Beyond social convention

So there are choices to be made when you go beyond social convention. To a certain extent—where it only affects you personally—any consequence of going beyond social convention is fine. But when it upsets other people‚ then it’s not really freedom any more – not in the sense of compassionate activity. 

p234, Warp and Weft of Wonderment, Ngakma Mé-tsal, Aro Books Worldwide, 2024, ISBN 9781898185680

For practice to mean anything

For practice to mean anything, one has to change for the better.  One has to be free—or freer—from habitual responses such as territorial avarice, petulance, selfishness, manipulativeness, and obdurate obfuscatory self-protectiveness. 

p19, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

The prison of moodiness

One must be able to remain free of the prison of moodiness – the infantile tendency to the three Ss: sulkiness, sullenness, and surliness.  We employ these three out of resentment that life is not what we feel it should be according to what is fair and just in relation to ‘ME’.

p19, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Transparent to ourselves

 

The experience of meditation practice is essential as a means of realising the view.  It is only within the development of the meditational experience that we become transparent to ourselves.  When we become transparent to ourselves, we can witness the mechanics of stylised perception – and only then can we free ourselves from restriction.

p49, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4 

Compassionate society

There is no guarantee that any conventional point of view can create a compassionate society.  Obsession with individual freedom at the expense of others is the death of compassion.  Obsession with neurotic parental concern at the expense of the personal liberty of others is the death of wisdom.

p217, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4

The freedom to experience

When allowing the emotional realm to be as it is, the freedom to experience the texture of life arises directly – and it becomes possible to sidestep the sour orthodoxy of preordained likes, dislikes, and habitual concepts.  Allowing perceptual life to be as it is, everything is self-liberated as it is – resulting in freedom from restrictive social rôles, conventional preoccupations, conservative anxieties, and mundane personal expectations.

p12, Shock Amazement: The four naljors and four ting-ngé’dzin from the Dzogchen series of the nature of Mind.   Khandro Déchen and Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books Worldwide, 2018, ISBN 978-1-898185-45-1 

We have to let go of what we are

Dying means letting go of self-image and self-conception.  We have to let go of what we are and open ourselves to what we can un-become.  From a Buddhist point of view it is unbecoming not to un-become.  In order to un-become, we must let go of security and find the security of insecurity.  We must discover the freedom of insecurity in which security and insecurity dance as nondual display.  If we cannot let our past preconceptions die we have no future, and cannot experience the present.  Unless we can die, we cannot be alive in the moment – and the moment is all we ever have.

p87, Rays of the Sun, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books worldwide, 2010, 978-1-898185-06-2

Freedom

   Freedom is the absence of self-consciousness.  The absence of self-consciousness allows generosity, transparence, decentralised desire, uninhibited action, and spaciousness.  
Being free, you do not need to be pathologically alert – as if there were emotional predators within every crevice of the societal milieu.
Being free does not merely mean dispensing with diapers at the due time.  Freedom is the discovery of self-existent confidence rather than breaking free from ‘the ties that bind’.

p210, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

We really do have all that we need

  The liberated field of energy of the earth element displays the glorious warmth and wealth of earth.  This energy is inexhaustible and free to whomever needs it.  
The kind of wealth we are discussing is reflected by the environment but it is central to our being.  With the discovery of intrinsic space we find that we really do have all that we need.  With this recognition we could realise that we are already totally secure in the primordial nature of our being.  We have within us the wisdom of equanimity and primordial freedom from attachment.  Mind is sufficient to itself and so is our world.  Mind requires nothing but is the ground of everything – the unemptiable source of all phenomena. 

p131-133, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

Vulnerability and freedom

   Shi-nè provides face-to-face experience with: insecurity, fear, loneliness, vulnerability, and bewilderment.  These underlying tensions are common to all – and create distortion whether or not shi-nè is practised.  Avoiding shi-nè is therefore not an answer.  Self-hidden vulnerabilities cause greater conflict in being hidden than in being exposed.  Clarity spontaneously arises from the discovery of openness within the practice of shi-nè.
Self-transparency manifests – and motivation becomes simpler in being seen nakedly.  A natural compassion arises – a compassion which does not need to be forced or fabricated.  This is the first real taste of freedom.

p25-26, Shock Amazement  : The four naljors and four ting-ngé’dzin from the Dzogchen series of the nature of Mind.
Khandro Déchen and Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books Worldwide, 2018, ISBN 978-1-898185-45-1

Dizzying heights of boredom

With respect to shi-nè – until you get seriously bored, you will not give up the illusion that there is something to be gained apart from what you are. 
Boredom plays an extremely important role as the altimeter of emptiness.  The spacious view of Dzogchen is only available once the dizzying heights of boredom have been recognised as freedom.   Boredom then transmogrifies into an ethereal translucent boredom.  It will still necessarily have an aspect of unease with it – but that is the key to an open dimension. 

p77, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Obession

"Obsession with individual freedom at the expense of others is the death of compassion. Obsession with neurotic parental-style control at the expense of the personal liberty of others is the death of wisdom."

pxvii, Dangerous Friend, Rig’dzin Dorje, Shambhala, 2001, 978-1570628573

Freedom

"Freedom is the absence of self-consciousness. The absence of self-consciousness allows generosity, transparence, decentralised desire, uninhibited action, and spaciousness"

p210, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, 978-0-9653948-5-7

Freedom of choice is the dominant myth of our society

"The seductive ideal of freedom of choice is the dominant myth of our society, encouraging people to remain essentially adolescent up until retirement age or even death... It's more important to follow your feelings than to actually arrive at any particular goal. We have become more interested in process than result."

p56, Dangerous Friend, Rig'dzin Dorje, Shambhala, 2001, 1-57062-857-2