The Resolved Practitioner: Naturally Graceful, Naturally Elegant

by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

A practitioner who is truly resolved of all conflict – inner and outer, self and other; ultimately, of life and death – appears simply ordinary, simply authentic. The reason grace and elegance comes through is because there is no clumsiness. Clumsiness can only reside in an unresolved mind – when you are resolved, awkwardness, the source of the clumsiness, is no longer present.

For instance, imagine you are pouring a cup of tea for a friend. The tea overflows the cup and spills all over the tablecloth and your friend’s lap. Your outer action – spilling the tea – appears clumsy, because your inner emotions – “I’m making a mess! I’m doing this all wrong! I ruined my friend’s pants!” – emanate from your awkward state of mind. You feel embarrassed; your friend gets irritated, and your pleasant visit might get cut short or ruined.

In the case of a resolved practitioner, the whole episode has a different feel and different outcome. Again, you pour the tea, and it spills all over the tablecloth and your friend’s lap. Yet, somehow, the action appears very elegant, very gracious; since there is no awkwardness on the inside, the “mishap” does not appear clumsy on the outside. You and your friend might laugh at the mess, or simply go on with the visit, unfazed. Why? When a resolved practitioner – like, for instance, my own mother or His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche – “does” something, it usually manifests the way he or she intended. When, from time to time, things do go awry – it doesn’t make any difference. There is always a tremendous sense of grace and elegance to their actions because each action is free from any clumsy, self-conscious intention.

Another example is Minling Trichen Rinpoche, who is very well known for sleeping almost all of the time. It is not that he is depressed, tired, or bored – he simply “sleeps;” sleep is an expression of his mind. For someone like Minling Trichen, the line between practice and non-practice has become transparent. When your mind is free from all conflict, totally resolved, there is no sense of right or wrong, sleeping or waking, action or non-action. At this point in your practice the whole world becomes your ornament, because everything you do or relate to becomes a clear reflection of your graceful, elegant mind.

The resolved practitioner might appear ordinary, but this ordinariness is very profound. When you are truly resolved, conflicts are no longer a problem because they don’t manifest; the conflicts remain just potential conflicts, circumstances that could produce conflict but, instead, remain dormant. Particular circumstances don’t hold sway because of the strength of your meditation practice – your resolution shields you from any and all conflict. You are free to live your life: spill your tea like a small child or dispense it like a trained waiter; it doesn’t make one bit of difference.

So the source of freedom is not in the things you possess, but, rather, in the quality and texture of your mind and experience. Think of a bard or minstrel – wandering, enjoying everything and anything that comes his or her way. The whole world is the minstrel’s world: the sun and the moon, the sky and the clouds, the wind and the rain. Similarly, when a practitioner comes to have grace and elegance through resolution, it doesn’t matter if you are Tibetan or Western, what your background is, or what country you live in. It doesn’t matter whether you pour the tea expertly or sloppily, whether you are sleepy or wakeful, whether you are struggling to pronounce chants in a Tibetan Buddhist shrine room or mumbling through grace with your parents at the dinner table. Since you have no conflict or preference, you can enjoy each particular, unique experience without prejudice, as a simple measure of the maturation of your practitioner’s life.