Buddhism As A Science Of Mind
The
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
Excerpted from a transcript on the "Khe-juk
Teachings" (Nova Scotia 1992)
The buddhadharma, the teachings of
Lord Buddha Shakyamuni, is a path that frees one from disturbing emotions and
fundamental ignorance. This dharma frees us from existence in samsara, defined
by samsaric fear, and leads us towards the fruition of independence, the fruition
of the state of complete freedom, the state of fearlessness, going beyond fear.
If we look at this buddhadharma, or Buddhism, closely, we find that it is a pure
path, pure teachings, a pure science, a science of mind. We can say that Buddhadharma
is not a religion. It's a science, a pure and genuine philosophy of humanity and
science which works with the two sides of our samsaric mind, the negative aspect
and the positive aspect of our mind. Fundamentally it is the science of working
with the very basic nature of our mind.
"Nangpa" - Insider
Therefore
it is interesting to look at the Tibetan term for Buddhism. What we call Buddhism
in Tibetan is nang pa, which means insiders. It's an interesting term, insiders;
it can have two meanings. Literally, it means someone who is within a certain
boundary, within a certain fence but another meaning of this word insider is the
sense that we are working with our inside, our mind, our fundamental confusion,
ignorance. Therefore we can see what Buddhism is fundamentally, from this term,
insider; it is a science, working with our mind, a philosophy of humanity, a human
science.
Is Buddhism A Religion?
Thus buddhadharma is not a religion in
the everyday connotation of the word. I'm not talking about the sophisticated
ways of explaining religion used by university Departments of Religion. But our
regular mundane understanding of religion is somewhat simple: it's a belief, a
dogma that we have about some superhuman beings outside our self, some supernatural
energy outside one's being which has power, control, over our universe and over
sentient beings. This mundane understanding of religion is a theistic view. And
for that matter, in this usual meaning of religion, that particular external being
or external energy is holding our computer keyboard and is doing the programming
for us; we don't have any power, we don't have any energy, we don't have any choice.
We ourselves have to work with it; we have to wait and see what comes up on the
screen.
Holding The Keyboard To Enlightenment
In Buddhism, however, we
are holding the keyboard; we ourselves are the programmer. We program our software
and we press the command keys on our keyboard. So depending on our own skill,
our own energy and our own knowledge, we get what we want on the screen. The reason
why Buddha taught the dharma is to teach us the command keys. The Tripitaka is
the manual, teaching us how to program, how to use the right command keys, and
depending on this knowledge, we can have a successful progression of programs.
Therefore there is no external energy or external being holding our keyboards
in Buddhism; even Buddha himself does not hold our keyboard. Buddha is a teacher,
a human being with great knowledge, great wisdom, who can teach us the right keyboard,
who can teach us how to work with it, who has the great compassion to share his
knowledge, the great compassion to hand over the keyboard to us. Even though he
has all this knowledge, he does not guard the copyright, saying: "Nobody
can use it except me". So we can see his great compassion, his great knowledge,
which he shares with us, giving us the keyboard, giving us the knowledge, giving
us everything.
This path of buddhadharma is totally free from any theistic
view and is totally free from any shape or color. It's like pure water; it has
no shape, it has no color. Depending on the container that we pour the water into,
the water adopts that particular shape. If you want to freeze this pure water,
you can do it by putting the water into the freezer, but as soon as you take the
ice out of the freezer, it will return to its natural state of pure water having
no shape and no color.