' Transmission of Rigpa in Dzogchen '...

Namkhai Norbu said to me in 1986: “rigpa is that changeless awareness, present right now, in which thoughts appear and disappear. Whether thoughts are present or not makes no difference to your awareness in which they are appearing”..

A huge insight and shift occurred which freed the mind from trying to manage, reduce, transform, modify or eliminate all thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions, as though the awareness needed to be free of unwanted thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions. That clear and perfect space of rigpa cognizance suddenly “knew” itself freshly.

How could one “practice” being that in which all thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions appeared, since that was already, always happening? There is an infinitely empty, unchanging, aware space for all thoughts, emotions, sensations, perceptions and experiences to freely appear and disappear.

It was seen that rigpa awareness was always free and pure, as nothing ever altered it. I zealously spent the next two days trying to share this insight with everybody at the retreat. It was a huge shift in seeing.

An even deeper experience of rigpa occurred when engaging in Douglas Harding’s “Headless Way”.

The whole point is that it’s not whether thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions or negative mind states were present or not; rather its about being “that changeless, stationary emptiness” which is hosting thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions or minds states whether occurring or not. It’s like being a stable movie screen in a theater which never changes no matter what movies appear upon it, yet without the movie screen, movies have nowhere to appear.

However, the identity-making aspect of subconscious mental activity will generate a new delusion of egoic identity such like “oh, I see... ‘I am’ this unchanging empty space of awareness”. But that whole conceptual construct of believing oneself to be this “empty space of awareness”, is itself arising in the authentic identity-less hosting space of empty cognizance.

“If thoughts (emotions, sensations and perceptions) arise, or if no thoughts (emotions, sensations and perceptions) arise, that which remains equally present in either condition, is the pure presence of rigpa.”


- Garab Dorje