Being with Problems
Everyone in samsara has problems. That is the nature of samsara. Practice will not make anyone problem-free as long as one is in samsara, despite what many Westerners seem to believe. People often ask me if people who always abide in the natural state get ill. Even people who abide continuously in this state—if they have a body!—will become ill if they live long enough. The rent still has to be paid, the car needs gas, food must be bought, relationships have difficulties, and finally the body dies.
Though practice will not remove all the difficulties of a life, it will lead the practitioner to better ways to deal with problems. This is a much bigger statement than it sounds, because in the practices the emphasis is on how to be rather than on the problem. Most people don’t know how to be with a problem and often don’t have a good method of working with difficulties. Instead, they have the pervasive idea that problems have substantial causes and that the resolution of problems lies there.
In psychotherapy it’s common to think that problems begin at a certain point in life as a result of certain situations, and that the particular time and situation must be dealt with in order to remove the problems. This may be so for particular problems, but suffering begins long before childhood, long before birth. No matter how perfect the childhood, everyone will still have problems.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we should not deal with difficulties. We must, and the more skillfully we do so the more beneficial for ourselves and for the people to whom we are connected. But realizing that there is no end to problems in samsara should make it a little easier to accept them. Some people think that to accept problems is to support them, that acceptance means not addressing problems, but that is not what I mean. Accepting that there will always be problems means opening to all of life, not only to what is positive, but to everything.
Dzogchen does not attempt to overcome problems or correct their causes, nor does it renounce problems or attempt to transform them. In the pure Dzogchen view, there is no such thing as a problem. When a thought or feeling or sensation arises it is left as it is. It does not cause a reaction. And if there is a reaction, the reaction is not further engaged.
The practitioner does not relate to what arises as an object of a subject who must deal with it. It just is—and then it is not. Because there is no engagement on the part of the practitioner, whatever could be a problem dissolves into empty awareness. The problem is directly experienced as empty luminosity and then has no effect. Because there is no reaction, there is no new karmic trace.
In Dzogchen, rather than work on problems, the practitioner works on recognizing and abiding in the natural state of mind. That is the actual resolution to problems, not in their particulars but as an end to “problems” as a category of experience. In Dzogchen it is said that to know one is to know all. To really know the nature of any problem is to know the nature of all problems—they are all empty luminosity.
Earlier, I wrote that all manner of disturbances could be described as an imbalance in the elements. This is also true in Dzogchen. There is no better way to balance the elements than to abide in the natural state. When abiding in the natural state, the mind is clear, the prana moves smoothly in the body, and the body functions better. Distraction from the natural state means greater elemental imbalance. It is also true that balancing the elements through any other means—diet and medicines, shamanic ritual, tantric practice, and so on—make it easier for the practitioner to abide in the natural state once it is recognized.
In the Dzogchen view, the goal is already present. Nothing has to be developed, only recognized. The fundamental practices of Dzogchen are not aimed at developing anything, not even positive qualities. The practice is simply abiding in the nature of mind in which all qualities are already present and can spontaneously arise. Even the methods and supportive practices are not essential. Methods can become an obstacle to abiding in non-dual awareness if the practitioner believes that one must use the practice to renounce something or transform something. Practices are only used to connect to the natural state and stabilize in it.
When I first began to teach in the West, I did so in a traditional way. This usually meant explaining what was in a particular text and adding my commentary. Then it was up to the student to understand or not. But as I spent more time in the West I began to see that there was a need to teach about the teaching, to explain how to develop experience and how to apply the teachings and practices to the situations of daily life. My main interest is in teaching what can be useful to people, what can help them heal conflict, work through their unhappiness, remove obstacles to meditation, and develop stability in the natural state.
Sometimes this means applying a very profound teaching to the psychological level of experience even though the view of the teaching is beyond psychological or emotional concerns, as is the case with Dzogchen. The view of Dzogchen is the highest view, the non-dual view, but this doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t affect everyday situations. For the real practitioner it affects everything—every relationship and every situation.
The point of the practice is to stop being the person who has problems, and instead to abide fully in the nature of mind where there are neither problems nor a separate individual to struggle with them.