The coalescing of transcendence and immanence we see depicted in our Dzogchen commentaries has wider ramifications for the structure of the spiritual path, which would normally be conceived of as a roadmap leading from ‘here’ to ‘there’,1 culminating in the standstill of a pre-established goal.2 Once the ideal of completeness and perfection is identified as the very ground (gzhi) of the meditator’s being,3 or as her integral identity,4 the individual stages of the path collapse into each other and are swiftly traversed, without it being necessary to tread them separately, since the entire universe of appearance-existence (snang srid) is pervaded by the primordial continuity of the enlightened mind.5 There seems to be here an uncanny resemblance to Ibn ʿArabī’s (1165–1240) idea of a station of no station, according to which any fixation on a particular station is a dead end, the highest station being beyond the high-low polarity.6 While there is thus no need to strive through a series of distinct stages, the notion of a path still applies, we are told, for it is a process which culminates in greater genuineness.7 The implication is that the path in Dzogchen is not about getting from ‘here’ to ‘there’ but is rather a process of unfoldment where an innate ground of perfection spirals open.8 The limitations preventing this ground from unfurling are dissolved in their own innate potential for release. Such a spiralic notion of the path, on examination, entails combining directional hierarchies, which are imagined in the relative terms of space and time and enable moral and intellectual distinctions (= the stages on the path), with a more fundamental sense of absolute equality and identity, which prevents the hierarchies from being solidified into too rigid a system.9
These ideas, which are the hallmark of a disclosive paradigm of goal-realization,10 are succinctly expressed in the Inlaid Jewel of Bliss Commentary through the image of the sacred padlock of the awakened mind, wherein wisdom is full yet beyond any indication.11 This image hints at the paradox that wisdom is both already fully present and beyond the reach of verbal and conceptual pointers. That it is, in some sense at least, inaccessible, can be seen from the metaphor of the padlock (sgo lcags). However, this does suggest that it manifests once the padlock has been opened. As mentioned above, one of the peculiarities of religious and particularly of mystical communication is the tendency to play with the possibilities afforded by presence and absence in a game where in every act of disclosure the referent (here, ‘wisdom’) must in principle already be at a remove, always remaining inexpressible and non-communicable.12 The avowed point is to constantly lead thought onwards beyond its own complacency in referential reification,13 gently confounding it until it breaks down at the threshold of its own nothingness.14
The image of the padlock is also interesting in that it suggests a process of unlocking an inner potential. The potential that is unlocked, wisdom, is described in the Piercing Awl Commentary as self-originated and is compared to a blazing wish-granting gem, which fulfils all its possessor’s desires. Its completeness is said to be uncompounded (’dus ma byas; Skt. asaṃskṛta), which is to say it is not made, being independent of any conditioned efforts to achieve it; specifically, its clarity neither wanes nor waxes, and there is nothing that needs to be picked out in order to improve its inherent completeness.15 The consequence is that self-originated wisdom is totally autonomous, without needing to rely on any external support.16 Hence, the Inlaid Jewel of Bliss Commentary advises that in order to gain realization one should examine the bliss which is primordially present within.17 In these and many other instances, the meditator is invited to turn inwards to discover a state of perfection and completeness that has always been there, yet simultaneously this sense of inwardness is set apart from any dichotomy separating the outer and inner spheres18—in other words, it is an inwardness in which ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ lose their meaning and fuse into an all-encompassing whole.
It is interesting to note the way in which spatial metaphors, derived from the encounter of the human body with its lived environment, shape our thinking and discourse regarding abstract notions, as here the related ideas of a spiritual path and its destination. See Slingerland 2003: 21, 23.
Guenther 1989: 82.
Esler 2018: 291, 641–642.
DPG 308.3.
DPG 320.1–2: sa ma bgrod par non pas dus shin tu myur ba’o/ /sa gang zhe na/ dbyings dang snang srid thams cad kun/ /ye nas rgyun gyi byang chub sems/.
Sells 1994: 104–105.
TBG 187.5.
Guenther 1989: 2, 85.
Sells 1994: 213.
Higgins 2013: 27–30; Esler 2017: 175.
DPG 306.6–307.1.
Krech 2021: 69, 143.
Sells 1994: 7.
Certeau 1982: 204–205.
DZG 383.2–3.
DZG 391.2–3.
DPG 306.4.
DZG 384.3, 389.1.