Since my last post, which I accidentally published long before finishing, I have been processing the concepts in Quintessential Dzogchen even more slowly and deliberately. It might take me a while to formulate and articulate it all here. For now, I want to go back to two items from the last post and make a note about the thoughts I've had around them in the past few days.
This is the first time I've actually written about Dzogchen, and for me, it is through writing that I come to the clearest understanding of anything. Writing the last post made me wonder if throughout the many teachings I have heard and read about Dzogchen I had been accepting things on blind faith. After all, what proof is there that the mind-essence is in fact primordially pure? There is logic to the concept of the emptiness of mind, but none that I can see to its so-called primordial purity. I have not had the pointing-out instruction from a lama (apart from readings, but I don't see them as having led me to realization), nor do I think I can say that I have truly connected with this absolute purity. Scientific research on the mind, as I mentioned, can not begin to answer this type of question. So how can I state that the mind's true essence is actually pure, that each one of us sentient beings has the exact same buddha nature that Shakyamuni and Samantabhadra did?
For me, this draws out the distinction between blind faith and plain old faith. If I remember correctly, the term for "faith" in Tibetan is synonymous with "confidence", which to me is a better way to refer to the particular kind of faith I have. It took me many years to come to the confidence, in the teachings and in myself, to take official refuge in the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha. I waited until I trusted both the doctrine and the path of the dharma enough, and until I trusted that I myself could follow the path for the rest of my life, before I made any commitments. I do have faith, then, but it is based on study and reflection. The point of faith of which I'm speaking here -- the primordial purity of mind -- belongs for me to the category of confidence in the teachings. I have gained a lot of confidence over the years in Buddhist philosophy and particularly in Dzogchen, having verified some of its tenets to my satisfaction. Therefore, I have confidence in the wisdom of Buddhist philosophers and those who have purportedly come to know the absolute nature of mind.
Another question that has come up upon reflection in the last few days is that of why the primordially pure, empty-in-essence mind manifests itself in the ways it does. Why do we see and hear the things we do? What is the mechanism that leads the "ground" of all being, so much like empty space itself, to be expressed as human tribulations (for us humans)? If I am in absolute reality not truly existent, and neither are any other beings or any of the perceptions I or they have, how on earth, and why, has mind come up with it all? And how, why, in this way?
It's a bit of a sticking point still, but when by way of answer my mind went to the place where "it's just like that," I felt a kind of resting, concept-free realization. Why posit a mechanism if there is none? I don't know what the Dzogchen perspective is on this, so I will be asking my teachers. But I do feel that it's just like that.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment