Chogyal Namkhai Norbu examines the sprirtual path from the viewpoint of Dzogchen.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu is a Tibetan master of the Dzogchen tradition. He has been a professor at the Oriental Institute of the University of Naples, Italy, and is the author of many books, including The Crystal and the Way of Light, The Supreme Source, and Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State.

Editor's Note to the Snow Lion Edition	p. 9
The Six Vajra Verses	p. 15
My Birth, Early Life, and Education; and How I Came to Meet My Principal Master	p. 19
An Introductory Perspective: The Dzogchen Teachings and the Culture of Tibet	p. 31
How My Master Changchub Dorje Showed Me the Real Meaning of Direct Introduction	p. 35
Dzogchen in Relation to the Various Levels of the Buddhist Path	p. 45
With My Two Uncles Who Were Dzogchen Masters	p. 63
The Base	p. 103
The Path	p. 109
The Fruit	p. 149
Garab Dorje's Three Principles of the Dzogchen Teaching	p. 169
Key to the Groups of Three in the Dzogchen Teachings	p. 170
Summary of the Three Methods	p. 173
Principal Practices of the Three Series	p. 176
App. 2: Biographical Sketch of the Author	p. 181
App. 3: Commentary to the Plates	p. 187
Notes	p. 193
Other Publications by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu	p. 203
The Dzogchen Community	p. 206
Index	p. 207
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Chapter One

My Birth, Early Life, and

Education; and How I Came to Meet

My Principal Master

From the very beginning

all the infinite number of beings that exist

have as their essential inherent condition

the perfectly pure state of an enlightened being;

knowing this to be true also of me,

I commit myself to supreme realization.

Lines on Bodhicitta, written by Longchenpa (1308-63),

expressing the concept of the Base in the Anuyoga

When I was born, in the village of Geug, in the Kongra district of Derghe, eastern Tibet, in the tenth month of the year of the Earth Tiger (December 1938), it is said that the rose trees outside my parent's house bloomed even though it was winter. Two of my uncles came at once to visit my family. They had been disciples of a certain great master, Adzam Drugpa, who had died some years before, and they were both now Dzogchen masters themselves. They firmly believed that I was a reincarnation of their master, both because of things that he had said to them before he died, and because he had bequeathed certain special possessions to a son who he said would be born to my parents after his death. When I was two years old I was officially recognized as a reincarnation by a high trulku of the Nyingmapa school, who made me a gift of some robes. I don't remember many of the details of what happened then, but I do know that after that I received an awful lot of presents!

Later, at the age of five, I was also recognized by the sixteenth Karmapa and by the Situ Rinpoche of that time as the mind incarnation of another great master, who was in turn the reincarnation of the founder of the modern state of Bhutan, and whose lineage had been the Dharmarajas, or Chögyals, the temporal and spiritual rulers of that state, up until the early twentieth century. As I grew up, I was thus to be given quite a few names and titles, many of which are very long and grand sounding. But I have never used them, because I have always preferred the name my parents gave me at birth. They called me Namkhai Norbu, which is rather a special name in its own way. Norbu means jewel, and Namkhai means of the sky, or of space. It's unusual for the genitive to be used in Tibetan names, but that's what my parents chose to call me because, although they had four fine daughters, they had been longing for years to have a son.

So strong had been this longing, in fact, that they had engaged the services of a monk to perform an invocation of Tara [see illustration on p. 22] on their behalf for a whole year, asking for the granting of their wish. This monk also became my sister's tutor. Eventually, he had a dream which he interpreted as a favorable sign. He dreamed that a beautiful plant grew up right in front of the hearth of my parent's home. The plant put forth a beautiful yellow flower that opened and grew very big. The monk was sure that this indicated the birth of a male child. Later, when I was born, my parents were so happy that they felt I was a gift from the heavens. So they called me `Jewel of Space', and that is the name I have always stuck to.

My parents were always very kind to me, and I grew up into a little boy as mischievous as any other, and learned to read and write at home. As a young child, I often dreamed I was travelling at great speed inside what seemed to me to be a tiger, a strange roaring beast. I had never seen a motor vehicle, as there were none at that time in our part of Tibet. Later, of course, I came to travel in many cars, and then I recognized them as being what I had seen in my dreams. When, as a teenager, I did catch my first sight of a lorry, I was on horseback on a mountain side at night looking down at the vehicles passing on the new Chinese road below.

The tail lights glowed red on the giant trucks thundering by, and I thought they must be on fire. I also dreamed of strange flaming flying objects that exploded causing terrible destruction. I now know that what I saw were the missiles that were being developed far away in other parts of the world.

I sometimes played such pranks on our neighbors that I would be in serious trouble when my father came home from the travels that his work often involved. He would beat me, and I would be very angry, and try to retaliate against the neighbors who had told my father what I had done by playing even more pranks on them. Then, of course, I would be in more trouble again. I began to become more considerate largely as a result of my grandmother's influence. She had been a disciple of Adzam Drugpa, and she took a great interest in me. She sometimes managed to keep me from being punished by preventing my parents finding out what I had done. I remember that I once found the dead body of a large rodent called a marmot. Unnoticed by anyone I spent a blissful afternoon playing with the dead creature, even filling the body up with water and whirling it round my head. But when I took my plaything to bed with me my grandmother noticed it. She knew that my mother would have been very upset if she had known what I had been doing, and would have worried that I might become infected with some disease, so my grandmother didn't tell anyone. I thought this was very kind of her, and in fact I loved her very much. So when I saw her quietly weeping to herself about my behavior when she thought I was asleep, I was deeply moved, and resolved to mend my ways. But I can't say that I ever completely succeeded in overcoming my mischievousness altogether.

When I was five years old, I was playing outside our house one day when twelve monks arrived, all very elegantly dressed. The place where we lived was very isolated, and hardly any travellers ever passed, so I was very surprised to see them. I couldn't think why they had come. They went into the house, and a little later I was called to go in after them. I was taken into the small shrine room we had there, and they dressed me in fine silk robes. I didn't understand why I was being dressed up, but I enjoyed it just the same. I sat there, on a high throne they had specially prepared for me, for hours and hours while they performed a ritual, and then they went away. I thought to myself, `Well, that's the end of that'. But everyone went on reminding me that I was a reincarnation and showing me great respect, and I soon realized that far from being the end of anything, everything was just beginning.

A couple of weeks later some monks came and took me to Derghe Gönchen monastery, which was a very important place in that region: the King of Derghe himself lived there. My father worked in the King's administration, at first as an official roughly equivalent to a mayor or provincial governor in the West, and later, since he loved animals so much, as the head of a department whose function was to prevent hunting out of season or in excess in the whole of that part of Tibet. I was taken in to see the King, and since I was now recognized as a reincarnation, he put an entire building inside the monastery compound at my disposal. I lived there until I was nine years old with a master, a teacher who made me study hard day and night. There were many things to learn, including all the rules and prayers of the monastery. A monk normally finishes at nineteen years of age the phase of study I undertook there, but I completed it at the age of eight, because my master was so strict, and I was allowed no free time at all. I also had a natural gift for memorizing things.

My mischievous side did manage to surface from time to time, however. I remember, for example, that once when the King was involved in a military ceremony that required him to sit still on horseback for a long time in the courtyard below and opposite the first floor window of my house, I leaned over the sill and used a mirror to reflect the sun's rays into his eyes to dazzle him. My intention, innocent enough, was to lighten the rather overly heavy seriousness of the occasion for the King, and fortunately for me he knew me very well by that time, so that, instead of being offended, he even enjoyed the joke himself, once he had recovered his composure.

Then for a year I learned all the rules for the drawing and practice of mandala, after which I went away to monastic college. A college always has its rules and regulations, and the normal curriculum of the one I attended was that one studied there for five years. But since I entered at a much earlier age than usual, I was there for six years. The normal age of entry was at least thirteen, and I was only nine years old when I went there, so they didn't count my first year which was regarded as a sort of trial period to see if I was capable of staying the course. It wasn't just a matter of memorizing things any longer: we studied philosophy, which requires a capacity to reason well, and many people found the going too tough and dropped out.

Being so much younger than all the other students, life in the college certainly wasn't always easy for me either, and I suffered as others do from the rigors of life in that kind of institution. I had to learn some practical lessons very quickly. When my father took me to the college for my first term, he left with me enough supplies for the whole three months that would have to pass before I would go home again for a holiday. But I'd never had to manage my provisions on my own before, and by about half way through the period they were supposed to last I had used up all my supplies because I was far too generous in my hospitality to all my new colleagues. When I had no food of my own left I managed to survive for about a week on the salty yak butter tea that was the only thing provided by the college, but then I got too hungry for my pride to matter any more, and I finally found the courage to face the humiliation of having to go to ask my teacher for help. He very kindly arranged for me to receive a bowl of soup every evening, and, of course, the next term I was a good deal more provident with my resources.

The regulations in the college were very strictly enforced, and we had to remain in our small rooms every evening to practice and study after dinner until bedtime. Butter lamps and coal for heating were supplied for our use, but not in very generous quantities, and I remember that once the butter in my lamp ran out before I had completed reading through the large number of practices I had to recite every night to maintain the commitments I had made in receiving the very many initiations given to a trulku like myself.

We weren't allowed to leave our rooms at that hour and there was a monk patrolling the corridors to make sure the rules were observed, so I didn't dare to go and ask a neighbor if I could borrow a lamp, but tried to read my practices by the light of the coal fire. I knew some of the texts well enough to be able to just about manage to recite them even when the embers had burned down to a mere glimmer, but when the last spark finally had gone out, there I was in the dark with a pile of long Tibetan pages still to be read if I was to maintain my samaya commitments. I didn't understand at that time how to maintain commitment by applying the essentials of the practice, and I interpreted and carried out all the instructions that were given to me by my teachers in a very literal manner.

In my holidays I found time to visit my two uncles and those visits were very important to me, because they were both practitioners of Dzogchen. One of these uncles was an abbot and the other a yogi, and in the course of later chapters of this book I intend to tell some stories of my experiences with them that I hope will bring the Dzogchen teachings to life for the reader. My relationships with them were of very great importance to me throughout my college years, and their example as practitioners was a vital counterbalance to the emphasis on intellectual studies that dominated my life between the ages of nine and sixteen.

Finally, in 1954, at the age of sixteen, I completed my studies and left college. By then I knew a great deal about all the various forms of the teaching and was considered to be well educated about Tibetan medicine and astrology, too. I'd studied diligently with many masters, some of whom even considered that I had mastered the subject matter they had taught me sufficiently for them to have asked me to teach others in the college. I could recite whole texts of philosophy and ritual by heart, and so, as I graduated, I really believed that I'd learned a great deal. It wasn't until later that I came to realize that I hadn't really understood anything at all.

Though I did not yet know it, events were moving me towards the one particular master who was to bring all I had learned and experienced into a new and more profound perspective, and through contact with whom I was to come to a reawakening, and to a true understanding of the Dzogchen teachings. Through his inspiration I came to know the importance of these teachings, and eventually to teach them myself in the Western world. This master was not a grand personage. Tibetans in general are used to seeing the teachings represented by famous teachers of high rank, who present themselves in grand style. Without such outer signs, in fact, people usually can't recognize the qualities of a master, and I myself might have been no different.

But, on leaving college, I was given my first official responsibilities, and was sent to China as representative of Tibetan youth at the Provincial Assembly of the Province of Szechuan, the local governing body, and while I was there I began learning the Chinese language, and also taught Tibetan. So with these secondary activities as well as my official job, I was very busy. But I couldn't avoid noticing how very different the social and political structure was there, or keep from wondering how what was happening in China would eventually affect my own country and its people.

Then one night I had a dream--a particularly important dream--in which I saw a place with many white houses built of cement. Since this is not a Tibetan style of building, but is a type of construction commonly found in China, I mistakenly (as I later learned) assumed that these houses were Chinese. But when, while still dreaming, I moved closer to the buildings, I saw that the mantra of Padmasambhava was written in very large Tibetan script on one of them. I was amazed, because if this really was a Chinese house, why would there be a mantra written in Tibetan over the doorway?

So I opened the door, and went in, and inside I saw an old man--just a seemingly normal old man. But for whatever reason the question arose spontaneously in me: `Could this man really be a master?' And to my surprise the old man bent to touch his forehead to mine in the way that Tibetan masters greet other masters, and he began to recite the mantra of Padmasambhava, which seemed to answer my question. What was happening still seemed very surprising to me, but I was by now fully convinced that the old man in my dream was a master.

Then he told me to go round to the other side of a large rock that was nearby, adding that in the middle of the rock I would find a cave containing eight natural mandalas. He told me to go there at once to look at them. This amazed me even more than just finding a master in such strange circumstances, but I nevertheless did as he said, and went right away to find the big rock that he had mentioned. Then, when I got to the cave in the rock, my father appeared behind me, and as I went into the cave, he began to recite the Heart Sutra , or Prajnaparamita Hridaya , an important Mahayana sutra, in a loud voice. I began to recite the sutra along with him, and together we walked all around inside the cave. Try as I could, I couldn't see the whole of the eight mandalas the master had told me to look for. I could only make out the corners and edges of them, but with their presence in my mind I awoke.

A year after this dream, when I had returned to Tibet from China, a man came to visit my father in our village, and I overheard him telling my father about an extraordinary doctor he'd just met. He described the place where the doctor lived, and he described the man himself in detail, and as he spoke the memory of my dream returned to me. I felt sure that the man he was describing was the same man I had seen in my dream.

I spoke to my father about this at once. I'd already told him about the dream I'd had in China of an old man who seemed to be a master, and now I reminded him of the dream, asking him if we could visit this doctor his friend was telling him about. My father agreed, and we set out the next day. We had to travel for four days on horseback, but when we got to the village where the doctor lived, the old man I met there really seemed to be the one I had seen in my dream. I really had the sense that I had been in that village before, with its Tibetan houses made in Chinese-style concrete. And the mantra was inscribed over the old man's door in exactly the same way I had seen in my dream.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Crystal and the Way of Light by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. Copyright © 2000 by Namkhai Norbu and John Shane. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.