Everything Is Light: The Circle of Total Illumination

This tantra, The Circle of Total Illumination, is a definitive expression of the apex view of Dzogchen. It presents a view that translates existentially into the Great Perfection. It is a root tantra, an explanatory tantra, a text that is the key to all other Nyingma Dzogchen tantras. It is definitive also in that it presents the nondual nature of mind just as it is, in our hearts, without any prevarication. Keith Dowman has again brought an exceptional vital text to the attention of lovers of Dzogchen, a text that in its very secrecy teaches the essence of the Nyingma tantras. Dzogchen is the very essence of the lamas’ dharma; and the core of Dzogchen is to be found in the Nyingma atiyoga tantras. It can provide initiatory ambrosia, relaxing into a circle of total illumination. Cradled in the Vajrayana, this Dzogchen tantra is like the Garuda that flies immediately it hatches – we are immediately initiated into the spaciousness of Dzogchen. Everything Is Light, with The Circle of Total Illumination at its core, is an essential guide to experiential understanding of the apex Dzogchen tantras. It is the open sesame to the jewels in the teasure cave of Dzogchen atiyoga. It is the thread that brings the mind out of the labyrinth of tantric dialectic and recursive mind games. It is a tantra for our time, that can be approached not as an alien literary artefact excavated from a time bubble, but with our own cultural and personal existential reference points. In Keith Dowman’s brilliant translation, an essential Dzogchen tantra is presented through a revitalized and poetic language, which is accessible to the layman while maintaining the visionary integrity of the precepts. He has replaced the tired jargon of academic Buddhism with a vital vocabulary that we can all appreciate. Further, the Tibetan-English, English-Tibetan and Numeral Glossaries are invaluable tools for anyone reading the Dzogchen tantras with the original language in mind. These equivalencies should become standard for translators of the tantras. Publication of this text will surely raise the hackles of timorous critics who would maintain the principle of traditional secrecy, keeping the text to themselves and their conventional institutions, regardless of the crying need for its meaning and value within a larger social context. To a more generous audience, the principle of self-secrecy allows revelation of self-evident meaning to anyone who is karmically prepared. As the tantra portrays itself, ‘This reality-text was spoken to to carry us over the ocean of samsara; to untie the knot of conflicting emotion; to dispel intellectual doubt; and to give us meaning and purpose. It severs the vicious circle of rebirth, establishes us in sublime vision, leads us onto the supreme path of freedom, bestows authority through vision, conveys the meaning of all secret precepts, and establishes the value of the eight lower approaches.’ ‘We are now going to expound the key to all the tantras: The Circle of Total Illumination, which is an elucidation of the terminology of the Great Perfection, providing pith instruction on all approaches to enlightenment, the crux of all lineal transmissions, and the key points of all secret pith precept.’ ‘It is a verbal lamp, a circle of total illumination, shedding its golden light of ultimate significance upon all tantra. As the ultimate key, may it unlock their hidden meaning, so that the retinue and future followers can read them and understand them.’This is a great garuda of a tantra that glides effortlessly and compassionately across the vast vault of mind’s nature. Bhaka Tulku Pema Rikdzin. My wish is that this work brings great benefit to all Dzogchen Practitioners. CG Namkhai Norbu