Whether glowing dimly or brightly there’s nothing wrong with our lamps!

If you know that a dimly glowing lamp is connected to a dimmer-switch …which operates by offering variable resistance to current…then you can simply turn the knob to decrease the resistance…and increase the current so that the lamp gives full brightness.

To allow the dharma current to flow freely through us… it would be lovely to find some secret knob and turn it in the right direction. Would that it were so easy!
Yet the egoic, karmic ‘self-sealed’ resistance… which limits our view and responsivity is not intrinsic,
not an integral part of who we are…but formed from accretions picked up through time and incorporated into our constructed sense of self.

There’s a great excerpt on the Simply Being homepage at the moment ‘The construction Industry‘ from a talk in Barcelona 2018 where James precisely explains… how we are truly….and it’s truly different from how we think we are….!

When I heard James teaching The view of Dzogchen , the first Macclesfield talk back in 2003, much of what he was saying floated straight through me… but I knew that it was true… and deeply wanted to have that truth as the basis for my being…
So like others, with close attention to the guidance offered by dharma teachers and their teachings..through reading… reflecting… questioning…and practice… old ideas about what’s true about ‘Me’ and it’s primacy diminishes.
The grip on thoughts of what I need for satisfaction loosens …so that we become more and more open and aligned with how we actually are…

All the dharma views have the most profound truth as their basis and it’s a matter of our luck or karma as to what we encounter and how able we are to make the best use of what comes our way.

Some of these, the ego-syntonic ones…build up our sense of being a ‘good self/buddhist’.
Others – the ego-dystonic ones, don’t taste so sweet but, as with less sugar…can be very helpful to us if we are willing and able to engage with them correctly – without grasping or misunderstanding.

If the Dzogchen teachings taste sweet to us, that may be due the good fortune of ripeness …
Alternatively the teachings may have been misunderstood – warped by a glancing engagement with their depth… through lenses clouded by samsaric finger-prints.

A superficial view of Dzogchen can be very attractive to the wobbly ego, which grasps at and interprets concepts in its own peculiar way, as giving a laissez-passer to ego-centric behaviours …but, as is graphically indicated in the book ‘Me First’ ( the link is to details, zoom talk and animation), the consequences of engaging from a distorted view can be profoundly detrimental to the one making the mistake…and to any who give credence to their expressions of misinterpretation.

Someone recently was surprised when I suggested we would do well to be a bit suspicious of what we are up to…and also that ‘the other comes first’… because it did not fit with their understanding of Dzogchen as spontaneous expressivity… acting however feels right in the moment…and this post is an elaboration of my response…

Some dharma views may be understood intellectually, but this kind of knowledge is not so highly rated… it’s considered to be like a patch covering a hole in a garment…
It hides the hole but it’s an add-on, not integral, not part of the fabric, and easily comes off with wear in daily life…
However the view of Dzogchen is primordial…and so cannot be grasped by thought, cannot be realised by any kind of thinking…

With this view, spontaneity is an energetic movement or gesture which arises directly from the openness and potential of emptiness … in connectivity with others, in the manner of a dream.
So ethics are inherent and the spontaneity which arises is radically different – it has a different root – from the impulsivity, drivenness, and other dualistic movements arising from the inflated egoic nexus…which are inevitably tinged, to a greater or lesser extent, by the poisons arising from ignorance.

If this difference is not deeply realised …then reading about Dzogchen or hearing the words…may lead to the belief that ‘Now I’ve got the deepest truth… so I can act, at will, from that…’
But this belief will blind us to the truth itself and also to alternative, more accessible, yet helpful dharma views which could prevent us from harming others and ourselves.

If the depth of the view of Dzogchen is contemplated… even if not realised…the contradistinction with a superficial view may throw a spanner in the ego works and be illuminating.
So… if…and it’s a very big ‘if‘… the mind is resting in openness, at ease and settled in itself, and open without effort…free of the dualism of subject-object…then compassion is inclusive… and it never separates from emptiness!
If that’s how it is for you… then noticing what we are up to, in the way I suggested, would clearly be redundant….
But until then… whilst Dzogchen is just an idea of freedom….there is much to relax out of…and let go…

It’s so easy to get lost in samsaric confirmations and entanglements, mixing them with dharma as cloak to hide our shakiness…
… to realise, and practice never separating from the naked truth of ourselves, is hard.
So kindly noticing to what we are up to, how we tend to position ourselves, is useful…we are not defined by what we see but in seeing, but we can then begin loosen out of our habit formations.

A ‘me first’, ‘what I want is most important’,’ I know what’s best’ ego-centric entitled positioning, blocks the receptivity of ethical connectivity… so that would be a particularly good position to loosen out of!
If free from that, gradually moving towards a more nuanced and attuned intuitive responsivity, within the shared experiential field, becomes more of a possibility….

As James has said ‘we have to have the humility to know that this practice is very difficult…’
And if the view does not become increasingly clear and accessible, deepening wisdom and compassion en route… then another dharma route with clearer tracks is a wise engagement … all are expressions arising for the benefit of beings…tending to their source.

If we have some grounding in a different view …say of tantra or general Mahayana practice… in this or other lives… then our mind has been worked in such a way that we are less likely to grasp onto a mistaken view of Dzogchen as a validation for impulsivity and entitlement, with limited or absent compassion…
Slipping from the view, if we cannot return directly, with a dharma safety-net, we may return more easily….and more readily accept that other views are also good and may be a better fit for our particular flourishing at this time.

In short: engagement with Dzogchen teachings invites us relax a bit and look without judgment at what we get up to… so that we can see through our defensive smoke-screen and feel all the tension and friction that comes with the falsity of grasping at identity as our ‘touch-stone’ and ‘home-base’ within a thought-formed dualistic framework… and then relax a bit more …easing our grip on that entanglement… and so on until our hands relax completely…and the rest…

As the ego shrinks back to it’s proper size, resistance to ‘how it is’ as opposed to ‘how I think it is’ decreases… helping us to bring all of ourselves, with trust and faith, into connection with the infinity of truth’s heart-call…and alignment with openness …
The brightness of the unmediated connection between the infinite source and the lamp… allows it to shine like the undimmed sun…