Self-Sense Witch Hunts

Along the general lines, and particularly for Jackson who appreciated that little bit from Ngak'chang Rinpoche about nyams, here's a link to a little piece by another Aro lama, Rigdzin Dorje. He has a somewhat more erudite style, but very vigorous and engaging, I think.

http://www.aroencyclopaedia.org/shared/text/c/confusion_ar_eng.php

I particularly liked this:

"A Sanskrit scholar recently brought to my attention the word pritagjana, which
he had found in the commentaries to the Prajnaparamita Sutras. It is a reference to
unenlightened people, and it literally means ‘separate people’ or ‘separation people’. In
the words of the Heart Sutra, the heart of Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen: ‘Form is
Emptiness; Emptiness is Form. Form is not other than Emptiness; Emptiness not other than
Form.’ If one tends to lack confidence in the open dimension, the reflex is to look
away from the vastness of one’s inherent enlightenment, in the hope that one might be able
to locate some more concrete form of security elsewhere. To possess that would mean
separating Form from Emptiness, which is impossible; but the effort in itself is what
curdles the ever-youthful freshness of ecstatic atheism into a search for happiness
‘somewhere else’. This is taking refuge in activity which ironically divides one against
oneself. Such is the characteristic nature of what is called samsara, ‘circling’;
because, as the English playwright Tom Stoppard put it, A circle is the longest way
back to the same place. There is no life-crisis which is not fundamentally this."

That was fantastic, Kate. There are a lot of books on Aro Buddhism. Are any of them especially good? I'd like to read one.

totally