Maya Yoga

Book excerpt: Maya Yoga is the title of Keith Dowman's translation of Finding Comfort and Ease in Enchantment composed by the inimitable Longchen Rabjampa. In the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism this text is considered second to none in its power to evoke the nature of the nondual reality of the Dzogchen view. With poetic mastery Longchenpa provides the precepts that can instantly illuminate the buddha-reality that is our ordinary everyday experience. He asserts that we are presently under the spell of magical illusion and that by recognizing it, we are instantaneously released from a conceptual cage into an enchanting reality which is pure pleasure itself. That reality is maya, apparent yet absent, and the recognition of it in the state of natural relaxation is maya yoga. In this renowned atiyoga manual, we find the key to the natural mystical state that Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, constantly evokes.This is the 2014 American Edition, comprising a improved second edition of the work. Longchen Rabjampa (1308-1363) was the greatest of Tibet's celebrated mystical poets and sages. The Trilogy of Finding Comfort and Ease is his most renowned work.Keith Dowman is a peripatetic scholar, translator, teacher and yogi in the Dzogchen tradition.