03/05/2026
Small children don't have to do anything to please you. Just learning to walk they please you. You can't help loving them. But we make such hellish demands on ourselves; only if I do this will I be a good enough person. We are so cruel to ourselves, we alienate ourselves ceaselessly by making these demands, 'I should be kinder, I should be more thoughtful, I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't do that, only, only after all this work will I become an acceptable human being. This is completely not the view of dzogchen. From the very beginning everything has been perfect. This is the meaning of the founding buddha of the dzogchen lineage, kuntozangpo. Kunto means always or in all conditions. Zangpo means good. Again not good as against bad but fundamentally pure, kadak. Means never has there been any stain, never has there been any fault. Even if you have been a total s**t all your life, even if you've hurt other people, even if you've lied, cheating, being cruel, none of these things has stained your buddha nature. Your ego has got alot of twists and turns in it, on the level of manifestation you've got some bad times coming but the buddha nature itself, the quality of the mirror is not harmed and if you take refuge in your own mind you know fundamentally 'I am pure'. On the level of manifestation, of energetic movement, there is work to be done, always unpacking and loosening karmic knots. But the fundamental level, the core nature is good. There is no original sin in this at all. Not bad news territory. This is good news territory. You don't need to be saved because you've never been lost. That is to say ignorance, as the cause of suffering has never covered over the buddha nature. In dzogchen we say there is one ground; emptiness or dharmadatu and two paths, one path you recognise your own ground and in the other path you forget your own ground. If you forget your own ground you start to think 'I am this or I am that'. When you recognise your own ground you see all that I think of as this and that I am it but I am it as the expression of the ground which I also am. So my openness, my emptiness and my manifestation are inseparable. This is really the heart of the practice and if we do that we can become more light, more free, more happy, more at ease with others and that's very nice , that's very nice and it's our birthright and it's everybody's birthright. So without straining, with trying, relax. Relaxation is the most important thing. So much of our world is driven by anxiety
- James Low
