Aro Quotation: December 2015

Monday, 28 December 2015

As it is

"When we allow our emotional realm to be as it is, we are freed to experience the texture of life directly. We can side-step the sour orthodoxy of preordained likes, dislikes, and habitual concepts. When we allow our perceptual life to be as it is, we are self-liberated to be as we are."

an-uncommon-perspective, Ngak'chang Rinpoche

Monday, 21 December 2015

The pleasure of existence

"Drala Jong innately exists in human beings. ‘Drala’ is the appreciative faculty which exponentially enlivens people the more they engage with the world. Appreciation is the key to enjoyment and to delighting in the enjoyment of others. When we learn to appreciate phenomena our sense fields ‘Jong’ begin to sparkle and a sense of generosity is born which connects us with others. Although Vajrayana Buddhism is by no means unknown in the West – the sense in which enjoyment and compassion are mutually interdependent remains unexpressed. We would like Drala Jong to be a place where human beings could discover the pleasure of existence – the pleasure that animates the sense fields and revitalises the Arts – and the art of living."
Drala Jong, Ngak'chang Rinpoche, Aro Encyclopaedia

Monday, 14 December 2015

Refuge

"We have to know that ultimate, everlasting happiness will not come if we could just get that new job, adopt a new lifestyle, clinch the business deal, buy a new house, change the type of car we drive, give up the car and buy a bike and trailer, if we become vegetarian or vegan, take more exercise, find our ideal partner, buy a new wardrobe of clothes, or have a change of scene, career, friends. We have to feel this enough to actually start practising and discovering experientially that the cause of our dissatisfaction is something fundamental in ourselves, rather than anything we can manipulate externally. We must realise that there is nothing in our lives we can manipulate and change that will ultimately quieten the feeling of unsatisfactoriness. It is our own relationship with experience that creates unhappiness."

refuge, Ngala Nor'dzin Pamo

Monday, 7 December 2015

Simply being

"You have to address your own level of fear, and that is called compassion – simply being with ‘what is there’. Accepting the whole texture of what you feel without having to act out, or lash out in some primitive bid for self-preservation. We have to trust the texture of what is happening and relax with the ‘rip-tides’ of what we feel. If there’s some space, then that becomes possible. It’s a ride though... but if we reject ‘the ride’... we get ridden... and the spurs bite deep!."

kindness-and-compassion, Ngak'chang Rinpoche