Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche gave transmission of all the three series of Dzogchen with practical instructions of their specific methods of practice

Namkhai Norbu was born in a small village called Geuk (dge ‘ug) near Changra (lcang ra) in Derge, Kham, in 1938, on the thirteenth day of the tenth lunar month of the earth-tiger year. Later in life he chose to mark his birthday on December 8. His father, Tsewang Namgyel (tshe dbang rnam rgyal, 1889–1962) of the Trokhe (gro khe) clan from Kamtok (skam thog), was a government official of the Derge kingdom; his mother, Yeshe Chodron (ye shes chos sgron, 1904–1965), belonged to the Ngonatsang (sngo rna tshang), one of the most ancient families in Derge. She was the niece of Jamyang Chokyi Wangpo (‘jam dbyangs chos kyi dbang po, 1893–1908) and the sister of his reincarnation, Khyentse Chokyi Wangchuk (mkhyen brtse’i chos kyi dbang phyug, 1909–1960), the first and second generation reincarnations of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo (‘jam dbyangs mkhyen brtse’i dbang po, 1820–1892), respectively.

He had three elder sisters: Jamyang Chodron (‘jam dbyangs chos sgron, 1921–1985), known as Jamcho; Sonam Pelmo (bsod nams dpal mo, 1924–1988), known as Aso; Tashi Yangdzom (bkra shis dbyangs ‘dzoms, 1929–2006), known as Trayang; and one younger sister, Tsering Yangdzom (tshe ring dbyangs ‘dzoms, b. 1946). His two younger brothers were Pema Gungtsen (padma gung btsan, 1940–1960) and Jamyang Puntsok (‘jam dbyangs phun tshogs, 1943–1948). Continue reading »

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: “Our natural condition is self-perfected from the very beginning. What is necessary is that we reawaken and remain in our true nature”.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: Compassion, Culture and Understanding

“Someone who begins to develop an interest in the teachings can tend to distance themselves from the reality of material things, as if the teachings were something completely apart from daily life. Often, at the bottom of all this, there is an attitude of giving up and running away from one’s own problems, with the illusion that one will be able to find something that will miraculously help one to transcend all that. But the teachings are based on the principle of our actual human condition. We have a physical body with all its various limits: each day we have to eat, work, rest, and so on. This is our reality, and we can’t ignore it.

The Dzogchen teachings are neither a philosophy, nor a religious doctrine, nor a cultural tradition. Understanding the message of the teachings means discovering one’s own true condition, stripped of all the self-deceptions and falsifications which the mind creates. The very meaning of the Tibetan term Dzogchen, Great Perfection, refers to the true primordial state of every individual and not to any transcendent reality.

Many spiritual paths have as their basis the principle of compassion, of benefiting others. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, for example, compassion is one of the fundamental points of the practice, together with the knowledge of the true nature of phenomena, or voidness. Sometimes, however, compassion can become something constructed and provisional, because we don’t understand the real principle of it. A genuine, not artificial, compassion, can only arise after we have discovered our own condition. Observing our own limits, our conditioning, our conflicts and so on, we can become truly conscious of the suffering of others, and then our own experience becomes a basis or model for being able to better understand and help those around us.

The only source of every kind of benefit for others is awareness of our own condition. When we know how to help ourselves and how to work with our situation we can really benefit others, and our feeling of compassion will arise spontaneously, without the need for us to hold ourselves to the rules of behaviour of any given religious doctrine. Continue reading »

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: “The principle of the Dzogchen teaching is, that is, being forever in the state of the contemplation, in our real nature”.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: The Importance of Being Present After finishing Ati guruyoga what should you do? We do not have any kind of rule that says, “In the Dzogchen teaching you should do this or that”. Dzogchen teaching is beyond rules.

In the Dzogchen teaching the rule is that you are present. You are not distracted. This is what you should learn. This is the second most important thing in the Dzogchen teaching.

If you like to do some visualization of deities, chanting mantras, invocations, etc., the Dzogchen teaching does not say that you shouldn’t do that. You are always free. You should work with circumstances and when there are possibilities, you can apply [these things]. But after being in the state of Ati guruyoga, what is really necessary is that you should be present, not distracted. You should learn this.

Some of my students say, “You always tell us that being present is very important. I have tried to do this, but it is not so easy. I am always distracted”. Then that person no longer tries to be present. This is not good. Even though it is not easy, you should learn because it is not as difficult as, for example, making a sacrifice. I am not telling you to spend many years on a mountain and do like Milarepa did. That would be really difficult. I am not asking you to do anything like that. I’m only asking you to be present, not distracted. So, maybe if you don’t know that then you should learn.

Our concept of not being distracted is a little different from not being distracted in the teaching. Our concept of not being distracted is this. If you think about something in your mind, for example, you want to write a letter, then you think that you don’t want to be distracted by anything else. You always concentrate on what you should say in this letter and go ahead. If you are not present about that and do something else, then we say that you are distracted. Continue reading »

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: Buddha taught that suffering is an effect and has its cause, if you discover the cause and work with cause, there is the possibility to overcome.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: Santi Maha Sangha.

Introduction. Good evening everybody. This is the first day of the Santi Maha Sangha training, but today everyone is participating. I am only giving an introduction, not a particular teaching of Santi Maha Sangha. This is also the Day of the Dakini, so we also need to do a Ganapuja. Before we do a Ganapuja, I want to introduce what doing a retreat of Santi Maha Sangha means.

Many of you don’t know what Santi Maha Sangha is. Why do many people want to do Santi Maha Sangha? Many people say it is because they want to be a teacher.

Some people have this idea, but Santi Maha Sangha training or learning is not for becoming a teacher. If you have the intention to be a teacher from the beginning, that is very bad. That means you have less qualification. For example, many years after I arrived in Italy, many people asked me to teach. I told them I was a student, because I didn’t feel I was a teacher. I felt that I still wanted to learn and do practice, at least to realize something. So if you have that idea from the beginning, it is not good and it is better you don’t do Santi Maha Sangha at all.

So it is better you have a little of the sense of what Santi Maha Sangha is.Santi Maha Sangha is the language of Oddiyana, not even Sanskrit. If we translate it, it means Dzogchen Community. Now you can understand how the Dzogchen Community must be. How the people who are in Dzogchen Community must be. What the people should learn. This is why we are doing Santi Maha Sangha. Continue reading »

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: I will not only keep these commitments only for a few days, but until I have total realization relationships with people, relationships with students, will always exist, so I will keep them.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: The 27 Commitments. Namgyalgar, Third Level Training, March 31, 2000

Now I have to say something about my personal commitments. It is very important that my students, particularly in Santi Maha Sangha, know this principle. This principle is not only something I write down to say, “This is my commitment”. I apply them. I wrote these commitments when I started to teach Dzogchen. In the beginning I taught Buddhist teaching in general, also Tantrism, and information in the University. Also ISMEO (Institute for Middle East Studies) sometimes organized some kind of public lectures. Those subjects were no problem.

Then, later, many people asked me to teach Dzogchen teaching. So in this case, teaching means I am showing the path, and students apply and follow, and they try to have realization. So that is not only for my students, but for myself also. I am still in the human dimension. I am in samsara just like you. There isn’t much difference. Maybe I have a little more experience of Dzogchen teaching and knowledge. That is true. But we are all in samsara. So we need realisation. To have realization we need the path. We need to apply the path, follow the path, in the correct way. Otherwise we could not have realization. So then when I am going to teach someone, “to teach,” means I am working with transmission, working with my path, which is what I am following.

So it is not something easy, like how people say in America say: “we share everything”. It is easy to say: “we share everything”, but the teaching is something concrete for having realisation. Until we really have total realization, we must respect the path and everything. So then I felt some responsibility. That is the reason why, at the beginning when the Gyalwa Karmapa sent two or three letters to me saying, “Oh, you should teach my students; you should go here and there to teach; there are my centers”, each time I replied to Gyalwa Karmapa, “Please, I have no time, I don’t want to teach, I have a job; I am living an ordinary life, working and earning money, so I cannot go here and there”. And I received letters again and again. I never accepted. Continue reading »

Namkha Norbu: “The best thing is for the individuals to become a little bit aware about their own existence, which includes body, speech, and mind.”

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: Man, Medicine, and Society

You may have noticed that on the poster for our conference there is a figure that may look like either a man or a woman. It depicts Yuthog Yönten Gönpo the Elder, one of the most famous and important Tibetan doctors of the past, who we think lived towards the end of the seventh century CE. Tibetans consider this doctor a Master. I have personally met many masters, spiritual masters, that is. For instance, I spent five or six years in a college where we studied mainly Buddhist philosophy, but the master of our college was a great doctor under whom I studied for the first time the famous Four Tantras of Tibetan medicine.

Later on, I was on the border between China and Eastern Tibet, where I met another teacher who was very famous as a spiritual master, and not so much as a doctor, but who was, in truth, also a great doctor. I studied under him the Four Medical Tantras again. Lastly, I met the man who was for me one of the most important spiritual teachers. Continue reading »

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: So, first of all, we need to understand the basis and work with it very well.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: What is integration?

What does ‘direct introduction’ mean? It does not mean reading a book or making a commentary on a book by Garab Dorje or a text like a Tantra. It means touching something as if you were being burnt. This must be understood. Especially people who already know and have followed the teaching may feel, “I am an old practitioner”. You really must observe a little what ‘old’ means in this case. Each of you should observe your own practice. How do you feel when you meet someone who may be unpleasant or disturbing? Do you really have the capacity to integrate this feeling? Do you feel the same when you meet a person you love very much, such as friends, and when you meet someone unpleasant? If, through distraction, you hate or get angry, but with presence are immediately able to liberate this feeling, it means that you are practitioners and that practice is something living in yourselves. It is not so difficult to understand that the function of the teaching is something concrete. Continue reading »

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: When we observe ourselves, we can discover how many limitations we have, how these limitations create many problems, and we can free ourselves from those problems.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: Relationship Between Physical Body and Mind

I am very happy to be here with all of you. This is the first time I have been in this place. In general most of the time I live in Tenerife. My origin is Tibetan and I received all my education when I was in Tibet. When I was 20 years old I came to India and two years later I was invited by the famous Tibetologist, Giuseppe Tucci, to Italy, and worked at the university in Italy for many years.As you know, for many centuries Tibet remained isolated and for that reason ancient spiritual knowledge and many ancient sciences have remained as they were up to this moment.

When I was studying in Tibet, I did not realize the value of all the education that I received there, but after working for many years at a university in the Western world, I have understood that Tibet has many things that are valuable not only for Tibetans but for all human beings.

So a little later when I finished working at university I dedicated myself to trying to communicate this knowledge to people.

I have been requested to explain a little about the relationship between body and mind. In general, in the Tibetan sciences and the spiritual path, when we speak about a human being we speak about three gates. A gate means something for entering into knowledge, or a way to come out of a problem. For example, if we want to visit a museum, we have to go through a gate or door. When we enter then we can discover what is inside. In the same way if we are inside a prison, in order to free ourselves, we need to go through the door. For that reason our physical body, our energy, and our mind are called our three gates. It is important to understand that we all have this base. If we study Tibetan medicine, it is explained and people learn it that way. That is the basis of the relationship between the physical body and the mind. Continue reading »