This, from Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, is possibly the best thing I have ever read on Dharma and culture:
There is a matter of principle which regards the teaching which is that all an individual must always understand it well through his own culture. But to take the teachings through your culture doesn't mean to transform or change the teaching. This is something that must be quite clearly present. Because when we learn a teaching, we apply it, and we enter into knowledge of this teaching. When one has acquired knowledge of a teaching, one becomes a kind of master of the teaching or one of the proprietors of the teaching. A person who follows the teaching also carries the teaching forward.
Certainly the teaching is not a matter of a race of people. It's not a party, a political party. So how can the teaching continue? It continues through those who know it and apply it. They are the carriers of the teaching. In this case, an individual who knows the teaching automatically becomes someone responsible for the teaching. In that case, if the teaching is misapplied, it ceases to function and to work. To work in the interest of the teaching means to work for a long term future without any possible deadline or horizon, because the human karmic vision will always continue. And the teaching is something that serves all human beings and serves all beings.
So you mustn't begin in a mistaken way. If you make a mistake, this leaves a trace which will then multiply in the future. If you are asked or obliged to explain, to teach something about the teaching, the first thing you do is observe yourself. Look at yourself carefully and discover whether you know the answer to the question or not. It's really true that in the Dzogchen teaching the first thing taught, employing the example of the mirror, is observing oneself. If you have a direct experience, you then know, really know, what it is you have to explain, communicate, transmit.
If you don't know, if one doesn't have the experience, using or being helped by some words you heard or some book you've read, you can carry the matter in an entirely wrong direction. So it's extremely important first of all, up front, to understand well and clearly, the meaning of the teaching. And to do that you don't base yourself on external matters, what appears, but you try to penetrate to the interior and depth of meaning of what is being communicated. A person like Buddha Shakyamuni who manifested humanly is said to have given the teaching in three vehicles. But there's also a chronicle of six Buddhas, one appearing in each of the six lokas. It's also told that the Buddha had prior incarnations, for example, that he manifested as an elephant to teach the teaching to the elephants. What this means is that a person like the Buddha, a realized being, entered into the culture of those to whom he was teaching. When the Buddha was illuminated, he no longer lived within the limits of any given culture. He no longer had a merely personal way of seeing, because he was beyond any such limitations. But if one has to relate to people in order to teach them, one has to enter within the culture and limitations of outlook of the people one is speaking to. So if the Buddha taught in India, he entered into Indian culture. Had the Buddha lived in China, he surely would have presented himself and his teaching differently. If the Buddha had come to America, we have no idea how he would have presented himself. He might have manifested as a black cloud. Because one has to manifest and present oneself in a way that people can believe in, and by which they're convinced, and which they can relate to.
Many things that we find are related to the epoch in which the Buddha transmitted his teachings, for example, the way in which the Bodhisattvas are presented and visually presented in the Mahayana Sutras. And this is also used in the visualizations of the Yogatantra. An image like that of Avalokiteshvara or Vajrasattva or an idea like that of the Sambhogakaya as being full of the wealth and abundance of wisdom, these dimensions are presented in the costume, in the manner, of an Indian prince of the Buddha's time. And this represents the method that's used on that path. And this is not necessary to change and transform. It may well be linked directly to the moment of transformation and which was first presented. We can use that idea. We know very well that one cannot invent the mandala. If mandala were merely a matter of an art or art form, one could certainly invent it. But if the mandala is the description of transmission of transformation of an actual manifestation, then one can't change or invent that. This means the method inherent in that task.
When one follows a teaching, that teaching is transmitting a knowledge. And this knowledge is developed through the method of its path. When a method is given, you can't change that method. You can't substitute Vajrasattva with Julius Caesar for example. Because this image is linked with that transmission, part of that transmission, from the beginning, from the way it has always been given. This is not what we mean by culture. Culture of the individual means all of his habits and attitudes and our habits and attitudes. Our way of being is linked with body, voice and mind. And this attitude is a way of understanding, can be a way of understanding the teaching and the path.
For example in Tibet, there were numberless usages, that way of living, that way of doing things. And that type of culture was adapted by the teaching. This is what we mean by culture. For example, a Tibetan will go into a temple and the first thing he'll do is a prostration. If he passes a temple, he'll turn so that it's on his right. But that's not the path. That's not a method of the path. That's an attitude and an expression of habit which is linked to an intention, a good intention, a desire to accumulate merit. How an individual behaves when he meets a master and when one follows a teaching, what is one's attitude and way of behaving, all this we call culture. The Tibetans have a system of their own as do the Indians. But also the Chinese and other nations have their characteristics. We mustn't confuse this with the path. Because many westerners go to India and learn this culture and are very satisfied to have learned it, and come back bringing it with them. I'm not saying that you can't study that culture. I'm not saying that you can't learn it. I'm not saying that you can't bring it back and make use of it. You can use it in your practice. But it's not so very easy to learn and take in the entire culture of another country. We've already got lots to do just to meet our obligations, to obtain food and shelter and survive. If you have only a small time that you can commit to the teachings, and if instead of dedicating that time to learning something concrete and useable as practice, you devote it to learning and assimilating a foreign culture, that's really a waste of time.
In this case you have to know how to use your own culture, because every individual has his own culture. And your own culture, your own attitude and way of understanding, is very easy for you and very near at hand. When you know how to use your own culture and understand through it, then it's much, much easier to get to the actual meaning of the teaching. But you mustn't confuse this with changing or transforming the teaching.
Many people think that the way of teaching in the Buddhist tradition, whether it be Sutric or Tantric, is very difficult and too complicated to transmit to westerners. And so a splendid idea is born. So let's mix it up a bit with western psychology and we can get rid of all the name and titles and labels and the forms of the teaching. And there are those who do this nowadays. This is perfectly characteristic of our human condition. Either we go too far left or too far right. Since we remain always in the dualistic situation, we only know these two excesses. We don't know how to take the third way. And according to me, that's just no good at all. Because the teaching is not just philosophy. If it were just philosophy, if it were just a matter of getting a notion into your mind, then it would be fine.
But many of the people who are following the teaching are actually seeking some kind of truth. That is to say, they're seeking a real answer to their need for realization. And a teaching possesses its transmission. Through transmission one develops toward realization. It's not sufficient to just jabber about something and multiply our ideas and fecundate our ideas. The teaching must not be carried, must not be brought down, to the level of duping people. If we're talking about a teaching we have to make explicit and make understood what the principle of that teaching is. We know very well that in the teaching there exist hundreds of different methods. If the teaching can penetrate into ·the culture of the individual, it's not that there aren't other ways it could proceed. This notion of transforming the teaching, of modernizing the teaching or changing it in some way, comes from insufficient knowledge of the teaching and of all its various ways of being used.
