Sporadically supervised aimlessness

Tidying is an aspect of pottering – but true pottering is more sporadic. It is a haphazard mode which often facilitates discoveries and unexpected creativity.

p182, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books Worldwide, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4 

Creativity

Becoming cheerfully creative means becoming open to playing with ideas, and having enthusiasm in carrying them forward as a mutual project.  You can only feel creative by being creative – and you can kick-start that at any moment as a matter of will.

 p239, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

A sad waste of time

Bringing one’s creative ideas into the nirmanakaya is important in being a mensch.  To be a person who merely talks about their wonderful ideas without ever making them a reality is a sad waste of time.

p393, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4

Some kind of miracle

I was always amazed with the way that phenomena could be brought into being.  Even when I was part of the act of creation – the creation was still some kind of miracle.  There was no God – but every creative human being—every artist—was some kind of god.  Creativity was a natural phenomenon that pulsed in us all – and our rôle as beings was to allow that to surface from the primal ocean of existence. 

p173, Goodbye Forever: miscellaneous memoirs of an English Lama, Volume One Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2020, ISBN 978-1-898185-51-2 

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

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