• 1 Despite being presented (p. 5) as having three parts.
• 2 rDzogs chen, which means Great Perfection, is often also known as Atiyoga (shin tu rnal ‘byor). It (...)

1Dylan Esler’s new book, Effortless Spontaneity, is a fascinating composite work divided into two main parts¹ centred around exegetical treatises authored by Nubchen Sangye Yeshe (gNubs chen Sangs rgyas ye shes, 844-?), an important Nyingma lineage holder who somehow stands as a link between the tradition connected to the dynastic period and the nascent Nyingmapa school starting to emerge as a more or less coherent system around the early 10^th century. Esler’s contribution to Dzogchen studies² therefore appears as a much welcome addition to our growing understanding of the “early days of the Great Perfection” itself.

• 3 The visionary notion of rtsal and all the related notions unfolding in the Man ngag sde instruction (...)

2The first part of the book is presented as an essay on the notion of Effortlessness (rtsol med or rtsol bral) which is a central theme in the teachings of Dzogchen. In fact, the author’s analysis of this crucial notion expands into further investigations of key concepts shared between other tantric categories (essentially Mahāyoga and, to a lesser extent, Anuyoga) and Dzogchen. These explorations are dispatched over the ten short chapters that make up the first part of the book. The approach adopted in these chapters is essentially focalised upon the rhetoric of absence (med pa) which, although evidently used in the Atiyoga texts, is, in my opinion, not central to the Path of the Great Perfection³. However, the line followed by D. Esler is indeed inspiring in that it introduces the readers to the most complex conceptions that form the basic contents of the texts discussed in Part 2.

• 4 As mentioned in the previous note, these texts all belong to the Mind Series (Sems sde) of Dzogchen

5It is true that the early Dzogchen texts that are the centre of this book⁴ are not famous for their yogic devices and that actual step-by-step meditative instructions are to be found elsewhere. However, this does not entail that such instructions are later adjunctions: rather, this means that these original texts were often accompanied by an oral transmission which contains actual meditative precepts aimed at enabling the practitioner to experience the real contents described in these texts. The author refers to Longchenpa’s manual on “The all-creating king” (Kun byed rgyal po) which is a very good example of that. In the same collection that hosts the present texts, one finds quite a number of “technical” works related to the Mind Series (Sems sde) and some are associated with later figures of both the Nyingma and Kagyü traditions, but this does not mean that these late authors have innovated by “inventing” techniques that were supposedly lacking: it would appear that they have put into written form instructions that their own masters conveyed to them orally. Therefore, it is crucial to never lose sight of the fact that the oral transmission (snyan brgyud) of actual whispered instructions is crucial for understanding these root-texts correctly in order to avoid deviations (gol sa) into nihilistic pitfalls. The classic error in this context is to have the View fall into Conduct (spyod pa’i phyogs su lta ba ‘chor ba). This importance of the oral transmission is clearly put forward by the author (pp. 45-46), something which is rarely taken into account in academic works discussing the literature of the Great Perfection.

• 5 He, however, goes into some superficial structural details in the fourth commentary (p. 151).

8From a purely literary perspective, these commentaries are intriguing in that they are not heavily structured, as those familiar with the traditional exegetical Tibetan literature will notice from the get-go. Basically, Nubchen quotes a line and explains it without being concerned in any way whatsoever with highlighting the internal structure of the root text⁵. It is true that he distinguishes between the interpretation of the title (and homage) on the one hand and the body of the text on the other, but there is no particular structural analysis put forward to enable us to appreciate the themes addressed by the texts in order to penetrate more deeply into their meaning. However, Nubchen’s comments are not paraphrastic: they are aimed at actually expanding the meaning of the original texts which are so often cryptic.