A-Z Dharma.

 Probably like me, you want an A-Z of Dharma… “Just tell me what’s what!” I don’t think understanding works like that. There are places we can go to study the ABC of Dharma, and for some it may work. My wife and I tried a Shedra in Nepal: it was a four year course at a monastery, studying the Dharma. The first year was concerned with Madyamika (the negation of everything). It was basically a scholars/translators course, and we would have had a degree at the end of it.

It was excellent…we lasted three weeks! So we took the course text, and went away to somewhere quiet  for three months to study it by ourselves. Three quarters of the way through the text, I looked at my wife and said, “If a thing is true, it can never not be true! If a thing truly exists it can never not exist, and therefore nothing can be said to truly exist! That’s it!”

The point is that, for me, this realisation meant something, because it connected with something within me.

We all have slightly different connections, and life has a strange way of helping us join them all up. So we start from where we are, and situations come along (not necessarily in sequential order) to clarify our understanding. If this wasn’t true, we’d spend our whole life waiting for the right path to come along, when we are already on it! The path is our confused mind.

 The Dharma talks of Ground Path and Fruition.

 The Ground is our essential nature.

The Path is our confused state about our essential nature.

The Fruition is realising that we were the Ground all the time,

and that the Path never truly existed.

 We can learn the words of the Dharma, but real Dharma is what is happening in our minds right now. Theory helps to describe experiences…experienced.