An Excerpt on the Twenty-Four Masters of the Zhang Zhung Nyen Gyu

From Living Wisdom with H.H. Lungtok Tenpai Nyima Rinpoche

His Holiness the 33rd Menri TrizinBelow are two excerpts from teachings given by His Holiness Lungtok Tenpai Nyima Rinpoche at Serenity Ridge in 1999 during the annual summer retreat. These teachings were among those compiled from His Holiness's teachings at Serenity Ridge and edited in the book Living Wisdom. His Holiness gave teachings on the Twenty-Four Masters of the Zhang Zhung Nyen Gyu, a most important cycle of dzogchen teachings in the Tibetan Bon tradition. In the first excerpt His Holiness sets the stage, so to speak, for receiving the pith instructions of the masters, and the second excerpt is from his teachings on the 24th master, Dawa Gyaltsen.

The main teaching here is about the experiences of the masters of the Zhang Zhung Nyen Gyu. It begins with four different types of transmission. The first one is mental transmission. The second is oral transmission. The third is the experiential transmission, one yogi to another, related with signs and symbols. The fourth is the transmission with words or explanations.

The blessings of the master to the student are understood in four different ways, ceaseless like the earth, profound like the ocean, spacious like the sky, and immeasurable like the sunlight. The teachings were transmitted in four different ways with a lot of blessings.

Originally, you were not to write these teachings down on paper. In the early times, transmission was mind-to-mind, direct. Later, transmission occurred through signs, symbols, and gestures, not constructed conceptual frameworks. Still later, transmission was through communication that was spoken. As all these teachings came down, they were finally written down as the cream, the pith instructions, of all the masters who were practicing. These teachings are not conceptual. This is the essence. We are fortunate to have connection and access to these teachings.

In this excerpt, His Holiness introduces Dawa Gyaltsen, whom many of you may be familiar with from Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's retreats, teachings and books over many years.

Dawa Gyaltsen, the last of the 24 masters, also taught five main points of introduction to Nangzher Lopo, who was the main student of Tapihritsa. [Tapihritsa was the 25th in the oral lineage of dzogchen masters who achieved the rainbow body. He was the first master to allow his student, Nangzher Lopo, to write down his teachings for the benefit of future generations.]

While in retreat in the western part of Tibet, Dawa Gyaltsen spoke of five points of introduction: vision is mind; mind is empty; emptiness is clear light; clear light is union; union is great bliss.

Vision is Mind

All external appearances, like one's own experience of the six senses, arise, stay, and liberate. Whatever arises in our mind is completely related with vision. Everything is a manifestation of our mind.

Understanding that every vision is mind, one realizes that one's own mind or self is completely empty but clearly present. The same applies to everything outside. I see and hear and smell, but everything is empty, vivid, and clear. If you understand, that is vision is mind. You understand emptiness as rootless.

The experiencer of the discomfort and suffering is the mind. All the deluded experiences and psychologically getting disturbed happen within that mental consciousness. There is no entity called mind separate from these visions. Look at your mind; look at what it is. It is always related with something. There is no independent entity. The world is projected out there, and there is nothing in here, either.

Everything we experience is our mind's relation to vision. The first point is to understand appearance as mind. When we meditate, our senses are open. You cannot close your ears. Whatever you are exposed to with the senses, closely listen, see, or feel so there is no separation. That is a good beginning to say appearances are mind. Look at colors. Come to the state where what you see is not separate from yourself. That is the first among five instructions.

(Living Wisdom, edited by Vickie Walter and published by Sacred Sky Press in 2019. You can find it in the Ligmincha Store.)