The two passages in this document from Stilling the Mind offer a complementary teaching on how shamatha meditation can be contextualized within the Great Perfection tradition, and offers general advice for students of Dzogchen.

Alan Wallace continues his commentary on The Foolish Dharma of an Idiot Clothed in Mud and Feathers, reflecting on the value and limitations of shamatha meditation practice. You can follow along with the text starting on page 144 in the PDF of the root text available in lesson 1, or in your copy of Heart of the Great Perfection, Volume 1 of Dudjom Lingpa’s Visions of the Great Perfection. An excerpt is below.

When I thought of going to a big marketplace dressed up in impressive, striking clothes, but found no such attire, [468] in the end I smeared my body with mud and stuck various twigs, grass, flowers, and feathers on it. Now I will explain the foolish meditations of one who wears mud and feathers for clothing, regarding them as if they were the finest garments and ornaments. So listen! Observe! And laugh at this! (more…)

Settle in and listen to this guided meditation that integrates Dudjom Lingpa’s teachings about compassion for all beings with our own lived experience.

Alan Wallace reflects on shamatha meditation practice and then returns to commenting on the text’s teachings on the mind reversals.

You can follow along on page 143 of your copy of Heart of the Great Perfection, the PDF of the root text found in lesson 1, or in the excerpt below.

Hey!

Individuals endowed with karma and good fortune have obtained a life of leisure and opportunity due to the assembly and timely ripening of a causal nexus of fortuitous connections of karma and prayers. (more…)

We turn to Düdjom Lingpa’s text, The Foolish Dharma of an Idiot Clothed in Mud and Feathers. Follow along in the PDF available for download or in the excerpt below.

In that very instant I awoke from the dense slumber of the mind into the buddhafield of Akaniṣṭha, the absolute space of phenomena, free of extremes.
My own pristine awareness arose as the dharmakāya teacher, the great, immutable, all-pervasive lord;
the creative power of self-emergent primordial consciousness manifested as a display of myriad disciples;
and its own inner glow appeared as the great expanse of the spontaneously actualized Great Perfection. How amazing!

To those whose minds are utterly dedicated to the one path traveled by all the jinas, who know they have arrived at a crossroads, but due to their blindness to the view, cannot see with certainty where to go, I guess this is a bit of what I, an old man who knows the way, would tell them. (more…)