Patrul Rinpoche’s commentary on “Garab Dorje’s Three Statements hitting the main point”1 Commentary and translation by James Low Freiburg, Todtmoos, June 2009 Transcribed by Sarah Allan and Matthias Steingass Edited by Matthias Steingass Excerpts: …From the point of view of dzogchen, there is no demand that we or others act in any particular way. You don’t have to bow to the Buddha, you don’t have to burn butter lamps nor do you have to do any kind of ritual. This ancient tradition is simply concerned to awaken people to who and how they actually are and through that, to experience a feeling of ease, of being at home in their own skin, and in the world as it is… …By relaxing into the natural state the busy turbulence of life is revealed as the energy of that natural state. The turbulence does not stop; there is still energy going on, there is power, there are all sorts of things moving but now we understand where it all comes from and we see that we are always – always and already – participants in it. This is a river we can’t step out of but by relaxing in the natural condition we find a better way to swim and by swimming with ease and grace we can encourage other people to stop doing doggy paddle and learn something a little bit more elegant… …In the Tibetan tradition tantra and dzogchen get rather mixed in together. For example, people go to get initiations with the idea that some big powerful person can give them something, can give them the experience of their own true nature. From the point of view of dzogchen all that is not necessary because this is your birth-right, or rather, your birth-right before you were ever born – your unborn birth-right… 1 Patrul Rinpoche’s commentary is Chapter 11 in Simply being: texts in the dzogchen tradition (James Low, Antony Rowe Publishing, 2010. ISBN 9781907571015) www.simplybeing.co.uk © James Low 2009 2 Day one. Friday. General Introduction ................................................................................................ 4 The Many buddhist views or: the path and the forest ...................................................................... 4 The Inner map, the territory and mindfulness .................................................................................. 6 Thought and the ungraspable flow of experience ............................................................................. 8 The Mood to be alive and the root of self ......................................................................................... 9 Shiné with fixation ........................................................................................................................... 10 Shiné without fixation ..................................................................................................................... 11 Day Two, Saturday. The Text ............................................................................................................ 13 We are active constructors of our experience ................................................................................ 13 About the author: Patrul Rinpoche ................................................................................................. 15 The Root Text ................................................................................................................................... 15 The Teacher ..................................................................................................................................... 16 View, meditation, conduct .............................................................................................................. 17 Gaining enlightenment in one lifetime ............................................................................................ 19 The First Essential Point: experience .................................................................................................... 21 Explanation of the practice .............................................................................................................. 25 Meditational experiences ................................................................................................................ 28 The Difference to tantric practice ................................................................................................... 29 The Second Essential Point: Making a Decision ................................................................................... 31 The Third Essential Point: Simply Being ............................................................................................... 32 Whatever arises nourishes the naked, empty awareness ............................................................... 34 To be realistic .................................................................................................................................. 37 The Three transmissions .................................................................................................................. 39 Patrul Rinpoche’s Commentary on his own text .................................................................................. 41 Original knowing (Yeshe) ................................................................................................................. 41 The Essential part of the transmission: only you can show this to yourself .................................... 42 Getting nothing by getting the joke ................................................................................................ 44 Day Three. Sunday. The Text ............................................................................................................ 44 Direct naked awareness .................................................................................................................. 45 Co-emergent ignorance ................................................................................................................... 46 A Narrow door ................................................................................................................................. 48 The Mind as it is ............................................................................................................................... 51 The Truth of the origin of suffering ................................................................................................. 52 One antidote is enough ................................................................................................................... 54 Giving everything, gaining all: compassion ..................................................................................... 56 Hospitality ....................................................................................................................................... 57 Clarity .............................................................................................................................................. 58 www.simplybeing.co.uk © James Low 2009 3 Day one. Friday. General Introduction During our short time together we will focus on the famous text that carries its own commentary. 2 The text is by GARAB DORJE and the principle commentary is by PATRUL RINPOCHE. I will first give a more general introduction to situate what we do in relation to the general view of Buddhism. The Many buddhist views or: the path and the forest In Buddhism there many different 'views', many different readings or understandings of who we are and how the world functions. Each of these views illuminates part of the territory of our lived existence just as if you went walking up the road, turning every ten steps and looking at the valley [here in the Black Forest], it would look different from the different levels you were at. There are various ways we can understand why there are so many different kinds of teachings and what they indicate. One is that the actual condition cannot be put into words and as soon as we try to explain something or indicate it we are always taking up a position. The positions that are revealed are because our world is relational. We cannot step out of the world and observe it from some neutral position. In science and certain forms of philosophy like phenomenology this has been a goal for certain investigators but in the end we face the fact that we are embedded in socio-cultural, political situations. We have our gender, our age, our own psychological dispositions and life histories. And the world we encounter is mediated through these internal positions we have. This is not something that can be removed, which is not necessary a problem. It only becomes a problem if we think we should somehow be in a neutral pure situation and be able to see things with absolute rationality and clarity. From the buddhist point of view that would be an impossibility. Rather than trying to do something impossible, the main thing is to examine for ourselves what sort of positions we take up. One way we do that is to adopt an intentional position and then observe how we come to deviate from it. Before they had breathalysers one of the ways the police would check if someone was drunk would be to ask them to walk in a straight line. So when we do any kind of practice there are two aspects: one is the conscious intention to do the practice as described. For example if we are doing this basic practice that we just did before we began, we would be paying attention to the flow of the breath through the nostrils, in and out, simply keeping our attention on that. The instruction