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Obstacles to Practice,
from Eight Verses for Training the Mind
Obstacles to our practice may be external, internal or secret. The external ones consist of natural disasters, harm inflicted by human and nonhuman beings, sicknesses and so forth. Internal obstacles are our own disturbed states of mind and emotions and all the obstructions to liberation and full knowledge of all phenomena. Secret obstacles are seemingly good circumstances, which distract the practitioner and make him or her forget about practice. For instance, one might gain a good reputation as a sincere practitioner and thereby attract followers and wealth, which in the end make one neglect one's practice.
—from Eight Verses for Training the Mind, by Geshe Sonam Rinchen, trans. and ed. by Ruth Sonam
112 pp., EIVE2E
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The Wrath of Deities,
from How to Free Your Mind
Why are there fierce protectors? Peaceful deities such as Tara have a certain energy that calms and gladdens our mind. But sometimes our mind is so belligerent and stuck that we need the kind of energy that goes "Pow!" to wake us up or to pull us out of unproductive behavior. For this reason, the Buddhas' wisdom and compassion appear in the form of these wrathful deities to demonstrate clean-clear wisdom and compassion that act directly. This active wisdom doesn't vacillate and pamper us. This wisdom doesn't say, "Well, maybe," or, "Poor you. You deserve to be treated well, not like that horrible person treated you." Instead, it's forceful: "Cut it out! Stop those false expectations and preconceptions right now!" Sometimes we need that strong, wise energy to be in our face to wake us up to the fact that our afflictions and old patterns of thought and behavior are making us miserable.
—from How to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator, by Thubten Chodron
224 pp., HOFRMI
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True Relaxation,
from Being Right Here
Relaxation involves a kind of awareness which reverses the normal tendency that we have. Because, as we have seen, this ordinary sense of self that we have lacks inherent self existence, it has to keep constructing itself and that requires a particular kind of effort. The ego's root feeling is that if I do not hold myself together there will be a falling apart into something chaotic and difficult. So there is anxiety, an energetic anxiety which is located in the body, in the whole energetic system of the body and interpersonal turbulence reminds us again and again "If I don't keep it together, I will get in trouble." The belief in reincarnation indicates that for many lifetimes we have been caught up in this anxiety, this nervous contraction which is holding our ordinary grasping sense of self in place.
—from Being Right Here: A Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje entitled ‘The Mirror of Clear Meaning' with commentary by James Low
160 pp., BERIHE
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