Natural Perfection (Keith Dowman)
The Un-Great Imperfection
[My 2-star Amazon Review (NDA) of “Natural Perfection: Longchenpa’s Radical Dzogchen†by Keith Dowman.]
“Natural Perfection†is the fourth book I’ve read on Longchen Rabjam’s teachings. The first, “The Practice of Dzogchen,†by Rabjam, Harold Talbott, and Tulku Thondrup, was crummy; the second two, “The Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding†and “A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmission,†by Rabjam and Richard Barron, were exquisite; and Natural Perfection, like “The Practice of Dzogchen,†is also bad. To emphasize this, know that I gave “The Precious Treasure of the Way of Abiding†five stars in my Amazon.com review, and now I am giving “Natural Perfection†just two. I will be receiving my copy of “The Practice of Dzogchen†next month (it has been in storage with dozens of my other books), and I plan to review it in January.
When I open “Natural Perfection,†I can hardly read a single paragraph without recoiling from Keith Dowman’s translation and/or commentary. I could write a massive tome deconstructing Dowman’s prose and “poetry,†but because this is just a review, I’ll limit my focus to select passages from the text. But know that these excerpts are not an exception; rather, they are the rule, and accurately reflect the entire text.
In the Introduction, Dowman vapidly reduces Dzogchen to a “single basic tenetâ€: “nonaction.†This is nonsensical, and, in fact, contradicts the four “tenets,†or themes –Presence, Oneness, Openess, and Ineffability - that Rabjam identifies as the heart of Dzogchen. Moreover, even though I’m not a fan of the late Rajneesh (Osho), he educated me when he differentiated between the terms “nonactivity†and “nonaction.†In reality, the practice of Dzogchen initiates with an “action,†or “gesture†- that of being directly, immediately present. The term Mahamudra means “Great Gesture,†and the Great Gesture, or Act, or, Sacrament, which is common to both Mahamudra and its kissing cousin, Dzogchen (and also the esoteric Christian Eucharist for that matter), is that of being consciously present and at-one with existence.
Dowman tells us “relaxation†is the key to buddhahood here-and-now.†No it’s not. Guys who “chill out†in their La-Z-Boy recliners with a few “cold ones†are no closer to en-Light-enment than the intense football players they watch on their Big Screens. To counter Dowman’statement, I’m going to quote myself from my book “Beyond the Power of Now: A Guide to, and Beyond, Eckhart Tolle’s Teachingsâ€:
“Eckhart Tolle says, ‘To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness.’ I say, the path of least (or no) resistance, in and by itself, is hardly the spiritual panacea that Tolle makes it out to be. If it were, we’d see the great sages recommending deep sleep and relaxing massages as the keys to Nirvana. The Buddha, in fact, instructed his disciples not to practice exclusive effortlessness. He taught that meditation is like playing a string musical instrument: if the strings are too tight, they will break, and if they are too loose, there will be no sound. The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path includes Right Effort as one of its constituents, so the Buddha certainly wouldn’t second Tolle’s one-dimensional directive to abandon all resistance.
Non-resistance is an essential component of real spiritual practice. But just as reduced resistance is meaningless in the circuit of an unplugged lamp, it is also less than potent in a yogi disconnected from the Source. The first principle of mysticism is direct contact with Ultimate Reality. Once this contact is established, then it becomes appropriate to let go and receive Grace, the flow of Shakti [the Sambhogakaya, or Clear-Light-Energy]. In other words, if you want to be in a state of Grace, the exclusive, contextless “practice†of non-resistance won’t enable you to achieve it. Only within the full context of Holy Communion [Presence + Oneness] will non-resistance enable you to receive and integrally channel Grace, the Holy Spirit, or true power of Now [the Sambogakaya, or Clear-Light Energy]. Until the Heart-knot is cut, effort--in the form of countering (or resisting) unconsciousness by attempting to remain present and plugged-in--is necessary. The force, or “voltage,†of your plugged-in presence creates a palpable pressure, and when you feel this pressure, the appropriate gesture at that point is to yield to it. And when you yield to it, relinquishing all resistance, the pressure translates into the flow of Shakti. Only this Shakti, this Kundalini [the Sambhogakaya, or Clear-Light Continuum], is Grace and Light; but this Grace and Light cannot be realized without effort. Spiritual life involves an intense holding-on (to the Source) as well as a total letting-go (of resistance), but for yinned-out New Age gurus like Tolle, it simply isn’t cool to emphasize the work, or pressure, side of spiritual life.â€
I can hardly read a sentence of Dowman’s book without disagreeing with him. For example, in the Introduction, he writes: “In a wider purview Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, is Tibet’s principal tradition of of Gnostic mysticism, commensurate to the Chinese Taoism of Lao Tsu and the Indian Advaita Vedanta of Shankaracharya and Ramana Maharshi.†Actually, Dzogchen is more akin to Hindu Kashmir Shaivism, Adi Da’s Daism, and Eucharistic Christian Mysticism than it is to the traditions Dowman mentions.
There are two principal practices in Dzogchen – trekcho and togel – and Dowman lacks a deep understanding of either. Regarding togel, he writes: “This phase of atiyoga is called Jumping Through and implies entry into the state of spontaneity that belies causality.â€Â This is a poor description of togel. Togel means Leaping Over spiritual materialism to the Spirit itself (the Sambhogakaya) and channeling, or conducting, its Clear-Light Energy, the continuum of Divine Radiance. In “A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmission,†Rabjam writes, togel “consists of resting in the continuum that is the radiance of awareness.â€Â Dowman adds color to his description of togel describing it as “the natural flow of nonmeditation upon upon the brilliance of the light through its apparent nuclear components known as ‘holistic nuclei,’ which may be compared to the pixels of light in a hologram.†If you enjoy this kind of far-out, but inaccurate, quasi-psychedelic language, which reduces true togel to a “thigle†“light-show,†then drop some Windowpane, pipe up the King Crimson, Pink Floyd, and Soft Machine, and relax your way into the shimmering Void, with Dowman’s text as your companion.
Dowman goes astray when he attempts to describe and define “rigpa,†a key term in Dzogchen, and the one he uses in lieu of awareness throughout this book. I randomly pulled four Dzogchen texts off my bookshelf - “Naked Awareness: Practical Instructions on the Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen,†Principal Yogacara Texts: Indo-Tibetan Sources of Dzogchen Mahamudra,†“The Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding,†and “Self-Liberation: Through Seeing with Naked Awareness†– and the first three define rigpa as “awareness,†while “Self-Liberation†says it means “intrinsic awareness or the state of immediate presence.â€
But Dowman believes mere awareness is an inadequate term for rigpa, because the term has cognitive as well as ontological aspects, so he opines: “If rigpa is to be defined at all, it is a brilliant radiance, as a constant experience of pure pleasure, as lightness and clarity, as the soft silence in every moment. The apposite English equivalent has yet to emerge, so here in this work we have retained the Tibetan term rigpa itself.â€
Unbeknownst to Dowman, the apposite English equivalent has emerged – and I am the one who has coined the term – “Plugged-in Presence,†which is a synonym for awareness (or presence) + oneness. Also unbeknownst to Dowman, rigpa is simply, and only, direct, immediate (or plugged-in) presence. The experiences of “pleasure, lightness, and clarity†that he superimposes on rigpa are superfluous to rigpa, and are poor descriptions of just some of the states of awareness that may or may not accompany the practice of rigpa. Rigpa, the Dimension of the Dharmakaya filtered through a human vehicle, is different in samsara than in Nirvana, and it would take a clearer thinker and better communicator than Dowman to fully expound upon the ontological and cognitive aspects of Rigpa relative to the Sambhogakaya and the Nirmanakaya. In short, Dowman tries, and fails, to improve upon the classical root-definition of rigpa as direct, immediate (or “plugged-inâ€) presence or awareness, and this failure is just another nail in the coffin of his translation and commentary.
I find it absurd that Dowman is concerned with the ontological and cognitive aspects of the term “rigpa†but not those of the term “mindâ€. In goose step with the other monkey minds currently writing on Dharma, he refuses to capitalize the term when appropriate, and fails to provide nuanced meanings of the term. In Sanskrit, for example, “manas†refers to mind-stuff or mental formations; “chitta (or citta)†refers to consciousness functioning as mind; and “Chit (or Cit)†refers to pure, or transcendental, Consciousness. When “mind†is used as a synonym for the Dharmakaya (timeless Awareness) or for en-Light-ened rigpa (individual awareness at-one with the Sambogakaya, or the Dharma Cloud), then it should be capitalized to distinguish it from the samsaric mind.
In the “Precious Treasury of the Way Abiding,†author Richard Barron translates Rabjam’s four cardinal themes of Dzogchen as Ineffability, Openness, Spontaneous Presence, and Oneness. In “Natural Perfection,†Dowman opts for the words Absence, Openness, Spontaneity, and Unity. I much prefer Barron’s choice of words. Absence and emptiness are virtual synonyms, and Dowman implies as much when he writes: “The absence that is essentially emptiness.†I can hardly imagine that Rabjam intended for two of the four themes to be redundant duplications of each other.
As soon as Dowman begins to translate Rabjam, he displays a lack of philosophic acumen and clarity. In the first sentence of the first chapter, he begins: “To timeless buddhahood, basic total presence, to unchanging spontaneity…†The Barron translation begins: “Primordial buddhahood, the ground of fully evident enlightenment, unchanging, spontaneously present…†First off, buddhahood is not the same as basic total presence; it is the immanent ground that is coessential with it. Second, the combination “unchanging spontaneity†makes no sense to me, but being “spontaneously present†does.
Dowman consistently confuses nouns with their attributes. Elsewhere, he describes the pure mind of rigpa as spontaneity. The pure Buddha Mind, as the great Zen master Huang Po describes it, is the spontaneously arising Absolute, but that’s hardly the same thing as spontaneity. If you think a pretty girl is the same thing as prettiness, you’ll doubless dig Dowman’s “creative†bastardization of the English language.
Here’s another example of Dowman’s laughable language: “The super-matrix of pure mind is the spaciousness of absence.†This is nonsense. Pure Mind is not spaciousness. Moreover, it’s not even spacious. It’s aspatial as well atemporal. Further, absence is a non-existent, and thus cannot be described as “spacious†or as anything else. Like endless other clueless apophatic “philosophers,†Dowman is consistently guilty of what Ayn Rand calls “the reification of zero,†the transforming of a non-existent into an existent and attributing qualities to it.
I could go on indefinitely deconstructing Dowman’s “Natural Perfection,†but because this is already an overly long review, I’ll bring it to a close.
In summary, if you dig Gertrude Stein and have zero or next to zero respect for the meaning and definition of words, you might find this book your “Dzoghen cup of tea.†But if, like me, you vibe with Ayn Rand’s Objectivist epistemology, you will have no affinity for it. If this book wasn’t a translation of a revered classical Dzogchen text, I’d smack it with a single star, but because it is, I’ll, reluctantly, give it two five-pointers.
[My 2-star Amazon Review (NDA) of “Natural Perfection: Longchenpa’s Radical Dzogchen†by Keith Dowman.]
“Natural Perfection†is the fourth book I’ve read on Longchen Rabjam’s teachings. The first, “The Practice of Dzogchen,†by Rabjam, Harold Talbott, and Tulku Thondrup, was crummy; the second two, “The Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding†and “A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmission,†by Rabjam and Richard Barron, were exquisite; and Natural Perfection, like “The Practice of Dzogchen,†is also bad. To emphasize this, know that I gave “The Precious Treasure of the Way of Abiding†five stars in my Amazon.com review, and now I am giving “Natural Perfection†just two. I will be receiving my copy of “The Practice of Dzogchen†next month (it has been in storage with dozens of my other books), and I plan to review it in January.
When I open “Natural Perfection,†I can hardly read a single paragraph without recoiling from Keith Dowman’s translation and/or commentary. I could write a massive tome deconstructing Dowman’s prose and “poetry,†but because this is just a review, I’ll limit my focus to select passages from the text. But know that these excerpts are not an exception; rather, they are the rule, and accurately reflect the entire text.
In the Introduction, Dowman vapidly reduces Dzogchen to a “single basic tenetâ€: “nonaction.†This is nonsensical, and, in fact, contradicts the four “tenets,†or themes –Presence, Oneness, Openess, and Ineffability - that Rabjam identifies as the heart of Dzogchen. Moreover, even though I’m not a fan of the late Rajneesh (Osho), he educated me when he differentiated between the terms “nonactivity†and “nonaction.†In reality, the practice of Dzogchen initiates with an “action,†or “gesture†- that of being directly, immediately present. The term Mahamudra means “Great Gesture,†and the Great Gesture, or Act, or, Sacrament, which is common to both Mahamudra and its kissing cousin, Dzogchen (and also the esoteric Christian Eucharist for that matter), is that of being consciously present and at-one with existence.
Dowman tells us “relaxation†is the key to buddhahood here-and-now.†No it’s not. Guys who “chill out†in their La-Z-Boy recliners with a few “cold ones†are no closer to en-Light-enment than the intense football players they watch on their Big Screens. To counter Dowman’statement, I’m going to quote myself from my book “Beyond the Power of Now: A Guide to, and Beyond, Eckhart Tolle’s Teachingsâ€:
“Eckhart Tolle says, ‘To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness.’ I say, the path of least (or no) resistance, in and by itself, is hardly the spiritual panacea that Tolle makes it out to be. If it were, we’d see the great sages recommending deep sleep and relaxing massages as the keys to Nirvana. The Buddha, in fact, instructed his disciples not to practice exclusive effortlessness. He taught that meditation is like playing a string musical instrument: if the strings are too tight, they will break, and if they are too loose, there will be no sound. The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path includes Right Effort as one of its constituents, so the Buddha certainly wouldn’t second Tolle’s one-dimensional directive to abandon all resistance.
Non-resistance is an essential component of real spiritual practice. But just as reduced resistance is meaningless in the circuit of an unplugged lamp, it is also less than potent in a yogi disconnected from the Source. The first principle of mysticism is direct contact with Ultimate Reality. Once this contact is established, then it becomes appropriate to let go and receive Grace, the flow of Shakti [the Sambhogakaya, or Clear-Light-Energy]. In other words, if you want to be in a state of Grace, the exclusive, contextless “practice†of non-resistance won’t enable you to achieve it. Only within the full context of Holy Communion [Presence + Oneness] will non-resistance enable you to receive and integrally channel Grace, the Holy Spirit, or true power of Now [the Sambogakaya, or Clear-Light Energy]. Until the Heart-knot is cut, effort--in the form of countering (or resisting) unconsciousness by attempting to remain present and plugged-in--is necessary. The force, or “voltage,†of your plugged-in presence creates a palpable pressure, and when you feel this pressure, the appropriate gesture at that point is to yield to it. And when you yield to it, relinquishing all resistance, the pressure translates into the flow of Shakti. Only this Shakti, this Kundalini [the Sambhogakaya, or Clear-Light Continuum], is Grace and Light; but this Grace and Light cannot be realized without effort. Spiritual life involves an intense holding-on (to the Source) as well as a total letting-go (of resistance), but for yinned-out New Age gurus like Tolle, it simply isn’t cool to emphasize the work, or pressure, side of spiritual life.â€
I can hardly read a sentence of Dowman’s book without disagreeing with him. For example, in the Introduction, he writes: “In a wider purview Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, is Tibet’s principal tradition of of Gnostic mysticism, commensurate to the Chinese Taoism of Lao Tsu and the Indian Advaita Vedanta of Shankaracharya and Ramana Maharshi.†Actually, Dzogchen is more akin to Hindu Kashmir Shaivism, Adi Da’s Daism, and Eucharistic Christian Mysticism than it is to the traditions Dowman mentions.
There are two principal practices in Dzogchen – trekcho and togel – and Dowman lacks a deep understanding of either. Regarding togel, he writes: “This phase of atiyoga is called Jumping Through and implies entry into the state of spontaneity that belies causality.â€Â This is a poor description of togel. Togel means Leaping Over spiritual materialism to the Spirit itself (the Sambhogakaya) and channeling, or conducting, its Clear-Light Energy, the continuum of Divine Radiance. In “A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmission,†Rabjam writes, togel “consists of resting in the continuum that is the radiance of awareness.â€Â Dowman adds color to his description of togel describing it as “the natural flow of nonmeditation upon upon the brilliance of the light through its apparent nuclear components known as ‘holistic nuclei,’ which may be compared to the pixels of light in a hologram.†If you enjoy this kind of far-out, but inaccurate, quasi-psychedelic language, which reduces true togel to a “thigle†“light-show,†then drop some Windowpane, pipe up the King Crimson, Pink Floyd, and Soft Machine, and relax your way into the shimmering Void, with Dowman’s text as your companion.
Dowman goes astray when he attempts to describe and define “rigpa,†a key term in Dzogchen, and the one he uses in lieu of awareness throughout this book. I randomly pulled four Dzogchen texts off my bookshelf - “Naked Awareness: Practical Instructions on the Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen,†Principal Yogacara Texts: Indo-Tibetan Sources of Dzogchen Mahamudra,†“The Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding,†and “Self-Liberation: Through Seeing with Naked Awareness†– and the first three define rigpa as “awareness,†while “Self-Liberation†says it means “intrinsic awareness or the state of immediate presence.â€
But Dowman believes mere awareness is an inadequate term for rigpa, because the term has cognitive as well as ontological aspects, so he opines: “If rigpa is to be defined at all, it is a brilliant radiance, as a constant experience of pure pleasure, as lightness and clarity, as the soft silence in every moment. The apposite English equivalent has yet to emerge, so here in this work we have retained the Tibetan term rigpa itself.â€
Unbeknownst to Dowman, the apposite English equivalent has emerged – and I am the one who has coined the term – “Plugged-in Presence,†which is a synonym for awareness (or presence) + oneness. Also unbeknownst to Dowman, rigpa is simply, and only, direct, immediate (or plugged-in) presence. The experiences of “pleasure, lightness, and clarity†that he superimposes on rigpa are superfluous to rigpa, and are poor descriptions of just some of the states of awareness that may or may not accompany the practice of rigpa. Rigpa, the Dimension of the Dharmakaya filtered through a human vehicle, is different in samsara than in Nirvana, and it would take a clearer thinker and better communicator than Dowman to fully expound upon the ontological and cognitive aspects of Rigpa relative to the Sambhogakaya and the Nirmanakaya. In short, Dowman tries, and fails, to improve upon the classical root-definition of rigpa as direct, immediate (or “plugged-inâ€) presence or awareness, and this failure is just another nail in the coffin of his translation and commentary.
I find it absurd that Dowman is concerned with the ontological and cognitive aspects of the term “rigpa†but not those of the term “mindâ€. In goose step with the other monkey minds currently writing on Dharma, he refuses to capitalize the term when appropriate, and fails to provide nuanced meanings of the term. In Sanskrit, for example, “manas†refers to mind-stuff or mental formations; “chitta (or citta)†refers to consciousness functioning as mind; and “Chit (or Cit)†refers to pure, or transcendental, Consciousness. When “mind†is used as a synonym for the Dharmakaya (timeless Awareness) or for en-Light-ened rigpa (individual awareness at-one with the Sambogakaya, or the Dharma Cloud), then it should be capitalized to distinguish it from the samsaric mind.
In the “Precious Treasury of the Way Abiding,†author Richard Barron translates Rabjam’s four cardinal themes of Dzogchen as Ineffability, Openness, Spontaneous Presence, and Oneness. In “Natural Perfection,†Dowman opts for the words Absence, Openness, Spontaneity, and Unity. I much prefer Barron’s choice of words. Absence and emptiness are virtual synonyms, and Dowman implies as much when he writes: “The absence that is essentially emptiness.†I can hardly imagine that Rabjam intended for two of the four themes to be redundant duplications of each other.
As soon as Dowman begins to translate Rabjam, he displays a lack of philosophic acumen and clarity. In the first sentence of the first chapter, he begins: “To timeless buddhahood, basic total presence, to unchanging spontaneity…†The Barron translation begins: “Primordial buddhahood, the ground of fully evident enlightenment, unchanging, spontaneously present…†First off, buddhahood is not the same as basic total presence; it is the immanent ground that is coessential with it. Second, the combination “unchanging spontaneity†makes no sense to me, but being “spontaneously present†does.
Dowman consistently confuses nouns with their attributes. Elsewhere, he describes the pure mind of rigpa as spontaneity. The pure Buddha Mind, as the great Zen master Huang Po describes it, is the spontaneously arising Absolute, but that’s hardly the same thing as spontaneity. If you think a pretty girl is the same thing as prettiness, you’ll doubless dig Dowman’s “creative†bastardization of the English language.
Here’s another example of Dowman’s laughable language: “The super-matrix of pure mind is the spaciousness of absence.†This is nonsense. Pure Mind is not spaciousness. Moreover, it’s not even spacious. It’s aspatial as well atemporal. Further, absence is a non-existent, and thus cannot be described as “spacious†or as anything else. Like endless other clueless apophatic “philosophers,†Dowman is consistently guilty of what Ayn Rand calls “the reification of zero,†the transforming of a non-existent into an existent and attributing qualities to it.
I could go on indefinitely deconstructing Dowman’s “Natural Perfection,†but because this is already an overly long review, I’ll bring it to a close.
In summary, if you dig Gertrude Stein and have zero or next to zero respect for the meaning and definition of words, you might find this book your “Dzoghen cup of tea.†But if, like me, you vibe with Ayn Rand’s Objectivist epistemology, you will have no affinity for it. If this book wasn’t a translation of a revered classical Dzogchen text, I’d smack it with a single star, but because it is, I’ll, reluctantly, give it two five-pointers.
