Precious Words of Dharma

A reflection on search, methods of practice, knowledge, and the sacred: why development begins not with attachment to tools, but with an honest recognition of one’s own knowledge.

The Four Facets of the Natural Awareness of Rigpa

So close that it cannot be seen.
So deep that it cannot be understood.
So simple that it cannot be believed.
So perfect that it cannot be accepted.

— Kalu Rinpoche

It is always worth remembering that search is an absolutely necessary condition for human development, but it is not its instrument. Scientists are completely unaware of this.

People of truth enter the hearts of people and leave them in such a way that people never know it. Therefore, one should not lie to people of truth. They recognize one another like horses — by scent. Wisdom always has a certain special aroma.

Anxiety gives absolutely nothing to human development. It is a mechanical reaction of the ego.

Most often, our growth is connected with a limited point of view. We become so accustomed to this condition that it begins to seem indispensable to us. And this is precisely why the liberation of the mind seems not entirely clear to us.

We bind ourselves so strongly to the instruments of development that we stop developing. Therefore, when the Dzogchen tantras tell us that the main thing is not method, but knowledge, we feel an abyss between ourselves and this knowledge.

Teachers tell us: “Practice twenty-four hours a day,” but we cannot. And we cannot understand why. Although everything is much simpler than it seems to us: we are slaves to the methods we have accepted.

First comes the practitioner and their knowledge, and only then come the methods — for uniting this knowledge with everyday life. This is the sequence.

If you have no knowledge, methods quickly lose their meaning, and practice becomes mechanical. Therefore, look honestly: what knowledge do you truly possess? What do you truly have to unite with everyday life?

Nothing is sacred in itself, while many people tend to believe that there is something objectively sacred that we simply do not know about. And they think: one only has to find it, and life will change.

But the truth is that first we change our life, and only then do we recognize something as sacred. The sequence is exactly this.

As much as we may wish otherwise, everything else is self-deception for us. As long as we are held captive by attachment to something, it is not truly sacred for us, no matter how much we try to assert that it is.

But this is not a reason to trample on something merely because we ourselves have made it so.