Many practitioners who study Dzogchen (the Great Perfection) go in search of a spiritual master, mostly with one expectation: that the master will directly point out the nature of their mind and transmit a pith instruction for instant awakening. Or they hope that by witnessing some miraculous act of the master, or by hearing the master recite a mysterious mantra, they themselves might attain enlightenment on the spot. There are not a few practitioners who hold such ideas, yet in reality these are nothing but unrealistic and delusional fantasies.
You might think it over carefully: if there truly existed a fixed and mysterious pith instruction that could enable anyone to awaken instantly, then why would the masters keep it secret? Would not it be better to tell everyone openly, so that all could rejoice? And why, then, would Vajrayana traditions establish graded practices before allowing one to receive such instructions, even requiring disciples to repeatedly complete the Five Preliminary Practices (ngöndro)—amounting to as many as five hundred thousand accumulations—at the cost of immense time and effort? Could it be that the masters lack compassion? Of course not. In fact, it is not that there are no pith instructions capable of leading one to awakening; rather, there is indeed no single “universal pith instruction” that applies equally to all beings and all capacities.
In practice, when it comes to discerning such core issues as the difference between ordinary consciousness and pristine awareness (rigpa), or between the ālaya-vijñāna (storehouse consciousness) and dharmatā (the true nature of reality), there do exist certain relatively fixed pith instructions, because when most practitioners reach that stage, the difficulties they encounter tend to be similar.
At the same time, there are many instructions that must be applied flexibly, and in this respect Chan (Zen) Buddhism is especially outstanding. For example, the “shout of Linji” and the “stick of Deshan” are both fixed in form and yet adaptable in response. The fixed aspect means that many who went to Master Linji or Master Deshan would, in all likelihood, encounter a shout or a blow, for these were ways in which the masters guided disciples to turn back and look directly at their own mind in the present moment. The flexibility lies in teaching according to the disciple’s capacity and level: if the conditions were not yet ripe, that shout or that blow might not come for a long time. This kind of adaptability—teaching in accord with circumstances—is precisely where the subtle wisdom of Chan lies.
To awaken through a single sentence, or to enter the Path with one blow, is not entirely impossible, but it is by no means something rigid or mechanical. Precisely because each person’s capacities differ, pith instructions must be tailored according to individual aptitude and adapted to circumstances. This is exactly the correct path of spiritual practice.
This article is a preliminary translation draft and has not yet been reviewed or proofread by the speaker.
