Attraction, aversion, and indifference are so habitual that they are not noticed - Battlecry of Freedom

 

The three basic responses of attraction, aversion, and indifference are so habitual that they are not noticed. In fact they may be regarded as ordinary or normal human behaviour. This mistaken view of normality gives rise to views such as: ‘Anyone would be angry if that happened;’ or ‘I have a right to be angry;’ or ‘There must be something wrong with you because everyone likes that.’ 

The imputed normality of classifying objects of desire as real personal needs, gives rise to the justification of greed, selfishness, neediness, obsession, narcissism, territorialism, theft, adultery, sexual harassment, stalking, and rape. 

The imputed normality of classifying objects of aversion as real personal threats, gives rise to the justification of incivility, churlishness, aggression, abuse, vandalism, discrimination, racism, hate-crimes, murder, war, and genocide. 

The imputed normality of classifying objects as irrelevant, gives rise to the justification of nonchalance, insensitivity, carelessness, apathy, coldness, lack of sympathy, failure to take responsibility, and ignoring the needs of others. 

Battlecry of Freedom by Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books worldwide, 2019, ISBN 978-1-898185-46-8, Part II - the slogans, pp65-66 

 

 

Rebirth - Illusory Advice

 

Apprentice: One Buddhist ‘belief’ I’ve never been sure about is rebirth. I find it interesting, and maybe helpful to adopt as an attitude sometimes ... but I can’t say I ‘believe’ it.

Teachers: Sure – that is fine. Rebirth can be held as a possibility rather than as a belief. You cannot prove that you will wake up in the morning, but experience shows that this is the most likely possibility at this stage of your life, given your current level of health.

Develop an understanding of emptiness and form, perception and response, continuity of consciousness, the arising and dissolution of the elements – and it seems most likely that death is not final and total. A continuity of some description is more likely. Thus you can live with the open view of rebirth being the most likely possibility – but not as a rigid, fixed ‘belief.’

Rebirth, from one life to the next, cannot be proven through your current experience. You can however, look at rebirth as the moment-by-moment experience of your life: you die and are reborn in each moment. For each new moment to arise, the previous moment has to die. ‘You’ die in each moment, and ‘you’ are reborn into each moment. ‘You’ are never quite the same from one moment to another, and as such, a new person arises into each moment. It is excellent to question these things and ponder on them, and the only source of certainty and confidence is your practice. 

Illusory Advice, Ngakma Nor’dzin & Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, Aro Books Worldwide, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-898185-37-6, p26

 

The realms are self-perpetuating - there is a strong tendency to re-create our former state. - Spacious Passion

 

The realms are self-perpetuating, because we tend to continue to create the causes for whatever perceptual state we find ourselves in. We maintain this state until the point of exhaustion and we have to let go. At this point of relaxation it is possible to move from the restraints of one perceptual realm into another one, or to relax into realisation. However, once we start to feel uncomfortable with the emptiness of the unfamiliar, there is a strong tendency to re-create our former state. We are always drawn to the safety of the familiar.

Spacious Passion, Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro books worldwide, 2006, ISBN 978-0-9653948-4-0, chapter 4 Coming up for Air, p81 

 

The three poisons—attraction, aversion, and indifference - Battlecry of Freedom

 

 

The three poisons—attraction, aversion, and indifference —are the three root misconceptions. 

The continual pattern of perceiving an object, classifying it, and responding with one of the root misconceptions drives the wheel of cyclic existence. The three poisons include the entire range of possible response.

Attraction encompasses a slight preference, to the extreme of obsessive, compulsive, uncontrollable desire.

Aversion encompasses the mildest irritation, to the extreme of total rage, violent hatred, and vicious, murderous intent.

Indifference is ignorance in that the object of perception is ignored. It is active ignorance rather than simply not knowing through lack of information. Indifference ranges from not caring enough to notice someone or something, to the extreme of blatantly ignoring someone’s need despite having the opportunity and capacity to help. 

Battlecry of Freedom by Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books worldwide, 2019, ISBN 978-1-898185-46-8, Part II - the slogans, p64-65 

Allowing Ultimate Interference in Your Life - Ngakma Nor'dzin & Ngakpa 'ö-Dzin

 

 

In this video from February 2010, Ngakma Nor’dzin and Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin discuss how we allow the Lama to interfere in our lives.

Transcript

Ngakma Nor’dzin: Often when people are thinking about the Vajra Master they always come up with this idea of, ‘What if the teacher told me to kill my child? How could I possibly do that?’ I think that we have to apply a little bit of common sense here – that we wouldn’t ask our ordained disciples to kill their firstborn child, or jump off a cliff, or do anything like that. There would be no principle or function working there. Usually what one might ask students to do is just view something in a slightly different way that is perhaps challenging – just questioning their rationale, asking them to actually let go of their comfort zone and look at another viewpoint that is perhaps scary and challenging. That would be the most that we would be likely to ask of them.

Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin: To be ordained is to allow ultimate interference in your life in terms of having interference with your entire view of your life. So there’s a theoretical idea of the dreadful things that may be asked of you, but there’s no basis in terms of practice as to why these things would be asked of you. Sometimes the most challenging things are actually the most subtle – just to be asked to be kind to somebody with whom you're having a difficult time could be the most challenging thing ever. Because you have this relationship with your Tantric teacher you take these indications seriously, and apply yourself to them seriously, and this is actually more dreadful and more of a real world possibility than ever being asked to sacrifice your child on top of a mountain or whatever things people think may come from a relationship with the Tantric master.

Ngakma Nor’dzin: Coming out of a teaching one time we happened to be opposite a derelict school and all the windows had been smashed, even the ones right on the high floors. I think it was about five stories high. I just casually mentioned to Ngak’chang Rinpoche what a shame that people have been smashing the windows like that, and it’s going to rack and ruin. Rinpoche paused for a moment– he has a certain look that comes on his face when he’s examining a situation. He said, ‘Pretty skillful stone throwing to hit those windows up there.’ This immediately flipped my view of this situation: ‘Wow! This is vandalism, but there’s also skilful throwing there’. These two seem incompatible and yet one can work with the ambiguity of those two views. It stops one falling rigidly on: ‘These are bad people because they’re throwing stones at the window,’ or ‘These are skilful people because they can hit those very top windows’. Both aspects are there. Rinpoche wasn't saying, ‘Oh vandalism is not bad, it's absolutely fine for people to smash up a building.’ He wasn’t saying that. It was just giving me the opportunity of holding those two apparently conflicting views and seeing how that worked for me – allowing me to play with that. That is the sort of thing that the teacher offers. It is just cutting through our tendency to be black and white, to be prejudiced, to be: ‘Yes it’s this’, ‘No it’s that’⎯whatever⎯playing with our perception, playing with our response. This is what the Vajra relationship offers us.

Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin: And I think sometimes these things can occur without even the intention of the Vajra Master, but simply because we take seriously what they appear to be doing. There was a time when I very firmly had Ngak’chang Rinpoche in the ‘good’ box, and that I had guns in the ‘bad’ box. Then Rinpoche took up shooting. In Britain, at least, this involved going down to the gun range and perforating paper – but I still had guns in the ‘bad’ box and that meant that I had to look at the certainty that I had about who would be in which box, or what would be in which box, and the certainty I had that anything to do with guns was automatically bad. So that re-evaluation and that change of view comes about not necessarily⎯who knows⎯because your teacher has decided to display something, but because you have decided to look seriously at what the teacher is doing and consider that in terms of your own prejudice. That in itself can open up all sorts of possibilities and free us up from a fixed way of thinking and doing things.

Gender becomes irrelevant - Illusory Advice

 

It is a Vajrayana ‘fact’ that men are externally form (compassion, male) and internally emptiness (wisdom, female). This is a view that is embraced in the practice of Vajrayana. It is not ‘truth,’ it is simply the view that functions in this method. Men view the phenomenal world as female in order to discover their occluded inner female nature. Individuals already have contact with their outer nature, so it is helpful to awaken awareness of their inner nature so that they can experience the nonduality of inner and outer.

Illusory Advice, Ngakma Nor’dzin & Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, Aro Books Worldwide, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-898185-37-6, p24

 

Practice that is Informed by Dzogchen Theory - Ngakma Nor'dzin & Ngakpa 'ö-Dzin

 

In this video from February 2010, Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin explains how practice within the Aro gTér Lineage is informed by Dzogchen theory so that practices from Sutra, Tantra, or Dzogchen may be appropriate to the individual. 

 

Transcript

Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin: One way of looking at the style of practice in this lineage is that it's informed by Dzogchen theory. From the viewpoint of Dzogchen everyone is already realised, and most of the time⎯possibly all of the time⎯we don’t know that. Realisation is something that is very close, very immediate. It’s described as being too close – that we don’t realise that the difference between us⎯as we find ourselves⎯and the realised us, is actually very small indeed.

So from that perspective, the methods and practices that a person would be instructed in, or introduced to, are the methods and practices that are appropriate to their particular condition.

These might be Dzogchen practices, or they could be Tantric practices, or they could be Sutric practices. It is really a question of whatever is appropriate to that person.

In order to see what is appropriate, or to define what is appropriate – then you need a teacher who can guide you, because otherwise, if we are left to our own devices, we pick what we think is appropriate to us without necessarily any idea of what’s actually going to work. So there’s a fair chance that we might actually reinforce our own neuroses.

The process of finding a teacher is a gradual one, where we might feel drawn to a person and the style of teaching. Then it’s the case of developing confidence, finding out that this particular style is for you. It’s not that suddenly you embrace the idea that this person is your teacher and then you do everything they say. This would be madness. It’s a gradual process where you gain confidence in the teachings, and you gain confidence in the practices, and then from within that confidence you’re able to take instruction and direction in terms of the practices you engage in. Because it’s based in the Dzogchen view, the practices that we undertake could be from a Dzogchen basis, or Tantric or Sutric basis.