The fire of wisdom can burn away illusion

To practise Tantra is to plummet into wisdom-fire.  The word ‘fire’ is used because fire transforms solidity into emptiness and shows us the empty nature of the material world.  Fire is a fascinating element – it’s both tangible and intangible.  You can’t pick it up – you can only pick up what it’s burning. It’s intangible and yet it destroys or devours tangibility.  It has great power to transform substance, yet it seems to be substanceless.  So wisdom-fire as a Tantric term carries the sense in which wisdom; that is to say primordial wisdom, can change the world as we perceive it quite radically.  The fire of wisdom can burn away illusion – it can reduce our own hard and substance-orientated concepts to ashes. 

p12, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4  

We have to let go of what we are

Dying means letting go of self-image and self-conception.  We have to let go of what we are and open ourselves to what we can un-become.  From a Buddhist point of view it is unbecoming not to un-become.  In order to un-become, we must let go of security and find the security of insecurity.  We must discover the freedom of insecurity in which security and insecurity dance as nondual display.  If we cannot let our past preconceptions die we have no future, and cannot experience the present.  Unless we can die, we cannot be alive in the moment – and the moment is all we ever have.

p87, Rays of the Sun, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books worldwide, 2010, 978-1-898185-06-2

The merest marginal moment

The question of death however, is subtle.  It is not merely an issue of when the last breath is taken.  Death pervades life.  Death is a continual presence.  Death assumes the form of: conclusion, termination, removal, exodus, exclusion, subtraction, confiscation, separation, parting, loss, departure, and in fact – any finale.  Death can be the merest marginal moment in which something mutates, misfires, or changes.  Death is not simply the day-by-day shift of the aging process which adds its lines to our faces, but the infinitesimal truncations which enable ‘old versions of ourselves’ to die and be replaced by rebirths in each passing moment. 

p182, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3 

People ...mostly could not help themselves

Apart from the sense of bemusement, there was an inherent obligation to be kindly rather than indulgent – whenever the choice lay before me.  People were as they were – and mostly could not help themselves.  I had come to understand that I could—and therefore should—step outside the framework in which I had to take offence at anything. 

p350-351, Goodbye Forever: miscellaneous memoirs of an English Lama, Volume One Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2020, ISBN 978-1-898185-51-2 

Gö kar chang lo vows

The fact that I’d taken gö kar chang lo vows was always with me.  It affected everything I did or said.  I had become careful: far more careful than I had ever been before – but also curiously carefree.  The vicissitudes of life were vaguely like a pantomime: they were scenarios with which I had to engage with whatever earnestness seemed suitable to the occasion.  It was possible to be earnestly light-hearted in the face of whatever came along. 

p350, Goodbye Forever: miscellaneous memoirs of an English Lama, Volume One Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2020, ISBN 978-1-898185-51-2 

Romance goes beyond limitations

How can one be open to romance when one is tied up in limitations which govern how it can occur? Basically we need as few limitations as possible.  Body type is a limitation which causes people to restrict themselves too much – especially at this point in history.  People have been surprised to hear us say that a yogi or yogini should be attracted to all body types: peaceful, joyous, and wrathful.  That is to say: thin, sensuous, and large.  One cannot entertain concepts of being a tantrika if there are body types to which one could feel no attraction. 

p152-153, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

Existential kaleidoscope

A kyil’khor can be created from coloured chalk dust.  Unexpectedly a wind blows – and the pattern is no longer what it was.  One can grieve the lost pattern – or enjoy the mingling of colours and the strange shapes created by the staggered disintegration.  Life appeared to be some sort of existential kaleidoscope in which the meaning could only be in the moment.  If one tried to extend the meaning beyond the moment – the meaning could become increasingly meaningless.

p167, Goodbye Forever: miscellaneous memoirs of an English Lama, Volume One Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2020, ISBN 978-1-898185-51-2 

There is a gap there

If we want to cultivate some understanding of what is meant by emptiness, we have to look for the reflections of emptiness within the mirror of the world of form. We need to look at the moments when our experience is transitional; when one sequence of events seems to conclude, and the beginning of another has not yet become obvious. There is a gap there – and that gap is emptiness.

p33, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

Simple, ordinary, and direct

Bodhicitta is its own success.  One who has authentically taken the bodhisattva vow is spontaneously pleasant and accommodating – a gentleman, a gentlewoman.  Seriously considering the benefit of others before oneself deflates the pneumatic pressure of duality.  It is extraordinarily simple, ordinary, and direct—saints of all denominations have been doing it for thousands of years.  They all did the same thing.  They let go of self interest (the individual salvation of the pratyékabuddhayana) and are therefore free of the strategising ploys which inhibit cheerfulness. 

p122, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Simple, blunt, uncompromising

When we commit ourselves to practice and to opening, we commit ourselves to change – and when we change, we die.  We have to die in order to change.  If we cannot die we cannot change.  This is a simple, blunt, uncompromising statement of fact. 

p87, Rays of the Sun, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books worldwide, 2010, 978-1-898185-06-2

Obsession

I'd succeeded and failed simultaneously.  The failure?  That was obvious – but what of the success?  That comprised of my having had the single pointed intention to do what I had done.  I'd carried through with a plan.  I'd not given up.  That was important for a Buddhist practitioner.  The lengths to which obsession carries a person, in terms of activity, is the mark of someone who stands the chance of realising goals in Buddhism. 

p75, Goodbye Forever: miscellaneous memoirs of an English Lama, Volume One Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2020, ISBN 978-1-898185-51-2

Then the mind begins to awaken

The rider must focus on the horse.  In this way, the rider is empty in relation to the form of the horse.  Through this relationship, the horse is able to respond fully, and achieve its potential.  The meditator learns emptiness in order to clarify the relationship with form, and thereby discover the nonduality of emptiness and form.  Then the mind begins to awaken.  

p10, Battlecry of Freedom  Ngakma Nor'dzin, Aro Books Worldwide, 2019, ISBN 978-1-898185-46-8  

The flow of whatever is

   Being is continually poised on the brink of effortlessness – but continually creates distractions in order to sustain the sense of divorced individuation.  These delirious, distressing, and dreary deviations from effortlessness are the mechanisms employed to maintain the illusion of duality.  Nonduality, on the other hand, is completely relaxed in the flow of whatever is.

p39-40, 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 

A provocative irritant

  As soon as shi-nè is practised with sufficient determination, it is discovered that ‘definitions of existence’ are a barrier to enjoying existence.  The barrier is built of feelings of insubstantiality, fear, isolation, agitation, and phlegmatic tedium.  Shi-nè is a provocative irritant to each of these feelings.  Life also irritates these feelings – but not as definitively.  The dualistic rationale continually seeks definition – so, in a sense, shi-nè causes the relaxation of that continual struggle for self-definition.

p31-32, 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 

Worthwhile just as we are

We have ideas about ourselves—about how we should be or could be—and we want other people to believe those self-images.  We also want the Lama to believe these self-images.  The problem is that as long as we want the Lama to believe our self-images we will never begin to practise.  We will never take the first step.  If we wish the Lama to accept us as being better than we are – there is no hope of anything apart from stagnation.  Once we have shed inhibition about dropping self-image however, the situation can improve radically.  We can then realise that we are fundamentally good – and that our goodness surpasses notions of worthy and unworthy.  We can be worthwhile just as we are.

p153, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Abandon inhibition

Facing yourself in terms of Vajrayana means acknowledging the worst and being prepared—immediately—to work with that as the basis of practice.  Once we decide simply to see what is there – we might see ourselves as pitiful specimens.  We might simultaneously see ourselves as fortunate.  A Vajrayana practitioner will naturally have talents as well as handicaps.  The important factor is being able to abandon inhibition.  The major inhibition is self-image. 

p153, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7

Earth, water, fire, air, space

    Earth is the nondual quality of solidity and intangibility.  Water is the nondual quality of permanence and impermanence.  Fire is the nondual quality of separateness and inseparability.  Air is the nondual quality of continuity and discontinuity.  Space is the nondual quality of definition and lack of definition.  As soon as we attempt to split the qualities and adhere only to the form qualities of the elements, we create samsara.  The form qualities of emptiness cannot be split from the emptiness qualities of form.

p27, Rays of the Sun, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books worldwide, 2010, 978-1-898185-06-2

This is here, that is there

With the arising of the elements comes the arising of time and space.  As soon as anything arises within primal space – co-ordinates come into being: ‘this is here, that is there. I look at this, then I see that. I see this on the background of that. I experience things in sequence.’  When there is no arising from primal space, time and space cease to exist.  In that condition these terms have no meaning.  The elements create direction out of their own intrinsic nature and time comes into being as the basis of their interpenetrating diversity.  From this essential visionary perspective, time exists as the flux that links endless focal points of tangible and intangible experience.

p75, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

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 

Dzogchen becomes feasible

     Recognition of the nondual state is the basis for approaching Dzogchen – but, in order to enter the path of self-liberation, perceptual phenomena must come to be perceived from the experiential standpoint which is empty of references.  It is only when the undivided nature of ‘that which arises’ and ‘that from which phenomena arise’ is first glimpsed that Dzogchen becomes feasible.

p17, 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