Reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. What Sogyal Rinpoche has to say about Dzogchen has set ideas sparking in my mind. Dzogchen is the primordial state, our true nature. This is what we naturally are. The problem, however, is ignorance. Dzogchen is not part of our experience and we imagine ourselves to be other than we really are. People take many paths pursuing different goals. Enlightened ones take the path which leads to fruition.
This fundamental nature is buddha nature – a term that describes the ineffable. In Christian terms we could say the divine. I am reminded of Athanasius: ‘God became man so that man might become God.’ Cats and rabbits grow naturally to the fullness of their nature. They are biologically determined. We humans are far more complex. As persons we are multi-faceted with biological, conscious, social and volitional dimensions. Each of these is determining to an extent. Sometimes one is dominant, sometimes another. It is in the volitional element that our freedom lies. It has the ability to override the other determinants, the biological, the social and the rational. And there is something else – a spiritual element. We use words like soul and spirit but we do not know what they mean, or have only a vague idea.
If we were only biological, social and rational animals then the behaviourists would be correct and B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two could become a reality. But we are also free agents in that we have the power to stand back from ourselves, look at ourselves reflectively, and make a response not dictated by the stimuli we are exposed to. We do not always exercise this power. Very often it is not in our interest to do so. The biological impulses to eat and to reproduce are vital and are only denied at our peril. A perceived social demand to be slender rather than plump may lead to anorexia. An ideological imposition of celibacy may result various psychological problems. Yet at other times the witness of a hunger strike may change the mind of a whole nation, as Gandhi discovered, and celibacy provide the freedom to reach out to others.
There is also a very mysterious dimension to being a person – the fact that we can be aware of transcendence, of a spiritual dimension to reality. This, taken together with the ability to act freely, is the very essence of what it means to be human. We are animals, but not just animals. We are social beings, but not just social beings. We can also reason and act freely. And there is something else, something we cannot describe, explain or easily put into words – a feeling, but more than just a feeling, of infinite depth. People have described it in different ways at different times but the description I like best is from the Chhandogya Upanishad.
In this body, in this town of Spirit, there is a little house shaped like a lotus, and in that house there is a little space. One should know what is there. What is there? Why is it so important? There is as much in that little space within the heart as there is in the whole world outside. Heaven and earth, fire, wind, sun, moon, lightening, stars; whatever is and whatever is not, everything is there. If everything is in man’s body, every being, every desire, what remains when old age comes, when decay begins, when the body falls? What lies in that space does not decay when the body decays, nor does it fall when the body falls. That space is the home of Spirit. Every desire is there. Self is there, beyond decay and death, sin and sorrow; hunger and thirst; His aim truth; His will truth.
Our growing and becoming is not predetermined. We are songs woven by many voices. And yet, in a sense, we become what we have always been. The becoming is an awakening from a dark and claustrophobic dream.