Every moment we live ...

If practice is a strong priority we should avoid weakening it by letting our other priorities contend with it.  So we should just sit.  When we get home, we should just sit.  We should sit again tomorrow morning and continue sitting in that way.  Every time we sit should be the first time, and every moment we live should be the last moment.  Remember to make friends with death, and let present sensations flow like sand through your fingers.

p143, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7 

Confusion

No one enjoys confusion, but as long as we cling to our dualistic vision, we will always translate not knowing as ‘confusion’.  We don’t like confusion because within the space of confusion definitions become vague and intangible.  That makes us feel insecure.  Accepting or relaxing in that insecurity is in itself a practice. 


p143, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7  

Clarity and motivation

Once silent sitting practice becomes part of your life, clarity will begin to develop.  When you start to gain a little clarity, there will be a much stronger motivation to practice.  Once you see the value of practice in your life, you’ll be motivated to make further discoveries—and then maintaining motivation will no longer be a problem.  Motivation has to propel you into practice—but there it must stop.  If you fill your sitting space with the desire for progress, you’ll stifle your developing awareness.  So letting go of motivation is critically valuable.  When we sit, we should sit without purpose—without hope or fear.

p144, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7  

Promises

Only make promises to yourself that you know you can keep, otherwise you’ll never have confidence in yourself and you’ll find that you won’t be able to make promises to yourself at all.  Being able to make promises to yourself is keenly meaningful.  It’s a way of giving your life real direction and enabling something positive to happen – especially if you link your promises to the wish for the liberation of everyone everywhere.   

p144, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7
  

Boredom is actually the threshold of discovery

It is said that meditation isn’t, because it’s not an end in itself.  It is said that getting used to is, because the enlightened state is already there and we simply have to become accustomed to that.  So, meditation is getting used to the enlightened state, cooperating with the enlightened state.
What’s important is simply being.  We simply get used to the condition in which thoughts are not present or in which they arise and dissolve.  Boredom is actually the threshold of discovery.  This is just the point at which something interesting could happen—if we simply continue to sit. 
p24, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7

Bringing practice into everyday life

To integrate practice into everyday life, you can let go of the sharp divisions between the times when you’re sitting and the times when you’re not sitting.  You should allow the spaciousness you discover in your sitting to overflow into your ordinary life experience.  You can start by allowing the postpractice period to be a time when you remain completely with whatever you’re doing.
If you sit for an hour, make sure that you have at least fifteen to thirty minutes for the postmeditation period.  When you get up from your sitting session, stand up slowly and with awareness.  Continue to find the presence of your awareness in whatever sensation arises—but avoid conceptualizing about the process.
You could get up and make a cup of coffee.  You could do the washing up.  But whatever you do, simply be with what you’re doing.

p153-154, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7

Creative potential and vibrant emptiness

Imagination relies on empty perception.  Painting relies on empty planes.  Sculpture relies on empty space.  Music relies on empty time.  Literature relies on empty concepts.  If we are to realise the art of freedom, if we are to discover our creative potential, we need to rely on the experience of our instrinsic vibrant emptiness—the beginningless ground of what we are.
The gateway to the art of freedom is the practice of shi-nè—our method of approaching the white canvas of Mind.



p49, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7

Motivation without a drag factor

Attuned intent is motivation without a ‘drag factor’.  It’s streamlined—aerodynamic.  It gives you access to incredible power and capacity for accomplishment of whatever needs to be accomplished.  In order to accelerate into the unimaginable, we have to let go of the ballast—jettison the habits of view that create drag factors. 
The drag factor is the thing that slows you down.  Mixed and conflicting motivations produce a drag factor and inhibit our development and growth as human beings.  As long as there’s a drag factor, we experience frustration and the unsatisfactory outcome of our wishes or intentions, whatever they might be.  Attuned intent is unmixed motivation, motivation without conflict—single-pointed motivation.
 p145-146, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7

The sparkling-through of enlightenment

Enlightenment is our natural state, and so it is not surprising that it manifests from time to time. Unenlightenment is the constant activity with which we engage. We have to work at it all the time. So when life circumstances intervene, in terms of short-circuiting this continual effort, we experience glimpses of realisation. These glimpses can radically change people’s lives, but it is a hit-or-miss affair to hope that life is going to ‘do it for you’ when the time is ripe. You have to cooperate with the sparkling-through of enlightenment by disengaging from referentiality and continuing with presence of awareness.

p122, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7

Pattern and Chaos

  The fabric of existence is a fluxing web or magical manifestation web of infinite dimensions.  Existence is a fluxing web whose threads are the energy of emptiness and form—of existence and nonexistence.  The style or pattern of individual existence sets up tremors in the web of which individual existence is a part.  One cannot ‘enact’ without affecting everything and, at the same time, being affected by everything.  Pattern affects patterns, creating further pattern.  Pattern evolves out of chaos and becomes chaos again.  Pattern and randomness dance together—ripples in water extend and collide with other extending ripples, a fish leaps to catch an insect, a wild goose takes to the sky, the wind blows, and a child throws a pebble into the lake. 

p82, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7

Pattern

"One cannot 'enact' without affecting everything and, at the same time, being affected by everything. Pattern affects pattern, creating further pattern.  Pattern evolves out of chaos and becomes chaos again. Pattern and randomness dance together."

p59, Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 1-57062-944-7

Wandering mind

"If you mind is wandering, if your attention is not on what you're doing, if you're hang gliding in your imagination while you drive, that could certainly be very dangerous. Have you ever seen those stickers in the back of cars that say things like "I'd rather be windsurfing"? I think that the Buddhist version could run "I'd rather be precisely where I am."."

p162, Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 1-57062-944-7

State without thought

"The reason for continuing to practice in order to arrive at a state without thought is that it provides the space to unlearn our neurotic relationship with thought. If we return to the idea that meditation isn't getting used to is, we can see that the process, or space of unlearning, is getting used to the referenceless quality of being."

p93, Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 1-57062-944-7

Always attempt to remain open

"It is a shame to become fixated on any idea. One should always attempt to remain open to anything that contradicts one's most cherished beliefs."

p94, Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam & Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 1-57062-944-7

Generosity, patience and exertion

"Generosity, patience, and exertion equate with compassion, wisdom and energy-the three important factors within Buddhist practice."

p125,Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 978-1570629440

We are not sitting in silence for ourselves

"Generosity is vital if we are to give ourselves time to sit and if we are to give all sentient beings our time of sitting. We are not sitting in silence for ourselves; that is crucial."

p124, Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 978-1570629440

The beginning of realisation

"From the point of view of shi-nè, boredom marks the beginning of realisation."

p23, Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 978-1570629440

A rolling wave of energy

"Once we develop our experience of shi-nè, boredom is no longer 'boredom' but a wellspring of nourishment-a rolling wave of energy."

p23, Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 978-1570629440

Being referenceless

"In terms of deep-rooted attachment to thought, one is getting used to non-referentiality. One is getting used to being referenceless."

p46, Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 978-1570629440

Our own enlightenment

"We are unused to our own enlightenment, so meditation is a way of 'getting used to' it."

p46, Roaring Silence, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, 978-1570629440