Dzogchen Center Cambridge

About Dzogchen

Introduction

This is the time of Dzogchen

by Lama Surya Das

According to the Dzogchen tradition our practice aims for simplicity. Dzogchen means the innate great completeness. It points to our own innate wholeness, our own true Buddha nature, our untrammelled spirit, perfect and pure from the beginningless beginning. It is what we call the Buddha within -- not an oriental Buddha, not an historical Buddha, not one of stone, not male or female, but the Buddha nature within each of us, true and wise, loving and compassionate. We want to come back to that, awaken it, cultivate it -- that is what the path is about. We don't get it from outside, from someone or somewhere else, or even from our own ideas of what we are. The Hevajra tantra says we are all Buddhas by nature but must, through our own spiritual work, awaken to ourselves.

Sometimes the spiritual or religious path seems like a jungle, a thicket of theories and practices and opinions. But there is at the center a sunlit clearing where all the teachings converge. The mystical teachings meet at this awakening to what is within us. It is also in everything around us, so our awakening isn't narcissistic. We see Buddha nature in the eyes and hearts of fellow humans and creatures in the natural world. It is there too. That is what we discover through these practices of meditation, self-inquiry, chanting, inner investigation, prayer, yoga, and so on.

I think our Dzogchen practice is an opportunity we should really treasure. It was a secret teaching in the East, almost unknown even to Tibetans. Many teachers have required ten or twenty years of preliminary study and monastic training before giving access to this teaching, but my teachers say this is the moment of Dzogchen. People have little time and the Dharma is fading in the East, but Dzogchen is something we can actually do here and now. With or without the Buddhist religious overlay, we can simply awaken with inquiry, awareness practice and a loving heart. It is not obscure but simple. We can take great joy in that.

This is the time of Dzogchen.

Edited transcription from June '98 Cambridge day-long teaching. Used with permission from the Dzogchen Center.

General
Description

General Description of Dzogchen

The Buddhism of Tibet represents the last extant wisdom culture to survive intact from ancient times. Tibet was a cloistered, theocratic Buddhist state which, until 1959, preserved all the teachings of the Buddha in a unique situation. Tibetan Buddhism includes the Theravadan, Mahayana and tantric Vajrayana traditions of Buddhadharma. All the sutras and tantras are preserved and practiced in Tibetan Buddhism. Many Buddhist sutras and commentaries in the Sanskrit language, which were lost in India during the Moslem invasions of northern India, were later discovered intact in Tibetan monastery libraries.

Buddhism was brought from its land of origin, India, in the Sixth Century A.D. to Tibet, where it incorporated certain indigenous traditions in becoming the colorful Tibetan Buddhism we know today.

Dzogchen is the consummate practice of Tibetan Buddhism. It is practiced mainly by the Nyingma Lineage in Tibet, although all four sects of Tibetan Buddhism practice it to some extent.

It is considered the summit of all the vehicles, or approaches, to enlightenment. It derives from the Maha Ati Tantra, and represents the nondual, or absolute/ultimate teaching of pure and total intrinsic awareness, innate wakefulness.

Dzogchen is considered, in Tibet, an advanced and secret teaching. Today it is said by certain senior Tibetan lamas to be "the teaching for our time," because it is direct, immediate, essentialized, adaptable and profound: a naked awareness practice applicable to any circumstance or situation, and easily integrated into modern life.