Simply Being

 

Dzogchen: the path of being right here

The purpose of the Simply Being website is to make freely available the fundamental teachings of Dzogchen and Tantra as transmitted in the Khordong lineage of the Nyingma or Ancient School of Tibetan Buddhism. Simply Being is the ground or basis of every occurrence; it is the unchanging awareness which reveals the ever-changing play of experience. This is dzogchen, the wholeness and completion within which we live. Dzogchen teachings recall us to this open purity which we have never left, yet habitually disregard.

Dzogchen teachings, the heart of the primordial buddha Samantabhadra, have been present in our world for many thousands of years, passed on in unbroken lineages in Tibet, and now spreading out in the world. The term ‘Dzogchen’ indicates the ‘Great Completion’. ‘Complete’ means without lack or excess which indicates that nothing needs to be done — it is as it is, and that is enough. What is complete? Our own intrinsic being.

How we actually are, however, is hidden from us by the partiality of our attention. We tend to focus on I/me/myself as someone who exists with specific qualities and entitlements within an ever-changing experiential field of possibilities. Our starting point is the fact of our inherent existence as someone, a someone who is different from everybody else. This unique essence of ‘me-ness’ seems to be apart from everything else. I am ‘me’ because I am not you — being ‘me’ is my exclusive defining state; only I am included in ‘me’.

With this as my basis I seek to obtain more of what I like and what supports me, and to avoid or limit what I do not like and what diminishes me. Given the ever-shifting patterning of the world we encounter, our need to survive and thrive keeps us busy managing our relation with events.

The view of Dzogchen offers a very different vision of our lived situation. Instead of starting with the assumption that ‘I exist as someone’, we relax our striving to hold onto our current version of ourselves, our imagined basis. We this we can rest in awareness of our actual basis, which is our presence within unborn openness. This presence is itself ungraspable as something. It is not an entity and not a possession. Our ungraspable openness is our direct non-dual awareness of our actual ground, the primordial purity which is undefended, unlimited, and the basis of all experience. Within this open presence there is the luminosity or lucidity of the ungraspable effortless display self-arising and self-vanishing. All occurrence is freely available as direct experience. However under the power of the delusion of duality we are easily misled by the hope that there are entities which can be grasped.

The teachings help us to see how the luminosity of becoming manifests as the illusory apparition of our appearance in the world of appearances. Meditation reveals this delusion for what it is and awakens us to our primordial integration. As this shines forth all the accumulations of tension, anxiety and assumptions that bind and restrict us are released without effort.

In this way each moment is open, effortless and unique. Each moment is our presence with all that is currently occurring. This is the undivided Great Completion free of all splitting and reification. This is our actuality. Yet it is obscured for us by our own self-referential beliefs and interpretations.

Thus the path of Dzogchen is not a path leading to somewhere else. It is the path of being right here, right on the point of emergence which is the ever-open here and now.

It is our hope that the teachings and texts available on this website will encourage you to strive less and relax in the always already present Great Completion that you are intrinsically within.

Photos

Various people have shared their photos to be used on the website. This includes Andrea Pieper, Chimed Jansen, Jan Szlagowski, Krishna, Marja Shramko, Marlis Scholz and Robbie Terris.