Dudjom Lingpa taught that all apparent existence is a manifestation of the mind itself. This principle is not only Dudjom Lingpa’s wisdom, but also his fundamental teaching Dzogchen. It is the idea that things are not as real as they seem to us. The “reality” of everything we experience, including the mind itself, is fundamentally a construct of our mind.
It’s not just a lofty theory—it’s wisdom we can bring into our lives and live by. It is much more aligned with the true nature of reality than what our minds perceive day to day. When we are able to truly embody and live this wisdom, we feel liberated because we see that many of the conflicts in our lives and our core sense of self are not intrinsically real. They are just a powerful play that takes place in the theater of our mind.
Those who have lived with such wisdom are considered mahasiddhas in Tibetan culture. Dudjom Lingpa was a true mahasiddha who was a living witness to this wisdom and embodied it in his life. He was described as being brave. Our fear often arises when we believe that the self, the problems, and the struggles in our lives have an internal existence. When one truly realizes that in one’s own mind it is all just a big story, one becomes liberated and fearless. If our consciousness is not frozen by fear, then love, joy and compassion shine naturally, just as the sun shines when it is no longer covered by clouds.
There is an inquiry in Buddhism that leads us to understand that the way we experience everything is just the mind entertaining itself with its own mental constructs. The strength of this analytical method is summed up in the following sentence: “nothing stands against investigation”. This means that there is nothing that is truly solid when we examine its true nature; everything collapses, as if it were just an illusion all along.
There is nothing that is truly solid when we search for its true nature; everything collapses, as if it were just an illusion all along.
This research method is an uncompromising invitation to a daring adventure into the secrets of all phenomena. We are invited to inquire not only about mundane things, but also about things that we worship and revere as the highest, as the holy. Basically, everything we believe to be true crumbles before such deep examination like a house of cards.
I once led a weekend retreat in Southern California and talked about this issue. During a break, a woman approached me and said:
“It sounds like an expression Alice in Wonderland. Alice looked at the Queen of Hearts and said, “You’re all nothing but a pack of cards!” At that moment the queen and the deck collapsed.”
I think this is a wonderful analogy for the power of inquiry.
“Who am I?”
Maybe it’s not challenging for us to be interested in something we don’t really care about, because it’s not a big deal to us whether it’s real or not. But when something is particularly dear to us, it can be too challenging to even question whether or not it’s real. Perhaps the most dear thing to us is our identity. There are some radical ways to let go of that identity. It is said that some creative Dzogchen masters sent their disciples to the mountains, wandering along the river banks, to search for themselves by calling out their own names.
At first, you might not take this all too seriously when someone asks you to. But if you do end up asking this question, make sure you’re alone because it can be creepy to see people walking around calling you by your name. They might think you’re losing it.
Imagine your name is Joe and you go by “Joe!” You may even be scared of yourself at first, but it can shake the idea of who you are. As you look deeper into who you are, you can see that every little part of your identity is an invention of the mind and is found neither outside nor inside.
I think I am Anam Thubten, but even that is not true in the ultimate sense. If I look deep into it, there is no Anam Thubten. People keep calling me Anam Thubten and I think I really am Anam Thubten. In my mind, it’s already well established, and there’s no way it won’t. But I wasn’t born with that name. Anam means “big sky” in Tibetan. Thubten was the name given to me by my abbot when I was ordained a monk, and it is the name I bear to this day, although I later became a layman. Thubten means Buddha-Sasanaor ‘Buddha Dharma’.
When you become a monk, you always get a new name, and every name is fancy. They never give a bad name. When you become a monk, you are given names like ‘Ocean of Dharma’, ‘Lamp of Buddha’, ‘Light of Dharma’ and so on. They never give malicious names like “Ocean of Stupidity” or “Castle of Hate”. All the names they give are very good.
The truth is that Anam Thubten is a person that society and I have created. It is purely a mental construct and there is no truth in this identity.
So who am I? You may probably think, “My name and my role in society are mental constructs, but at least I’m a person.”
But what does “person” really mean? If we keep asking questions, we can feel like we are just swirling particles governed by the laws of physics. If we continue to ask, what is a particle? What is physics?
And who perceives all this at all? It is similar to the Dzogchen examination of trying to find the self in our body and finding nothing to point to as the self.
Then we can come to the realization that all reality is just a representation of our consciousness, and we can feel that consciousness is real. It’s the last thing we can cling to to soothe ourselves from the terror of existential collapse.
But Dzogchen does not allow us to indulge in the false comfort of having something to cling to like an ontological pacifier. Traditionally, as part of Dzogchen training, we are asked to examine the existential nature of mind and consciousness itself…
Inquiry Into the Mind
The true nature of the mind can be experienced through an inquiry that is very precisely taught in the Dzogchen tradition. It is usually done in a formal setting, such as a meditation retreat, where you take time out of your daily life and work on your inquiry without any distractions until an authentic insight emerges.
The examination can begin with the same meditative posture that we have already described. We can then intuitively turn our attention to the mind itself and seek the mind by asking the following three questions:
Where is it from? where does he live where are you going
Each can be elaborated: does it come from outside, inside or different parts of the body?
Is it located outside, inside or in different parts of the body or organs? See if it’s there.
We can ask the same questions about where the mind goes.
This examination can be detailed by looking for the color, shape and size of the mind.
Finally, we arrive at the powerful conclusion that there is no single phenomenon that is the mind. There is no “thing”. Then the foundation of the mind collapses in the state of non-founding, that is, “no root and no soil.”
At the same time, as we have already said, the mind is not completely non-existent, otherwise we would not experience anything. Yet when we reach the state of not finding, we let go of our attachment to our perceived reality and many of our painful, constricting experiences and thought patterns. Once we realize that there is no solid existence from our mind, it becomes natural to grasp experiences.
The mind is not completely non-existent, otherwise we would experience nothing. Yet when we reach the state of not finding, we let go of our attachment to our perceived reality and many of our painful, constricting experiences and thought patterns.
This state of non-finding may not sound inspiring because it is denial, but through it the egoistic self and the constricted sense of reality can collapse in on itself, just like the Queen of Hearts. Alice in Wonderland. This is because the mind always sustains them, so when the mind collapses, so do they.
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From Releasing the knot of the Mind © 2026 by Anam Thubten. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com
