Maya Yoga - Dzogchen Precepts [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Once again Keith Dowman delivers a short yet concentrated dose of essential dzogchen precepts. This is the concluding book of Longchenpa's classic Trilogy of Finding Comfort and Easy - originally translated by Herbert Guenther (with his trade-mark thoroughly detailed arcane convolutions), and published as Kindly Bent to Ease Us: Wonderment (Part 3) (v. 3), by Dharma in 1980, while the second volume was published by Wisdom in 2000 as Mind in Comfort and Ease: The Vision of Enlightenment in the Great Perfection, from teachings by the 14th Dalai Lama (with his trade-mark thoroughly detailed comparative and logical approach).

This current translation is a very short, plain and simple edition (by Vajra Publications of Kathmandu), and yet this unassuming packaging may hide from the unfamiliar the incredibly direct, profound and complete teachings contained within. Of the 110 pages about half are Dowman's introduction (as well as a preface acknowledging Dr. Guenther's pivotal role in introducing Longchenpa to Western scholars and students), and half are the translation of Longchenpa's text presenting the highest view by way of Nagarjuna's eight analogies for emptiness.

Dowman has a wonderfully casual yet precise approach to translating that works extremely well in presenting the essence and intent of dzogchen. Over and over we are reminded that the direct experience of nonduality is what matters. In this context the teaching is that "maya", or illusion, is the very nature of reality (in both immaculate and polluted aspects). The "two truths" of Buddhism, are in fact nondual and inseparable, and thus more accurately can be called the "two lies", as from the dzogchen view everything we can experience is illusion (and not, as is more tamely and commonly expressed in exoteric Buddhism, that all experience is like an illusion).

This translation (and needless to say Longchenpa's original text) presupposes a certain familiarity with the oral teachings and practices of dzogchen, and although it probably wouldn't be inaccessible to the novice, it would probably not have the same weight and impact. Yet dzogchen by definition is beyond cultural, religious, linguistic or even mental limitations and conditions and so is beneficial to anyone who is ripe and receptive. As Dowman concludes his introduction, "No verbal formulation whatsoever can do justice to experience after it is recognized as apparitional light-form. Labels are for the birds. Any discussion about the nature of reality is mere speculative hot air. Even the verbal function of pointing out the nature of mind is delusion."

After that very thorough introduction Longchenpa's poetic text is the essence of simplicity and clarity. Each of the eight short chapters presents first the view then meditative approach of dzogchen. Since I can't read the text in Tibetan I can't tell whether its variations in the author or translator, but I find Dowman's skill ever increasing with the result of more clear and simple translations (as compared, lets say, to his translation of Lonchenpa's seminal 1st volume of the Seven Treasuries series, Old Man Basking in the Sun: Longchen Rabjampa's Treasury of Natural Perfection). Such as with;

"From time immemorial, conditioned to such relativity,
our environment, corporeality, pleasures - our lives,
envisioned as good or bad, are happy or sad;
out of delusion, unity appears in manifold guises,
like an infinite variety of realistic graphic arts,
and, believing in them, delusive appearances are incessant.
Ah, yes, this world is just a dream." (Longchenpa, pg 56-57)

and;

"Unthought, always a multiplicity, as primordial space,
everything that appears, however it appears,
all things are like the reflection of the moon in water;
not true, not false, samsara and nirvana the same,
let the mind relax into the space of reality just as it is." (pg. 75)

In a bonus appendix Dowman gives us two more "Reality Analogies for the 21st Century" - the motion picture and the hologram. What I like about this inclusion is both how it presents the dharma in a current form (exactly the kind of thing Buddhist and non-Buddhist thinkers ponder and discuss all the time), and by contrast shows again how sublime and complete the ancient's formulation was!

"Just as the cinema is an illusory pretense, a fraud, an illusion,
a lie calculated to inveigle and capture the audience,
so the actors are the vehicles and agents of that trick.
To reclaim the awareness and power, value and meaning,
stolen by the apparitions on the screen,
we see all, all as illusion
and thereby we regain our freedom." (Dowman, pg 97)

As with his earlier "radical dzogchen" translations of the very short Eye of the Storm: Vairotsana's Five Original Transmissions, and collection of short texts The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, we are easily encouraged to return again and again to familiarize ourselves with the all important view. "Small is beautiful" indeed, and simple is complete enough.