Meeting up with a group of us, one sunny Saturday in Macclesfield, James said he had been ‘crocussed’ on his way there.

I remember sharing his enjoyment… and earlier had seen the grounds of the cemetery of the nearby churchyard, through which he had walked on the way. They were spangled with this amazing array of freshness…of shape and light, of colour…
The mind, metaphorically ‘mirror-like’, was momentarily filled with an un-mediated perception….a display including masses of what, in the English language, are reduced to the label …’crocuses’!

I’d suggest that revelation…no ‘thing’ in itself…yet stunning and heart-opening …was available in its fullness through receptivity…through presence.

In one of the macclesfield talks, maybe that one, I learned from James about how perception comes first and is direct…but is so quickly veiled by the secondary movements of abstract conceptualisation.
We make our own ‘sense’ of the perception through applying and incorporating an interpretational overlay … formed from whatever thoughts feelings memories associations come to mind in the moment.

Often there’s so much that we don’t even register what’s around when we’re walking… maybe hurrying… along the path towards ‘something’…
We’re busily thinking about what might happen, has happened, or is happening…maybe how something or someone else is…
So, partially abstracted from life, within the dimly-lit thought-cupboard, we’re distracted into giving our own meaning to whatever imagined absent ‘something’ which arises for me..

As we look… and then conceptually conceive ‘through a glass darkly’… the spacious bandwidth available for receiving and responding to ‘how it is’ is artificially constricted by our egoic pre-occupations.
And so we become more estranged from the ‘happenings’ of the broad experiential field of now – whilst also being a non-dual aspect of that field.

If this strangely estranged view…a view from a window in an encapsulation within openness… is the starting point for our engagement with others, then being able to respond into a situation from the fullness of our potential… appropriately, as required – is a very long shot!

And the more we believe that view to be more than situationally true for me, within relative reality … well, the world’s non-sense shows how that goes…

We happily have the luck to come across the dharma teachings and meditations which offer ‘de-encapsulation medicine’ free of charge!…
They can invite ‘bursting the bubble of self’… which sounds dramatic and painful…and something the ego wouldn’t want to do…but we have a nascent wisdom which moves us in that direction…
And we can see how actually…it’s locating oneself inside the bubble which is a cause of suffering and a painful constriction of our potential.

The teachings facilitate our softening and relaxing out of any circumscription, any fixed shape.
A release from the constrictions, being breathed by the life of the moment into….?… let’s see… : )

Evening-time now…the crocuses have closed their flowers…for the night : )

P.s. This post links with the previous one, of the new recording… part (ii) of Love and Impermanence

*To a Korean friend:

‘The old man of the village
called us back
to drink three cups
beneath the crooked mulberry.

Mankind is small
but this drunkenness is wide and great–
where now is Japan, where is your Korea?’ *

Just thought- lines in the shifting sand
drawn in the mind by the wind-fingers of karma…
Yet in identifying more with one side
it’s as though we see through just one eye…
and define and reify with the other

And a deeper sense of fragmentation
with agitation and polarisation
occurs through biased interpretation
of the contra-distinction of conceptualisations

Yet… all this mental activity comes to naught
for what is really made by thought?
Where does it take us to ?
Nowhere –
still here,
but not quite simply being

See how, with just a little space…
‘Nowhere’ becomes ‘Now here’ …
my little joke : )
… opening to our potential
**to live in equanimity, calmly and contentedly

free from all care, acting naturally and reasonably
Not striving to avoid delusion nor seeking after the truth…
…knowing delusions as baseless and truth as ourself**

So… may dualistic tensions be recognised as baseless … and dissolve in the deep peace of their origin… May we and all beings fully realise how we actually are…

This plant, without my glasses on, looked dead… so I was about to take down its drying stems and leaves…
but on closer inspection noticed what looked like buds and so left them, and instead watered the
pot…
and was surprised by flowers in January!

Will there be flowers from new growth…maybe…
Will there be flowers from old stems ?…maybe…

Botanically… the potential for flowering may be present but it is latent, unless and until the necessary
causes and conditions are in place…

If the bud’s not fully developed then it cannot not open to the warmth of the sun’s rays…and the viability of the plant itself depends upon so many factors…
activity in the stem and leaves and roots,
survival of the greenfly onslaught, fertility of soil, nutrition, freedom from disease…sufficient watering… space… and light

Dharmically… our potential to realise how we are is ever-present…and although realisation is not a product of conditions…
dharma ‘re-conditioning’ can bring about a softening and loosening …
easing out from fixity and rigidity…to more spaciousness and lightness…

Perhaps we had some presents to unwrap at Christmas…
but we already have so many riches –
all we need to help us unwrap from the beliefs which constrict own potential.

We currently have ‘on loan’… and (ahem…) we don’t know how long the lease is!
~ this human body, along with the faculties and freedoms which allow us to appreciate and connect with the stream of dharma we’ve encountered…
~ access to so many of James’ and others’ clear dharma explanations… with the opportunity to ask questions to clarify our understanding of what we’ve read and seen and heard…
from this, and also from example…
~ connection with compassion which arises from openness… free of assumption and appropriation, free from the objectification of dualising consciousness

All this… as movements of the mind… which is not on-loan…but ‘the chief’…. a given and enduring treasure…
can evoke the scents of ease and freshness and act as a catalyst for the realisation of our own
potential freedom.

Inviting that slight, yet deep adjustment, from being not quite here…
to being fully present as presence…
so we too may flower from openness,
unconditioned… 

A bit more on connectivity to follow …but this, is plenty long enough!

* from William Wray’s Sayings and tales of Zen Buddhism

** from the Sutra of Wei Leung

Buddhists have made tsa-tsas imbued with prayers… sometimes placing them in stupas and other holy places… for centuries.
Over the last few years many of James’ students and those connected with them have being doing this around the world… and following the invitation and instructive help of others… and linked with the Earth Healing group, I’ve also made quite a few.
Sometimes making them on my own, sometimes with others…sometimes placing them on my own, sometimes with others…Sometimes others have placed them locations meaningful to them…
all these connections have been delightful!

Tending towards perfectionism, I spent a while checking out different types of clay…where it can be purchased….and fired (though that’s not essential)…
This brought me into connection with Devon potters and others…
but in the end a local ‘decorate and make your own pot’ shop cum café offered the solution for me.
The friendly lady who runs it gave me a large tub of clay for very little cost and fired the tsa-tsas destined to be buried in the earth pots free of charge…and I happily enjoyed her cooked breakfast! : )

It’s a soothing activity in itself to work with clay…and the image formed in the process is imbued with prayers for the most profound welfare for all. So the wisdom and beneficial capacity of the deity…and our own latent/ nascent potential…are clearly connected in the process.

Then the placement of these tsa-tsas takes us out into the world, into sites of beauty where, with the prayers we offer, we can see them as acting as ‘place-holders’, focal points of beneficial energetic radiance…and bringing healing into areas where activities arising from ignorance have despoiled land and sea… and the lives of those connected with such exploitation.

Many people are suffering through feeling isolated, disconnected, and impotent; we are very fortunate in having the practices that we do…
Being able to do what we can that’s beneficial, in a way that resonates with and for us, is such a blessing and as these tsa-tsas are placed across the world we can imagine a physical ‘web’ forming, infinitely illuminating the interconnectivity of our hearts and those of all sentient beings within the illusion of duality, with the infinite potential of emptiness…

Julie joined me in making some tsa-tsas a month or so ago and mine went up onto Dartmoor a little while later. The images above are of Julie’s …as they recently found their place… in Dartmouth.

On a gloriously sunny late-autumn afternoon and evening we did some prayers on the harbour wall… and then she gently lowered the flat tsa-tsa into the water… for its blessings to dissolve into the seas…

Later we found and followed some steps down to and old fort…part of the defence of the harbour and the prosperous town that grew up around it.
Now open to the sky it was quiet in the early evening and we could say prayers in the arched embrasure close to the water, where armed guards would once have kept look out ready to fire one of the two canons which covered the entrance to the port in case of attack.

Julie then placed the rupa in a niche, high up in the external wall …disguising it with jasmine, ferns and daisies…and, with the dedicating prayers…there it remains, transitioning… as the rain washes it, particle by particle… into the sea

It was indeed a beautiful evening…

…
So if this connective activity takes your fancy, Hanna Holtbernd is kindly offering two days of opportunity to connect with each other around this 17 Nov. and 15 December. You’ll find the details on the Simplybeing website

If write ‘above you’ll see my neighbours tree’…well would I lie to you?

That saying ‘seeing is believing’ is so often what we do … but the believing is deceiving… and it confounds the seeing!

Looking with wider eyes, is there just a tree?… – no sky, no clouds or sun?’
Okay… so maybe there is a tree and sky and sun and clouds in front of me…

Or maybe not…

Are there simply dots… showing variation of colour on the screen…
(mostly back or white)
which I take to show defined and separated shapes
quickly pattern-matched to words
with the easy familiarity of
of one steeped in human concepts…

Connecting these words creatively…
with echoes from the senses
from memory… and beliefs,
from ‘me’,
I weave an artificial-a-tree!

Although it seems that there
is, really, truly, something there…some self-existing ‘thing’
independent of the movements of my mind…
That’s a belief…a thought taken to be true, invested with certainty by the energy of another thought (or two, or three…or four or many more!)
Mum says to six month old tugging at what’s within it’s grasp from the back pack as we chat …that’s a tree! A silver-birch tree!!! it goes on and on from there…it’s a this…it’s a that…but whatever we call it that’s not what it is.

Then I could investigate further…this propensity to reify imaginings!
Does something similar happen when I’m out in the garden looking at ‘my neighbours tree’…
Do I separate dualistically, there’s me-subject and tree-object…do I interpolate a screen of interpretation between the tree and me?
Or do I see what’s there prior this activity…the radiance, light or energy of my mind showing as forms of emptiness…none which are ‘things’.

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet he says ‘there’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’.
But although it’s less poetic isn’t it more true to say thinking makes it ‘seem’ so, for the thinker…?
And we can also look deeper… to the possibility of realising that there are no self-existing things onto which such an attribution of value could be stuck…Thinking, believing, that there are!.. won’t make it so…
and closes the door to a vital question… regarding the nature of this confident labeller, the ‘sticker’ !

Adding concepts to light forms is the recipe for making samsara… a world of pseudo entities where, as we fall into reifying interpreting and identifying with arising thoughts… utilising them as the basis for our fabrications, the light of the mind seems obscured…
And as we feel more dense solid and certain about our existence as individuated things we forget how much we have in common…most profoundly the equality of the empty ground or basis of our manifestation.
It’s always there but ‘unseen’ by our way of looking… until we desist…and relax out of our hungry egoic fascination with any movement of the mind…in meditations which facilitate this realisation.


Can I relax out of my solidifying busyness enough to allow the showing of the energy, ‘the tree’ , to impact me, to open to it, relax into… allow myself to be at one with the tree?
Then maybe I’ll see that the dry and dehydrating concepts which I, as ego-self, might usually unwittingly apply …making it seem more interesting to me… are not only superfluous … but a distraction.
It’s a bit like putting a big wedding dress over it… you look so pretty! I say, relating to the dress/ing that I just added…I’m appreciating my creativity not what’s actually there.

Maybe you like Wordsworth’s poetry…and can kind of imagine the daffodils…but if really you want to ‘get’ a daffodil you’ve really got to be there, present..relaxed…soft gaze, absorbing, sniff… and put your face in it! Then…what can you say about that? …it’s ineffable! and more of life would be as that if we weren’t so quick to deaden it with our ‘knowing’ words


So, if you like, you can imagine me in the garden enjoying the display…

At eight a.m….morning tea,
blackbird looks out from the neighbour’s tree…
By nine…
both gone!

…sawdust… logs… and chippings…!!!

Is there a gap in what I see… a hole left in the mind by the missing tree?…Happily not..it’s self-healing, always complete …

I appreciation of the tree I wrote:

For many years this full grown, vital tree
offered generous hospitality…
to birds and many beings

Nesting mating resting singing,
playing fighting shouting screeching
warming wings and preening feathers

shade and shelter from inclement weather,
the smaller from the big predator

In conversation with the soil; fungi bacteria and
all surrounding trees, and more,
the clouds… the sun and moon…
and stars

Drinking the rain and swapping gasses with the air
It swayed and danced and bent in gales,
and swished it’s branches in the breeze…

then suddenly…

first legs and arms, then head,
then trunk,

erased from view

chunk after chunk
like slow-mo etch-a-sketch…

Apparently…

my neighbour’s neighbour…
is troubled by needles!

Eh!!?… Oh!…
not the sharp and shiny ones
but the browny and piney ones
Riding the wind they sometimes fly from the tree
and, thoughtlessly,
some land…
in his gutters!

Laughing or crying…??? which to do ???
sadness and laughter both move through…

Illusions arise that we call ‘you’ and ‘me’
‘the bird’ ‘the chainsaw’ and ‘the tree’

but as they arise and we let them go free,
we can play in the play… with equanimity

Appearances – as experience shows –
Come as they come
and go as they go!

P.S For some reading this, it might be a first taste … You’ll find that the You-Tube Videos of the recent retreat James gave ‘The practice of Meditation’ explain this and much more with great clarity!
Releasing out our habitual orientations is not a task for the anxious ego…but, softening in the dharma rain and feel safer, closer to the truth..reliance on the ego-self construct diminishes and so we see more clearly

In the time that the historical Buddha was teaching he had some interactions with a certain King Udayana
This king was about to go to war… again!
He had won all his previous battles and was confident that his next venture would, doubtless, have a successful outcome…
Although, within relative reality, some might see that it’s usual in battles for many people on both sides to die, so many in the ensuing generations are marked by and carry the emotional fall-out…resources are squandered, the land is scarred…and there is action and reaction pulsing through time… from this king’s position all that was irrelevant.
He had yet to encounter any dharma teachings so in his opinion he was truly ‘a winner’… his kingdom would surely increase in size, riches and power… so why hold back?

The Buddha knew that now was the time to engage with this particular King, and was very skilful in working with his intention ….
Having shocked the King by the way he repulsed his attack ( the King had regarded his arrival as a bad omen)… from the Buddha’s unshakeable position of equanimity free from aversion (having realised the basis of all phenomena) he was able to work with the king’s pride…inviting him to engage with a far greater challenge – that of defeating the greatest enemy …
The king’s curiosity was piqued… and with that he started to listen to what the Buddha had to say…and began to examine his views and long held certainties under the different lenses of the profound teachings being offered for his benefit and the benefit of many others…including… us!

If you are wondering whether I just made this up …you too can now read the Mahayana Sutra, Advice to a King 2, Advice to Udayana King of Vatsa and check.
You’ll find the whole of the sutra on that link and see that what I’ve written is my interpretation… by way of an introduction to this sutra. It is freshly translated, just this July, and published by the group 84000 Translating the Words of the Buddha …. along with other translations, including the sutra Advice to a King 1 which the Buddha gave to his friend King Bimbisara.

As the Buddha offered so many different teachings for different students at different times in different situations…it seems wonderful that these reliable translations are being brought out and offered freely, into connection with us and our world at this time…so we can read them or speak them out, and contemplate on the deep wisdom offered… and the manner of its presentation.

James recently mentioned how much richness of dharma is yet to be made available…for our benefit and that of others, in whatever our native language is… and was inviting us to consider how we might help.

Donating money towards those engaged in producing translation of such a high calibre as those of the 84000 is just one such possibility…
If it should appeal to you’ll see on their site they offer different ways to do this… including doubling the impact of any regular donation.

There are other groups e.g. The Padmakara group, also offering similar high quality, group worked and peer reviewed translations. That the source of the translation is of such quality is vital for we dharma students… A deep understanding of the way both languages are used by native speakers… and a deep understanding of the dharma, as close as possible to that of the depth of the meaning of the text…will offer the greatest clarity

Clearly there are many different ways of bringing our life energy into connection with the world, inspired by the dharma…People are writing, talking, teaching, transcribing, typing, translating (lots of t’s!)… involved in art, making music, tsa-tsas, earth pots and so on… we find our own way for this to flower
Grand or overtly dharmic gestures may not be called for… communal litter-picking was another of James’ suggestions – decreasing a sense of hopelessness and passivity by increasing connectivity, sharing and participating free from judgment and with the warmth of an open heart… whatever is fitting is perfect.

Image from 84000 translation July update.

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 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!

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…

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

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

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.