Wendy’s Writings

Do we know what to adopt and what to reject? Pure Discernment ~ Lotus Source recording

the clear illuminating
light of wisdom

There is no way to navigate across the river to the ‘Further Shore’… or cross the ‘Ocean of Samsara’… using the map we found in our hands when we first started out on this journey.
That map only shows the land-locked features which are taken to be significant in samsara…and the routes which our habits, inflected by our conditioning, might take either towards or away from them.

These are routes and features which are personalised, individually highlighted…seemingly ‘for us’.
So to find and take other routes which don’t feel familiar… where we feel incompetent, where there are no star charts to indicate progress, where the destination is not another place… is not easy.

However although it’s far easier to continue with the old map we’ve been using for years, lifetime after lifetime…you know – the one with ‘me’ at the centre – as with the geographical world-map we’re most used to…the reference point and intention affect the projection … and distortion is the inevitable result . With distortion there is tension… and thus we keep wandering in samsara.

Latterly new projections of the world-map have emerged. Each shifts the reference points and the perception offered…just as when we engage with different dharma teachings we alter the lenses and the perspective with which we view our world.

Although they are vital and helpful, no dharma teacher can download and replace the out of date maps we’re using…they can show us it’s possible, give us methods and much more…but it we who have to engage reflect and apply, working with our tendencies and what we can access of what’s offered to us.

Being recovering samsaraholics our efforts and success in this are a bit variable to say the least.
It’s a bit like the first time I had too much to drink, when I could clearly see that the tables on one side of the pub were taller than on the other side…so best thing to do in such an unusual situation seemed to be to walk at an inclination between the two… : ) …not exactly a position of equipoise!

What we have in this next sutra, the Aspiration for Pure Discernment, is a dharma transmission directly from the openness, through one manifestation of Padmasambhava to another…and another… to us – to help us to navigate in as a straight a line as we may… in the direction ‘Home’…

It highlights the wrong turns and cul-de sacs we are likely to encounter en-route…and the consequences of falling asleep at the wheel.
The pot-holes and pit-falls which will inhibit us from realising our inherent potential are illuminated… and the straight ways and good surfaces which will help us… are clearly laid out.

These dharma reference points are so valuable…without the reliable route…and the bogs… being marked for us on our dharma route map…we would be hopeless lost.
The title of this prayer says it all….it’s The Prayer by which one Recognises ones own Faults and Remembers one’s Refuge together with a Repentant Confession and Rectification and a Very Pure Aspiration to be very clear about what is to be Adopted and what is to be Abandoned.

The Colophon should make us sit bolt upright with full attention …
The urgency of the lady’s request for this prayer arises from a profound sense of its necessity for the welfare of we dharma-practitioners…
and it’s from our requests, and to our need …that the dharma responds so clearly



The recording was completed during the night of the full moon… 1st August 2023

Thanks to Sean for the photo from which this was taken

Sutra of King Golden Hand – additional reflection and James’ advice

I was reflecting on how often there are difficulties with family relationships in life…and death.
I worked in a hospice for some time and so experienced first-hand how variable the attitudes of the dying and their family members can be… to the the process of dying…to death…and to each other.

Death and funerals are often far from easy times… and although there may be healing around these events, emotional turbulence is likely and feelings of disconnection and judgment often persist.

My mother died last year, in Thailand. I only learned of her final illness after her death… and to me the circumstances in which she died were heart-breaking.
For the second time in my life, like many during covid times…and others…with a similar sadness, hearing belatedly of this, I was not able to say goodbye… nor take part in or attend the funeral.

Although I didn’t recite this sutra until well after her death it felt helpful and good to do this.
James’ advice about this was:

‘…reciting the golden hand sutra should be useful…and indeed any sutra that emphasises concern for others…a quality often lacking between family members.’


Our ideas about who is family and who is not… can widen in scope to an infinite inclusivity…
and softening, moving towards healing these apparent rifts is possible at any time
as the dharma… with this practice and others, offers the opportunity to reduce ‘The hatred implicit in duality [which] seems to be more manifest in the world [J.L.]’…


with love…

Thanks to my brother Sean for the gorgeous photo…

The Sutra of King Goldenhand and his Aspiration

The recording of this amazing sutra is now published under audio/video.

As we are alway including all beings in our prayers this sutra is wonderfully helpful in expanding our imagination …from the restrictions of our conditioning with its habitually ego-human-centred view of the world…to include of all the different states and realms in which which sentient beings may find themselves.

Not forgetting ourselves! In the past…in the future… who knows in which direction the winds of karma will take us?
So we offer and connect as best we can, while we can… while we have this precious opportunity to fulfil our potential and be released from self-absorbtion, at this level of practice, into the most profound intention to benefit others

…and follow through with that….

So as we recite it… the power of our aspiration also expands the brilliance and intensity of the rays of light emanating from a candle, a butterlamp… as from our hearts… so that the different darknesses of each of the differently envisioned realms is removed.

All the occlusions or opacities arising from all delusions are lightened and vanish… resolving entrapment into the ineffable brilliance of its ground.

The sutra is short and poetically graphic, it can engage the whole of our being in beneficial activity if we allow it to…

~

Many years ago someone who was very unbalanced sent me an email full of different distresses… one of which was ‘what’s the the point of sending light to someone?’ I was happy to respond, in some way, to what seemed most pressing but dodged that one. I wasn’t too sure myself.

Although, at that point I’d had the luck to ‘be not other than what is to be known’… how to relate the truth of ‘what is’ to what ordinarily seems to be the truth was a mystery yet to be fathomed…
The ‘two truths’ seemed very separate.

There was a pointer in the book ‘Being Guru Rinpoche….’

and then many more came in the teachings and as more books became available…

There’s an early post on this website written around James’ words – ‘light plus concept equals pseudo-identity’…that was/ is a good low-calorie sweet to suck on!

We can become softer
~ through study…. by applying what we learn from the teachings to our lived existence. For as we examine the nature of, and our attachments to, concepts as if they had an inherent validity…we begin to appreciate how solidification and rigidity occurs, become alive to it’s occurrence and loosen out of that

and lighter
~ through different practises, engaging with light as if it was other… until it is not.

~

Thanks again to Pedro for the image!

Introductions to the Vajra Knot and Wish-Fulfilling Jewel

Is the light of our mind blocked by the net of illusion…? or…. is the illusion the light of our mind?

Does how you look influence what you see, what seems to be so to you?

Well, I have a loosely woven cardigan…is this cardigan opaque or translucent?
Lying on the chair it looks opaque…
and if I hold it at a distance and try to look through it I can’t see the flowers in the sink outside.
So, as I cannot see through it – my cardigan is opaque.

However if bring it close to my eyes… the sink and flowers clearly appear.
I can see through it – so my cardigan is translucent.

Which is it… opaque or translucent?
As it can seem both it is neither… but can seem either, depending on your point of view

Sri Nisgargadatta said:
‘The real world is beyond our thoughts and ideas; we see it through the net of our desire, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net.
It is not hard to do, for the net is full of holes.’

William Blake wrote of ‘mind-forged manacles’….
and the realisation of the historical Buddha, as expressed in the Dhammapada, was:
‘Mind is the forerunner of all experience. Mind is their chief and they are mind-made’

Seeing this, its clear that our lack of freedom arises from substantialising both the ‘self’ and our ‘obstacles to freedom’…and it is from this ‘self-ish’ mental activity that we need to desist on order to realise the truth of who we are… beyond the stories we weave about ourselves.

Stretching the metaphor a bit … similar to stretching the cardigan… compassionate views and activity stretch the self-net…so that the holes become bigger and bigger – more light permeates both ways, and our view of the world changes becoming clearer and more luminous…

…and with the clearest view there is no need to stretch… for compassion arises naturally from the un-deluded mind. Arising from wisdom, the net is insubstantial and there is nothing to escape

From the Vajra Knot:
‘Whatever appears is forever inseparable from the ever-changing net of illusion….’

Linked with this prayer, in one of the Macclesfield Talks, James described the Great Net of Indra …where from each of the myriad interstices of this inconceivably vast net… a multifaceted and brilliant crystal hangs.
Each facet of each crystal shows reflections from all of the other facets…resulting in an entrancing, ever-changing mutually influencing illusion.
This display of the energy of the mind needs no interference, it is not a problem to be solved…

However if we are bedazzled by and fuse with display, as if it were real, our perspective narrows and excludes the on-going un-changing stillness and spaciousness within which these movements are occurring, forgetful of the source of the creativity.
In fusing into the movements as if they showed the actual truth of our situation … we forget our non-dual freedom, and take on the dualistic beliefs of a suffering sentient being wandering in samsara.

The introductions are now included in the recordings of The Aspiration of the Vajra knot and the Prayer of Aspiration which is a Wish-Fulfilling Jewel. The option to download or listen to them is now available.
I’d be glad if you would delete the earlier version, lacking the introduction… as they belong together, the introduction influencing the connection.
For these are not ‘just prayers to be said as a duty’ but can be a profound education, in the truest sense of the word…
…as we take in these words, their words… into our hearts, and release them out into the world on our breath…this brings us very close to the hearts vision and aspiration of those who have realised the deepest truth….from which the words arose…

‘Vajra Knot’ and ‘Wish-fulfilling Jewel’ – with introductions to these prayers…

These prayers are now available to listen to under the Audio/ Video tab… and now include the introductions you’ll find below.

If we’re trying to join two pieces of wood together… then hammering a screw into them is not likely to be effective…and likewise, we’d use a different approach and tools if joining steel plates.
The more we learn about the nature of the material … alongside that which tools to use and how to use them, the easier the task becomes.

And just as with the tangible tools of the world, each dharma tool or method we use has a particular function and an effective way to use it.

These prayers are like tools for opening… to the open…
The introductions James has written for them explains their function, their meaning, maybe their provenance…and so are invaluable for their effective use.
Some introductions, like these two, are like prayers in themselves …

The Aspiration of the Vajra Knot

This prayer is a brief summary of the path…emphasising our wish never to be separated from the dharma.

The fourth stanza points to the heart of our tantric practice:
Whatever appears is forever inseparable from the ever-changing net of illusion.
All sounds are the ungraspable sound of mantra.
The movements of our mind are actually our own uncreated awareness.
May we fully open to the infinite happiness which is neither gained nor lost.

The more frequently we can recite the precious words of this aspiration written by the great Mingling Terchen, the more the mutually collaborative aspects of our practices will become clear.

Through this aspiration the blessing of the path is absorbed through our body, voice and mind preparing us to meet the Lotus Born.

The Prayer of Aspiration Which is a Wish-Fulfilling Jewel

This is a treasure terma spoken by Padmasambhava, then hidden, and later revealed by Rigdzin Godem. It begins with the confessing of mistake made during practice.

When you recite it you can also add any other errors that you are conscious of in your practice.

The root of the many different ways we cannot fulfil our intention to practise correctly is set out in the seventh stanza:
“I and all sentient beings without exception, from the beginning of this great aeon until now have been drawn to the karmic activity of grasping at appearances as if they were substantial entities.
Due to this we have gone under the power of the five poisons, have broken our vows and insulted the Dharma.
We humbly confess these actions which have become obstacles to our liberation.”

All merit and demerit arises from the orientations of our mind.
Once we turn away from the actual, delusion corrupts our intention like sewage released into a river.
Until we are fully enlightened we need to be vigilant in purifying the errors and stains arising from reification and attachment.
Then, as Buddhas, the purification of all will be our ceaseless activity.
May we gain the merit and wisdom that will let us benefit others by our mere presence, just as Padmasambhava is able to do.

It comes to an end with the aspiration that we will purify the five poisons so that their true qualities of great happiness, great love, benign control, great peace, and helpful activity become effortlessly apparent.
By frequently reciting this prayer we immerse ourselves in the tantric Buddhist tradition and thereby soften our self-affirming ego-structure… so that we become sensitive, pliable and responsive in the service of others.

Once as a young child at school, one break-time as a punishment, I had to write out the lines…’I must not skip in line’ one hundred times. The line was a crocodile of children walking in pairs from the school to the church hall where we eat our lunch.
Though my typing is so much slower than my writing…typing this out was another good reminder…and writing it out or saying-praying it a hundred times, could be a good use of time…
Thanks to the dharma we may skip down the road… metaphorically if not physically, perhaps enjoying both…working with circumstances and easing out of fusion with constricting karmic knots…

Image…thanks to Pedro…an edited screen shot from one of his video introductions



Spending the time of my life!

“Beauty feeds devotion and devotion dissolves difficulties.” James Low

Given that no more new coins will be put into my life-time purse what will I choose to spend my money-time on this week?

I could spend it ‘Under the board-walk down by the sea’…I could spend it arguing with people who wish to argue about everything…side with the hyenas and cackle on the side-lines laughing at the non-sense…weep…do good works… or just enjoy doing whatever else seems pleasurable or a good idea to me just now…

The possibilities which seem available to me are karmically derived… and some will shine more than others with apparently inherent value… These are the ones which fit my conceptual notions of the world, myself, and what’s fitting for ‘me’ as I take myself to be.

Ok!… I’ve made some choices… on Wednesday evening I’ll do this… and at the weekend I’ll do that…I’ve got plans… Happy Days! : )

But just a quick rain check…

There’s a saying which isn’t exactly true, but you’ll get the drift…’if you always do what you alway do you’ll get what you always get’…repetition strengths the identification, makes it ‘feel like me, my kind of thing ‘

Alright…ok… ill take a look at my patterns of behaviour… I’ll also check out the prayer mentioned below.
‘It’s very important….’ ….apparently (🙏 It truly is ) …but I really need to check and see… how does it apply it to me?

With that in mind let’s see…how many coins do I have left in this lifetime’s purse?

Ans. Absolutely no idea! Maybe lots maybe a few, maybe just two or only one…maybe all gone by tonight…eek!

Well, I’m not completely compelled by karma, I’ve some sense of the problems and limitations of samsara…maybe a dharma breeze is stirring… I’m having second thoughts…
Reflecting that samsara’s gales are cooking up…what’s ahead? Which winds will I catch, in my sail of freedoms and opportunities, to help return me safely home?

Consider how many chances will there be to take the Padmasambhava/Medicine Buddha initiation…or to hear the second half of Radiant Aspiration expounded by a teacher who can reveal the true meaning underlying the words

The dharma as I’ve understood it is not at all ‘hair-shirty’*…and getting out into the fresh air is wonderful and may be what we really need just now…but it’s a very rare concatenation of circumstances which bring us and the teachings together…

It won’t happen again like this in this lifetime, so for myself I’ll be inside whatever the weather and so effing grateful for the opportunity…

So… May those who are able to connect with James teachings this week benefit deeply… and also all those who are unable also benefit through our inherent connection.

My little Thursday group is cancelled this week so people have as much time as possible both to attend and prepare – reading the book and the prayer that goes with the initiation. Juggling life’s constraints is not easy I know…and the prayer linked above and below, by Yigdral Yeshe Dorje may help revise priorities!

*If you check the simplybeing.co.uk website recent entries show some of many other beautiful and enriching ways to spend the time…to enjoy.. including music inspired by William Blake words, which I also took to heart through James …. and the making and distribution of tsatsas across the world…and and also..of course… studying and taking to heart this prayer

Thanks to Sean for the beautiful blossom picture… : )


No barrier to openness…

Sunrise, New Year’s Day 2023*

I’m writing this now as, on Sunday 8th there is an opportunity to take the vows which will be needed if you wish to take the Padmasambhava initiation later in the month…

…and having come across the fresh clarity of Dzogchen teachings, the question is arising for some… why bother with taking Refuge, Bodhisattva vows, Initiations and other such-like ‘buddhist stuff’?

Dzogchen practice involves realising directly the nature of the ground … and thus the illusory nature of appearances…and increasingly not deviating from that unconstructed view of ‘as it is’.
[This is very different from resting in the usual dualistic throw away line ‘well… it is what it is’… meaning ‘it is as it seems to me’…a miss is as good as a mile here!]
With this, through realising the middle-way between ‘something as such’ and ‘nothing at all’, ultimate compassion arises naturally…

And if that’s the case for you then you won’t be asking the question!

The question may be more about… If I listen to and study James’ teachings and meditate as he suggests won’t I get ‘there’ without all this other weird stuff??

I can’t answer that for sure but I think it’s very risky approach…

Although actually there is no big barrier to climb over in order to escape from the apparent limitations and confusions of our usual situation in this world… a state of dis-ease, of ‘not ok-ness’ (even though I might believe, say… or even squeak… ‘i’m fine!’) … there is a big illusory barrier for the illusory ego to climb over to ‘get over itself’ and find itself in an appropriate relationship to awareness.

At different times over the last twenty years I have found all the dharma teachings that I have come across helpful and supportive in this gradual deconstruction process.

Taking refuge from my egoic/karmically distorted view of reality into the different more and ultimately reliable refuges offered in the dharma was a process critical to my ‘recovery’.
Simply ‘relax and release’ wouldn’t have cut the mustard!!! I didn’t even realise that I was not relaxed … or what I was holding onto…

…or who ‘I’ was beyond my assumptions.
The openhearted connection with the openness at the heart of Padmasambhava was profoundly helpful with that!

I remember about twenty years ago hearing James say in the first Macclesfield talk ‘You will never get enlightenment’…’The way out is through with and as everyone’.

What??? !!!

Many phrases in James’ teachings functioned like Koans for me – ‘I’m in the plane and the plane is in my mind’ – I spent years with that one as my companion on walks…
Then, like those little metal puzzles where two shapes seem inextricably interlocked, then suddenly you get it… and from then on that configuration is easy to release… and you have a better sense of how the others might come un-done.

To be free we firstly need to realise that our Operating System is infected with a virus….mistakenly identifying as a knowable some’thing’ who knows the truth… we relate to all phenomena as self-existing other ‘things’ – like cans of beans defined by their apparent qualities – or apparent lack of them…
and this delusion brings us into an overloaded, vulnerable, reactive, and diminished state…

How this comes about, how it is maintained…how to be free of it…all this is encompassed within many teachings of the Buddha you’ll find expressed in James’ Macclesfield teachings and many others.
Diverse teachings for diverse situations… different methods to help us …

The ego may be saying ‘you don’t need this… you can manage without’… but I’d be very suspicious of the wobbly ego’s capacity for wise discernment! These methods are for us, for our freedom from the not so merry-go-round…

Addressing this James said:
‘Many people just wish to mediate and don’t want to engage with belief and devotion but this is not advisable… never doubt the power of the ego! Devotion leads to humility…which leads to an evenness of regard to all sentient beings. It is a profound preparation for the practices of Mahamudra and Dzogchen.’

The extracts below, from the talk The Illusory Nature of Phenomena: Six Bardos (Transcript) • Eifel Retreat, Spring 2008 – Simply Being may be helpful… and also reading this – James’ commentary on the dokpa practice text What more reading?! Well you matter…your choices matter to the world… and you have a few days in which to decide. This is a wide-ranging commentary in just 29 pages covering Refuge Bodhicitta the Form and Emptiness of the Heart Sutra and more…including a very beautiful prayer for the world in these troubled times.

…The power of a tantric deity lies in their being absolutely free of solidity. The blessing of the deity is to free us from any sense of solidity. Faith is important in order to do their practice but to have faith in the forms of emptiness is very different from having faith in substantial forms. The goal is always to deconstruct, to dissolve, to let go of the object of fixation… 
…In our preparation for death, it’s very important to do a kind of spring cleaning: to go through what we have in our mental house and ask ourselves what use it is to us. Imagine wakening up and thinking, ‘This is the last day of my life.’ — looking at everything we do with fresh eyes, but also saying goodbye to it. Every saying ‘hello’ is also a saying ‘goodbye’. This brings an immediacy and a freshness, but it also prepares us for saying the big goodbyes later…
…Who knows whether we go to a pure land or not? Inside of the tradition, we say that this is definitely possible. By practicing, by praying to Padmasambhava, we gather ourselves together to go on our journey. We might leave our packing till the last moment but a good buddhist will have their bag packed ready to go. What’s inside my bag? My faith, my good karma, my hope, and my meditation. What else are we going to take with us? Nothing else gets through the customs—it’s all taken away…
…Remembering with gratitude and respect that the teachings have come to us because of the practice of other people, and that we are dependent on other people for our liberation—people from the past and people in the present—this is enormously important in the whole tradition of buddhism…

* Thanks to Sean for the photo

Longing for Limitless Light – C.R.Lama and James Low. New audio recordings 11-18

Sun-setting Dartmoor

Scroll down to the bottom of this page to find the additional recordings from the book…or find them from audio/video in the headers on the front page of the site.

If you are interested, these recordings may speak for themselves… but James’ explanations, in this video which you might have missed, expand their depth.
Video of the book launch of The Healing Power of Emptiness translated into Portuguese.

If you are interested in the Refuge and Bohicitta vows more information will be available on the simplybeing.co.uk website shortly.
In the meantime you may find this video and the recordings from Longing for Limitless Light helpful in seeing how they fit with the view and practice in every day life…as James further elucidates the relationship between the Bodhisattva intention, emptiness, and the Repelling all troubles practice which you can find from this page.

The photo above was taken on the afternoon of completing a contribution to the Earth Healing Groups’ lovely activities. If you’d like to know more about check this link. There’s also information on making Tsa-tsa on the main website…

Let me know if you can’t find it…no doubt you’ll find something else interesting along the way : )

…maybe the upcoming interesting events
23 Nov Q&A Dec 3&4 weekend teaching Jan 27&28 Macclesfield
check Events on Simplybeing.co.uk.

From the Archives…and for the Archives

I’ve been meaning to mention this for awhile… and maybe now it’s time to put pen to paper… or something like that 🙂

The buddha images above are clearly symbolic, they don’t speak words (as far as I can tell!)…while others do…
and listening to words arising from openness rather than conditioning is a rare treat in this world.

These days, as you have probably noticed… karmic glitches and gremlins abound…interrupting and distorting easy connectivity… and at the moment they are bounding about much more rapidly !!!

Yet how much do we still take for granted in the face of impermanence? Perhaps quite a lot…

For us, one of the likely things would be to have access to all of James’ audio and video teachings… these dharma transmission through words… available via the internet whenever we want to access them.

As you may know, in the Zen tradition, there are stories of teachers who once held their precious sutras so close to their hearts – but eventually discarded them… and those happy to burn a wooden statue of the Buddha in order to keep warm.

The point here is that when the teaching is integrated and sings as the basis of every movement there is no longer any need to hold onto an outer form or expression of the teachings…until then we need help.
Introductions to the view, explanations of the view… of different views and mediations….

As we hear these teachings the first listening or viewing gives so much, is so rich… and later we discover more as we review them having grown in the dharma…
I have often been so surprised, as I listen again, that James actually said something ‘way back then’ that had just struck home… .
Sure I heard but didn’t notice it, it didn’t register when I first listened… either because I already had so much on my plate that it slipped off… or I already had my mouth full, was chewing on something else…or perhaps my teeth weren’t sharp enough!

Whatever the veil of obscuration… re-listening and re-viewing has been a principal way of learning for me… letting it sink in… and sink in deeper….working it around, so it is assimilated… thinning and dissolving the obscurations to full receptivity.

My suggestion is that if there are some talks or videos or prayers on the website that are particularly meaningful to you, it may well be worth while downloading them now and keeping them as a resource on an external hard drive or some other device. The apparent stability of internet accessibility and cloud storage is imagined…it will change.

If we have the teachings in our heart that’s best for sure, but in the meantime at this juncture taking steps to create our own readily accessible back-up may be very wise.

In case you missed it here’s an archive  video from 1992 of James teaching the basis of what, ten years later, had developed the ‘View of Dzogchen’ audio … the first of the Macclesfield talks, mentioned in the introduction to this site.

I’m about to check all the links in the Index to these talks…some no longer function as videos have moved home or because of other issues.
Please let me know if you come across a problem and hopefully between us we (Barbara, Chris, Pedro and I) will be able to restore them for you.

Longing for Limitless Light – C.R.Lama and James Low. New audio recordings 8, 9, 10, 11

The Elephant’s child …is the title of both a poem and a story by Rudyard Kipling.
This particular elephant’s child … is full of (in)’satiable curiosity.
The poem begins
‘I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew);
their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.’

My mother taught me those lines when I was little girl… and I, who knew so little by comparison, believed that employing these honest ‘serving-men’ would give me the true answers to so many important questions….
After all, as you’ll know if you read the story…you can find it on-line …they explain how the Elephant got it’s trunk!


However….in my life, the answers glibly provided by Which, When, How and Where never seemed very satisfying…and for me, most often, ‘Why’ was a problematic rather than honest servant! Coming up with some temporary or superficial non-sense of an answer, the deeper aspects of ‘why’ seemed unanswerable. Why would people do? believe? say? what they do…it was an unfathomable mystery.

So I breathed a huge sigh of relief when James explained how relative reality operates back in 2003 in ‘The view of Dzogchen’. The big question mark above my head began to dissolve… ‘because they are them’ was a surprisingly helpful answer early on! One which deepened and expanded as he expounded!
Discovering that the answers to these questions … offered by dualistic relative truth…may not serve us so well. How our search for the salve of truth within the paradigm of illusion is a fools errand…one which obscures the heart-easing satisfaction of simply being.

In the poem, Kipling goes on to explain how he gave these ‘serving-men’ a lot of rest…. during the day-time and at meal times! That was interesting news to me!
Whether he really did or not we don’t need to know… but we certainly could try ‘giving them a rest’ when faced, as ever, with freshness…in meditation, in daily life.
Maybe, if you were looking at the view above, you would like to see more… beyond knowing ‘where is that’ or ‘what you can see in the distance’?

Given that ‘this is not other than that’ – ‘form is not other than emptiness’– as per the wisdom of the Heart Sutra… rather than throwing our opaque mantle of knowledge, answers to the questions, over the view in our usual way…with a flourish~ swoosh~’There’s the road to …’ ‘You can see…from here’ ‘That’s a buzzard…up there’ ‘They must be growing…maize / wheat/ vines/whatever’ ‘I can see…from here’ we could relax a bit more, and a bit more, and allow this tendency to release as it arises… and look more lightly, just seeing what’s there – in receptive mode.

Our usual egoically driven, rather desperate, determination to identify, locate, and fix in place whatever ‘this’ is – according to the templates and reference points of our conditioning – is an interposition, interrupting the view, distorting it, apparently ‘breaking’ it into bits. Relaxing out of that habit or ‘mantle’ frees us to experience the this-ness of this display…it’s luminous perfection…wherever and however it seems.

So the less we give ‘this’ an illusory solidity via our ‘knowledge’, our labelling , categorising, comparing and contrasting… the more likely we are to rest lightly as awareness, as ‘that’ for which ‘this’ is not other….

‘the ungraspable view…the ungraspable you…nothing to do just free to be’

As a way into this James explained that the essential point is the relationship with yourself. He suggested some different questions which can be usefully employed at all times under all circumstances. These begin with Who and Where and What and What…
So now we have just four serving men, two with the same first name, who are truly honest and can be employed for free, to remind us not to get lost, not to fuse with the transient… but stay present as presence
They are:
Who am I?
Where am I?
What am I doing?
What is occurring?

These new recordings 8, 9, 10, and 11 from Longing for Limitless Light and others in this series, link our practice, our existence, through sound and openness, intention and devotion, with those with the most profound vision who have led the way…with all beings.
After a while, by repeating out-loud these prayers with names which at first, to me anyway, felt ‘out-there’ strange, comes the possibility of softening and relaxing…becoming at at ease, at home with the energy of the arising sounds and feeling the connection through the words…

Photo thanks to Peter Farrie who looks after this web-site.

Longing for Limitless Light-by C.R. Lama and James Low. New audio recordings – 6 and 7

It’s always there!

Six and seven figure in the title of this post…and the world is at ‘sixes and sevens’!
The meaning of this phrase has changed through time but currently ‘at sixes and sevens’ refers to a state of confusion, disorder or disagreement…

Thinking of climate change, fiscal policy, food supply, political alliances, the price of petrol at the pump, availability of ambulances, the situation in Sri Lanka, species extinction… just a few random examples …the world we inhabit is clearly changing very rapidly and heating up in different ways.

With this, the world we knew, what we once had taken for granted as ‘structurally sound’ and reliably so… is ever more obviously revealed as lacking inherent stability, loosely supported by a wooden wobbly wood-wormy scaffolding woven from beliefs, hopes, fears — founded in ignorance of how things actually are.

Without realisation of the dharma there is a driven-ness to behaviours. This is predicated on karma – previous activity performed while deluded as to the nature of the ‘self’ – and so what seems to be a freely chosen behaviour is really not so.

The Bodhisattva Vow, the subject of these two recordings, starts with a conscious intention which is so vast, so unlimited in scope, that if taken seriously, rattles at egoic-attachment and begins to shake our limiting self-beliefs.
This idea could provoke anxiety but taking this Vow as a path is a way that may eventually lead to a genuine stability, that of indestructible integrity…no matter what the circumstances!

In inviting association and alliance with, and support from, those who have trodden this path before us –some to its completion of realisation of Buddhahood – our lives can be immeasurably enriched with deepening profundity through practice… through engagement…

…and all the tensions of being at ‘sixes and sevens’ are resolved in the universal common denominator of 0, of emptiness or openness… as is explained in the perfection of wisdom of the Heart Sutra*.

Different paths lead up mountain Everest to the site of the (now non-existent) ‘Hillary step’, the once formidable challenge or crux faced by mountaineers just before the summit*….each path offers different challenges and a different appreciation of the mountain and it’s environment.
Just so different pathways lead us deeper into the dharma and to an appreciation of the rich variety of dharma teachings… all point towards the absolute – 0… which whilst underlying, non-dual, with everything… is beyond or without paths, fixed-ropes, striving or any thing.

*If you are looking to deepen your understanding of the Heart Sutra I can recommend  Macclesfield talk 13    The Illusory nature of Experience which you can find from this index – audio and video available
and also the The Heart Sutra Emerson College 2014 audio recordings.

* The placing of fixed ropes diminished the extreme hazard of climbing this section;
it’s near vertical slope was destroyed in the 2015 Nepal earthquake.

Buddha Shows the Way…latest book and review

This latest book from James Low is available from Amazon where, currently, the price is £16.81 – with the Kindle edition greatly discounted to £5.60…

So the Kindle edition, if this format works for you, is an inexpensive way to check whether or not you agree with my review, included below!
James hoped that ‘its enthusiasm will encourage at least a few people to look deeper into their lives’
….and if you do agree with me… you’ll find you have downloaded a genuine treasure-bargain.

I’m still a fan of a ‘book in the hand’ and reading this while recovering has been a particular pleasure.
I can imagine we’ll enjoy having a go at exploring its deep but relatively easily accessible content in our little group.

Here’s details of the book… and review!

This book contains a selection of edited public talks given by James Low.
They cover a wide range of topics yet share a common theme: how to apply Buddhist teachings in our complex engagement with the modern world.
We are all faced with ever increasing tasks of life maintenance as we struggle to cope with the profound impact of climate change, conflict, economic chaos, environmental and political instabilities. Moreover our own inner life is prey to habitual tendencies, impulses and blind spots so that our sense of the world is often more muddled than we imagine it to be.

The Buddhist view encourages us to see the ungraspable illusory nature of every situation in order that we might avoid being buffeted by samsara’s waves of hopes and fears. With this clarity our own potential can be turned towards the benefit of the many rather than towards individual selfish pursuits.

The Buddha shows the way contains eighteen short chapters which can be read in any order so it is a book that can be dipped into according to your mood and time available.

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to relate to, with stunningly clear explanations…Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 June 2022Verified Purchase

I would give this book a sky-full of stars if I could.
This is much more than a collection of what has already been said.
James has transformed these talks – with a diamond-cutters precision and a heart which is writing for us as we are – into what is, to my mind, the most widely accessible and easily digestible yet comprehensive book that he has offered us thus far.
Each of his books is radiant with truth, some rich as peonies , others fresh as daisies…each may appeal more to some than others…
But i would recommend this book to all, without reservation, for its simple clarity in explaining the profundity of the truth of us all in a way that we may recognise and realise…
and how we can live from that truth in easeful connectivity with the appearances of our increasingly turbulent world.

‘Ear today and gone tomorrow!’… Living with impermanence, gratitude, love and respect.

Carving reminiscent of Gautama Buddha’s statue in Parinirvana, at the Mahaparinirvana Temple Kushinagar

Once, in a Macclesfield talk, James said to us …’If you are so anxious about this, how will you be if you get a cancer diagnosis?’

Recent experience gave me the opportunity to find this out…and the answer is ‘very different with the dharma than without.’

I’ve a bit of a medical background and had a strong sense that, despite the certainty of the dermatologist that it was benign, the tumour on my ear was a melanoma.

Happily, despite confirming her initial opinion by checking through her dermatoscope, our discussion did eventually lead to a biopsy (Trust your intuition and work with the circumstances… which included that the dermatologist had been covering for those off sick and was exhausted).

In the weeks before the result came back I did some research…(not ‘just a wee stookie’ standing immobile in the face of changing circumstances but saying …’this is coming, so what’s wise to do?’)

With a melanoma, best practice for best result would be for one excision, done correctly – to clear the tumour, and a.s.a.p.

The head and neck are particularly problematic sites where recurrence is not uncommon and this is not good news. Tumours on the ear are asymmetrical with often a high degree of sub-clinical spread. It’s a site where the ‘in-need-of-review yet nationally applied’ wide margin excision guide-lines may well be inadequate and, in practice, frequently not achieved.

I found out…a lot!… and when the biopsy result confirmed my intuition, this helped me to make the moves which I felt were most likely to achieve the best chance of complete recovery. What the ear would look like afterwards was inconsequential…though ears are surprisingly useful – enhancing hearing and sound-locating ability…and for hanging glasses, hearing aids and masks over!

Thanks to the dharma this research did leave space for practice and connection so my world didn’t completely shrink to the size of my ear for a couple of months…and, although i could see a tendency to grasp at definite knowledge for reassurance, the more I looked the more i could see it’s insubstantial nature…in practice the world opens as it does and with there is plenty of self-liberating weird shit (to borrow a phrase) and plenty of curved balls in the mix!

I’m just now happily working my way through the infections, and antibiotics which followed the surgeries…
There are no certainties but a very good chance of a complete recovery…from this…
but not perhaps other sicknesses, and certainly not old age and death.

Death is surely coming, so what’s wise to do?
Being able to recognise and work with the circumstances of death requires prior knowledge not to found in PubMed!… and a different relationship to the body from that which currently prevails.

So if you can…do listen as James * teaches on the Bardos this weekend.
*Link takes you to the text and translations of it.
Update –the recordings of this weekend of teaching are now available to listen to/ listen again here.

Knowing impermanence as truth and that this body is a vulnerable and complex little shell…although i have been very healthy and healed well in the past.. the dharma whispers in my ear ‘not always so’ ‘do not assume, take nothing for granted’.

Just now the body is maybe a bit useful, so some effort to maintain it seems right…but in knowing that it’s an expression of, rather than being entire truth of ‘me’…anxiety is diminished.

Knowing how much other beings are suffering…i share in that, this little drama is insignificant.
And being composed of an inexpressible numbers of uniquely and inexpressible vanishing moments…there is freshness. So living with the ‘lasagne effect’ of: ‘there was this! on top of that! on top of that!’ is avoided.

It is only in staying present as presence that the richness is revealed…otherwise it’s masked by the falsity and staleness of presenting a conceptualised ‘me’…and all that goes with that…

The dharma teachings, bringing lightness freedom and connectivity, are so precious and have come to us through lineages of teachers… each embodying and teaching from wisdom with a profound commitment to the welfare, to enlightenment, for all beings.
Without their help we would be, and I would have been, and as my sat. nav. says in Billy Conolly’s voice…’Completely lost!’

June 14th, this Tuesday, is Saga Dawa Duchen, Paravirvana day… a day to reflect on the teachings of the historical buddha, of C.R.Lama and all the teachers of the lineage… this was James’ suggestion.
He also suggested that we take the time to appreciate and reflect on the precious connection we have with each other, in the dharma. I’ll be doing that : ) and the repelling all obstacles and…

wearing a sun-hat, in the shade and, soon, sun cream on the ears as well!

Working with change and impermanence. Macclesfield  talk 11 – video… and Index

This was the concluding talk given at what was, at the time, the Khandro Ling Centre in Macclesfield, England and the recording of this talk is the last of the outstanding! recordings which, over time, have filtered through from the generous sponsor of the centre out to you the wider audience.

Although at the time, due to causes and conditions, his own interest had waned… as the wider interest in them became clear, Chris Coppock who created the earlier recordings, got them out of storage in his garage and, as time was available, made archive quality copies from the Master DVDs …sending the copies over to me for Barbara, or later Pedro, to publish…

This video is comprised of the three recordings, but he was only able to send me copies of the first two as the third was compromised in some way.

I asked around to see whether anyone had a copy they could lend me…but none was forthcoming. Most of us were buying the CD sets at the time, ten to twenty years ago.

Looking on the web it seemed that although the Master couldn’t be copied it might still be possible to extract the information from the disc onto a lap-top. So I asked Chris and he entrusted the master to the post. Happily it survived the journey intact despite without the protection of a box…and it ‘ripped’ ok!
So I was, at last, able to send all three over to Pedro who has presented it for you.

Just a flavour of some of the factors upon which the availability of this recording depended – that a little group formed to study buddhism. At the point i joined we met in a room above Pizza Hut and different teachers were invited to come and speak. That’s where some of us first met James.

As the numbers grew we then met for ‘James weekends’ in local buildings, in a hut in the local hospital and in a park.
James expressed his ease with this light way of meeting – like the gars in Tibet where students would gather for some time in the summer to receive teachings then disperse back into the hills to practice… Then the idea of a dedicated centre arose for the teacher of the group, and then a sponsor…and a lot of work for those involved. When teachers were invited to the centre the sponsor then made audio recordings of their talks… then as interest increased he bought a video camera…and then…and then…

Along with much else, James explains in this video…as he did in the first talk from the centre…the nature of relative reality – that ‘this’ appearance arises due to a multiplicity of causes and conditions, that due to impermanence this centre will be here whilst the factors for its maintenance are in play and then….and then…other factors arise and…it’s no longer a dharma centre
yet here we are connected in the dharma!

And i’m happy to say that here also is the complete index to all the 21 recordings from Macclesfield 2003 to 2020

P.S. On finding relevant videos on YouTube:

If you are looking to find particular James Low videos on YouTube it can be a bit of a maze. 
Using the playlists which have been created might help with this.

Go to YouTube  enter  james low dzogchen   in the search box…this brings them up
Then click ‘filters’ (to the right of the Home symbol)
The second column contains ‘playlist’ …select that.

Included in the revealed selection you’ll find playlists where teachings in a particular language and translations are grouped together, also playlists where you’ll find all the translations of a particular video. Also, playlists of excerpts and single episode teachings …

n.b. If the playlist doesn’t have   James Low – Dzogchen and Buddhist teachings   next to it,  you’ve  instead found the playlist of the person whose name is shown. This will include a JL video among their personal recommendations!’

Sweet Simplicity: Book review

You can read more about the book and its contents, and find out about dohas here

Below is my review for browsers on Amazon:

‘It’s a heart’s delight to read, speak and resonate with these Songs of Realisation… and to appreciate the integrity of their expression.

It seems to me that translating these songs requires facility in both of the languages  used – for accuracy, a poetic appreciation and expression – for flavour and flow, and ideally realisation of the actual for the feeling tone – to reflect most fully the truth which is being gestured towards.

There is no doubt in my mind that the dohas and texts in this book are a clear and true representations of the original expression of the Mahasiddhas… and James Low’s introduction, with its advice on how to approach the contents, is invaluable – a plain-song doha – key to receiving the treasures within.

With this, having left our intellectual glasses at the gate, we are welcomed as though into an exquisite garden where images of great beauty… and variegated blooms of profound truth, shimmering and radiant with clarity… manifest with each turn of the page. Their scent, rare yet pervasive, is of cloyless emptiness…

This book costs about £16, enough for a gorgeous bunch of flowers…which will eventually decay, smell rank, and fade away.
Whereas the blooms in the book open… whenever you open to them…
it’s more than a bargain!’