The natural path of that Vehicle

Apprentice Just a simple everyday life question . . .

Ngala Rig’dzin & Tsalgyür Wangmo You found a simple one?

Apprentice How do I best react to someone when I can recognise the elemental problem behind the situation?

Lamas Kindly.

Well, you said it was simple!

Apprentice Do I react in the liberated style of that element to help the situation?

Lamas Researching a ‘style’ of response would be overly conceptual – maybe workable up to a point but not necessarily a path of practice as such. If that was the answer then one would always be able to look up how to ‘tune’ one’s behaviour as though dharma were a car maintenance manual – which is somewhat true of the Sutras. But that would still be Popular Psycho-Mechanics, not liberated activity. Vajrayana is distinctly more edgy. You can only react how you are able to react. When you’re hot, you’re hot; when you’re not, you’re not. And mistakes are possible. In the moment, either you come out with a good-hearted response or you run the person down with your lower-case-v vehicle. You cannot be better than who you are in the moment, without time for calculation, orientation, remembering . . . Those are all reference-points, so how can they help support you in the Five Wisdoms? Every moment of decision is like the moment of death: we lack any means of support except wisdom-mind – or neurosis. Remember the teaching about asking any question beginning “How . . .?” Asking “How?” means one finds one lacks a certain base. But knowing how means that one authentically finds oneself at a certain base. Dzogchen View of practice means that ‘when you’re at the base, you’re at the base’ – whichever base that may be. One’s practice would follow from that base along whatever is the natural path of that Vehicle. If one finds oneself uncertain about seeing any path at all, then one should just be as kind as one is able to be. That covers all bases. But if one can be conceptual without departing from the natural state then that would bespeak the actual practice of Dzogchen.