Rushen Practices

Lopon Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche’s translation of and commentary on Heart Drops of Dharmakaya (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2002) contains instructions on the rushen practices, which are important foundational practices in Dzogchen.

Rushen means to separate or discriminate, and the rushen practices are meant to clarify experiences of the pure and impure.

They lead the practitioner to recognize the nature of mind rather than to be continually distracted by what arises as experience in the nature of mind.

There are different categories of rushen: outer, inner, and secret.

Outer Practices

The outer practices work with the body.

For example, one practice involves standing in a difficult yogic posture, the vajra pose, that generates a movement of energy in the body and results in three benefits: (1) the heat generated burns karma that affects the body so there is less disease and so on; (2) the energy aroused burns the karma that negatively affects the energy body; and if the practitioner remains in rigpa while holding the posture, (3) the karma that generates mental disturbance and defects in the view is burned.

When the posture cannot be further maintained, the practitioner collapses. In the moment of exhaustion there is again an opportunity for impure or pure experience. If the first, the practitioner is distracted by the release and is lost in the experience—this is like the forgetfulness in any ordinary exhaustion; if the latter, the practitioner abides in pure presence.

Inner Practices

The inner rushen practices work on the energetic level.

The syllable HUNG is visualized and moved in accord with the mind and breath, sometimes gently and sometimes wrathfully. The peaceful practices gently integrate all appearances with light; the wrathful practices forcefully destroy appearances and dissolve them in space.

The practices are done many, many times. Each time that blocks, obstacles, and identifications are represented by images and destroyed, the habitual grasping in relation to them weakens.

This is not a logical or rational process—things and identities, represented as images, are simply integrated with light or destroyed or dissolved. With nothing left to hold, the practitioner recognizes intrinsic awareness, rigpa, however briefly.

Secret Practices

The secret rushen works directly with the mind.

An inquiry is made into experience: Where do thoughts arise? abide? dissolve?

When we look for the mind, nothing is found and the not finding is very clear. That is, what is found is the clarity of pure space, the nature of mind. If we recognize that space, we have found the nature of mind.

If we do not recognize our own nature, the moving mind continues to search.

Practices like the rushen are preliminary practices.

The real practice of Dzogchen cannot be described accurately because the words are only meaningful after one recognizes what they point toward.

Most spiritual practices work to generate experiences, to develop certain positive qualities through which one finds oneself closer to one’s true nature.

Dzogchen practice is not about generating anything. It is not about any particular experience but is the recognition of the basis of experience.

All visions of the five external elements and the five internal elements, all thoughts and experiences, dissolve into the base.

When all experiences stop, even the experiences of unconsciousness, sleep, and the sense of self, what remains is inseparable emptiness and luminosity. Abiding in this is Dzogchen practice.

Dzogchen practice can be summed up like this: Recognize non-dual innate awareness, dissolve all identity in it, and abide without distraction.

This main practice is described as having, and often taught as, two parts:

Cutting Through, trekchöd, the practice of continuously cutting through distraction in order to abide in the natural state of mind; and the practice of Crossing Over, tögal, the visionary practices that naturally arise from Cutting Through.

But these are two aspects of the same fundamental practice, which is to integrate oneself and all phenomena of experience into the natural state of mind. When this is accomplished, the elements in the dimension of the individual are naturally and spontaneously balanced.

The practitioner in Dzogchen works in this secret dimension of the elements in which the elements are luminosity, the radiance of being.

Cutting Through integrates the practitioner with the space element. It emphasizes the primordial purity (kha dag) of emptiness. The practitioner must no longer identify with what arises in experience—including the subject—and instead abides as the empty nature of mind. All phenomena is left to arise and pass away without attachment or rejection, without a subject constituting in response to experience. The practitioner abides in pure space. “Abiding in space” means being the empty-aware space, recognizing innate non-dual awareness and dissolving identity in it.

Crossing Over emphasizes luminosity. It is the practice of light.

Cutting Through focuses on abiding in the empty nature of mind; Crossing Over integrates the expressions of the energy of the elements into the nature of mind.

In one sense, trekchöd avoids involvement and tögal is involved through integrating what arises.

When abiding in non-dual awareness— Cutting Through—experience is a flow of empty phenomena, an unceasing flow of light. Allowing experience to manifest without being distracted from the nature of mind is the practice of Crossing Over.

Trekchöd and tögal, though often taught sequentially, are inseparable.

Without stable trekchöd there is no tögal and when trekchöd is stable everything that arises is tögal.

Although it is not traditionally taught this way, all experience integrated into the natural state—experience in which the practitioner does not become distracted and does not return to the dualistic state—is tögal vision.

One reason for the separation of trekchöd and tögal in teaching is to allow particular practices related to tögal, such as the dark retreat, to be taught separately.

Once a practitioner is introduced to the nature of mind by his or her teacher, practice follows a pattern described in detail in the A-khrid teachings, one of the three main Dzogchen transmissions in Bön.

The pattern is: abide, dissolve, continue. The Dzogchen practitioner’s goal and practice is to always abide in the nature of mind. When he or she is integrated with the nature of mind, whatever arises self-liberates, dissolving into empty luminosity. However, when one is distracted from the nature of mind, the duality of subject and object arises. Then one must use intention to return to pure presence. Then the practitioner continues in the natural state until distracted again and the process is repeated.

(1) Abide in the nature of mind, (2) dissolve distraction, (3) continue in the natural state.