This comes with love… at the turning of the year, towards light and joy… and with gratitude for the innumerable gestures of wisdom and connectivity through time which are linked with this chapter of brief teachings. You can now listen to the audio recording of this chapter from the book here or via the drop-down menu under Audio/Video.
When an oyster finds a piece of grit inside its shell-house it is stimulated to produce an exudate called nacre as protection from the irritation. This covers the grit , softening its sharpness and gradually enclosing it. So pearls are formed from a build up of these layers around a tiny piece of grit – or some other particle which has been artificially introduced. Pearls come in different sizes and, to our human eyes in the light of day, they may seem to have an alluring lustre and colouration… and corresponding, perhaps enduring, value…
But the ‘pearl’ is a construct and is soft and liable to change… Degradation occurs quickly if there is insufficient humidity… if conditions are not right they lose their lustre or may even disintegrate.
Our bodies are similarly unstable… and our thoughts are inherently unreliable…nothing reliable there! We can check this out… There is a saying in English ‘nothing ever is or was but thinking makes it so’. Yet although thinking can make something seem so… it does not make it truly so.
Thankfully the buddha taught… teachings which lead and gesture, as all roads once led to Rome, towards the realisation our true nature… the unchanging basis of our existence – uncompounded, unconstructed – and encouraged awakening to this. But this true nature is not to be found in the ‘obvious’ places where we usually seek stability…not in self, others, control, riches, the world, not in any thing…
So while the rarest most lustrous of pearls has a high material value, teachings which help us wake up from the confusion of duality are priceless.
Some teachings gently help to see more clearly… encouraging curiosity, others come as a blast of wisdom which blows holes in the ephemeral shaky cover-up of our egoic constraints and certainties, exposing the lack of self-nature of the ‘grit’, of the grasper. With grasping released, the residual tatters fall away and with them the suffering and irritation which arose from the mistaken belief in duality.
Hoping you enjoy the teachings in the recording… and life : )
Well…I had imagined that the next post would be an audio-recording of a chapter from C.R. Lama Collected Works. However Peter, who does the technical work on this website, is not well and is currently in hospital. His treatment is working well but he is wisely pacing his work…and it seems that recording will be published very soon.
In the meantime, working with circumstances, like the ‘Potter’s Wheel’ film that used to fill the space between the main feature and the supplementary film at the cinema back in the day when reels of film had to be changed over between features…we can now offer you the Video recording of The Four Foundations of Mindfulness – Macclesfield talk 11 from 2010 on Vimeo…. on Youtube… as an audio recording
In this weekend of teaching: “Mindfulness is explored from different perspectives including psychotherapy, theravada and dzogchen. With mindfulness we can become intentionally attentive and careful so we are no longer at the mercy of whatever is happening. From the view of dzogchen we can be in the movement of the world as it changes and re-mind ourselves to relax back into integration.”
Those few sentences can’t encapsulate the breadth of the teaching but gesture towards its invitation into mindfulness of the body, of feeling, of the mind, and of dharmas. Towards a deep investigation into how our belief in the veridical nature of thoughts has us inhabiting a world of knowable ‘things’ as a ‘certain thing’. Towards seeing how and why fusion with and addiction to thoughts arises.. what we loose in this confusion and how to begin to ease out of the habit. So hopefully you will find this rather more precious and useful than a ‘time-filling’ film…yet the potters’s wheel analogy is somehow fitting. There’s a wheel, clay, movement, involvement…shaping…Some ‘thing’ seems to arise….something that can go back into the mass of clay…or we can become more involved in shaping… finally, using a wire, we cut this ‘some thing’ off from the base then ‘hard bake’ it. Ok with clay…. but are we are doing this with thoughts… take a look : )
Thanks to Chris Coppock who made the original recording and to Pedro for making this widely available…and wishing good health to all!
The list of currently available ‘Macclesfield teachings , both audio and video, since 2003 can be viewed here
This post will be ‘book-ended’ by audio-recordings from two of James Low’s books – the one in the previous post of the Dhammapada from Finding Freedom… and the next will be a chapter from The Collected Works of C.R. Lama.
These books, with others that James Low has written… often re-presenting texts which were the effulgence of the realisation of teachers of a different time and place in ways which make them more accessible to us… challenge, soften, inspire, and invite… helping to bring us closer to realising the ever-present truth of our existence…
One could not put a value to these books, which can be true lifetime companions…rather than a ‘once read – finished’ affair! Priceless indeed, yet price may put them out of reach. If this so for you then hopefully the information below will help to bring the book(s) you’d love into your hands, with a smile.
Sponsored Book Fund
Some people find the price of the books to be unaffordable and sadly this stops them accessing the books. Thanks to the generosity of a kind sponsor, a book fund has been set up to help whoever wants to buy books by James Low, in whatever language is useful for them.
The Fund has been created to give as many people as possible the opportunity to read, reflect and meditate on the teachings and practices in these books. The aim is to help as many people as we can who want to buy a book but cannot afford to. As far as possible the Fund will support people in buying a single copy of one, some, or all of the books written by James Low, including the books that have been translated into languages other than English.
It will run for a trial period to see if it works well.
If you would like to make use of this Fund, or have any questions, please email jameslowsbooks [at] pm [dot] me We will reply explaining how it works and what to do.
Please note that for the security of your personal and financial details PayPal will be used to reimburse you.
There is a permanent link to this information on the Books page on simplybeing.co.uk
A very precious jewel to reflect and reflect upon… one which illuminates the deep heart of the previous post… is offered in James’ teachings entitled Vulnerability as Hope.
If you’ve already watched this perhaps you may remember the ‘ghost’ explanation/connection which comes around mid-way!
But even if you have, and certainly if you haven’t, do take a (nother) look and listen.
These teaching are so rich that it’s unlikely that we are able to digest and incorporate them sufficiently well – to be able to reflect upon what this means for us, and become more aligned with the truths expressed – in just one sitting.
In the little group i facilitate the first fifteen minutes brings more than enough to the table to fill the stomach… And fifteen minutes chunks may be a very helpful way to try listening or re-listening… With space for the words to sink in… drop by drop…if we are very dry, otherwise so much just runs off us.
Walking in the desert, being so hot and tired and thirsty… then coming across a waterfall of clear cool water flowing over the rim of a rocky outcrop How amazing and wonderful it is to just stand underneath and let it flow over us…
As the words wash over us… we know they are good and refreshing…and, amidst the aridity of much that is around us, such relief…
But it’s on opening the mouth to drink, gently… gulp by gulp, that satisfaction’s found…
Look closely and what do you see.. . ‘You’ see…whatever ‘you’ take it to be… to mean….A face or two? ?Symbolic, Some leaves, hearts? From shape and colour our conceptual imagination can conceive … ‘ten thousand’ seeming things!!!…How amazing!
Some years ago on Halloween, some children came to the door and demanded ‘Trick-or-Treat’. I smiled and said ‘Trick’ … they were so surprised they did not know what to do or say…
Our selective attention, our expectations and projections, our assumptions our beliefs… are all ingredients with which a trickster or illusionist can work to manipulate and affect how we are likely to interpret our experience.
In a projector or ‘magic lantern’ a concave mirror, placed behind the light source, is used to focus the light from a source in the lantern… through a slide – a piece of glass with an image on it – placed in front of the light source… onto a lens at the front of the lantern. This lens can be altered to change the distance at which the magnified image became clear when focussed onto a screen.
If a slide with a suitable image is used, and the result is projected onto smoke then the resting appearances, observed in a darkened room by gullible observers, may be assumed to be ‘spectral.’ One definition of spectral is – ‘of or like a ghost’… another is – ‘of or concerning the spectrum, the band of colours of light’.
The second more accurate definition of what actually occurs is taken to be the first – ‘it’s a ghost!’ – when we bring all the interpretive ingredients on our side into the mix! Illusionists who forget their own hand in creating the shapes and shadows they project, and then believe that the illusion they created is real, are deluded… and well on the way to the kind of madness prevalent in the world.
Maybe a bit interesting, but what has this to do with me? Well, quite a lot because as the dharma explains, we live in an illusory, ungraspable world and how we actually manifest (notwithstanding our story-lines) is also illusory and ungraspable. It’s hard to see the truth of this… it doesn’t seem like this to us because we are ignorant of the karmically coloured lenses in the glasses we wear; ignorant of the mediating filters in our ears, our noses…all our senses… and while repeatedly singing, or sighing, the ‘song of me’ we are deaf to the truth of the way in which we and ‘others’ actually exist.
So we in samsara are illusionists…projectionists… who become delusional as we attribute a self-existence to the appearances which arise for us, imbuing them with our beliefs. We miss-take nature of these appearances, assuming solidity continuity and reliability and in misprisioning their true nature we delude ourselves and take them to be truly real. Lacking curiosity – the wobbly little ego seeks stability in certainty – this leads quickly to ‘I know it is so because I think so’… ‘whatever it, or they, seem to be (for me!)… has the ring of truth about it ‘….
The ‘ghosts’ of ourselves, the shadow-shades of our past confusion, patterns of relating… to which the ego-thoughts attach in insecurity… attribute solidity and give certainty of definition and value to colour shape and movement. In low-lighting ‘this’… and high-lighting ‘that’ aspect of experience – imputing, forming a particular perspective – and then taking the resultant con-fusion… that juxtaposition, brought togetherness, or compounding… as an accurate reading giving us the truth of the arising… we make it ‘real’ for us, although we cannot really…and believe in the products of our creativity….
and then… Oh! No!… Snap! We are trapped ….by our beliefs… into one of many possibilities of formation… including ghosts!
What nonsense!…you might say. But humans have the potential to experience many different states from heavenly to hellish, for a while…which may seem like a very long time! Can I rest, as presence, and move from that responsively? If not maybe there is something ghostly in the way of false identity getting in the way…acting as a limited shadow of my potential.
Without the dharma we wouldn’t have a ghost (ha! ha!) of a chance of realising any of this but happily, as with card tricks and the illusionists ‘magical display’… once we know for ourselves how the trick works we’re no longer so easily taken in, no longer so certain about and believing in the truth of our earlier conditioned interpretations.
With our deep habits – reliance on our thoughts and our beliefs, the patterns with which we identify… of thinking and activity, patterns which feel so much to be the truth of ‘me’… it can take much time and application or attention, listening study and meditation, to shrug ourselves free of these limitations…or maybe not so long depending on the students desire or aspiration and the teachers realisation and capacity*.
Maybe the little ‘ego-me’ tends to take things a bit too seriously… you must get it right! you mustn’t lose! or break or…. whatever the wraith we snag with energetically…
Spaciousness and kindness – the truth of us, can say ‘Aw c’mon, sweetie its o.k. relax… and relax more…it’s your display… tension, with humour, fades away…’
So ‘Welcome sweet ghosts… Here, have a chocolate finger … yes, have some more : ) ‘ Happily, sharing, dissolving becoming free-er than before….
Believe in ghosts?…
Perhaps we do unwittingly…
the thoughts that tell us how we ought to be echoes from the past arising presently
Believed in, tangled with these, our lived reality is shaped by ghosts
defining the truth for me, and you, and all that we can take to be ‘just as it seems to us’…
and we are lost…
Happily, a chink of wisdom’s light illuminates, reveals, explains our own birthright
and the innate integrity of all within mind’s pristine reality
As the Budhha said, of experienced phenomena, ‘mind is their chief and they are mind-made’
* there’s more to this…. and much else besides… in The Collected Works of C.R. Lama by James Low. Some audio recordings of the ‘Brief Teachings’ from this will be posted here soon.
Maybe quarter of a century ago the man I was living with suggested that we take a weeks holiday in a nudist colony in Croatia.
Gulp! Ummm errr? Well OK…. you would like to go… so I will errrrr…give it a go… I went ahead and booked it.
And having sunshine on the skin, the breezes, blue skies, pines trees and no encasement in a nylon swimming costume was actually delightful…as was – for those with febrile imaginations – reading my way through seven paperbacks!
Year later when James spoke, in an early Macclesfield talk, of ‘how to be naked’…this literal-minded beginner thought ‘well at least that’s something I can already do!’ Duh!!! Ha! Ha! Ha!
You’ll get my drift in a minute…
I wrote a post about ‘This is it‘– Revealing the Great Completion , James’ latest, profound and very beautiful, book back in July.
In August he launched this book at Watkins bookstore where they stock many of his books, and will post them to you. They recorded this event and uploaded it to their YouTube page so you can watch it here… and see for yourself exactly what kind of ‘artificial clothing’ he was inviting us to abandon, to move freely as the dancer on the cover above…
(hint..it’s not a manmade/womanmade synthetic swimming costume, yet there are parallels in the seemingly obligatory wraps and cover-ups of our disguise, printed with patterns which feel so very, essentially, ‘us’ )
Whether or not you are drawn towards buying the book the overview James gives in the video is, I think, very helpful.
The audio recordings of the summer camping retreat, now entitled ‘Letting nature show the way’,
are ready to listen to … this link will take you to them… Simplybeing.co.uk
Meeting together in a field in England was not possible for many of us this year… but happily Gareth made audio –recordings of the teachings and prepared them that so we can enjoy the sharing nonetheless…
Meeting together in a field in England was not so easy for many of us this year… but happily Gareth made audio recordings of the teachings and has prepared them for us to share. Here is the link to find them on Simplybeing.co.uk
I sent the email below to the little group I facilitate, then thought to widen the connection
Hi, Maybe you’re not coming on the retreat this year but there is a connection we share…wherever we are…on retreat, at work, at home and the words below from the book ‘Being Right Here’ …which the retreat organiser just sent round are words you could give… well, how much time would you feel is right to give… to contemplate their profundity? Especially given how much time we spend contemplating the non-sense aspect of the world! Your own mini-retreat with contemplation and meditation, at some point during this period, could be a possibility…?
Compassion without wisdom is limited partial biased, but if arising from wisdom it is inclusive and effort-free We all have this as our potential to manifest and these words below point to how that might be realised
Hope you enjoy them, the easing they invite and the summer-time xx wendy
Verse 34. from Being Right Here the book by James Low. A Dzogchen treasure text of Nuden Dorje. The mirror of clear meaning.
” Maintain emptiness and compassion without distraction. Always free of effort and struggle, contemplate the flow of awareness” The key thing is to be kind to yourself. The barriers we have to entering into presence are already hard enough. If we try to become great heroes and push our way through we will make the resistance even greater. Tenderness and love are always important. Being tender towards ourselves, being very finely attuned to what is going on. We are simply being present to whatever occurs, here and now.If somebody comes to us and tells us they have done terrible things and they are really upset by it, we are touched by that and we want to help them. All the stupid or bad things that we feel that we have done, the things that we feel ashamed about, we have only ever done them out of confusion or pain, out of ignorance. The path to integration is not through punishment but through tenderly accepting ourselves as we are, so we can come close to ourselves. And if we come close to ourselves then the most subtle breach of subject and object as two entities is gradually collapsed. And through the moment of loving ourselves very deeply and profoundly, which is at the heart of true meditation, we make this primary integration into our true nature.If we take up this tender attention it will take us into the depths of meditative evenness, which means the state in which the mind is not disturbed by anything that arises. And that will naturally integrate into our daily lives, where we find ourselves in the world with other people. If we can be relaxed, open and at ease in these two states, that is said to be awake. The natural condition is not against you, other people are not against you in your nature, primarily we against ourselves. When we get on the same side as ourselves, the world turns around and we start to feel this flow of energy flowing through us. And we start to awaken to the fact that we are nothing but this non dual integrated manifestation of presence.”
On the back cover of this book – ‘THIS IS IT’ – you’ll find James has written some explanations.
In the first paragraph he explains how the six distinct parts of the book offer key insights into the Buddhist understanding of how to free ourselves… whilst within the very situations which trap us.
Sounds good?
Then he explains the depth of the resource – ‘It offers diverse resources for study and practice. Covering detailed analysis of phenomena, tragedies of blind arrogance transformed through tantra, and awakening in the presence of Dzogchen.’
and follows this with two paragraphs of truth to contemplate and realise…each infinitely more valuable than a king’s ransom:
‘The past is gone, the future never comes, and our present is obscured by echoes of our vanished past… and dreams of our imagined future. Living in the miasma of our own mental activity we are the pulsations of our thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions. We invent what we take to be occurring and then believe that life is what we imagine it to be.
The Buddha dharma offers us many ways to awaken from this delusion and bring us ever closer to the actual. When we are present in and as our unchanging awareness the mistake of duality vanishes. Resting in our non-dual presence, every moment is complete in itself and our anxious need to do something, anything, falls away. No more make-believe, no more illusion, just ease and contentment in the simplicity that: THIS IS IT’
I have been engaging with this book for just a little while but would say, from my own experience, that opening to the variety of teachings therein… and responding to the images – beautiful, symbolic, striking, facilitates transformational connections outside of time and space with multiple manifestations of the truth of the buddha-dharma…not essentially different from those around us just now.
My own gratitude is deep, not just for the author’s wisdom but for all those who collaborated in bringing the book to life, applying their unique skills and loving energy… for our delight and ease-ing.’
– to be clearer and to include a bit more information –
so please, if you’d like to, take another look…
Refreshing the audio player …
This player seems a little unstable at present… so until that’s fixed here are some things to try if the chapter you are wanting to listen to shows an error message:
~ Click on the mp3 link underneath…it seems that often you can play it there despite the error message.
James has written an introduction inviting you to these recordings:
‘The Dhammapada is a book of excellent advice on how to manage the many trials and tribulations of life. Taught by the Buddha this is an ethical guide to disciplined and compassionate existence. The consequences of blind self-indulgence are revealed in wars, pandemics and the impending catastrophe of climate change. The word discipline is not very popular in current culture and seems to imply an unwelcome imposition. However for most of us, when we stop and review our life we find that our ego-self is frequently wild and untamed. When this is replicated in the billions of inhabitants of the earth it is not surprising that chaos is pervasive. However here we have a chance to listen to the deep and soothing words of the Buddha offering support and guidance for those who wish to live in harmony with others and with the world we all inhabit. May it bring happiness to all!’
These recordings which cover the first section of the book ‘Finding Freedom’ are now available for you to listen to or download here under ‘audios and videos’.
James translation and elucidation in the commentary invites a deeper engagement with this text…unpacking it so that it’s value may more easily shine and resonate with and for us..
I hope you find this format useful…it was a pleasure to make and to enjoy the beauty of its harmony, spoken through thousands of years by so many thousands wishing to follow a way to truth.
Front cover of the book including revised translation and commentary to the Dhammapada (2019)*
I have reviewed this most recently published book by James Low on Amazon, below.
Happily, currently it is also available at Waterstones… and via independent bookshops.
Words don’t really ‘cut the mustard’ for this book but anyway I wrote:
The flawless facets of this jewel are luminous with wisdom, radiating the truth…and the setting is gorgeous!
Each facet displays a different aspect of the dharma teachings without any clouding by extraneous inclusions.
With consummate skill born of a lifetime’s study and practice, firmly rooted in tradition, the related texts are expounded by James in a way which can clarify satisfy and delight… bringing ease in this time of turbulence.
The exquisite illustrations perfectly illuminate and reflect the text, as does the feel and lay-out of the book.
‘This is it’ is a rare and precious jewel of wisdom set perfectly in this engagement ring of the dharma’s compassionate communication. The fruit of the heart-work of many through time – it is both a joy and liberating privilege to engage with ‘this’…
I hope you may also enjoy the great pleasure of ‘this’
On the Simplybeing website there is, under News, coming from India, a request for prayers – link to this with James’ recommendation for the recitation of the Seven Line Prayer ‘dedicating the merit for the wellbeing of all, especially those suffering in India now , in India’s hot season’ …and with that there is a link to the text.
This is a powerful prayer ‘manifesting spontaneously as the natural resonance of indestructible reality’*.
This prayer is not familiar to everyone and the question of how to pronounce it has arisen… so I have put together a couple recordings.
This 2. is a combination of me reciting and singing it followed by 1.
James’ pronunciation is spot on of course, and mine derived from that less so…but i don’t have a version with James reciting to offer.
You will hear how James takes good time in his recording… mine’s a bit faster…may they be useful and the benefit of the recitations vastly multiplied!
* White Lotus, translated by the diligent and very reliable Padmakara Translation Group, contains an explanation of this prayer, given by Jamgon Mipham, and is recommended if you have an interest in this. The different depths of the prayer are revealed, being less or more accessible depending on our openness and engagement through time.
The translators introduction is very good, and includes an invitation to open the eyes to see how and why our initial engagement with this aspect of the dharma, often approaching from a reductionist or modernist level, may be softened…and so the profundity is more and more revealed.
