Hitting the nail of reification with the nail of emptiness. Public Talk. Lahr, 2009

James Low

Lahr, Germany
4th December, 2009
Transcribed by Sarah Allen
Unedited

Excerpts
Tantric practice involves attending to beauty as beauty calms the heart. If one is held by beauty one has no need to make sense of it.  That is to say, the presence of beauty allows us to move from the phallic nailing of the world, the penetrating of the world, the filling of it with our own interpretations, to a more receptive experience in which we open ourselves without any limit to the revelation of the unfolding of what is there.
In being touched and moved in this ceaseless pulsation of responsivity the burden of individual agency is released.  In that way one finds oneself being part of the integrated flow of experience, which is described in terms of the three kayas or three modes of the buddhas existence.

Contents

Five Skandhas…………. 3
Emptiness and tantra…………. 4
Vajrakilaya: nailing the nail…………. 5
Tantra and beauty…………. 6
Dzogchen and light…………. 7
Two aspects of dzogchen: kadag and lhundrub…………. 7