The Central Teaching of The Six Lamps

The central teaching of The Six Lamps is that everything—every experience, every thought, every identity—is the manifestation of the pure, luminous basis of existence. One must recognize this and abide in the recognition.

Though The Six Lamps does not speak of five lights, the luminosity that it is describing is the five pure lights of the elements. This is what is to be understood, recognized, and lived in.

The luminosity in the first lamp is (1) unbound pure presence. The succeeding lamps are (2) the fundamental pure presence abiding in the heart, (3) arising as individual experience, (4) operating in the senses, (5) manifesting as phenomenal appearance, and finally (6) appearing as the bardo visions.

The light that illuminates and is each of these varied experiences is the same sacred light, the innate non-dual awareness.

Dzogchen teachings say that all gross and subtle visions—whether the outer visions of mountains and buildings and so on or the internal visions that arise in meditation and spiritual practice—arise from the five pure lights.

One needs support to experience the five pure lights internally, the support of practice and the teachings. Through the grosser external visions, one tries to experience the subtle. Through experience of the subtle vision, one tries to recognize the pure luminosity—the five pure lights—in all external visions.

For the practice of Dzogchen, one must learn to abide in the realization of the first lamp through all experience. We can meditate in a shrine room and have experiences of emptiness, clarity, and bliss. And then get up and walk to the store and become involved with someone and lose ourselves in the interaction. But the awareness underlying both the meditative experience and the distractions of our daily lives is what we must recognize and abide in. When we abide in rigpa, what we experience as external is less substantial. Our identities are less substantial. Our problems are less substantial. We experience rigpa everywhere; there is no difference between inside and outside the body.

There is no difference between meditation and non-meditation. We experience rigpa through the senses. This is not done with the senses; what is experienced with the senses are the sense objects.

Experiencing rigpa through the senses has nothing to do with sense objects; it is about connecting to the inner light—abiding in rigpa—and staying connected during sensual experiences.

Dzogchen isn’t really about the personal. It is concerned with space and light, with emptiness and non-dual awareness, more than with the development of qualities.

Dzogchen truly begins as a path when the first lamp is recognized, and it isn’t the property of Tibetans or Westerners, of humans or non-humans. What is realized is the nature of every being.