James Low > Quotes

“The difficulties or pains or resentments that get built up when people live or work together, the assumptions you make about other people and how things should be done are like old food in the pot. Each morning, when you meet each other, let it be like new fresh food! So don’t put new arisings into your dirty pot of yesterday’s food.”
― James Low, Buddha shows the way: a collection of public talks and teachings

“Everything is already integrated within this mind so it is not about keeping the good and the bad separate. The good and the bad have no essence or substance; they are the ceaseless play of the clarity of the mind.”
― James Low, The Mirror of Clear Meaning: A Commentary on the Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje

“We awaken to our spaciousness through meditation. We awaken to the richness of the world and our part in it through relaxation. We awaken into the fullness of the moment by being the field. Instead of imagining that I'm living in this skin bag, looking out at something else, trying to get from the world the things I want and keep away the things I don't want”
― James Low, Buddha shows the way: a collection of public talks and teachings

“First you make a solid substance, 'me,' and then you can apply an evaluative matrix: good, bad, right, wrong, successful, unsuccessful and so on. But when I am here with you there isn't a 'me' and a 'you'; there is 'me with you'. It is our being with each other that allows the evolution of the shared field of experience and moment by moment it is what it is. This is dzog pa chen po – it is complete – it is just this. What else should it be? 'Ah, but James you could have been talking about something else? Why did you choose this when you could have chosen that?' This has gone and that has never arrived. How you can compare the fantasy future to the vanished past I don't know, but we do it all the time and this is how we persecute ourselves: 'If only I had done that!' Not possible. Each moment is this.”
― James Low, The Mirror of Clear Meaning: A Commentary on the Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje

“Buddhism is concerned to go beneath and beyond the limitation of our personal identity, to see that awareness – the clarity which illuminates every moment of our existence – is not a construct, is not an aspect of our personality, is not something”
― James Low, The open door of emptiness: A collection of public talks and teachings

“Our self is not a thing but a space of potential located inside the space of awareness,”
― James Low, The Mirror of Clear Meaning: A Commentary on the Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje

“To try to protect ourselves against impermanence is a madness. Impermanence is how it is. To protect yourself against how it is, is exactly the sign that you are far away from how it is. Impermanence is not the enemy. Impermanence is the enemy of the fantasy that I am stable and secure and enduring. But when I find all this movement too much and I want to control it, then I go for the earth element.”
― James Low, Buddha shows the way: a collection of public talks and teachings

“When you sit in meditation, relaxed and open, everything arises, all of samsara and all of nirvana. Everything is contained within the spacious mind. Is this the Buddha? You can read many dzogchen texts which say that your own mind is the Buddha. This doesn't mean that your ego formation or your sense of self is the Buddha. Rather, within the openness of your awareness there is space for your ego, and the qualities which are arising there are held inside the infinite clarity of the mind.”
― James Low, The Mirror of Clear Meaning: A Commentary on the Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje

“We are used to the idea of 'freedom from' and 'freedom to.' In the Tibetan language the word for Buddha is sangye, sang means pure and gye means spreading or increasing. Sang indicates free from all limitations: the pure state of wisdom. Gye means free to do whatever is necessary: the pure state of compassion. But there is another kind of freedom which is 'freedom with'. So, in the meditation when the thoughts, feelings and sensations arise, we are resting on the fine point between withdrawing and merging.”
― James Low, The Mirror of Clear Meaning: A Commentary on the Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje

“The answer to our problems doesn't lie in improving the quality of the contents of our mind, although that's not a bad thing to do and that would be useful in making us more helpful for other people. There are many things about the world I don't know. For instance, I don't know anything about car engines, so if your car breaks down I can't help you. If I knew about car engines it would make me more helpful as a person in certain situations. Whatever we learn, whether it's sewing, dancing, singing or knitting, these can be useful in certain areas, but they are all relative. The key thing is for us to learn about ourselves. This doesn't mean developing a narcissistic orientation, but to see how I am? What is the ground of my being, and what is the patterning of my becoming? Following the instruction of the teacher means to turn your gaze toward yourself. To become calm and clear. To be honest in the seeing of limiting patterns. To allow them to be there, neither pushing them away nor merging into them. In that way we learn for ourselves the self-liberating nature of the mind.”
― James Low, The Mirror of Clear Meaning: A Commentary on the Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje

“In the tradition it says that your wisdom should be as vast as the sky and your compassion should be as fine as the point of a needle. This is because compassion is about the detail, about the actuality of how someone else is. Setting out codes of conduct and moral rules is very easy, but working with people in the actual complexity of their lives is more difficult because we don't know what to do. It is not about mastery. The master musician knows how to play the notes before the concert begins, but when we meet other people we don't know what to say. We find our way; a way which is always fresh and which emerges through openness and being with the other.”
― James Low, The Mirror of Clear Meaning: A Commentary on the Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje

“If our parents didn't speak to us when we were very small, the opportunity to enter the world of language would close. There are reports from various countries and at various times of children who were found running wild. They learnt to survive by running and hunting with dogs or wolves, but they couldn't speak and it was very difficult for them to learn to speak. The fact that we can speak is based on the fact of parents and friends talking with us; without them we would be empty; we are filled with them and this is amazing. Gratitude starts to dissolve the barrier of duality; without you there is no me. 'I am me because I am not you!' is our ordinary ego position: I am who I am. But what do we have? Language. We were invited into it by people repeatedly speaking to us when we were small, and kindly correcting our grammar and vocabulary. The teachers at school helped us to learn to read and write and not to make our notebooks such a mess. The competencies that we now have were transmitted to us; we become ourselves through the other.”
― James Low, The Mirror of Clear Meaning: A Commentary on the Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje

“The most important aspect of the transmission is the relationship with the teacher. The teacher is the site of emptiness and contact with that emptiness can fundamentally alter the basis of our ‘being in the world’. We see the teacher function out of nothing, out of space, directly showing the spontaneity of the empty mind. This is how all things are. The teacher is the special one who demonstrates the specialness of the ordinary. This is the deep specialness of all-pervading emptiness.”
― James Low, Sparks