Today’s quote comes to us from the great Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche.

Rinpoche is accomplished yogi and scholar in the Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist tradition, who teaches primarily through dohas, or “songs of realization”–much like the great master Jetsun Milarepa.

Rinpoche was awarded his khenpo degree under His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, and for years served as principal teacher at Rumtek Monastery in Gangtok, Sikkim–the seat of the Karmapa and Kagyu Tibetan Buddhism in exile.  These days he also teaches in the West through Nalandabodhi and Shambhala International.

His books include The Sun of Wisdom: Teachings on the Noble Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness, Beautiful Song of Marpa the Translator, Maitreya’s Distinguishing Phenomena and Pure Being, The Two Truths, and Buddha Nature:The Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra with Commentary.

Here’s the quote, which is part of a dialogue between Rinpoche and Shambhala Sun editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod for a past issue of Buddhadharma:  The Practitioner’s Quarterly:

It seems to me that you are devoting yourself to trying to establish a genuine and complete Buddhist yogic tradition in the West. What is the essence of the path of the tantric yogi?

The essence of the yogic tradition is that disturbing emotions and suffering are not to be abandoned; rather, one should meditate on their true nature. In that way, they are self-liberated, because suffering and the disturbing emotions are self-arisen and self-liberated. Therefore, one needs to train in the understanding of what it means to be self-arisen and self-liberated, in the meditation that is self-arisen and self-liberated, and in the conduct that is self-arisen and self-liberated. That’s the whole point. Do you understand?

No. [Laughter.] What does “self-liberated” mean?

The analogy is often used of a wave coming up and dissolving back into the ocean. That’s a good analogy, but you have to experience for yourself how it actually is. As one master said, “When you see a beautifully bright, clear ocean, with waves coming up and going back down into the ocean, don’t you know that this is the lama teaching you that thoughts are dharmakaya?” Self-arisen and self-liberated means that when the thought arises, it’s like a wave coming up from the ocean of luminous clarity. And it dissolves back into that luminous clarity. It never leaves being of the nature of luminous clarity, just like a wave never leaves the ocean.

That means, basically, that whatever appears is always luminosity. For example, your thoughts don’t come from anywhere and they don’t go anywhere. But, at the same time, they appear and they manifest. So that appearance, that arising, is called self-arising and self-liberation because it’s nothing other than luminosity itself that’s liberated.

[Sings:] “Thoughts don’t come from anywhere and they don’t go anywhere, so how could they be anything other than self-arisen and self-liberated? Just like waves on the ocean.” That’s how it is.

Milarepa said that the thoughts and appearances of demons are self-arisen and self-liberated. The way he said that was, “What appears as, is perceived as, and is thought of as a ghost – whenever these appear, from the yogi they appear, and whenever they dissolve, into the yogi they dissolve.”