Illusion and reality

The play of experience which arises in a mirror is the key to understanding the nature of illusion and reality.  Just as waking and sleeping can be a seamless flow of awareness – so can birth and death.

p48, 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

Indoctrination

People often fail to question the commonly accepted version of reality into which they have been indoctrinated.  It’s not necessarily a deliberate process of indoctrination – it merely happens as part of the way human society functions.

 p216, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4

Surrealism

Being that the phenomenal world is an illusion from the perspective of dualistic derangement – it is useful to have whimsical alternatives to such illusions.  Surrealism provides such alternative illusions – and prompts us to examine what we take reality to be. 

p181, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4  

Whether we like it or not

Whether we like it or not – Vajrayana is what is happening.  Vajrayana is the warp and weft of reality. 

p236, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4 

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

Discovering the nature of reality

“ ... I made the distinction between Truth and reality.  I don’t see Buddhism as owning ‘truth’ – because Buddhism isn't a religion of ‘truth’.  It’s a religion of ‘method’ – and, its methods are ways of discovering the nature of reality.”

p177, Goodbye Forever Vol. II, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2021, ISBN 978-1-898185-60-4

The self-astonishment of reality

All we need to do is gaze affectionately at the vivacious self-astonishment of reality.  We could gaze at what arises – relishing the immensity of that visionary dimension, in which we are all unremittingly self-celebrated in the vast expanse of the inner ying and outer ying.

p218, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7 

Spacious passion

Reality and the realised state reflect each other.  To actualise this knowledge at the level of experience is the goal of developing spacious passion.  Spaciousness without passion has no possibility of compassion as an interactive quality.  Passion without spaciousness becomes blind or blinkered obsession – a completely claustrophobic view that gives rise to highly limited and limiting activities.  

p102-103, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4 

Restaurant Reality

I was far from sick of the world, even though it had its lows as well as its highs.  I was currently riding pretty high – and although I was aware that I needed to find the one taste of pleasure and pain, I had no objection at all to pleasure.  Maybe I’d just have to accept that you had to choose both from the menu at Restaurant Reality.  Would I ever be able to do that?  I both wanted it and feared it.

p179, 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

The Vajrayana that is already there

 Knowledge of Vajrayana is intrinsic to human beings, in the sense that Vajrayana is our condition.  It is the thread of continuity which runs through every aspect of what we are.  In this sense Vajrayana may be invisible – but it is also sharply and poignantly perceptible.  The Lama shows us the reality that Vajrayana is already there as the basic energy of our existence.

p68, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

The desire to be in charge

    The nature of existence continually helps and hinders the search for definition in a completely impartial manner.  The problem is the desire to be in charge of the defining process.  This is a highly complicated procedure – but it is so customary, that it is hardly noticed.  Rather than allowing continual re-definition (and occasionally lack of definition), the prevalent impetus is to attempt domination of the mutually defining and un-defining process which constitutes the flux of reality.  

p32, 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

The force of illusion

Enlightened intention arises out of the experience of the singular field of reality and because of this, it manifests methods of understanding itself which are reflections of our sense of dividedness.  This enlightened intention employs the strategy of the apparently separate spheres of being, as a means of communicating the nature of reality to those who have become confused by dividedness.  So; within the view of Tantra, this portrayal of division is an aspect of the skilful means that destroys divisiveness.  Tantra uses the force of illusion itself, to destroy illusion.  Tantra functions in this way, because the energy of delusion is none other than the play of our own enlightenment. 

p55, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

What does it mean … to ‘approach Tantra’?

Approaching Tantra is what you’re doing now!  Tantra is not separate from the stream of reality that you are living all the time.  Especially when you allow yourself to enter into confusion – when you regard that as workable ground.  And when, the workable ground is one in which the ‘working’ itself is indeterminate.  That is very much the ground of Tantra. This is what you could call living the view. 

p118, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

The effort required to make the bed beautifully

Being a warrior means that we can accept the reality of what we are – including our fear and apprehension.  We see our fear and we step beyond it.  
We can discard the yearning for security and move into a greater sense of spaciousness in which heroism applies to the effort required to make the bed beautifully.  To do anything well requires confidence in the potential beauty of each moment.    

p143, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

We have to begin with that which presents itself

One begins with the accidental nature of what is occurring—and accepts that as the nature of one's current reality. 
We do not have to begin with clarity, because clarity is inherent in every situation.  We simply have to begin with that which presents itself.  This will include our mistakes and the mistakes of others.  It will include errors, omissions, miscalculations, appropriations, misappropriations, faux pas, indiscretions, and oversights . . . 
Clarity is a groundless experience, but one that we can only realise when ground and groundlessness are realised a non-dual.  When we accept confusion as the rich ground from which clarity can be discovered, we can cease being our own enemies. 

p3, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Multiplicity and Divergence

 
Buddhist nonduality allows multiplicity and divergence.  At the level of emptiness – we are indeed all one: your emptiness and my emptiness—the emptiness of everyone—is the same.  However – emptiness is only one aspect of reality.  The other aspect is that which continually arises from emptiness: form.  At the level of form – we are certainly not all one, we are different.  Nonduality is the inseparability of this sameness and difference.

p23, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon http://arobuddhism.org/books/entering-the-heart-of-sun-and-moon.html, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3