Dzogchen (Great Perfection) goes to the heart of our experience by investigating the relationship between mind and world and uncovering the great secret of mind's luminous nature. Weaving in personal stories and everyday examples, Pema Rigtsal leads the reader to see that all phenomena are the spontaneous display of mind, a magical illusion, and yet there is something shining in the midst of experience that is naturally pure and spacious. Not recognizing this natural great perfection is the root cause of suffering and self-centered clinging. After introducing us to this liberating view, Pema Rigtsal explains how it is stabilized and sustained in effortless meditation: without modifying anything, whatever thoughts of happiness or sorrow arise simply dissolve by themselves into the spaciousness of pure presence. The book is divided into chapters on the view, meditation as the path, conduct, the attainment, and the four bardos. Each chapter consists of mini-sections that can be read as stand-alone Dharma talks. Pema Rigtsal has studied and lived with several authentic Dzogchen masters and has surprising stories to tell about their unconventional methods to introduce students to the subtle view of Dzogchen.

Great Secret of Mind: Special Instructions on the Nonduality of Dzogchen, Tulku Pema Rigtsal, Keith Dowman (Translator), Snow Lion Publications, Paperback, 304 Pages, $24.95

Tulku Pema Rigstal Rinpoche, who comes from the lineage of Degyal Rinpoche of the Dudjom LIngpa tradition, received this Dzogchen teaching from the greatest Dzogchen masters of the twentieth century. In particular, he was taught and trained in the high remote mountains of Eastern Tibet by two most brilliant scholars and ascetic hermits, Khenpo Dawai Wozer of Rahor and Khenpo Choying Khyabdal of Horshul, of the Longchen Nyintig lineage as their heart-son for years.

Contents: The Great Secret of MIND: Special Instructions on the Nonduality of Dzogchen by Tulku Pema Rigstal
Foreword by Tulku Thondup Rinpoche	xi
About the Author by Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche	xv
Translator's Note	xvii
Translator's Introduction	xxiii
Introduction	1
The Great Secret of Mind
1. THE VIEW	15
1.1 The nature of the physical sorld	15
1.2 The difference between "insider" and "outsider" meditation	19
1.3 The fallacy of materialism: how the actuality contradicts our assumption that our happiness and sadness depend upon material things	20
1.4 The unreality of material things	21
1.5 All things are figments of the mind	25
1.6 How this body emerges from the karmically conditioned mind, and how we may anticipate the next life	26
1.7 Distinguishing between impure outer appearances and the pure nature of reality	29
1.8 All phenomena are unreal: all is just a delusive display of mind	33
1.9 The method of eliminating belief in concrete reality, the cause of suffering	37
1.10 The ways of establishing the unreal world as magical illusion in the different levels of approach	40
1.11 People ignorant of the illusory nature of their own unreal mind spin around in confusion	45
1.12 Pure presence itself is buddha	47
1.13 Illustrating the similarity of the world and magical illusion	51
1.14 The conviction that all is unreal accords with the sutras	53
1.15 An introduction to the secret of mind	56
1.16 The dualistic nature of the intellect illustrated in the question-answer method of the sutras	60
1.17 Reasonable proof that buddha-nature exists in our mindstream	65
1.18 When the natural perfection of mind is realized, there is no need to apply an appropriate antidote to each karmic impulse	71
1.19 Reconciliation of the view that the world is an empty, unreal, subjective delusion with the scientific viw that it is composed of atoms	72
1.20 Sickness and physical pain are relieved by making a habit of recognizing pure empty presence	75
1.21 Mind is the root of all experience	80
1.22 Knowing the whole world as figments of mind, undisturbed at the time of death, we are released in the bardo	81
1.23 The creative and fulfillment phases are complete and perfect in the space of basic empty presence	84
1.24 Why all beings are continuously bound in samsara	86
1.25 Delusion dissolves when we look at the essence of mind	89
1.26 The advantage of perceiving all things as mere conceptual labels	94
1.27 When pure presence is spontaneously recognized, its veils naturally dissolve	95
1.28 Creativity is necessarily release in pure presence	100
1.29 Samsara never existed except as mere creative visions	102
1.30 In unconditioned pure presence, all buddha-potential is spontaneously manifest	104
1.31 When we abide in unchangeable mind, there is enormous instant advantage	106
1.32 Uncontrolled emotion effects severe ecological damage	108
1.33 The Dzogchen process necessarily and naturally preserves the environment	109
1.34 Illustrating that all things arise out of the basis of mind	113
1.35 With a full understanding of the inseparability of appearances and emptiness, vision is naturally suffused by infinite purity	115
1.36 A finger pointing directly at pure presence	116
1.37 Reasons for the necessity to seek a rigzin-lama to introduce pure presence	120
1.38 The potential of pure being and primal awareness is already manifest in basic pure presence	126
1.39 Dispelling doubt about the unconditioned potentiality of pure presence	127
1.40 How to make the five poisons into the path itself	131
1.41 Until discursive thought dissolves in spaciousness, karmic repercussion must be considered	136
1.42 The benefits of hearing Dzogchen precepts	137
2. MEDITATION AS THE PATH	141
2.1 First, conviction in the view is essential	141
2.2 The reason for meditation	142
2.3 Disposition of meditation	143
2.4 Without meditation, even trivial events create severe suffering	147
2.5 Meditation removes the attachment that is the root of suffering	150
2.6 The cause of manifest suffering is hope and fear	152
2.7 A short explanation of how to sustain the primal awareness of intrinsic presence	155
2.8 The place of meditation	155
2.9 The disposition of the body	157
2.10 How to sustain pure presence in brief	158
2.11 How to sustain pure presence in general	158
2.12 The five faults that hinder concentration	159
2.13 The eight volitional antidotes to the five faults	160
2.14 In unitary shamata and vipasyana, the nine mental states and the five mystical experiences are correlated	161
2.15 The simple, quintessential disposition	165
2.16 The method of practicing the essential pure presence in sessions	166
2.17 The place of deviation into mystical experience	169
2.18 The distinction between mind and pure presence	176
2.19 The rigzin-lama's personal instruction inspires meditation	177
3. CONDUCT	181
3.1 An explanation of conduct	181
3.2 The sin of ignorance of the continuity of reflexively liberating thought	182
3.3 The preeminence of the mode of simultaneous arising and releasing of thought	183
3.4 Meditation experience arises naturally in the mindstream	185
3.5 When conduct consists of simultaneous arising and releasing, it is free of karma and its effects	186
3.6 A categorical assertion that Dzogchen transcends cause and effect	189
3.7 So long as dualistic perception obtains, heed karma and its effects	190
3.8 The evidence of the accomplishment of unchangeable self-beneficial pure presence is equanimity in the face of the eight worldly obsessions	195
3.9 The evidence of the accomplishment of unchangeable altruistic pure presence is spontaneous compassion and reliance on the laws of karma and their results	195
3.10 Practioners of the lower approaches are bound by strenuous effort	198
3.11 Conduct is characterized by the three modes of release	198
3.12 The perspectives of both sutra and tantra agree in rejecting gross emotivity	200
3.13 Infusing conduct with the six perfections	202
3.14 Addiction to wealth leads to suffering	205
3.15 Everyone, high and low, has been a slave to attachment	206
3.16 The stupidity of suicide	209
3.17 With detachment, the mere possession of wealth and fame does no harm	211
3.18 Others are served best by an unselfish mind	213
3.19 When we know objects of attachment as delusion, the five sensory pleasures do us no harm	215
3.20 Those with pure presence are labeled "buddha," while the ignorant are "sentient beings"	217
3.21 Three special features of intrinsic awareeness	218
3.22 Discursive thought necessarily dissolves into basic pure presence	219
3.23 Detachment from samsara, nirvana, and the path between them is the crux	221
3.24 "Hand-holding" instruction, in short	223
4. THE ATTAINMENT	227
4.1 The spontaneous manifestaion of buddha-potential in basic pure presence	227
4.2 Knowing the great perfection: buddha in one lifetime!	229
4.3 Contemporary stories of physical dissolution and liberation in a rainbow body	232
5. THE FOUR BARDOS	235
5.1 For those of middling acumen: instruction about liberation in the bardo	235
5.2 The bardo of life	236
5.3 The bardo of the process of dying	238
5.4 The actual practice in the bardo of the death process	240
5.5 Consciousness sublimation is among the five nonmeditation methods of attaining buddha	244
5.6 The bardo of reality	245
5.7 The bardo of becoming	247
Author's Colophon	253
Selected Glossary	255
Works Cited	257