The Base, Path, and Fruit (Dzogchen)

The Dzogchen teachings are often structured threefold: the Base, the Path and the Fruit.

The Base

Usually a realized master introduce the Natural State to the student. He is able to directly transfer that state of awareness to his student. The student who now has experienced his Natural State of being, even if it is only briefly, then has to practice in order to enter the natural state again and again. This constitutes the Path. But first the student has to have had a direct experience of the Natural State.

The Base is the experience of identity with the Natural State. It is the fundamental ground of existence, both at the universal level and at the level of the individual. The base has always been there, has always been pure and perfect. It is present in every living being. It is non-dual. Once the being enters duality the experience of the Natural State is lost. This means that is temporary obscured by attachment and aversion arisen from ignorance of dualistic vision. A normal person is ignorant and thus his Natural State is only latent; but for a realized person it is manifest. The goal of practice is to make the Natural State manifest again. From the moment we enter into dualistic vision, we leave the primordial Base, and transmigration begins. Transmigration is the continuous movement of going from one body to the next because of karmic causes. One has become subject to cause and effect.

The primordial state is beyond space and time, beyond creation and destruction. But its nature is to manifest itself as light, as the elements, as energy and all the interactions that end up what we experience and enjoy as the cosmos. Entering into duality we become caught up with all these projections which we mistakenly take as external reality. Thus we perceive the individual as made up of Body, Voice and Mind. The Body is the entire physical manifestation of the person. Voice is the vital energy (prana) of the Body. The Mind is that what reasons.

The Natural state is permanent, all the rest is impermanent or temporal. Why is everything we experience, including ourselves impermanent and temporal? All phenomena lack inherent existence; nothing exists by itself as a permanent something. If something existed permanently, it would have its own inherent existence, and nothing else could affect or change it. It would be immutable and unchanging. There would be no causality, no cause would be able to change it into something else. Experience tells us otherwise. Everything is changing all the time, thus everything lacks inherent existence. It is our perception that makes us think that phenomena are somehow solid and permanent.

The Base, or Natural State, has a threefold condition: Essence, Nature and Energy.

The Essence of the Base is fundamental voidness. Voidness means that when one examine thoughts, one will find that they come and go, but do not have any real, independent existence. It is a phenomenon that only temporarily exists. Before and after a thought there is only emptiness, voidness. This emptiness is fundamentally pure and clear, and it is compared to a mirror. A mirror reflects whatever is put in front of it, but the mirror itself is never changed, nor made impure or obscured. It always remains empty and clear. Thoughts come and go, but they are just reflections, they do not change the purity and emptiness of the Natural State.

The Nature of the Base is the manifest phenomena. Although phenomena coma and go, and at their essence they are void and empty, nevertheless phenomena do exist and continue to manifest. This is compared to the nature of a mirror. Although the mirror remains empty and pure, it is its nature to continuously reflect what is in front of it.

The Energy of the Base is the way the Base, or the Natural State, manifests itself. This is compared to the reflections themselves in the mirror. 

Essence, Nature and Energy are all interdependent. One cannot exist without the other two.

The last one, Energy, manifests itself threefold: Zal, Rolba and Dan(untranslatable terms)

Zal (the appearance of a seemingly external world): is the energy of the individual that appears as a seemingly external world. The individual sees himself as a separate entity that lives in outer world of objects. But these outer objects/world are actually projections from his own energy. This compared to a crystal. Light (energy) enters the crystal (the individual) and projects into rays and patterns of colors which are seen as separate from the crystal, but in fact they are functions of the crystal's nature. In reality there are no external independent or separate phenomena; they are manifestations of the energy of the individual.

Rolba (the way in which the energy of an individual manifests): In the individual the energy is experienced as an internal image. The image might appear as very vivid and real. But it is just a manifestation of his energy. This is compared to the image of an object that is seen inside a crystal ball.

Dan (infinite and formless quality of the energy): the energy of an individual can take any form whatsoever. Because of the individual karmic vision, its energy will shape itself into a Body, Voice and Mind with an external environment; life after life. This is compared to a crystal ball that will take the color of whatever colored cloth it is put on. 

The Path

After the student has been introduced to the Natural State of being, he need to practice the Path in order to get out of his dualistic view and condition, and to realize again his true Natural state. The Path has three aspects: 

View, Practice and Attitude.

View means that one has to observe oneself and discover what one's own condition is in regards to his body, voice and mind. In this way one will find that one is conditioned by a lot of things, and stuck in many 'programs'. The body is conditioned by its living conditions, external influences, nutrients and so on. The vital body has problems with energy being stuck, not flowing freely, causing both emotional problems and physical ailments over time. The mental body has its own imbalances, like a distorted view of the world, mental fixations, unhealthy thought processes... Here we have the image of the mirror again: the practitioner needs to look in the mirror of his own being.

Practice strictly means contemplation, that is, one strives to enter the state of non-duality, the Natural State, and tries to stay in it for longer and longer periods. Thoughts can come and go, but when properly centered in the Natural State, the practitioner will not be affected by those thoughts. The mind itself is not engaged in doing any effort or work, as it is the case in meditation. Meditation engages the mind to do something with for example visualization to bring about a state of calm that is inductive to enter contemplation. Once in contemplation one is totally present ad aware, and one neither rejects nor follows any thought. Because we are all different, and our energies are all different, one has to look inside to find one's own kind of obstacles (=View), and then one has to choose and employ a meditation technique(s) that will help him to dissolve those obstacles. Meditation techniques are a help to overcome one's problems, but they should not be a goal by itself. The focus in Dzogchen is always on contemplation.

Attitude means that once the practitioner is able to stay in contemplation, in the Natural State of clear awareness, during his practice, then he needs to continue, being in this Natural State, into his daily life. Then he brings his present clear awareness into every moment of his life. He avoids all distractions that could bring him out of the Natural State. His mind doesn't wander about the past or future, but he can actively plan something for the future while remaining clear and aware of the present. For this he needs to cultivate constant clear awareness of his entire being. It is an attitude or conduct that will allow him to gain mastery over the karmic causes in his life. Karmic causes are twofold: primary and secondary. Primary causes come from the past and can be experienced as good or bad. But the primary causes need the right conditions in this life time to be able to manifest themselves, thus they need secondary karmic causes. When the practitioner has continuous clear awareness of the Natural State, he is able to recognize when the secondary karmic causes are arising and prevent the negative ones to develop, while stimulating the positive ones. Eventually he is not conditioned at all by any experience, good or bad. Thus he becomes completely liberated from conditioned existence. He is not limited by the actions of the manifested world. He can act completely free from all limitations, rules and causes/effects. Such a person may be seen acting in strange and unexpected ways. A master of himself, he is free to do what he wants, but he remains aware of the needs and limitations of other people, and he will always try to help them to observe themselves and to make their own decisions.

The Fruit

The fruit is Realization. Realization means that one has made manifest in his awareness that which he in essence always has been, that is, a state of pure, clear awareness that we call the Natural State. Through the process of ever deepening awareness of this state one self-liberates from from the dualistic vision. All passions and all karmic causes that condition a person to a dualistic world have dissolved. This person has no attachments to these plays of energies. There is no separation of subject and object, which is merely a habitual vision of unrealized beings.
A practitioner who remains continuously in the Natural State does not expect any virtuous qualities to arise or fear bad consequences of wrong actions. The Natural State is beyond all karmic causality and its effects. Such a practitioner is not subject to causality or karma. Our existence as a human being is the result of our impure karmic vision brought about by causes. It is impure because it is caused by ignorance and the passions or emotional defilements.

Source: http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/dzogchen.htm