Befriending the orphaned self. Cologne, 2017

Compassion, befriending the orphaned self

James Low

Public Talk, Cologne, 19 April 2017

Transcribed by Lea Pabst and edited by Barbara Terris

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.

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Excerpts

…We are fundamentally unknowable since we are all the lost children of the ever-fecund, the ever-generous mother of all the buddhas. The womb of the great mother, of Prajnaparamita, is emptiness. That is to say, at the heart of all the buddhas there is nothing at all…
 
…What buddhism means when it refers to ignorance is the active process of ignoring the simplicity of the given and the substitution in its place of ever more elaborate confectioneries of meaning….
 
…The ego is very good at hiding in the energy. As long as there is some energy movement, the ego can find a little niche, a little corner, and just hide in there. This is why the primary focus in dzogchen is on the mind itself – to relax and open and be with the spaciousness of awareness which is always here and now….
 
…Our primary focus in dzogchen practice is to relax and open. Gradually we then find that the space of the mind is truly infinite, that we are nothing and everything. And then we are not orphans anymore…

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