Dzogchen In Plain English

A Beginner's Guide To Self-Liberation

De: Zachary Perlman

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Pure from the very beginning, not made pure by anything. Spontaneously present, not manufactured by anyone. This, just as it is, is your own awareness.

Dzogchen, the great completeness, is the summit of the Nyingma tradition and the plainest teaching it has. Its root instruction is three sentences long. Garab Dorje left them as his final testament, and Patrul Rinpoche's commentary on them is the tradition's best loved short text. The literature that surrounds those three sentences is vast, technical, and written for people who already have a teacher standing beside them.

This book walks the path those three sentences describe, lesson by lesson, in language a modern reader can hear.

What You Will Practice

• The four thoughts that turn the mind, the special preliminaries, and guru yoga
• Rushen, which separates the ordinary mind from awareness by searching for the mind and failing to find it
• Posture, the open gaze, and resting in natural stillness
• Semdzin, the short techniques that settle the mind or cut the flow of thought
• The ground: essence, nature, and energy, primordial purity and spontaneous presence
• Telling rigpa from sem, which is the distinction the whole path turns on
• The three words: direct introduction, deciding upon one thing, and confidence in liberation
• Trekcho, cutting through, and the four ways of leaving things just as they are
• Carrying recognition into daily life, sleep, and dying
• The three meditative experiences, and the strayings that imitate realization

How Each Lesson Works

Twenty lessons across six modules. Each one gives you something to read, something to contemplate, and something to sit with, so that studying the path and walking it stay close together. A glossary of terms is included for the Tibetan vocabulary the tradition uses.

Who It Is For

For anyone drawn to look directly at their own experience. You do not need to be a Buddhist, to have taken any vow, or to belong to any lineage. It is meant to serve a beginner arranging a cushion and a longtime practitioner returning to first things alike.