Frank's Summary

I contemplated in front of a beautiful statue of Padmasambhava in a Tibetan monastery in Southern India the question: "What is the great perfection?" I was hoping for some answer given this special occasion. Note that Padmasambhava is the person who brought Buddhism to Tibet. He is also one of the main teachers of Dzogchen, translated as the "Great Perfection" or "Great Completion". This is one of the inspirations at the origin of wh, I believe. The answer I came up is very plain and simple: "THIS is the great perfection." I was reminded of Maria's "Always already here" and Rod's: "Right this. Right here. Right now."

The approach to working with wh I gravitate to is to find where wh can be seen to be hold quite easily, and then to allow this experience to embrace "everything". It is an inside out approach, of you wish. The practice I always come back to eventually is the main Dzogchen practice I was taught before: " Awareness being aware of awareness." "Attention attending to attention itself." "Mind minding mind." Pure Awareness, the original face, is easily seen to be perfect, flawless, timeless, you name it. Then it is seen that awareness embraces all phenomena and appearances. And this beautifies and completes phenomena. Seen without the ground of awareness they are samsara and suffering. Embraced by our true nature they are perfection, beauty and play, the dance of Shiva, if you wish. This is a felt truth within the experience itself. When I ask: "What is the closest, the most intimate thing?" then this is awareness itself. It can never be an object of awareness, because awareness is closer. Phenomena and experiences are a dream. By recognizing my true nature as awareness, an awakening to this dream occurs. Including to the dream character, the dream body that I take myself and others to be. They are another appearance. Piet, thanks, for pointing me to also look for what the "I" is, and not to stop too early in the investigation. That was helpful in this context.

When working with wh: "Everything is perfect." I often don't know consciously what "everything" is. Phenomena are always fragmented. Something is missing. To use a traditional image, phenomena are the reflections of the sun on the water. Only when the origin of the reflections the sun is also consciously experienced there is peace and wholeness. Phenomena are seen as ornaments beautifying the sun, expressing the sun. After recognizing the Sun as the ground of being, the fragmented world has been completed. Is this another important meaning of the wh version "Everything is Complete", besides interpreting this in a temporal manner? Could this be what "Great Completion?" means?