“Trying to make yourself feel better, will make you feel worse. And if you relax at trying to feel better you’ll feel much better.

Now the thing about this journey is it’s not enough just to know that I have wisdom, compassion, power. It’s important to know it, but it’s not enough to know it intellectually. We have to discover that outrageousness within ourselves. And that outrageousness is hidden in our neurosis. So the journey—largely in meditation practice—is experiencing how neurotic we are. And beginning to explore that neurosis, whatever it may be, and being unafraid of that neurosis. And when you do that, then that neurosis is actually the key that opens everything up. That’s why the journey is painful. When the Buddha first taught the Dharma, his first and most important and final truth is called the truth of suffering. And the truth of suffering means that we can’t ever fix life up. We can never get it right. We can never alleviate all of the storms of our existence. Life is fundamentally painful, always. And we can try all kinds of strategies to do something about that, and none of them are going to work. And that is a blessing. That’s an incredible blessing, because it means that the ego is a losing battle. The ego basically doesn’t have a chance.

It is important not to try to be too perfect. You know, the whole Buddhist thing is that first we’re attached to things that are not helpful at all, and then, the next step is we become attached to things like the dharma and like meditation. It’s still attachment but it is very helpful, because it actually helps that attachment, over time, to dissolve. So, I wouldn’t require of myself not to be attached to the dharma or not to be attached to the forms. I think actually that’s okay. Because we’re constantly talking about attachment. It’s not like we’re not aware of the problem. But if you don’t develop attachment for things that are good, you’re just going to maintain your attachment to the other things. So, all of us need to have an attachment, you could say transfer—it’s  like transfer of funds—so we’re going to transfer it from the ego’s bank account over to the dharma’s bank account, and then, eventually, we’re going to transfer it from the dharma’s bank account into boundless space.” ~Reggie Ray of the Dharma Ocean Foundation

Here is Dr. Reggie Ray describing the path as the “Dharma Of Everyday Life.”

Dr. Reggie Ray currently resides in Crestone, Colorado, where he is Spiritual Director of the Dharma Ocean Foundation, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to the practice, study and preservation of the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the practice lineage he embodied.

The Dharma Ocean Foundation has an online media store where you can download “theme-based affordable bundles of talks, as well as complete program recordings.” Right now they are offering a free MP3 or PDF download, a talk from Reggie Ray entitled, “Emotional Awakening.” Click here for this free download.

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