Our small community of practitioners started a new book last night - Why We Meditate by Dan Goleman and Tsoknyi Rinpoche. So where does this fit within the whole Buddhist thing? For a start let’s name what he is teaching. It’s called Dzogchen which means the Great Perfection. What is perfect? - our buddha-nature, the awakened mind. This teaching emerges around fourteen-hundred years after the Buddha in Tibet. The roots of it can be traced right back to the Buddha but - as the Buddha said - everything keeps changing and that includes Buddhism. What had changed by the time a small group of yogis began to talk about the Great Perfection was the insight that we could not create, make, construct or grow awakened mind, but we could uncover, reveal or disclose it. Why? Because it was already there, merely hidden by the conflicted emotions and distorted thoughts that obscure it. Like a limitless clear blue sky hidden by clouds. And we did this - astonishingly - by doing nothing except initially just looking and then nothing more. We had to trust it would come to us. Which is what most of the blogs here are about.
Buddha-nature, within Dzogchen, is equated with a special type of non-dual spacious awareness that it calls rigpa. We could also call it intrinsic awareness because - like the sky - it is always there, or our ‘natural state’ because it is our fundamental nature … actually the synonyms for it are almost endless. The thing with rigpa is that it is not something we create, not something with a beginning or and end, and just like the sky with its clouds, it is the space of awareness in which all thoughts and emotions continually come and go. Think about the words on this page. We usually focus on the words and don’t notice the gaps between them. They are there in plain sight but are invisible until we look - same with rigpa. Always there, usually unnoticed. And why is it called ‘non-dual’? Because for the simple reason that there is nothing but this awareness - everything arises within it and is an ‘expression’ of it. (If this sounds like a head fuck, don’t worry, experience instantly reveals what is being talked about).
This type of practice has two names in Tibet. The first yogis called it Dzogchen but then several hundred years later another group called it Mahamudra - which translates as the ‘Great Seal’. Same end point, slightly different methods to glimpse it. And further more it is also found in the ‘religion’ that already existed in Tibet, prior to the arrival of Buddhism, that is now called Bon. The Bon yogis have a parallel and identical Dzogchen tradition. And it is also found in Hinduism - Advaita Vedanta. Started by a teacher who had studied with a Buddhist Dzogchen teacher. And not only in Tibet and India. Around five hundred years after the arrival of Dzogchen in Tibet, a wandering Japanese monk called Dogen discovered a method of practice that he called ‘just sitting’ that is now the school of Soto Zen. Same thing again - if everything is already buddha-nature we need do nothing but recognise it. We can’t make it, we simply do nothing and it becomes obvious. In fact when we sit, what we are really doing is just being buddha-nature expressing itself in this particular way. It’s already happening!
Although our - Philippa and myself - tradition is Dzogchen, we first introduced this type of practice into our mindfulness groups by following the American Zen master Shinzen Young and his instruction for ‘doing nothing’ meditation. We have also borrowed from Adyashanti - another non-dual teacher and, more recently from Loch Kelly who was taught Dzogchen by Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s father, the famous master Tulku Urgyen and also Mahamudra by Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s brother, Mingyur Rinpoche - yes, keep it in the family! Also many of the books we have worked with have been written by authors who are students of Tsoknyi Rinpoche - Tara Brach, Sharon Salzberg and of course my own, Present with Suffering. Pema Chodron also comes from this perspective but starting with Dzogchen’s twin, Mahamudra. And although within the Tibetan tradition this is still something of a ‘secret initiation’ - called the direct introduction to the nature of mind - there are now many other sources for this approach that are openly available.
So that’s the map. If you would like to join the group please come. Tsoknyi Rinpoche says very clearly this is a book for everyone and Dan Goleman’s scientific contribution takes it away from straight Buddhism. Flicking to the end it looks like it takes us right up to the edge of ‘doing nothing’ so, as such is a great foundation.
NW. 2 May 2024
Photo: Tsoknyi Rinpoche with four yogis from the community of Tashi Jong in Northern India.
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