Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales

Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales
Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales

Monday 28 May 2018

Our senses are the communicative quality of the elements.

Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon Our senses are the communicative quality of the elements in which the dance of existence and non-existence allows ‘self’ and ‘other’ to be both separate and non-separate.  Spaciousness gives birth to ideation; wind carries sound, vibration, and the possibility of hearing; fire ignites vision; fluidity encourages fragrance and tasting; and substance phenomena allow touch.  Our intellectual faculty is comprised of elemental patterns – as are our emotions.  The sub-atomic structure of being is the play of the
thig-lés – the five essential elemental expressions of emptiness from which everything comes into being.

p197, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon  Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen,  Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-3-3

Monday 21 May 2018

This rare disease—kindness

Wisdom Eccentrics  Whenever I remember this story (told by Künzang Dorje Rinpoche), I look at my life for symptoms of this rare disease—kindness—and whatever signs of health I exhibit cause me to stimulate new areas of infection.  The most saddening aspect of life for me, is to witness immunity to the disease of kindness either in myself or others.  Although I initially preferred the first story, the second has caused me to reflect a great deal on the nature of kindness – and how it can be encouraged in the world.  The idea of kindness as an illness—with all its attendant concepts of infection and contagion—is highly creative.  This manner of expression is a brilliant example of how Tantra turns language on it head.

p138, Wisdom Eccentrics : Rumours of realisation as told by Künzang Dorje Rinpoche with additional tales of the unexpected.  
Ngakpa Chögyam,  Aro Books, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9653948-6-4

Monday 14 May 2018

The real nature of experience

We artificially separate experience into two fields: ‘perception’ and ‘field of perception’.  The term ‘perception’ applies to the way in which we register the presence of the world through our sense faculties.  The term ‘field of perception’ applies to the world that we perceive.  With divisive logic we distance ourselves analytically from direct experience.  We lose our ‘knowing’ and end up 'knowing about’'. 
Our perception and field of perception are mutually self-creating.  What we see incites a reaction which influences how we see it.  How we view things changes how they are.  Enlightened Mind is divisionless.  Our perception and field of perception are completely and utterly interconnected, and this fundamental indivisibility is the real nature of experience.

p31, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

Monday 7 May 2018

We do not employ the term mindfulness

The word ‘mindfulness’ is not a bad translation of dranpa (dran pa—smriti in Sanskrit) but it is more accurately translated as ‘resting in recollection’.  Recollection does not mean thinking about a past event—but ‘being present with what has been received as teaching’.  The word ‘awareness’ is not an equivalent for ‘dranpa’ – because ‘awareness’ relates to rigpa or non-dual awareness.

p63-64, Emailing the Lamas from Afar, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9653948-5-7