Battlecry on Horseback

 

Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin and Ngakma Nor’dzin read from ‘Battlecry of Freedom’.

‘Battlecry of Freedom’ by Ngakma Nor’dzin, published by Aro Books worldwide in 2019, explores the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Lojong, Mind Training, as presented by Chekhawa Yeshé Dorje in the 12th century. His Seven Points of Mind Training offer a complete approach to daily practice in 59 slogans.

Monday Meditations: 7 - 8:30 pm (UK time) on Zoom Monday evenings.
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Do join us for silent sitting and yogic song, finishing with a reading from ‘Battlecry of Freedom’. Everyone is welcome.

To see all videos with Ngakma Nor’dzin and Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, go to:
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"When the world and life is full of malice and bad circumstances, transform it into the path of awakening" - Battlecry of Freedom

 

Bad circumstances offer particularly juicy objects and experiences for transformation. If an object or experience is labelled bad, there is energy there – there is an acuteness of dissatisfaction that is tangible and can be embraced as practice.

In the unusual circumstance of malice actually being personally directed, practitioners recognise the confusion and delusion behind such behaviour. Harmful actions are not perpetrated by happy people nor create happiness. Bad actions are harmful all round. If harm can be responded to with kindness, this offers the possibility of a change of view. But if harm is responded to with reciprocal harm, things just get worse and worse.

Battlecry of Freedom by Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books worldwide, 2019, ISBN 978-1-898185-46-8, Part II - the slogans, p. 77+78

Practice should start to filter into ordinary life - Illusory Advice

 

 

Apprentice: I guess that my involvement with you both has short-circuited enough of my neuroses for me to feel relatively comfortable. Now that I can dissolve myself into the void and taste the aliveness of each moment, part of me just relaxes because life has never been this pleasant. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of uncomfortable times where I can see my emotions going haywire, but life seems more manageable. What do you think of this rationale?

Teachers: Practice should certainly start to filter into ordinary life so that it becomes enlivened with the sparkle of emerging view. This will be uncomfortable when you notice habit patterns and neuroses, but pleasurable when you relax into view.

page 66-67, Illusory Advice, Ngakma Nor’dzin & Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, Aro Books Worldwide, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-898185-37-6

Tonglen II - Relieving pain - Battlecry of Freedom

 

 

There are two approaches to practising tonglen to relieve actual present pain. The first is focussing on the pain being experienced, and dissolving it on the in-breath, and sending soothing energy to the point of pain on the out-breath.

The second approach is to imagine that the pain being experienced is the pain that anyone anywhere is experiencing in that moment. Through practising tonglen with this view, it can alleviate the personal pain, but also embrace the expansive view of helping others.

Battlecry of Freedom by Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books worldwide, 2019, ISBN 978-1-898185-46-8, Part II - the slogans, p. 74

 

Devotion to the outer Lama enables the student to be empty in relation to the Lama. - Illusory Advice

 

Devotion to the outer Lama enables the student to be empty in relation to the Lama. This allows the Lama to conjure with the form of the student’s neuroses to mirror them, so that they become transparent for the student.

An example of this would be when Ngak’chang Rinpoche made a suggestion to Ngakma Nor’dzin with regard to a building that had been vandalised. He suggested that the stone throwers were skilful in succeeding in breaking the highest windows in the derelict building. This comment completely cut through the prejudiced view she was presenting of their vandalism.

It was not that Rinpoche was condoning the vandalism, but just offering an alternative perspective. Ngakma Nor’dzin found that this opened her view so that she was then dancing with the ambiguity of whether this was a bad action or a skilful action.

page 62, Illusory Advice, Ngakma Nor’dzin & Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, Aro Books Worldwide, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-898185-37-6

 

As warriors we have to live with honour, boldness, and integrity - Spacious Passion

 

Taking refuge in Dharma is placing our confidence in practice as a place of safety. This is redefining ‘safety’ as the challenge of practice. Once we become practitioners it is guaranteed that at some point practice will become inconvenient. We will wish to take the easy but less honest option; to make the half-hearted response; to indulge in believing that we have no responsibility for the situation in which we find ourselves. But as practitioners, these are no longer available options.

As warriors we have to live with honour, boldness, and integrity. We cannot allow ourselves to slip into good-enough mediocrity. Our security in terms of realisation is absolutely guaranteed if we remain in the domain of practice. But the path of warriorship may be the harder and less comfortable choice. It may be the path that leads us into exposure and danger. The security of practice may be the least secure path in terms of referential personal safety and referential self-protection.

Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books worldwide, 2006, ISBN 978-0-9653948-0, chapter 9 Irrational Reason, page 215 and 216

 

Tonglen I - Secure your own mask - Battlecry of Freedom

 

A common phrase in Buddhism is that practice is engaged for the benefit of all sentient beings. Practitioners must remember that they themselves are included in all sentient beings. 

Tonglen is not a sacrificial practice. Wanting to free others of pain and be of benefit to them, does not require ignoring personal needs.
Practitioners take care of themselves, recognising that their health and welfare makes them more useful to others.

An everyday example of the wisdom of this approach is mentioned before flying in every aircraft safety presentation: secure your own mask before helping others.

Battlecry of Freedom by Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books worldwide, 2019, ISBN 978-1-898185-46-8, Part II - the slogans, p. 73