All quotes from
Dzogchen's book
Drama is illusion
that acts like truth and dharma is truth itself -- the way things are, the
basic state of reality that does not change from day to day according to
fashion or our mood or agenda. To change
dharma into drama, all we need are the elements of any good play: emotion,
conflict, and action -- a sense that something urgent and meaningful is
happening to the characters involved.
Your awakened mind
is always a good mind; it's never dull or confused. It's never distressed by the doubts, fears,
and emotions that so often torture us.
Instead, your true mind is a mind of joy, free from all suffering. That is who you really are. That is the true nature of your mind and the
mind of everyone.
Ironically, what
blocks your view of your mind's true nature -- your buddha mind -- is also your
own mind, the part of your mind that is always busy, constantly involved in a
steady stream of thoughts, emotions, and concepts. This busy mind is who you think you are.
In our ordinary
life, we're like dreamers believing that the dream we're having is real.
Buddhism is
primarily a study of mind and a system for training the mind. It is spiritual in nature, not
religious. The goal is self-knowledge,
not salvation; freedom, not heaven. It
relies on reason and analysis, contemplation and meditation, to transform
knowledge about something into knowledge that surpasses understanding.
A spiritual path can
exist within or outside a religious context.
Religion and spirituality can be complimentary or separate practices and
experiences.
From the Buddhist
point of view, there not only no savior, there is no one to be saved.
If we believe that
our senses and our conceptual mind are giving us a true and complete picture of
the world and who we are in it, we're just fooling ourselves. We need to expand our understanding beyond
our sense perceptions and concepts, which are nothing but tiny windows through
which we see only a partial reality.
Genuine faith is
simply confidence and trust in ourselves, in our own intelligence and
understanding, which then extends to the path we're travelling.
Because truly direct
experiences of the world are not often present in our ordinary life, we find
ourselves living either in concepts or in an emotional world of past or future.
We go so quickly
from perception to concept to emotion, and from there, it's just one more step
to value judgments, concepts so solidified that they've grown impervious to
doubt and questioning.
We may think that
our exhaustion comes from our job or our family, but in many cases, it's not
the job or family itself -- it's our mind.
What's exhausting us is how we relate to our life conceptually and
emotionally.
The question you
should ask yourself is, "What am I clinging to?"
We may not be
conscious of it, but the reality of our aloneness is with us all the time, and
we feel it in different ways. We might
experience it as a sense of dissatisfaction or restlessness, or we may feel
undercurrents of anxiety or depression.
Whenever we are or whatever we're doing in a given moment, it never seems to be quite enough.
Suffering is a
problem for us only when we can't see any possibility of freeing ourselves from
it. When we're willing to work with our
pain, it becomes a productive experience.
The key thing to
remember is that when an emotion arises, it's just a simple thought in the
beginning -- nothing more. But then we
take it further.
When your
relationship with your mind is based on trust instead of ignorance, fear, and
hopelessness, your mind becomes calm, clear, and open.
Discipline goes
beyond just following a set of rules, it requires genuine discrimination,
empathy, and honesty. Still it's your
own discipline you're developing. You're
the one on the road, making your way to your own freedom.
It may come as a
surprise to us, but by studying our mind, we discover our heart; by freezing
our mind, we open our heart.
Instead of seeking
to protect ourselves from confusion and chaos, we begin to appreciate that
confusion as being full of opportunities to train our mind further.
A mind of anger,
whether overt or hidden, always cuts off communication and makes us insensible
to the feelings of others.
If we think that the
… view of practicing compassion is going around saving the unenlightened, then
that's no different from the view of the religious sects whose members knock on
our doors.
No matter how bad it
looks or how horrible it may feel at times, this mind we have right now is our
only hope for awakening. … Whatever
we've been depositing into the bank account of our mind over the course of our lifetime
has been drawing interest to the point where we're now pretty rich with it,
whatever it may be.
A meeting of minds
or hearts is never about just one person; it's like a chemical reaction, and
alchemy that can transform both.
You don't need a new
or better heart. You need only to
recognize the heart you have and work with it, believe in it, and challenge
it.
It is in the arena
of our own life that you become a warrior and win your freedom.
How far are you
willing to go from your baseline of opinion and values to reach out to someone
who's confused and suffering?
It's often in our
efforts to help others in their confusion that we can experience some kind of
liberation of our own confusion.
