James Low - Dzogchen and Buddhist Teachings

652 Berghof 2024 Retreat - Session 7 of 8

Dec 10, 2024
A retreat deep-dive into Mahamudra and Dzogchen practice, exploring techniques, mood, and bringing practice into ordinary life. Talks probe appearance and emptiness with water/ice and water/waves metaphors. Themes include one taste, non-meditation, compassion and the bodhisattva vow, skillful spontaneity, and how to maintain enquiry and ethical action amid distraction.
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ADVICE

Question Right Livelihood When It Fixes Others

  • Evaluate right livelihood honestly: some jobs (e.g., border policing) structurally oppose compassionate practice and are hard terrain for awakening.
  • James Low warns practitioners may need to avoid roles that fix others into harmful categories.
ANECDOTE

Trungpa's Mandala Of Social Skillful Means

  • Trungpa Rinpoche's unconventional methods created alternative mandalas and social expressions intended to manifest awareness in ordinary society.
  • James Low notes some students benefited while others left, illustrating mixed results of radical skillful means.
INSIGHT

Post-Meditative Emptiness Changes Everyday Reactions

  • When a yogi awakens to the one taste, emptiness pervades post-meditative life: phenomena remain self‑arising and self‑vanishing in ordinary situations.
  • James Low emphasizes staying with 'how' things are to prevent reification in action.
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