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?
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