I am the last person you should trust

Apprentice I am feeling as though I know nothing. Teachings used to make intellectual sense to me—or so I thought—but at the moment it seems as if I need go back to the start and try to understand something fundamental through my heart.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche It might be more a question of silent sitting. No matter how much intellectual sense we make, it will be of our making and therefore little better than any other fabrication. If you simply return to more basic teaching and try to work your way forward again, even via a more emotional sense, you will merely arrive at the same destination.

Apprentice Is this part of the path?

Ngak’chang Rinpoche Not particularly. The path is connected more to your buttocks than your heart—in terms of understanding the teachings at least. You have to sit. If you gain from glimpses of emptiness, your ‘heart’ will make sense of itself.

Apprentice It feels as if this is a step along the way, just an unexpected one. It appears to be cutting a certain sort of grasping. I realise that I have read about non-duality, listened to teachings about non-duality, and talked with other apprentices about non-duality—but without any practical sense of what that really means.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche Quite so. It would appear that this is a splendid opportunity and inspiration to sit. I used to get highly excited by teachings I heard when I was first in India. I was so excited that I tried to explain them to others—but the more I tried to explain the more lost I became until I ended up losing the inspirational understanding I had. Inspiration occurs when we hear teachings, but that inspiration does not last if there is insufficient basis in practice. That does not make the inspiration worthless or invalid—it simply means that we have to actualise the inspiration through our silent sitting.

Apprentice I feel inspired by the sense of the teachings rather than the words of which they are comprised.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche Excellent—that is a most useful approach with material on nonduality.

Apprentice And being in your presence moves me to open in trust.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche Well—gag me with a spoon—if you pardon the expression. I think I would rather you simply sat. I am the last person you should trust. After you have spent more time sitting, trust will be self-accomplished rather than having to be inculcated, even through devotion. Devotion is only feasible through experiencing emptiness.