Buddhist thought is very broad in scope. While there is the emphasis on preparing the path to truly understanding suffering and on learning to not rely on craving, there is also the description of the state of complete freedom. Within the Dzogchen tradition is the elaboration of what is understood to be the primordial ground, a natural perfection that is uncreated, ever present and eternal. Everything is part of this natural perfection, of a ground or a basic space that is the matrix of all that is expressed, manifest and known. All phenomena without exception are likened to rainbows on this sky like primordial ground. Practitioners of the Dzogchen way claim that no matter what we do, believe and perceive, they are this very ground. Within this tradition, all ideation is meditation and all endeavor is fruition! So we are actually unlimited, no matter what our ignorance seems to set before us.
As a concept, this notion of freedom can be very appealing. However, there is a difference between a conceptual notion or belief in natural perfection and actually ‘seeing’ and feeling it. Just thinking about it does not free us and even though it is said to be ever present and actually all that there is, only a seldom few are equipped to see and live natural perfection. We have to be prepared to be free, to acquire the causes and conditions for liberation and the full glory of natural perfection might manifest if we were to realize that we are free no matter what state or circumstances we inhabit. This is paradoxically, not easy! Most, if not all the time, we are stuck in our minds and our lives to be able to rest in natural perfection. Incessantly, we long for the things and circumstances that will please us and suffer when we do not get what we want. Mental and physical frenzy is the norm and even thought of as necessary. Our inability to rest in freedom is perpetuated by our ignorance.
We see our trials and tribulations as real, we identify with our minds and our bodies and a so called self, and so it goes, endlessly. Perhaps, in order to see natural perfection and be immediately free, we have to first cut through our usual perception of things. The world of senses and objects and knowing has to be seen as transient and subject to change and thus not really ours at all. Through meditation or contemplation, we connect with this ‘non-self’ view of phenomena. We begin to see all things and experience as arising and ceasing, never solid and independent and thus not really worth clinging to. Regular practice literally helps us shed the weight of me and mine and this or that. With that happening, it becomes easier to just rest in the natural fluidity of reality, and we begin to catch glimpses of a reality that is free from all structures and ideation, from any elaboration, conceptualization or labeling.