James Low - Dzogchen and Buddhist Teachings

1/2 Self-liberating understanding. Eifel 10.2015

Dec 7, 2025

Explore the art of shamatha and vipassana meditation as they calm the mind and reduce ego's grip. Dive into karma’s role in shaping our choices and habitual patterns. Discover how naming influences experience and learn to let thoughts flow naturally. Uncover the inseparability of emptiness and appearance, while examining self-liberation through awareness. Insight into integrating these principles into everyday life — even in simple tasks. Ultimately, find trust in the interplay of awareness and action in a complex world.

08:50:59

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ADVICE

Calm The Mind With Gentle Breath Focus

Use shamatha by gently focusing on the breath to settle attention and reduce ego-based narrative.
Return kindly and smoothly to the breath whenever you drift instead of blaming yourself.

insights

INSIGHT

Attention Co-Creates Experience

Attention creates the worlds we then inhabit by revealing latent patterns.
The power lies in how the subject gives itself to potential, not in the object itself.

insights

INSIGHT

Naming Changes What You See

Naming and conceptualising transform raw experience into constructed objects and identities.
Recognize the immediate presentational body before it is subsumed by narrative labels.

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Shamatha: Focusing on the Breath

00:00 • 3min

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Settling Attention and Gentle Posture

02:38 • 15min

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Karma, Choices, and Habitual Patterns

17:09 • 14min

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Vipassana: Bare Attention Through Body Scan

31:07 • 13min

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Naming, Bodies, and Sensation's Radicality

44:35 • 12min

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Spontaneity, Subpersonalities, and Awareness

56:48 • 13min

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Awareness, Suffering, and the Mirror Metaphor

01:09:53 • 29min

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Nine-Round Breathing and Open Awareness

01:39:02 • 12min

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Attention, Attachment and Consumer Choice

01:50:56 • 12min

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Disidentifying: From Form to Emptiness

02:02:49 • 11min

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Guru Yoga and Self-Liberation Practice

02:14:11 • 12min

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Spaciousness vs Ethical Complexity

02:26:28 • 12min

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Non-Activity: Thoughts Pass Without Trace

02:38:22 • 23min

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Practice Rhythm and Intro to Patru Rinpoche

03:01:03 • 12min

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Essence of Dzogchen: Emptiness and Dharmakaya

03:13:04 • 13min

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Seeing Mind Directly: Experience and Subjectivity

03:25:54 • 13min

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Space, Velcro, and Letting Go

03:38:50 • 17min

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One Ground, Two Paths: Practice and Action

03:55:26 • 12min

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Taking Refuge in Mind, Dharma, Sangha

04:07:52 • 11min

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Refuge, Ethics, and Practical Uncertainty

04:19:18 • 16min

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Emptiness and Manifestation Together

04:35:41 • 24min

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Garab Dorje's Three Statements Summarized

04:59:33 • 12min

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Practice with Others: Grounded Spontaneity

05:11:08 • 12min

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Remain Without Artifice in Practice

05:22:47 • 13min

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Attachment, Stories, and Self-Liberation

05:35:56 • 12min

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Non-Reactivity: Let Thoughts Flow

05:47:46 • 12min

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Questions for Direct Inquiry

05:59:35 • 13min

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Mind Inside or Outside? Field Experiments

06:12:15 • 11min

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Mind-Color, Direct Experience over Concepts

06:23:31 • 12min

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Remain as the Looker; Let Thoughts Self-Liberate

06:35:49 • 14min

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Equanimity Amid Flux and Practical Care

06:50:05 • 11min

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Unborn, Unceasing Mind and One Taste

07:01:28 • 13min

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Practice, Opinions, and Social Conditioning

07:14:51 • 15min

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Hidden Faults and the Cow-in-the-Field Metaphor

07:29:40 • 13min

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Searching for Mind: Wrong Methods and Parables

07:42:17 • 14min

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One Ground, Two Paths Revisited

07:56:11 • 12min

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Emanation, Practice Integration, and Everyday Life

08:08:24 • 12min

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Trusting the Pattern: Practice, Ethics, and Action

08:20:44 • 30min

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15-18 October, 2015. Meditation retreat in Kamalashila Institute, in the Eifel region of German, based on Chapter 10 of James Low's book Simply Being, which is a translation of Patrul Rinpoche's text "Self-liberating Understanding".

"Integrating the view, meditation and activity in dzogchen. We will focus on the self liberation of experience, which is the heart of the meditation, and how to apply that within the complexities of daily life. This involves finding the middle way of appearance and emptiness, free of control and avoidance on the one hand, and merging and identification on the other."

~ James Low

• Thursday 15/10/2015: session 1 introduced "two methods for calming the mind and looking at the contents of the mind by focussing attention."

- Shamatha meditation

- Distraction - giving ones self

- Re-collection and mindfulness

- Vipassana

- Naming is not neutral

- Question - spontaneity and choice

- Awareness

- Identity - meaning - situation

- Nine round breathing

- Sitting with what occurs

- Leaving appearances to be as they are

- Guru Yoga

- Guru Yoga instructions

- Thoughts and feelings passing through

- Question - who notices - mind - ego

- Just with the thought

- A few words about the text

- Introduction to the text

- From the heart of a ragged gentleman

- Inseparability of your mind and the Dharmakaya

- Knowing this everything is liberated

- Question - fear - dissolving

- Question fear anxiety holding on

-This one is sufficient to rule

• Friday • 16/10/2015: session 2 develops that. The topic is awareness. "Awareness and attention are not the same. Awareness is the open clarity of the mind which is present whether we are attentive or not. Awareness is innate, is there from the beginning, whether we are aware of it or not."

- On Refuge

- Question - tree of refuge

- Compassion then back to Refuge

- Clear and alert in non-artificial voidness

- Question - letting go

- Do not react - remain without artifice

- Practice in conjunction with the text

- Your mind is not found by seeking

- Staying with the direct experience

- Time is limited

- Seeking is not necessary - remain without artifice

- Non-artificiality removes all obstacles

- About the involvement of the experiencer

- The demon of elation - relational structures

- Buoyant and hopeful - equanimity

- Question - faith and trusting

- Teaching on the minds hidden faults

- Sitting exactly here and now

- Question - one ground two paths - the Bardo

- Question - Semdzin practice

- Question - allowing impact allowing duration

- Question - emanation

- Question - partial enlightentment - predjudice illumination relative truth

- Question - a universal ethical code

Transcript of the retreat: https://bit.ly/4iJbaX5

Audio recording of the retreat: https://www.simplybeing.co.uk/2015/11/28/autumn-2015/

Learn more about future events: simplybeing.co.uk/events/

📱 Instagram of excerpts: https://instagram.com/SBSangha_JamesLow

🎧 Poscasts of some teachings: https://simplybeing.co.uk/news/podcasts/

📆 Learn more about future events: https://simplybeing.co.uk/events/

Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywDBc4XLsvU

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