There are many different practices in Buddhism, just as there are in Christianity. Dzogchen is a set of practices within Tibetan Buddhism. Dzogchen is translated as the Great Perfection or the Great Completion. These teachings are based on the understanding that within each of us lies a primordial state of perfection. Lama Surya Das, a leading Buddhist teacher and author of Awakening the Buddha Within, has many books and lectures that cover this special set of practices. We also talk about this state as Buddha nature or our innate goodness. However, I’m sure many of us have days when we don’t feel like there is any goodness to be found. But even then and even now, it is here, just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be nurtured, just waiting to be allowed to shine. The teachings of Dzogchen encourage us to discover this innate goodness, to practice cultivating it, then put it into action in our lives.
We don’t have to wait to get reborn, we don’t have to even decide whether reincarnation is true or not. We just need to practice being present, and find out for ourselves if what they are saying is true. A great quote from a Dzogchen master named Manjusri is, “One instant of total awareness is one instant of total freedom and enlightenment.” Dzogchen breaks down this idea of “enlightenment” into bite size pieces.
There are three primary points in Dzogchen: View, Meditation and Action.
The Glimpse/View: To recognize one’s own nature
Meditation/Practice/Path: To practice resting in that nature
The Result/Fruition: To sustain that awareness
The basic premise of Dzogchen is that everything exists in the natural state. Imagine that everything you need right now exists in this present moment. No place to go, nothing to do, just be present and you will find whatever you need. How can this be? Imagine that whatever answer you are struggling with, whatever situation is worrying you, that the process for solving this issue is to first do nothing. Now, of course, many of us already choose the method of “doing nothing”. We do nothing because we are afraid, or we do nothing because we can’t decide, or do nothing because it seems too difficult to think about the problem. So, I’m not talking about THAT kind of doing nothing—I think most of us have all already mastered that. This is actually a different kind of “do nothing”. This is about being fully present in this moment and being open to the huge potential that exists in each moment. So maybe “being open and present” is a little doing, but mostly not doing--not being distracted, not struggling, not over-analyzing--just relaxing into the fullness of the present moment.
Most of us have already had a glimpse of being fully present. Recall a time that you were in nature or playing a sport well or listening to a great piece of music or see great art, when you felt “in the zone”, a sense of all things being connected, a sense of life being perfect, nothing to be added or subtracted. That is awakening. That is what this is all about. There is a state of being that we all can realize and cultivate.
One of the things I love about Buddhism is that it is very practical. This is not about anyone telling you what to believe. Buddhism is about offering up a new way of looking at the world, then you have to go try it out for yourself. It’s not enough to just read about it or hear about it. Test is for yourself. You decide if it works. And Dzogchen teachings are the same. There are people who came before us, who were kind enough to show us the path that worked for them. They found some techniques that worked, for breaking down pre-conceived notions of how they viewed the world, and now we have an opportunity to learn from their experience.
Dzogchen is the meditation teaching of non-meditation. We’re not trying to get to some higher level of consciousness; we are not trying to create some vision or special experience. We are practicing just being. We begin by bringing awareness to the breath, just breathing in and breathing out with awareness. But focus on the breath is not the end process. It is a stepping stone to just resting naturally in the moment. Imagine that you are in a dark room, with windows so dirty that you can’t see out. Your sense of the world would come from all the experiences that you have had inside that dark dirty room. Now, imagine one day that your arm accidentally brushes up against the window, and a little dirt is removed, enabling you to see a little bit of what lies outside the window. This little glimpse might encourage you to begin washing the window little by little until you see more and more of what’s going on around you. The dirt symbolizes all the thoughts and sensations that cloud our sense of being. There’s no reason to get mad at the dirt. We don’t need to feel badly for having the dirt—everyone has some. We just need to clean the windows. We are cleaning the windows of our awareness. With all this cleaning, we might then realize that, in truth, there is no window; there is no room. It’s just a mental construct that we created in order to define who we are. But with the practice of awareness, of seeing beyond our thoughts and sensations, we start to experience the fullness of life. When your window was dirty, the fullness of life still existed. There were still many other things happening beyond your small room, but YOU didn’t know it. This is a good illustration of the glimpse that Dzogchen is talking about. The glimpse of the fullness of life begins with just washing the window a bit.
The second step in this process reminds us that, to expand the number of moments we experience fully, we need to commit to and then follow through with practice. We commit to practice no matter how difficult or frustrating it might sometimes be. Oftentimes, early on in practicing mindfulness and meditation, we are struck by all the crazy thoughts and projections that we place on ourselves and the world. It can be somewhat unsettling. It may make you want to jump up and run out of the room and never meditate or be mindful again. BUT, this second step reminds us to stay put, to hang in there, to keep trying. As Pema Chodron says, if you can manage to hold your seat, especially during the tough times, great progress can be made. if you can manage to not get freaked out by what you’re experiencing, and to just sit and observe how your mind tries to hold onto its old way of viewing the world, then you start to see the incredible possibilities that truly do exist in this world.
Another powerful mindfulness exercise is described by Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements. He suggests that we imagine we go back to our childhood, before we were given words to describe everything, before we personally had an experience of so many things. From this place of innocence and not-knowing, look around at everything and everyone and imagine that you are seeing and experiencing this world for the first time, without words or experiences to pre-judge. Imagine that you are experiencing yourself without words, without preconceived notions about who or what you are. By taking away our words and our memories, we can start to recognize what a huge impact our words and memories make on how we interpret the world that we live in today. In this way, we start to see the world anew. Dzogchen teaches that this is NOT just a mental exercise, that you really do have the ability to start fresh in each moment.
The last step and of course continual step, is action, continually expanding the moments spent in full awareness. With the glimpse, then practice, you begin to embody this new way of living in more and more moments of each day. You discover more and more ways to see the world and yourself in a fresh new way. You rest in the full view of life more often and that becomes your pattern, your “habit”, when the synapse of your brain become rewired.
There is a wonderful Dzogchen poem by the Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche:
Happiness can not be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present,
in open relaxation and letting go.
Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there -
open, inviting and comfortable.
Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing -
Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment