From a friend.

The Illusion of the Seeker and the Mirage of Enlightenment

In the Dzogchen view, the highest teachings do not aim at attainment, progress, or transcendence. They reveal the inherent absurdity of the very notion of seeking. The referential comment—“Enlightenment reveals there's no one to be enlightened, only the illusion of a seeker chasing its imagined escape”—is not a poetic turn of phrase, but a direct articulation of the radical, luminous clarity at the heart of Dzogchen: that the ground of being is already fully present, and the seeker is but a ripple on its surface—restless, imaginary, and unreal.

At the root of all striving lies a fundamental misidentification. The seeker imagines itself as a someone, located in time, trapped in limitation, aspiring toward some exalted future state. But as long as this structure remains intact—this idea that “I” must become awakened—the natural state remains hidden not by distance, but by misperception. The very effort to find truth is the veil obscuring it.

As Longchenpa, one of the greatest Dzogchen masters, writes:

“Since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.”

— Longchen Rabjam, “You Are the Eyes of the World”

What bursts in this laughter is the falsehood of division—the split between seeker and sought, path and destination. When awareness sees through itself, it recognizes there never was anyone behind the seeking, only the dance of appearances occurring within the boundless expanse of presence.

In Dzogchen, this is expressed as rigpa—the self-knowing awareness that is not a function of the mind but the essence of what is. It does not arise through purification, method, or time. It is not improved or diminished by effort. In fact, every attempt to grasp it solidifies the illusion that there is a grasper. As Patrul Rinpoche writes:

“The view is to be free of all fixations. The meditation is not to meditate. The conduct is to be without effort.”

— Patrul Rinpoche, “Words of My Perfect Teacher”

This is not nihilism, nor quietism. It is the unshakable freedom of resting in what already is, prior to naming, prior to seeking. The seeker is a mirage born of attention collapsing into thought. When that contraction relaxes, what remains is not a “person” attaining awakening—but the timeless presence that was never absent.

There is no destination in Dzogchen, only recognition. No distance, only immediacy. No one behind the curtain, only the dancing of light and shadow. And yet, even this is saying too much. As the saying goes:

“To speak of the view is to obscure the view.”

So what, then, is to be done? Nothing. And that is the challenge. To do nothing—not passively, but with total presence. To stop reaching, stop resisting, stop narrating—and to see. Not as a witness, but as the luminous openness itself.

Final Reflection

The referential comment dissolves the entire edifice of becoming. There is no enlightenment for someone—because the someone is the invention. What appears to be a seeker is a function of thought, memory, and habit looping upon itself. Dzogchen reveals this not by destroying the illusion, but by laughing at its nonexistence. The chase ends not in arrival, but in the recognition that there was never anyone running, and nowhere to arrive.

Let this not be believed, but seen—directly, effortlessly, nakedly. In the absence of the one who seeks, the natural state is obvious.