she did not appear as you see him or her now. Also, consider that many other people know this person but do not share the same view you have of him or her. In fact, your own sense of identity is what has created this specific image.

In this moment, instead of focusing on the image as a substantial entity that is clearly separate from you and outside you, close your eyes, step back into yourself, and let the mental image come in. Reflect on the image and your experience.

This image is your vision. It is very much in you, in your mind. Perhaps you tend to feel self-protective, contracted, or agitated in the presence of this famous person. Feel this fully, not simply with your intellect. Sit with the image of your famous person and the resulting feelings and sensations until you recognize that this experience is in you, and conclude, “Vision is mind.”

MIND IS EMPTY

The next question is: what is this mind? Look at your mind. Look from the top of your head to the soles of your feet. Can you find anything solid? Can you find any permanent color, shape, or form that you can call your mind? If you look directly, you come to the conclusion that mind is empty. Some people reach this conclusion very quickly; others need to undertake an exhaustive search to discover this spontaneous awareness. But this is what mind is. Your clarity of understanding may become polluted in any given moment, but by continuing to observe directly, you can discover that mind itself is just clear and open. What began as the gross reality of your famous person is now clear and open. If this is not your experience, you are still grasping the image and your experience in some way. Just be. Relax into the experience. No matter what vision appears, it is always empty. Just as waves in the ocean always have the nature of water no matter how peaceful or violent they may appear, vision always has the nature of emptiness. The essence is always there. When you arrive at the experience of emptiness and vastness through the doorway of the famous person, it is possible to have quite a strong experience of emptiness.

EMPTINESS IS CLEAR LIGHT

Now we can ask ourselves: what is this emptiness? It can be scary to confront the nothingness that is the absence of self, to the point that some people may prefer their famous person to emptiness. But the experience of open space is essential since in order to clear the obstacle you have to clear the identity that creates the obstacle. There is an expression, “The sword of wisdom cuts both ways.” That is, the wisdom of emptiness cuts not only what is perceived but also the perceiver. Try not to be frightened by emptiness. Instead, remember that emptiness is clear light. It has light—the light of self-awareness. It is possible to feel this light in the absence of phenomena.

We tend to accumulate a lot of “stuff” in life: cars, furniture, appliances, books, knick-knacks, pets, and friends. We also collect opinions, emotions, and experiences. Every now and then we have a big yard sale to get rid of our old stuff. When we do, we may feel a certain lightness and relief at being free of it all. But very soon we become excited about all the new stuff we can accumulate to redecorate and fill the space that has opened up. In your meditation, when things clear, try to just be in the openness. Don’t focus on the absence of the stuff but discover the presence of the light in that space. The light is there.

I’m not saying it’s easy to recognize and connect with the light; your facility will depend on how caught up you are with appearances, including the image of your famous person. If you have more flexibility, when you look at the famous person and discover it is mind and then discover that mind is empty, the moment you see the space, you begin to clearly see the presence of clear light.

When you look for mind and don’t find anything, the dzogchen instruction is to “abide without distraction in that which has not been elaborated.” What has not been elaborated is that space, that openness. Abide there. Don’t do anything, don’t change anything, just allow. When you abide in that vast space without changing anything, your awareness of the emptiness is clear light. “Clear” refers to mind’s empty, spacious aspect, and “light” refers to its quality of self-awareness, or clarity.

The only reason you have a famous person is that you see yourself as disconnected from the clear experience of the vast, open space. Not recognizing the vast space, not being familiar with it, you experience visions. Not recognizing the visions as mind, you see them as solid and separate and “out there”—and not only out there, but as disturbances that create hassles for you.

One can say, “I have clarity about my direction in life.” Here, in emptiness, there is clarity as well, but it is not “clarity about something”; it is clarity in the sense of being. There is a clear experience of your essence, your existence, your being. That is the best kind of clarity. Through experiencing that clarity you overcome self-doubt.

CLEAR LIGHT IS UNION

Within this experience of vast emptiness, we now say to ourselves: clear light is union. Eastern spiritual traditions have many examples of two elements in inseparable union: yin and yang, male and female, wisdom and compassion, emptiness and clarity. If you try to look for clarity, you cannot find it—it becomes emptiness. If you abide in the emptiness, the emptiness becomes clarity. Clear light is union in the sense that these two are not separate. Clarity is simply the experience of emptiness. One cannot experience clarity without experiencing emptiness, and one cannot experience emptiness without experiencing clarity. These two are inseparable. Recognizing this is called union.

Because they are inseparable, no experience should have to affect our ability to remain open. Yet our experiences normally do affect our connection to openness because as soon as we encounter them, we become excited and attached or agitated, conflicted, or disturbed. When openness is unaffected by vision, when our experience spontaneously arises and does not obscure us, that is union: the inseparable quality of clear and light. We are free, we are connected. We are connected, we are free.

This combination is rare, whether in deep meditation or in everyday life. Often, if you are free, it means you are disconnected. If you say you’ll be free on Tuesday, that probably means you won’t be working that day— you’ll be disconnected from work. If you are working, then you are not free, you are stuck. The sense of union, the ability to see things, do things, and be with people while still feeling open and free is very important. That is what is meant by “clear light is union.”

UNION IS GREAT BLISS

If you recognize and experience this inseparable quality, then you can experience bliss. Union is great bliss. Why is there bliss? Because now you are released from that apparently solid obstacle or block that kept you from being deeply connected with your self. A strong experience of bliss spontaneously arises because nothing obscures you or separates you from your essence. You feel everything is complete just as it is.

You begin with the famous person and end with great bliss. What more could you ask for? This is the basis of the entire dzogchen view in five short lines. The entire process can be experienced in an instant—the moment you see your famous person, you can feel bliss. But sometimes we have to go through all the progressive stages. You must first understand the famous person as a vision, the vision as your mind, and that mind as empty. From there, emptiness is realized as clear light, clear light as union, and union as great bliss. Reaching this conclusion can take time.

One should also receive direct introduction to the nature of mind by a knowledgeable, experienced dzogchen master to ensure one does not practice with a mistaken view. But the fivefold instructions by Dawa Gyeltsen offer a clear map.

These five principles are a doorway to the nature of mind when applied as a formal daily practice, but they can also be recalled during difficult circumstances. You can remind yourself of them in any situation, in any given moment, and especially when the famous person is bothering you. Of course, when problems arise, there are likely to be many conventional solutions. But through this practice, there is the potential for more profound and lasting results.

At the beginning of a formal practice session, start by trusting with your heart and praying for a deep experience and the blessings of effortlessness. Perhaps you are feeling bad because you just lost a business deal; now, look at that sense of loss—it is a vision. Whether your vision is loss based, fear based, or greed based, you can look directly at your experience and be with that experience. You can realize that your vision is mind; then look at mind and discover that mind is empty. Even when you have a lot of problems, the essence of mind is always empty and clear. There is always the potential to connect with the essence of mind rather than with its confusion aspect.

I encourage you to follow this heart advice of Dawa Gyeltsen, to look directly into what is disturbing you and discover the nature of your mind. As you repeat this practice, the image of your famous person will not disturb you as much. Not only can you heal your day-to-day life and make it lighter and more pleasant, but through the profound simplicity of these five lines you can also recognize and connect with your innermost essence, the nature of your mind as Buddha.

~Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Yogas of Body, Speech, and Mind.