Necessity and Creativity: The Status of Lived Experience in Longchenpa’s “The Precious Treasury of the Space of Phenomena”

This paper discusses the existential status of the world as a primal space of lived experience in the context of the nondual Tibetan Tradition “The Great Perfection”; is it necessary or contingent. We begin with distinguishing two senses of necessity, a primordial meaning that is grounded in the nature of nondual Awareness and a spatiotemporal meaning which signifies the predictability of specific events. Based on this distinction, it is asked if and how the world is necessary in each existential context. What we find is that the world in all its multiple experiential qualities is an inherent expression of Awareness. Simultaneously, its contents as information are woven into a continuum that unfolds according to causal patterns. Consequently, it is asserted that lived experience brings together immediate presencing and causal patterns. Finally, we turn to the relations between necessity and creativity within the nondual ground and in the space of spatiotemporal beings. This leads us to discover the integral nature of ground and beings, which is rooted in the characteristics of nondual Awareness, open essence, and lucid self-nature.