The style of one’s responses

We cannot be responsible for many things – but we are all responsible for how we feel about what happens. To embrace emotions as the path, one must take responsibility for the style of one’s responses.

p230, 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 

Reflex responses

As long as people have patellar reflex responses to anything it means they haven’t stabilised shi-nè, let alone lhatong, nyi’mèd or lhundrüp. For those who have good experience of shi-nè however – they will no longer be subject to automatic or autonomic emotional responses.

p414, Warp and Weft of Wonderment, Ngakma Mé-tsal, Aro Books Worldwide, 2024, ISBN 9781898185680

Hall of mirrors

No matter to what degree the dualistic hall of mirrors distorts the emotions; a connection with the intrinsic unmanifested nondual condition remains.

p156, 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

How we feel

If you allow yourself to get caught up in the idea that your pain has been caused by somebody else, you may feel you have to throw a tantrum.  People get into some terrible difficulties over this, and act in ways that only make their situation worse.  Rejecting responsibility for feeling as we do spawns jealousy, bitterness, resentment, recrimination and vengefulness.  Rejecting responsibility for how we feel has never created the causes for pleasure, enjoyment or emotional fulfilment. 

p91, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8 

The style of our responses

We cannot be responsible for many things.  But we are all responsible for how we feel about the things that happen to us.  To embrace our emotions as the path, we must take responsibility for the style of our responses.    

p91, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

An enormous difference to our lives

Accepting sole ownership of our emotions can make an enormous difference to our lives.  Unless we accept the responsibility of owning whatever we feel, we will not be able to embrace our emotions as the path.  As soon as we accept that we cannot actually justify our feelings, we can start to approach our feelings openly.  To let go of justification requires that we let go of our experientially claustrophobic habit of referentiality.  With some sense of space we can begin to experience our emotions as they are; rather than as if we had rehearsed them.

p92, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8  

This unwithheld approach

When we embrace our emotions in Vajrayana practice, we begin to operate in a more magnanimous way.  We embrace greater emotions: greater appetite, greater rage, greater passion, greater speed, and greater abandon.  With this unwithheld approach we begin to lose track of our referential ground and our referential boundaries.  Then we have nothing to gain or lose—we simply have the existential fact of what is—whatever it is. 

p148, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

A delicate balance

It is a delicate balance: to acknowledge emotional needs, on the one hand, and to have a sense of these needs being conceptually generated on the other.  This balancing act requires the experience of emptiness, because without it, we either indulge ourselves or brutalise ourselves.  The experience of emptiness, in this sense, helps us to view our emotions with a degree of humour – with more sanity and true perspective.

p143, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8
 

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

Painful emotions

Painful emotions are maintained though the process of thinking about them.  We continually regenerate our painful emotions by intellectualising about them – rather than experiencing them at the non-conceptual level.  The only way out is to let awareness find itself in the dimension of whatever emotion has arisen; and to experience it purely.  When we are able to let go of justification we are no longer as involved in maintaining the integrity of our self-image.  When this neurotic involvement is reduced, the energy of anger is no longer coloured by the need to prove our existence through the manifestation of aggression.

p145, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

Inviting others in

"We cannot expect people to know we are in need just because we feel completely raw and think this must be obvious. Everybody is dealing with their own issues all the time. 'Not asking for help' may easily be interpreted as 'not needing help'. Everyone feels they are the centre of their own little universe. If you want people to become involved in your universe, you have to invite them in-and also be willing to accept invitations."

p.79, Illusory Advice, Ngakma Nord'dzin and Ngakpa ö-Dzin

Spectrum of fluid

"It is important to experience our emotional energies simply and directly. Our emotions are a spectrum of fluid and fluent energies, and experiencing their energy fields is the purpose of our exploration."

p7, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, 0-9653948-0-8

Reflections

"One of the most enlivening, exciting, and fulfilling discoveries we can make as human beings is finding that our emotions are actually reflections of our awakened enlightened potentialities. The complete unexpurgated range of what we feel is a spectrum of ecstasy."

p7, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, 0-9653948-0-8

Emotional comfort

"Anyone who believes anything, at some level, makes the choice to believe. If we make the choice to believe because there’s a spiritually materialistic payoff in believing, then as soon as the payoff ceases to function we lose our belief. With rebirth, I would say that there is a grave danger of the payoff being connected with emotional comfort of some kind and that is deadly in terms of an authentic Buddhist practice. Buddhism is not actually emotionally comfortable in terms of the need to experience continuity. If we are to call ourselves Buddhists we have to accept the practice of discovering that we are discontinuous – that the ‘I’ is momentary."

Counting the cars, Ngak’chang Rinpoche, Aro Encyclopaedia

Defined rules

"In contrast with happiness, misery has clearly defined rules but rapture, is a somewhat unbounded state in which clear-cut definitions have no function. In comparison with sadness, joy is far more intangible and unpredictable. We all know the rules and regulations of melancholy but the perceptual patterns of carefree happiness are subtle and difficult to define."

p55, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon, Ngakpa Chogyam and Khandro Dechen, Aro Books Inc., 2010, 978-0965394833

Open-ended opportunity

"Every emotion is an open-ended opportunity. Every feeling or sensation we experience is an expression of enlightenment-a manifestation of our spectrum of radiant energies. Yet almost always, emotions manifest as distorted reflections of those energies. These distorted reflections arise as a result of the way in which we constrict the natural display of the mirror of Mind with our compulsive intellectual contrivances."

p32, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, 0-9653948-0-8

Spectrum of fluid and fluent energies

"Its important to experience our emotional energies simply and directly. Our emotions are a spectrum of fluid and fluent energies, and experiencing their energy fields is the purpose of our exploration."

p7, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, 0-9653948-0-8