Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s Dzogchen Practice in Everyday Life

The everyday practice of dzogchen is simply to develop a complete carefree acceptance, an openness to all situations without limit. We should realize openness as the playground of our emotions and relate to people without artificiality, manipulation or strategy. We should experience everything totally, never withdrawing into ourselves as a marmot hides in its hole. This practice releases tremendous energy which is usually constricted by the process of maintaining fixed reference points. Referentiality is the process by which we retreat from the direct experience of everyday life.

Being present in the moment may initially trigger fear. But by welcoming the sensation of fear with complete openness, we cut through the barriers created by habitual emotional patterns.

When we engage in the practice of discovering space, we should develop the feeling of opening ourselves out completely to the entire universe. We should open ourselves with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind. This is the powerful and ordinary practice of dropping the mask of self-protection.
We shouldn’t make a division in our meditation between perception and field of perception. We shouldn’t become like a cat watching a mouse. We should realize that the purpose of meditation is not to go “deeply into ourselves” or withdraw from the world. Practice should be free and non-conceptual, unconstrained by introspection and concentration.
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The Core of the Teachings According to Krishnamurti

[The following statement was written by Krishnamurti himself on October 21, 1980. It may be copied and used provided this is done in its entirety. No editing or change of any kind is permitted. No extracts may be used.]

The core of Krishnamurti’s teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said: ‘Truth is a pathless land’. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a fence of security-religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man’s thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind.
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Excerpts from Writings of Annie Besant

“Theosophy postulates the existence of an eternal Principle, known only through its effects. No words can describe It, for words imply discriminations, and This is ALL. We murmur, Absolute, Infinite, Unconditioned, – but the words mean naught. SAT, the Wise speak of: BE-NESS, not even Being nor Existence. Only as the Manifested becomes can language be used with meaning; but the appearance of the Manifested implies the Un-manifested, for the Manifested is transitory and mutable, and there must be something that eternally endures. This Eternal must be postulated, else whence the existences around us? It must contain within Itself That which is the essence of the germ of all possibilities, all potencies: space is the only conception that can even faintly mirror It without preposterous distortion, but silence least offends in these high regions where the wings of thought beat faintly and lips can only falter, not pronounce.”

“Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.”

“An attempt to grasp, however feebly, the nature of the sacrifice of the LOGOS may prevent us from falling into the very general mistake that sacrifice is an essentially painful thing; whereas the very essence of sacrifice is a voluntary and glad pouring forth of life that others may share in it; and pain only arises when there is discord in the nature of the sacrificer, between the higher whose joy is in giving and the lower whose satisfaction lies in grasping and holding. It is that discord alone that introduces the element of pain, and in the supreme Perfection, in the LOGOS, no discord could arise; the One is the perfect chord of Being, of infinite melodious concords, all tuned to a single note, in which Life and Wisdom and Bliss are blended into one keynote of Existence….Hence the sign of the spirit is giving, for spirit is the active divine life in every form.”

Excerpts from Writings of Annie Besant

Consciousness and the Absolute p.112-114

All knowledge is like the son of a barren woman.
Presently there are only beingness and functioning.
The individuality and personality are thrown overboard.
There is no personality, so there is no question of birth, life, or death.
What remains is only the consciousness without name or form.
The form needs a name, but when both are not there, then the consciousness remains only for so long as the body is there, but without any individuality.
The body is of as much use now as it was prior to birth and after death.
How do you know me?
You know me only the acquisition of body form, name and form.
Do you really see me as I am? I doubt it.
Now the conclusion is that the unborn is enjoying the birth-principle.
That principle that is born took so much time to understand this, and is it is the unborn only which prevails.
It took so much time for the Self to understand the Self.
We have tied around our necks so many concepts; death, this “I AM”,etc.
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A Letter Written by Fra Giovanni Giocondo to Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi on Christmas Eve, 1513:

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.

Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see. And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you.

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.

The Clear Light Invocation

The Clear Light is the Source of Light that lighteth everyone of humankind that cometh into the world. It is the radiance of cosmic consciousness. Yogins realize it while still in the fleshly body, and all humans glimpse it at the moment of death. It is the light of the Buddha, the Christ, and all Masters of Life. And to the devotee in whom it shines unimpededly, it is the Guru and the Deliverer.

W.Y. Evans-Wentz

The Song of the Poppadum

No need about the world to roam
And suffer from depression;
Make poppadum within the home
According to the lesson
Of ‘THOU ART THAT’, without compare,
The Unique Word, unspoken,
‘Tis not by speech it will declare.
The silence is unbroken
Of Him who is the Adept-Sage,
The great Apotheosis,
With His eternal heritage
That Being-Wisdom-Bliss is.
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My way is so simple to feel, so easy to apply,
That only a few will feel it or apply it.
If it were not the lasting way, the natural way to try,
If it were a passing way, everyone would try it.
But however few shall go my way
Or feel concerned with me,
Some there are and those are they
Who witness what they see:
Sanity is a haircloth sheath
With a jewel underneath.

- Lao-Tzu, Translated by Witter Bynner

Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.
Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.
It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, i.e. hate, ruled us we should have become extinct long ago. And yet, the tragedy of it is that the so-called civilized men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence.

- Mahatma Gandhi

NOTE: Gandhi was once asked what he thought about western civilization. His response was: “I think it would be a good idea.”

Excerpt from Jellyfish Bones

So, what is Zen? You are Zen! The Zen approach is to strip away all accumulations. Zen requires that we be naked. The intent of Zen is to bring about a denuding. This calls for the complete destruction of the accumulations of little mind. Destruction in the sense that it will be revealed for what it is, an accumulation of concepts, and that we have accepted the accumulations as a real world.

Zen Master Don Gilbert (aka Rev. Ta Hui)

Jellyfish Bones: The Humor Of Zen; Don Gilbert