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 

Effortlessness

Pure appropriateness is an invisible dance in which one is transparent in terms of what is taking place.  there is an effortlessness that is not even named or differentiated from effort.

p237, Tracts of the Sun : An Earth Orbit of Vajrayana Expressions.  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2022, ISBN 978-1-898185-28-4 

Transparent

No one can ever understand themselves.  All you can hope to achieve is to be transparent – and allow understanding to occur naturally.

p231, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7   

The Tantric joke

   We feel ourselves to be solid, yet we are nervous about our existence.  We feel our world to be coherent at one moment; and at another, the whole fabric of our life-event can seem a trifle questionable.  If we never experience our intrinsic spaciousness – we can only ever experience this alternation as: pain, discomfort, alienation; boredom, panic or dissatisfaction.  But as soon as we begin to practise silent sitting meditation; to stare into the nature of what we are; we become a little suspicious of our life-event. We become intrigued by the transparent ambivalences of our situation. It could be quite possible that things are both not what they seem; and, simultaneously, exactly what they seem. This could be called the Tantric joke, the vajra sense of humour that continually prompts us to ask the questions: What is going on? Why is this solidity so solid and also so insubstantial? Why am I consumed by so much certainty and uncertainty?

p47, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

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 

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

We can laugh at our compulsion, fearfulness, and wilfulness

 Through the development of spaciousness, our patterning can become totally open and transparent.  We can view perception.  We can recognise intention.  We can motivate responses.
When our patterning becomes transparent, we can laugh at the compulsion of our desire, at the fearfulness of our aversion, and at the wilfulness of our stupidity.  Every moment becomes an opportunity for freedom and realisation.
Ultimately, finding presence of awareness in the dimension of the moment is the experience of non-dual emptiness and form.

p150, Spacious Passion Ngakma Nor'dzin, Aro Books, 2006 ISBN: 978-0-9653948-4-0