All our attempts to establish security fail

   We survey our perceptual horizon and categorise everything that appears on it as: proving our existence in terms of duality; disproving our existence in terms of duality; or as some vague neutrality, which presents no opportunity for manipulation either way.  All our attempts to establish security fail.  Our efforts fail because they are based on maintaining the illusion of duality.    
   There is no way that we can establish the security we’re looking for as long as we operate from the principle that duality actually functions.  In this sense, enlightenment is the continual realisation that duality is not functional. 

p108, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

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

Self-secret buddhas

 

   Vajrayana begins with the premise that dualism is a state of prejudice against non-duality. On the basis of this prejudice against non-duality, infinite forms of prejudice will manifest in order to obfuscate non-duality.

Beings may exist in a state of dualistic distortion, but that which is distorted is a distorted version of non-duality. Because of this, it is possible to employ the energy of duality to transform “what seems to be” into “what actually is”.

Beings are self-secret buddhas and the powerful methodology of Vajrayana enables the realization of this through the empty form of the yidam. From the perspective of the visionary practices of Vajrayana, it is possible to transform every aspect of prejudice against otherness—of every possible description.

Ngak'chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen in Global BuddhistDoor Magazine  posted on the  Drala Jong Facebook page 20th March 2020  

Keep calm and carry on

   The best way that we know for people to keep calm—or become calm in the first place—is called ཞི་གནས་ / zhi gNas / Shi-né. 

This has been translated in many ways: the most common being Calm Abiding. Literally it means Peace Remain.   We usually translate this as ‘Remaining Uninvolved With What Arises’.  This is the only way there is – or has ever been.  There are many different practices.  There are many different mantras.  There are many different visualisations – but, basically, if one has no basis in ཞི་གནས་ then these marvellous practices will be of no use in any case.
  
So, this returns us to Silent Sitting.  If you are calm then, everyone around you will become calm – simply by knowing that you are calm.  The more people who become calm the calmer people will become.

Posted by Ngak'chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen to sangha on WhatsApp 14th March 2020

Like walking through a minefield

   Life is a little like walking through a minefield – you never know when you might step on something—a circumstance of your life—that will explode a programmed pattern of perception.  If the cause is not encountered the reaction will not occur.  One of the principles of the monastic path is to regulate the secondary causes—in terms of life circumstances—as much as possible to avoid triggering unhelpful reactions that deepen patterning.  The tantric path however says: ‘Bring it all on!’ so that you have the opportunity to transform distorted perception and response into enlightened perception and response.

p169, Illusory Advice Ngakma Nor’dzin and Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, Aro Books, 2015, ISBN: 978-1898185-37-6 

We are prejudiced against our own natural state

 Fear of otherness lies at the root of prejudice.  From the point of view of duality – nothing is as ‘other’ or dissimilar as the nondual state.  From the perspective of nonduality we are prejudiced against our own natural state.  In the condition of dualistic estrangement – our own beginningless enlightenment becomes alien to us, and we are therefore antagonistic to it in every form it assumes.  From this primitive antagonism every type of prejudice arises. 

p156, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

The otherness of emptiness

     Vajrayana is based upon the experience of ‘the otherness of emptiness’ – so otherness holds no fear for those who practice according to the principle of transformation.  Tantrikas develop vajra pride which—because it is founded on emptiness—allows the possibility of assuming infinite forms of otherness: otherness of colour, otherness of shape, otherness of gender, otherness of disposition, and limitless other varieties of otherness.  Every variant of vajra otherness is a glorious manifestation of the nondual state as it sparkles through the appearance of every permutation of our humanity.

p155-156, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

Blue is blue

  The context of Vajrayana is one in which symbolism is self evident: blue is blue; green is green; red is red; white is white; yellow is yellow; raven caws; wolf howls, frog croaks, bull bellows; scorpion arches its tail; cockerel crows; snake hisses; pig shrieks; sky is azure; sky is grey; sky glimmers with stars; horse whinnies; rain is refreshing; leaves are green; tears are wet; skin is soft; espresso steams; brandy leaves a pleasant burning sensation on the palate; wind moves; snow flurries; water sparkles —— meaning is no longer hidden within the search for meaning.

Ngak'chang Rinpoche, posted on Telegram to apprentices, 21st February 2020, 
and The Bristol Talks: Ngak'chang Rinpoche on Vajrayana Topics on the Aro Community website.   

Glimmer with limitlessness

   The more one understands the symbolism of Vajrayana, the more one understands that everyday life IS Vajrayana – and, when that begins to become apparent, one’s life commences to glimmer with limitlessness. 

Empowerment performs itself all the time: at the bus stop; on the peak of a mountain; in the cinema; in the midst of a Finnish forest; in the bath; on Freak Street in Kathmandu; on horseback in the Laughing Water range of the Rocky Mountains; and, on the factory floor. 

This may sound banal, or profound, but the profundity of it is often too subtle to see. 

One has to authentically understand the context of Vajrayana if one is to stand a chance of everyday life exploding into symbolic meaning. 

Ngak'chang Rinpoche, posted on Telegram to apprentices, 21st February 2020, 
and The Bristol Talks: Ngak'chang Rinpoche on Vajrayana Topics on the Aro Community website. 

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

‘Thinking’ and ‘the thinker’

   In the non-dual state we are present with the free movement of whatever arises.  Thought is simply an ornament of perception.  ‘Thinking’ and ‘the thinker’ are not isolated events which solicit each other for reassurance.  Thinking and concept can simply exist as ornaments of the non-dual state – free of the artificial function in which they are goaded into providing proofs that we are solid, permanent, separate, continuous, and defined.
There is —actually—no way to understand the free manifestation of concept within the non-dual state from the perspective of dualism. 

p206, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

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

Trust

   Trusting yourself  – in the sense of meditation, is a question of expanding—of slowly expanding the expression of sitting.  Through sitting, self-existent communication is discovered as the nature of the world.  It becomes a completely real world, rather than a world of bewilderment and pain.  You begin to trust yourself because you begin to trust the nature of the elements; the nature of your perception; the nature of your emotions; the nature of your physicality; and, the nature of your psychology.  It is all there to see and it is an open space.

p205, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Taking a shine

    When attraction and desire are awakened—and especially within the romantic sexual dimension—two things happen simultaneously: we shine, and we also perceive the shining quality of our focus of desire—we start to see being ‘in the pink’.  This is also why people’s pupils dilate.  The pupils dilate in order to see more of the shining quality.  This shining quality is the lustre of the primordial state as it manifests within the dimension of nirmanakaya.

p225, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7
   

There is great value in simple-mindedness

   Life has a way of becoming complex whether we like it or not – and then all we can do is to be simple in relation to it.  
There is great value in simple-mindedness – and especially of a certain ‘unsophisticatedness’ when it comes to Dharma.
Those who absorb too much in terms of ‘Dharma sophistry’ become blind to the precision, directness, straightforwardness, and fundamental wholesomeness of essential Buddhism.

p232-233, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Naturalness

   I no longer use the word ‘enlightenment’ when I can help it.  It has been horribly overused and does not actually represent a direct translation of a Tibetan or Sanskrit term.  We use the term non-duality.  The word ‘nowness’, as spoken of by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, is important in Buddhism – especially any tradition which emphasises silent sitting.  
We tend to discuss naturalness – but it has the same meaning.  Naturalness is relaxed.  Naturalness is relaxing into the present moment.

p234, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

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 

Staring anew

    Starting anew while standing in the stinking crap heap of one’s old mess is the only place anyone can ever start anew.  There is no other place.  That is essential to the dynamic of Vajrayana.  You—just as you are—is the ideal and only starting point.

p235, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

More in common with a spanner or monkey wrench

   The scope of intellect is rather narrow.  Although it can be used to point beyond itself, in terms of the teachings, it has more in common with a spanner or a monkey wrench than with our innate capacity of clarity.  Once you get a handle on this idea, you’ll be able to recognise when intellect is out of it’s depth.  At that point you’ll be able to make a springboard out of the stuff of intellect and dive off into the sky of experience.

p83, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

The voltage of pure panic

The power of Tantra doesn’t go with wanting to be calm.  It goes with being willing to ride the voltage of pure panic!  In Tantra, we have some knowledge of the calm of ‘non-arising’ – the state without definitions; the state of emptiness.  So; when we recognise this state of emptiness, as the basis of what we are, we can then turn round and face phenomena with fierce compassion!  The spirit of heroism embraces the tumultuous flood of existence, in which: war and peace; calm and panic alternate – but, have the same intrinsic taste.

p16, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4