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 27 January 2020

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
   

Monday 20 January 2020

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

Monday 13 January 2020

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

Monday 6 January 2020

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