Khyab rig, the final word from Drenpa Namkha

As we have seen previously, Shardza Rinpoche and Yongdzin Rinpoche’s definition of Pervading Awareness (khyab rig) concur with one another. The works in which they refer to khyab rig are :

— the Treasury of Space and Awareness (dByings rig mdzod) and the Heart Drops of Kuntuzangpo (Kun bzang snying thig) for Shardza Rinpoche,

— the Commentary and Notes on the Magyü Thigle (Ma rgyud thig le mtshan ‘grel) for Yongdzin Rinpoche.

All three sources have canonical status and in all three cases, they state that khyab-rig is the Sugatagarbha (bde gshegs snying po) which embraces beings (‘gro ba, i.e. transmigrating beings).

Now some people pretend that the source of Khyab rig definitions appears in the works on Dzogchen logic but I haven’t been able to locate any reference to it so far in the concerned texts themselves. However, I have located the actual source to which both Shardza Rinpoche and Yongdzin Rinpoche have drawn in order to provide their definition. This source is none other than the famed Commentary on the Treasury of the Sky (Nam mkha’ ‘phrul mdzod kyi ‘grel pa) whose authorship is attributed to Bla-chen Dran-pa nam-mkha’ (8th c.). Vairocana, his disciple, was the first recipient of the transmission and hid the text which is said to have been recovered by Lung-bon lha-gnyan, sometime in the late 11th century.

Now the most careful edition of this Commentary, published by the Gangs ti-se bon-gzhung rig-mdzod very recently and available for free on the internet, has been included in a volume entitled rDzogs-chen tshad-ma (The Logic of the Great Perfection, meaning the Dzogchen texts dealing with logic). The file being searchable, it is pretty easy to locate any compound or individual syllable, even letters. If one launches a research for khyab rig, one will find only one reference to it in the entire corpus. As we have mentioned, this occurrence appears in the Commentary of the Namkha Trüldzö, not in the other works on Dzogchen logic.

There, in the Commentary, p. 485, we find the following line :

=0-:m#-0+{-0:-#<{#=-.8m-$m$-.}=-8E}-;-=0-.-21-`o-8+}+-.-+$-k

khyab rig bde bar gshegs pa’i snying pos ‘gro la khyab pa tsam du ‘dod pa dang/

I won't repeat the word by word which can be found in a previous message here, but the meaning is : « — Pervading Awareness is defined as being simply the Sugatagarbha which embraces beings. »

Here, no need to discuss about adding anything between brackets, the reference to "beings" ('gro ba) is totally explicit, which demonstrates that this addition in Yongdzin Rinpoche's definition is confirmed (it actually did not need any external confirmation because it was explicitly enunciated with a reference to "beings" by Yongdzin in his own explanation). This demonstrates that the intent of those questioning my addition of "beings" between brackets in an earlier post was simply motivated by a dramatically bad motivation. Ill-intentions combined to an ignorance based on defective secondary sources result simply in deeper delusion.

There is also no necessity of metre or anything demanded by metrics in Dran pa nam mkha's line, therefore if objects were to be embraced by this pervading awareness, they would obviously have been included here. Those who refuse to understand the evidence are most apparently not capable of understanding the Universal Base either. They equate this Pervading Awareness and the Universal Base. This is a very deluded perspective. It also entails not understanding that even though the natural state embraces everything (Samsara-Nirvana, etc.), only beings who have an awareness can reflect the knowledge of the natural state. This is in direct line with the statement in the Zhangzhung Nyengyü saying that, just like the moon shines over rocks and pounds, only pounds can reflect the moon, similarly, even though the natural state embraces everything, objects don’t have an awareness and therefore cannot manifest the knowledge of that state.

We therefore have on one side Tapihritsa, Drenpa Namkha, Shardza Rinpoche and Yongdzin Rinpoche who all share the very same idea (and for a the last three of them the very same wording in their definition of khyab-rig), denying the fact that objects have an awareness, and on the other side a few individuals who lack clear understanding of the meaning of the texts and bring within the corpus of Dzogchen teachings conceptions which are basically dependent on ignorance.