December, 2008 ................................. from STEPHEN KORNS

Regarding my spiritual practice, I continue to be a student of a Tibetan Lama, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche.  Our practice, called Dzog-chen, is the source of Chinese Chan Buddhism and Korean and Japanese Zen.  It came to Tibet in 900 AD and has been practiced and developed there, and in an expanding global context, ever since.  There are many wonderful texts, manuals, legends, and miracles associated with this tradition, and it has earned an enthusiastic and seamless welcome in the West since the destruction of Classical/Medieval Tibet in 1959, and through the activities of many well known and unknown Lamas including Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who was the first Tibetan teacher in the USA, in the 60's and 70's.   Imagine an intact classical urban society (like ancient Greece or India) that still existed in 1959, whose thousands of libraries contained 1000 years of documented research on the nature of mind, psychology, medicine, plant science, astronomy/seasonal cycles, the dying process, sound and other psychic phenomena, etc.   In 1959 there were 6,000 monasteries in Tibet.  After 5 years of the Chinese Cultural revolution and it's invasion/"liberation" of Tibet, there were 6.  That's six.

We are lucky that Buddhist practitioners have left Tibet to teach in the rest of the world, since they have genuine knowledge that is relatively unaffected by commercial and sectarian motives.  Partly this is a feature of Buddhism, but it is also part of the outlook and isolation of the Tibetan society -- as distinct from contemporary India, China, and even Japan...  The students of Norbu Rinpoche are a special community that freely associates and collaborates -- or not -- and we enjoy all the benefits and hazards of pooled resources, present-day communication technology, and a very mobile and active teacher who encourages us to join him wherever we please. 

There are web sites in every language spoken by students of Norbu Rinpoche.  The German Dzogchen Community site is my favorite.

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