Robert Thurman begins to explore the tantric teachings and helps us understand why tantra is considered an accelerated path to buddhahood. We learn about how the buddhas Shakyamuni and Vajradhara are related, explore the three types of course, subtle, and supersubtle planes, and learn about the eight levels of dissolution that take place in the bardo.

Alan Wallace comments on the final pages of The Foolish Dharma of an Idiot Clothed in Mud and Feathers, taking us through Düdjom Lingpa’s song of experience. Read along in the excerpt below or on page 156 of the PDF of the root text found in Lesson 1, or in your copy of Heart of the Great Perfection.

This is called illumination by primordial consciousness of the face of the Great Perfection of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa.

All modification, alteration, hope, fear, doubt, negation, affirmation, grasping, exertion, investigation, and analysis are imputed by the intellect, and the intellect is not ultimate. The ultimate transcends the intellect, so you must know this critical point. When you are utterly settled, you may fall into error, and while you are present in the aspect of emptiness, thoughts may become hidden, beyond the scope of the creative expressions of pristine awareness. In this case, I say that thoughts become ethically neutral in the boundary between the mind and pristine awareness. Not veering away from the nature of existence of the Great Perfection of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa is a sublime and utterly crucial point. With it, all gods and demons and all of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are liberated within themselves, with no distinction of good and bad. (more…)

Alan Wallace takes us through Düdjom Lingpa’s teachings on the guru, viras and dakinis, and all beings. You can follow along in the excerpt from the text below, or on page 143 of the PDF of the root text (found in lesson 1) or your copy of Heart of the Great Perfection, Vol 1.

Having established those teachings as your foundation, with constant devotion offer prayers of supplication to your guru. Outwardly, imagine your guru on the crown of your head. Inwardly, visualize your own body as the guru. Secretly, again and again transfer your own vital energies, mind, and consciousness, and nondually merge them with the non conceptual primordial consciousness of your guru’s mind. This is the first point.

With devotion and affection, visualize your companions as being of the nature of vīras and ḍākinīs, and see the fine qualities of your guru and Dharma siblings rather than looking at their faults. This is the second point. (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…)