Through the Looking-Glass

Our Nature Mirrored in the Elements

Summer course, 26 June - 5 July 2009

Aro Ga’dzong, Toscana

'...the self-expressed nature of the phenomenal world which joyously communicates itself...'

- Lama'i Naljor of Khyungchen Aro Lingma

Aro Ga'dzong is situated

on Tuscany's sea-to-sky highway,

an historic route from the port of Pisa up to the passes over the Appenines and the Alps. From the palm-trees and cypresses along the riviera, past the olive groves of Lucca, it climbs through chestnut and acacia jungle to the pine forests on the snow mountains, and up above the tree-line.

"If you let the roots go deep enough, the tree will blossom abundantly."

- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Dzogchen images the mind as a tree. The tree has its roots in the sky, the sky-like Nature of Mind. The branches, twigs and leaves are our experience. What we experience is the whole phenomenal universe, spreading towards the fringes of perception and sensation. The tree-sap is the movement of our irrepressible enlightened energy. Its blossom is our realisation, when we recognise the inseparability of inner, our senses, and outer, the sense-fields. This non-duality is the heart, the means and the goal of Buddhist meditation.

There are stations on the highway

between sea and sky,

locations which specially support Dzogchen meditation; power-places called bardo. Bardo literally means river/rock, an expression symbolising places and occasions where the elements are in transition. This course featured day-long excursions to fulfil the meditation in these places (see numbered image files) which are neither here nor there, neither this nor that:

Between the sea and the land: the shoreline    
Mouth of the river Serchio

Between the river and the sea: the lake           
Puccini's Torre del Lago

Between the valley and the mountain: the abyss          
Orrido di Botri

Between the earth and the clouds: the mountain    

Michelangelo's quarry

Between the peak and the sky: the air               
Hannibal's Pass