A vibrant, creative state of awareness

Day dreaming is not conducive to discovering mind without thought, and the nature of this empty state may be misunderstood through believing that day dreaming is meditation.  In Letting Go we are not aiming for a dampened down, thought suppressed state.  Mind without thought is a vibrant, creative state of awareness.  It is vivid with an electric sense of being awake in the present moment.  Even momentary glimpses of this vibrant state will begin to open our experience of ourselves.

p139,  Relaxing into Meditation   Ngakma Nor'dzin,  Aro Books Worldwide, 2010, ISBN 978-1-898185-17-8 

Access to the teachings of wisdom eccentrics

For anyone who wants access to the teachings of wisdom eccentrics – it’s found within the world we know.  Trying to find it in a Land of Snows you may never see is impractical.  Even to look to India for wisdom eccentrics is no longer as possible as it was in the 1970s.  Those days are more or less gone.  The non-dual inspiration however, remains – often in unexpected places.
The wisdom eccentrics of these lays discovered the nature of Mind as human beings. 
Rinpoche instructed me to “Tell these stories to your students.  Make a book – but tell the stories in the language of the West – so that people will enjoy them and understand them.  These are not just stories from the past – they are stories for practitioners everywhere in all times”.

p8, Wisdom Eccentrics : Rumours of realisation as told by Künzang Dorje Rinpoche with additional tales of the unexpected.  
Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9653948-6-4


  

Direct experience of who we are

   
By letting go of thought we can discover the space of mind without thought.  Through Letting Go the arising and dissolving of conceptual mind can be revealed as a wave that surges and breaks on the surface of the deep, still ocean of fundamental mind.  Through discovering the quietness of fundamental mind we can gain direct experience of who we are, what we are and where we are, rather than trying to discover this through the ebb and flow of concept.

p134,  Relaxing into Meditation   Ngakma Nor'dzin,  Aro Books Worldwide, 2010, ISBN 978-1-898185-17-8 

Emptiness is the oven where the bread of vision bakes itself

  After you've received empowerment into the practice of a particular awareness-being, or yidam, the form of this awareness-being will spontaneously arise out of the state of emptiness when you engage in practice.  The form of the awareness-being will also arise in your dreams – maybe even in the steam that arises from your cup of coffee.  It depends on the intensity of your devotion.  There is no process – it simply happens because you have the key; and the key is the Tantric text or the awareness-spell which is sung to instigate this arising.  Your experience of emptiness is the oven where the bread of your vision bakes itself.  The empty state is the perfect environment for endless vision to arise.
p116, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

Not having an opinion

It is often considered weak-minded not to have an opinion – but, from the perspective of practising emptiness, it might be considered weak-minded to be unable to resist forming an opinion. If the urge to establish an opinion can be resisted, the emptiness of simply not knowing can be formlessly investigated. There are many occasions in life where it might be valuable to recognise that there is insufficient information upon which an opinion could be based. This could be termed ‘the emptiness of open-mindedness’ or ‘the emptiness of having a certain level of information – but being able to resist compulsively establishing concrete conclusions’.

p52, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

Having a good sob and then turning to face the raw texture of it all again

  I’m talking about the courage it requires to be alive, and to relate to the world in a real and caring way.  To be alive, and to take responsibility for what you feel.  By courage, I mean that you have to have a certain level of love, dynamism, and integrity.  Really; just to be able to cut out the kvetching, whinging and whining – the ‘poor me’ mode.  I’m not talking about feeling sorrow or having to cry; life can be tragic at times – for all of us.  I'm talking about acting as if it were unfair and wallowing in that; rather than having a good sob and then turning to face the raw texture of it all again, saying “Right!  Let’s have some more!”  It’s important not to hide from life.  It’s important not to play it safe too much.  This could be the last hour of your life.  It could be the last day, week, month or year. . .

p239, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

If I knew that this was the last year of my life

  You could,  occasionally, simply ask yourself: “What decision would I make if I knew that this was the last year of my life?”  This could be a practice of looking at your life; especially in terms of major decisions.  For certain other decisions you could reduce the time scale to one month.  Having the support of your Lama and vajra family, can be really crucial in this.  Your vajra brothers and sisters are very important in terms of actualising your own courage when life gets a little too ferocious.

p240, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

Irrational

  There’s no reason why the word ‘irrational’ couldn’t have a positive meaning.  It obviously can have a positive meaning if you put it into a suitable context; but on it’s own it tends to sound like something you wouldn’t want to be.  I think that allowing the irrational into your life is a very exciting idea!  People are quite often obsessed with sense-making, even though the sense they make often makes no sense at all from the perspective of realisation.  Let’s be irrational now!  Let’s practise together!

p244, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

Courage

   ‘Courage’ is a form-related word, or an active-compassion related word.  Courage certainly means the ability to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’; but it also has the sense of really owning your capacity to love and care for others.  We often stifle the great capacity for love that we have, through our fear of losing all sense of boundaries – as if we needed boundaries!  Courage is very much linked with compassion.  Compassion, at the level of our intrinsic nature, is linked with all our activities – especially our activities of personal interaction.   


p243, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

Vajra-romance

The elements are the symphonic texture of vajra-romance.  They are also the cacophony of neurotic attachment.  The cacophony however, only exists in terms of duality, because from the point of view of the infinite purity of the phenomenal world – symphony and cacophony are undivided, and it is this fact which makes vajra-romance an immense opportunity.  Even within our confusion we partake of the realised state.  
Nondual reality sparkles through every aspect of our being and the Khandro Pawo Nyi-da Mélong Gyüd is a key to direct knowledge of this state.  For the khandro and pawo each point in time is a pivotal point – a point at which the elements can be allowed to become ballet, or a point at which form-attachment cripples any nuance of movement.

p230, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

Romance is orchestrated by the elements

The five elements are ubiquitously at play.  They play within the display of phenomena.  They play within the entire reach and range of the sentient spectrum. They play through our physicality; through our intellectual faculties; through our emotions and imagination; through visionary dimensions – down to the subatomic structure of being.  They play within the spheres of essence, nature, and energy – within ‘duality and nonduality and the infinite purity of the phenomenal world.’  By virtue of this, it should come as no surprise that every relationship is comprised of the performance of the elements – and, that romance is orchestrated by the elements. 

p229-230, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

Love

We can only share the experience of love if we relinquish our definitions of who we are and what we propose to become.
Love is there when the artificial divisions between us dissolve into the iridescent spectrum of our beginningless nature.  The love which radiates from our primordial state cannot help but sparkle through: no matter how insecure, frightened, isolated, anxious, or bewildered we become.
To fall in love, and to realise one’s beginningless nondual nature, have tantalising similarities.  They reflect each other.  The Khandro Pawo Nyi-da Mélong Gyüd is a teaching that elucidates the nature of this reflection in a manner which has the capacity to change the world.

p4-5, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3
   

Our senses are the communicative quality of the elements.

Our senses are the communicative quality of the elements in which the dance of existence and non-existence allows ‘self’ and ‘other’ to be both separate and non-separate.  Spaciousness gives birth to ideation; wind carries sound, vibration, and the possibility of hearing; fire ignites vision; fluidity encourages fragrance and tasting; and substance phenomena allow touch.  Our intellectual faculty is comprised of elemental patterns – as are our emotions.  The sub-atomic structure of being is the play of the
thig-lés – the five essential elemental expressions of emptiness from which everything comes into being.

p197, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

This rare disease—kindness

  Whenever I remember this story (told by Künzang Dorje Rinpoche), I look at my life for symptoms of this rare disease—kindness—and whatever signs of health I exhibit cause me to stimulate new areas of infection.  The most saddening aspect of life for me, is to witness immunity to the disease of kindness either in myself or others.  Although I initially preferred the first story, the second has caused me to reflect a great deal on the nature of kindness – and how it can be encouraged in the world.  The idea of kindness as an illness—with all its attendant concepts of infection and contagion—is highly creative.  This manner of expression is a brilliant example of how Tantra turns language on it head.

p138, Wisdom Eccentrics : Rumours of realisation as told by Künzang Dorje Rinpoche with additional tales of the unexpected.  
Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9653948-6-4

The real nature of experience

We artificially separate experience into two fields: ‘perception’ and ‘field of perception’.  The term ‘perception’ applies to the way in which we register the presence of the world through our sense faculties.  The term ‘field of perception’ applies to the world that we perceive.  With divisive logic we distance ourselves analytically from direct experience.  We lose our ‘knowing’ and end up 'knowing about’'. 
Our perception and field of perception are mutually self-creating.  What we see incites a reaction which influences how we see it.  How we view things changes how they are.  Enlightened Mind is divisionless.  Our perception and field of perception are completely and utterly interconnected, and this fundamental indivisibility is the real nature of experience.

p31, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

We do not employ the term mindfulness

The word ‘mindfulness’ is not a bad translation of dranpa (dran pa—smriti in Sanskrit) but it is more accurately translated as ‘resting in recollection’.  Recollection does not mean thinking about a past event—but ‘being present with what has been received as teaching’.  The word ‘awareness’ is not an equivalent for ‘dranpa’ – because ‘awareness’ relates to rigpa or non-dual awareness.

p63-64, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Tantra is simply, the one taste of all sensation

   In Tantra, sensation is the path. That means every sensation: hot and cold; pleasure and pain; sharp and blunt; agony and ecstasy; hope and fear; falling in love and having a panic attack.   Neither aspect of these polarities are ends in themselves. Tantra is simply, the one taste of all sensation.  To practise Tantra is to ride the energy of duality.
No-one can be called a yogi, yogini, or tantrika, if they cannot experience pleasure and pain – and experience the one taste of the energy that is the ground of both experiences.

p10-11, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

Force results either in hilarity or frustration

The practice of shi-nè involves the renunciation of attachment to form as a reference point.  Through shi-nè we learn that we cannot force thought.  We need to be completely purposelessly welcoming. Whatever thought arises simply moves in its own way.  Any approach involving force results either in hilarity or frustration.  One needs a sense of humour about one’s condition.  One catches oneself trying to force meditation – repeatedly.  All we can do, however, is watch ourselves in the process of trying, until trying wears itself out with trying in the open space of awareness.  This is patience in terms of shi-nè – as we speak of it from the point of view of the Four Naljors of Dzogchen sem-dé.

Aro Encyclopaedia Index: The Ten Paramitas, Khandro Déchen  

Karma: the personal police state

Our karma is entirely how we perceive the world – moment by moment. So the ‘law of karma’ is not just law, it is the entire legal system. It ranges from the inception of the legislature to the nature of law enforcement and punishment. Our perception is the legislation and our responses enforce it. We are our own judge, jury, and prosecution. We sentence ourselves, gaol ourselves, and execute ourselves. This is the only entirely accurate legal system – but its accuracy only exists within its own frame of reference.
Meditation is our only weapon against this repressive regime and constitutes civil disobedience in the form of ‘passive resistance’. By allowing the development of experiential space through shi-nè – through letting go and letting be – we discover our own intrinsic awareness. The Four Naljors of Dzogchen Sem-dé is one of the ultimate crimes against the ‘law of karma’ and is punishable by enlightenment – the final revolution and overthrow of the legal system.

Aro Encyclopaedia Index:  Karma: the personal police state Ngak'chang Rinpoche

Power

   I have thought about this question of power many times, since my discussions with Kyabjé Künzang Dorje Rinpoche. I have realised that power has got very little to do with power to – but rather, power not to.  It is not a question of supernormal abilities.  It’s a question of being prepared to die in the next moment – to be totally insignificant. The power to be unafraid of looking like an idiot.  The power not to care about what people think or say.  It is not a question of being physically, intellectually, or emotionally strong – but of being open to annihilation. Everything has to matter—and not matter—at the same time.

p242, Wisdom Eccentrics : Rumours of realisation as told by Künzang Dorje Rinpoche with additional tales of the unexpected.  
Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9653948-6-4