Maya Yoga: Longchenpa's Finding Comfort and Ease in Enchantment

I am a frequent reader of the work of Keith Dowman. I must say, he has yet to disappoint me. Really, really nice work!

Keith Dowman has written another beautiful and concise book about the art of the ultimate deconstruction (Dzogchen). It is radical ,intelligent, poetic and clear! How can the human beeing, that was obliged to use his natural intelligence in a practical way to form a complex net of knowledge that serves him to survive and "prosper", discover his way out of this structural cage?Dzogchen hypothesizes that the REAL Intelligence is something that exists independent of us as the very taste of life and space. Mind and language is a game of endless dissection and reification. Emile Benveniste pointed out that : " It is in and through language that humans constitute themselves as subjects".If we start to glimpse that we are inadvertedly caught in that highly complex net of concepts (which are nothing else than practical and unconscious instructions on how to engage with the world), the spell can be broken. If we start to understand our own suffering and the cause of that suffering (our own bubble) we have the "open mind attitude" to see whether such a preverbal and pre-personnel Intelligence exists. That is where the anti-technique of Dzogchen come in.In the words of Keith: "This maya (illusion) of our ordinary experience rests upon the structure that our intellect imposes. This is a diverse and complex system of concepts and beliefs that not only determines the quality and nature of our experience but also of the natural - seemingly external,world." (page 19)"We begin in the heat of delirious attachment to our egoistic selves, and merely through recognition of our deluded condition, chilled out in the birthless and deathless space of reality, we find respite and release in the magical display of our everyday life." (page 17)This space of ease and enchantment opens up to the persons who managed to release themselves from the illusion and mandate of an inplacable and goal-oriented ego. That process of discovering our own limits is of course a very humiliating and painfull passage but nevertheless the "price of entry".In Dzogchen we learn to surf and release the perceptions before the onslaught of the conceptions. ( The american logician and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce was aware of that early preverbal phase and called it "fistness". He discribes this pre-reflective stage of experience as immediate, direct, chaotic and luminous. In Pierce's words: " Another example of firstness is experiencing the absolute present directly (if that were ever possible!). It is a kind of unmediated meditative state without unity and without parts, it just "is.")Learning to dissolve "ourselves' in that constant and present encounter we are escpaing the contaminated maya and opening us up for the immaculate maya.May all beeings be happy!

Along with B. Alan Wallace and John Myrdhin Reynolds, I’ve found Keith Dowman’s translations and commentaries to be top of the line. For anyone interested in my recommended books (Dzogchen and other spiritual gems), please click on my Amazon reviewer name: PW108.Additionally, for erudite, thoughtful, and well-written analysis of many Dzogchen tomes, I recommend to everyone here that they avail themselves of the comments from the Amazon reviewers going by the names, “Book Drawn” and “applewood.” Given the many wonderful reviews of theirs that assisted me with my purchases, anyone looking into these types of spiritual texts would do well to read their posts. My thanks to both these fine gentlemen!

Chogyam Trungpa and Thinley Norbu are exceptional teachers because, among other things, their command of English is exhilarating. Similarly, Keith Dowman's command of Longchenpa's ideas and ability to "translate" that into a highly dynamic and contemporary English is unique. Not only is his rendering of Longchenpa's text extraordinary, but his Introduction is full of many, many insights into Buddhist thought which hit home simply by virtue of a word or phrase. Concepts (or non-concepts) that I thought I fully understood had the bugs shook out of them like an old rug on a Spring day.This is the third Dowman translation I've read, and in harmony with the sublime Longchenpa, it is the best of the best.

This is a wonderful translation of Longchenpa’s seminal Dzogchen text:Maya Yoga: Finding Comfort and Ease in EnchantmentFor those who are Awakening this cooling transmission will remind you of the intrinsically non-problematic, essential effortlessness of Great Perfection. This is an exquisite blossom in the Garland of Blossoms left to us all through Longchenpa’s unobstructed transmissivity.This gem is an antidote for scholarly polemics that only confuse our process of Awakening. It really is this simple, it really is this wonderful, it really is this Clear. Do not let any apparition tell you otherwise.

Another slender text by Keith Dowman in which size belays significance. Maya, translated as illusion, comes in eight forms in this elaboration of a Longchenpa text. The author says he makes no apology for it, and indeed he should not. In our materialist realm it’s great to find a writing that loosens thinking about the reality we confuse as solid form. The text has a fine introduction and then goes through Longchenpa’s analogies of illusions with his meditation on each. As a bonus Keith Dowman has added an appendix with two new analogies he feels are applicable for the 21st century. They are. Don’t hesitate to add this slim volume to your Dzogchen collection and refer back to it whenever you start to believe what you see is real.

I have a copy of H V Guenther's "Kindly Bent to Ease Us" part three: Wonderment which is heavy dutyintellectual Dzochen but still worthwhile reading. K Dowman's Maya Yoga is the equivalent of seeing anolder black and white film (I loved his motion picture analogy) like "The Island of Dr Moreau" vs experiencing a movie like "Gravity" in 3D Imax with surround sound. Most everyone would opt for the latter is my guess.Maybe just the way our 'minds'? are bent to ease us

Ma = "Not",and Ya = "That which is", the ultimate dissociation of the Para Brahman Absent, or Godhead, yet apparent it is all a dream, a magic show, an echo, a mirage, an apparition."You fortunate ones, convinced by direct experience, you recognize that no situation has any reality, that emerging into nothing and vanishing into nothing, pure from the beginning, it is all but a magical show."

Downman porta avanti un lavoro di traduzione di testi dzogchen che risulta di inestimabile valore, come questo tesoretto, in cui Longchempa ci spiega e ci invita ad esperire la Maya delle apparenze, dedicando ciascun capitolo alle similitudini che ci ha trasmesso il Buddha. Da non perdere per i cercatori su questa via

I have a number of Keith's translations from the Tibetan and would consider this his most mature effort. If your eyes are open, your vision not too cluttered with ideas and concepts 'about' Dzogchen, Dzogchen will become fully alive through this, inseparable from your mind and your reality.