Dzogchen has two quintessential principles: primordial purity and spontaneous presence. Primordial purity is the empty aspect and spontaneous presence is the experiencing aspect. These are an original unity. When training in development stage and completion stage, we train in manifesting as a pure form, which is already the case. This is the basic situation of everything, how it really is. Reality is already the unity of male and female buddhas, in the sense of the indivisibility of primordial purity and spontaneous presence. The whole mandala with the deity is a display of primordial purity indivisible from spontaneous presence.
This indivisible unity also appears as the deities in the bardo. Likewise, the deities in Tögal practice are the unity of primordial purity and spontaneous presence. In these two instances, the mandala of the deities of your own body arise, or manifest, like rainbows in the sky. These deities are five-colored lights, as a sign of the indivisibility of primordial purity and spontaneous presence. In both cases, these things are as they are; you don’t need to think that what isn’t, is. Your own deities appear to you.
From the perspective of the manifest aspect of buddha-nature, the deities can be said to abide in our body. These deities of the development stage do appear to us in the bardo and in Tögal practice. Our own deities manifest to us. In terms of the essence of our mind, nonexistence is primordial purity; existence is spontaneous presence. Our essence is the unity of existence and nonexistence. The deities are the experienced aspect; this is how things are. This is the preciousness of development stage; it is not an unimportant point.
If, in the state of primordial purity, there were no aspect of experiencing spontaneous presence, nothing would happen. However, this is not the case, because these two, primordial purity and spontaneous presence, are a unity. Primordial purity means the “absence,” no concrete thing, the empty quality, whereas spontaneous presence means the “presence.” It is not a case of having “only absence” or “only presence;” they are indivisible. The primordial indivisibility of absence and presence is a very good example. Experience and emptiness are a unity. The experiencing aspect is development, and the empty aspect is completion. The rainbow in the sky is not tangible, but it’s still visible. There is no “thing,” and yet there is something. That is a very good example. Also, rainbows only appear in the sky. You don’t have rainbows in wood or in stone, and so on.
All phenomena are the unity of existence and nonexistence. Primordial purity and spontaneous presence are a unity. The kayas and wisdoms are a unity. There is a quote that goes, “All the scriptures say that everything is empty, but the fact that our nature is not empty of the kayas and wisdoms, that is the real tradition of the Buddha.” This is how it really is. In the second turning of the wheel of dharma, the Buddha said that everything, from the aggregate of form all the way up to and including omniscient enlightenment, is empty and devoid of self-entity. Of course that is correct, but it is not the full truth; that statement emphasizes the empty quality. Liberation is only possible through realizing the basic unity of emptiness and experience. Like space, the empty aspect cannot get liberated.
All phenomena are the unity of experience and emptiness. Without the experience aspect, the kayas and wisdoms would be hidden and would never manifest. Kayas and wisdoms are very important principles. It is said, “If the kayas and wisdoms are empty, there is no fruition.” If the state of fruition is empty, it is just like space, which is called “nothing whatsoever.” Just like space means there’s “nothing to understand, nothing there.” Think about this. Everything is of course empty, but not empty of the kayas and wisdoms, in the sense that they are nonexistent or absent. If the kayas and wisdoms were absent, there would be no twenty-five attributes of fruition. If they were absent, how could there be five kayas, five types of speech, five wisdoms, five qualities, and five activities? The twenty-five attributes of fruition are not some kind of concrete material substance. There is ground, path, and fruition—not only ground and path. If everything were empty, there wouldn’t be the two kayas of dharmakaya and rupakaya. The dharmakaya—free from constructs, like space—is defined as “dissolved yet unobscured.” Dissolved here means “totally free of all disturbing emotions.” At the same time, wisdom, meaning “original wakefulness,” is unobscured. That is the meaning of dissolved yet unobscured. This is also called the “dharmakaya of basic brilliance.” Dharmakaya is not empty or devoid of a cognizant quality.
Furthermore, in terms of experience, dharmakaya is primordially the unity of experience and emptiness. Primordial purity is the empty aspect, while spontaneous presence is the experience aspect. These two are a unity. That is why we say that the kayas and wisdoms are a unity. Dharmakaya is a body of space, free from constructs. Sambhogakaya is a body like a rainbow. The five buddhas of the five families are called the “bodies of the wisdoms of distinguished characteristics”—white, red, yellow, green, and blue, the five lights.
Once again, first there are two kayas: dharmakaya and rupakaya. The rupakaya consists of two types: the sambhogakaya, which is of rainbow light, and the nirmanakaya, which is a material body of flesh and blood possessing the six elements.
If we claim everything is empty, then who would there be to know that? There wouldn’t be anything. There would be no wisdom, no original wakefulness. The wakefulness knowing the original nature is a type of knowing that does not depend on an object. Thought, on the other hand, cannot stir without depending upon an object. When you say original wakefulness, (yeshe,) or wisdom, by definition it signifies “a knowing that has no object.” When you say thought, (namshey,) it signifies “a knowing that has the structure of subject and object.” Yeshe is a knowing that doesn’t fixate in a dualistic way, whereas our ordinary knowing is dualistic fixation. Dualistic fixation should be destroyed. That is the whole reason why we strive so diligently in meditation and recognize mind-essence. Yeshe is primordial knowing. We get used to primordial knowing by recognizing our essence as primordial purity. Nondualistic wakefulness destroys dualistic fixation. When dualistic fixation is destroyed, deluded experience falls apart, and all conceptual activity collapses. We should become completely clear and resolved about this.
Ultimately, the vital point is the difference between consciousness and wakefulness, namshey and yeshe. Consciousness is a way of knowing in which there is subject and object and in which the subject gets involved in the object. The state of realization of all the buddhas, on the other hand, is a primordial knowing that is independent from an object. Trekchö training reveals this state of realization. If we, on the other hand, believe that our basic state is only empty, a blank empty state, this emptiness wouldn’t possess any qualities. But the qualities are primordially present. This original wakefulness, yeshe, is inconceivable. The Dzogchen teachings describe it either as the unity of being empty and cognizant or as the unity of being aware and empty. Of course, the dualistic consciousness is also empty and cognizant, but it is suffused with ignorance, with unknowing. Ignorance means “not knowing rigpa.” Yeshe is empty cognizance suffused with knowing.
In actuality, all that appears and exists, all worlds and beings, are the mandala of the five male and female buddhas, the mandala of the victorious ones. This is simply how it already is, and that is how we train ourselves in seeing things, by means of the development stage. To recognize rigpa is the true way to acknowledge what is, as it is. At that moment, experience, in itself, is already the mandala of the male and female buddhas, without us having to think it is. When we don’t recognize rigpa, then it isn’t, even though, essentially, it is. When we merely think it is, that is only a pretense—even though, based on this pretense, called “ordinary development stage,” we can realize rigpa, in actuality, since whatever appears and exists is already the mandala of the victorious ones.
Development stage is a training in what really is. The perceiving quality is the yab and the empty quality is the yum. These two are an indivisible unity. This is the fundamental mandala of all the victorious ones, of all buddhas. This unity of experience and emptiness is also the source of the ordinary body, speech, and mind of sentient beings. Sentient beings, however, are not simply ordinary body, speech, and mind.