Many scholars historical and contemporary have pointed to the East Asian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions which closely verge on theism. I take "theism" here very broadly, referring to any metaphysical vision—whether Vedāntin, Neoplatonic, or otherwise—which affirms an unconditioned, limitless, conscious reality to be the most primordial ground of all reality. With the contemplatively and speculatively profound Dzogchen tradition (rdzogs chen, the highest "vehicle" of the Nyingma lineage of Tibet), we have very little philologically and philosophically precise work aimed at understanding Dzogchen's relation to this wide terrain of "theisms." This paper undertakes some of that work, closely following classical Dzogchen discussions of the key terms "ground" (gzhi), "essence - nature - responsiveness" (ngo bo rang bzhin thugs rje), and "primordial awareness" (ye shes). I will develop this core Dzogchen account in order to offer a conceptually and terminologically specified answer to these two questions: Does Dzogchen belong within this terrain of theisms (broadly construed)? And if so, what distinguishes the sort of "theism" Dzogchen is?