'Recognizing and Shining Through One's Delusions'

An Edited Excerpt from Oral Teachings on ‘The 21 Nails, Part 3’ by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, European Summer Retreat 2017, Buchenau, Germany

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche teaching in Buchenau I’ve been coming here to Germany and Austria for 27 years. Time has passed really fast, but one thing is clear: this kind of commitment – that I’ve come every year – has continued for a very long time. A number of you were here from the beginning along with myself, and this commitment is amazing. We have learned so much about ourselves. We have learned so much depth in the teachings. We have gone through ups and downs – some people have left us, some people continue, some people have passed away – but the journey still continues. It is always in some sense evolving, growing, and deepening. So, I’m happy to be here again, a familiar place and familiar faces.

The last few years we were teaching on the 21 Nails. Probably some of you have already received it before. These teachings are a continuously evolving thing. I have told people that I have nothing more to teach; I will teach the same thing no matter how many years you follow me. The whole idea about this teaching is not about changing things, it’s about realizing and going deeper. Every moment, if you are fresh with what you are learning with your life, you never get bored with the same topic. But when you are not connected with what you are learning about yourself, every new topic becomes boring right away. It becomes boring because there is no connection. It becomes not-boring because it changes, evolves and never loses the connection.

If you think about the whole teaching of Buddha, there is only one purpose: to self-liberate, that’s the only topic. If you look at all the cycles of teachings of dzogchen, the great perfection, the only one topic is to self-realize. There are not many self-realizations, there is only one self-realization. That is the topic that we are not trying to change.

There is one mantra, the SA LE Ö mantra – A OM HUNG A A KAR SA LE Ö A YANG OM DU – that I want also to introduce and emphasize and sing during this retreat. I created this melody for it in the last year. During the break we will play this music, and you listen to it, get used to the melody and then we will sing together. It is one of the Three Heart Mantras of the Tibetan Bön tradition.

When you’re singing sacred mantras you use your voice, vibrations in your body, your attention, concentration to those energies. It seems like a powerful way of changing and transformation, rather than trying to put a lot of effort into understanding and figuring things out conceptually.

In the handout for this mantra, you can read the meaning of each syllable, which is very important to understand. However, when you look at what each syllable means, it’s important that you don’t simply look only in the usual conceptual way: Oh, A means space. Not like that. But how then should you be relating when you sing A? Experience the space. That’s what you need to understand, not like: Oh, A means space and has nothing to do with me.

Understand, experience, realize, integrate. Most of the time people are trying to understand, and then they don’t experience, or they get the experience and get too attached to the experience, and they always seek experience – it's not like that. You experience, and then you also will go beyond experience, more like realization, more like being. In being in that state, you do not necessarily have experiences. Sometime you might have experiences; experiences are an outcome of realization. Realization is more important than experiences. Very often, though, as human beings we seek more experiences than realization.

Maybe the difference is that experiences are a little bit more feeling and emotion, related to conditions, whereas realization is more a state of awakening. For example, if you feel open, it’s like a state of openness itself, not necessarily so much a feeling about opening or a feeling about clearing something, or releasing something, or feeling free of something, or from something – these are all experiences, you see? The realization itself can be just a state of awakening of space. Now, I’m not saying that experiences are not good, but I am saying there is a difference.

I do encourage everyone to sing the mantra. For people who love to sing it’s great. For people who have not sung for a long time, this is your opportunity. For sure you might surprise yourself with singing, that’s a good surprise. Definitely it will be a good practice. Specifically, it is the mantra of dharmakaya, the mantra of awareness of space. It helps one to open, clear and connect.

The teachings are talking about the space, the sense of being. This sense of being, of space, of ground, of foundation, of essence. It’s there all the time, but we lose the connection to it. When you observe other people, it’s easy to recognize when they lose it, but it’s harder to recognize yourself when you lose it.

Yesterday as I was coming here from Berlin, I was a little bit early at the train station so I had a cup of coffee and was just observing, watching people. There was a couple, and of course I don’t know anything about this couple, but I have my imagination. They were in their thirties, a new relationship, they were on their holiday, and you could see they are in love. The guy goes into the supermarket in the train station to buy some food. She was sitting there with a coffee, and every time somebody came out of the supermarket, she thought it was him. You could see within 10 minutes’ time the situation was different for her: He’s not coming; why does it take so long to get a few things; he’s always late, he’s lazy. I think it was basically insecurity, whatever it was, but it was amazing. I could not help noticing. Every time someone moved she looked, but it was not him. Then after maybe six or seven times of that, you could see the expression on her face getting agitated. Before, she was just looking like it might be him with some sense of joy, then It’s not him again. You could see her face was changing, her eyes were changing, like pain coming out, and I was kind of worried what would happen. Fortunately, nothing happened.

Of course, when I was doing that, I was not aware of the base, but I was very aware what she was doing. I could clearly see she was not aware of that base. This happened for about 10 minutes. We live our life like that, which is scary, waiting for somebody or something to happen. What I’m saying here is that you lose the connection to the base. When you are losing contact with the base, like in that example, one has to be aware and self-reflect on it, one needs to know it. Now, my observing her doesn’t help her. But, if she realizes that she has lost contact, then there’s a good chance that she will not repeat herself after the first time. Or, maybe she will succeed after half of it, or at least the next time she will be better prepared not to do that. But it looks like she did not realize, which means she was not even conscious of what happened during these 15 minutes. That’s a pattern of life she lives. Energetically it’s a quite draining 15 minutes – not being able to enjoy a cup of coffee; she had to turn her head all the time to the one side to face the door. You can see there’s no base, there is no connection, there’s no resting, there’s no trust. There is a constantly ungrounded, disconnected, fearful, anxious stress that she was in during that 15 minutes, and she’s not conscious. There is an impact of living life like that; you have to pay the consequences for that. It’s not a good thing.

This sense of being, of space, of ground is there all the time, but we lose the connection to it. So the question will be, of course, are you interested in recognizing your delusion? You don’t have to answer loudly, but be curious about the answer. Are you interested in your delusion? Are you interested in your weakness? I mean are you interested to know about these things. Interested in recognizing the delusion, investigating the delusion. When somebody asks you, Are you interested in your delusion? maybe there’s a good chance that you say, What do you mean? Me? A delusion?

Sitting in gompa in BuchenauThere’s a good chance, since we are sitting here in this gompa trying to learn and meditate, that everybody is very open and says, Yes, I’m interested. But if you have a conflict with somebody you have a relationship with, and that person tells you that you need to realize your delusion, then you will say, No, me? I don’t need to, you need to, or at least, we need to. You don’t like the idea when you’re in a relationship that somebody is telling you that you need to realize the delusion. Immediately you can feel like that, right? You know what I’m talking about. The closeness to recognizing the delusion in different circumstances is different. But I think as a practitioner we need to be really open, saying, Yes, I’m really interested. I’m genuinely, truly interested in understanding my delusion. That’s the only way.

Every recognition of your delusion, either in you or in relation with somebody, is a great help to you. Do you agree with that? So get more interested, more open to it. The ability of how fast you can transform is a different story, but acknowledging it is already good enough. Better to be in the right place and going slowly than in the wrong place going at a fast speed.

Once you’re interested in your delusion, once you recognize the delusion, then you have the chance to enter into the nature of Bön. Nature of Bön refers to the truth of phenomena – referring back to that space. You will find yourself in that true space within you.

Read SA LE Ö Mantra text and meaning
Listen to SA LE Ö  Mantra recording (Mantra of Light)

UPCOMING: Two retreats on the Twenty-One Nails with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche:

• March 3–8, 2020: Mexico: The Twenty-One Nails. Visit: Ligmincha Mexico
• August 3–9, 2020: Buchenau Germany:  “The Essence of the 21 Nails” (practice retreat) Learn more and register