Wisdom-awareness
There are three kinds of transcendent wisdom-awareness: wisdom that arises from hearing and receiving the Dharma teachings, wisdom that arises from reflecting the teachings that one has received, and wisdom that arises from meditating them. Wisdom-awareness that arises from hearing and receiving the instructions is won by listening to teachings that qualified Lamas impart or reading books that explain the Dharma.
In the Jewel Ornament, Gampopa illustrates perfection of wisdom awareness. He compares the receiving of wisdom of awareness to a bodhisattva as a person seeing clearly. There are several components necessary to attain perfection of wisdom. The first is a need for a guru to guide you. “If millions upon billions of blind people are without a sighted guide and do not know the road, how can they enter the city?” in order to become a bodhisattva, there needs to be a guru to guide the student through right and wrong methods of attaining enlightenment. Furthermore, it is important to practice wisdom awareness with method.
Gampopa reflects that we should imagine feet as being the method and sight as being perfection of wisdom. Just like we are not able to cross without sight and feet, at the same time we need both method and perfection of wisdom to attain nirvana. This sort made me think of education in the western world, as we are accustomed to learning about a subject in school for a long period of time. And then once we enter the career, we start to apply the wisdom we learned in school to our day-to-day routine. Furthermore, the teachings of emptiness is hard to grasp as it teaches that nothing is permanent and that things cannot exist independent of everything else. This is what is called wisdom awareness. As he defines it as “the perfect and full discrimination of all phenomena.” Since, it is our human nature to be attached to worldly pleasures and people around us. It becomes difficult to see things as impermanent. In order to grasp such a concept requires a lot of discipline and focus, which only a guru can provide. This is why Gampopa stresses that both method and a spiritual master is necessary to attain Buddhahood.
see also; Dzogchen as self liberation through the ground of wisdom awareness
