Where Is The Dragon's Gate?

The famous nineteenth-century dzogchen master Paltrul Rinpoche explained self-liberation concretely and precisely:

"The practitioner of self-liberation is like an ordinary person as far as the way in which the thoughts of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, manifest themselves as creative energy. However, the ordinary person, taking these really seriously and judging them as acceptable or rejecting them, continues to get caught up in situations and becomes conditioned by attachment and aversion.

"Not doing this, a practitioner, when such thought arise, experiences freedom; initially, by recognizing the thought for what it is, it is freed just like meeting a previous acquaintance; then it is freed in and of itself, like a snake shedding its skin; and finally, thought is freed in being unable to be of benefit or harm, like a thief entering an empty house."

...Freeing or liberating thought does not mean ignoring, letting go of, being indifferent to, observing, or even not having thoughts. It means being present in hope and fear, pain and pleasure, not as objects before us, but as the radiant clarity of our natural state. Thus anger, for example, when experienced dualistically, is an irritation which we may indulge in or reject, depending on our conditioning. Either way we are caught up in it and act out of it. But when aware of anger as a manifestation of clarity, its energy is a very fresh awareness of the particulars of the situation. However, these particulars are no longer irritating.

from You Are the Eyes of the World, by Longchenpa, translated by Kennard Lipman and Merrill Peterson