Magic

Magic isn't really of much interest from the point of view of Dzogchen...  Because everything is magic simply by being as it is...  If you’re open to seeing and hearing—and sensating through all the senses—everything is magic.

p63-64, Goodbye Forever Vol IV Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2026, ISBN 9781898185741

Being alive

Engage with the sense fields. Become authentically involved with the senses. Being alive is being surrounded by colour, sound, fragrance, and texture. 

p38, 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 

Cavort with reality

To be an artist one simply maintains the endeavour. One’s senses have to cavort with reality – and that voluptuous liaison has to become a dynamic aspect of one’s experience of appreciation. 

p316, 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

Disorientation

Nyams arise via disorientation in terms of  habitual tendencies. As soon as referential perceptual mechanisms are released—to whatever degree—the psychophysical fields of the senses begin to relax into their own condition.

p76, 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 

Liberation

Liberation is ours to see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and ideate – but all we seem to sense is the shifting surface of that vastness.  We see reflections, but are blind to the nature of the mirror.  We see waves, but fail to experience the ocean.  We see clouds, but cannot conceive of the sky.

p188, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4

Theatre of existence

Love touches people through Art: not simply through the Arts of music, painting, sculpture, poetry, literature, and drama – but through the constantly performing theatre of existence.  Art and the nature of the senses continually imitate, intimate, and initiate each other.

p220, 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 splendid dance

We wish you nonreferential joy and gleeful abandon. We wish you passion and spaciousness in the splendid dance of your sense-fields and sense perceptions.

p338, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4

Allow the senses to dance

Allow the sense-fields to be as they are.  Allow the senses to dance with the sense-fields.  That, in itself, is the meditative state.  Every artist will understand that experientially – even if they know nothing of meditation.

p200, 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 sense field

Conceptuality is a sense field as much as the other sense – but apart from artists, most people prioritise the linguistic aspects of thought.

p416, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4

Boredom

Boredom is a sign that: one is not alive to one’s senses.

p81, 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 words of Dud’jom Rinpoche

I remembered the words of Dud’jom Rinpoche ‘With each life circumstance: whatever is enacted, stare directly into the enactment – with all the senses.’

p194, Goodbye Forever Vol. II, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2021, ISBN 978-1-898185-60-4

Open and embodied

Discovering the nondual state is not a process of internalisation.  We do not cut off from the external world.  Everything we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or ideate is undivided from the nondual state – so, to be present, is to be entirely open and embodied.

p83, 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 

You will have no time for ‘unhappy’

Re looking at colours …  Include sounds, textures, fragrances, tastes, and ideational vectors and you will have no time for ‘unhappy’.  ‘Unhappy’ is what we create by turning off the senses.  It is possible to be happy by allowing the senses to be absorbed into the sense fields.

p180, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

You can feel with your mind and think with your nose

What is it like to look at a mountain, or a cherry?  What is it like to hear bird-song?  What is it like to feel velvet?  Is this a one-way process – or is this, in some inexpressible way, a communication?  You see, the intellect is a sense field.  You don't have to understand everything through that one sense field.  The fundamental genius of Tantra is that the sense fields are interconnected.  You can feel with your mind and think with your nose.  

 p216, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

There is nothing wrong with thought

     There is nothing wrong with thought – even though some categories of meditation instruction would have you accept that this is the case.  According to Dzogchen, thought is a natural function of Mind – and, just as the other sense faculties are natural to physical existence, so too is thought.  Moreover, thought—according to Buddhism in general—is a sense-faculty, rather than a function that is separate from the senses.

p35, 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 

Desire

The Vajrayana texts—both Tibetan and Sanskrit—portray Vajrayana as a magnificent banquet of the senses.  Naturally then, as teachers of Vajrayana, we encourage desire.  Desire is the sensory scenario in which lust and liberation are indivisible.  Desire is inseparable from chang-chub sem.  This is both subtle and easy to misinterpret – which is why we place  such emphasis on silent sitting.  Without recognition of emptiness, desire is merely self  orientation.   

p51, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

A certain sense of the magical about your existence

Kyil-khor is the living sense of being related with your environment – of being aware of the subtleties and nuances of your situation.  There is a certain sense of the magical about your existence when the principle of kyil-khor starts to apply at the level of your senses.  You begin to feel as if you’re actually alive!  The tree we’re sitting under is performing photosynthesis at this moment!  It has some sense of the earth.  We’re here at this moment, being attentive to all this – existing in the presence of everything that’s happening.  It has to do with climbing out of the cocoon of self-orientation.     
With kyil-khor there is both the sense in which everything can be seen as the radiance of our own awareness; and, the sense in which we simply participate in the radiance of everything else.

p80, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

Our senses are the communicative quality of the elements.

Our senses are the communicative quality of the elements in which the dance of existence and non-existence allows ‘self’ and ‘other’ to be both separate and non-separate.  Spaciousness gives birth to ideation; wind carries sound, vibration, and the possibility of hearing; fire ignites vision; fluidity encourages fragrance and tasting; and substance phenomena allow touch.  Our intellectual faculty is comprised of elemental patterns – as are our emotions.  The sub-atomic structure of being is the play of the
thig-lés – the five essential elemental expressions of emptiness from which everything comes into being.

p197, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3