Recognition and Compassion in Dzogchen

I recently published a Complete Guide to Garab Dorje’s Three Statements That Strike the Vital Point. In it, I walk through the view, meditation, and result of Dzogchen as distilled in those three instructions.

At the end of the root verses, Garab Dorje says:

“There is your own nature, and what appears as other. These two being inseparable is recognition.”

This might sound abstract, but if we look at our ordinary experience, we know the structure he is pointing to.

We feel like a subject in here, looking out at a world out there. Me and you. Inside and outside. Self and other.

This division feels solid and separate. It shapes how we move through our day. It shapes how we how we relate to our experience, how we protect ourselves, how we love.

Garab Dorje is telling us to look at this directly.

In the language of Dzogchen, your own nature is rigpa, intrinsic awareness. We are not talking about your personality, or identity, or thoughts. It's the simple fact of clear, lucid knowing that is present right now.

It has no shape. No boundary. No center. There is nothing to hold onto or grasp. And yet, everything you experience occurs within it.

“What appears as other” includes everything that seems outside this awareness. The person in front of you. The sounds in the room. The thoughts in your mind. Even the feeling of being a separate self.

Ordinarily, we assume these stand apart from us. Recognition is seeing that they do not.

Recognition is seeing that awareness and appearance were never separate to begin with.

The world does not disappear. The diversity of experience remains, but the sense of distance falls away. The tension of holding to a “self” over here and experiencing “other” over there begins to relax.

And when the tension of that dance relaxes, resistance loses its ground and softens into connection, oneness, ultimate love.

In Mahamudra and Dzogchen, compassion is not added to our nature as an action to do. It is the natural responsiveness of buddhanature when separation collapses.

We do not try to feel oneness. We don't try to be compassionate. Instead, again and again, we simply recognize this non-duality of awareness and appearance and let experience unfold within awareness without pushing or pulling each other around.

Recognition is simple. Living from it takes familiarity and confidence.

Over time, the division between “me” and “you” falls away. And in that loosening, love and compassion stop being something we try to generate.

They become what remains when division falls away.