Born to be
Free
by Dzogchen Ponlop
Rebel Buddha is an exploration
of what it means to be free and how it is that we can become free.
Although we may vote for the head of our government, marry for love, and
worship the divine or mundane powers of our choice, most of us don't
really feel free in our day-to-day lives. When we talk about freedom,
we're also talking about its opposite -- bondage, lack of independence,
being subject to the control of something or someone outside ourselves. No
one likes it, and when we find ourselves in that situation, we quickly
start trying to figure out a way around it. Any restriction on our
"life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" arouses fierce
resistance. When our happiness and freedom are at stake, we become capable
of transforming ourselves into rebels.
There's something of a rebellious streak in all of us. Usually it's
dormant, but sometimes it's provoked into expression. If nurtured and
guided with wisdom and compassion, it can be a positive force that frees
us from fear and ignorance. If it manifests neurotically, however, full of
resentment, anger, and self-interest, then it can turn into a destructive
force that harms oneself as much as it does others. When confronted with a
threat to our freedom or independence and that rebellious streak surfaces,
we can choose how to react and channel that energy. It can become part of
a contemplative process that leads to insight. Sometimes that insight
comes quickly, but it can also take years.
According to the Buddha, our freedom is never in question. We are born
free. The true nature of the mind is enlightened wisdom and compassion.
Our minds are always brilliantly awake and aware. Nevertheless, we're
often plagued by painful thoughts and the emotional unrest that goes with
them. We live in states of confusion and fear from which we see no escape.
Our problem is that we don't see who we truly are at the deepest level. We
don't recognize the power of our enlightened nature. We trust the reality
we see before our eyes and accept its validity until something comes along
-- an illness, accident, or disappointment -- to disillusion us. Then we
might be ready to question our beliefs and start searching for a more
meaningful and lasting truth. Once we take that step, we're starting off
on the road to freedom.
On this road, what we free ourselves from is illusion, and what frees us
from illusion is the discovery of truth. To make that discovery, we need
to enlist the powerful intelligence of our own awake mind and turn it
toward our goal of exposing, opposing, and overcoming deception. That is
the essence and mission of "rebel buddha": to free us from the
illusions we create by ourselves, about ourselves, and those that
masquerade as reality in our cultural and religious institutions.
We start by looking at the dramas in our life, not with our ordinary eyes,
but with the eyes of dharma. What is drama and what is dharma? I guess you
could say drama is illusion that acts like truth, and dharma is truth
itself—the way things are, the basic state of reality that does not
change from day to day according to fashion or one's mood or agenda. To
change dharma into drama, all you need are the elements of any good play:
emotion, conflict, and action—a sense that something urgent and
meaningful is happening to the characters involved. Our personal dramas
may begin with the 'facts' about who we are and what we are doing, but,
fueled by our emotions and concepts, they can quickly evolve into pure
imagination and become as difficult to decipher as the storylines of our
dreams. Then our sense of reality becomes further and further removed from
basic reality itself. We lose track of who we really are. We have no means
of telling fact from fiction, or developing the self-knowledge or wisdom
that can free us from our illusions.
The above is an excerpt from
the book Rebel Buddha: On the Road to Freedom by Dzogchen
Ponlop. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from
print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may
appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for
accuracy.
Copyright © 2010 Dzogchen
Ponlop, author of Rebel Buddha: On the Road to Freedom
___________________
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is
a widely respected teacher known for his skill in making the full richness
of Buddhist wisdom accessible to modern minds. He is also a poet,
visual artist and city-dweller, based in the United States for two
decades. He devotes much of his energy to developing a vision of a genuine
Western Buddhism that is free from the cultural hang-ups that distract us
from the Buddha’s essential message of wakefulness. Born in 1965 in
northeast India, Rinpoche was trained in the meditative and intellectual
disciplines of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism under the guidance of many of
the greatest masters from Tibet’s final pre-exile generation. He is the
founder and principal teacher of Nalandabodhi, an international network of
Buddhist practice centers, and Nitartha International, an educational
non-profit devoted to the preservation of Buddhist literature and art.
Nalanda West, Center for American Buddhism, in Seattle, is currently the
primary seat of his educational and spiritual activities in North America.
His latest book is Rebel
Buddha (Shambhala Publications) forthcoming in November 2010. The Rebel
Buddha North American Tour, featuring Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche and
other leading voices in Western Buddhism, kicks off on November 14 in New
York, NY at The Cooper Union's Great Hall. The Tour will continue to
Halifax, Toronto, and Boulder, and will conclude in Seattle. You
can connect with Rinpoche on Twitter (@ponlop)
and become a fan on Facebook,
or visit his Web site at http://www.dpr.info.
For more information about the book, go to www.rebelbuddha.com and
follow the Rebel Buddha Twitter feed.
