Jigten Sumgön

The most important idea associated with Jigten Sumgon is the "Single Intention", which is based on the idea that all of the Buddha's teachings have a single essence, a single meaning and a single intent. This single intent is generally identified with "nonarising" or "birthlessness" (skye ba med pa) in the context of sutra and "mahamudra" in the tantric context. This single intent is also identified with terms such as tathata and dharmata.[10]

This is the central topic of a collection of 150 vajra statements which were collected into the influential text known by the name Single Intention (Gongchik, Wyl. Dgongs gcig). The first vajra statement encapsulates the main idea of the text: "All the teachings of the Buddha are the revelation of the original state of the fundamental nature (gshis babs)."[10]

According to Jan-Ulrich Sobisch:

The Single Intention weaves the thread of ineffable mahamudra through the entire fabric of Buddhism. It presents mahamudra as pervading disciplined conduct, meditative concentration, and discriminative knowledge; ground, path, and result; view, practice, and conduct; and the “three vows” of pratimoksa, of the bodhisattvas, and of mantra. Jikten Sumgön teaches how the fundamental values and insights revealed by the Buddha are woven into reality and therefore accessible to all.[10]

Even though there is only a single intention in the teachings of the Buddhas, due to the varying capacity of sentient beings, the single intent is expressed through limitless skillful means, through teachings on the ground, path and result and through the three vehicles.[10] Even though there are these many numerous teachings, Jigten Sumgon holds that all of them have the common purpose of leading to supreme Buddhahood. He also holds that they were all taught for all beings (against the view that certain teachings were only taught for certain classes of beings, such as Hinayana teachings being only for those of the Hinayana family and so on).[10] Thus the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma are essentially one, they contain each other and aim at the same goal, but different beings have different conceptions, and thus there appear to be three turnings.[10]

The eighth Karmapa referred to Jigten Sumgön's Gongchik as "siddhānta of the Kagyupas",[11] suggesting he considered it to be the definitive text outlining the philosophical tenets of all Kagyu schools. Seven centuries later, Dudjom Rinpoche quotes Jigten Sumgön on something else he emphasized, the significance of the preliminary practices (ngöndro): "Other teachings consider the main practice profound, but here it is the preliminary practices that we consider profound."[12]

Regarding Buddhist philosophical tenets, Jigten Sumgön and his followers generally held a dismissive attitude towards their usefulness. Jigten Sumgön states in Gongchik (4.13): "The truth is veiled by all [philosophical] tenets whatsoever." He also wrote:

May those who mistake the system of tenets, which is a knot of the mind, as the Buddha’s intention, realize true reality and may their mindfulness be purified in itself.[13]

Moreover, echoing the mahāsiddha Saraha, he says:

All the views starting from the Non-Buddhists’ view of permanence and nihilism and up to the Madhyamikas’ [view] are something that is a mind-made duality. Since I have not studied these views of the various tenets, I do not know them.[14]

Instead of establishing a specific philosophical view as unrefutable or attempting to conceptually express the truth intellectually, Jigten Sumgön held we should strive to attain direct realization of the nature of the mind.[10]