Realise the potential of non-dual view

"The Four Thoughts teach us everything we need to know to be authentic practitioners. We can embrace the gentleness, kindness, and immaculacy of the warrior. We can embrace the dynamic energy, fierceness, and directness of the warrior. We can realise the potential of non-dual view on a moment by moment basis."

p179, Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books, 2007, 978-0-9653948-4-0

We play with our life experience

"Death, impermanence, things that go wrong, laughter, colour, autumn leaves, light sparkling in puddles, cars breaking down, relationships ending, falling in love - all are the play of existence, the movement and change that is reality. It is only experienced as unsatisfactory when we try to stop movement and change, or see movement and change as painful. Once we have a real understanding of the cause of our experience of samsara as unsatisfactory, we can engage with it in a light-hearted manner. We play with our life experience, rather than feeling like a victim of our circumstances."

p157, Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books, 2007, 978-0-9653948-4-0

Patterning becomes transparent

"Once we are able to dwell in the experience of emptiness between moments of movement in the mind, and even expand the scope of that emptiness, our patterning becomes transparent. It is revealed and laid bare. We can experience the naked empty nature of our perception, and joyfully play with the movement of intention and response."

p133, Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books, 2007, 978-0-9653948-4-0

Impermanence is a cause for celebration

"Impermanence is a cause for celebration. Impermanence is our opportunity to discover presence. Present moments are infinite. They will never end. We will never cease to have opportunities to start again. We will never cease to have opportunities to experience presence."

p109, Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books, 2007, 978-0-9653948-4-0

Honourably upholding the cause of kindness and awareness

"To activate our potential as human, we must live our lives as warriors: fearless, without need of reward or recognition, honourably upholding the cause of kindness and awareness. This is the scarcity and preciousness of human rebirth."

p75, Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books, 2007, 978-0-9653948-4-0

Return to openness

"The most efficacious practice is always that which enables one to return to openness, and to the possibility of the direct experience of the non-duality of emptiness and form."

p51, Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books, 2007, 978-0-9653948-4-0

The still potential of the-nature of-mind

"Cloud mind is the ebb and flow of conceptual mind, and Sky Mind is the still potential of the-nature of-mind. Clouds arise in the sky, flit across it and decorate it, but do not limit or define the vast empty blueness of the sky. Sky always has the potential for cloud to arise. Cloud is a natural aspect of sky, but sky is not limited by cloud. Sky exists irrespective of cloud, but cloud cannot exist irrespective of sky."

p19, Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books, 2007, 978-0-9653948-4-0

Leap, without reservation

"Through the practice of philosophy one might expect to arrive at one's own conclusions about the nature of being - such investigations having been mostly self-referential. Through the practice of the religion of Dharma one discovers that the nature of being has already been understood by one's teachers, and that it can be discovered for ourselves through the methods of practice they reveal. Hence, to fully engage with Dharma, we eventually have to let go of the limitations of our own view - and leap ... without reservation, into Dharma-view"

p3, Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books, 2007, 978-0-9653948-4-0

The chance to be real and vivid

"Vajrayana offers those with kindness, honesty, and courage the chance to be real and vivid, at a time when cultural horizons are shrinking. We cannot go forth like Lewis and Clark, in search of the passage west - there are no such new trails to blaze on behalf of others. The only compassionate trail left to seekers of such high adventure is the Vajrayana"

p67, Dangerous Friend, Rig'dzin Dorje, Shambhala, 2001, 1-57062-857-2

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

Not just for this life

"The relationship with the vajra master is not just for this life, but is renewed in all future lives until enlightenment is attained. When enlightenment eventually dawns, the student will have become the equal of 'all the enlightened ones of the past'. Until then, the magnetism of this particular vajra master's transmission, the single key to the future, exceeds the inspiration even of the legends of other Buddhas"

p33, Dangerous Friend, Rig'dzin Dorje, Shambhala, 2001, 1-57062-857-2

The possibility of everything

"Once we perceive the small space of our habitual mind, we begin to long for the open vastness we have glimpsed in the eyes of the Lama. We begin to understand that in 'giving up' the dubious freedom of following our dualistic rationale, we are in fact losing nothing and gaining the possibility of everything."

p20, Dangerous Friend, Rig'dzin Dorje, Shambhala, 2001, 1-57062-857-2

More important than this one life

"The relationship between the vajra master and the vajra student should be the most important relationship in one's life as a spiritual aspirant. This is the only relationship that we can have which ultimately leads to enlightenment. ... For a Vajrayana student it is more important than this one life."

p11, Dangerous Friend, Rig'dzin Dorje, Shambhala, 2001, 1-57062-857-2

Nothing but what you actually are

"To receive empowerment is to be struck by lightning in the gentlest possible manner. To be burnt by searing kindness into nothing but what you actually are. ... To wake up, softly startled, at one vivid moment in time. To realise that you have been asleep; and, that suddenly you are both older than the earth and younger than you can remember."

p211, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, 1-898185-03-4

The radiant space of choiceless choice

"To enter vajra commitment is to leap from the perfect precipice. To find yourself in the radiant space of this choiceless choice, is the very heart of Tantra. To leap open-eyed into the shining emptiness of the Lama's wisdom display, and to experience the ecstatic impact of each dynamic gesture of the Lama's method display is the essential luminosity and power of the path."

p175, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, 1-898185-03-4

The terrifyingly compassionate gamester

"The Lama is the ecstatic, wild and gentle figure who short-circuits your systems of self-referencing. The Lama is the only person in your life who cannot be manipulated. The Lama is the invasion of unpredictability you allow into your life, to enable you to cut through the convolutions of interminable psychological and emotional processes. The Lama is the terrifyingly compassionate gamester who reshuffles the deck of your carefully arranged rationale."

p141, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, 1-898185-03-4

Symbols of ourselves

"We all question our lives at certain moments. This is somewhat unavoidable. Our beginningless enlightenment continually sparkles though, and causes us the irritation of wanting to question what is going on. This happens at various junctures in our lives; and when it does, we are confronted with the inconvenient fact that we are somehow symbols of ourselves. We're not completely certain that we're the real thing."

p93, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, 1-898185-03-4

Our complexity is merely a distortion of the energy of enlightenment

"If we are able to enter the empty state, then the complexity of the khyil-khor replaces the complexity of our unenlightenment. We replace the convoluted patterns of our frustration with the khyil-khor's shimmering irridescence. It's at this brink of experience that we realise something outlandishly potent: our complexity is merely a distortion of the energy of enlightenment. It is then that the appearance of the khyil-khor becomes a transformative experience."

p69, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, 1-898185-03-4

The Limitless Pattern of Creation and Destruction

"We exist in continual flux. We move, and are moved, in the dance of appearances - in the limitless pattern of creation and destruction. The perceptible and imperceptible seem to make each other a mystery."

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

Tantra is constantly performing itself

"Because Tantra is constantly performing itself; in us; through us; and around us - we can either acknowledge it, by taking hold of the bare electric cables of existence and non-existence, or; try to pretend, as hard as possible, that it's not happening."

p29, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, 1-898185-03-4