The Heart of Dzogchen Record of the Heart-felt Advice of the Dakini Indestructible Glorious Lamp Teaching and commentary by James Low Eifel retreat, Germany 11 to 14 October 2012 Transcribed by Jo Féat Lightly edited by Barbara Terris and Lea Pabst http://www.simplybeing.co.uk/heartfelt-advice-ayu-khandro/ http://eifelaudio.simplybeing.co.uk/2018/02/16/autumn-2012/ James Low 2013 © http://www.simplybeing.co.uk Page 1 Excerpts 'The natural clarity – the natural light of the mind – is only revealed to us when we stop being busy running around with our torch trying to illuminate what's going on. 'But if I switch off the torch, won't it get very dark?' We are afraid of the dark, so we better keep the torch on, but then you only ever see what you are used to seeing.' ✻ 'Non-duality is simply relaxing the focus that says my life begins with myself. I start on the basis of this existence and from me I look out at the world. All we are trying to do is just shift the balance slightly to see that what I call myself and the environment always occur together. They are inseparable. You are always somewhere.' ✻ 'Awareness is the light of the ground – the energy of the dharmadhatu – or the energy of the basic nature illuminating experience. What is experience? It is the movement of that energy, so the ground and the movement of the energy are inseparable, just as the mirror and the reflection are inseparable.' ✻ … If you look back in your life, how many things have you grasped at that you thought would really be the one thing that you need? It doesn't work, and it can't work. Samsara is the environment created by the busyness of always seeking the wrong solution to the problem. Ignorance is the misunderstanding of what the basic problem is: What we lack is to wake up to where we are… ✻ …If you have a children's spinning top, and if you keep spinning it, it will keep going round and round. After a while it slows down and wobbles and gets ready to fall over so you spin it some more. If you don't keep spinning it, it will stop spinning and fall over. Duality is the way in which we keep spinning the wheel of samsara. We keep spinning by investing energy into phenomena. That is what stops the experience of the self-liberation, however if you just leave it, it will be what it is and it won't last forever… ✻ James Low 2013 © http://www.simplybeing.co.uk Page 2 Thursday 11 October ________________________________________________________ 4 What is there to really rely on? ...................................................................................................................... 4 Non-duality: seeing everything as a whole ..................................................................................................... 5 Like a balloon the ego is inflated and deflated ............................................................................................... 6 Fascination ...................................................................................................................................................... 7 Colour as concept: metaphor of the red cushion ........................................................................................... 8 Experience is ceaseless and ungraspable ....................................................................................................... 9 Compassion as interconnectivity .................................................................................................................. 11 Opening to that which is open ...................................................................................................................... 13 Who is the experiencer of the experience? .................................................................................................. 15 Emptiness of self allows us to be many different things .............................................................................. 16 The field of experience is inseparable from the field of openness ............................................................... 17 Balance in meditation: metaphor of riding a bicycle .................................................................................... 18 The space of our mind is filled with ever changing content ......................................................................... 19 Being available means having no agenda ..................................................................................................... 20 Allowing oneself to be interrupted is a quality of compassion .................................................................... 21 Friday 12 October __________________________________________________________ 22 Reciting Refuge and Bodhicitta: experiencing sound as emptiness ............................................................. 22 Awareness is always where it needs to be ................................................................................................... 24 A brief biography of Ayu Khandro _____________________________________________ 26 The Record of the Heart-felt Advice of the Dakini Indestructible Glorious Lamp ________ 26 The fantasy of 'special' teachers ................................................................................................................... 29 Others impact us ........................................................................................................................................... 30 There is only experience: our mind is our world .......................................................................................... 31 Meaning is contextual ................................................................................................................................... 33 Getting caught up in karmic winds ............................................................................................................... 35 Space does not stand in relation to anything ............................................................................................... 38 Our bodies in meditation .............................................................................................................................. 38 Be present with the one who is always already present .............................................................................. 40 Obscurations self-liberate on this path ........................................................................................................ 41 Energy flows from enlightenment ................................................................................................................ 42 Consciousness cannot become awakened ................................................................................................... 44 Tonglen: generosity linked to emptiness ...................................................................................................... 53 Saturday 13 October _______________________________________________________ 55 Curiosity can get in the way of our being present ........................................................................................ 55 Responding fully to the world without having to make sense of things ....................................................... 58 Being blown around by karmic winds ........................................................................................................... 60 Dissolving the need for fantasy .................................................................................................................... 62 Emptiness is the vanishing of situations ....................................................................................................... 63 Where is this continuing self? ....................................................................................................................... 65 Presence is the revealer of all movement .................................................................................................... 68 Clarifying what is meant by a sense of lack .................................................................................................. 69 Dzogchen is not about applying antidotes in meditation ............................................................................. 72 To taste direct experience, let go of the constructs ..................................................................................... 76 The power of the object lies in the subject .................................................................................................. 77 What about love? ......................................................................................................................................... 79 Love and compassion as availability ............................................................................................................. 80 Space is the central point ............................................................................................................................. 82 What about loving yourself? ......................................................................................................................... 83 Sunday 14 October _________________________________________________________ 87 Assumptions rest in the house of artifice ..................................................................................................... 87 We are not made for conformity .................................................................................................................. 89 Waking up to