The Supreme Source (Chogyam Namkhai Norbu, Adriano Clemente)
The Un-Supreme “Tantra” Text
[My 4-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Supreme Source: The Fundamental Tantra of of Dzogchen Semde (Kunjed Gyalpo)” by Chogyam Namkhai Norbu and Adriano Clemente.]
I first read this text ten years ago, shortly before I had “cracked the cosmic code” and fully grokked the fundamental principles that explain how it “all comes together” in the Great Spiritual Traditions (Zen, Dzogchen, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Christian mysticism, Kabbalah, Daism).
Not long after I read it, the book went into storage, and I received my copy earlier this year. I have just reread it from cover to cover, and my take on it now is not the same as it was a decade ago. While I still think it’s a worthwhile text to read, I no longer rate it as a five-star one, and in my amended Spiritual Reading List (which will be published in my forthcoming, 2015 book on Buddhism), it will be demoted from the Highly Recommended category to the Recommended one.
As I’ve read Buddhism book after Buddhism book, I have come to a sobering conclusion: I cannot find a single contemporary Tibetan lama, Zen master, or professor/writer of Buddhist philosophy who expresses Buddhadharma to my satisfaction. Every one of them, in my opinion, is limited in his understanding and communication of spiritual Truth. Namkhai Norbu and his student-authors -- John Reynolds (“The Golden Letters” and Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness”) and Adriano Clemente (“The Supreme Source”) -- are better than most of the current writers, but are still compromised in their exegeses and elaborations of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection.
I’ll return to this theme of mediocre exegetes and elaborators, but before I do, I’ll provide my take on the Kunjed Gyalpo, the Fundamental Tantra of the Dzogchen Semde. The essential, and constantly repeated, message of the Kunjed Gyalpo is the same one found in Hindu Advaita Vedanta texts such as “The Astavakra Gita” and Tibetan Mahamudra teachings -- and it can be summarized in a few paragraphs, if not a few sentences. But Kunjed Gyalpo beats this message to death and never moves beyond it into esoteric considerations regarding subjects such as Clear-Light Energy and the en-Light-enment process.
The essential message of the Kunjed Gyalpo is that the ‘highest” meditation is non-meditation, that “meditation means understanding there is nothing to enter onto or exit from.” It means to “remain in the natural state without seeking,” to be “beyond affirming and refuting,” because there is “nothing to accept or reject.” Non-effort includes non-correction, which means the yogi should “leave everything as it is.” The Kunjed Gyalpo criticizes “lesser” practices and, ad nauseum, stumps for simply “letting it be,” just as the Beatles did.
The problem with this “highest meditation” is that no one can practice it, in and of itself. The greatest spiritual masters, such as Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Adi Da, Jigme Lingpa, and Naropa, did other practices. I spent years attempting to effortlessly be and allow – and decades later, I figured out the problem with this “non-practice” and developed my Electrical Spiritual Pardigm (ESP), which explains why effortless “non-meditatation” does not, in and of itself, cut it as a spiritual practice.
The Kunjed Gyalpo is a “Semde” (or Mind Series) teaching, and because these teachings were, and are, insufficient in and of themselves, the “Longde” (Space Series) and Menngagde (Special Instruction) were also developed. Wholistic Dzogchen necessitates both treckho and togal practice, but the Kunjed Gyalpo is all about realizing “pure and total consciousness,” and thus ignores Energy and togal (the conductivity, or channeling of, Clear-Light Energy). Given its myopic Yogacaric-like emphasis on Mind and its lack of emphasis on Energy, I have no idea why the Kunjed Gyalpo is classified as a Tantra.
Just as the Kunjed Gyalpo is less than stellar, so is the writing of Namkhai Norbu and Adriano Clemente. First off, their definitions and explanations of terms are lacking. For example, they define Sambhogakaya as the “dimension of the richness of qualities.” Then they describe it as “the source of the transmission of Tantra [that] corresponds to the aspect of the “nature” of clarity of the primordial state.” If I didn’t already know what the Sambhogakaya is, I certainly wouldn’t be able to get clear on it from reading this text. The Sambhogakaya is Divine (Blessing/Blissing) Power, Clear-Light Energy. It is the same Dimension of the Absolute as the Christian Holy Spirit and Hindu Anugraha Shakti.
In the Preface to this text, Norbu writes, “The meaning of the word ‘tantra’ is ‘continuity’ or ‘without interruption,’ and refers to the condition of infinite potentiality and of uninterrupted manifestation of our primordial state.”
Given Norbu’s definition of “tantra” and the fact that “The Supreme Source” is supposed to be a Tantra text, it is lamentable that nothing is said about togal (thodgal), which is the definitive tantric practice of conducting, “without interruption,” the Sambhogakaya. Togal is mentioned just one time in one sentence in this text, when Norbu writes, “Dzogchen practice comprises two aspects: tregchod [treckho] and thodgal [togal].” But readers are left hanging, because togal is not mentioned again.
In summary, this is a good text, but hardly an indispensable one. If you read Longchen Rabjam’s “The Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding,” you don’t really need to read this one, because Rabjam’s includes the essential material from Kunjed Gyalpo as well as plenty from other outstanding Dzogchen teachings.
[My 4-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Supreme Source: The Fundamental Tantra of of Dzogchen Semde (Kunjed Gyalpo)” by Chogyam Namkhai Norbu and Adriano Clemente.]
I first read this text ten years ago, shortly before I had “cracked the cosmic code” and fully grokked the fundamental principles that explain how it “all comes together” in the Great Spiritual Traditions (Zen, Dzogchen, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Christian mysticism, Kabbalah, Daism).
Not long after I read it, the book went into storage, and I received my copy earlier this year. I have just reread it from cover to cover, and my take on it now is not the same as it was a decade ago. While I still think it’s a worthwhile text to read, I no longer rate it as a five-star one, and in my amended Spiritual Reading List (which will be published in my forthcoming, 2015 book on Buddhism), it will be demoted from the Highly Recommended category to the Recommended one.
As I’ve read Buddhism book after Buddhism book, I have come to a sobering conclusion: I cannot find a single contemporary Tibetan lama, Zen master, or professor/writer of Buddhist philosophy who expresses Buddhadharma to my satisfaction. Every one of them, in my opinion, is limited in his understanding and communication of spiritual Truth. Namkhai Norbu and his student-authors -- John Reynolds (“The Golden Letters” and Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness”) and Adriano Clemente (“The Supreme Source”) -- are better than most of the current writers, but are still compromised in their exegeses and elaborations of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection.
I’ll return to this theme of mediocre exegetes and elaborators, but before I do, I’ll provide my take on the Kunjed Gyalpo, the Fundamental Tantra of the Dzogchen Semde. The essential, and constantly repeated, message of the Kunjed Gyalpo is the same one found in Hindu Advaita Vedanta texts such as “The Astavakra Gita” and Tibetan Mahamudra teachings -- and it can be summarized in a few paragraphs, if not a few sentences. But Kunjed Gyalpo beats this message to death and never moves beyond it into esoteric considerations regarding subjects such as Clear-Light Energy and the en-Light-enment process.
The essential message of the Kunjed Gyalpo is that the ‘highest” meditation is non-meditation, that “meditation means understanding there is nothing to enter onto or exit from.” It means to “remain in the natural state without seeking,” to be “beyond affirming and refuting,” because there is “nothing to accept or reject.” Non-effort includes non-correction, which means the yogi should “leave everything as it is.” The Kunjed Gyalpo criticizes “lesser” practices and, ad nauseum, stumps for simply “letting it be,” just as the Beatles did.
The problem with this “highest meditation” is that no one can practice it, in and of itself. The greatest spiritual masters, such as Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Adi Da, Jigme Lingpa, and Naropa, did other practices. I spent years attempting to effortlessly be and allow – and decades later, I figured out the problem with this “non-practice” and developed my Electrical Spiritual Pardigm (ESP), which explains why effortless “non-meditatation” does not, in and of itself, cut it as a spiritual practice.
The Kunjed Gyalpo is a “Semde” (or Mind Series) teaching, and because these teachings were, and are, insufficient in and of themselves, the “Longde” (Space Series) and Menngagde (Special Instruction) were also developed. Wholistic Dzogchen necessitates both treckho and togal practice, but the Kunjed Gyalpo is all about realizing “pure and total consciousness,” and thus ignores Energy and togal (the conductivity, or channeling of, Clear-Light Energy). Given its myopic Yogacaric-like emphasis on Mind and its lack of emphasis on Energy, I have no idea why the Kunjed Gyalpo is classified as a Tantra.
Just as the Kunjed Gyalpo is less than stellar, so is the writing of Namkhai Norbu and Adriano Clemente. First off, their definitions and explanations of terms are lacking. For example, they define Sambhogakaya as the “dimension of the richness of qualities.” Then they describe it as “the source of the transmission of Tantra [that] corresponds to the aspect of the “nature” of clarity of the primordial state.” If I didn’t already know what the Sambhogakaya is, I certainly wouldn’t be able to get clear on it from reading this text. The Sambhogakaya is Divine (Blessing/Blissing) Power, Clear-Light Energy. It is the same Dimension of the Absolute as the Christian Holy Spirit and Hindu Anugraha Shakti.
In the Preface to this text, Norbu writes, “The meaning of the word ‘tantra’ is ‘continuity’ or ‘without interruption,’ and refers to the condition of infinite potentiality and of uninterrupted manifestation of our primordial state.”
Given Norbu’s definition of “tantra” and the fact that “The Supreme Source” is supposed to be a Tantra text, it is lamentable that nothing is said about togal (thodgal), which is the definitive tantric practice of conducting, “without interruption,” the Sambhogakaya. Togal is mentioned just one time in one sentence in this text, when Norbu writes, “Dzogchen practice comprises two aspects: tregchod [treckho] and thodgal [togal].” But readers are left hanging, because togal is not mentioned again.
In summary, this is a good text, but hardly an indispensable one. If you read Longchen Rabjam’s “The Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding,” you don’t really need to read this one, because Rabjam’s includes the essential material from Kunjed Gyalpo as well as plenty from other outstanding Dzogchen teachings.
