Table Of ContentTsig Sum Nei Dek
Garab Doije’s
Three Verses That Strike the
Key Points of Practice
As Taught
By
Lingtrul Rinpoche
M irro r of Wisd o m
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Tsig Sum Nei Dek
Garab Doije’s
Three Verses That Strike the
Key Points of Practice
As Taught
By
Lingtrul Rinpoche
Translated by
Richard Barron (Chokyi Nyima)
The Three Verses That Strike the
Key Points of Practice
To begin, I ask you to approach this teach
ing with the proper motivation. With altruistic and
compassionate resolve in your mind that you may
contribute to the spiritual attainment of all beings,
whose numbers are equal to the limits of space, to
the state of the Sovereign Lord, Samantabhadra, the
primordial Lord Protector. That is to wish for each
and every being to attain nothing less than complete
enlightenment.
As you know, the topic is the instruction on
the direct transmission that is known as the Tsig
Sum Nei Dek in Tibetan or The Three Verses That
Strike the Key Points of Practice. Due to the nature
of these Dzogchen, or Great Perfection teachings, it
possible, under ideal circumstances, for an individ
ual of the very highest acumen to use these instruc
tions for the attainment of buddhahood in this life
time. However, we shouldn’t think of Great Perfec
tion teachings alone as some kind of a magical for
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mula. A number of circumstances must come together
in order for that ideal result to come about. By this, I
mean that there must be the factor of a qualified and
realized teacher, as well as the student who is of the
highest acumen. In the student’s own situation any
number of factors must come together in a very posi
tive and supportive way in order to allow the practice
of that individual to lead to the very ideal result of the
attainment of buddhahood in a single lifetime.
On the level of the teacher to whom the stu
dent relates, he or she cannot be just anyone who is
conversant on an intellectual level with Dzogchen
teachings. In order for this ideal situation that we are
discussing to come about, the teacher must be of an ex
traordinary nature. He or she must be endowed with a
great deal of realization and enlightenment and, then,
be able to affect that same kind of realization through
working with the student. On his or her part, the
teacher must be someone who has realized and given
rise to the positive qualities of that realization based
upon an understanding and an experience of the
ground, path and fruition of the Great Perfection. In
order for the student to benefit, that realization must
already be present in the mindstream of the teacher. As
well, the teacher must be someone who has sufficient
blessing and power to be able to transmit that realiza
tion to the student. It is not enough just to have that
realization; he must be able to transmit that to some
one so that they can come to that same realization.
On the part of the student, it is important for
the student’s mindstream to be such that the student is
able to overcome all wrong view and all incorrect or
counter-productive thoughts and ideas concerning his
or her relationship with the teacher and the teachings.
So, if the teacher is of such a nature that he or she is
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not able to inspire that kind of unwavering confidence
in the student’s mind and is not able to transmit the re
alization that he or she as a teacher has gained, then,
it’s really like trying to pour something from an empty
vessel. If the vessel is empty, there is nothing to pour
into another vessel; no effective transmission of the
Great Perfection can take place because of the defi
ciency on the part of the teacher.
When relying upon a teacher in the context of
the Great Perfection, it is important to understand that
the teacher must have these qualities that I’ve been dis
cussing. It’s important for the student to assess
whether he or she can have such a relationship with a
given teacher and to not assume naively that this is the
right teacher and begin to take teachings, because per
haps later on, a sense of disappointment or disillusion
ment will develop, as well as a wrong view about the
teacher. It is far more important in the first place to
examine the qualities of the teacher and determine
whether you feel you can trust and work with that
teacher.
Now, regardless of whether the teacher has all
of these qualities or not, if you as a student are entering
into a relationship with the teacher and are receiving
Great Perfection teachings, it is important for you as a
student to make the decision, ‘Yes, I can trust this rela
tionship. I will have respect for this teacher. I will
hold this relationship as dear to myself as my own
heart and my own eyes.’
It is said that seeking the Great Perfection
teachings is like encountering a poisonous snake with a
jewel on the top of its head. If you want to take the
jewel, you have to be careful how you go about it. It is
possible to get the jewel and gain great benefit from it,
but you can also injure yourself if you go about it in the
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wrong way. You have to remember that the situation is
loaded.
There are different styles of teaching in the
Great Perfection approach. All are valid given that
they are styles that developed through the process of
historical transmission, which has come down to us
from the Dharmakaya level of Samantabhadra through
to the present day. It is important for there to be this
authenticity, although the style of one teacher may dif
fer from that of another teacher. In my case, my root
lama in the Great Perfection was a great lama, Khenpo
Munsel. His particular means of teaching the Great
Perfection was to insist that, first and foremost, the stu
dent had completed the ngondro or preliminary prac
tices—the 500,000 repetitions of prostrations, bodhi-
citta, Vaijasattva mantra, and so forth. Khenpo Munsel
was not particular about which tradition one need have
practiced to complete this preliminary. One might
have practiced the Nam Cho cycle, the Long Chen Ny-
ing Thig cycle, or the Dudjom Tersar cycle. It really
didn’t matter. The important point is that the student
had first gone through this process of purification and
development by completing the ngondro or preliminary
practices. Following this, Khenpo Munsel would teach
a one hundred-day course as a means of further purify
ing and training the student’s mind.
The particular text that he used as a basis for
this course was a commentary to the Kun Zang Lamai
Zhal Lung, The words of My Perfect Teacher, written
down by Patrul Rinpoche and given by Khenpo Ngu
Gu. It begins with an examination of the Four Con
templations that turn the mind toward practice and
away from further involvement in samsara and contin
ues through the Six Perfections and so forth. So, there
is a very developmental approach of the basic teach
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ings of the three yanas. This was the course that
Khenpo would teach following the completion of the
preliminaries. This course was given in a very me
thodical manner in the sense that each topic that was
discussed and contemplated had a set period of time
that it was taught—for a week or a few days or what
ever—beginning with the contemplation of precious
human existence with the complete freedom and op
portunity that it offers for spiritual practice. We would
spend a number of days with Khenpo Munsel teaching
on the various states of freedom of the human exis
tence—he would teach and then we would contemplate
the teachings. We would then move to the different
types of opportunities that derive from our own situa
tion and the social situation around us. In this way, we
would go very methodically up to and including a dis
cussion on the Six Perfections and so forth. It was not
simply an intellectual course of teaching but an experi
ential one. Also, it was important for the teacher to
check each student’s development to determine that the
appropriate levels of realization were dawning in the
student’s mindstream. Only then would Khenpo Mun
sel proceed with the Great Perfection teachings. This
was how he insisted upon these teachings. In addition
to the completion of the ngondro practice, the prelimi
naries, and this course of training in the basic teach
ings, it was also important in Khenpo’s point of view
that one had received one of the major empowerments
from the Nying Thig Yab Shi cycle, the Four High Col
lections of the Heart Drop teachings, and all four levels
of the empowerment, which are technically known in
the Dzogchen context as the elaborate empowerment,
the unelaborate empowerment, the extremely unelabo-
rate empowerment and the utterly unelaborate
empowerment.
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Having received the four levels of
empowerment into any one of these cycles connected
with the Nying Thig Yab Shi he would then proceed
with the teachings. He was very precise about what he
considered to be the necessary prerequisites for the stu
dent who was interested in truly following the Dzog-
chen, Great Perfection teachings. After all of this
preparation, Khenpo Munsel would use another text by
Khenpo Ngag Chung which is considered part of the
Nying Thig tradition and it is known as Ten Pai Nyimai
Zhal Lung, The Oral Instructions of Khenpo Ten Pai
Nyima who in turn was Ten Pai Ngag Chung’s teacher.
He would use this particular text as the basis of intro
duction to the Great Perfection. This particular text is
interesting because it is the first case in this particular
lineage of the teachings having been committed to
writing. The Nying Thig transmission, as many of you
are aware, was transmitted through the great Long-
chenpa to the holder of intrinsic awareness, Jigmed
Lingpa. From him to Jigmed Gyalwai Ngu Gu, and
then, to Patrul Rinpoche, Jigmed Chokyi Wangpo. The
heart son of Patrul Rinpoche was Longchen Nyingpo
who in turn became the guru of the author of this text,
Khenpo Ngag Chung. Up until the point that Khenpo
Ngag Chung transcribed these oral teachings, there had
been no case of them actually being written down. It
had been solely an oral transmission held in the mem
ory of all the lineage holders, which was then transmit
ted from their memory to their students. Fearing that
these teachings would be lost, Khenpo Ngag Chung
committed to them writing, and this text became
known as The Oral Instructions of Khenpo Ten Pai Ny
ima. This was the text on which Khenpo Munsel based
his teaching of the Great Perfection. When Khenpo
Munsel taught the Great Perfection based upon this
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text, he followed the developmental presentations in
the text beginning with the preliminaries unique to the
Great Perfection approach. These preliminary stages
are known as tearing down the hut of ordinary mind.
Think of the function of the ordinary mind as a hut that
is being tom down or dismantled. That is the technical
name given to that stage of practice. Following that is
the direct introduction to rigpa, or intrinsic awareness
in which the student is introduced to his or her intrinsic
awareness and all its immediacy. Then the practice of
Great Perfection begins, you may say, at that point.
When Khenpo Munsel taught that approach, he pre
ferred to take six months to do it. At the very least, if
you were rushing him, he would do it in one month.
But to think of it as being a week-end course, or some
thing that could be done in a couple of days, was really
out of the question. He insisted on it being a methodi
cal, thorough approach so that one had the proper in
troduction to the teachings and practice.
When he taught the introductory stage of tear
ing down the hut of the ordinary mind, Khenpo Munsel
would be very comfortable teaching a hundred or even
hundreds of people in one group. However, when he
gave the direct introduction to intrinsic awareness and
all its immediacy, he would insist upon doing this one
on one. He wouldn’t even have two people in the
room. When it was appropriate for you as a student,
you would see him alone, and at that point there would
be the direct transmission. When I say he was giving a
course on this introductory level of tearing down the
hut of ordinary mind, I don’t want you to think that all
day was spent in lectures with him talking and every
body just listening and taking notes. It was a very
practice oriented course in which you would be given
just the essentials of what you needed to contemplate.
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