Student and Teacher

Together on the Path

In this excerpt Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche responds to a question about the dzogchen advice of leaving it as it is.

Student: I need some clarification about when to follow the precept of leaving it as it is versus when to put effort and energy and work toward making something manifest.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche: That is a good question to consider for oneself, right? What to work on is very simple. What is it that wakes you up in the middle of the night, what takes your smile away, what makes your body very stiff, what makes you not able to speak up, what makes you not able to be playful? What are those things? Well, you can say that is a big story, a long story, especially if you are Buddhist, then you have many lifetimes of story.

Okay, but let's think about it. What are the immediate ones that come up? When you wake up, there are some thoughts that you engage with, right? Simple things, one simple story, or maybe it's not that simple if it's waking you up. Well, that's it! There's a story. There's a fear. There is anxiety. And there you are, in relation to that story, creating all of that story. That's the reality you have created. As a practitioner, that's how this should work.

So you see? You don't have to worry, because what you need to work on picks you. And when it picks you, the only thing to say is, thank you for picking me. I'm going to work with you. It's as simple as that. But whatever that one simple thing is, the reason why you need to pick that one is that it interferes with your real and current life, like waking you up in your sleep; or due to not having a better relationship with certain people, you stop talking with them. You stop seeing the potentiality to work with them. Then those are the things that are choosing you. It's really that simple.