The Lion’s Roar (Nyoshul Khen)
First-Rate Lingpa, Second-Rate Everything Else
[My 3-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Lion’s Roar: Profound Instructions on the Great Perfection, Dzogchen” by Nyoshul Khen.]
This book’s redeeming virtue is 18th-century Dzogchen master Jigme Lingpa’a The Lion’s Roar, including Noshul Khen Rinpoche’s commentary. My prior exposure to Lingpa’s Dzogchen teachings was to his Longchen Nyingtig, as elaborated in Sam Van Schaik’s “Approaching the Great Perfection” (see my three-star review), and suffice to say, I was unimpressed with it. The Lion’s Roar, however, is an excellent Dzogchen “Treckho teaching,” as opposed to Longchen Nyingtig, which I consider a disappointing “Togal teaching.”
The Lion’s Roar constitutes about one-third of this book while the remainder consists of an incomplete and unimpressive presentation of Longchen Rabjam’s Resting at Ease in Illusion, hagiographical accounts of the lives of Rabjam and Lingpa, and remedial Dharma teachings steeped in Tibetan Buddhist cosmology and tradition. Again, only The Lion’s Roar floated my boat.
The two big problems with this book are the poor quality of the writing/translating and the perverted Dzogchen metaphysics espoused by Noshul Khen Rinpoche.
First the problematic writing. Translator David Christensen apes virtually all the contempory (monkey-see, monkey-do) Buddhist writers by refusing to capitalize terms that should be capitalized and by failing to employ nuanced translations of terms. The result is second-rate prose.The second problem, again, is Nosul Ken Rinpoche’s metaphysics. The Rinpoche is philosophically “lost in space.” He writes,”The difference between ourselves and Samanabhadra Buddha [tantanount to the Divine Person, or All-Creating Monarch] is that our awareness is has not been actualized and enlightened. We have not realized it for ourselves; and the only way we can understand it is if we ourselves experience and realize the inseparability of space and awareness.”
This is nonsense. Pure awareness is spaceless as well as timeless, while space, along with time, is a created emanation from the Uncreate. Gautama Buddha never taught the inseparability of awareness and space, and neither do mystical traditions outside of Dzogchen. Noshul Ken Rinpoche writes, “For us the world seems to exist, but this is only due to our deluded perception.”
Again, more nonsense. Whether or not one perceives the world, its existence is phenomenally real. And mystical schools with metaphysics superior to Dzogchen’s, such as Kashmir Shaivism, inform us that the world is (phenomenally) real, because nothing unreal can from the Real.
I could go on and on countering the Rinpoche’s ridulous philosphic statements, but since this is just a review, I’ll bring it to a close.
In sum, this book merits three stars only because of The Lion’s Roar. Remove it, and this would be, at best, a two-star text.
[My 3-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Lion’s Roar: Profound Instructions on the Great Perfection, Dzogchen” by Nyoshul Khen.]
This book’s redeeming virtue is 18th-century Dzogchen master Jigme Lingpa’a The Lion’s Roar, including Noshul Khen Rinpoche’s commentary. My prior exposure to Lingpa’s Dzogchen teachings was to his Longchen Nyingtig, as elaborated in Sam Van Schaik’s “Approaching the Great Perfection” (see my three-star review), and suffice to say, I was unimpressed with it. The Lion’s Roar, however, is an excellent Dzogchen “Treckho teaching,” as opposed to Longchen Nyingtig, which I consider a disappointing “Togal teaching.”
The Lion’s Roar constitutes about one-third of this book while the remainder consists of an incomplete and unimpressive presentation of Longchen Rabjam’s Resting at Ease in Illusion, hagiographical accounts of the lives of Rabjam and Lingpa, and remedial Dharma teachings steeped in Tibetan Buddhist cosmology and tradition. Again, only The Lion’s Roar floated my boat.
The two big problems with this book are the poor quality of the writing/translating and the perverted Dzogchen metaphysics espoused by Noshul Khen Rinpoche.
First the problematic writing. Translator David Christensen apes virtually all the contempory (monkey-see, monkey-do) Buddhist writers by refusing to capitalize terms that should be capitalized and by failing to employ nuanced translations of terms. The result is second-rate prose.The second problem, again, is Nosul Ken Rinpoche’s metaphysics. The Rinpoche is philosophically “lost in space.” He writes,”The difference between ourselves and Samanabhadra Buddha [tantanount to the Divine Person, or All-Creating Monarch] is that our awareness is has not been actualized and enlightened. We have not realized it for ourselves; and the only way we can understand it is if we ourselves experience and realize the inseparability of space and awareness.”
This is nonsense. Pure awareness is spaceless as well as timeless, while space, along with time, is a created emanation from the Uncreate. Gautama Buddha never taught the inseparability of awareness and space, and neither do mystical traditions outside of Dzogchen. Noshul Ken Rinpoche writes, “For us the world seems to exist, but this is only due to our deluded perception.”
Again, more nonsense. Whether or not one perceives the world, its existence is phenomenally real. And mystical schools with metaphysics superior to Dzogchen’s, such as Kashmir Shaivism, inform us that the world is (phenomenally) real, because nothing unreal can from the Real.
I could go on and on countering the Rinpoche’s ridulous philosphic statements, but since this is just a review, I’ll bring it to a close.
In sum, this book merits three stars only because of The Lion’s Roar. Remove it, and this would be, at best, a two-star text.
