A natural function of Mind

It may come as a surprise that thought is not antithetical to the nondual state.  Thought is a natural function of mind.  Where nothing arises from emptiness, there is no energy – and, consequently, no clarity.  The reason for continuing in practice in order to arrive at a state without thought is that it provides the space to unlearn the neurotic relationship with thought. 

p50-51, Shock Amazement: The four naljors and four ting-ngé’dzin from the Dzogchen series of the nature of Mind.   Khandro Déchen and Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books Worldwide, 2018, ISBN 978-1-898185-45-1 

Karma disappears

The actual meaning of karma is habituated perception and response – which is to say: how we interpret information, objects, situations, or persons dictates how we respond to them.  Karma disappears as soon as the perception-mind-of-karma disappears. 

p94, Shock Amazement: The four naljors and four ting-ngé’dzin from the Dzogchen series of the nature of Mind.   Khandro Déchen and Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books Worldwide, 2018, ISBN 978-1-898185-45-1 

No one watching

It only becomes interesting when ‘nothing’ happens – when there’s nothing with no one watching nothing.  That’s what it takes to allow awareness to be what it is.  Our natural awareness only becomes evident when we let the structure of conceptual mind drop – and … it’s a long process because the habit of conceptual mind is well entrenched.  

p194, Goodbye Forever Vol. II, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2021, ISBN 978-1-898185-60-4

Anything could happen

Anything could happen.  To come to an understanding of my culture and my epoch – I had to be open to anything happening.  If I sheltered myself from the wilder side of existence – I would never be able to teach anyone to live as a tantrika in the West … when, eventually, the time came to teach. 

p147, Goodbye Forever Vol. II, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2021, ISBN 978-1-898185-60-4

Mind would abide in its natural dimension

Dudjom Rinpoche said that one must keep one’s body in equanimous stasis in order that the spatial nerves would be in natural alignment – and the spatial winds unobstructed.  If the spatial winds were unobstructed, then mind would abide in its natural dimension where the spatial essences manifest as primal creativity.

p73, Goodbye Forever Vol. II, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2021, ISBN 978-1-898185-60-4   

Obsession

I'd succeeded and failed simultaneously.  The failure?  That was obvious – but what of the success?  That comprised of my having had the single pointed intention to do what I had done.  I'd carried through with a plan.  I'd not given up.  That was important for a Buddhist practitioner.  The lengths to which obsession carries a person, in terms of activity, is the mark of someone who stands the chance of realising goals in Buddhism. 

p75, Goodbye Forever: miscellaneous memoirs of an English Lama, Volume One Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2020, ISBN 978-1-898185-51-2

You can either be irritated or you can be irritated

Many people—but only honest people—find spaciousness irritating, and would prefer the claustrophobia and snugness of deranged density.  The simplicity of acknowledging spaciousness requires precision.  Precision does not allow the seeming safety of woolly-edged spin-doctoring.
We enjoy a soupçon of confusion, in which to establish the experiential ground rules from which non-duality can be seen as the unobtainable godhead.  Non-duality is irritatingly possible – because it is our authentic nature and somehow, being reminded of that, is irritating.  So … you can either be irritated or you can be irritated.  It is entirely up to you.

p69-70, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

We are not speaking in terms of nihilistic negation

  Form is the dance partner of emptiness – and emptiness cannot be understood apart from form.  Emptiness is the dance partner of form – and form cannot dance without emptiness.  Form could be said to be the apparently tangible aspect of experience and existence – but form is empty.  One can only understand form in the confident absence of tangibility.  That does not mean however that everything is nothing.  When we speak of emptiness as nothingness or voidness, we are not speaking in terms of nihilistic negation—but in terms of nothingness being inseparable from everythingness. 

p49, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

A process of evolution

  Meditation is not a progression through stages, nor is it advancing or climbing.  Meditation is a process, not entirely dissimilar from maturing or growing older.  Development occurs over a period of time – but it is not gradual.  It is a fluctuating stream which contains gradual change, stasis, and sudden change.  This is precisely what occurs in terms of meditation.  Meditation is not based on stages as heavily defined segments of an established spiritual framework, but on a process that is taking place in those who meditate.  That process also takes place in the context of our living situations.

p79, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

The dance of sub-atomic particles

   The elements are an array of characteristics which can be understood both in terms of duality and nonduality.  They express themselves at every level at which existence can be understood – yet they go beyond the sense-making remit of quotidian existence.  They travel into the sphere of unconditioned potentiality where language can no longer even hint at meaning.  The elements are the fabric of the Earth and the solar system in which it orbits the Sun.  Beyond that, the elements outstrip the extent to which science can currently see.  There is nothing other than the elements.  The dance of sub-atomic particles is simply the elements performing – arising and dissolving in a manner not entirely different from the way in which they perform within the facets of our perceptual continua.

p196-197, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

All our attempts to establish security fail

   We survey our perceptual horizon and categorise everything that appears on it as: proving our existence in terms of duality; disproving our existence in terms of duality; or as some vague neutrality, which presents no opportunity for manipulation either way.  All our attempts to establish security fail.  Our efforts fail because they are based on maintaining the illusion of duality.    
   There is no way that we can establish the security we’re looking for as long as we operate from the principle that duality actually functions.  In this sense, enlightenment is the continual realisation that duality is not functional. 

p108, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

Liberating anyone and everyone

      The symbolic nature of Tantra is a reflection of the spontaneous creativity, that is inherent in the fabric of reality.  There is no aspect of Tantra that has been invented through the processes of a manipulative intellect.  Tantric imagery has all been spontaneously realised and communicated with the implicit function of liberating anyone and everyone into their authentic condition. 

p101, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

The Vajrayana that is already there

 Knowledge of Vajrayana is intrinsic to human beings, in the sense that Vajrayana is our condition.  It is the thread of continuity which runs through every aspect of what we are.  In this sense Vajrayana may be invisible – but it is also sharply and poignantly perceptible.  The Lama shows us the reality that Vajrayana is already there as the basic energy of our existence.

p68, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

‘Thinking’ and ‘the thinker’

   In the non-dual state we are present with the free movement of whatever arises.  Thought is simply an ornament of perception.  ‘Thinking’ and ‘the thinker’ are not isolated events which solicit each other for reassurance.  Thinking and concept can simply exist as ornaments of the non-dual state – free of the artificial function in which they are goaded into providing proofs that we are solid, permanent, separate, continuous, and defined.
There is —actually—no way to understand the free manifestation of concept within the non-dual state from the perspective of dualism. 

p206, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Freedom

   Freedom is the absence of self-consciousness.  The absence of self-consciousness allows generosity, transparence, decentralised desire, uninhibited action, and spaciousness.  
Being free, you do not need to be pathologically alert – as if there were emotional predators within every crevice of the societal milieu.
Being free does not merely mean dispensing with diapers at the due time.  Freedom is the discovery of self-existent confidence rather than breaking free from ‘the ties that bind’.

p210, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Trust

   Trusting yourself  – in the sense of meditation, is a question of expanding—of slowly expanding the expression of sitting.  Through sitting, self-existent communication is discovered as the nature of the world.  It becomes a completely real world, rather than a world of bewilderment and pain.  You begin to trust yourself because you begin to trust the nature of the elements; the nature of your perception; the nature of your emotions; the nature of your physicality; and, the nature of your psychology.  It is all there to see and it is an open space.

p205, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Taking a shine

    When attraction and desire are awakened—and especially within the romantic sexual dimension—two things happen simultaneously: we shine, and we also perceive the shining quality of our focus of desire—we start to see being ‘in the pink’.  This is also why people’s pupils dilate.  The pupils dilate in order to see more of the shining quality.  This shining quality is the lustre of the primordial state as it manifests within the dimension of nirmanakaya.

p225, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7
   

There is great value in simple-mindedness

   Life has a way of becoming complex whether we like it or not – and then all we can do is to be simple in relation to it.  
There is great value in simple-mindedness – and especially of a certain ‘unsophisticatedness’ when it comes to Dharma.
Those who absorb too much in terms of ‘Dharma sophistry’ become blind to the precision, directness, straightforwardness, and fundamental wholesomeness of essential Buddhism.

p232-233, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Naturalness

   I no longer use the word ‘enlightenment’ when I can help it.  It has been horribly overused and does not actually represent a direct translation of a Tibetan or Sanskrit term.  We use the term non-duality.  The word ‘nowness’, as spoken of by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, is important in Buddhism – especially any tradition which emphasises silent sitting.  
We tend to discuss naturalness – but it has the same meaning.  Naturalness is relaxed.  Naturalness is relaxing into the present moment.

p234, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Overt nonsense

     If you’re able to let go of reference points to the extent of identifying completely with the awareness-being; you would be able to observe yourself for an instant as the awareness-being would view you.  You would gain some glimpse of your dualistic structures as being monumentally absurd.
Catching yourself in the act of confusing yourself with the more overt nonsense patterns of samsara, is going to change your relationship of involvement with those patterns.  The patterns would have a transparence in the afterglow of wearing the body of visions that would make it difficult, though not impossible, to take those habitual tendencies completely seriously.

p88-90, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4