The View and practice of trekcho. Eifel Autumn Retreat, 2013

Includes Tulku Tsorlo’s Trekcho commentary using Vimalamitra’s Seven Fundamental Points, and Khorde Rushen exercises.

James Low
Kamalashila Institute, Germany, October 17 – 20, 2013

Transcribed by Vera Neuroth
Edited by Barbara Terris

Download the Transcript of Complete Retreat. Days 1-4

Download the Transcript of Day 1.  How Dzogchen and Trekcho fit in to the Buddhist structure

Download the Transcript of Day 2. Refuge, Trekcho Teaching Notes from Tulku Tsorlo on Vimalamitra, and Khorde Rushen

Download the Transcript of Day 3.  More on how the different dharma styles, including trekcho, fit together

Read the transcript in German of days 1-4.  Translated by Lea Pabst.

Listen to the audio recording of the October 2013 Eifel Retreat

Excerpt
Thogal practices refer to ‘lug gu gyud’. Lug or lug-gu means sheep and gyud means a chain.  You’ve seen a whole series of sheep going one after another along a little track on the hillside? Sheep follow, follow, follow… Likewise we have these thoughts that follow, follow, follow… they leave tracks. If you recognise that the thought, in the moment that it arises, is nothing at all, then you won’t put extra valency into it. This is why the instruction is always, “Don’t enter into judgement!” Don’t sit separated from your own experience, saying, “Bad! Good! I don’t want the bad! I do want the good!” If you do that, you sit in the split. You are both inhabiting duality and creating duality. Who is doing that? A thought. 
However, the thought hasn’t come from ignorance.This is the particular teaching of dzogchen. The thought, ‘I don’t want this thought!’ is itself arising from the mind. The negative thought comes from the mind, the judgemental thought comes from the mind. So stay with the mind itself. Patrul Rinpoche, Nuden Dorje and other meditation teachers always say, “Stay on the thought as it arises; stay on whatever is arising.” In Tibetan, this is thog-tu and it means ‘to stay with it’, but stay with it, not on top looking down, not in a positional way, but stay as the presence within which the thought is arising. The middle way. Don’t merge into the thought, don’t separate yourself from the thought.