Every experience

The khandros and pawos are our environment: the earth, water, fire, air, and space which manifest as the conditions in which we find ourselves.  When we realise that the entire phenomenal world is the dance of the khandros and pawos – every experience becomes a teaching.  Every experience becomes the possibility for liberation. 

 p99, Rays of the Sun, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books worldwide, 2010, 978-1-898185-06-2 

Practitioners’ best friends

Khandro and pawo are the female sky-dancing and male warrior aspects of the nondual state.  We discover the khandro principle when we begin to discover our spaciousness.  We discover the pawo principle when we begin to discover our innate compassion.  The khandros and pawos are the circumstances of the path – practitioners’ best friends.

p99, Rays of the Sun, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books worldwide, 2010, 978-1-898185-06-2    

Everything seems to fall apart

Our lives do seem to go through phases when there is more emptiness.  Everything trundles along nicely for a while and then suddenly everything seems to fall apart.  Emptiness happens.  Do not read significance into this – it is just what is happening now.  Recognising this emptiness and attempting to relax with it is heroic.  This is practice.

p188, Illusory Advice Ngakma Nor’dzin and Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, Aro Books, 2015, ISBN: 978-1898185-37-6 

Simple, clean and straightforward

Everyone relapses into neurotic patterning all the time.  Regret is useful, but shame simply adds another layer of neurosis to plough through.  Regret the relapse and move on.  Shame is actually holding on to it and not allowing yourself to move on.  Regret the action and let it go – this is simple, clean and straightforward.

p175, Illusory Advice Ngakma Nor’dzin and Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, Aro Books, 2015, ISBN: 978-1898185-37-6 

Restaurant Reality

I was far from sick of the world, even though it had its lows as well as its highs.  I was currently riding pretty high – and although I was aware that I needed to find the one taste of pleasure and pain, I had no objection at all to pleasure.  Maybe I’d just have to accept that you had to choose both from the menu at Restaurant Reality.  Would I ever be able to do that?  I both wanted it and feared it.

p179, Goodbye Forever: miscellaneous memoirs of an English Lama, Volume One Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2020, ISBN 978-1-898185-51-2  

Some kind of miracle

I was always amazed with the way that phenomena could be brought into being.  Even when I was part of the act of creation – the creation was still some kind of miracle.  There was no God – but every creative human being—every artist—was some kind of god.  Creativity was a natural phenomenon that pulsed in us all – and our rôle as beings was to allow that to surface from the primal ocean of existence. 

p173, Goodbye Forever: miscellaneous memoirs of an English Lama, Volume One Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2020, ISBN 978-1-898185-51-2 

Buddhism and Blues

There was something about being seated on a motorcycle that fitted both Buddhism and Blues – especially a chopped easy-rider motorcycle.  I had to concentrate in a relaxed manner – alert, yet not anxiously alert.  Being aware of the manœuvres of other motorists—which were not always precise—was a form of open-ended vigilance.  It was delightful that anything could be meditation if one was open to that dimension of experience.

p168-169, Goodbye Forever: miscellaneous memoirs of an English Lama, Volume One Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books Worldwide, 2020, ISBN 978-1-898185-51-2  

What matters

It does not matter how many teachings we may have attended.  It does not matter how many empowerments we have received.  What matters is how kind and open we are becoming.  

p92, Rays of the Sun, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books worldwide, 2010, 978-1-898185-06-2 

The inseparability of sameness and difference

In terms of emptiness – we are indeed all one.  Your emptiness.  My emptinesss.  The emptiness of everyone.  They are all ‘one’ in all being the same.  Emptiness however, is one aspect of reality.  The other aspect is form.  Form is that which continually arises from emptiness.  In terms of form, we are certainly not all one – we are all different.  Nonduality is the inseparability of this sameness and difference.

p25, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon 2nd edition, Khandro Déchen and Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books, 2021, ISBN 978-0-9653948-7-1

The dramatic dimension of dance

Buddhist Tantra explores the nondual matrix of emptiness and form.  It delves into the dramatic dimension of dance.  When the nature of the dance is realised, extrication from the vast and subtle sexual embrace of each shining moment becomes unfeasible. 

p22, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon 2nd edition, Khandro Déchen and Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books, 2021, ISBN 978-0-9653948-7-1  

The desire for happiness

Theories based on the desire for happiness would have us believe that anything is possible.  According to Vajrayana however, the desire for happiness is not concomitant with knowledge of the nature of happiness.  The desire for happiness and happiness itself are mutually exclusive within any dualistic paradigm.  This is due to the fact that attempting to achieve happiness is undertaken in a manner which undermines the possibility of attaining happiness. 

p15, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon 2nd edition, Khandro Déchen and Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books, 2021, ISBN 978-0-9653948-7-1  

Beyond concepts of illusion

Vajrayana goes beyond concepts of ‘personal illusion’ and ‘group illusion’, into a space where the effect of entering the dimension of view is more important than whether the view is ‘hard wired’ in terms of the fundamental biochemical structure of human beings.  This, perhaps, is a paradoxical beginning – but when has the subject of romance ever been adequately described in terms of rationalism or scientific objectivity?

p11, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon 2nd edition, Khandro Déchen and Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books, 2021, ISBN 978-0-9653948-7-1  

The fist that lands on your nose

Tantra is very complex. But; it is also absolutely simple – incredibly straightforward; totally direct. It is not just a matter of its being as apparent as the nose on your face – it is more a case of its being as immediately obvious as the fist that lands on your nose. At some level, you cannot pretend that it’s not happening. 

p4, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4  

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The dance

We are the dance of existence and non-existence.  Unless we know this – Tantra is impossible.  But whether we understand it or not – Tantra is continually performing itself; it is what is happening.  But this is somewhat poetic.  What can such extraordinary statements mean?

p4, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4  

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Far too tightly clenched

The unrestricted energy that is Tantra is always within our reach; but, we cannot touch it – because our hands are often too tightly clenched. There seems to be something we’re hanging onto rather desperately – something we’re afraid we might lose if we slackened our grip.

 p5, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4  

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The freedom to experience

When allowing the emotional realm to be as it is, the freedom to experience the texture of life arises directly – and it becomes possible to sidestep the sour orthodoxy of preordained likes, dislikes, and habitual concepts.  Allowing perceptual life to be as it is, everything is self-liberated as it is – resulting in freedom from restrictive social rôles, conventional preoccupations, conservative anxieties, and mundane personal expectations.

p12, 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 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

A certain degree of chutzpah

A tantrika requires a certain degree of chutzpah.  But that’s not to say that Tantra can’t help you short-circuit insecurity, fear, loneliness, anxiety, and depression.  This may sound like a complete contradiction – but there is an escape clause: devotion.  You can short-circuit all your neurotic sensitivities if you have complete confidence in the practice.  But you can never let that slip.

 p215, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

Each Mind-moment

Ecstatic appreciation of every moment of experience is simply what happens when we give up on our attempts to create reality according to the banal dictates of security.  When I say that “the texture of whatever happens is, in itself, the implicit meaning of every Mind-moment”, there is the sense in which each Mind-moment is, in it’s nakedness, the state of enlightenment.

p209, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

The sexual dimension of being

Tantrikas remain always in ecstatic embrace with the khandro or pawo.  Tantrikas refrain from subverting the sexual dimension of their being in the attempt to avoid authentic relationship with the khandro or pawo.  They avoid obfuscating the inner pawo or inner khandro by objectifying women or men according to sexually distorted or degraded stereotypes.

Aro Encyclopaedia Index: From the commentaries by Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen on the ’ug-Kyi Lab-Nga – the five Owl Precepts from the gTérmas of Khyungchen Aro Lingma.

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Drala Jong