' Fundamental emptiness '...

Thrangu Rinpoche:

"The tantra teachings were introduced into Tibet by Padmasambhava, but the sutra teachings were disseminated in Tibet primarily by Shantarakshita, who came before Padmasambhava and ordained the first monks in Tibet. The third Madhyamaka analysis of Shantarakshita is the examination of the essential quality, or intrinsic nature, in order to recognize its transcendence of conceptuality.

This method of Shantarakshita is the easiest way to understand fundamental emptiness. There is only one thing to understand:

"non-conceptuality". (A mind free of all concepts)

It is not necessary to approach the subject from many points of view; from this one perspective we can understand the emptiness of everything - the emptiness of mind, the emptiness of phenomena, the emptiness of the connection between mind and phenomena. In all contexts, emptiness can be understood from this one point of view. From this single perspective, emptiness can be understood in its totality without reference to the many different possible points of view.

Mipham Rinpoche, the great Nyingma scholar, when writing his commentary to The Ornament to the Middle Way said that Shantarakshita’s single point of view is like the thunderbolt of Indra which he could hurl to earth destroying whole cities."

My comment: We don't "create" a non-conceptual mind, nor do we suppress conceptualizing and concepts; rather the knowing eye of default rigpa awareness never has or had concepts or beliefs to become free of.

If the air in a room is heavily polluted with cigar smoke, the empty "space" of the room remains unpolluted. It's only at the level of air molecules that the pollution obtains.

Likewise the clear space of our awareness is untouched and unmodified by the mind's projections, concepts, thoughts and beliefs; yet it hosts all appearances including the mind's.

In Dzogchen we are "oriented" to the changeless, ever present, clear light space of rigpa awareness rather than to the level of mind's distractions.
When so "oriented"; the conceptualizing mind cease


-Jackson Peterson: Thrangu Rinpoche