The Three Words That Strike the Vital Point

Lama Lena gives a series of 3 teachings and commentary on Garab Dorje’s text, “The Three Words That Strike the Vital Point”. This was filmed in Wildervank, Netherlands, April 2018.

Part 1 - Video

Part 1 - Transcript

[Lama Lena reciting mantra]
[sound of bell ringing]

Lama Lena:

What an appropriate and auspicious beginning. Guru Rinpoche, precious teacher, this symbol of the archetype of the pointing out of your own innate and natural state of enlightenment.

Do not be confused by the many stories of Guru Rinpoche’s life, many of them disagreeing with each other. I have a favorite life story, namtar [rNam-thar], of Guru Rinpoche. “High in the sky above north Orgyen, there arose a golden double vajra. It shone forth with many colors of rainbow light, causing many sentient beings to have a wide variety of experiences.” End of story.

And in fact we do. Us sentient beings have a wide variety of experiences. The past ten minutes, what happened? What has been occurring in the last ten minutes, turn to each other, if you would for a moment, and discuss the past ten minutes and see if there are any similarities on what happened to the people in this room.

[laughter]

No, I mean it, take a moment, do this.

[people starting to talk with each other]

[sound of bell ringing]

Lama Lena:

So, how similar have your past ten minutes been? Not so much, huh?

You are made out of your thoughts, your feelings, your perceptions and your experiences. Your very personality that you have right now is not the same one you had when you were fourteen. One would hope. [laughter]. It’s changed. What changed you? Your experiences, yes? You experience the world through your sense organs, all six of them. But how do you do that?

You see with your eyes, we say. But when you look at something, you name it. You associate it with all the things you’ve seen in the past, that look like it. With everything you know about it, all that is in the act of seeing and that doesn’t happen in your eyeballs. The cones and rods in your retina perceive, well the cones, okay the rods perceive a light and dark, shape, and the cones perceive color. And these impulses run through your channels: got channels from your eyes, circle around here, go down through here and there is a chakra in the back here. Where the sensation of the eyeballs is translated into things. Then it goes down through your channels to here, where you form a very quick feeling about the thing, liking or disliking, some combination of the two. Not in your eyeballs but in your mind. With your thoughts you see, not with your eyes. Close your eyes.

Imagine a picture of a flower. Can you see that, in your mind’s eye? It has color and shape, it has characteristics, whatever flower you’ve chosen. They are not using your eyes to do that, you’re seeing it in your mind.

Guru yoga

The three words of Garab Dorje, a text about mind. Like all Dzogchen texts it begins with ‘homage to the teacher.’ Do not confuse the archetype of teacher-ness with the personality talking at the moment. Just as it is important that you don’t confuse your own innate Buddha nature with the personality you are manifesting as at the moment.

Guru yoga has probably more misunderstandings than almost any other subject. And yet is it necessary for the transmission of Dzogchen, for the transmission of lineage.

When Rinpoche and I were first traveling together and I was translating for him— You know that line ‘to merge your mind with the teacher’? Yeah, well we had a little “oops,” see. You see, we tried to do it with our personalities; he got my hot flashes, I was having menopause at the time.

[laughter]

And I couldn’t eat seafood, he is quite squigged by seafood. And we were both most uncomfortable, because instead of both of us merging our minds with the lineage and the essence of teacher, we ended up merging the confusedness of our transitory personalities with each other. And giving ourselves both very severe psychic indigestion.

It’s not Lena the person that you merge your mind with, when you merge your mind with the teacher, so that it is possible to transmit nature of mind, which can only be shown to mind. It is not little me. What you are doing is recognizing that your own innate Buddha nature and my innate Buddha nature is the same Buddha nature.

At the end of a teaching it is traditional to come up and offer a kha-ta, a white scarf. The word kha-ta, means incorruptible, unfuckupable, unbreakable, it refers to your Buddha nature which cannot be damaged, no matter how confused you are. When you offer that scarf to the teacher, you’re offering the best thing about you. You’re giving the totality, of your own innate enlightenment, you’re offering it to the teacher and the teacher accepts your offering and then offers it back to you, to acknowledge that it is the same Buddha nature and we share it. So please, don’t try to emerge your minds with an old leather-dyke, sitting up here.

[laughter]

That will seriously give you indigestion. It’s the lineage, it’s the transmission, passed down, teacher to student, teacher to student, from beginning-less time that you are invited to participate in. And participating in that is Samaya, a relationship of mutual openness and participation. And it is not about whether your personality is able to perfectly participate with my personality because “No, no way”! It is about whether your Buddha nature can rest in comfort with my Buddha nature and the recognition that it isn’t two Buddha natures but it is simply Buddha nature. So don’t get all twisted out of shape about your personality and my personality and his personality and her personality, they are just personalities, they are just passing through. They are all fucked up. It is the nature of personalities to be confused, don’t mind it. Look past that. Both inward and outward. Do you understand?

Guru yoga is very important, but don’t confuse it with putting a person on a pedestal. First time they ever made me sit on a throne, I was wearing my robe skirt, yes, somebody may have seen that. And fortunately I was wearing a pair of boxer shorts, I think they had bright green frogs on them, because they built a throne for me as a translator, you know I was with Rinpoche, out of two like, futons stuck together with a cloth over them, I didn’t wanna sit there. “l don’t get to sit there, I don’t want to sit there.”

Anyway, and then Rinpoche is like, “Sit down!” So, in all my confusion and resistance I managed to fall upside down between the two futons with my short, little legs ticking in the air and my great green boxer shorts sticking out and my robes over my head.

[laughter]

Participant: Is there footage of this?

Lama Lena: Unfortunately, if there is I haven’t found it or I would stick it up on Facebook as a teaching on guru yoga.

View, Meditation, and Action

So yes, Dzogchen requires guru yoga, but don’t be confused by your personality or mine in the practice of this, look past that,

“tawa longchen rabjam yin” [lta wa klong chen rab ‘byams yin], “the view is Longchen Rabjam,” this is right what I’m telling you, it is right out of the text.

In the guru yoga we take view, meditation and action and we associate them with names of teachers of the lineage so that we can see that our mind in meditation, our practice, is not separate from the lineage.

So when we say “tawa longchen rabjam yin” [‘lta wa klong chen rab ‘byams yin], and Longchen Rabjam [klong chen rab ‘byams] means infinite vast expanse. Tawa [Lta wa] is the view. The view is infinite vast expanse. This is also a name of a teacher in the lineage, the lineage is infinite vast expanse.

“gompa khyentsé özer yin” [sgom pa mkhyen brtse’i ‘od zer yin]: the meditation is rays of infinite loving kindness. The aliveness of mind itself, of infinite vast expanse, the vitality of that is the nature of great hearted open heartedness. The nature of Bodhicitta which literally means Buddha consciousness; Bodhi-Buddha, vast gone, gone beyond. Citta consciousness. That infinite, vast expanse which is the true nature of your own mind, is vital and alive with Bodhicitta. With light rays of infinite love, open heartedness, great heartedness. Not petty. Openness. This is the vitality of the universe.

chöpa gyalwé nyugu yin [‘spyod pa rgyal ba’i myu gu yin’]: The action is the deeds of the Bodhicitta, the dance of phenomena is the dance manifesting as openhearted, greathearted action. Only we sentient beings in our deep “doo-doo” of confusion don’t see it that way, ooops. All phenomena is the dance of Buddha, enlightening Buddha. Even if what we see it as a nice cup of coffee.

So you see guru yoga is not separate from view, meditation and action. It is not separate from your own mind and the relationship of Buddha nature with Buddha nature is Samaya. Inherent, unbreakable, natural open awareness. For one who practices in this way there is no doubt about enlightenment in one lifetime, it’s easy. Maybe it’s a little bit too easy….

‘Cause we’re so busy having a hard time. Hard times are entertaining. Look at the last book you read. There was conflict in the plot, wasn’t there? [laughter]

Yeah, we’re very entertained by that. But even if not, there is still happiness, ah la la. That’s Tibetan for “Oh, wow!”

So the point here is, in order to recognize your own Buddha nature, you have to let go of your distractions a little bit. Just for a minute, you can have ’em back.

Inner Mind Rushen

There is a practice, which is a traditional ngöndro, done, a Dzogchen ngöndro. It’s contained in the rushen, and more details are available in the text Yeshe Lama. But traditionally the inner mind ngöndro is done in order for this text to make sense. Yeah, I’m about to give you another ngöndro. Bad news is, you gotta do it, good news is there is no hundred thousands, it just takes a few minutes.

In this rushen, in the inner mind rushen, there is a teaching of the body, a teaching of the speech and a teaching of the mind. The teaching of the body is all about physical position, how to sit. Most of you all kind of know that already, that you have to have your channels in alignment to avoid getting side effects. Right? That’s not new to anybody. And you know how to cross your legs or sit in a chair. So I am not gonna spend a lot of time talking about how to cross your legs or how to sit in a chair. What I will say is either way, don’t have your weight on your tailbone. Your weight needs to be further forward, where your thighs meet your butt, that crease there, that should be the center of down. So if your weight is back on the back of your buttocks, it will curve your spine in such a way that it will lead to “finding problems” type depression. You know that mood where you can see everything wrong? Well that’s what happens from that, don’t do it, it’s unpleasant.

When you have your weight adjusted that way, you’ll find that your back will naturally pull straight. You’ll know about making a double chin, tucking your neck back a little bit, leaving the shoulders loose. This is more important in Dzogchen and less important in tantra, but you want to have your teeth slightly apart. See, you stick the sides of your tongue…. [Lama Lena talking with tongue between teeth] you know, a little bit in between them, but relaxedly, not emphasizing, just a little bit. And your tongue lies with the tip right behind the front teeth on the roof of your mouth, but the sides sort of hold your teeth apart, just a little. And your lips don’t completely close either. This is important for this practice, although it is done slightly differently in other practices.

The main point however is your eyes. See, trekchö [khregs chod] is all about attention, trekchö is what the mediation of Dzogchen is called. It means “cutting through.” It cuts through illusion, delusion, confusion. Your attention follows your eyeballs. You cannot look at that thang-ka without thinking about it. Try! Look at the thang-ka with your eyes without thinking a single thought about the thang-ka. Look at that tang-ka now. You see how you’re paying attention wherever you look. So from beginningless time we sentient beings have been looking in front of us and behind us, to the left of us and the right of us, above us and below us. We look in the ten directions and we look in the three times: past, present and future.

So how to get you to look in another direction, that’s not one of those? There is an eyeball-trick. See, your mind isn’t in one of those directions. If you want to find your mind, you will have to pay attention in another direction which is not any of the usual directions, like past, present, future. Like left, right, up, down, inside, outside. It’s another direction all together. And the point of this ngöndro is to gently guide your attention to look in another direction altogether.

To do that, you have to let go with the muscles that control the lens of your eyes. You have to relax those muscles. Now those of you wearing glasses have a great advantage, you can take them off. This will immediately cause things to be blurry and make it much easier for you to relax the focus muscles of your eye lens. There is these muscles that the lens attaches too, you gotta relax them. So what you do with your eyes, and this is the key to trekchö, is you let the line of your gaze follow your nose outward and down and so you find a point where your eyes naturally will focus. Found your point, you’re looking at our point? Without moving your eyeballs stop looking at the point. Let our vision blur. Unfocus your eyeballs, leave your eyelids about half open, not all the way closed, but not all the way open. Allow them to blink whenever they want to, don’t try to restrain your blink reflex. But do let your vision blur. If you do not blur your vision, this is much less likely to work for you. With your vision blurred, open the orifice of your attention.

From beginningless time, you have paid attention to what you are thinking, what you are feeling and what you are perceiving with your sense organs. Each of these attentions is a point-focus of attention, just as when you look at this or that, it is a point-focus, a vision. Let go. Release the point-focus of your eyes and the point-focus of your attention. If you are feeling slightly agitated, bouncy, when you try to do this then take a deep breath through your nose and blow it out slowly through the pursed lips of your mouth like this

[Lama Lena taking deep breath and slowly blowing out]

That will settle the chi in your channels and smooth out its movement. Your thoughts, your thinking, you think in your mind, yes? The mind is the thinker of the thoughts, the feeler of the feelings, the do-er of the deeds, the perceiver of the perceptions. Let your attention open, into the totality of mind itself.

Sometimes it helps to use a picture. Imagine an umbrella. See the image of the umbrella in your minds eye, visualize it. Where is that picture? Do not use our intellect for this purpose. It’s the wrong tool. Feel for it.

All thoughts occur in mind, without specifically thinking about mind, perceive. Mind with mind. Let our attention relax and expand into the natural awareness of mind itself.

The tendency will be to think about mind and pay attention to what you are thinking about mind. When you catch yourself doing that, take another breath into your nose, blow out through your mouth [Lama Lena taking deep breath and slowly blowing out] and re-unfocus your attention on all the ‘thisses and thats’ of thoughts and feelings.

Make a picture in your minds eye, with your imagination of a sailing-ship on the ocean. Do you see that picture? With your mind? Now gently allow your attention to expand from the picture, the image of the sailing-ship on the ocean, to the infinite openness in which that picture exists.

Mind, mind looking.

Open awareness, aware of itself.

For some people it is helpful to examine both inside their body and outside their body, to try to see where the picture is. So with your attention examine your body, inside your body in minute detail, to see if you can find any location whatsoever, in which an image of a sailing-ship on the ocean is. Start at the tips of our hair, work your way down to your toes, carefully checking to see if the image is inside there anywhere. Again don’t intellectualize this, do it experientially.

If, after careful examination, you find no place within your body, that is mind.

Then look outside your body. In front or behind, above or below, to the left, to the right.

Look until the not finding is certain. This takes your attention to the vanishing point of mind. To an openness of attention, which is not resting on anything. And in that complete open awareness words, thoughts, feelings and perceptions arise and vanish without limitation. And in this completely natural and relaxed, open awareness there is nothing that can be said about it. Colors, shapes, even the very idea of center or edge, these are thoughts that arise in mind, dissolve in mind. Mind itself, there is really nothing you can say about it. Relax and relax again. Let your mind settle naturally, into an open awareness of itself.

Tawa

This openness, this infinite open vastness of mind itself was infinite open vastness before you ever noticed it. And will remain infinite, open vastness when you become distracted from noticing it. Your attention or your distraction have no effect whatsoever upon mind itself. To relax in this way is tawa, [lta-ba].

The first word of the three words of Garab Dorje.

It is sometimes translated as view. But that is an inaccurate translation. You see, it is your mind. You are your mind. There is no you. Looking at your mind, that dichotomy, that disassociation that we live with as sentient beings where we feel as if everything is somewhere outside of ourselves, even our mind, because we look at our mind and it is like a view, looking out the window at the view. Only it is not, is it. You’re gazing into your own eyes here. You are this infinite, open awareness. And you’ve always have been and you’ll always will be. Nothing to be accomplished, is there? Your attention wiggles. Your thoughts are moving and changing, your personality comes and goes, is born, is dying. This natural open awareness of mind itself unborn, undying. Neither here nor there. Not something you have to create or acquire. It’s simply your own mind.

And this is the first word of Garab Dorje.

Ta-wa, to recognize your own true nature is the first vital point.

Ta wa long chen rab dyam ni [lta ba slong chen rab ‘byams ni]

Infinite vast expanse, your mind is not limited, your thoughts are limited!

You can only think in a language you know. There is lots of things you can’t think, cause you don’t have words to think them in. That’s why so much of the Tibetan vocabulary gets left in Tibetan. It’s why I leave tawa rather than translating it as view, because the moment I say view it’s like I am here looking at a view. I am creating that disassociation that plages all of us sentient beings. Where here I am, looking at the view, here I am looking at my mind as if I wasn’t my mind. And it was something over there and I had to somehow stabilize it and acquire it and make it hold still. No.

Look at your mind with your mind, there is nothing there to move.

It can’t get away. You are that! How can you get away from yourself? You can’t!

So mind-mind looking. Not mind looking at mind.

That is already in the vocabulary of it in the way it’s freezed adding in that disassociation that we live with. Let that go, put that down for a moment, you don’t need it.

You are tawa. Not you see tawa, you are tawa.

Like a pirate, yu’ar, yar! [laughter] Yep, but you’re gonna remember it now.

So there is absolutely no danger of your losing tawa. No matter how fucked up you get on a given morning, tawa is completely unaffected infinite vast expanse.

Stuff moves in space. Space isn’t moving. That’s an analogy. We have a word in Tibetan, nam kha [nam kha’]. It means sky space. It is the word for sky and it is the word for space.

[Sound of a spoon stirring in a cup]

We gotta keep me awake, otherwise I’ll go to sleep while I’m sitting here talking to you and become incoherent. Jet-lagged lama. [laughter]

Do you have any questions about tawa? Do you have any questions about your homework? Yeah, you get homework in these retreats. This ngöndro I gave you, the inner mind rushen where you sit with your channels in alignment, you unfocus your eyes, you take your glasses off, you let your eyes get unfocused and you actually go through the process of trying to find where your thoughts are happening.

Jan, you’re a musician, you up to telling them how to do it with sound?

Jan: Any musicians? Okay, it’s much easier for me this way and that is to, in the mind’s ear, listen to a tune. And as you’re listening to that tune, look with your perception, with your feeling, and see if you can notice where it is playing.

And as you do that, go ahead and create your own tune, any old thing that comes in and notice where that tune arises, where does it come from, where is it playing? And remember the first tune, that was maybe one you’d heard before, where did it go when you weren’t listening to it? Same three questions, different perception.

Lama Lena: You can do this with a visualized image, an audio-lized tune, a tacta-lized touch sensation, a tongue-alized flavor? [laughter]. Look to see.

All of these are thoughts, kinds of thoughts. That are, you’re creating in your mind to work with. Look to see where the thoughts are coming from. Not what in the past inspired them. But physically, actually spatially, where did they come from to arise in your mind, where were they before then? Where did they go when you’re done thinking them?

What are they made of? Where are they right now? So it is three questions and a fourth bit. Where does it come from, where does it occur, where does it go when you’re done thinking it? And what is it made of? Regardless of whether you think in pictures, in musical notes, or in words. Find your mind. Your mind is the thinker of the thoughts.

By looking to see where the thoughts come from, where they occur, where they go, and what they are made of, this will take your attention and shoot it to look in a direction that is neither inside, nor outside. Neither to the right, nor the left, above, nor below, in front, nor behind. And when your attention shifts in this ‘nother’ direction, it expands, it opens and mind directly perceives itself.

It is possible to allow your attention to remain open while thinking. It is easier to relax past thinking or to put your thinking in neutral gear, where it is not logical and linear, because that’s awfully distracting. When your thinking is making sense to you, the way it makes sense is by your paying attempting to it. So it’s often easier if you’re working with thoughts and words to make them random.

Questions and Answers

Questions on homework? Yes.

Participant: You introduced us now with visualized, “audiolozed,” etc. Can this also be done with, for example, I was feeling the edge of the…some knots of…”tactilized”?

Lama Lena: No, don’t do it with something that is actually a physical sensation the moment. Feel the edge and then imagine feeling the edge, take your hand away from the edge. But imagine the feeling of the edge, where is it when you’re imagining it. Your…finding your imagination, your imagination is your mind. Your imagination isn’t something other than your mind. If you try to do it with an actual ‘of this moment’ like the texture, if I try to do it with the texture of brocade while moving my hand across brocade, I find it in my fingertips. That is where the sensation is when I am doing this or so it will appear to me.

Participant: So it appears like that to me as well, but my experience with doing this is that while I have the clear experience of the touch in my fingertips, I can’t locate my fingertips.

Lama Lena: You’re weird. [laughter] I am just teasing you. It is not traditional and I have not heard of it before, but if it’s working for you, go ahead, be experimental, you’re a Westerner. Airplanes and ice cream, Tibetans would never have thought of them. As my teacher says, that is a quote from Wangdor Rinpoche. He is very impressed by ice cream and airplanes. [laughter]

Yes?

Participant: Yeah, to blur the vision, can one also put on the reading glasses, because then for me it blurs.

Lama Lena: No, it is better to learn to do it without. If you cannot get it to blur, you can try putting on the reading glasses, but don’t rely on them. The blurring of the vision has to be a relaxation, it is not just that things look blurry. It’s actually a relaxation of the lens-muscles which will lead to a relaxation of an internal attention muscle. I don’t quite know what to call that but there is something that you use, like when you’re really focused on math problems, like you’re doing math word problems. Remember homework. So when you really have our attention focused on that, there is a muscle you tighten. You gotta learn to relax that muscle.

Now sometimes for some people doing a great deal of intensive focus and then letting go will make it easier. So if you have trouble relaxing the muscle of your attention, then do a very intricate Yidam visualization and sadhana. And that is so tight and specific, that when you get to the point that it all dissolves, you’re so relieved not have to maintain that anymore, that just….vwiiuu [Lama Lena making sound of being relieved]… and you sort of flop into trekchö. That’s how it works.

How many of you are doing a Yidam practice or sadhana? So there is a place in your sadhana, where this comes. Not the homework I gave you, but where sitting in trekchö meditation arises. After it all turns back into the seed-syllable and goes “poof.”

The—for many of us—the tension of an attempt to do the visualization perfectly will tire the muscle of attention. So that it will then more easily relax. And since mind is not directly perceivable with point focus, having let that “let go” is important.

Benefits of Dzogchen Practice for Householders

If you decide to go for it, with all of you, all of yourself, all of your enthusiasm, there is absolutely no doubt about enlightenment in one life. But that is if that is the one thing you want. If you have lots of wants and you’re trying to balance them all out; you wanna have a baby and you wanna get enlightened and you wanna have a career and you, you know, wanna have stuff! Right? Like so you have all these wants? Then it is not a guarantee in one life but it will still make your life a damn sight easier than without it. That is what they mean by “but if not there is still happy in this “ah la la.” You see, if you practice Dzogchen, well first of all, you’ve all noticed that life is like “shit happens.” I mean it does, there is no way around it. At the least of it, you’re gonna get old and that is full of shit.

So if you practice Dzogchen, even just in your spare time, while trying to raise a family and have a career and have a viable relationship and maybe have a hobby or two, our lives get pretty full, you know.

If you just turn your attention to this daily on a regular basis, when the shit happens you will have a greater resilience to weather it for you’ll be able to see through to some extent, the terrible story you’re telling yourself about the shit that did just happen. About how it is all your fault and you’re a terrible person because that happened to you. You know that story? If you know what that story is made of it won’t catch you as hard. You understand what I’m pointing at here? It’ll still catch ya, but not with the same level of catchiness, that people that have not experienced nature of mind and turn their attention to nature of mind on a regular basis, experience.

Yes you can still get depressed, but you know how when you’re depressed you think it really is like that? That’s the layer on top that this peels off. you will be less trapped, not that you won’t have hopes and fears, but you will be less trapped in taking your hopes and fears with utter seriousness. Yes, you will still continue to think stupid things and many of the things you think will really bother you. But if you have practiced trekchö regularly, you won’t quite as strongly believe everything you think while you think it. Oh, you’ll still fall in, I am not telling you’re not gonna fall in to some crazy story you’re telling yourself about how terrible you are or how mean somebody was to you or “yada yada yada.” But there is going to be a subtle increasing transparency to it the more you practice.

You see, your thoughts are transparent. Last night, remember I showed you about looking at your fingerprints and then looking through your hands at me. Some of you were there. Those of you who weren’t there, give it a try. Put your hand with your fingers spread in front of your face and look at me through your fingers. You’ll find you can see me quite clearly through your fingers. Now, focus your eyes on your fingerprints. While you focus your attention only on your fingerprints, you can’t see me at all. But just to change a focus of attention of eye focus and you can see me quite clearly through your fingers. When you practice open awareness, openness of attention not “thing-looking-ness” of attention, not “thing paying attention-ness” of attention, and you get used to doing that. You’ll find it easier to see through your thoughts even while you’re thinking them. And they won’t yank you around so much. That they will still a little bit. Unless you decide you’re gonna go for it and this is the one thing you want in life and then take yourself off, leave your home and family, go off, find a cave or a wild place and do nothing but practice. But if that is not how you want to do it, it still works.

That is the cool thing about ‘tsig zhul na deb’ and Dzogchen. So yes, you can have a life and a career and some babies and a couple of hobbies and maybe a lover and you know, whatever you’re gonna fill your life with. you just gotta let your attention open every day, five minutes. And over time it works. Questions on this, cause it’s a really important point. Yes.

Participant: Yeah, you gave this teaching two years ago. I was there, and it was really awesome.

Lama Lena: Did you practice?

Participant: I try, I try every day.

Lama Lena: That is all you need to do. Now, there is a problem with trying. It’s tight. Instead of trying, relax every day. It’s not like a bird dog, pointing at a squirrel, to look at the view, tawa. It’s like sliding into a hot bath, you are tawa.

Participant: It’s like the weirdest thing, it’s like in meditation it goes really, you know, surprising well. But it is like you say, you know, then out of meditation then all these things come back and sort of, and you’re just looking at it like “what the hell.” Like it is sort of, I can sort of see that it is not true but in the meantime….

Lama Lena: It still catches you sometimes.

Participant: Yeah, it just goes on, you know….

Lama Lena: Yeah.

Participant: It’s like a trip.

Laktong

Lama Lena: It is like a trip. It’s called samsara, bad drugs.

Keep going, you’re already beginning to experience the loosening of your grasp on the illusion of reality. See, your reality is whatever you think it is in the moment, that is the reality that you’re experiencing. So you’re always telling yourself a story about what is going on. And that story is our reality of the moment. Once you can see a little bit through the stories while you’re telling yourself, they won’t quite so hard trap you into that reality, that you’re making up anyway. Yeah, takes a while. The trick, there is a word in mahamudra, how many of you are Kagyu lineage here? So, in mahamudra, Laktong we call it, direct seeing, it is very much the equivalent of trekchö, direct seeing, cutting through or pointing at the same thing.

The more you are able to do laktong, laktong in mahamudra is where you begin to be able to meditate while thinking, instead of meditating instead of thinking.

And since you will be thinking, right? I mean, you will. You’re not gonna stop thinking, so you need to be able to practice while you think. That’s why laktong, trekchö is so important. It does not have to be instead of thinking. When you see what the thoughts are made of, clearly, then you can think anything you want. And still at the same time see nature of mind. Now you’re still disassociated at this point. There is a “you” seeing a mind and you’re not realizing that you’re mind. But you’re less troubled by what you think. That doesn’t mean you don’t think, you still think and feel, you don’t wanna stop thinking and feeling. This is the creativity of natural mind. The vitality of the universe. We are not going for Darth Vader trying to destroy all life in the universe, to make it to be still nirvana. We’re trying to see what samsara is made of. Infinite open awareness, in all its vitality and aliveness, dancing with the phenomena of thoughts, feelings and perceptions, none of which are made of anything other than infinite open awareness. No conflict, no separation between samsara and nirvana. Natural mind, in all its dancing vitality, there’s not a single thing which moves. See that?

Did I give you a Dorje last time, a little Dorje?

Participant: Two years ago.

Lama Lena: How many of you lost them? [laughter]

It’s okay, I’ll give you new ones tomorrow. Other questions…worried about time anyway, it is nine thirty. Are you satisfied? For tonight? The more attention you put into your homework, whether it is going dancing or sitting on your cushion…. How many artists have I got here? Visual artists. For you, visual artists, I’ll give you another piece to do, maybe over breakfast in the morning or if you’re going out partying, you can do it tonight.

Shift your vision between objects and the space around the objects, just shift your attention if you go about, don’t do this while driving please. Between objects, your cat, your coffee, your television, whatever objects enter into your life tonight and the infinite open sky around them. Practice shifting your attention between the objects and the space they inhabit. And when you shift your attention to the space, all the space. Not just this way but all the space below, all the space above. For you visual artists it is equivalent to the dancing one. Find the stillness in the dancing, find the space around the objects.

Participant: How is the Dorje relating to the open space, the open….

Lama Lena: It is a reminder of practice, I’ll show you tomorrow. The Dorje is used as a tool.

Participant: Has it also has to do something with….

Lama Lena: That which is so open, it contains not, that is which is so empty, it contains not even space. Therefore it is utterly hard, nothing can penetrate it. That is the symbol. You can’t break the sky, you can pollute the atmosphere, but you can’t break the sky. No matter how hard I strike space, space is utterly unaffected. This is an analogy. The Dorje is the symbol of the unbreakableness of open awareness. Your attention, your thoughts, your feelings, all wiggle about all over the place. You pay attention here, pay attention there, your mind is utterly unaffected by what you’re paying attention to. And you will discover this if you repeatedly look and see if it is still there. And if anything changed it. So next time you’re really depressed, look and see if your mind is still there and if it is affected in the least. Not your personality; open awareness.

ge wa di

nyur du da

che chi

sa la god par shok

Wylie:

dge ba ‘di

myur du bdag/

(che bzhi) de kyi sa la

‘god par shog

Part 2 - Video

Part 2 - Transcript

Lama Lena: So how did your homework go last night?

Participant: I went early to bed…. [inaudible]

Lama Lena: I too.

Participant: Okay.

Lama Lena: Yeah, now I can see you. Yes.

Participant: I’ve been doing the thing a lot where I am aware of the space around an object while looking at an object. And this seems to lead to a lot of the nyams. Is this usual?

Lama Lena: Any practice leads to a lot of nyams if you do it a lot.

Participant: What is a nyam?

Lama Lena: Ah, nyams, you’ll be having those. Nyams are meditative experiences. Nyams, n-y-a-m. the Japanese call the, comes and goes. Cause they are experiences that come and go…shift in mahamudra terminology for a moment; because I have noticed with Westerners there is a place in Dzogchen that everybody gets hung up for a while, called stabilizing their trekchö [khregs chod].

Somebody told you somewhen or something got translated as “there is something you’re supposed to stabilize.” However, you can’t stabilize the moving. Not gonna happen. In mahamudra we spent a long time in shyi-né [zhi gnas; shamatha], as shyi-né develops into lhaktong [lhag mthong; vipassana]. As resting in stillness develops into direct seeing, where we separate and become very clear to ourselves what is the moving, and what is the stillness; this will later on protect you from the accident, which can take years to get over, of trying to stabilize the moving. You try to stabilize a meditation that you have accomplished.

Go back to lam-rim [lam rim], impermanence, anything that has a beginning is gonna have an end. So if you achieve in meditation, that means that this meditation has a beginning in time. It started, you achieved it on September twenty-fourth two-thousand and ten. It is gonna end, ya can’t keep it. Things that begin and end are “come and goes”; they come and go. They are part of the moving. This is really important.

Your thoughts are moving, they come and go. Your feelings are moving, the come and go. Your perceptions are moving and your experiences are moving. If you experience the experience of stillness, although the stillness does not come and go, your experience of the stillness does. It is moving. You know the Zen koan, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him quickly?” You have to destroy any such thing as a meditation which you acquire.

They say that a yogi’s practice is just as a mountain stream: as it falls from to rock to rock in the high mountain: it breaks itself and becomes pure and clear, aerated, better drinking. So a yogi’s practice has to be broken again and again. You can’t keep it. Yeah?

Participant: This relates to a difference that I noticed between, let’s say, the very basic method of cutting through and guru yoga. Which in my experience adds a layer of blessing, of feeling connected to a mandala, to a lineage. There is some experience there which….

Lama Lena: Comes and goes….

Participant: Which comes and goes, yet somehow I am not convinced I want to break it down. I might just….

Lama Lena: Oh, you’re going to have to. Eventually. If it reassures you and motivates you, you can keep it for a little while, just like I can keep this marvellous cup of coffee for a little while. But eventually it will be gone.

Participant: I know, but somehow it seems bigger and more important than all the other thoughts and experiences and perceptions et cetera.

Lama Lena: In kye-rim [bskyed rim] yes. Kye-rim is path of accumulation, path of creation. All of your sadhanas are kye-rim. You do them. Shyi-né, resting in stillness. What do they call that, samadhi. You do that, it comes and goes. You can’t really grasp and keep on any kind of permanent base, it’s a come and go. And if you become attached to the dharma, and try to keep it rather than go past it….

Look, the dharma is a set of tools. When you pick up a screwdriver to unscrew a screw, once the screw is unscrewed you put down the screwdriver. Because now you got the back of the thing. All of these doings are tools, and yes, they lead to experiences. You have to go through and pass them.

Guru yoga is very important: it leads to a blessing. But the blessing occurs. Behind that, is that which doesn’t come and go. When I recite the lineage before beginning, the names of the teachers, the personalities of the teachers, come and go. What is pointed at by the names and the personalities of the teacher is always there. Mind, what we call sem-nyi [sems nyid], big mind, real mind, absolute mind. As separate from ordinary sem, little mind. That is always there.

Look at the analogy of space and matter. Matter is always moving through space, it doesn’t hold still. If you were to take any bit of matter down to zero kelvin degrees, it would vanish. That is why nothing goes to zero kelvin, it always goes to a light percentage of zero kelvin. Those of you who’ve done some physics in chemistry are gonna follow this part. Because absolute stillness is zero kelvin and matter vanishes in absolute stillness so no one can achieve zero kelvin in matter without it completely disappearing, the electrons can’t even move there, or the quarks, all of the little bitty, buzzy, tiny little particles that have weird names like gluons.

The space in which the matter moves doesn’t move. Phenomena arises in mind, your experience is phenomena, it is moving. Whether it is an experience of great blessing, or an experience of great horror, it moves. The mind in which the experience occurs, does not move. As long as you put your trust in a moving, your trust will be betrayed in the long or the short run. ‘Cause it’s gonna wiggle. So if you put your trust in an achieved, acquired practice, and you are very good at achieving and maintaining that acquired practice, it is still on the wheel and all it is gonna do is drop you into a god-realm. And you’ve been there, and you’ve done that. If certain belief systems assist you, such as belief in dharma, you may keep those belief systems as say “working hypotheses” until you no longer need them.

There is still a belief system, they are phenomena. Moving. Tawa [lta ba] is to recognize stillness. Your recognition of stillness is moving. And will continue to be a moving object, unreliable, until such time as the separation between the recognizer, rigpa [rig pa], the see-er, rigpa just means see-er. Rigpa is that which is staring out from behind your own eyes. See-er, that is the literal meaning of the word, it is not some highfalutin [fancy, pretentious] something. So, until the see-er recognizes itself as the stillness inseparable from the moving, and the stillness and moving ceases to be a dichotomy, and there is no perceiver separate from the perception, you’re gonna be having nyams, and you can’t trust them. Does this answer your question?

Nonetheless, those useful bits, you’re welcome to keep them as long as they are useful. Just be aware, when you’re done with the screw, you’re gonna have to put down your screwdriver. It isn’t that guru yoga goes away. It is that it matures into a recognition of all Buddhas of the four times of which one is a member. And one ceases to need to separate oneself from tawa. Makes sense?

Participant: That makes sense.

Lama Lena: Don’t put your tool down before you got the screw loose. Other questions on last night’s homework. Yes, you need the blessing of tawa. Which is in no way separate of all buddhas of the four times. Which is in no way separate of all sentient beings of the three realms. Bodhicitta and guru yoga are not two different things. Where do you think all Buddhas of the four times come from? They arise out of sentient beings. They are not separate. You can’t hate sentient beings and love all Buddhas. They are the same thing, beyond time and space; within time occupying space, they are quite different. But space and time, the entire space-time continuum is simply a phenomena. It is moving. Other questions. In the back and then you.

Participant: I hope…now you are teaching about gompa [sgom pa; meditation], yesterday. So I am wondering, yesterday you said about meditation it is Khyentse Özer [mkhyen brtse ‘od zer].

Lama Lena: Light rays of compassion and love, yes.

Participant: For me it is, and you explained also that it has to do with open heartedness. For me that is very difficult to recognize, in the nature of the mind.…tawa as I understand it.

Lama Lena: Oooh, we got a misunderstanding there. Here, let me show you. Align your channels. Got to show you, I can’t explain it. Breath in through your nose, blow is out through your mouth and settle your chi. Open your attention to mind itself. Open awareness; the see-er sees itself. Not coming or going. This indescribable awareness, unborn, undying. Beyond the limitations of the ideas of time and space. tawa is simply “hung,” the mind of all Buddhas of the four times, empty and aware. Luminous with the clarity of vitality. Brightly creative of the entire gamut of the moving of phenomena. Infinite open awareness.

Chöku [chos sku; dharmakaya], longku [longs sku; sambhogakaya], tulku [sprul ku; nirmanakaya], infinite open awareness, the mind of all Buddhas of the four times. Bright, luminous, aware, awake. The speech of all Buddhas of the four times. Nirmanakaya’s creativity; infinite diversity and infinite combination, arising and vanishing as no thing and nowhere. Infinite beings of the three realms.

Chöku, longku, tulku, no separation. The open awareness in its vast indescribable brilliance and creativity. You cannot separate clear light from openness. You cannot separate all beings of the three realms, all sentient beings; the living, moving, dancing, feeling, thinking, perceiving from the mind which utterly still unborn, undying, living, dancing with the creativity that creates time and space and phenomena. Open awareness. No ‘thing’. All beings arise as all Buddhas. Samsara and nirvana, the dance of stillness.

Bodhicitta, Buddha-consciousness, open awareness, infinite recognition, vitality and aliveness. The creativity of all phenomena. These are the same thing. There is no separation here. Guru yoga, your reference for all Buddhas of the four times cannot be separated from Bodhicitta, the consciousness of all live. Mind-mind looking. Mind is mind. Mind-mind being.

You are, we are, it is infinite open awareness; alive with the vitality of the dance of stillness, the arising of phenomena, the disappearing of phenomena, arising in mind as mind, never was anything other than mind. All form arises as emptiness, infinite open awareness of emptiness arises in all possible forms. With no thing happening. Let go, of your little tiny location in the time-space continuum. Let go of your point of view, relax. And relax again. You see?

Participant: Somehow.

Lama Lena: Yeah, don’t try to understand this. ‘Cause your understanding is thought and thought limits and distorts. ‘Cause you’re gonna be thinking in English or Dutch or French or one of these. And each one of these has its own set of limitations. You’re bilingual, you speak more than one language. Well, you know you think differently depending on the language you’re thinking in, you all’ve noticed that. When you’re completely thinking in Dutch you think one way, and when you’re completely thinking in English you think another way, and if you switch to German or French it changes again.

Each one of these are limited ways of thinking, and if you try to understand Dzogchen in words, you’ll squish it, cause it doesn’t fit inside those limitations. That is why we strongly recommend you do not attempt to get your Dzogchen through books. Cause all they’re gonna do is give you the words. And the words are really half-assed. They are not complete. It is like “this is a pointing finger,” it is pointing at a bell. I can’t make it ring.

[silence; Lama Lena making movement like ringing a bell without a bell in her hand]

Pointing at a bell, it is not a bell.

[Sound of bell ringing] That is a bell. This is pointing at a bell. All the words I give you these days are fingers, they don’t ring. Okay?

Participant: For me names like Longchen Rabjam [klong chen rab ‘byams], it is helpful you see, also connected to Khyentse Özer; the combination that can be helpful, but I am not, the great breakthrough is not there yet. But it takes time, I think?

Lama Lena: It takes time, because it is, we are from beginningless time, habituated into obsessing with phenomena. Look at what you do all day, you mess with phenomena. Stuff! You think about it, you mess with your thoughts, you have feelings, you mess with those. Your attention is constantly and always on your thoughts and your feelings and your stuff. That is a long-term habit. Eons.

Bugs have the habit too. Bugs feel. Hope and fear. Bugs think: eat that, run away. They don’t think with the complexity we do, but they think. And bugs are very interested in stuff; it is either edible or not. So even way back when you were a bug, you were still obsessing with phenomena. It is kind of compulsive, it is like OCD, you’ve all got this obsessive-compulsive disorder. In regard to phenomena, and you just won’t leave it alone.

Gom [sgom], meditation, is to leave phenomena alone for a few minutes and break the habit. But if the phenomena of a meditative experience catches your attention, oops! This is why any meditation that you acquire, you have to “pop.”

Nyams are likened to signposts. If you see a sign that says “Amsterdam, twenty kilometers” ahead, and you were on your way to Amsterdam, you would find this very reassuring. “Oh, good! I am on the right road.” But you wouldn’t now stop there and hang on to that sign and stay there cause it said “Amsterdam.”

Same thing for all your lovely meditative experiences that you have acquired through practice. They’re signposts, leave them behind the road and drive on.

Only they’re really interesting sometimes, they can be blissful. I can get into a practice where nothing hurts. At my age that is a big deal, even in this weather. And it is very tempting, even though this is obviously a come and go because my thumb hurt or my toe hurt or something was acting up, before I sat down. I am talking to all you guys who are my age now, you know damn well something hurts as long as you’re walking around.

Yes, you can get into a practice of bliss where it is blissful to be completely pain free for a moment. You forget what that feels like. But it has a beginning in time. Tempting to stay there a while, take a little rest, okay. I am not telling you not to when you get a pleasant nyam, yeah you can hang out with it for a little while. But don’t think you are going to be able to keep it. And after you’ve had your fun for a few minutes, realize that it is a phenomena, and you’re mucking about with phenomena again. 0:30:03

And trying to keep one phenomena and get rid of a different phenomena, which is what we do with desire and aversion continuously all the time. Look, you all know you can’t get enlightened on purpose, right. [laughing] If you try to get enlightened, you’re trying to get something and you’re trying to get away from ignorance and confusion; desire-aversion, it’s what keeps you stuck unenlightened. You can’t do it on purpose, it is not a doing. It is the opposite of the doing, it is a not doing.

There is a rushen [ru shen] which tires out your do-er. I have not done this rushen, it takes about eleven days of practice and you’re practicing day and night, you don’t come out of it. And you do and you do and you do and you do and you do and you do until you fall over. And you accidently not do, because your do-er is exhausted and can’t do one more thing. Very powerful practice, one of the Dzogchen rushens that is not given in the first years of Dzogchen. But is given later when people keep trying to meditate. And they can’t stop doing meditation, which of course is not gonna work.

Trekchö, real trekchö is not doing. It is simply “is.” Yes, we start with doing, cause you gotta start somewhere. And we all have this illusion that time is linear, like it’s a line and it goes past, present, future. And you keep like going in this line. Na-aah, wormy, scormy ball of timey, wimey stuff. [laughter]

Real trekchö is not stuck in a point of the space-time continuum. It is here and now but it is all the here and nows, not just this here and now. And we tend to think we’re stuck in this here and now, and we want to get a better here and now next. Nyeh, it does not work so well. You had a question.

Participant: My question has to do with this, with non-doing, …[inaudible] But I don’t know exactly what the question is. There is a non-doing, does not mean passivity.

Lama Lena: No.

Participant: And I have this, not so much in my formal practice on the seat, but in my practice life, there is this pattern of passivity, things happen to me. Which almost without exception support my practice, in horrible ways, but support my practice. Girlfriend leaves me, and unemployed, last year my teacher left me, he literally dumped me, and all these things they take away hope, fear. And there is a question in there.

Lama Lena: Yeah, can you find me the question mark?

Participant: Where, I can’t do the practice, you can’t “do” this practice, but by the same token, the practice can’t be done through me….

Lama Lena: No, it can’t neither, these are extremes, go find the middle way between them. When you have a question like this, always look for the middle way. To do this would be an extreme, to have it done to you would be an extreme. You are. You are your practice.

Look, each one of you, in this moment, who you are right now is a clump of all your sensory input, what you think about your sensory input, your ideas. Everything you think has happened to you in the past. All the feelings you are having now, all the feelings that you feel you have had in the past. Your little self, in this moment is the clump of the shape of this moment. All the people around you are part of that shape. All the bacteria inside you are part of that shape.

But that is not all you are. You are also infinite open awareness, which in this moment of time and space is manifesting as a clump. But the clump is not made of anything other than infinite open awareness, there is no conflict here. In order to be active you need to be. In order to be passive you need to be. You aren’t. Relax and relax again, let go of every belief system you have built, they are made of thoughts, and you all know what those are made of, don’t you? You can’t even sit on them. [laughter]

Your thoughts, your feelings, your physical sensations which are oh so important to you. Yeah, to me too!

This clump with all its experiences, both meditative and non-meditative, is the moving. You trust a clump? Better you trust stillness. The combination of guru yoga, is to trust not the individuals of the lineage, but to trust what they point at, the infinite open awareness of Buddha mind. And to recognize that that is not separate. If it would be separate, it would be limited. Being unlimited, it is not separate from the dance of phenomena. But the dance of phenomena is not more real than infinite open awareness. Your obsession with it makes you feel as if it is. The more time you spend relaxing in open awareness without rejecting phenomena, the clearer it will be to you. That they are not separate. Does this in some way answer your question?

We have such a tight grasp on who we think we are. And yet I sure think I am different; I mean who I think I am before I get my coffee and who I think I am after I get my coffee. They are really quite different. Jan will have noticed that, if she is around here somewhere.

You’re trusting the wrong bit. And it is sliding and you keep trying to put it, make phenomena be infinite open awareness, instead of leaving it as phenomena and leaving infinite open awareness as infinite open awareness and recognizing that the two are the same thing and you are that.

So back to gom, practice. Break the habit, break the OCD habit. We start to break the OCD habit, by just adding in more doings. The tantras, the mantras, the ngöndros. Eventually the do-er gets tired of that and is willing to relax and stop for a minute. And in that willingness to relax and stop for a minute, which actually gets easier as you get older, rarely are teenagers good at Dzogchen. Ngöndro was invented for teenagers. You got to tire them out. [laughter] And it does, thank you. Time on the cushion really makes a difference, and that is gom. Yes.

Participant: In order to stop doing, would it also be like, is there also a sense of boredom? Or like fed up, loose.

Lama Lena: That can lead to renunciation, boredom and fed-upness. But renunciation is a doing. Boredom is an emotion, another phenomena. Other questions on this, yes.

Participant: For me it was like, it felt like sort of a rebel thing coming up, uhm, like you were saying to be fed up with things, but it is not like rejecting but more like to go in a different place or something. And then the only doing that is helping me is now like to wiggle, it is hard to explain.

Lama Lena: To move the body.

Participant: Not really the body but when I have all the thinking and then I go into something, to things, something, then it is like okay, I can move, there is to wiggle in, there is coming more space around me again.

Lama Lena: Yes, okay, I see what you’re doing. Good first state. That is a good first state, you found a thing that works for you when you become obsessed with something to loosen the obsession. A sensation of wiggling like that to make a bigger space around it. Good nyam, good signpost, keep going.

For gom, gom is really simply to rest in tawa, a lot. But it is not enough to just do this on the cushion. It is not enough to just do this off the cushion. You need on the on the cushion and you need off the cushion. Generally you need to go through nyams, through meditative experiences. And that is going to happen on the cushion. When you have an experience, the traditional are bliss, clarity, thought-free states, stopping thinking, and grouches. Oh you know, you’re sitting on your cushion ‘nraahnraahngraahnrah’ and you just get into this really good juicy grouch about your partner or your job or you know, whatever. And it just, it tastes good.

That is a nyam. It is a common meditative experience. It is just as common as getting all blissed out, it is just sort of like the flip side of it. Whatever you get caught up in, bliss, clarity, a sense that you really now got just pure clarity of mind, you really see Dzogchen, beyond understanding. Everything, every text is completely clear to you. Don’t grab that! It’s an “oops.” Wisdom. Magical powers. Somebody tells you, you walked through a wall. Let go. Something, there is a common saying among yogis: should it happen that a yogi finds himself able to fly, he is strongly advised not to fly over large bodies of water. Especially if he can’t swim. [laughter]

These are nyams. You may find all sorts of weird shit happening. It is a nyam. Couple of things about nyams. Usually we say: if it has a beginning in time, it will have an end in time; it is a meditative experience if it happened in retreat, while you were sitting on the cushion.

But for example ringing in the ears, I’ve had an—I am also the doctor to a lot of yogis. So some things that appear to be nyams are physical problems. That one turned out to be dehydration. Sense of being light and being able to fly could be beginnings of malnutrition. So with your common sense, if you get an experience that appears to be physical: check it out! With the doc…okay

Don’t assume it is a nyam. It might be, it might not be. This is just a little bit of a word of caution, as I’ve seen a lot of yogis live with a lot of weird illnesses saying “No, it is just a nyam.” No, it is not, you’re sick. So, little common sense here. This is more likely to happen to people in long retreats, where they can forget to eat or forget to drink water.

When you get these experiences there is a tool. A seed syllable. Letters have meaning, have symbols.

PHA, the -er suffix is the symbol of method. TA, thrul thra, it is the symbol of wisdom. Thrul thra näl djor [rnal ‘byor] is a word for lhak-tong [lhag mthong], for direct seeing, yoga of dancing stillness.

So, when we bring together a letter of method and a letter of wisdom, we create the seed-syllable PHET. Think of a graphic novel in which the entire universe exists on the surface of a soap-bubble. Poke it, what sound does it make. PHET. So when you get stuck in a nyam there is a very specific instruction, using the seed syllable. Which in this case has to be suddenly, you have to sort of sneak up on yourself with it. Sharply, sharp and short, not drawn out like you do when you’re doing phowa [‘pho ba]. And fiercely, you strike the experience, a sneeze will work too but it’s hard to do that on purpose.

You strike the experience with the seed syllable while looking directly at mind. The experience, the nyam you’re having pops. The seed syllable pops it, for a moment there hè-te-wa [?0:52:36], an unconstructed state, a not made or done state. And then your habit-pattern reasserts itself and you make something out if it.

So saying the syllable properly is important and you have to do it out loud, no sub vocalizing, won’t work. Because also how that effects your breathing and the chi in your channels is important. So you actually have to say PHET. Give it a try.

[audience saying PHET out loud]

This is not for group practice, right. You just sound like microwave popcorn. [laughter] This is for when you are alone. And it is not for out in public. Really, the time you need this is when you’re on the cushion. You don’t often get stuck in a nyam when you’re out and about. Generally if you moving, your chi is moving in your channels so fast that nyams just arise and then they change. You’re not stuck, well as if you’re still on your cushion you will tend to get stuck. Pop it. Two aspects to this: how you say it and where you’re looking when you say it. Of you just say it properly but you not actually looking at your mind, all you gonna do is startle your fleas. Both have to be together. Question on how to use this.

Participant: I had a question about this nyam. If you say it is a signpost and it is like this is signpost and this is the car and you drive by it; it happens with me is that I am talking to you or to another person and then suddenly the bliss jumps on my neck. So it happens and it is not something I…and it….

Lama Lena: And it catches you?

Participant: Yeah, it catches me, so …then…

Lama Lena: You are one of the rare people who may need to use the seed-syllable while in public; here is how you do it.

[Lama Lena takes out a handkerchief and mimes sneezing while saying PHET [laughter]

Okay, but remember to be looking, and carry a hanky.

Participant: Okay, thank you.

Lama Lena: Most people, that is, doesn’t happen that way, but a few it does and so you can use it in public, you just disguise it as a sneeze. Cause you don’t wanna bother people, it is a secret practice.

Participant: If it, how do you say, it doesn’t hurt me, it is very pleasant, it is like a soft shoe [inaudible], and….

Lama Lena: You can see what’s right on the other side of it. It is a way of protecting yourself from enlightenment. We work very hard to avoid enlightenment, we actually work harder to avoid it then we do to get it, even dharma practitioners.

It’s, your self-preservation instinct is really powerful; it is one of the most powerful instincts that people have. And you will attempt to preserve the illusion of there being a self. Separate and interdependently existent.

Why do we try to pretend that that is so? Why are we invested in being? There is only one instinct strong enough to overpower the self-preservation instinct. Any mother with a baby would give her life to protect her baby, it is an instinct. All sentient beings were once your baby. Bodhicitta is powerful enough when you realize it even the pale reflection of Bodhicitta, which is the mating instinct, the urge to merge. The fear of loneliness, the wanting to merge your heart with another’s to mate. It is a distortion of Bodhicitta because it is focused to mate with one person. For most of us. There’s exceptions.

It is powerful. If it wasn’t powerful praying mantis would have died out; you know, the female eats the male’s head right after he comes. Most teenage males would do it anyway. Even if that were the case. Remember back to being a teenage boy, fourteen, fifteen if she was gonna eat our head as soon as you were done, you’d still do it [laughter]. Pretty damn strong instinct, isn’t it. Lust is a reflection in dirty water of Bodhicitta. Lust is the urge of form to penetrate space and the urge of space to encompass form. So that form arises as emptiness and emptiness arises as form. This is the, do you have any, yab-yums? You don’t.

Participant: On the cover.

Lama Lena: On the cover. Ah, Kuntuzangpo, primordial Buddha, Kuntuzangmo, primordial Buddha. That is what that symbol is. The union of method and wisdom, Bodhicitta and emptiness.

Bodhicitta is the natural energy of the dance of all phenomena. We distort it with our self-preservation instinct, which makes us fight others for what we think we need, which arises as competitiveness and jealousy, as lust and desire, as avarice and dissatisfaction with what is, as fear and as anger, as depression and exhaustion.

The dance of the five Dhyani Buddhas with their consorts is the dance of emotion which is distorted from its natural state of the five wisdoms. And it is distorted into the flavors of the fifty-one human emotions that we think are real. Ah no, I am not saying that right. Your feelings don’t go away, they simply lose their stickiness.

This is the fifty-one human skulls worn as a necklace by Vajrayogini. The fifty-one fresh and juicy human heads worn as a necklace by Dorje Phagmo. It isn’t even that they lose their juiciness, they become what they are rather than what you make them into by your hope and fear. That is the distortion.

That self-preservation instinct is a bugger. You can’t go at it directly. You know what is gonna happen if you actually go after “one taste” directly and try to like, really focus on seeing. Your mind will come up with some entertainment to distract you from that such as a depression, full blown.

You have to sneak up on that through Bodhicitta. Through the instinct of a mother for her child towards all sentient beings, to all of whom you have once given birth to. The urge to merge, that moment of mutual orgasm which one gets very rarely with a partner, but sometimes, where you both come at the same time and you both just aren’t for a moment. And there is no separation, you know that one. Maybe once or twice you managed it. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t happen every time, that’s okay.

That energy is the reflection of the energy of Bodhicitta. Loneliness is lack of Bodhicitta. Loneliness is a method of protecting oneself from Bodhicitta. A distraction, of the self-preservation instinct. This is why Tibetan dharma is full of all these methods. Because if I just sit up here yelling at you: “yarn’t, you aren’t, you aren’t, you aren’t,” that’s not gonna do diddly squat. You don’t wanna “aren’t,” you wanna “be.” So you get to go ahead and “be,” but look past it.

You aren’t going to disappear, let me reassure you that you are going to keep a personality. You have never seen a Lama without a personality, have you. Many Lama’s have a lot of personalities, even the Buddha had a personality. So don’t worry about losing yourself. Question.

Participant: Yeah, the terms are …quite good to…hear, clear [inaudible], is it body, Bodhicitta, is it….

Lama Lena: Universal love.

Participant: So it is not, is it the play of phenomena, or is it….

Lama Lena: Well, yeah, the play of phenomena is universal love. Bodhicitta literally Bodhi means Buddha, which means vast gone, gone beyond. Citta means consciousness or mind. However we normally in dharma language use the term Bodhicitta to mean openhearted, great heartedness, the hero.

Sometimes we use the word compassion, an openheartedness to all life. Not pity-compassion, don’t…. Take the word pity out of the word compassion and you got what it means. The Tibetan word is nying-je [snying rje], superlative heart. Great heartedness. That help?

However, the Tibetan language is a fractal: many words you can keep opening them and opening them up into deeper and deeper meanings. So when you say a sentence it is like shorthand and there is a surface meaning, and then there is another level underneath that and another level underneath that. And I am trying to put it in English and you’re thinking about it in Dutch, so we’re already playing telephone.

Who is good—Pepijn knows most of the terms, and is a good person to ask in future as you read things and something doesn’t make sense. I just picked him cause he is sitting next to you. And he is a nice guy. And he has a lot of Bodhicitta, and…I’m just teasing Pepijn. [laughter]

Participant: He is well known for having no bodhicitta at all. [laughter]

Lama Lena: Oh no, he is just manifesting a slightly narrower version. [laughter]

Changchub Dorje’s Trekchö instructions to Wangdor Rinpoche

Questions. Although I am teaching tsik sum né dek [tshig gsum gnad brdegs; Hitting the Essence in Three Words], and talking about gom, I want to open another text. Anyone here a student of Norbu Rinpoche? So, Norbu Rinpoche’s teacher was Changchub Dorje. And this is a private text, written by Changchub Dorje and given orally to Wangdor Rinpoche. And it is very good on gom, and it is in here somewhere. Give me a moment, these are all the good—this particular folder has all the good stuff, I was terrified that I lost it….

[someone asking Lama Lena if she needs something as she looks a stack of papers for the text]

I am good at the moment…good text, but no…come on, you’re in there, I don’t want to have to quote this from memory….It is gonna be the last one I find….Yep.

Of course it started out in Tibetan, so what we have here is translation.

“Dear children, listen closely.
What you call mind isn’t anything concrete.
Allow your own mind to look at itself.
Past thoughts are no longer here and the future hasn’t happened yet.
Whatever arises now in this moment, is beyond knowing.
Let all thoughts of the past, present and future settle.
Let go of the three times.
Right now look at the essence of this.
If you see colors and shapes,
that shows you’ve strayed from the presence of awareness.
And if you think it is nothing, there is nothing there,
you’ve strayed in the other towards the cliff edge of nihilistic emptiness.
And if you think you’re meditating, you’re fooling yourself.
The richness of your own nature won’t come out.
You can analyze and meditate for a hundred years,
but you won’t be heading towards liberation.
The great perfection naturally,
this very present awareness of this moment, right now,
freed from conditioning by thoughts,
clear radiant like the sky,
the unchanging ground of it is dharmakaya.
And the clear radiant awareness of this,
the see-er of this in its unceasing splendor is the sambhogakaya.
And the arising of all that is everything is the ever-present creativity, the nirmanakaya.”

He used the word thigle [thig-le] for creativity. Lifeforce essence, sperm.

“And so whatever appears, don’t do anything with it.
Let it settle by itself.
All thoughts which are the cause of the five poisons,
they arise and are released by themselves, dissolving into space.”

You don’t need to make them do that. You can’t keep them from doing that! Go on, have a thought, pick a thought. Hold that thought! Got away, didn’t it? Dissolved into space, you’re having a new one now. You don’t have to make the thoughts dissolve. You can’t stop them from dissolving if you try.

“Arising and releasing no difference”

A single thought has no duration. Infinite thoughts in a single instant. Look and go. There is nothing moving there, nothing going, nothing coming. Look at your mind with your mind.

“When thoughts arise, look directly at the nature of that arising;
when thoughts release, look directly at the nature of that release.
Arising and liberating themselves no difference.
It’s exactly the same, there is no slipping into preference.
Thinking or not thinking, no difference.
No need to prefer stillness over movement,
no need to grasp movement over stillness.
No separation there.
When eating, sitting, walking, getting up, sleeping or talking,
whatever you do while you’re doing it, look directly at the nature of this.
This is how all Buddhas arise from all sentient beings.
There is no direct teaching more profound than this.
Those who rely on this teaching, beyond causes and conditions,
in the expanse of the dharmata, realize all appearance as magic.
And the wisdom eye is now present and so is the knowing.
Your body is no longer solid, you travel through structures.
And when your life comes to its end,
and breaks down into atoms and the four elements,
there will be the blessing of the five colored ringsel.
Unchanging, naturally open.
This is the see-er settling into the space of dharmakaya
as the space of dharmakaya.
And rupakaya is enlightened activity, which brings benefit to all.
All who live, equal in number to the vastness of space.
This concludes this teaching which carries much benefit.
Yi Ho, may all be happy.”

This speaks to an aspect of Dzogchen, which although is contained in the three words of Garab Dorje, is not as clearly spoken of. In here, it says, “at all times, on all occasions, recognize the already known dharmakaya awareness.” This goes into more detail. While eating and talking and walking and shitting and speaking and dancing and drinking and working; at all times, on all occasions.

Now, there is a problem with this practice, or rather there is a really common misunderstanding with this practice. You’re gonna try to keep the idea of the practice and hold it still. The idea of tawa, you’re going to make it last. Don’t do that. You can’t do that. It will fail if you try to do that. Because you can’t make an idea last, an idea is a thought. And we just looked at how fast those change.

The view, tawa, cans just about well as asparagus. Did you ever taste canned asparagus? Slimy, tinny and bitter. Completely different from asparagus. In America there is an hors d’oeuvre that is often served, which is canned asparagus with Miracle Whip, which is a fake kind of mayonnaise with sugar in it on Wonder bread, wrapped up in a roll.

Participant: Why?

Lama Lena: That’s okay man, that is how the way we would feel about, that they feel about herring. [laughter]. And there is always lutefisk to laugh at.

You can’t can it, it has to be fresh. And this is why I have a small gift for you guys. Which is a tool. I talked about it a little bit last night. And yeah, you’re not so many that I don’t have enough. I think.

[sound of Lama Lena talking softly, searching through her things for something]

Bil-bla. Really good Tibetan term. Bil-bla, this is a bil-bla. We say that most of our thoughts become a bil-bla. Come along, there I got ya, one more…got you stuck on, yeah.

[Lama Lena apparently ‘talking’ to the ‘bil-bla’s while trying to get them untangled]

Method to my madness.

This is a little one of these, this is a dorje, a vajra. This is a symbol of that which is so empty that it contains not even space. Therefore it is utterly hard, nothing can penetrate it. This is a symbol of your own real mind, sem-nyi [sems nyid] big mind. Come, have one. If you still have yours from last year, or from two years ago, you may not need another, but very few people retain a small useful object for two years.

Now, don’t put it on your altar. Put it on your cellphone, your boyfriend, something that you look at a lot. Your computer, your television. This is a tool, not a relic.

So what you do with those little dorjes is you put them somewhere they will come to your attention frequently; not on the altar, not safely at your mom’s. You keep it with you. You can hang from your glasses, turn it into a long earring that dings your neck and bothers you. Tie it on your wrist, stick it on your boyfriend if you happen to look at their pecs a lot. It depends on the boy…

Every time you see it, check your mind and see if it is still there. Or if by chance you’ve lost it. Glance at tawa. Hundreds of times a day. Anyone hear from great freedom foundation? Someone was here the other day or last night, anyway. They call it short moments, same practice. Every time you see the dorje, and you can print out little stickers of dorjes on sticker paper with your printer and stick them inside your cabinet and on the milk jug and to your cat. You know, or your turtle. Anywhere that you look a lot.

And every time you see a dorje, quick glance, at tawa and then don’t grab it. Don’t try to maintain it. You’ll squish it if you grab it, it is like grabbing a butterfly. Don’t grab, just glance. And let go. Leave it be as it is and in a few minutes again, check and see if it is still there. That is all. All you’re doing is continuously reassuring yourself that tawa hasn’t gone anywhere. You’re learning to trust it.

To develop absolute certainty is the third vital point sopa [spyod pa], Garab Dorje. You get the certainty, that kind of certainty, not intellectually, but experientially. When you all walked up here to get your little dorje, how many of you were thinking of the law of gravity. How many of you were completely relying on gravity, to walk, to receive. Without doubt and without having to think about it, it was there for you. How did you get that way with gravity. You sat in your highchair, and you held things out and you let go. Lots of times, and every time they went down. You attempted to go and you also went down. After a while you became quite certain of gravity, without the least bit of theoretical understanding. It was simply there. tawa needs to become the same for you as gravity, simply there. That’s gom. Do you understand the instructions.

Over our lunch break, practice that. Wear your dorjes, go out to lunch with others, you’ll be seeing each other, you’ll be seeing each other’s dorje. Check

and see if your mind is still there. Eventually, after a lot of checking, we all become sure that tawa doesn’t come and go. Your attention on tawa comes and goes, that is fine. Attention is part of the moving, you ain’t gonna stabilize it. Your perception of tawa comes and goes. That is fine, perception is part of the moving, it’s done with the six sense organs. You’ll perceive tawa with your “yi,” sixth sense. But tawa itself doesn’t come and go. Only knowing this is different than being this. It has to get past knowing.

If you had been raised in a space station, without gravity and medically were able to come then to a planet with gravity and walk around on it, have the musculature. You would still have an awful lot of learning to do to keep from constantly forgetting that gravity was there and trying to set your coffee down in the air. A mistake which none of us make these days.

You gotta get tawa that way. Questions on this practice.

Participant: Yesterday you gave this crystal. And it had to do with the third wang [dbang] and that the thoughts are transparent. Is this also connected to one of the wangs? This dorje.

Lama Lena: No, this is a tool. It is in some way, in order for you to be able to use the tool you must have had the fourth wang. But since I am giving you the fourth wang in every session, which is the telepathic showing of tawa, of nature of mind. If you are getting or not is depending on you. If you are too busy thinking to feel what I am showing you, then it will go right by. But I’ll do it again. Goodness, Rinpoche must have taught this text and given to me the fourth wang hundreds of times before it went in. but I was particularly dumb. I mean, I was not an easy student, and I made every possible dharmic mistake you can possibly make, I was really creative about that. Some of you will have a much simpler path then I did. Do, am.

Are we good for the lunch break and the practice you know to do during the lunch break. Real…ah yes.

Participant: Is it possible to have the text you just read.

Lama Lena: I do not have another copy.

Participant: Maybe we can make a copy, with a phone…write it down from [inaudible]

Lama Lena: No, ah yes, but I think I would rather make sure you have a ….Yes, I will give it to you but you cannot in any way have only the English version, you must also take the Tibetan version, and you must never separate the two. Okay?

Participant: I can take care of this, also with the recordings for the people that were here.

Lama Lena: Yes, please, these recordings are fine to put out. But I will highly recommend that you get the fourth wang in person from somebody before we experimentally try to transmit it through a video. I can refer you back to it, through a video just fine if you’ve had it. But I don’t know, none of us do, it is too new, you know, we’ve been giving the four wangs for centuries, for thirty thousand years actually. And we’ve only had those videos for what, ten years? So we don’t know if it goes through or not, maybe. The four wangs first is explaining logically, second is explaining by symbols and analogies, third….[silence] and fourth…[silence]

Only the first two can be described in words. Are there questions?

Participant: It reminds me when you hit [inaudible] with like this, there is, when Karhyapa received the words was [inaudible] teaching of the Buddha when he shows a flower, is that the same?

Lama Lena: I don’t know, I wasn’t there. [laughter] Maybe. Other questions.

Participant: I think I may be intellectually stuck again. If mind doesn’t truly exist, how then can I actually see if it is still there?

Lama Lena: By opening your awareness. Opening your attention and allowing your attention to let go of all the this-es and thats. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations, this-es and thats. When you defocus your attention, from the point focus of this and that, there is an open awareness which is perceptible but beyond the perception of it; that open awareness is you. To do that with your attention is called tawa.

So whenever you see the little dorje you do that with your attention for a moment. If you’ve done it a lot with your channels in alignment, sitting on your cushion still, it is really easy then while going about and do other things, to do a quick glance or quick release of your point-focus. And it’ll come right back, because you might be busy doing things. Do not, until you’re really good at this, while driving. Okay? Or riding a bicycle. That is too easy to ‘oopsie’ there. Walking is okay, as long as you’re not in the bike lane. So little common sense on it. But, the more you sit on your cushion for time in gom, the easier these short moments of open awareness become. And yet it is the short moments of open awareness that causes the recognition of the inherent stability of natural mind. Which is that damn “trying to stabilize trekchö” misunderstanding. Some of you are in that misunderstanding, cause everybody gets stuck there in Dzogchen. Does that help.

It is a doing, because we are do-ers. Eventually, when you’ve done it enough, your relationship to gravity is not something you’re doing. When you walk, your attention to gravity is not something you do. It just happens. So this will also become like that. Given time. Your awareness of gravity while thinking, feeling, talking, eating, drinking, it doesn’t come and go. Your natural, innate, open awareness does not have to come and go. But in the beginning it will appear to come and go, because you are disassociated from your perceptions. And you are seeing tawa as something outside of you. It may not be point-focussed, but there is still a separation between the see-er and the seen. That will dissolve over time. But you can’t make that dissolve faster than it do. Because any kind of effort will constrict. And that don’t work. Yes.

Participant: When there are still points or vastness of old pain in between….

Lama Lena: Have you tried some of the basic therapies that work with post-traumatic stress?

Participant: [inaudible]

Lama Lena: There are practices that will often release the old pain, such as Vajrasattva. They can be rather time-consuming. I think they synergize nicely with some of the western therapies. EMDR, there is a few others. So I kind of recommend both. Because yes, that will get in between and interfere many times for people and, go back to the tantras to work with that. They are very powerful. Chöd [gcod], if you can do it. It is very, very powerful, but it goes wíth the EMDR.

Participant: I can understand, yeah.

Lama Lena: They synergize. So yeah, I would use methods like that. Other questions.

Participant: Do you mean that when you do a lot of these exercises, that one day you are the tawa and not the experiencer.

Lama Lena: Eventually you will notice that you always have been the tawa, so it isn’t something that happens. You’re already that, you are simply confusedly holding yourself separate from it, because you want to be. The illusion of separation, being a “come and go” goes. You always were that, you are that. You never weren’t that.

Participant: And is trying to stabilize the trekchö means you try to….

Lama Lena: Trying to stabilize trekchö is a joke.

Participant: Yeah, yeah, try to keep that experience instead of the—

Lama Lena: You try to keep that experience instead of going further. And it is kind of like very old fish. Not something I’d highly recommend. Other questions.

Participant: Maybe it is stupid, but if we are all the same, one consciousness, why one part wakes up, doesn’t the whole wake up

Lama Lena: We’re not all the same consciousness. I’ve used three words; dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya. The infinite open awareness is dharmakaya. That is the term for it. However that infinite open awareness has the quality of aliveness, vitality. We call that the clear light nature of the dharmakaya. Sometimes we call it sambhogakaya, another word. Too many terms. But we just don’t have these words in English, so I have to use them in Sanskrit or Tibetan. The creativity of that vitality, because aliveness is creative, that is the nature of aliveness, is to be creative. Creates the multiplicity of phenomena. That is the manifestation of the creativity of the emptiness.

Phenomena is multiple. You’re a phenomena, the part of you wakes up and goes to sleep at different times is phenomena. But phenomena arises in mind. And dissolves in mind. It is that vitality, that aliveness, that clear light, the central pivot of sambhogakaya that all the westerners miss because they didn’t grow up with a thousand pointers pointing at it. That is the key to the singularity of multiplicity and the multiplicity of singularity. In language, in our language, western languages, things are either like this or like that.

It was very interesting studying Chinese medicine and having to learn a bit of Mandarin. Because the assumption that things are like this or like that, is not Asian. Things can be like this and like that. And this and that can be quite different from each other and that is okay with people. However, German based languages have a bugger of a time with that idea. So your assumption that things are actually this way or that way, and they can’t be both, that assumption is itself incorrect and language based, culturally based. Okay?

Sharing Practice with Yogis and Nuns in India

Now I have something to ask you. Among the yogis, up in the caves out in India, I try to find for them when I travel in the West patrons to help support their practice. It’s particularly good, there is a synergizing that happens, for those of you who are currently career- and family-busy. And can’t go make long retreats, ‘cause your kids aren’t old enough yet. If you’ve got a two year old, you’re not going into retreat. No way, they’re not gonna let ya. Or mortgage, career, you’re at the peak of your career, if you’re busy like that and therefore at this time of your life don’t have the opportunity to go into retreat but would like to have the results of going into retreat happen to your practice, you can share practice with one of the yogis because you support their retreat. It is about twenty Euros a month to keep somebody in retreat. That’s dinner, once a month dinner out; I’ve looked at the restaurant prices around here, they’re pretty high.

To keep a yogi in retreat you share practice with them. So a lot of the blessing of the result of their retreat comes through to you and helps your practice mature, without you having to make such a time commitment if you’re unable to. I will say if you are not working and can make retreat: do it. I’ll recommend that first. But if you have, are in the middle of your career, and you need to put your time into that, if you’re raising a family or having a mortgage or part of your culture, if that is what you’re doing at the moment, this is a nice way to jumpstart your practice. Also it really helps them a lot.

Many of them there are mostly refugees, some of them, mostly women, because the women are not supported in Asia in practice the way the guys are. And yet of the best practitioners are women. So we got a bunch of nuns up in the caves, and down in town, who have their own caves higher, higher up the mountains which they go to in summer. But then thirty feet of snow, if you’re past 30 is a little bit much, so they come down for the winter, the older ones, and make retreat all summer. When I don’t find sponsors for them they break rocks on the roads all summer instead of making retreat, to get enough money to get down and get teachings in the winter and make a little bit of retreat.

It is really nice when somebody sponsors them. I have a folder with pictures. This afternoon, or rather this evening, for those of you are interested in doing this, plan to hang out a little bit to look through this folder with me, or actually with Jan. Cause I’ll probably be hitting people over the head with a vase. And then after with me and pick somebody. Any of you who are thinking of coming out to Tso Pema to practice, having a friend there is nice. And many of are lama’s, I’ll tell you which ones. Having your own lama, is also nice. Course they don’t speak English. Which is how they’re not here and famous. But boy, do they practice, some of them! So be thinking about this, to decide, and talk to, you know, your marriage partner, spouse, whether you guys wanna do this and those who do, we’ll set it up at the end of the teaching. Okay. Let’s go eat.

Participant: I have a question.

Participant: I’d like to share my experience, with those I am very thankful and I am doing this about two years.

Lama Lena: Who are you…who do you have?

Participant: I have Ani Nowan [phonetic]

Lama Lena: Oh yes, excellent.

Participant: And I would like just in two minutes to share that I am having twelve years old, I am in the middle of a kind of career, and I am super busy, I have the excuse for myself to …[inaudible]…a bit in a way. But I also have the experience of ….[inaudible] retreats and supporting Ani…[inaudible] and I see the results of their, just like being on a long retreat, it is incredible. I really see the support and I am very thankful for that. As well as …. [inaudible] in my life I lost someone and somehow I managed to get in contact with Lama Thupten, who supported the passing away in a….way. So I’d really recommend you, if you can do, get this….

Lama Lena: Lama Thupten is a great one, he is one of the local Lamas, his main practice is chöd, and he has a lot of the nuns we sponsor follow him. And do a lot of chöd, and he is a great ceremonial ngag-pa [sngags pa]. For Dzogchen he sends the nuns come to me and when I have students who needs ceremonial training, I send them to him in town. If they need chöd, because he is much better at chöd then I am. So yeah, he is quite impressive. If you ever get out there in a holiday, you’ll meet him. And he does speak English, but he is not Western culture. So what he means by those English words he is using, may very well not be the same as you mean by those English words. ‘Cause he is totally not westernized.

Let’s go have lunch then. And thank you for speaking about that. We’ll do that this afternoon, so we’re not taking our lunch hour. Don’t forget to notice your dorje, see if your mind goes anywhere during lunch. What time are we back here, guys? Three o’clock, I will see you all then.

Part 3 - Video

Part 3 - Transcript

Lama Lena: So the title of this text, the three phrases that strike the heart. Tibetan doesn’t have words, it has syllables that modify each other into making phrases. The word’s division, where we divide it into words, that is something do to it as Westerners. That is not something inherent in the language. So it is really three phrases. Those of you who were writing things down, to recognize you own true nature is the first vital point: tawa. To decide on one thing, to make a decision to practice, that is the second vital point.

With Dzogchen, the way it works best for most people, there are exceptions, is for it to be a main practice, to decide to do Dzogchen all the time. That is the second vital point, the point of gom, of meditation. If you just meditate sometimes and don’t try to mix meditation with your daily life, to practice the yoga of dancing stillness, which allows completely free arising of phenomena in stillness as stillness without any separation between the two, it will not work as well. There is still a great deal of blessing in Dzogchen, even if you just turn your face to it a little bit. But for full effect you kind of have to go for it with full gonzo. You all know the word gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson? Somebody who knows it, say it in Dutch.

Participant: There is no Dutch equivalent. Just gonzo.

Lama Lena: So gonzo means, to do something with gonzo is to do it with a certain amount of go-for-broke enthusiasm.

Participant: [speaking Dutch] Met hart en ziel, je er echt helemaal ingooien.

Lama Lena: So in the text—oh and to develop absolute certainty is the third vital point. The kind of certainty you have about the law of gravity. You need that same kind of certainty about nature of mind. See what happens is you’re thinking. Well, that is fine. But you’re believing every word of it and that is not fine. That is how you get into trouble, believing what you think. And then we think, well some thoughts are not real, but this thought is real.

And then we get into worse trouble or we try to figure out which thought is real. And that is even more troublesome. All thoughts, without exception, are made of the same thing. If you think a happy-making thought, think of kittens, and look at that thought as it arises and vanishes. See where it is, see what it is. And then you think of a sad making thought, think of the American president. He is always good for this, our current one.

Participant: Do you have a president at the moment?

Lama Lena: We have an entertainer, who is actually very successful at keeping us entertained. With his tweets. But that is a negative-feeling-making-thought. Well, look at the thought as you think it. You see how the duck, we call him the duck for Donald Duck, and the kittens, both these thoughts are made of the same thing? So really powerful next time you’re having thoughts that really bother you, let’s say you’re having a fight with your spouse, best friend, boss, and you’re really thinking about this. If you can see through those highly emotionally charged thoughts, it is really effective.

Now if two of you in here happen to be partners, do not say to the other one, during the fight, “Look at what your thoughts are made of.” That won’t go well. You say it to yourself. I speak from experience.

In order to sit in trekchö, in gom, in meditation, you need to let your mind rest loosely. So the instructions of meditation, having recognized your own true nature, then first let your mind rest loosely. The problem is that the moment you glimpse tawa, you grab it and make something of it. You wrap it in thoughts, you explain it to yourself, ad infinitum and probably anyone else who will listen.

Don’t worry about that you are doing that, but don’t take it seriously either. Relax your attention. Away from point focus, into open awareness, let it rest loosely. If that is difficult for you, focus really intensely on something for a couple of minutes, and then you let go. Like you do in sadhana. Add up a column of numbers or find the square root of something. That takes a lot of focus. And then when you’re done, let go.

Sometimes if you can’t relax, tightening all your muscles and then tiring them is easier to relax. You can do the same thing with your focus of attention, in order to relax it. If you can’t simply get it to relax, try tightening it. And then relax it. Just another method that works for some people. Yes.

Participant: Could you also do that with thoughts, because if, I feel that when you visualize a picture or a thought and you focus on that, even though I know that it is not really somewhere, it feels like my focus is really sort of here? And it still feels very tight.

Lama Lena: Yes, so make it as tight as you can. And then let go. Yes, you can do it with that. In fact, if we visualize an archetype. And these images on the thangkas [thang ka], they’re not deities or gods, they’re archetypes. They are symbolic representations of sambhogakaya nature of mind, of aspects of vitality. Energies. So when we visualize, and especially in Kriya tantra, we put it here. And we focus on every bit of minutiae. In fact if you use, rather than an umbrella for that, any one of these thangkas that pleases you, pick one you like. Maybe White Tara for you. Put it somewhere. Memorize it. By looking at it, closing your eyes and working to see all the details. And then relax.

You see, the symbols in the thangka of White Tara all point at nature of mind. Your subconscious will read those symbols. In the way she sits, what she is wearing, in the jewels of her crown and the colors of the jewels of her crown, all these little details, each one of them is a symbol which points to nature of mind. So if you use a thangka for your way of tightening, as the image you put here, and then let go, your subconsciousness is already kind of looking in that direction. Because the symbols led it there, even if your conscious mind is just looking at the colors and saying, “Well, her hand’s like this and ….” So when you let go with your conscious mind it will automatically follow your subconscious. See how that works. And yes, I think you’d like White Tara in particular.

Participant: Thank you.

Lama Lena: White Tara, the great mother ocean of dharmakaya, the symbol of that which is beyond time and space, she is considered the deity of long life; which is a really odd jump to make, but I can see how you can make it, from unborn undying, which is the longest of life, beyond time and space. And she is really pretty and you look kind of like her.

Participant: Is she the white lotus?

Lama Lena: She sits on a white lotus, there is a white Tara. She is actually sitting on a pink lotus, and in that depiction the pink lotus refers to the fact that she is an emanation of the western direction, which is the direction of clear light, incomparable light, Amithaba, which is red in color, which is the color of that direction. So the symbol of her lotus being pink in this particular rendition is the symbol of love and compassion, which she arises out of, is born from. That energy. Green Tara is born out of a combination of that energy and the energy of competence. From the green, from the northern direction. So all of these images have symbols that point. You don’t have to memorize what they mean, they work anyway.

So first as you let your mind rest loosely, without concentrating; don’t concentrate on nature of mind, concentration is a point focus. But also you don’t want to be distracted from nature of mind to concentrate on something which is not nature of mind. So without concentrating and without distracting, while relaxed and remaining evenly, in a loose, relaxed, unconcentrated, unfocussed, and undistracted state, this is mind-made meditation. While you rest in mind-made meditation exclaim as suddenly mind shattering PHET. For the moment after that, if you are looking properly, if you are resting in intentional meditation, that pops, that is dispersed for just a moment and there is neither meditation nor not-meditation. In that open free awareness, infinite possibilities exist as “no-thing” and “no-where.”

This is the source of all creativity.

Artists, musicians, composers, let me suggest to you. I’ll speak this to artists but translate it to your own field: put a canvas in front of you, put a brush with paints or inks or something beside you. Meditate. Break your meditation again and again. In that gap between creating a meditation and being distracted, pick up your brush and do something. Allow the occurrence of something to happen to the paintbrush in your hand, without intent. It can be very interesting what occurs.

So those of you who are artists and value your creativity, this is also reaching to the source of your creativity. And there is no need while practicing Dzogchen to renounce life. Dancing, loving, eating, drinking, feeling, moving, perceiving, being. You don’t have to shove it away. But if you hold it loosely, it will flow, so much nicer then if you’re constantly trying to get all your ducks in a row. You have the phrase in Danish, “Get all your ducks in a row”?

Participant: Not with ducks.

Lama Lena: But with something else.

Participant: Just row, ‘ze op een rijtje hebben’.

Lama Lena: Trying to get it all in a row, and down. Ducks don’t go in rows anyway. They go in V’s.

The PHET, fierce, sudden, short and sharp. Eh Ma Ho, nothing whatsoever totally blank, uncreated, undone, undoing, no, undoing is a doing, you undo something; not that. There is an unconstructed awareness which is totally open. And this openness is completely indescribable.

The Buddha himself gave eighty-four thousand teachings, without uttering a single true word. No matter how much I point at the bell, my finger ain’t gonna ring. And all eighty-four thousand teachings point at the same thing. When you minutely pick apart as this-es and thats dharma teachings, you will find many that appear to disagree with each other.

May I use you as an example? The person behind you. Will it embarrass you? Okay, everybody point at her. [laughter]

You will all please notice that you point in different directions while pointing at the same thing. So when you are confused by a teaching that seems to be completely different than another teaching, don’t worry about it. It’s just pointing from different directions.

‘Cause if you read dharma, you’re gonna run into this. You can’t help but run into this. That total indescribable openness, which is unconstructed and not created by your mind, which has always been there, which is on the other side; just behind—this is an analogy—your mind-made meditation and so becomes visible when you break your on-purpose-meditation. Recognize that as dharmakaya aware of itself. In that moment you don’t disassociate. In that moment you are the blankness, the open awareness.

And then being a sentient being, like we all are, you immediately make something out of it. And talk to yourself about it. And so you have the description of a memory, not the memory. So you have to do it again and again and again.

To recognize your own true nature just as it is, rather than how you think it ought to be, how you read somewhere it was, how you hope it will be. To recognize your own nature as it actually is, as your own nature, this is the first vital point. After this, once you have seen that clearly, not your image of it, which is what you make at first when you let your mind rest loosely and turn you attention to mind itself. What you’re getting is a mind-made meditation, it is when you break that and look right behind it. Right where it was. That. That.

And after this, whether you are thinking or still, whether you are angry or happy or sad, at all times and on all occasions, acknowledge, glance to, recognize, the already recognized dharmakaya nature of mind, which is your own true nature. Do you understand this so far?

Now don’t try to understand this as intellectual theory. Understand this as a “Put tab A into slot B. These are instructions to be done and then a transcendency of doing. Not a theory. Catch the difference.

The more you talk to yourself about Dzogchen, the less you will clearly perceive it. There are some internet groups which seem to spend their time arguing about the nature of mind. I suppose they find it entertaining. Any of you part of that?. [laughter] Yeah. It is entertainment. It is like those things, you watch, those satisfying videos for frisson. You know, I like to watch glassblowing.

Participant: Glassblowing is amazing, the [inaudible] museum has this amazing livestreams on glassblowing, they’re amazing.

Lama Lena: Absolutely. Frisson is a mental sensation you get from certain odd videos and different ones do different things for different people, and it is not all that good for you. It is like eating potato-chips. Occasionally it is okay.

“Let child luminosity unite with the already known mother.”

This is Tibetan poetry and very beautiful. Mother luminosity of ground is your own true nature that has always been there and always will. Unborn, undying. All Buddhas of the four times, you, the lineage, your teachers, and the mice. Unchanging, nothing to acquire, nothing to abandon. This is mother luminosity of ground. Child luminosity of path is what is shown to you telepathically by the teacher in the fourth wang [dbang]. What is pointed out by the pointing out. Chöku rigpa [chos sku rig pa], dharmakaya awareness. They’re not different: you are that.

It is not necessary to hold your meditation separate from all Buddhas of the four times, which is inherently stable and requires no effort on your part to be stabilized. You, who are a dance of phenomena, arising as a personality of this moment, which is simply a heap of the current phenomena that thinks it is you, is not separate from what it is made of. Your body is not separate from your flesh; your personality is not separate from your own nature. All this phenomena of which you are a heap in any given moment, an ever-changing heap, we call it the moving, is nothing other than the dance of the clear light of mind.

0:26:46

So you don’t have to fix it. It is that. Let mother and child luminosity unite. And rest in this state of inexplicable awareness. It is unthinkable, guys, you can’t think about it. I am pointing with words, I am pointing with telepathy, I am pointing with objects, and symbols. None of that with which I point is what I am pointing at. Follow the finger. That is the essence of guru yoga; don’t stare at the teacher, look at where they’re pointing.

There was a student of Trungpa Rinpoche. Now, Trungpa Rinpoche’s personality was well known for drinking and fucking. He—and fancy clothes, he liked to wear fancy clothes—and then drink and have sex with them. Or with whatever…

So a lot of Trungpa’s students copied his behavior. He used that behavior to point at nature of mind. So they copied the behavior. Oops! But there was one student and it happened, she was a nun, so she couldn’t copy his behavior. So instead she looked where he was pointing. That is Ani Pema Chödrön, perhaps some of you have received teachings from her.

Don’t get all tangled up with the shape of the finger the guru uses to point. That is not important. We’re all crazy, all us sentient beings by nature are crazy. All us sentient beings by nature are Buddha. Look where we’re pointing. Not at how we point. Do you understand this? This is going to be important as you encounter a wide variety of different personalities, pointing in the way of their personality. And sometimes if you expect the personality to be perfect, you’re in for sore disappointment.

Natural mind, your innate Buddha-nature is perfect. And we share that. But we don’t share our personality. We don’t wanna. Trust me, you don’t want my personality. [laughter]

Participant: Give me a choice.

Lama Lena: Hieeh, you got yours and it is changing continuously. Destroy again and again, all mind-made meditations; stillness, bliss, clarity, grouch, belief systems, judgments: pop them.

Let the syllable of knowledge and wisdom suddenly strike down. No difference between meditation and post-meditation. I am not instructing you to make no difference between meditation and post-meditation. You just look, there is no difference. How could there be? Stop fighting it and pretending you’re real. And that all the shit around you is real. Relax.

Your own innate Buddha nature, open awareness: it’s there whether your attention is on your shoe or open in a relaxed state of open awareness. Your personality will be more comfortable when your attention is in a relaxed state of open awareness and less comfortable when it is busy complaining about itself, which is what we do with our personalities a lot.

No division between session and session-break. That is what your little dorje is for, to help you discover, not to help you make no difference between session and session-break. But to help you discover that there is no difference between session and session-break. By checking and checking again and again to see if it moved.

Rest continuously in the undivided state. Be what you really are. Don’t fight it by trying to make something else of it.

We’re always in this self-improvement shtick. Most of us came to dharma because we noticed somewhere along the line that we were nuts and giving ourselves a hard time and we thought maybe the Tibetans had an answer to that, cause they all look so happy.

Give it up. You don’t have to make phenomena perfect. Phenomena is perfectly transparent. Your thoughts with which you perceive the world—you don’t perceive the world with your sense-organs, you interpret the sensations of your sense-organs by thinking about it and telling yourself a story and then that’s your reality, the story you’re telling yourself.

You make your reality out of thoughts. Thoughts are by nature transparent, there is nothing there to stop you from seeing nature of mind, through your thoughts while you’re thinking.

A pumpkin, you all know what a pumpkin is? Visualize a pumpkin here in my hand, a big old orange pumpkin. Visualize this as hard as you can, make it as real and solid as you can.

[Lama Lena mimes holding a large pumpkin, then makes funny faces.]

[laughter]

Why are you laughing, you can’t see through your thoughts?

You see, it is not that you have to learn to make your thoughts transparent. You can’t make them all opaque no matter how hard you try. However, if I tell you to gaze at nature of mind while thinking, what you’ll do—this was a misunderstanding I had at one point, I know this one really well—is you’re gonna try to keep inserting the thought of nature of mind in between all the other thoughts that you’re thinking. That is not gonna work.

So instead of thinking or trying to stabilize the idea, the experience, or the perception of natural mind, relax and notice that regardless of what you are thinking, feeling or doing, natural mind is still present. It doesn’t come and go; this is the meaning of unborn and undying.

But if you try to stare at it you will immediately start talking to yourself about it. This will distort it, this will change, tawa the view into the idea of tawa. And that is no better than the idea of a pickle.

So instead of trying to stare at it or maintain anything, frequent quick glances, using the dorje just to remind you to do that. What I find useful for this process, is to make a bunch of dorje stickers and stick ‘em in places. Here and there, and every time you see it, check and see if it is still there, your mind, open awareness.

But don’t try to maintain anything. Eventually you will cease to maintain the constriction in your personality that withholds your awareness from natural mind. That constriction is an overlay. It is a come and go, it will slowly thin out and go. Natural mind won’t change.

“At all times and in all situations.

chöku chikpö yolang kyang”

[chos sku gcig po’i yo langs bskyeng]

I believe in the text it says maintain the continuity of dharmakaya, mistranslation. Yo lang chang, again and again notice, not maintain. But like continuous, again and again, continuously notice. As this text goes into English we’ve got a few distortions, which is why just reading the book doesn’t work so good, because otherwise you try to maintain the idea of the continuity of dharmakaya. Won’t work.

“Resolve that there is nothing other than this.”

Become resolved, certain that it is all the continuity of dharmakaya. To become certain is not something, some shape you shove yourself into. It is a natural relaxation that occurs from repeated glancing. So it is not an on-purpose. Even though this is stated, eh..

“dé lé shyenmé kho takché”

[de las gzhin med kho thag bcad]

“Be resolved in the recognition that there is nothing other than this.” To come to notice the singularity of open awareness, which doesn’t come and go and pervades all phenomena, this is the second vital point.

“Thug chig tu du tawa ne ji jin”

[thug gcig thog tu lta ba ….?]

To notice that tawa pervades everything. To rest naturally in the seat of tawa, as the seat of tawa. Which generally gets translated as to “decide on one thing.” To become certain of one thing, by practice. Questions so far

Symbolism of The Dorje

Participant: I had a question about the dorje. You said that it is so empty, there is no space inside, or something? What do you mean by this?

Lama Lena: Yes. It is the symbol of the lack of dichotomy between emptiness and fullness. It is also a symbol of unshake-ability, indestructability. There are many ways of thinking of it, but it is a symbol of the indestructability of open awareness. Which is going on, which is open, which is aware and awake, all the time. Whether you think it is or you think it isn’t. Whether it thinks it is or it thinks it isn’t. those are just thoughts, they come and go, they don’t bother it in the least.

The dorje is a very powerful and profound symbol. You can read a lot about it if you google vajra. Some of which is bunk and some of which is quite good. As anything when you google it.

The Third Vital Point

At this time your likes and dislikes, your joys and sorrows, all your passing thoughts without exception, all your passing feelings without exception, all your passing experiences without exception, leave no trace in the state of recognition.

Look at your mind with your mind. Open, empty; you can’t stick anything to it. You can’t leave footprints on the sky.

Everything that happens appears to happen. Might happen, might have happened; all happenings have no effect on the natural open awareness of mind itself.

By recognizing open awareness, dharmakaya, in what is liberated—what is liberated? Every quality of this moment is liberated, is free, is dissolved into the next moment. Each moment leads to the moment after. Each thought as you think it vanishes and disappears to be replaced by the next thought.

Feelings, when you pay attention to really what they are while you’re having them, you’ll notice that they’re always in the state of flux, they don’t stay the same. You can be really angry, and you might stay within the sensation you identify as the feeling of anger. But within that it changes, as you think different things. Frustration, annoyance, anger, self-anger, angry at them, it is all over the place.

By seeing while it happens, not by thinking “it did happen,” by seeing how thoughts arise in dharmakaya nature of mind, how thoughts arise in mind, as mind, never anything other than mind, and how they dissolve in mind as mind, never were anything other than mind, and again and again watching them do this while they’re doing it. Meditating while thinking.

Like drawing on the surface of water with your finger, there is unceasing self-occurring self-liberation. All phenomena in each moment liberates itself into emptiness and new phenomena arises. And the old phenomena of a moment ago, where did it go?

In this moment you can think of a moment ago, but that is this moment’s thought of the last moment, that is not the last moment itself. Each moment self-liberating as it occurs, you don’t have to make ‘emdo that, they do that. Usually you ignore that they are doing that. You create a sensation of continuity, by constantly thinking about the past, present and the future: what happened, what you wanna happen, what you afraid might have happened, …we go on.

If you look through those thoughts while you’re thinking them and see what they’re made of, you will see that that illusion of continuity is mind-made. It is not inherent.

In this recognition, whatever occurs is fresh food for the empty awareness. All feelings arise as energy. All thoughts as the dance of no thing and no where. All sensations as the play of the dharmakaya.

Whatever is thought is an expression of the dance of emptiness, an expression of the dharmakaya king. It isn’t bad or good; it is only when you grab it, make something out of it and believe it that it becomes a problem.

Traceless and naturally free. Ah la la.

Just as it is.

The way thoughts occur is the same as before, nothing changed. You’re thinking in exactly the same way you’ve always thought and probably the same things you’ve always thought.

I mean, really; if you actually start listening to what you’re thinking, you’re gonna find a lot of re-runs.

It is the way they’re inherent unraveling is recognized that is the special key.

Until you can meditate while thinking, you can’t free yourself. For as long as you are meditating instead of thinking, or thinking about meditating and calling it meditation or any of the multiple jokes we play on ourselves, it won’t free itself naturally.

You actually have to recognize dharmakaya inherent in each thought while you think it, not after you think it. It is not something you slap on to a thought afterwards to make it vanish.

So the word dharmakaya that I am using, for those of you who don’t know, that familiar with Tibetan terms, is simply tawa, the view, open awareness; these are all words that are used interchangeably to point at that. We can call it George. [laughter]

Calling it George is neither more nor less accurate than calling it dharmakaya.

When Rinpoche first introduced me to dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya— you know periodically I go over to his cave and you know, hang out or have lunch or I write some letters for him and he’d teach me some new vocabulary.

He says, “I got some new words for you.” He had me sit down and showed me how to see nature of mind, stillness, open awareness, and said, “That is called chöku.”

“Okay, new word.”

And then he said, “Notice how bright it is.”

That it is not just a big, dead old nothing, but it is brilliant, luminous, bright with clear, transparent light.

And I’m like, “Yeah!”

He says, “That quality of it is called longku.”

“Okay, I got another word.”

He says, “Look at all those thoughts you’re thinking, look at them go! Look how they arise in mind as mind. All this phenomena that is dancing around and manifesting and vanishing, well that’s called tulku.”

So I had three new words. And they were very good words, because I never had a word to think of those thoughts before. So that was very good.

Some years later I met a real translator. You know, the kind that, like, actually went to school? [laughter]

And he told me that those words meant dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya. I’m like, “Really? That’s fancy, I just thought that was just chöku, longku and tulku, my own mind. I didn’t think it was anything special.”

It isn’t anything special. Don’t worship the three jewels. You are the three jewels. It is not a religion, it is a state of being. That you’ve always been and always will be.

Without this ability to meditate while thinking, which will come as a result of using the little dorje I gave you—and it will occur naturally, you can’t do it on purpose, ‘cause all you can do on purpose is thinking about meditating while thinking. And that won’t work. So use the dorje. Without this point meditation is just a path of confusion. All it is gonna do is get you magic powers. And then you’re gonna have a nice big “oops” when they wear off.

Possessing this ability to see what your thoughts are made of while you think them, is itself the uncultivated, unmade, uncreated, undone state of the dharmakaya. To gain confidence in this liberation, in the innate and natural liberation of all phenomena in its moment of arising, to gain the confidence, because you’ve been seeing it do that all the time it do that.

This is the third final key, sopa [spyod pa]. Do you see why “conduct” is a funky translation for sopa? So is “action.” “Liberation” perhaps. The spontaneous liberation of all phenomena into its natural state, which occurs in each moment without fail. To be sure of that, ‘cause you’ve seen it do that. That is the final point, the third word of Garab Dorje. This view endowed with the three vital points, it’s all tawa, it’s all mind-mind looking, that’s really all it is. Utterly simple, nothing fancy, no great special, and yet, it is the meditation of combined knowledge and compassion.

“khyentsé drelwé gompa dang”

[mkhyen brtse ‘brel ba’i sgom pa dang]

Yeah, we translate that just off the top.

The meditation is the meditator. And combines open-heartedness and open-mindedness. See that? It is aided by the general sons of the victorious ones, the spontaneous bodhicitta, real bodhicitta, not fake bodhicitta. Fake bodhicitta, little bodhicitta’s, “Well, I know I suppose to love all sentient beings, god damn them.” [laughter]

How do you feel about your hand? Do you wish it harm? Could you wish your hand harm? Well, yeah, one could be into cutting but that is not ‘cause you wish your hand harm, but you wished your mind felt better. You’re not actually trying to harm your hand when you’re cutting on it, you’re trying to get your mind feel better, ‘cause you’re all stressed and somehow that helps.

We are all so interconnected, interrelated. You have changed who I am, my personality by our interactions in these days together. Perhaps I have also changed yours. Oh, not completely remade each other. But there have been shifts in how I feel and what I am thinking and how I perceive the universe. Simply from interacting from y’all.

We are so interconnected. The personality you struggle so hard to perfect and maintain and improve, how did you get that personality, the one you have right now?

You got it through experience, didn’t you? Interacting with other sentient beings, most of the trauma came interacting with other sentient beings. The good stuff too. We’re made of each other, all of us.

Look, do you ever have a yeast overgrowth, where, like, you have these sugar cravings because you have candida? That ever happened to anybody here? Yes, it is kind of common. So let’s give an example. If a poor man has an overgrowth of candida causing sugar cravings, which causes him to steal a donut because he can’t afford one, who gets the karma, him or the yeast?

You see, you’re not an individual, you are an ecology. You ever feel depressed after taking antibiotics? Some people do get that as a side effect. Well hell, lot of ya just died, cause it is depressing. Duh, you’re an ecology, guys, and Gaia probably thinks she is an individual too.

We’re all interactive interpenetrating. Real bodhicitta is inherent in the recognition of the total interpenetrating inter-activeness of all phenomena which arises in mind as mind and dissolves in mind, which was never anything other than mind and which is self-liberated in every moment.

There is no real separation between space and matter, between sky and things.

Ah look, what’s between molecules? Space. Between mind and phenomena. The general—this is aided by the general action of the victorious ones, bodhicitta manifests as wisdom. Open awareness spontaneously manifests as bodhicitta. You can’t separate the two.

“Even if all the Buddhas of the three times were to confer, they would find no oral instructions superior to this. This is the dharmakaya treasure-revealer of the awareness display.”

I am not giving you anything you didn’t have before.

You’ve always been Dzogchen. I am simply pointing it out so you’ll notice.

Unlike extracts of earth and stone, which are treasures that come and go, like money, which you have until you’ve spent it, the vitality of infinite open awareness can never be exhausted. Nor can phenomena.

Nothing can be lost.

Nothing need be gained.

It is the testament of Garab Dorje. This text, originally given to Jampalshenyen [Sanskrit: Mañjuśrīmitra], from a circular rainbow in the sky after Garab Dorje had died.

It is the heart essence of the three lineages.

It is the profound meaning, the words from the heart. It is the words from the heart that hold the essential meaning of all things.

Do not let the essential meaning fade away. Do not the instruction dissipate. Samaya, damtsig [dam tshig]. I offer you the opportunity, should you choose to take damtsig from this teaching, to every day, once, for thirty seconds, “Look at your mind with your mind as your mind.”

So if this is a teaching you wish to practice, you will need to do that without fail, every day. Or the wang [dbang] will wear off. You will forget how to look at your mind if you go even a few days without looking at your mind. Therefore I highly recommend, even if it is not your main practice, even if you are busy, even if you are in labor, to quickly every day, quick glance; check and see if your mind is still there. That will be enough on one of those days when the shit is hitting the fan repeatedly, to hold continuity. So that when whatever emergency you think you are involved in, you think has passed, you will still remember how to practice.

That’s what is meant by don’t let it fade away. You do not have to take this damtsig; it is voluntary and optional. If you do not intent to practice this practice then I highly recommend you not take is as the damtsig, but simply as a blessing. But if you do intend to practice it then I highly recommend that you don’t skip a day. Lest the intuitive knowing how to look at mind with mind as mind dissipate and all you have left is the words.

Q and A

Are there questions? Yes.

Participant: What you did yesterday evening, it highly resembled the practice I am already doing with my teacher, within another tradition. Can I do, can I take the damtsig now, or?

Lama Lena: Yes, if it is the same practice.

Participant: More or less. You’ve had some different extent but in essential it is the same.

Lama Lena: So just different words?

Participant: Yes, you used different words.

Lama Lena: That you will find in different lineages and even with different translators. Uuhm, yes. Other questions? Yes.

Participant: Yeah, um, in the text it is said it’s the pinnacle of the teachings that Buddha could not give, find higher teachings

Lama Lena: That’s right

Participant: And this is the trekchö. So why is there also tögal [thod rgal] in Dzogchen? Is there a need for that or is this enough as the text says?

Lama Lena: Tögal is a method of using the way attention follows your eyes, to train your eyes to open, and it uses different body positions, many of which involve stimulating the vagus nerve to assist in relaxation. It goes with trekchö but just like a practice, trekchö will go all the way without tögal. No problem.

For some people tögal is very helpful for their trekchö. Tögal is not taught before someone has gotten past trying to stabilize trekchö and recognize the inherent stability and the relaxation of that. Because that would be like if there is a practice where you have to pat your head and rub your stomach while riding a bicycle. It is not that hard, provided you’re good on a bicycle. But if you can’t ride a bicycle yet and I teach you to rub your stomach and pat your head while riding a bicycle, what’s gonna happen? You just can’t do it. So tögal is not usually taught until the inherent stability of trekchö has been noticed. In my lineage it is not taught to groups, it is always taught to one or two individuals at a time, when those one or two individuals require it.

Was there a question?

Participant: Uhm, hi.

Lama Lena: Hi.

Participant: Agnes, nice to meet you by the way. Um, I practiced Buddhism in Rome for Japanese, the sutra, about twenty-five years ago. And this came into my life [inaudible]. ‘cause this is new, you know what I mean. So it is interesting but is … similar. But my question is, I want to do more, you know, I want to make a switch. But I don’t know if it is good, or to stay with Japanese or stay…and then go to Tibet, for a woman like me.

Lama Lena: I have not practiced the Japanese sutra style. To be able to really address your question appropriately and say which is better for a woman like you. I also don’t know you that well yet.

Participant: But like, do I have to make the switch or do I have to stay with [lineage] ?

Lama Lena: No you don’t have to stay or make the switch. You don’t have to do either one of those. You will have to see what will most inspire you to practice.

Participant: That is why I am here….[laughter]

Lama Lena: Yeah, so, and do be aware that all lineages arose in a culture and a context, and you are not of that context.

Participant: It is all energies, it is all connected though.

Lama Lena: It is; however, there are areas of misunderstanding, culturally, which may occur. Especially as a woman in Tibetan Buddhism.

Participant: But is it like I come here twice a month, for meditation with Ankie. And I feel like I am home.

Lama Lena: Well good then, then keep going.

Participant: Okay!

Lama Lena: You have to, ah, in the Tibetan system we say “choose a practice you like, because if you don’t like it you won’t really do it.”

Participant: But I do not less, not anymore [inaudible]. So I am like, you know, it is my thoughts…[inaudible]….said before the practice…[inaudible]…something you do for a week and then it stops and when you thinking…since I do the meditation here at the center, I did less….thus I feel guilty.

Lama Lena: Those are thoughts.

Participant: It is like I don’t know, what to go, what direction, and it is now like….

Lama Lena: Mm hm, I see your problem. Hang on a second. [silence]. You need to get past the conflict. Therefore you need to make a decision, one way or the other. I think you’re asking me to make that decision for you.

Participant: Yes, please. [laughter][Lama Lena takes out a coin and flips it]

Participant: Can’t I say head or tail?

Lama Lena: No, you asked me to make the decision. [laughter]

So the way that came out is to make a partial switch. Do not abandon your previous practice. But you do not need to do it with the same force. Explore this new way of practicing that has caught your attention. It doesn’t matter if you do less of the old kind, if you are doing more of the new kind. They’ll balance out, you see? Whichever kind you do, let it add up to the same amount. But you don’t need to feel guilty about less of one kind and more of another kind. Okay? But yes, but continue to explore Tibetan Buddhism, but keep your books and your other practice. And do it a little bit, okay, because it makes you feel good?

Participant: I’ve done that for twenty-five years, so…

Lama Lena: Yeah, so don’t throw it away. But you can de-emphasize it to explore this new kind of practice, okay?

Participant: Thank you, yes.

Lama Lena: Yes.

Participant: A question about the homage to the master it is said: action is gyal we [rgyal sras] nyu ku, that is the bodhisattvas?

Lama Lena: Yes.

Participant: And then I think about the paramitas, but then on page six, about the self-liberation of thoughts.

Lama Lena: Yes

Participant: How can we combine those two things?

Lama Lena: It is necessary to allow the spontaneous practice of the paramitas to arise. When you practice patience—

[Lama Lena mimes concentrating with a lot of force and tension]

[laughter]

—it won’t work nearly as well as when you open your awareness and perceive nothing worth getting impatient about. When you practice generosity by trying to make as big an offering as you can—

[Lama Lena mimes making an offering with one hand while grimacing and holding her body tightly with the other hand]

[laughter]

—it’s easier and smoother, more relaxing, to simply recognize that there is no separation between self and others, not really. And so it becomes easy to share without overdoing it or underdoing it.

In the natural awareness of dharmakaya nature of mind, where you rest in open awareness, seeing the thoughts arise and dissolve, you transcend the paramitas, rather than attempt to force yourself to practice the paramitas. So the generosity arises spontaneously because giving gifts is fun. So the patience arises spontaneously because, you know, why sweat it? Do you understand?

Participant: Yeah, I understand. Almost. [laughter] You say just, like, you can say it is a training in the relative bodhicitta, of action, but Dzogchen style, you translate it in this way? Without, I think, also without concepts. It is correct?

Lama Lena: It is a relaxation into the natural paramitas, rather than a forcing yourself to take the shape of what you think the paramita is.

Participant: Yeah, helpful, helpful thank you.

Lama Lena: Yes.

Participant: Can I ask you, suppose a master is very highly realized and there is, uh, very close to the nature of mind, realization, and acting form that, is it still possible that he is doing very wrong things?

Lama Lena: The judgement.

Participant: Yeah, the wrong things and unethical things and harming people and, I guess…

Lama Lena: It is possible that people are harmed. A teacher may be very highly realized but have quite a funky personality, which someone else’s funky personality can trip over and experience harm. Or benefit. But for us to judge whether they are right or wrong is to believe in our thoughts, to judge whether—to notice whether we are comfortable with their behavior is to be self-honest. Can you feel the difference?

There are some teachers’ behavior with which I am uncomfortable. I don’t know if those behaviors are right or wrong, I had a teacher called nine fingered Tobgyal. The survival rate among his students was not very high. No, I mean literally. Um, a lot of them died in the practices. The survivors did relatively well. I will never know what he thought he was doing.

Participant: You mean what his intention was.

Lama Lena: Well yeah, he chased me around with an ax once. [laughter] I ended up on top of the roof of the house, ‘cause he could not climb very well. I was still young. He was like that. He taught me some good stuff and I honor his teachings, but he did a lot of stuff to friends of mine, that I still haven’t a clue why he thought that that might benefit, if he thought it might benefit or if he was drunk. I don’t know, I never will. I honor his teachings though, the essence of chö [gcod], the essence of experiencing feeling as energy without denying the feeling. Very powerful teachings. I was with him for only about six, eight months, and then my root-guru Wangdor Rinpoche told me to come back before he got me killed.

Participant: Really?

Lama Lena: Yeah, he was like that. You think you have troublesome lamas here.

We’ll never know what they thought they were doing when they did this or that. We can’t know. We can know that it bothers us that they did this or that. “I” statements. “It bugs me, I don’t like it.” But why they did it, whether they are realized, not-realized, yada yada, all you can judge is whether they’re the right teacher for you. Inherent right-ness and wrong-ness, you really can’t judge that on another person.

I do not know for a fact what the president of America thinks he is doing. If he thinks. [laughter]. However, I am pretty damn sure he is not the right president for America. For me, for my country. But perhaps there is somewhere he is or someone he is right for. It is a fine line, because you want to be able to stand up politically, you know, people get the government they deserve. ‘Cause if you don’t stand up you got somebody like Hitler coming through. So you need to be able to be active or activist without believing the thoughts of judgement that you’re having. It’s hard. And it makes a lot of conflict, especially in regard to teachers. Many of them have very difficult personalities.

Participant: Suppose somebody believes highly of, behaves very highly unethical, you know, like abusive and like, uh, yeah…

Lama Lena: Well, first of all, your ethics are cultural. What you think is abuse; Tibetans all beat their children. It’s what they consider normal; children don’t study if you don’t beat them. For us that is abuse.

Participant: I know because I am married with a police-woman, so I know.

Lama Lena: Okay.

Participant: I know very well, but I know also that a code of ethics is really necessary in a Western context.

Lama Lena: Yes, and it is extremely important for you that you have one and follow it. And it might not be the same I am following.

Participant: Could be.

Lama Lena: Could be. This is a really difficult subject and it’s really up right now. Because of the behaviors of a number of lamas are in conflict strongly with Western morality and rules. I don’t know exactly how to answer you on this. Now, Lama Tobgyal, I can only speak from my own experience, had the intention of being a dharma teacher in the hell-realms in the next life. He wanted to go to the hell-realms to liberate sentient beings there. From some of the stuff he got up to I suspect that is actually what he is doing. I cannot say if he was fully enlightened or simply drunk. At times. I don’t know.

My teacher, Wangdor Rinpoche, sweet little monk, has pulled some really weird shit on me occasionally. I have no idea what he was thinking or what he meant by any of that. But damn, he taught me well!

And one of the things he taught me is I’ll never know what he thought he was doing in this situation or that situation. I only know what I think happened. And a lot of what we see happening, we see it once removed. For some of us, it happens to us personally, but for the most part we’re concerned about what happened to others. I will say that, yes, warn the young girls, that Tibetan lama are not celibate, and that their methods of seduction may not in accord with your cultural matrix. It’s complex. It’s not a subject I am afraid to talk about, but it is a subject I don’t have perfect answers for.

Participant: You gave a lovely answer. And you demonstrated it. Without meaning to, I am fairly sure. But you cautioned us not to make a judgement of right or wrong for someone else. And yet in many ways, and you demonstrated that, that was awesome, not on purpose. But the question becomes, then, we so automatically in the West particularly, will accept whatever the lama says about what is right or wrong for us, as absolute truth. And that’s I think the sticky point. We give the lama much more credit for knowing what is right or wrong for us, many of us do, than we, maybe we should be doing the same thing that you ask of a student of a teacher, maybe we should be doing the same thing with our teacher, not allowing the judgement of right or wrong for us, now I don’t know what that….

Lama Lena: Absolutely!

Participant: I do not know what that should do to Tibetan Buddhism, cause it feels like that’s a part of it….

Lama Lena: Okay, it is a part of tantric practice. However it is, hmm, tantra is a sticky wicket. Tantra is accident prone, risky, dangerous. In order to study tantra under a teacher you are expected to spend at least three years prior checking out that teacher before you even consider asking them to teach you tantra, making sure that they’re someone you can work with the way they see the world. They are expected to spend at least three years checking you out before they teach you tantra, making sure that you are not someone prone to victimhood. You know that there are some people who will hit themselves with you whatever you do.

Now I am not saying that is what happened to these lamas. But it is a lama’s responsibility to see who they can teach and who is just gonna get into trouble on it. But it is a student’s responsibility to see who they can learn from. So you’re supposed to spend some time checking it out. Westerners with vast enthusiasm jump into guru-yoga with a teacher way early. People who come and first meet me come and say, “I want to be your student.” Nah, let’s date for a while first. It is too early to get married. [laughter] Let’s have a nice dating relationship, where I’ll teach you and we’ll work together for the next few years and we’ll see how it goes. Maybe you’ll find somebody you like better. It is not monogamous dating. That’s how I do it.

In Tibet, especially in the monasteries, you sort of automatically got the monastery’s teacher if you were a monk there. And a lot of the teachers that are having trouble here in the West are teachers who were raised in monasteries. That is where you’re running into most of the difficulties. Most of them have never met a woman, until they come here. Females are a mythical creature. They don’t know what to do with a live flesh and blood woman; how to relate, how to form a friendship, how to teach. Utterly confusing. But they have fantasies. And messes occur.

I knew one who had heard of “free love,” in the hippie days, this is way back. And thought it meant that it is like prostitution, but you don’t have to pay for it. That it, “free love” means any woman will sleep with you for free. If you ask her. There is a lot of confusion going on.

We do have and I will say the responsibility to the lovely young girls of us who are a little bit older, is to say “don’t sleep with the Tibetans unless you want to sleep with the Tibetans.” Don’t do it because they told you to or asked or because you think you should. And don’t have sex with monks. It is seven years’ bad luck. Worse than breaking a mirror. And they lie. Monks say that they’re not monks, under those circumstances. So when that happens, check their hair. If they have long hair like this, and a stripy zen like this, then they are not monks. Short hair. Short hair and a red zen, probably it is a monk.

Participant: [inaudible]

Lama Lena: Well, get over it, unless you’re celibate. Get one of these.

Participant: I’ll wear the striped one tomorrow.

Lama Lena: These are, it’s supposed to let people know so when they see they know whether they can make a pass at you or not.

Other questions on this topic or any other one. Yes.

Participant: Another topic. I’m meditating for a long time and still I am addicted to phenomena. And I feel, every time I start to meditate I feel I have to sit down and I am addicted to the phenomena, do you understand what I mean? I am addicted to “Oh, this is important, this is important, this, I want to do, this is what I do not want to do.” I am addicted to samsara, I think that is the good description. Do you understand?

Lama Lena: Yes, I don’t believe you. [laughter]

You’re just a normal sentient being, it is not an addiction, like a drug addiction, anymore than it is for anybody else. Of course you tend to focus on phenomena, you’ve been doing it for fifty-thousand years, and longer. However, if it is distracting you, then take your dorje. Use this method mostly. Sit for very short sessions, and when your attention has truly gotten absorbed by phenomena, get up and go do stuff. Short sessions. No longer then they can be, and lots of glancing.

Participant: Glancing, what is glancing?

Participant: [in Dutch] Een blik werpen. Kort.

Participant: Okay?

Lama Lena: This sensation of being addicted to phenomena; you know, in our culture addiction is a big deal, so we use that word. Actually we’re just fascinated by phenomena. It’s entertaining, and boy, do we like being entertained.

So we think about stuff and we muck about with stuff and we get all into our feelings and what we feel and all of this. That’s okay. All of those thoughts, all of those feelings, look and see what they’re made of.

They themselves are natural mind. You don’t have to get rid of them. If you like a “to do” list, you can have a “to do” list. It is a matter of not fighting yourself about it; that tenses you up. Relax. If you like to keep busy, meditate while you’re busy. It doesn’t have to be either/or. We create conflict for ourselves, again for the entertainment value of it. Relax. Just when you start feeling conflict, say, “Oh well, I am entertaining myself with conflict now. Okay.”

Does that answer your question? Other questions. Yes.

Participant: What you were introducing us today, eventually all the time, is this the ultimate bodhicitta, not to use the term, but just like a philosophical stone that recognize….?

Lama Lena: When you recognize your own nature, ultimate bodhicitta is not separate from that.

Participant: Samsara is then, is self-liberating.

Lama Lena: Samsara is self-liberating, that doesn’t mean it goes away.

Participant: [inaudible] not there

Lama Lena: Doesn’t mean it is not there. It means..?

Participant: Where am I tricking this?

Lama Lena: You’re trying to find the right thought.

Participant: It is like try…[inaudible]…describe…[inaudible]

Lama Lena: You can’t understand this. You’re going to have to give that up. That’s your favorite entertainment. You don’t have to give it up. you have to recognize its transparency while you’re doing it.

So anytime you try to understand any part of dharma, when you notice you’re doing that, align your channels, do the breath that settles your chi and look at your mind, with your mind, as your mind.

This will break the pattern of attempting to understand the unthinkable in words. All you’ll get is a pale approximation. All the words point and the words may be completely in conflict, pointing in complete opposite directions. But pointing at the same thing.

[sound of a bell ringing]

Participant: It’s sometimes like the burn of the spicy food. It is not the food, though. It’s quite disgusting sometimes.

Lama Lena: Exactly, yes. But that’s a very good analogy. Other questions. Yes.

Participant: Yesterday you gave us this crystal, and now we got this dorje. And can I use both? And what is the difference?

Lama Lena: The dorje is to remind you to look at your mind. The crystal is to remind you that your thoughts are transparent and in no way interfere with looking at your mind. There really isn’t a difference. They are symbols. All symbols point at the same thing, just from different angles.

Other questions. Are we complete then? Yes.

Participant: I am puzzling with this dorje. Is the homework from last time was to take quick glances, and I notice that there is a kind of a doubt that will, I guess, as always, at some point keep me from doing this. “Am I doing this right? It can’t be that easy.” All these….

Lama Lena: It really is that easy. And yes, you’re doing it right. And if you will make a morning session on your cushion before you interact with the day. There is a relaxation if you come out of sleep. Now, depending on how—I have to do it with coffee, otherwise I just go back to sleep onmy cushion. Find your balance, but if you will make a morning session while you’re still relaxed, before you begin speaking and engage the day, that will make it much easier for you to make the quick glances.

And it doesn’t have to be a long session. Five minutes, three minutes, ten minutes, depending on your lifestyle. The only people who aren’t gonna be able to do this is mothers of two-year old’s. No matter how early you get up, they will get up first. And they will be right there the moment your eyes are open. However, they will grow out of it.

Participant: I don’t necessarily wake up relaxed. Very often I wake up in like in a state of fear. How to deal with that then?

Lama Lena: Sit on your cushion, while you’re still in that state, sit on your cushion and look through the feeling at mind. There is a whole retreat I teach on working with feelings, short version.

There are a bunch of thoughts that are trying to stick to the feeling and explain what you’re afraid of. Look through those and allow them to dissolve, leaving the feeling naked of the thoughts. Find the naked feeling as a sensation in your body. Do not mind the feeling. Or the sensation. Do not name it: fear, excitement, anger. Simply leave it as a simple sensation. Do not try to relieve it, do not try to make it go away. Just sit there and feel it, without letting the thoughts wrap around it and conceal it. Do you understand this instruction?

Participant: Yes, someway yes, and I can immediately tell what it does to me so I am trying to…

Lama Lena: What does it do to you?

Participant: Heart racing, fear, anxiety, I am not able to do this, full stop. And immediately turning away from the instruction, I suppose.

Lama Lena: Okay, for you then, do you have a mala?

Participant: Yes.

Lama Lena: For you, the moment you wake up, take your mala in hand and hum beneath under your breath softly, gently. Om mani padme hum.

[Lama Lena gently humming mani mantra].

Any tune. Do you feel that, the feeling of it, as I am humming it? Do that when you first wake up until the agitation passes. Then sit.

Participant: And what is the mala for, am I supposed to count, I mean….

Lama Lena: No, you run the mala. Okay, you run the mala through your fingers because the mala will take a charge from the mantra and so when you touch the mala you feel the lessening of anxiety. So it will synergize with you. And take my e-mail and periodically, when you’re afraid you’re doing it wrong, you can e-mail me for reassurance. And I’ll tell you, you’re doing it right. ‘Cause I think right now you’ll need that for a little bit.

Participant: I promise not to e-mail three times a day. [laughter]

Lama Lena: Yeah, you can. Just to get you over that hump.

Mani’s are very effective when you are troubled with an emotion which is keeping you form practicing Dzogchen, with the effective relaxation it requires. Mani’s will, we use to get colicky babies go to sleep. To stop fights. To calm down the crazy people, back home. To calm ourselves down when we are the crazy people. It is really a powerful SZZZzzzzzzzzzz…..

[Lama Lena making sound of a high and loud getting lower and softer]

It’s where bodhicitta meets open awareness. So if you get into a set of emotions that are so powerful they are interfering with your practice, run that. Use your vocal cords and any tune you like, fast or slow, you’ll find the one that is most soothing for yourself.

Do you all know how to do mani’s, you’ve all had the lung for manis? Have you had the lung for mani’s? Okay, I’ll give it really quick. Repeat after me; Om, Mani, Padme, Hum, Om Mani, Padme Hum, Om Mani Padme Hum. Hrih.

[audience is repeating]

There you have it. If you would like to find some tunes, google it on Youtube. There is some beautiful Tibetan singers, singing manis with some incredible tunes. But frankly you can use any tune that pleases you. You can make up a tune, find the one that works for you, or the tune that works for you or whatever. Very useful practice. ‘Cause sometimes we’re just way too agitated to sit in Dzogchen. Yes.

Participant: When I look from mind to mind, it just reminds me of childhood. Are children more connected to vast, open space? Or is it…?

Lama Lena: No, that was you. You were. All children are different. Do you have kids?

Participant: No.

Lama Lena: If you ever, when you have kids, you’ll get to notice, or even if you just adopt them young. They’re all different from each other. Yes.

Participant: Before I knew you, I had all the big, how do you say, meditation life, and the year before I met you and I have received instructions from you and I noticed that the instructions and the experience that came out of it, it merged with my regular practice, and it feels very good. But is there a danger in it, or, a danger in, how do you say, is it a problem?

Lama Lena: Why would it be?

Participant: I don’t know, but I am a little bit uncertain, I used, I use it also with this merging and this instructions and I driving in my car and say “Om Ah Hung Benzra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum” and then I finished my mantra I said “Look at mind at mind” and I do that. So it is, yeah, because I do a lot of things, um….

Lama Lena: Go right ahead!

Participant: Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Lama Lena: Everyone’s practices are going to be slightly different. Because the practice is going along the map from who you are in this moment to the complete relaxation of open awareness. So how you get there from Paris and how you get there from Timbuktu are a little bit different, different map. So you all get to do slightly different practices. Some of you prefer mahamudra, maha-ati, tantra, combinations thereof and that is really okay. You can mix, yes. If you become confused by mixing, that’s when you need to talk about exactly what and how you’re mixing it with a teacher. So that they can help you un-confuse. But if it is working for you, then you don’t need to have somebody to go over it with you. ‘Cause it’s working.

Participant: And another aspect is also that I am liking very, very much my practice.

Lama Lena: Good!

Participant: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I heard also instructions from let’s say Dzongsar Kyentse, he said practice should be demolishing you. So if you get too comfortable with it….?

Lama Lena: That is true in certain contexts and not true in other contexts. Remember all the fingers pointing in different directions? So I don’t think that is true for you at this time. Because you are continuing to practice. When somebody gets too comfortable in their practice and it is no longer demolishing or changing them, usually they’re just doing mantra by rote. It is a Tibetan thing. Not so much for Westerners. But Tibetans do get into not going any further in their practice sometimes. And it is all rote and they are very comfortable in it and it not going anywhere, and it is very safe. Very few In-ji [dbyin ji] fall in there. Some do. I don’t think you’re falling into that, okay?

Participant: Yeah, thank you

Lama Lena: Any last questions?

ge wa di yi nyur du dag

de yi sa la göd par shog

May all beings be happy

May all beings be free

So be it

So is it

The Three Words That Strike the Vital Point

Guru yoga

View, Meditation, and Action

Inner Mind Rushen

Tawa

Questions and Answers

Benefits of Dzogchen Practice for Householders

Laktong

Changchub Dorje’s Trekchö instructions to Wangdor Rinpoche

Sharing Practice with Yogis and Nuns in India

Symbolism of The Dorje

The Third Vital Point

Q and A

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