Dzogchen Is Not At Odds With Anything

Dzogchen is pure compassionate awareness,
in which anything may arise
while pure awareness remains uncontaminated.

A Pure Garden
where anything may grow
and the garden remains pure.

This is a Buddhist Dzogchen site and as such, has a flavour and language describing our essential nature as pure emptiness – naked awareness – primordial wakefulness. There are many other Buddhist traditions that have slightly different methods for arriving at the same conclusion. These differences are not at odds with each other; they reflect one another. We all follow the path that suits us the best. Within these traditions, there are many levels or yanas and it is here that we have to be careful because it’s easy to talk at cross purposes as our understanding of the same word may differ; each may be correct in itself but as perception changes, so does the meaning.

As an example, Dzogchen and other Buddhist traditions use phrases such as “the three kayas”:

Dharmakaya = Empty essence (absolute truth)
Sambhogakaya = Cognisant nature (relative truth)
Nirmanakaya = unconfined Compassionate energy (the union of the other two)

Confusion arises due to our capacity to perceive, and how closely we look in practice – how we see things in genuine experience as opposed to philosophical discussion. Dzogchen is not concerned with philosophical debate: it is how we are. If we are looking down a microscope, we have to be clear what we are looking at; it could be matter, or it could be the space between matter. It is said that we can’t follow two paths at the same time; that would be like sewing with a two headed needle, and we’d just become confused. Much depends on whether we are using ordinary perception or pure perception, and whether we are being literal or metaphorical/symbolic.

Let’s look at the Garden of Eden through Dzogchen eyes:

In a spiritual sense we could say that our true nature is a pure garden of all we need, as it is eternal and beyond desire and aversion. Our problem arose when we turned aside from dwelling in the metaphysical* and wanted a literal dwelling. This strong desire created an identification with a body and mind, and the contaminated quality of our desire determined a corresponding body form and mind (this is the karmic effect). Although we may be born into unfortunate circumstances, this could be karma playing itself out; it could be our final piece of karma as karma is finite.

Our pure garden became impure, contaminated. This happened when we “ate the apple” by wanting to know, instead of being knowingness itself. Thus we discovered judgement – this and that, good and evil. We became this and that, good…and evil!

When we are no longer satisfied with merely naked awareness, we look for something extra – and we’re still doing this. We have separated ourselves from pure, naked wakefulness. Embarrassed, we cover ourselves up in conceptual justifications, and have condemned ourselves to lifetimes of looking for home – the pure garden.

Our path home is our own confusion.
Eliminate the confusion and we are home.

Our conflict is what we have become as opposed to what we are;
this conflict is a metaphysical battle across space and time.

Returning to who we are is beyond
a metaphysical battle across space and time.

*Metaphysical: the essentially metaphysical question of the nature of mind. Transcending physical matter or the laws of nature: Good and Evil are inextricably linked in a metaphysical battle across space and time.