Dang, Rolpa, Tsal: the Dzogchen triune governing the manifestation of energy

Sarva Mangalam

Dang, Rolpa and Tsal is an esoteric doctrine within the Mantrayana vehicle enshrined within the lineage(s) of the Dzogchenpa. I could easily have conveyed this doctrine in my own words but resolved that as there are presently so few readily accessible sources of this information in English to garner comparative understanding and to secure a certain philosophical finesse of technical terminology, resolved that the most honourable and useful course of action would be to render the text with felicity.

I am not basely echoing acculturated information, I am conveying knowing of lived experience. I have had and do have experiences of the manifestation of energy in my own spiritual exploration through devotion, trance, altarwork, dreamwork and in everyday activity, all of which established me in the primordial state of Dzogchen prior to knowing of its cultural evocation. That said, my experience of effortlessly abiding in the natural state is not yet unimpeded.

Some may rail at this, but Dzogchen may be divorced from Tibetan culture. Indeed, I prefer the Sanskrit term Adi Yoga rather than the Tibetan. I have used Dzogchen in this weblog simply as it is more widely known. As an experience and worldview Dzogchen is transcultural and ahistorical. That said, it is also a testament and honour to the sacred keepers of the Tantric Vision within the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau, not to separate it from its cultural support and trappings. Truth takes the form of the vessel by which it is housed. Dzogchen also has historical and cultural evocations which are amongst the greatest and most profound of our worlds living spiritual traditions.

In the following weblog I have neither reproduced italicized text nor diacritics from the originals. I have chosen to enhance the direct quotations with metatext to maximize the medium. I will engage the content with hermeneutic analysis in other weblogs to make peace for my license.

Aum A Hung

The following is a generous extract from Norbu, N. & Shane, J. (1999). The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen. Snow Lion Publication. ISBN 1559391359, pp.99-107:

Energy manifests in three characteristic ways, which are known as Dang, Rolpa, and Tsal. These terms are untranslatable, and we have to use the Tibetan words. They are explained with three examples: the mirror, the crystal ball, and the crystal-prism.

Dang

A mirror has neither form nor color. Yet when a red cloth is placed in front of it, the mirror seems red, and with a green cloth in front of it, it seems green, and so on. Thus, although a mirror's voidness is essentially infinite and formless, the mirror may fill itself with any content. The same happens with the individual's energy: although at the Dang level it is essentially infinite and formless, it is clear that it has the capacity to adopt any form.

In fact, although essentially our energy is totally formless and free from any duality, the karmic traces contained in our stream of consciousness give rise to the forms that we experience as body, voice, and mind, as well as to those that we perceive as an external environment -- whose characteristics are in both cases determined by the causes accumulated during numberless lives. The problem is that these karmic traces also give rise to the dualistic delusion and the attachment that cause us to be utterly unaware of our own true condition, so that we experience a radical separation between our person -- body, speech, and mind -- and that which we take for an external world. This causes us to experience both ourselves and the 'world around us' as absolute, self-existing realities. The result of this delusion is what is known as 'karmic vision'.

When freed from this illusion, the individual experiences his or her own nature as it is and as it has been from the very beginning: as an awareness free from any restrictions and as an energy free from any limits or form. To discover this is to discover the Dharmakaya or 'Body of Truth', which is better rendered as 'Body of the True Nature of Reality'.

Rolpa

This type of manifestation of the individual's energy is illustrated with the example of a crystal ball. When an object is placed near a crystal ball, an image of the object may be seen inside the ball, so that the object itself seems to be found inside it. The same may happen with the energy of the individual, which has the potentiality to appear as an image experienced 'internally', as though it were seen 'with the eye of the mind', although what appears is truly neither 'inside' nor 'outside': no matter how vivid this seemingly 'internal' image may be, it is, just as in the previous case, a manifestation of the individual's own energy, this time in the form of Rolpa energy.

It is on the basis of the functioning of this type of manifestation of energy that many of the practices of Thodgal and of the Yangthig work...It is the source of the one hundred peaceful and wrathful deities which, according to the Bardo Thodrol or Tibetan Book of the Dead, arise in the experience of the chonyid bardo (or bardo of the Dharmata); and it is also the original source of the deities that are visualized by practitioners of the Path of Transformation in order to transform their impure vision into pure vision.

Finally, it is precisely this level of their own energy that realized individuals experience as the Sambhogakaya or 'Body of Wealth'. The wealth referred to is the fantastic multiplicity of forms that may manifest at this level, corresponding to the essence of the elements, which is light and which realized individuals do not perceive in dualistic terms.

Tsal

Tsal is the manifestaiton of the energy of the individual him or herself, as an apparently 'external' world. But, in fact, the apparently external world is a manifestation of our own energy, at the level of Tsal. Together with the arising of dualism, however, there simultaneously arises the illusion of a self-existing individual who feels separate from a world which he or she experiences as external. The fragmented dualistic consciousness takes the projections of the senses for objects existing independently and separately from the illusory 'self' with which it identifies and to which it clings.

The example used to illustrate the illusory nature of our sense of separateness establishes a parallel between the way in which the individual's energy manifests and what happens when a crystal-prism is placed in the light of the sun: when the sun's light falls on a crystal it is refracted and decomposed by it, causing the appearance of rays and forms in the colors of the spectrum which seem to be separate from the crystal, but which are actually functions of the crystal's own nature.

In the same way, what appears as a world of apparently external phenomena is the energy of the individual him or her herself, as perceived by his or her senses. In truth, there is nothing external to, or separate from, the individual, and all that manifests in the individual's field of experience is a continuum, fundamentally free from duality and multiplicity: this is precisely the 'Great Perfection' that is discovered in Dzogchen.

For a realized individual, the level of manifestation of energy called 'Tsal' is the dimension of the Nirmanakaya, or 'Body of Manifestation'. But we must keep in mind that neither the Dang, Rolpa, and Tsal forms of the manifestation of energy, nor the Dharmakaya, the Sambhogakaya, and the Nirmanakaya, are separate from each other. Limitless, formless Dang energy, the correct understanding of which is the Dharmakaya, manifests on the level of the essence of the elements, which is light, as the nonmaterial forms of the Rolpa energy, the correct understanding of which is the Sambhogakaya, which can only be perceived by those having visionary clarity. On the 'material' level, it manifests as the forms of Tsal energy, which deluded individuals perceive as external to their consciousness, as solid and material, but the correct understanding of which is the Nirmanakaya...

When we understand the non-dual nature of reality as described in the explanations of the Base* as Essence, Nature, and Energy, and know how the Energy of the individual manifests as Dang, Rolpa and Tsal, we can understand how someone who has reintegrated their Energy is capable of actions not possible for an ordinary being. Then the actions of such a master no longer seem incomprehensible.

Key *= Please note the Wikipedia article of the Base is principally my work (that is B9HH aka Beauford Anton Stenberg) by the grace of the Naga.

Extract from Beer, R. (2004: p.188). The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs. Serindia Publications, Inc. ISBN 1932476105, regarding the iconography of the 'mirror' (Sanskrit: darpana, adarsha; Tibetan: me long):

The mirror's function is to enable one to see oneself clearly, and as a cosmetic accessory or household object its auspicious importance is obvious. In Buddhism the mirror is the perfect symbol of emptiness or pure consciousness - it is clear, bright and shining, it reflects all objects impartially, and yet remains completely unaffected by the images which arise in it. It reveals all phenomena to be void in essence, like a passing show it reflects all objects of the phenomenal world but reveals them to be without substance.

In ancient Indian rituals of cleansing or bathing a sacred image, the reflection of the sacred image in a mirror would often be washed by pouring water over the mirror. This rite is known as pratibimba, which literally means 'reflected'. In Tibet this ritual is known as the 'bathing ceremony of the deity' (Tib. khrus gsol), where water is sprinkled over the reflected image of a statue or thangka. The water, having bathed the form of the deity, is thus considered consecrated water. The mirror is also used in divination rituals, and in many shamanic rituals of healing and exorcism.

Extract from Beer, R. (2004: p.271). The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs. Serindia Publications, Inc. ISBN 1932476105, regarding the iconography of the 'mirror' (Sanskrit: darpana, adarsha; Tibetan: me long):

...the divination mirror (Tib. mo me long) or 'magical mirror' (Tib. 'phrul gyi me long). The circular divination mirror is made of silver or polished bell-metal, and marked with five small inscribed circles in the centre and cardinal directions, forming the shape of a cross and symbolising the Five Buddha wisdoms. In divination rituals - such as are performed to the goddess Dorje Yodonma (Tib. rDo rje g.yu sgron ma) - the mirror is placed upright in a container of barley or grain, and covered with five coloured silk cloths representing the Five Buddhas. A young virgin boy or girl acts as the medium of divination, seeing images or syllables which may arise on the mirror's uncovered surface, and which are then interpreted by the ritual master. As a hand-held attribute the magical-mirror is held in the left hand of Palden Llamo, in her four-armed form as the 'Self-arisen Queen' (Tib. Rang byung rgyal mo), symbolising her ability to clearly perceive the activities or karmas of the three reams.

A circular silver, bronze, or gold divination mirror also adorns the breast and costume of oracular deities and certain protectors, such as the Nechung and Gadong oracles and the dharmapalas Begtse, Dorje Dragden, and Tsiu Marpo. Placed above the heart of the oracle or dharmapala, this mirror is known as the 'mirror of mind' (Tib. thugs kyi me long), which represents the mind of the deity and is often sealed with the deity's inscribed seed-syllable.

IMAGE CREDITS: all the images are very poor electronic reproductions of line drawings from the excellent work of Beer for whom I have the most deep and enduring respect. In most part for his meticulous, faithful labour and his encyclopedic work of strong anthropological and ethnographic grounding. I shall endeavour to refine the pixels within the images within the indeterminate future, by grace of the Trikaya.

Ever-completing in beauty