Ignorance

Written By Paul Baffier

Paul, translator from Tibetan into English and French. He was trained at INALCO and Rangjung Yeshe Institute.

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Dzogchen Terms | The Dzogchen basics

In this article, Paul defines ignorance (ma rig pa) as: being unaware of one’s own nature, and thus believing in the existence of a self and a phenomenal reality that exist independently.

Series: The Dzogchen Terms

Ignorance (ma rig pa)

Ignorance (ma rig pa) is the failure to recognize one’s own nature—empty and luminous—and thus the belief in the existence of a self and a phenomenal reality that exist independently. It is the absence (ma) of awareness of what is most fundamental and intimate within us : primordial evidence (rig pa).

More precisely, the Great Perfection distinguishes three modes of ignorance:

causal ignorance of the single primordial manifestation (bdag nyid gcig pa) of the nature of mind in all phenomena: causal ignorance is the mother of all our troubles, the source of all our illusory scenarios, the non-knowledge of the primordial ground (ye gzhi); but also the presence of the primordial evidence “within” this very ignorance;
innate or “spontaneously arising” ignorance (lhan skyes ma rig pa): this is the grasping at a permanent self, master and possessor of its aggregates — which are, however, transitory and subject to destruction — leading to the suffering of endless rebirths; a blind ignorance that neither sees nor knows;
acquired or “fully imputed” ignorance (kun brtags ma rig pa): this is the erroneous conceptual view of “labelling” (brtags) all phenomena — which are, however, not established or empty in essence and whose appearance is produced by subject-object duality — as existing independently on their own; this erroneous view is “acquired” in the sense that it is learnt through educational, cultural or philosophical systems which do not teach the conditioned co-production of phenomena. It is an active aspect of ignorance that recognizes something other than what truly is.