A Dog Zen Simpleton's Instructions

The Actual Practice of Dzogchen
( a reprint from January, 2005)

If you want to learn the meaning of Dzogchen and get its benefits
You will have to overcome your twisting of the dharma, spirituality and everything else.
You should understand
That It’s going to take an organized and ongoing effort
Until the dam of artificiality breaks free.
Here goes:

When you hear about looking into your mind, no matter where it comes from,
Just go ahead and do it.
At first glance, whatever mind is, for sure you see thoughts and feelings.
You don’t know what you are doing, it's ok.
There are thoughts and feelings.
Just for now, forget about the word “mind” and just look at those thoughts and feelings that you see when you tryed to find the mind.
Focus on “what thoughts are.”

Look in your mind for the answer, don’t look at me or your memory.
You must focus, look directly and observe the thinking.
This looking at thoughts and wondering what they are must continue
Until you are fully confident that thinking
Is utterly and completely unlimited in its potential seeming situations and formulations.

This process of getting used to knowing this takes a length of time to incorporate.
My suggestion is to forget about goofy meditating and just do this!
If you do what I say and keep going, at some point
An unquestionable confidence in how thoughts and emotions exist will arise:
Every thought, limited and impermanent,
And its rising knowledge will change you in a big way.

You will know that you could be thinking anything, anywhere, anytime! Wowie!
There are ultimately no governors that control what you can think or feel.

Now, looking again, do something different:
Whether you see angels or demons, family or enemy,
Recognize that you cling to a thought-emotion experience only.
That's all.

Consistently, there’s a thought of a "you" and at that "you" seems to be relating to "other." Baugh! That really is a good one!
Consider our Tower of Babel called “higher learning",
school and university,
Whose sophistry is deified but should be put in its place...
Of all the extensive activity of these organizations...
Of their underlying belief system as it spreads over and influences the mediathink and our children...
Of the sums of even the trillions of waves of thoughts...
Within and including humanity's great libraries of theories and scientism, not science,
Of even every system and technology, of every wise man or woman that ever lived,
And all their mental activity, all their knowledge, all thoughts, all ideas
Set forth for all to see....
All hopes and fears set out,
At this I looked and looked.

Yet, in all this ocean of complexity,
In wonder it struck me....
Oh my God
What is wrong with us??
And I saw that never has there been even one thought that touches the way that things actually are.
Not one!!

Doen't anybody see this?
The root of this blindness in every case
Is the inability to recoil and say
“Hey! There seems to be a ‘me’ within my theories, but I'm dreaming it up!

Hey! Every new idea grows along with a made-up me-ness versus a not-me-ness!
Unfathomable creativity seems real or unreal as my own folly intends!
Wow...Amazing!”

Further, on this awakening to the not knowing of sages...
If you don’t get the correction and make it change your life,
At least focus your life on helping others and your family.
But try to get the real correction if you can.

Get help from the professional dogs.
You can have it if you want to...
Go back, do it again and again....look into your mind.
Since now thoughts are only your creative imagination,
Things are different, they look not so “real” and certainly a lot more fun.

Try it again,
Gander deeply to where thought, which seems to be "things happening" comes from:
A proud Buddhist looked into his mind,
But unable to find anything but thoughts, will he give up?
Don't stop here..this is the good stuff!

From habits you will be seeing what seems to be endless thoughts:
“I’ll find the mind, dammit.”
“Ahh, this is the mind.”
“I'm in a meditation state.”
“Maybe I’m enlightened.”
If you don’t know these are just thoughts you truly are an idiot.

So keep going, dedicate your life to traverse where few dare,
And don't stop!
This is the practice of Dzogchen unshakeled,
But you will need to knuckle down and do it.

“Oops, hey, just more and more thoughts and feelings!
What is the mind anyway?...Whoh, there’s no way to define things in the old way!”
Now that's a little better.

Get comfortable that actual real Mind-God-Dharamakaya, a simple clarity,
The very nature of all things and thoughts
Which can't be known by intellectual jockeying.

By following this Dog Zen way
You can be absolutely certain that you can‘t find anything but that which is made up.
There's no real thinking in thought,
There's no thought in primordialness, take that verbatum when it becomes obvious.

A salute goes to you, the few and the sincere,
You will climb the greatest mountain at your own home!
You will see the cause of suffering and its release!
Go, modern yogi, go!

Join in the beneficient franchise of direct awareness breakers!
Watch and receive through the five mysteries
That melt the ice of this old, old mistake.

Why not do it again. Look.
Thoughts are the creativity of the mind, whatever that is.
Now that question, what the mind is, becomes so new, so different!
Thinking doesn't think, so mind primordially can't be thinking at all.
If it’s not thinking, then what is it??
C'mon, get real.

This is not a puzzle, sober up, try much harder and longer, and let me know what you get.
What is this thing we have all along assumed to be the "mind?"
If I try to explain it then it won't be yours.
Whatever you accomplish from here depends on your assurance from experience
That the nature of mind is not your thoughts, ideas or feelings
And that misunderstanding and taking them as a serious reality
Bogged you down in foolishness since who knows when.

All this time, your view has been thought-centered! Wow! WOW!!
You can go a long way if you get this, you won’t if you don’t.
Not just Buddha, but Christ and the Tao masters knew this perfectly.
No one can change the way things are.

Revel and prepare the torma-expression in the light of the not-knowing
Since unknowability is the fortress of Urel’s newest thread.
Doesn’t that make perfect sense: Kali-moderns are addicted to think-knowing!

While the weak can’t depend on the Full Perfection’s not-knowing.
A dog bounces happily on a trampoline and becomes a rainbow man.
The dog zen simpleton engages the full feast of mind's beingness
And henceforward partakes the indescribable blisses.

Sages throughout time have spoken of satisfaction, happiness and its appearance.
Instantly not-knowing, you can dig out what you have been storing for countless seasons.
Dear man and woman:
The glory of this can't be explained
By me for certain
But I know your soul is sweet
So I hold my crazy wish
That you get it's full force today.