Tag Archive for James Low

Macclesfield videos/audios – a great dharma tree to explore

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From 2003 James taught in Macclesfield either once or twice a year. Originally when he came up he taught in a little room above pizza express, then in a park building and in a hospital out-building.  After that the group of practitioners in Macclesfield had the use of a building which became a buddhist centre…

For about a decade Chris Coppock, who was a major contributor to this, made audio recordings of the talks which James gave… and also made (along with Charles Lomas) some video-recordings.

Thanks to Pedro and Barbara this set of recordings is now available within the complete collection on James’ YouTube channel .  
(Videos posted prior to December 2002 are included are still available on the  Vimeo collection)

Due to causes and conditions that buddhist centre eventually folded but happily James continued to journey north and teach in different venues, annually, since then.

 Over two decades, James took us along in the dharma stream opening up and elucidating different aspects to us. Beginning with little knowledge of the dharma and what it offered we became able to follow and change and grow out of, at least some of, our limiting old ideas about how ‘things’ are.

Some people are using these audio and video teachings as a way to study so to make it easier to see and hear how the talks evolved as we did, I have grouped what’s available in this set of teachings together on this page. 
I hope you enjoy the journey as much as i have done!

In this short and sweet video James offers an introductory explanation as to how we become confused… and the freedom of the view of Dzogchen, to which all his videos audios and texts relate. 

In the Macclesfield set, we have so far :

1. View of Dzogchen                                                                                Nov 2003

The beginning: explaining how the dzogchen view fits with the other teachings in buddhism. As you listen you may begin to sense how this right this engagement could be for you. The possibility of …’freedom is our birthright’…is scented in the air.

 audio  only                                                                                        

2. Focussing and Distraction – Dzogchen practice                             July 2004

Without realising and activating our capacity to choose whether or not to identify with arising thoughts we have little freedom.

Like preoccupied puppets we are pulled by the strings of internal forces and external triggers which drive us into reactivity. 

Practices such as following the flow of the breath on the upper lip help develop a clear attention, and bring the calmness and perspective necessary for a more intentional and pro-active life.

audio  only                                                                                                            

3. Living with Anxiety and Doubt                                                February 2005

Most of us have a lot of worries and anxiety in our lives. James explains the traditional Nyingmapa understanding of the nature of anxiety, the structures underpinning its development, and shows how meditation can help us cut through the root of that development.

In practicing  different meditations, we can offer a more open precise and present attention to the complex circumstances of daily existence. We can then work more easily with everyday moments of anxiety and confusion.

audio  only                                                                                                

4. Wisdom and Compassion     (1)                                                              May 2006

Explaining the two truths: how it appears…the imagined illusion, and how things are…the ultimate truth.

That real compassion arises from wisdom i.e. from realising the ultimate truth and then helping others realise their true nature.

So getting to know your own mind, letting go of the knot of dualism, and not being distracted is vital…   

audio only                                                                                                        

5. Lojong – Mind training                                                                         Dec 2006

audio    videos – YouTube      vimeo (x3)                                                                            

6. The Transmission of  Flow and the Flow of Transmission         June 2007

Considering the nature of lineage, its function and importance…and continuity
James refers to a short text by Saraha, ‘The Treasury of Songs’, which is included in his book ‘Simply Being’.

audio   videos-YouTube  or   vimeo (x3)                                                                                  

7. Clearing the Clutter                                                                  November 2007

audio    video-YouTube or  vimeo  (x3)                                                                      

8. Basic Buddhism practiced with a dzogchen view                     March 2008

audio     videos – Youtube  or vimeo videos (x3)    

How the preliminary practices in Tibetan buddhism can be taken up and made use of within the dzogchen view                                                                       

9. Refuge is Liberation                                                                             Nov 2008

Teaching on Garab Dorje’s ‘Three Points’ as the essence of refuge

Using the three statements as a base for exploring dzogchen, view and practice…

the view shifts from  fusion… to dualistic intention… to non-dual liberation

audio    videos                                                                     

10. Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity                                       June 2009
– The Four Immeasurables

The deep meaning of the  ‘Four Brahmaviharas’, which is found in all schools of buddhism, is expounded here… with the accompanying prayer.

Wishing for all beings to rest in the integration of their natural condition and that the obstacles to this may dissolve.

Then, seeing the equality and insubstantial nature of what our conditioning would denote as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, we practice remaining relaxed and open with whatever occurs.

audio     video                                                                                      

11. Four Foundations of Mindfulness – a dzogchen perspective      Jan 2010

Mindfulness is explored from different perspectives including psychotherapy, theravada and dzogchen. With mindfulness we can become intentionally attentive and careful so we are no longer at the mercy of whatever is happening. From the view of dzogchen we can be in the movement of the world as it changes… and remind ourselves to relax back into integration.

audio      videos – YouTube  or   vimeo                                                                                                  

12. Working with Change and Impermanence                                   Nov 2010

Exploring how my behaviour is generated from the belief that I have a fixed internal ‘essence of me’ 
… and how my belief that there are self-existent ‘things’ in the world keeps me trapped in reactivity.

As we meditate, and thoughts feeling and sensations arise and pass, we experience that change is the basis of our existence.

If we can see that we are change – that who I am is co-created – then we can inhabit our existence freed from the trap of trying live to life on our own terms. 

audio         video                                                                                             

13.   The Illusory nature of Experience                                           March 2012

The text of the Heart Sutra, which is the basis for this talk, begins ‘Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness not other than form’.

It continues in is way expounding the true nature of all phenomena, including what we take to be ourselves.

This is so very other than we how habitually imagine it to be and James explains freshly, clearly, and accessibly.

audio      video                                                                                 

14.    Integrating openness and presence                                        Feb 2013

Explaining how wisdom and compassion can be activated in our own existence.

Seeing that the compassion which arises from through understanding the illusory nature of phenomena is not artificial…

that the openness, the radiance,  and the arising gesture are integrated.

This talk includes the  practice of tong-len

audio  only                                                                                                     

15. Balancing Relaxation and Effort in Buddhism                              Feb 2014

We can see how effortfully attempting to stabilise that which is inherently unstable will be exhausting and ineffective.

So, on retiring from that struggle, how do we make the appropriate shifts between agency – the assertion of energy… and plasticity – where we allow ourselves to be moulded by circumstances? 

Looking at how space allows us to see clearly…and how, by relaxing into our potential, our potential can be activated into the situation with finesse.    

audio    only                                                                                                        

16. Staying Open to Life as it is                                                              Feb  2015

The world impacts us and influences us as it flows into us through our sense organs…

and we influence the world by being part of it, like a stream of many potentials within a bigger river.

Exploring how observing yourself as you are, being kind to yourself and letting yourself reveal yourself… is the way to make life easy… 

audio  only                                                                                                  

17. Buddhism and creativity                                                                   Feb 2016

Buddhism would say that ethics is the basis for the forms of our experience…

That due to causes and conditions we inhabit a particular vision, a mental construct created from a configuration of many factors. 

Exploring this and seeing how meditation brings the spaciousness and flexibility needed to respond easily in interaction with the world. 

audio only                                                                                                     

18. Dissolving attachment in the openness of being                          Feb 2017

Dissolving attachment in the openness of being. Dzogchen practice focuses on avoiding hanging on to what we like and pushing away what we don’t like. This is supported by the mindfulness that helps us avoid falling asleep in the process of living. Being undistracted is simply talking with full attention when you are talking, walking with full attention when walking etc.

audio        video                                                                                         

19. Working with Life and Death                                                      March 2018

Many different ideas exist about what happens at death which direct our intentionality in this life.

Here James explores what buddhism has to bring to these ideas and explains the traditional view of what the mind is and also what is  consciousness.

Including the nature of the death process and how we might work with that.

audio                                                                                                    

20.  Balance in Turbulent times                                                              Feb 2019

Attempts to withdrawal from the turbulence or to control the mind are actions which increase our sense of separation.

With the Mahayana view we are looking at how our mind is rather than focusing on its impermanent contents.

Through meditation we are seeking to open to that which is stable…an invitation, explanation and practice.

audio                                                                                                         

21. Kindness, Fellow Feeling and the Common Weal                       Feb 2020

Loving kindness, karuna, is the foundational attitude of Buddhism. Kindness sees all life as kind, as kin, as always-already-connected. With this view the barrier between self and other shrinks and we become inclusive in everything we do. This is deepened and supported by the wisdom of seeing our mind as it actually is.

audio     video                                                                                          

22. Finding Refuge and Spreading Light                       Jan 2023

Finding enduring refuge in the intrinsic purity of our own mind. 

audio video

23. Wisdom and Compassion (2) March 2025 (Talk 4. 2006 has the same title)

Wisdom and compassion are often said to be like the two wings of a bird…with their collaboration we can fly free of the snares of samsara and its false dualism. We will integrate the wisdom of emptiness which reveals how all our experience is like an illusion with the kind compassion which brings us into authentic contact with sentient beings…

audio video

Update on Emerson college recordings / “Courageous Compassion”

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IWP_20160713_21_02_00_Pro said it would only take a week or so of free time to get the recordings ready… and this is true, but sometimes there’s more to it than that….

Emerson recordings update  22nd Aug…nearly complete. There have been lots of difficulties in getting hold of the final part of the good recording which Gaynor made…i’ve tried improving mine but the result’s not great… so thankfully a friend who is a sound engineer is going to have a bash today…so…. ready shortly!

The first week back different people i had not seen for years got in touch or visited. Last week I was  away at the Buddhafield festival, which had the theme “Courageous Compassion” and gave a talk in a little tent on the need for wisdom – the wisdom of emptiness or openness – as the basis for the arising of sustainable compassion.

If you are interested here’s the gist of what the talk was based around.

Dualistic, false–relative, compassion… where I am going to act compassionately towards you –  where I, you, and the action are all three seen as entitative –   is a big step up from ‘I just care about me and mine’ but it maintains the sense of separation, of solidity, even superiority …  and, because of its effortful nature, transient effect, and the desire (and often frustrated desire!) involved it can be exhausting.  Jumping in to help a drowning man is great if you can swim and are strong enough to get him safely out without getting yourself into the same predicament…knowing the variable nature of your capacity and working within that is essential at this point.

So different dharma teachings  gesture to the way through this via another approach to suffering.

If we take the bodhisattva vow, as in Mahayana Buddhism, then the intention is to ‘develop’ the mind of the buddha.  Understanding that the compassion that goes with this intention involves a wish to attain enlightenment in order to benefit all ‘others’… to bring them happiness and freedom from suffering in the short term and enlightenment in the longer term…whilst accepting that this longer term may indeed be very, very long!

It seems likely that  in the sustained and concentrated effort of altruistically attempting to attain the perfections of generosity, morality, vigour, patience, concentration and wisdom of a bodhisattva, somehow the custard–like skin of self-referential thoughts holding us in a particular shape thins to the point where there is an understanding of non-duality in the relative sense and perhaps the realisation of prajna as revealed in the Heart Sutra shines through. At this point compassion is fearless rather than courageous.

The view of Tantra  is that of (an initially intentional) transformation of all that is manifesting by viewing it through the lens of the pure relative. Compassion then, as the liberation of all sentient beings, is that of not taking them prisoner, and relating to them as entities in the first place!

The encouragement is to practice until we have integrated the view.  I think it was Gampopa who said to his students who wanted to bring their retreat to a premature conclusion in order to go and  be helpful… ” Do you think there will be nobody left in need of your help down in the valley if you wait until completion of your practice?”

After the initial introduction, the practice of dzogchen is that of absolute compassion arising spontaneously… not being impulsively or thoughtfully contrived but arising naturally from the ground nature, freshly in each moment. So rather than using different strengths of detergent to eventually clean the window, or looking through a different window, its a matter of … throwing the window wide open!

If we overheat or get stuck in the practice of relative compassion we may not get to ask…What  is the nature of this self, this other, these thoughts, this mind?… it is the answer to this that the buddha was seeking… and found and, in deep dharma, taught.

 

Of the different levels of compassion arising from the different views – false relative, pure relative and absolute… these are explained by Patrul Rinpoche in Chapter 7 in the book Simply Being by James Low.

Chapter 3 on the development of bodhicitta is also recommended.

 

 

Heaven or hell ? – it’s all in the mind as it moves with our thoughts

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Version 2Some years ago I was doing a strict Goenka vipassana retreat in a monastery in Thailand… the sitting for ten hours a day was hard for someone used to sitting for short periods.
Each day I looked around me  and everyone else seemed to be coping just fine – ‘a bunch of crack meditation ninjas’ – and I thought it was just me, so unused to this kind of practice, who was really struggling with discomfort.
There was no communication allowed during the retreat between the participants  so we could not compare our experiences or encourage each other verbally…yet somehow or other a little nun from Korea and I mostly got up to leave the meditation hall at the same time  every evening…

Two days of the retreat had been billed as being particularly difficult – the first turned out to be easy for me and the second was very very difficult, the pain in my legs was becoming intolerable. At one point, fearing becoming crippled due to the impact on an earlier injury,  I was granted permission to use a chair but that seemed to make matters worse as the blood pooled in my legs, so I went back to the floor and gritted my teeth. I have a reasonable amount of willpower and used that to get through  that day… but that wasn’t the end…. there was the next day and more! The next morning, for the very first time, I skived off to the toilet in the early hours of the meditation and after that it was downhill all the way and it became so hard to stick with it…

Then I remembered a teacher saying ‘well – if you can’t do it, you just can’t do it’.
This may not seem very profound but being able to accept that I might not be able to do it brought about enough relaxation for me to hang in there while my legs shook and shook until they settled and I found that I was still practising after the teacher had left.  On this occasion he had walked out quietly without giving notice of his departure… usually there was a bit of a countdown… and I had been counting the seconds believe me!

So it got easier… in fact it got to be pleasurable – extraordinary! – and that was when a big ‘downfall’ occurred. We had been warned not to indulge in any pleasurable experiences if they arose…the  thought of this happening seemed so remote that the instruction barely registered. But then I remembered ( having indulged!) and the world changed – this is the interesting bit.

Prior to indulging in these feelings I had been in a kind of  heaven… albeit a somewhat painful one. The  setting was beautiful with a river nearby. There were flowers and sunshine and a golden dome and starlight and birds and food which was – edible, and  I was doing something I felt to be meaningful.

Then suddenly, with this enormous sense of shame at having not followed the instructions, everything changed. I could no longer look at people, I could barely eat, all the colour had drained out of the environment, it had become  monochrome, grey…there was nothing to wonder at… just my dismal thoughts that there was no point in my continuing, that I wasn’t worthy enough to be there or to do the pilgrimage which was to follow.

Then I thought my way through the inevitable conversation when I returned – ‘so why didn’t you do what you to set out to do?’ ‘Well you see I was in a monastery and I hadn’t done what I’d been told to do so obviously i am not good enough to be following in the Buddhas footsteps… so I came home.’
I imagined the somewhat  disappointed acceptance of my returning thousands of miles to say that…. and thankfully, I started to sound foolish to myself and to realise that this was all part of the ‘growing up’ process… and the world started to lighten up again for me.
In truth I started to lighten up the world, just as before my thoughts had darkened the world. The food, the monastery, nothing much changed while I went on this mental journey and so the truth of – “Everything has mind in the lead, has mind in the forefront, is made by mind” (Thomas Cleary’s translation of the first few lines of the Dhammapada)  became very vivid for me.

I had been swept away by thoughts with which my egoic sense of self (another thought) had fused. Believing in the truth of them any awareness, or sense of presence had been completely lost. Then, lacking spaciousness, i had collapsed into being a ‘no good’ object for my judgmental ego-self. Luckily that little hell didn’t last for too long; thanks to impermanence and karma some more useful thoughts arose which i could use as a rope ladder to climb out…not the method of choice but all i was capable of at the time.
Any dzogchen practitioners reading this will know that any kind of  thoughts can arise and pass in  awareness as an aspect of the arising field …but fusing with them and taking them to be definitional is as wise as jumping out of a high window in the belief that you can fly…
…ah well, it takes practice and growing confidence which was part of the reason for the pilgrimage!

As for not doing things exactly as instructed… well under my particular circumstances  that was quite understandable. Really, as always, it was just a matter of learning from  that slip, letting go of it, and carrying on…and when i did just that i was finally practising properly –not  hooking into any sensation.

Making the mistake meant that I also had a glimpse of the truth that forcing myself in order to succeed might get me to a ‘goal’ but not much past it… it was the relaxation coming from looking ‘failure’ in the face which allowed me to continue.
Dzogchen in particular is not a practice of  anxious striving but of a profound relaxation from which manifestation arises precisely in relation to the emergent field …and as James has said more than once “it’s a marathon, not a sprint”

At the end of the retreat also it became clear that my assumption that I was the only one suffering was completely unfounded – we all were; some of the exuberance and joy expressed  was related to the retreat experience… but quite a lot to do with the ending of it and the release from silence and tension!

The little nun and I hugged each other…

… and then we were told off for breaking ‘Sila’…’good grief’ i thought ‘what have i done now?!’

That hug was in fact ‘right action’ – entirely appropriate – but back then I felt terrible and got someone to translate my abject apologies…

…. however the nun was vey happy about the hug… and we did something lovely with any merit gained in our practice then

…and i hope she is very happy now and that her practice is going well.

 

The linguistic penny drops!

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If you have listened to any talk James has given you will have noticed that he has a very particular way of speaking.
When I first started to edit transcribed recordings I spent some time cutting and pasting and fiddling with the words so that they sounded more normal to my ears. Then I realised that  it no longer sounded like James speaking and that, more importantly,  there is an unusually extreme precision in his use of language…which is not something to fiddle with.

In learning from him, when something is not clear, sometimes I interrupt the flow and ask a direct question but more often it’s either that clarification comes during the course of later conversation or I wait for the penny to eventually drop. When I have a little more clarity myself there may be a lightbulb moment –  mixing my metaphors wildly here.  I think its a sign of good teaching to encourage the stretch to a higher shelf rather than just handing things down. So here’s what was on the shelf…

hqdefault

In English language lessons we are taught the singular and the plural of many nouns and so i had  a little puzzle because, no matter what the circumstance, although the singular seemed to be called for James always uses the plural – phenomena.

So, some time ago, although fairly sure what his answer would be, I  asked him a question. In the past he has said that one could refer to Noam Chomsky as a bodhisattva of language. and looking at what he, Chomsky, has written about language is a revelation…just a quick look was enough to my eyes water! There is clearly a lot more to communication than the surface construction. So it was unlikely that he doesn’t know the singular…

so i asked… ” you do know that  that the singular of phenomena is phenomenon?” He just smiled and said “yes” and we left there.

For a while the situation was that he continued to say the plural “phenomena” no matter what the context  and i continued to twitch slightly whenever i thought it should be “phenomenon” singular. Maybe its just an anomaly, best ignored … i thought.

Eventually my ‘school trained’ knowledge succumbed to dharma understanding and the penny dropped…there is no such thing as ‘a phenomenon’. The word is suggestive of something discrete and discontinuous – separated out from other phenomena… whereas the experience of phenomena is always plural… each being dependant upon other phenomena for their arising together…kerr-chink!

Using the scissors or ‘biscuit cutters’ to abstract phenomena from the arising field and then reifying them and ascribing value to them are steps in the instructions in the popular “Create your own Samsara” kit. The result is not real but suffering, arising from misapprehension, is woven into its apparent structure because, as there is neither reality to the building blocks nor cement in the mortar, it cannot bear any weight. Not that hopes and fears and expectations have any more weight than other thoughts but there seems to be quite an energetic charge to them…

Whether or not to use this kit is the choice which mediation offers.
To begin with the misapprehension, being habitual, is continuous…and it takes a lot of mediation and examination, slowing things down before we can see what we’re doing. Then, with practice, we can see through  ‘the rabbit/thought hole’ and choose not to go down it.
If we do its like putting our attention into a little vortex where the thought you’ve caught plays around with other thoughts taking our energy into a spin and  the actuality of the spacious, open, astonishing  revelation from which we are never apart is occluded…
but its always there… even when we’re forgetting…just a little release and we’re back home.

The scent of bluebells… or bullshit?

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Something fresh for you..Bluebell_aka_Hyacinthoides_non-scripta

Recently I was talking with someone and we were imagining the notion of sitting inside  a lotus bud, in a pure–land, hearing the Dharma bells sweetly singing of ways to the truth as we surely grow into buddha-hood…(ok you have to use your imagination for this!)

…and then contrasting that with a common position in samsara where we have climbed inside a dustbin to keep safe and then pulled the lid down tight on top of us. The sights smells and sensations are… ummm…rather different.

Then tidying up some paperwork yesterday I came across a few lines of James’ –                                      “if you believe in conceptual elaboration, if you believe that the creativity of your own mind is telling the truth about the world, you will delude yourself and stay in the staleness of the repetition of your own mental confectionery!”– and the thought of the ego burping away as it chews on all the old beliefs and certainties makes life inside the dustbin seem even less attractive!

 

 

Emerson College 2014 recordings now available

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The recordings of that weekend in July 2014 when the Heart Sutra was explained are now posted on the Simplybeing.co.uk website; you can play and listen or download.

If you were not at that weekend maybe you’ll make it next year. The venue is delightful, the food good, and the quality of the teachings speak for themselves.

You can either camp or stay indoors. There are likely to be movement /Qi Gong workshops, music and dance…all in the company of (in my experience) wonderfully warm and open-hearted people.

P.S. An excellent edited transcript of the Eifel  2008 retreat is also now available and ties in well with this, exploring the illusory nature of reality and emptiness from the hinayana, mahayana, tantra. mahamudra and dzogchen perspectives.

 

 

A downbeat yet somehow encouraging offering.

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150px-Punishment_sisyphThis recording of Alain de Botton’s talk on pessimism posted on vimeo is a refreshing change from the often promulgated notion that  happiness and success are within the palm of your hand if only you try hard enough or buy the right book. That if they are not what you are experiencing then something has gone wrong…you have failed… and that those who have the good things have got them solely by their own efforts.  He suggests that, in fact, these might not be the worthwhile goals of life; that sadness fully experienced is of value and there is a cheapening  of one’s humanity in brushing it aside.

From a deep dharma perspective all experiences are empty therefore they can be fully felt, and their richness experienced, without fear of being overwhelmed.  Each experience then naturally dissolves making way for the next.

The greater the range of tolerance to the experiences, the greater the compassion available as this brings a reduction in the ‘turning away’ from the undesirable or desire for fusion with the ‘desirable’.  Any attempt  to push experience away (avoidance) or to hang on to it (grasping) means a separation from the flow of experience and the creation of  a false position (knitted from the experiences – thoughts feelings and sensations) and with that a sense of continuity, of substance, to both experience and experiencer.

It looks like James recommended it and i hope it lifts your… errm…  spirits!

 

P.S The picture is of Sisyphus (see Camus on pessimism)

Now available – James Low 2015 Emerson college recordings

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Chris, who lives in Germany, has completed a big job in reorganising the audio site so well done to him…and, following on from that, he has just  uploaded the recordings made in July for you to listen to. So just click here or look on the simplybeing.co.uk website where you’ll find it under audios…If you visit the site you will see that there are other interesting new additions shown on the right of the title page which Barbara has recently put up – including a video of meditation for escaping ‘imprisonment’… whether the bars are metal or mental!

 

I’ll leave the bit below (which i put up while we were waiting for the recordings) for a little while yet…..In the meantime (a bit like the potter’s wheel) how about a look at The three modes of energy  a text which has just become available… and then there’s some art work you might enjoy by Stuart Edmondson a Dartmoor based artist….if you look under ‘process’ you will see it is like the freshness of responsivity arising from openness and these quite took my breath away.

Then i laughed a bit at how amazed we are if an artist manages to capture a good likeness of a tree on paper or canvas…If its really ‘life- like’ we are so amazed, there’d be a queue to look at it…yet if we look at the tree itself that’s maybe not so amazing ?! Maybe its all amazing…

May – chirruping in Spain

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I take my hat off to the translators of James talks. They have to keep remembering everything he has said… which can be a lot… until he stops speaking and then they have to correctly re-present all this to the audience. To express this in a manner which is ‘simpatico’ is a joy to behold. So I hope you enjoy this video in ten parts – Emptiness and Dzogchen – from Grenada, translated by Juan.