The Trap Of Display In Dzogchen And Kabbalah

Display may attract, but it’s all about letting go.

The display is just the wrapping;
it’s all about opening the package, and then eventually throwing it away.

In both Dzogchen and Kabbalah mysticism, form becomes a distraction, and must be dropped.

In Dzogchen, which is the transmission of emptiness, we stop decorating the mind with mantras and visualisations, and realise that even the practice of meditation is a form of doing.

Kabbalah means ‘received’, but receiving what? Do the rituals, or the esoteric transmission beyond words refine the ego until it becomes so thin that the light of the infinite shines through as the soul unites with the source, and where labels like ‘Jew’ or ‘human’ no longer exist.

Other religions have the same problem;
rituals are not reality.

The trap of the display:
The display is attractive. It provides us with an identity – a feeling that we belong to a different or special group, with the safety of having a map to follow – the Torah, the Sutras – along with the art, music, and poetry of that tradition.

The danger is spiritual materialism. This is when we start collecting spiritual identities of “I am a Buddhist” or “I am a Kabbalist” instead of actually letting go. We end up just trading one ego for a ‘holier’ ego.

The ultimate letting go means being at one with the silence which is beyond any word-obsession, when the display has gone.

If we are pure consciousness, there is nothing to achieve and no one to be; to reach pure consciousness, we have to let go of the idea of being a practitioner.

Once we’ve reached this level of letting go, do we find it difficult to relate to people who are still deeply attached to their religious displays? Or do we see their attachment as just another part of our process?