The Flight of the Garuda Quotes

“In Dzokchen, compassion is much more than the virtue of loving kindness. Nor does the word compassion in the Dzokchen context denote its English etymological meaning, “suffering together” or “empathy,” although both these meanings may be inferred. Essentially, compassion indicates an open and receptive mind responding spontaneously to the exigencies of an ever-changing field of vibration to sustain the optimal awareness that serves self-and-others’ ultimate desire for liberation and well-being. The conventional meaning of compassion denotes the latter, active part of this definition, and, due to the accretions of Christian connotation, response is limited to specifically virtuous activity. “Responsiveness” defines the origin and cause of selfless activity that can encompass all manner of response. On this nondual Dzokchen path virtue is the effect, not the cause; the ultimate compassionate response is whatever action maximizes Knowledge—loving kindness is the automatic function of Awareness.”
― Keith Dowman, The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism

“Even at the moment of direct perception when gnostic awareness of emptiness as form and form as emptiness is experienced, the mind is preparing to dualize the situation.”
― Keith Dowman, The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism

“In dualistic philosophies, where ignorance is rationalized as an acceptable norm or idealized for the purpose of manipulating an objective reality, valid meaning can be discovered only in the sphere of relativity, in the sphere of objective duality. This statement is framed in the law of the excluded middle. Dzogchen insists unequivocally that on the path of gnostic awareness, meanings informed outside the excluded middle are spurious and deviant and that reliance upon such meanings exacerbates the painful alienation associated with continuous transmigration.”
― Keith Dowman, The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism

“The mental activity alienating human beings from immediate, direct experience is referred to frequently in Dzogchen texts as the dualizing function of the mind. First, separation is made between subject and object, the perceiver identifying himself with an egoic consciousness that perceives an isolated, external other. Introversively, in the same way, he alienates himself from aspects of his own being.”
― Keith Dowman, The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism

“terms tend to become dead counters in a futile, spiritually obstructive semantic game, for they describe mystic experience that cannot be exposed to the common light of day without devaluation and dilution of meaning.”
― Keith Dowman, The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism

“Total presence is the unstructured, natural radiance of your own mind, so how can you say that you cannot see the Buddha? There is nothing at all to meditate upon in it, so how can you complain that meditation does not arise? It is manifest total presence, your own mind, so how can you say that you cannot find it? It is a stream of unceasing radiant wakefulness, the face of your mind, so how can you say that you cannot see it? There is not so much as a moment of work to be done to attain it, so how can you say that your effort is unavailing? Centered and dispersed states are two sides of the same coin, so how can you say that your mind is never centered? Intrinsic knowledge is the spontaneously originated three modes of being, which is achieved without striving, so how can you say that your practice fails to accomplish it? It is enough to leave the mind in a state of nonaction, so how can you say that you are incapable of attaining it? Your thoughts are released at the moment of their inception, so how can you say that the antidotes were ineffective? It is cognition of the here and now, so how can you say you do not perceive it?”
― Keith Dowman, The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism