Dzogchen
Excerpt from the Chögyal Namkhai Norbu’s book Starting the Evolution:
When I arrived in Italy for the first time, many years ago, no one knew what Dzogchen was. The only exceptions were a few professors who wrote articles saying things like, “Various currents of Buddhism exist in Tibet; there is also one called ‘Dzogchen’.” Nowadays, Dzogchen is becoming more and more popular in the Western world. Still, people who hear or read this name for the first time think, “Oh, this must be one of the Eastern philosophies.”
You can consider it a philosophy, a religion, or a spiritual path, if you wish, but it is not like that. It is important to understand that Dzogchen is not really a kind of school or tradition.
Dzogchen is our real nature, a potentiality that we all have. It is a very ancient knowledge, transmitted and taught. The way that teaches the methods to discover that potentiality and use it in our lives, is called Dzogchen teaching. We can follow it and learn how to discover our real nature: Total (chen) Perfection (dzog).
It is a very high teaching, but high does not necessarily mean complicated. Dzogchen can be very simple. Why Because it is based on experience, not so much on study and learning. The teacher explains a little, introduces us to directly discover our real condition, and when we do discover it, then we have that knowledge.
This is something very useful also in a practical way: if we know our real condition, we can overcome all our conflicts or problems. And we also get to know ourselves a little better. So this is what the teaching can give. This is what I have been teaching for more than 40 years…
…Human beings have created different cultures, philosophies, and religions in different times and places. Someone who is interested in the Dzogchen teaching must be aware of this and know how to work with different cultures, without becoming conditioned by their external forms.
For example, some people might think that to practice Dzogchen you have to convert to either Buddhism or Bön, because Dzogchen has been spread through these two religious traditions. This shows how limited our way of thinking is. If we decide to follow a spiritual teaching, we are convinced that it is necessary for us to change something, such as our way of dressing, eating, behaving, and so on. But to practice the Dzogchen teaching there is no need to adhere to any religious doctrine or to enter a monastic order, or to blindly accept the teachings and become a “Dzogchenist.” All of these things can, in fact, create serious obstacles to true knowledge. Monks or nuns, without giving up their vows, can practice Dzogchen, as can a Catholic priest, an office worker, a laborer, and so on, without having to abandon their role in society, because Dzogchen does not change people from the outside. Rather it awakens them internally.
Dzogchen is not a school or sect or a religious system. It is simply a state of knowledge that masters have transmitted beyond any limits of a school or monastic tradition. The lineage of the Dzogchen teaching has included masters belonging to all social classes: farmers, nomads, nobles, monks, and great religious figures, from every spiritual tradition or sect. A person who is really interested in these teachings should understand their fundamental principle without letting themselves become conditioned by the limits of a tradition.