Student and Teacher

Together on the Path

During the recent annual summer retreat at Serenity Ridge, on the topic of The Seven Mirrors of Dzogchen, a student asked Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche to help with their understanding of why the symbol of the mirror is used.

Student: This is a basic question, but can you explain more about the use here of the symbol of the mirror?

TWR: A mirror allows whatever appears there. For instance, when you first get up in the morning and you go to the mirror, does the mirror get shocked by whatever appears? Is the mirror shaking, saying, "Oh my, is that you? What happened?" No, the mirror is peaceful, quiet, like Samantabhadra. Open, luminous, accommodating. That is the mirror.

And for all of us, our authentic self is like a mirror. For example, during practice when you are really resting, resting your pain identity, then you become like a mirror. Who is it that's resting? The one who is obscuring the mirror is resting. Therefore you become more like a mirror. What does that mean? It means at that moment, everything sounds okay, I'm not labeling anything. I'm not labeling anything as wrong, or identifying this or that as a problem. I'm not saying anything. I'm experiencing them, but I'm not labeling them.

The mirror here symbolizes the quality of spontaneous clarity. You come up to a mirror with your story of what is not nice about what appears in it. Whatever is not nice, though, is your story, it is not the story of the mirror. Clarity is the story of the mirror. The mirror is not obscuring what it is, it is clearly allowing to appear what is. You are obscuring by labeling what appears. The mirror simply allows to appear what is. That is the beauty of the mirror wisdom. But you are labeling what the mirror is not labeling. You might be saying, I don't look so good; that is your label; the mirror is not saying that, because that is not part of the appearance.

In dzogchen teachings, the mirror is one of the most important symbols of self-clear, of unobscured. Obscuring the mirror happens when the thought comes, when the emotion arises, and when you label; then mirror is getting obscured. Your authentic self is not able to experience what it is, rather it is experiencing what it is not. And that's why we say, in order to know who you are, it is best to recognize who you are not. That is because we normally engage more with who we are not, than with who we are. And you'll naturally have more chances to come to a realization about what you are more engaged with, rather than what you are less engaged with. Doing so, you can clearly realize that those are not you.

Rinpoche's book The Seven Mirrors of Dzogchen is available in the Ligmincha store.