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James Low, April 2026 writes: The traditional structure of Buddhist teachings is that each level or vehicle has its own View, Meditation, Activity and Result. Over the years I have focused on making the various views and meditations as clear as possible and you can access these through my many audio and video recordings, books and transcripts.
I feel that our retreats now need to have increasing emphasis on your activity and proactive learning.
We all have a lot of life experience and so how can we mobilise this experience to become an ally on our path instead of an obstacle? Rather than relying on our habitual assumptions and conclusions, our practice is to investigate how our subjectivity arises in different situations. We aim to locate the ground (or basis) for our subjective thoughts, feelings and actions in our simple presence within the ever-open here and now.
I will be teaching in the mornings. In the afternoons there will be small group activities led by experienced members of our sangha. They will offer a range of activities and I am encouraging you all to try them out so that you can experience what you can make use of (or not) at each moment in time. The key point is for you to observe what arises for you as you engage with each activity in your ever-changing environment.
The aim in dzogchen is to see the self-vanishing of each moment. We do this by ripening our presence without engaging in dualistic reificatory judgement.
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Public Talk, Cologne
James Low
Compassion, befriending the orphaned self.
Due to ignorance all beings become cut off from the ground of their own being and seek to find a place to abide. Compassion, from the buddhist point of view, is the means to offer hospitality to ourselves and others – a hospitality grounded in the actuality of our mind as it is.
Mitgefühl für sich selbst und andere.
Bedingt durch Unwissenheit fühlen wir uns oft abgeschnitten von den Wurzeln unseres Seins. Unablässig fühlen wir uns getrieben, auf der Suche nach Sicherheit und Beständigkeit – nach einer Heimat zum Ankommen. Aus buddhistischer Sicht bietet Mitgefühl hier eine Möglichkeit, uns dieses Ankommen zu ermöglichen. Durch die Praxis des Mitgefühls eröffnet sich uns ein Weg, uns selbst und anderen mit offenem, gastfreundlichem Herzen zu begegnen – mit einer großzügigen und gelassenen Offenheit, die ihren Ursprung in der wahren Natur unseres eigenen Geistes hat.
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