#keith dowman

[nousrose]

The shaman's vision is a holistic vision where the distinction between the outer physical environment and the inner human being is blurred. In the shaman's mindscape there is no radical distinction between outer phenomena and inner noumena. Human consciousness encompasses the totality of possibility. This is a pre-rational mindstate. The development of consciousness that occurred in the western mind after the renaissance and the scientific enlightenment with the growth of rational, logical, thought processes, undermined this holistic vision of reality. As the conceptual capacity of the mind increased, so did our alienation from a sense of oneness with the environment. Outer phenomena became separate from us and became objects of alienated scientific observation. An acute separation, a dualism of self and other evolved. Rational consciousness, indeed, depends upon the suppression of the noumena of the holistic mind. The alienated dualistic mindstate of western man has grown like a cancer to the point where we can only gain access to vestiges of the holistic shamanistic vision by damaging the psyche and entering an atavistic stratum of consciousness that is conventionally labelled insane.

The Sacred Life of Tibet

Keith Dowman

[dimensional-tourist]

The Dzogchen View

The crucial significance here lies in knowing the pure presence ([rigpa) inherent in the ground of being as the view of the unelaborated primal purity inherent in the con-tinuum of the natural state of mind. When we recognize the view as ‘presence’ (rigpa), we abandon all attempts to cultivate the mind through meditation practice, the practice that locks us into a contrived view and a meditation structured by the intellect. Natural perfection, Dzogchen itself, is thus consummate, and the ineluctable circle of clear light that we see in nonmeditation is coincident with it. It is imperative, therefore, at the outset, that “we recognize undivided pure being as presence!”

The substance of the foregoing is the first of the three incisive precepts. If we lack an introductory experience of the view, where is the presence (rigpa) to be sustained in meditation? Initiatory experience is of crucial importance. Initiatory experience is revelation of our indwelling awareness. Nothing is to be sought elsewhere. Nothing new is to be generated in consciousness. “Direct introduction into the nature of mind is the first precept."

Keith Dowman

[opiraticentranced]

The vision of your envy is ultimately empty and ungraspable. Do not reject your jealousy! It is all-accomplishing awareness.

From The Flight of the Garuda (as translated by Keith Dowman)

[opiraticentranced]

The spontaneity of the togal path does not imply that Dzokchen is a 'sudden school' like Zen, with which it is often compared. On the contrary Dzokchen atiyoga is pre-eminently the middle path which steers between the concepts of gradual and sudden schools. In so far as it is possible to say of Dzokchen that 'the starting point is the path is the goal' -- the finger pointing at the moon is the moon itself -- the concepts of gradual and sudden enlightenment do not apply.

Keith Dowman, from "Sky Dancer: the Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel"

[opiraticentranced]

[Dzogchen] has been damned as a Hindu Saivite school and as a Taoist school, a path of immoralists and heretics, but without doubt it contains the most potent and efficacious yogas, precepts and metaphysical formulations, of the entire Buddhist dharma.

Keith Dowman (from commentary on Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel)

[opiraticentranced]

In Tantra the Bodhisattva Vow can be defined as the will towards universal happiness, with the onus on 'will', because the energy of dynamic aspiration is employed in various tantric yogas. This will is not a drive derived from the intellect that has concluded by deduction that one's own happiness is impossible amidst the suffering of others; it is not derived from altruistic sentiment; and it is not imposed by the Guru or doctrine.  Rather, it is life-force itself and the basic creativity of the mind, innate 'nuclear' energy released by the intuitive insight that the alienation of oneself from others is a function of karmic conditioning performed by a now redundant part of the mind."

Keith Dowman (from commentary on Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel)

[opiraticentranced]

The definition of nirmanakaya does indicate that no specific apparition is implied; rather it is a principle, or mode of being. 'Manifestation' is by definition 'compassion'; the creative act is an act of love, and only our confused notions and emotions corrupt it. Unveiled, a kettle or a gun no less than the Dakini herself are manifestations of the Guru's compassion.

Keith Dowman, from the commentaries on “Sky Dancer, The Secret Life and Teachings of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel”

[opiraticentranced]

Although the word Emptiness is frequently used as if it denotes an ontological absolute, the Old School, unlike other sects, stresses that ultimate reality is only empty of defilements, etc. and not Emptiness itself.  The problem is not only semantic; by implying that Emptiness can be experienced divorced from phenomenal appearances there is danger of the yogin striving for other than what is here and now, or for utter cessation...  The relative world is not to be shunned for a pie in the sky; the absolute is the relative, and the male and female principles are always in indivisible union.

Keith Downman, The Path of the Inner Tantra (Commentary on Sky Dancer, The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel)