Customer Reviews

Old Man Basking in the Sun: Longchenpa's Treasury of Natural Perfection

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BACKGROUND/CONTEXT: Richard Barron's 1998 trans. of Longchenpa's "The Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding" (1st vol. of the 7 Precious Treasuries) with poetic root text & prose self-commentary was followed in 2001 by "The Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena" (root text) & "A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmission" (self-commentary), & recently published (2007) The Precious Treasury of Pith Instructions (The Seven Treasuries Series). He plans to do all 7 Treasuries. "Old Man..." is Dowman's trans. of the same text as Barron's 1st volume, adding a little modern commentary; it's his favorite of the 7 (but I prefer the "Space of Phenomena" much better). The text itself has 5 chapters: "absence, openness, spontaneity, unity, & advice to recipients." Barron calls them: "ineffability, openness, spontaneous presence, oneness, & the individuals to whom these teachings may be entrusted." Dowman translates Longchenpa p. 27: "The elixir of this most profound approach should be offered only to the most favored & brightest, not to adherents of the lower approaches, to those caught up in their moral conditioning or to unfortunate narrow-minded people & p. 29: [it] "is a summation of the incontrovertible truths of natural perfection."

LONGCHENPA'S TEXT: contrasts what Dowman calls "radical Dzogchen" with gradualist approaches: p. 76: "Religious practice becomes a tense constraining mesh constricting & veiling gnosis...goal-oriented action is a mesh of constraint leading us closer to Buddhahood by not so much as a hair's breadth, p. 95: There is no view to cultivate, no commitment to observe, no ideal conduct to strive for, no pristine awareness to unveil, no spiritual levels, no path to travel, p. 97: Any striving precludes attainment, p. 228: It is only in the gradualist approaches that people believe in virtue & vice, good & bad...There is no good & bad in pure mind...The principle of delusory cause & effect is inapplicable to the nature of mind...Since natural perfection is beyond causality from the 1st, it is attained by non-action, not by deliberate effort, & p. 235: Noncompliant with the lower, progressive approaches, ignoring their many theories of causality, we have broken out of the eggshell of philosophical opinion." Further, p. 236: "beings...have different capacities, the Great Perfection is the prerogative of those with capacity for instantaneous realization."

TRANSLATION: Dowman borrows heavily from Norbu's excellent The Supreme Source: The Fundamental Tantra of the Dzogchen Semde & provides a source appendix & some word translations: p. 30: `Pure Mind' is Bodhichitta; `pure being' is Dharmakaya; `spaciousness' or hyperspace' is the Dharmadhatu; & gnosis is Rigpa." He translates Garab Dorje's p. 275: "cutting through time or the 3 times" as "synchronicity." Despite similarities, Garab Dorje did not invent the term, Jung did. Overall, the terminology is obtuse, strange, annoying, unpoetic, pseudo-scientific, inelegant, & occasionally contradictory. The sparse modern commentary might extensively use "glitch, matrix, gnosis, bind," but they're inappropriate to root text/self-commentary. Use of "gnosis" was particularly annoying--Rigpa is better (esp. if a glossary were included). This is hardly an introductory text. "Gnosis" has some commonality with "Rigpa"--but not equivalence. In short, there's so much Dowman in the translation that a reader can't tell where Longchenpa ends & Dowman begins. I greatly prefer Barron's translation, though it's hardback & more expensive.

Obviously this text is not for everyone. But if you're looking for a powerful dose of Lonchenpa (Tibet's preeminent dzogchen master), I wholeheartedly recommend this book and Dowman's translation. I think it was issued in a rather limited printing, and so i would not delay if you are interested and in need of Longchenpa's lucid and liberative words. (It is also available as a paperback online directly from Vajra Publications in Kathmandu.) The cover alone is worth a thousand words... (the type of t'hangka we'll appreciate in the new age of dharma free of dogma).

I cannot compare this to Padma Publishing/Richard Barron's translation (1st text of Longchenpa's Seven Treasures), but I am familiar with other works of theirs which are always authoritative, but also perhaps a bit stiff. 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 - Lonchenpa'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...." (Lonchenpa)

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)

(Note, this is soon to be reissued by Wisdom Publications (on 3/2010) as - Natural Perfection: Lonchenpa's Radical Dzogchen - looks to be the same text and translation but without the really cool cover...)

It's great to have this Dzogchen text available.

The words provide transmission into the ever-present, scintillating embodiment of non-duality.

For anyone ready to move beyond limiting concepts of self, who has done their work on the personal and is ripe for the transpersonal, this is a great book of transmission.

This is truly a Dzogchen text with incedible translations and Keith Dowman's commentary is precious. This book along with Longchenpa's Seven treasuries captures the heart of great perfection teachings. There are now dozens of transalted dzogchen texts and without doubt this one is top 3. Read it slowly and digest.

ATI HEART ESSENCE

PURE AWARE PRESENCE

IMPERTURBIBLE LUMINOUS MIND

SUBTLER THAN SPACE

I AM THAT




(c)2007 KUAYIN