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Born to be Free
by Dzogchen Ponlop, Author of Rebel Buddha: On the
Road to Freedom
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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.
© Copyright 2010 Dzogchen Ponlop, author of Rebel
Buddha: On the Road to Freedom. All rights
reserved. |
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Books
by
Dzogchen Ponlop:
Please click on the book cover to purchase
at Amazon.com
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Living)
Dzogchen
Ponlop Rinpoche is a widely celebrated teacher
known for his skill in making the full richness of
Buddhist wisdom accessible to modern minds. A lover of
urban culture, Rinpoche enjoys writing poetry and
creating art of various kinds in his leisure time. Based
in the United States for the past 20 years, he devotes
much of his energy to his vision of a genuine American,
and Western, Buddhism, free from the cultural trappings
that sometimes distort the Buddha's essential message of
wakefulness. Born in 1965 in northeast India, Rinpoche
received comprehensive training 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. Among the many
organizational roles he juggles, he is the founder and
principal teacher of Nalandabodhi, an international
network of Buddhist practice centers. His latest book is
Rebel Buddha (Shambhala Publications)
forthcoming in November 2010. For more information
please visit Rinpoche on
Facebook,
Twitter and his
Website.
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