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Natural Perfection: Longchenpa's Radical Dzogchen

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(Note this review is copied in part from the one I did for: Old Man Basking in the Sun: Longchen Rabjampa's Treasury of Natural Perfection - which is an earlier printing of this book. I have not seen this new edition, but from information available it appears to be simply a reprint without changes. This is a classic and profound text, and I love Dowman's "radical dzogchen" translation style...)

Obviously this text is not for everyone. But if you're looking for a powerful dose of Longchenpa (Tibet's preeminent dzogchen master), I wholeheartedly recommend this book and Dowman's translation.

I prefer not to compare this to Padma Publishing/Richard Barron's translation (1st text of Longchenpa's Seven Treasures - Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding). I am familiar with several works of their Seven Treasures series which while always authoritative, are also perhaps a bit stiff (and too careful). This translation is anything but stiff, it is fluid and free, playful and evocative. It is a poetic text, poetically rendered.

Generally, the text is clearly organized with the complete 28 page text coming first (Treasury of Natural Perfection), then the 220 page auto-commentary making up the rest of the book (end notes, appendices and a dzogchen glossary follow). The root text is magical (beyond thought or concepts), and the commentary section is organized into 4 parts for each stanza - Longchenpa's text, then his auto-commentary, then some lineage quotes to back his statements up, and finally a few comments of explanation from the translator. Here is an abbreviated example of this process from pages 68-70;

Root Text-
"During the empty enchantment of dream
ignorant babes are entranced,
while the wise, disillusioned, are undeceived;
those unaware of the truth of absence,
clinging to their identity, wander in circles,
while the wise yogin, fully present,
aware of the zing of reality
convinced of the absence of that very moment,
is liberated in the non-contingent reality-matrix."

Auto-commentary -
"Enchanted by the play of illusion, children who do not know their own minds are bewitched. They take the show to be real and become attached to it, enwrapped in their imagination. Old people, on the other hand, who know the story, cannot get caught by such fascination...." (Longchenpa)

Supporting text -
"In nonduality, object and mind are released as one; whatever emerges out of unitary sameness is a unitary field; all created qualities are the existential ground; everything whatsoever, liberated without deliberate action, is a matrix of total freedom" (Garab Dorje)

Translators comments -
"The matrix is the spaciousness of timeless freedom. It is a point-instant free of all time and space; identical to nothing yet it contains or subsumes all times and spaces..... Ambitious people fixated on a goal tend to fear this matrix...." (Dowman)

A must read for anyone interested in the experiential knowing of our phenomenal world, and of ourselves. If your into the science of meditation, this rigorous translation of Longchenpa's will connect every day life with the deepest understanding of how our minds work, and how we live with ourselves and others.Natural Perfection: Longchenpa's Radical Dzogchen

After forty years of experience translating Dzogchen texts by the side of exceptional scholars in Tibet and Nepal, Keith Dowman has developed a rich vocabulary with an exquisite style which is a powerful and refined tool for the expression of the nonduality of the Great Perfection. He was the first of the new wave of Dzogchen translators to come out of the sixties, and the first to be published (Ornaments of Illumination, Kalimpong, 1969) and he set a standard which has not yet been overtaken. In this translation of one of the most demanding Dzogchen expositions of Longchen Rabjampa (Natural Perfection, a re-edition of Old Man Basking in the Sun, Vajra Publishing, Kathmandu, Nepal), with evocative poetry Keith Dowman creates a consummate link between the wisdom of the Himalayas and that of the western world, presenting a work which proves to be a faithful and powerful transmission of Longchenpa's teaching and at the same time accessible to readers who have not been exposed to the Tibetan language. Old Man Basking in the Sun invites us to read it over and over again and I think we should definitely consider it a headpiece book. I'm grateful for this particular English version of such an important pillar of the Dzogchen teaching and I look forward with pleasure to the next work of this author.

Natural Perfection: Longchenpa's Radical Dzogchen

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