The Two Wings of Dzogchen

Trekcho, cutting through, and togal, direct crossing, are the two core practices of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, the highest teaching of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism and, in a related form, of the Bon tradition, understood within Dzogchen teaching as complementary rather than sequential alternatives: trekcho works by cutting directly through mental fabrication and habitual grasping to rest in rigpa, the already present, naturally pure awareness Dzogchen holds to be the fundamental nature of mind, while togal works instead with spontaneous visionary phenomena and forms of luminosity that Dzogchen practice describes arising once rigpa has been stabilised, using these arising appearances as a direct path to fuller realisation rather than treating them as obstacles to be set aside. Dzogchen teaching itself insists that togal in particular depends on trekcho's prior stabilisation, so that the two practices are understood as a coordinated pair rather than as separate paths a practitioner might choose between freely, an interdependence central to how the tradition frames responsible progression through the system.