Portrait of Longchen Rabjam (Longchenpa)

Longchen Rabjam (Longchenpa)

1308-1364 · Indo-Tibetan Buddhism · Little-known

Longchenpa was a Tibetan master of the Nyingma school and the great systematizer of Dzogchen, its highest teaching. You are not working your way toward enlightenment, he taught. The ground of all experience, rigpa or primordial awareness, is already clear and already awake, so practice means catching sight of what has been the case all along instead of scrubbing the mind over lifetimes.

Signature

The position Longchenpa is most identified with in the Profiler:

Nature of Reality
strongly leans Unity
Perception
Other

Positions on the 11 axes the sources answer

Natural Processes
leans Purposeful (71 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
Society
leans Individualism (79 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
Mind
strongly leans Beyond Brain (93 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
The Divine
leans Indescribable (79 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
Identity
leans Unchanging (21 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
Meaning
leans Inherent (86 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
Nature of Reality
strongly leans Unity (7 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
Ground of Being
mildly leans Immanence (36 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
Nature
leans Harmony (79 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
Conviction
leans Certain (86 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
Allegiance
leans Global (71 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)

9 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Longchenpa refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.

Foundational questions

Highest Good
Service
What is the highest good?
End of Things
Other
What is the ultimate end of all things?
Perception
Other
What do we directly perceive?
Knowledge
Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge?
Agency
Non-Self
What is the nature of human agency and freedom?
Economy
Other
What is the ideal organization of economic life?
Death
Reincarnation
What happens at death?
Open Longchenpa in the ProfilerTake the test and compare yourself

More from Indo-Tibetan Buddhism

🛞 Siddhattha Gotama / Siddhartha Gautama (सिद्धार्थ गौतम), the Buddhac. 480-400 BC🕳️ Nagarjuna150-250🗄️ Asaṅga (असङ्ग)c. 300–370 CE🐘 Aśoka Maurya (अशोक; in his own inscriptions Devānāṃpiya Piyadasi)r. c. 268-232 BCE☴ Bhadantacariya Buddhaghosa (Pali: Buddhaghosa)fl. c. 5th c. CE✖️ Dignāga (Diṅnāga)c. 480–540 CE