The nature of mind is the same. It arises and it manifests within the space of your awareness in its own natural state. Thus, the genuine state of aggression is not aggression; rather, 'aggression' is a label that we give to a particular experience. Passion is a label that we give to another experience. When you look at the raw, vivid and sharp experience of passion and aggression, you realize that they are inseparable. From the point of view of experience, there are no distinctive labels that identify something as passion and something else as aggression, ignorance or jealousy. (p.105-106)
I think this quote is quite fascinating, because it seems to describe how to work with the energies of emotions without trying to label them or sort them out into good or bad states. To give a simple example, right now, as I am sitting in front of my laptop, there is a tension arising around my forehead which is likely arising from a state of tiredness, or fatigue. Now, I could resist that tension and say, "this is bad; I want to feel something else" or "I want to focus on something good". And I might then find some way to distract myself to force the pain to go away. But rather than counselling people to distract themselves with spiritual practices, Dzogchen Ponlop seems to be suggesting the opposite--to see all these emotional states as one of many forms of mind. To extend to my example, I don't need to create a distinction between 'this state of mind' and 'that state of mind', and then create opposition between those states. By resting mind in this present moment, I can learn to see that all the states of mind are just one seamless totality.
I have to say from my own experience that this practice is not always so easy. It is not to be confused with just following every thought that comes to mind. To give an example, there is a difference between allowing anger to arise in mind, and attaching to one's thoughts about what to do with anger. These two states are different because the former is a more direct investigation of that emotion. It doesn't presume to know what the state of anger is, or how it is meant to be. Instead, the attitude is to face the energy of anger with a full embrace, not giving into fear of one's own aggressive energy. But what typically happens is that I don't give the aggressive emotion its due, and there is a struggle in labeling it and then wanting it to somehow go away. Nobody wants to think themselves to be an anger prone individual, so there is a desire to scuttle the anger or put it under the rug, rather than seeing it as a pure kind of energy.
One of the biggest challenges with this practice is the tendency to identify ourselves with whatever we observe comes to arise in mind. I can see that being more observant of certain emotions can also be a temptation to identify them as 'this is me', rather than to see the emotion as one part of a vast unfolding from moment to moment. While it's helpful to observe the emotion, it's equally helpful to see its impermanence. Without the latter view, an awareness of pent up or disowned energy can lead to an overidentification with those disowned parts. I begin to see this practice as a delicate balancing act between owning emotion and not attaching them to a self.
Ponlop, Dzogchen (2006, 2008), Mind Beyond Death Ithaka: Snow Lion.
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