Tag Archive for The Open Door of Emptiness

Open Door of Emptiness – Open to Life (i)… road-runner!

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Road-runner… nose to nose with Wyle E. Coyote…
from the Warner Brothers film To Beep or not to Beep !

Sentences from James’ teachings have often – thankfully – ‘stopped me in my tracks’… and caused me to reflect…sometimes for a long time, acting like a koan…

‘Stopped me in my tracks’ is rather a telling phrase … it’s as if we have train-tracks underneath our feet… that we are unwittingly running on until we shift tracks, the tracks shifts… or something shifts us!

The audio-recording of the Introduction to Chapter 3 of the book, the Open Door of Emptiness is now published… and I was struck by this sentence referring to the construction of the different stories that we tell to different kinds of people: ‘The stories may seem quite true as we tell them, yet we can’t quite escape the knowledge that they are constructs, that in the telling of them we are creating the ground we are standing on.’

As I was unpacking that…as I see it … that the ‘ground’ we create in this way acts as a temporary platform, or jumping off point, for further expression and is, of course, not the self-existing ground… but more a moment by moment investment in selected aspects of the of the mind’s creativity … yet how in a confused way, as we busily link one thought-formation with another, we imbue the result… (which, if one were to give shape etc. to it… would have the all the integrity and strength of home-made polystyrene tile)… with stability validity and credibility … some vivid imagery arose – of a new scenario for a Looney Tunes cartoon!

I watched these cartoons a very long time ago!
There was Road-runner… the very tall ‘chicken’ who was such an incredibly fast runner…
So amazingly fast that he left a trail of smoke behind him as he happily sped through the Arizona desert…often fanatically pursued by the hapless Wyle E. Coyote…who was intent on destroying him.

As humans we are a bit like Wyle E. Coyote…with a plan to fulfil our desires by deploying a special dualistic conditioning kit bought cheaply from the Acme store (don’t buy from them – believe me, they never work!).

When Road-runner comes to an obstacle, like a canyon…no problem… down… and then up the other side he would go… quick as a flash.
So in this imaginary scenario Wyle Coyote plans to catch him as he shoots back up the other side of the canyon… by getting across the canyon before him, crossing directly… in a straight line – through the air… After all, the fastest way between two points is a straight line, isn’t it?
(Some wiser ones will know that this is not always so…it would depend on the terrain and many other factors… and also be thinking, look before you leap…but anyway…!)
So he buys an ‘air-suspension-bridge’ kit from Acme.
On delivery, he discovers the kit is comprised of a generous supply of short wooden planks in a bag … and the instructions for their effective deployment.
The instructions tell him to carry the bag under one arm and run very very fast towards the canyons edge… then use the other arm to start laying out the track, throwing the pieces out in front of him so quickly that, letting momentum carry him forward … he would be able to run onto the next piece before it fell to the ground.
So much quicker than going down one side and up the other…he thought!!!

Maybe you can picture the scene as he runs onto the track… as it briefly extends towards the other side … through the air across the chasm…
before panning down to a coyote-shaped depression in the canyon floor…as road-runner passes going ‘Beep Beep!

Life in samsara ; )

If he had turned the plan over, perhaps he would have found its deconstruction…another sentence from the introduction… and given up the dualistic chase, for:
‘To locate a moment in the arc of time, you have to apply an interpretive structure…which disguises the immediate actuality of the moment’
…and finding his way to the truth of that, would surely be a less painful and more satisfying way of spending his days!

Screenshot–image thanks to Wikipedia…under fair use policy…



Open Door of Emptiness~Love and Impermanence (vi) ~ completion

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‘The approach offered in Dzogchen is helpful in its depth…
it is helpful in its radiance…
and it helps to make us more aware of our intrinsic connectivity…’
James Low

These words are from the closing paragraph of this section of the book…which is published as an audio recording, this new-moon day in May.

At this time it is as if the sun and moon come quietly together…
and from this darkness, through the lunar month, brightness increases to a peak, …followed by diminution to darkness with just a little light…

The life of the body… and many systems both within and without it… parallel this cyclical display, over a shorter or longer time frame…
and so it is for all compounded phenomena…for all constructs, as the Buddha noted…

His final exhortation… to keep going until the truth of the uncompounded was realised… was given to the monks around him at the time …
That which does not wax or wane, that which does not change, is the basis for the expressions of both wisdom and confusion.
Through time teachers with that same realisation have arisen, who show, indicate, and invite us to look in such a way that we also might find freedom from the constrictions and suffering which flows from taking the unreal to be strongly real…and with that release, the realisation of our full potential

There is a big difference between how it actually is, and what I think it is … but this is medicine that our egoic attachment makes difficult to swallow.
However, if trust in ‘my certainties’ diminishes as trust in the teachings of openness or emptiness increases…and I keep looking with a gentle eye… then the invitations in this text to ‘relax and open’… and ‘doing non-doing’ may help us see more clearly how it is before… my ‘doing’ casts a shadow …

…perhaps so that, in the dusty and deserted mid-west town…… moved by the wind that’s passing through… the one remaining door of the ego-saloon bar creaks a little as it swings listlessly… back and forth… hanging from it’s bent hinge
doing no harm, no-one inside…no-one outside, blocking no-thing…

Sounds like crap to your dualising consciousness? That’s ok …just relax back into spaciousness…it’s gone… : )
But we can enjoy /appreciate the flavour of ‘crappy prose’ without judgment …and however emptiness arises as the mind’s display, as our experiential field…trust that will vanish by itself…then there’s this…

….so how is ‘this’ before I appropriate it into consciousness, into my labelling value systems, and put my stamp on it?

Photo credit : I’m not recommending, nor have I looked at the content of the site but appreciating the sense of numinous radiance evoked by this photo – thanks to Lifereader.co.nz.

The happy easter-egg… of Love and Impermanence (iv)

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This dharma ‘easter egg’ is now added to the other recordings from the book ‘The Open Door of Emptiness’.
You’ll find it, with other book recordings, by clicking on the Audio /video tab.

As James has explained, the dharma is here to help us in our life.
Maintaining a dharma view as we engage with the day to day turbulence of the world…not getting lost in the nonsense…is no easy task…
Yet if we make full use of the help that’s been offered so freely… it surely will get easier…

The teachings are provided… whether in person…in books…recordings – in whatever form the dharma shows up for us…so we can absorb what we need from them
Then contemplating, as we massage them into us over and over again and again… our rigidities will gradually soften… so that their deep meaning can in time, sink into our heart…

When this occurs so completely that dharma-wisdom becomes the basis for expression…then compassion will be every-ready, at our finger tips – the fulfilment of our potential…

I can remember unwrapping an egg, as a little girl, one Easter Sunday …peeling off the shiny foil…and breaking in with a cracking bite. Also the slightly disappointed feeling ‘oh there’s nothing inside this one’ on finding it was hollow.

I hope you’ll feel no lack in the empty-ness of this particular egg…paradoxically it’s both empty and satisfying!
With zero calories, no artificial additives…and absolutely no saccharine …it can be eaten again and again…
As each mouthful re-minds us of the truth of us… unlike with a chocolate egg, we get healthier and lighter with every bite!

Love and Impermanence Part (ii)…the Open door of Emptiness

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The recording of Part (ii) of the chapter Love and impermanence is now available from the Audio/Video tab above, in The Open Door of Emptiness series.

If you were listening on Saturday 1st March to James’ teaching on ‘Effortful Selectivity and effortless non-selectivity’ you’ll maybe find the contents unconsciously resonating with the themes he explored.
If you didn’t get to see that live, then you might find that video complements this teaching and vice versa.
Each time a fresh expression …

In my experience these ripples of dharma act like the sea on my egoic sandcastle… a form built of and from the open sea’s shore …
As the tide comes in…each little ripple of arriving water has an impact on the apparently given stability of the structure…

At first the sand gets wet.. then dries as the water retreats…
But gradually, as ripple follows ripple…
the outer ramparts, rigid constructs… soften… and then slide into the sea…

Then the inner structures strictures or constrictions…the grasping at, and that which is grasped at…
give way to the truth… and all releases…

and freshly emergent experiences, in openness, arise and dissolve naturally…like the waves of the sea

P.s. There’s also a new post about being crocussed! …which comes and goes with this…

The Open door of Emptiness: Getting to know how we are ~ part (iii)

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i) The shining moon of wisdom…the clarity, or energy of the mind’s display… inseparable from open emptiness

ii) and this?

Below image i) there are some shapes that we call ‘letters’, arranged in groupings we call ‘words’ …
They don’t say anything from their own side…but as we attend to them, the concepts that we apply make them meaningful for us (or not) in different ways… according to our conditioning.

If we have a dharmic orientation they may resonate…but how to attune with the truth that they gesture towards and live from that?
This book offers a way in…and it’s first chapter ‘Getting to know how we are’ is, in my opinion, so very helpful with this.
Part (iii) the final part, is now available to listen to… illuminating how to practise the middle way, beyond extremes…(too tight is at 3’52 and too loose at 11’58)

The creativity of the mind shows itself continuously…
As I look at image i) …the central whiteness of the ‘moon’ seems more brilliant than the whiteness of the ‘page’ on which its set…
…and if I look a while longer, this white disc becomes grey with a white ring around it…

Image ii) could be another visual metaphor…perhaps for wisdom and its absence…
A vision of ice shelves fissuring and melting into the seas….with, just below the centre, a radiant peacock, its extravagant tail hanging down…
Above and to the left of that… Padmasambhava…surrounded by many beings, some enshrouded by their beliefs, others awake or awakening to how it is…and becoming lighter…

But both images are the same, in nature – the showing of no-thing…

Samsaric ignorance or stupidity is not innate but is an on-going ignoring… not looking to see, not opening to receive, ‘how it is’…
Instead we trust in our blind beliefs that ‘how I think it is’… ‘how I imagine it to be’…is how it actually is
So we are pixilated – bemused, bewildered, slightly crazy, intoxicated – as we take the product of our egoic con-fusion of concepts and pixels of light … to be veridical ; )

As we heard in one of James’ teachings, many yeas ago…light + concept equals pseudo-entity…
Image (i) is of the full moon November 2024, (ii) is of the residue left in a grey washing-up bowl…a few days after emptying out the clothes-soaking water! : )



The Open Door of Emptiness Getting to know how we are… Part (ii)

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Rookery, autumn…leaf fall exposé : )

Part (ii) is now published and includes Finding a method that works for you, Deconstructing our assumptions, and… Seeing things as real and being attached to them.

As dharma birds in the dharma tree

…this branch suits you

and this suits me

temporarily…

we may find some stability

nested

symbolically…

as a prelude to flying

invisibly

free


As we come into connection with the truth of emptiness …what happens to the fig-leaves of identification that, in taking ourselves to be some’thing’, we firmly hold in place?

If we gently examine this seemingly essential and definitional ‘clothing’ in the light of wisdom…its unsubstantial, non-essential nature becomes clear.

We do the same with the ‘self’, the one who is the wearer of the clothes…who is attached to these gossamer web-like ‘threads’ of mental clothing…

And we can see that… as the energy that flows with our attention is invested in particular beliefs… the shapings or ways of relating, that we adopt… become habitual… limited and limiting.
Yet ordinarily these views are assiduously strengthened and bolstered by linking them with associated arising thoughts of a similar ilk…and then, like the cuckoo… our sense of self, our identity, settles down to sit in that nest we made…our ‘home sweet home’ !

Unless we are fortunate we won’t leave its, in time foetid, cosiness.
But if we are, we get to turn around a bit and see that, inadvertently… we’ve turned our back on our unshaped, unborn naked awareness…within which both the nest and cuckoo rest!

If we see that our true home is awareness then we can see that putting on different ‘clothing’ that’s fitting to the situation, like an actor in a particular rôle…just as and when appropriate…is not so difficult. If the no-thingness of everything is clear then no clothes /’threads’/thoughts are special… true, our very own …

The Open Door of Emptiness

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I’ve just started to record this book by James Low…and have finished the first section of ‘Getting to know how we are’. You’ll find it in the collection of other book recordings… under Audios/Video from the menu-bar.

Traditionally, if we follow that path, one can be re-born in Sukhavti or Dewachen, sitting inside a Lotus with the dharma spontaneously re-sounding all around….We sit… and listen… and reflect… for a very long time until the meaning of the teachings has been realised.

In this world it’s not so easy to find the time to listen to and engage with the dharma ….but currently we have a chance. May we find enough time for that which is most important…and benefit deeply…from all the dharma-heart’s treasure that comes our way.

Photo of embroidery: Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Qianlong period (1736-95)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art