Free from mental constructions, it is called The Great Seal.
Free from extremes, it is called The Great Middle Way.
Because everything is complete here, it is also called The Great Completion.
May I gain the confidence that, in understanding one, I know them all.
Commentary
The prefix maha or great in the names of each of these contemplative
traditions indicates that these are all names for traditions of mystical practice. Mahamudra means The Great Seal—maha means great and mudra means seal. The Great Seal is emptiness. When you know emptiness, you know the nature of everything that arises in experience, and that knowing enables you to experience it without doing anything with it, without falling into reaction or being conditioned by it.
The Great Middle Way (Skt. Madhyamika) is one of the oldest teachings in
Buddhism, a path that is travelled by not falling into an extreme position:
monism vs. pluralism, for instance, or “Is the world one or many?” Other
extremes are order vs. chaos, existence vs. non-existence, form vs. emptiness,
asceticism vs. indulgence and so on. In the practice of the Middle Way, whatever arises, you experience it just as it is. This can only be done by not doing anything with it, and that brings us back to mahamudra.
The Great Completion is dzogchen, mahasańdhi in Sanskrit. In this approach,
the emphasis is on resting and opening, resting so deeply that you don’t do
anything with what arises in experience, and thus know each moment of
experience completely—all five aspects of timeless awareness present in each moment of experience, for instance.
Over the course of centuries, teachers in every generation have discussed the relative merits of different teachings. There are differences in methods, certainly. A wide range of methods is needed because no two practitioners are the same. All the different methods, however, have the same aim: to make it possible for the practitioner to rest in mind-nature and not react to or be consumed by the movements of mind that are experienced as thoughts, feelings, or sensations. For this to be possible, the practitioner needs to be confident in his or her practice.
As Rangjung Dorje wrote elsewhere1:
When you practice this over and over again, at some point, you see the nature of thoughts. Then you know directly that awareness has no ground or base. Attraction and attachment release themselves naturally, and habitual patterns subside on their own. This is “buddhahood”. This is what is meant by “one moment makes all the difference: in one moment, complete awakening”.
One day shortly after the three-year retreat ended, I went to Kalu Rinpoche
for instruction in dzogchen. I had asked for the instruction because, frankly, I
thought I might be missing something. Rinpoche picked up a piece of paper from a pile of pages in front of him and read a pointing-out instruction to me. “Sounds like mahamudra to me,” he said. He then picked up another piece of paper and read another instruction. “Hmmm, that sounds like mahamudra, too.” Another piece of paper elicited, “That sounds like dzogchen, no?” I was familiar with almost all the instructions from my studies during the three-year retreat, and began to say so. Rinpoche ignored me and continued to read, mahamudra, dzogchen, dzogchen, mahamudra, back and forth—for half an hour or more. Eventually he stopped, looked at me, and asked, “Do you understand?”
Do you?
- A translation of another version of this paragraph can be found on pg. 17 in Crystal Cave: a Compendium of Teachings by Masters of the Practice Lineage, translated by Erik Pema Kunsang, Rangjung Yeshe, Kathmandu, 1990 ↩︎