Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales

Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales
Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales

Monday 26 November 2018

Emotional heights and depths

Emotional heights and depths exist as ornaments, in the sense that ornaments don’t alter the basic nature of the person who wears them.  You can wear joy, and you can wear sorrow.  When you have the experience of joy or sorrow, you can have the sense that you are not actually totally defined by either. That is to say: who is it who wears this sorrow or this joy?

p50, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

Monday 19 November 2018

Spiritual gorilla

Once a leap of daring has been made – it is possible for arrogance to arise.  One might feel a little carried away by one’s achievement and become a spiritual gorilla.  One might start to beat one’s chest – and that is entirely alien to the spirit of the pawo or pamo.  Arrogance is not a functional parameter of heroism.  Authentic heroes and heroines are gentlemen and gentlewomen – they are unassuming, pliant, and spacious.  The pawo or pamo is tender hearted.  He or she has no interest in donning the rhinoceros hide trench coat of belligerent braggadocio and bestial bellicosity.  The pawo or pamo who has renounced the reference point of personal victory becomes utterly fearless without becoming a King Kong of co-emergent confusion and callousness. 

p138, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Monday 12 November 2018

A Vicar of Vajrayana


Drala Jong  There is no area of life that is ever separate from practice; whether we’re in a business meeting with the board, eating paella and drinking Prosecco with friends, roaring with laughter at a bad joke, hang gliding across the Grand Canyon, walking in the wind with the hounds on the hill, singing the blues, stringing beans, or attending a dying friend. Whether we’re on the bus, on the stage, or on the run, on a roll, on the mend, or on the make, on the toilet, on the edge, or on our last legs and last breath . . . there is nothing but practice. The essential practice of recognizing the one taste of emptiness and form, of wisdom and compassion, of manifesting the non-dual play of our awareness and kindness at all times.
 
Drala-Jong.org: A Vicar of Vajrayana Ngakma Mé-tsal Wangmo
Excerpt from an article published in the magazine Buddhist Door Global 2018.


Monday 5 November 2018

Discover the pleasure of existence

 Drala Jong  The name ‘Drala Jong’ means ‘Sparkling Meadow of Primal Iridescence’.  Of this name,  Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen write:

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.org: Sparkling Meadow of Primal Iridescence Ngak'chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen