Dzogchen
-
Thanks Alrah for the Lin Chi tip!
Zen is awesome but Dzogchen claims that its advanced methods somehow get you deeper down the rabbit hole than Zen. So the Dzogchen people claim that it's different to Zen. My review of Dzogchen and Zen shows me that they are identical in philosophy.
Maybe someone has a clue what is so deeper in Dzogchen than in Zen? -
@Modes said
"The case is that Sutra unites sorrow and emptyness, Tantra - bliss and emptyness but Dzogchen like Zen states that there is nothing to unite - just reveal emptyness. So we get three schools whose aim is emptyness but a different approach. Sorrow Black, Bliss White, just Emptyness Yellow. If I may ask what do you label as a Yellow school?"
The clearest example of Yellow School philosophy would be the Tao Te Ching (and, to a lesser extent, Taoism). I labelled Dzogchen as 'White School' because I took it as an extension of Vajrayana, but I agree that it does share some aspects of Yellow School philosophy (along with Zen, it seems). But I don't at all think the distinctions are necessarily that clear-cut. Perhaps it would be pertinent to distinguish between ethics and metaphysics: the bliss of Tantra and the emptyness of Dzogchen/Zen/Taoism are not mutually exclusive. Take the philosophy of Thelema, for example:
"Our own School unites the ruby red of Blood with the gold of the Sun. It combines the best characteristics of the Yellow and the White schools. [...] To us, every phenomenon is an Act of Love, Every experience is necessary, is a Sacrament, is a means of Growth." - Magick Without Tears -
Dzogchen is a fascinating system. I mean, at core it seems to be a Sudden Illumination/Direct Path type of teaching, similar to Zen, some Daoisms, and Advaita, and therefore Yellow School, but it does have screeds of pretty strictly-defined magickal practice more typical of White School (if I've got the definitions right). And actually there are many forms of Daoism (in fact probably most extant Daoism) that are like this too (so-called "religious" Daoism).
My suspicion is that it may actually be derived originally from a remnant of Gnosticism, possibly Manichaeanism, via Silk Route connections. I think this has been mooted by at least one scholar of Dzogchen. The clue may be in the "light" symbolism in Togal.
And even a *direct *connection to Advaita is not out of the question (IIRC this was a criticism used by one of the great Sakya pundits - plus also there's an acknowledgement in the famous Self Liberation through Seeing With Naked Awareness, by Padmasambhava, that what Dzogchen is talking about is the same as what some "unbelievers" call "The Self").
But of course over the centuries, all the Dzogchen we know about is by now thoroughly Tibetan - if there ever were any Indian forms, they seem to have been totally lost (which makes sense if the Indian forms were found mostly in the Swat valley in Pakistan, as Buddhism was totally destroyed in that region by Islam).
-
Alrah, I understand you completely. In Japan there is Rinzai and Soto (Dogen's) Zen to represent the Southern and Northern schools of Chan. Soto stresses the state of nonduality in every action i.e. enlightement as a permanent state. That Dzogchen calls tregchod practice. But in Dzogchen it doesn't end at that - thodrgal is afterwards.
I recieved illumination right now! Tregchod is the Tarot card The Universe and thodrgal is Art. After that we land in Tiphareth. OMG. Some people live in 1 Tarot card all their lives, 2 is a near impossible attainment... wow...
Gurugeorge, fascinating indeed! The most important thing it takes one to Tiphareth! -
93,
Although we all learn the word 'sephirah' early on, the term for a connecting path, 'nethibah' (plural = nethiboth) isn't used much. It needs to be reintroduced. For example, a text such as The 32 Paths of Wisdom includes both the sephiroth and the nethiboth under the term we translate as 'Paths.' Using the two Hebrew words would clarify things.
93 93/93,
Edward
-
@Modes said
"enlightement as a permanent state"
Just to nitpick slightly, for the record, none of the Sudden Illumination/Direct Path systems, so far as I am aware, consider elightenment (the full banana, so to speak) as a "state", it's not an experience or a state or anything phenomenal, like a "glimpse" or mystical experience of union, or loss of sense of self (such as probably many of us here have experienced) - marvellous and life-changing as such things may be.
That is to say, many of us who have had a mystical experience of union or whatever, imagine full-blown enlightenment to be a temporal continuance of that state, or that experience, and struggle to attain such a thing.
AFAIK, this is precisely what a Master of the Yellow School would deny, and would tell us that we are wasting our time ("polishing a brick", for example).
This is similar to what Crowley says in the Hashish essay, IIRC, about Nirvana being not on the end of the pendulum swings (between "enlightened state" and "ordinary state"), but at the fulcrum. This exact same metaphor, whether coincidentally or not, has recently been used by the modern Advaita teacher Wayne Liquorman.
Another place where Crowley explicitly talks about this is where he talks about "The Way of the Dao" in the Commentaries. His subsequent discussion about "The Way of the Artist" may be seen as his championing of the White School over the Yellow School (although it's clear he has great respect for the Yellow School), where "The Way of the Mystic" (i.e. Black School) has already been rejected along with the "Way of the Rationalist" (the perfection of mundane thought).
Now this may seem contradictory to the method of Trekchod, which at first glance seems like you're "continuing" something temporally (e.g. the instructions given by the extraordinarly generous Tibetan teacher Namkhai Norbu in The Cycle of Day and Night). But what you're continuing, sustaining, is eventually meant to be *automatic *(and is that not another way of saying - sustained by the Unconscious, i.e. the True Will?) Think of the image of "the thief passing through an empty house".
But on the other hand, you could just see that as the same as Northern School practice - i.e. you get a "glimpse" and you work to sustain it through daily life, to integrate it with daily life. Just terminological differences, that, due to being reproduced by the profane, tends to make it seem like they are two distinct kinds of teaching.
I'm not terribly clear on all this myself, just some food for thought ...
-
Ooh, ooh, just remembered something that I've always thought of as highly pertinent in terms of the connection between Dzogchen and Thelema. There's an amazing little poem by Namkhai Norbu that epitomises, in the gentlest, friendliest, most childlike way, the teaching of Thelema (as I understand it):
*The Little Song of Do As You Please
In the natural condition, the supreme space
which does not fall into the limits
of measurement or even the concept of direction,
Whatever presents itself there,
I enjoy as an ornament.
I don’t make any effort
to create or reject anything.
You who take up preferences,
Do as you please.Directly in the space of the dimension
Of original purity,
I meet all meditative experiences,
manifestations of energy, and visions
in a state of equanimity.
With no need to desire
artificial religious practice, I am happy.
You who dwell on mental constructions,
Do as you please."– Namkha’i Norbu Rinpoche, 20th of January 1984*
Is that not the most extraordinary nod and wink from the Yellow School to the White School?
-
Thank you, gurugeorge, for your help regarding this topic. Nirvana as a fulcrum is an interesting idea but I thought samadhi, nirvana, enlightement is at the one end and Samsara at the other? But I don't realy know how to call the state at the fulcrum - maybe Taoist P'u? I have to read the Crowley's essay you mention.
I've read Namkhai Norbu's Crystal and the way of light in lithuanian and at the end of the book there's a inspiring poem from Dzogchen tantra that goes at the very end something like this:
In the end, as if a madman who released himself from bondage - go wherever you want (do what thou wilt fits nicely!).
-
@Modes said
"but I thought samadhi, nirvana, enlightement is at the one end and Samsara at the other? "
I think in Dzogchen and Mahamudra, it's considered that Samsara and Nirvana are two sides of the same coin (i.e. two ends of the "swing" in pendulum terms), and they call Rigpa/Nature of Mind the fulcrum. But in older Buddhist terms, Nirvana is the fulcrum, and what's on the ends of the swings is alternation between mystical (Jhana) and mundane states.
I guess you could say that some terms suffer deflation and others inflation over the years. This is probably partly to do, not with the Masters who initiate these things, but with students and pundits who form "schools" and wish to vie with each other as to whose school is "better"!
(But even Masters are not above a little bit of boasting now and then Crowley laughs about this somewhere, where he talks about how you get Nirvana, then Para-nirvana, then Para-para-nirvana)The actual words used aren't so important, I think; the images and metaphors are usually more consistent (and indeed cross-system consistent) than the actual terms used. For example, the metaphor "rope/snake" or "waves/ocean" or "mirror" are used almost completely consistently across all Asian systems, Buddhist and Hindu, whether they call the mirror (for example) Nature of Mind, Rigpa, The Self, or Nirvana.
If you take for example the pendulum metaphor, the "ultimate ultimate" is the fulcrum (whatever you may call it - full-blown Nirvana or Moksha or Enlightenment in the "classical" sense, Rigpa/Nature of Mind in the Indian mediaeval Buddhist and subsequently Tibetan sense), whereas normally we have this alternation between states or experiences of "being enlightened" (in a deflated sense, or having "mystical experiences", or "glimpses"), and "being ordinary". Whether the term "nirvana" is held for the ultimate, the fulcrum, or one of the ends of the swing, is something you just have to watch out for, and compensate for when you're reading any given ancient text.
IOW, it's a bit of a minefield for someone wishing to make their own consistent table of correspondences, because terms change value sometimes. "Nirvana" in one text may not mean quite the same as "nirvana" in another, or the same with "samadhi" and other terms. But as I say, the images and metaphors seem to be more consistent and reliable.
-
@Alrah said
"
At the end perhaps any such distinction between do what you want and do what thou wilt is meaningless? Just a thought."Hehe, yes Alrah. In fact, it's funny how people speculate and ponder what's meant by "will" - what they *should *be speculating and pondering about is what's meant by "thou"
-
Alrah, 93,
"At the end perhaps any such distinction between do what you want and do what thou wilt is meaningless? Just a thought."
Sure, if you've harmonized all the different aspects of yourself. For example, I 'want' lots of money. I observe that the Chiah aspect of my higher nature has willed that I have *enough *money, particularly when I earn it through working. And so it goes.
You keep peddling this 'one leap and it's done' philosophy that ignores the basic facts of human psychology, and refuses to acknowledge the difference between the levels of our own being.
So no, the distinction is not meaningless at all. It's the key to understanding what all this is about.
93 93/93,
Edward
-
Gurugeorge, I have to look into conotation, thanks. But to think about it I like Crowley's terms Hadit and Nuit. Could it be that Hadit, Nirvana, Rigpa, Enlightement, Samadhi, is the centre and Nuit, Samsara the circumference - nowhere to be found i.e. is endless illusion?
Hehe knowing "thou" there would be nothing to speculate about. -
From the Rigpa point of view It's nondual - you can't have Hadit without Nuit and there is no such thing as illusion but Buddhists call it emptyness.
So you can't remove the space between quantum particles because it's a part of their existance.
Gurugeorge, I think I found the extremes - Dispersion, Samsara on the one hand and Concentration, Samadhi on the other, their essence being Emptyness, Nirvana. -
Yes, the aim is the same, from the Dzogchen point of view. However, from some of the other school's points of view, they say, "No you're *not *talking about the same thing as us". There's a fair degree of sectarianism in Tibetan Buddhism (albeit kept mostly within civil bounds).
Mainly there's a big distinction between the schools that say that Buddha Nature is something attained - *created *- as a result of causal work and the schools that say, no, it's something we already are, it's just that we are under the illusion we are something else.
I think it's that the latter is true, but in practice it looks like the former. It looks like the practitioner is doing a bunch of stuff and, over time, to the external observer, the practitioner changes. But the truth is the new habits spring forth naturally from the work of clearing out obscurations, smoothing out the tangles in the folds of the Khu, so the light of the Khabs shines through to illuminate the world around it.
There *is *work done, but it's not causal work that creates something new in the way a carpenter might (linear causality); it's more like gardening, where the conditions are worked on (daily watering, for example), and something naturally occurs (non-linear causality?).
-
In Sutra where vows are given a Buddha is created. In Dzogchen where your practice unfolds Buddha - there is no law but do what thou wilt. For me my practice unfolded no smoking, no alcohol, vegetarian etc. and it was easy to do my will.
In the end, the result of created or unfolded should be Buddha nature. -
@gurugeorge said
"
@Alrah said
"
At the end perhaps any such distinction between do what you want and do what thou wilt is meaningless? Just a thought."Hehe, yes Alrah. In fact, it's funny how people speculate and ponder what's meant by "will" - what they *should *be speculating and pondering about is what's meant by "thou"
" -
@Modes said
"Maybe someone has a clue what is so deeper in Dzogchen than in Zen?"
The student asked the master “When there is no clutching or clinging, what of it?”
The master said “Surely the way is thus”
The student asked “And isn’t that the truth of our original nature?”
“Clutching, clinging” Was the reply.
