Thank you Ralph (-;

In sutric Buddhism, it is taught that the ordinary person cannot know emptiness through direct perception, but must rely on inferential cognition. There is a great deal of discussion both historically and currently in sutric traditions regarding how to employ inferential cognition and reason toward the recognition of emptiness, but little about recognition of the nature of mind through the senses. In sutra, only the yogi who has attained the third path, the path of seeing, has yogic direct perception of emptiness, at which time he or she is no longer categorized as an ordinary being.

Dzogchen has a different view. The teachings tell us that not only can the emptiness and clarity of the nature of mind be directly apprehended through the senses, but that it is easier and more valid to use the senses in this spiritual task than to use the conceptual mind. The senses are the immediate gates of direct perception, which, before it is seized by the conceptual mind, is very close to pure awareness. Some sutric commentaries criticize Dzogchen, saying that Dzogchen practitioners are too caught up in visions of light and so on, visions that even ordinary beings can have. But this is as it should be; the nature of mind that we are recognizing exists in all beings.

Often, relying on the intellect for understanding, we become satisfied with concepts. We can be conditioned to assume, upon hearing certain words, that we understand what is meant without ever having had direct experience of what the word indicates. Instead of relying on direct apprehension of the truth behind the concept, we consult the conceptual models we have constructed of that which we wish to understand. This makes it easy to stay lost in the moving mind; it is mistaking the map for the territory, or the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. While we may end up with an impressive description of the truth, we also end up not living in that truth.

The nature of the mind can be experienced through the eye sense consciousness, the ear sense consciousness, the nose sense consciousness, and so on. We see through the eye, but our eye is not seeing. We hear through the ear, but the ear is not hearing. In the same way, the nature of the mind can be experienced through the eye sense consciousness, but it is not the eye sense consciousness that is experiencing.

It is similar with all direct perceptions. The form that is received by the eye sense consciousness and the form that the conceptual mind thinks that the eye sense consciousness has perceived are different. The form that is apprehended directly by the eye sense consciousness is closer to fundamental reality than the modeling of that perception, which takes place in the conceptual mind. The conceptual mind is incapable of direct perception; it recognizes things only through projected mental images and through language, which is itself inferential.

For example, eye sense consciousness sees the phenomena that we call “table.” What it perceives is not a “table,” but a vivid, sensory experience of light and color. The conceptual mind does not directly perceive the raw and

vital phenomena that make up the experience of the eye sense consciousness. Instead it creates a mental image of what the eye consciousness experiences. It claims that it is seeing the table but what it sees is a mental image of the table. This is the critical point where conceptual mind and direct perception differ. When the eye is closed, the “table” can no longer be directly perceived, and that set of phenomena is no longer part of the experience of the immediate sensory present, but the conceptual mind can still project an image of the table, which will not be the same as the directly perceived phenomena. The conceptual mind does not need to stay oriented in the sensual present, but can exist in its own fabrications.

This capacity of the conceptual mind to model direct experience, though of inestimable value to us as humans, is the cause of one of the most insistent obstacles in practice. Before and after direct experience of the nature of mind, the conventional mind attempts to conceptualize the experience. Just as the experience of rigpa is, in the beginning, obscured by forms, thoughts, and a dualistic relationship to the phenomena of experience, so the conceptualization of rigpa becomes a barrier. We can then think we know the nature of mind when we are only experiencing a relationship to a concept.

This is not to say that direct sensory experience is itself the nature of mind. Even with very raw perception we tend to be subtly identified with a perceiving subject, and the experience remains dualistic. But in the very first moment of contact between awareness and the object of the senses, the naked nature of mind is there. For instance, when we are sharply surprised, there is a moment when all our senses are open; we have not identified ourselves as the experiencer or the experience. Normally that moment is a kind of unconsciousness, because the gross moving mind with which we identify has, just for that moment, been shocked into stillness. But if we remain in the awareness of that moment, there is neither perceiver nor perceived, only pure perception: no thought, no mental process, no reaction on the part of a subject to the stimulus of an object. There is only open, non-dual awareness. That is the nature of the mind. That is rigpa.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

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