@ Bodhi☯️
2025-06-07 11:50:48
From a friend:
The Heart of Dzogchen
Clinging Is the Root: The Disappearance of Suffering in the Light of Rigpa
There is no suffering where there is no clinging. This truth, though deceptively simple, pierces to the heart of Dzogchen. The ancient masters do not point toward elaborate practices or conceptual frameworks but toward the clear seeing of what is always already so. The problem is not the world, not even the arising of thoughts or appearances—it is the subtle act of grasping, the invisible contraction around what is fleeting. It is this contraction that gives rise to the illusion of a self, and with it, the entire architecture of samsara.
Padmasambhava’s instruction, “When there is no grasping, there is no suffering,” is not a moral ideal but a direct statement of ontological fact. Suffering is not a property of experience; it is the distortion of experience by identification. The moment grasping ceases, the mirage of “me” and “mine” collapses. What remains is not emptiness in the nihilistic sense, but the luminous clarity of rigpa—spontaneous presence, unborn, unconfined, and untouched.
Longchenpa refines this with: “If you do not cling to appearances, the mind itself is naturally liberated.” Liberation, in Dzogchen, is not attained—it is unveiled. Mind does not need to be improved, purified, or transcended. Rather, it needs only to be seen as it is, prior to the movement of appropriation. In clinging, we superimpose a false solidity upon what is inherently spacious. We take dream-stuff as real and suffer accordingly.
Garab Dorje reminds us that “All appearances are your own mind, and mind itself is free from clinging.” Here lies the paradox: the world appears, yet it is not separate from the seer. The play of forms arises within awareness, not apart from it. What imprisons us is not the appearance of things, but the belief in their otherness. When mind recognizes itself, there is nothing to hold, nothing to oppose, nothing to fear.
Mipham Rinpoche writes: “Attachment is the very ignorance that conceals the natural state.” This ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the turning away from what is self-evident. It is the insistence on being someone who owns, defends, and suffers. In that defensive gesture, the mirror of awareness clouds over, and we forget the ungraspable transparency that is always here.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche says, “It is not the object that binds you, but your grasping at it.” Samsara is not imposed from outside; it is manufactured moment to moment through the mechanics of craving and aversion. Liberation is not elsewhere—it is the cessation of that machinery. When grasping is seen and relaxed, even samsara is experienced as the display of wisdom.
Namkhai Norbu makes it even clearer: “Delusion arises from dualistic clinging; awareness is non-dual from the beginning.” Duality is the mind’s attempt to divide what has never been divided. The seer and the seen, the thinker and the thought, are artificial distinctions laid over the seamless fabric of being. Rigpa, self-knowing awareness, needs no effort to unify anything—it was never split.
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche cuts through illusion with: “The root of samsara is the belief in a self. Cut that root.” The belief in a self is not merely psychological—it is ontological confusion. The “I” that clings is itself a fabrication. Letting go is not something it can do—for its very existence depends on not letting go. When this is seen, the self falls away on its own.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche affirms: “Rigpa has no basis for clinging, for it sees no other.” Clinging requires a division—between self and object, desire and lack. Rigpa knows no such distinctions. It does not cling because it does not separate. This is not detachment born of distance, but intimacy beyond ownership.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche gives a poetic image: “Like writing on water, thoughts and feelings vanish if not held onto.” The natural state is not opposed to thoughts—it is simply untouched by them. To not grasp is to allow the river of mind to flow without dam or defense. Nothing needs to be erased. Only the hand that holds must release.
Yeshe Tsogyal concludes: “If you are not attached, you are free—even in samsara.” The place doesn’t matter. The appearance doesn’t matter. Without clinging, samsara is nirvana—not because the world changes, but because you no longer cling to the belief that you are in it, apart from it, bound by it.
Closing Reflection:
Clinging is the act of forgetting what cannot be lost. It is the contraction of spaciousness into identity, of immediacy into concept. The Dzogchen masters are not inviting us to improve this contraction—but to see through it entirely. The natural state, rigpa, is never attained; it is what remains when the one who seeks dissolves. The cessation of clinging is not the loss of the world, but the unveiling of its true nature—empty, luminous, ungraspable, and free.
To release grasping is not an effort—it is the recognition that there was never anything to hold.