Rob Dowling

Rob Dowling Meditation Teacher helping people connect with their essential nature and relax

So it's a very important thing to observe how much of the past I am carrying on my shoulders. How much I burden myself w...
15/11/2025

So it's a very important thing to observe how much of the past I am carrying on my shoulders. How much I burden myself with the knowledge I've had

- James Low

The Dzogchen yogin is first a shape-shifter. No outer or inner form expresses his secret nature, which is emptiness, mor...
14/11/2025

The Dzogchen yogin is first a shape-shifter. No outer or inner form expresses his secret nature, which is emptiness, more than any other; no one specific form of practice is correct practice; and no outer form of conduct can be adopted as a universal method of service to sentient beings over any other. Insofar as each situation demands a different form of response and expression, the Dzogchen yogin is a chameleon

- Keith Dowman

The reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren’t, shall I put it like that? We aren’t better because we wan...
14/11/2025

The reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren’t, shall I put it like that? We aren’t better because we want to be. Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because all the do-gooders in the world whether they’re doing good for others or doing it for themselves are troublemakers: on the basis of “kindly let me help you or you will drown,” said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree. Sometimes doing good to others and even doing good to oneself is amazingly destructive because it’s full of conceit. How do you know what’s good for other people? How do you know what’s good for you? If you say you want to improve then you ought to know what’s good for you, but obviously you don’t because if you did then you would be improved. So, we don’t know. We do not really know how to interfere with the way the world is

— Alan Watts

This is the human condition, we can believe anything, anything, anything. So we're both intelligent and crazy. Once we s...
14/11/2025

This is the human condition, we can believe anything, anything, anything. So we're both intelligent and crazy. Once we start to believe we can go on believing even when it's time to give up

- James Low

This new life that we would like is impossible because we are full of old thoughts, old beliefs, old assumptions. Assump...
13/11/2025

This new life that we would like is impossible because we are full of old thoughts, old beliefs, old assumptions. Assumptions are a way of making life very quick. You can buy pre-prepared meals, you can pop them in the freezer, you can come home at night when your tired and you can stick them in the microwave and eat it and it's just food. Probably doesn't taste great but your cold and your hungry and its alright. That's what most of our mental activity is. Out of the freezer of our memory bank into the microwave of current agitation we pluck out this stuff and eat it with a big or small spoon according to the situation. Where's the freshness. The freshness is there phenomenologically speaking, it is in the phenomena themselves, in what's coming in through our eyes, our ears, nose, tongue, skin, the senses are always of the moment. The senses are not existing in time. Our interpretation of the data which is given in the immediacy of the sensory moment that is based on the past. We approach the freshness of the world with our old assumptions

- James Low

You confirm to yourself that I am the experiencer of this experience. So here we simply want to stay relaxed and with wh...
12/11/2025

You confirm to yourself that I am the experiencer of this experience. So here we simply want to stay relaxed and with whatever is occuring. Coming and coming all sorts of things are coming, what do they mean, not my question because the meaning will always be an interpretation and they will mean whatever you want them to mean. They don't mean anything in themselves, the meaning is injected. You know you have these so-called truth drugs and you get injected and you can only tell the truth well these egoic assumptions are stupidity injections. They make you stupid because you believe what you have invented the object as being. You fall in love with the machinations of your own mind, of your own thought construction. That's why it's difficult not to do it because you get used to it. It gives you a sense of power. I know how to work it out

- James Low

Whatever I know about the world and I am confident that I have an accurate knowledge is simply a kind of obscuration ope...
11/11/2025

Whatever I know about the world and I am confident that I have an accurate knowledge is simply a kind of obscuration operating in me. Which means be careful in the world. CR Lama said the word careful to me probably a thousand times. Careful, careful, what's going on, careful, don't jump, don't assume. Take your attention away from the world, bring it back into yourself, be aware on an outer form of your breathing, your posture and so on, then bring that attention to the flow of experience, thoughts memories and so on, be present with them and then finally bring your attention to your attention in the moment, that it is relaxed and open. That is to say that we move from telling the world what it is to stopping telling the world what it is. Then we observe how we tell ourselves who I am, what I'm like and we let go of that falsely stabilising activity. We move away from conclusions. From the effort to establish a flase stasis, a false stability and through that we become to able to remain relaxed and open and allow the free flow of experience

- James Low

The most important thing is to change your relationship with yourself so that you start to experience the open clarity o...
10/11/2025

The most important thing is to change your relationship with yourself so that you start to experience the open clarity of the mind. This is entirely dependent on you, about developing the practice of observing yourself. You don't need any special clothes to do this. You don't need a vajra and a bell, you don't need an altar, you don’t need to get a Tibetan name, you don't need any initiations, all you need is to have a mind. If you don't have a mind, bad luck. But we all have a mind, it's running around, so it's clearly there. So you have many, many opportunities to observe how this functions

- James Low

Since other people are so happy and willing to judge you, let them be the judge. Don't judge yourself. However you are, ...
07/11/2025

Since other people are so happy and willing to judge you, let them be the judge. Don't judge yourself. However you are, this is a pattern of emptiness. This is an illusion. It is not a thing. You are not a thing. You are not a broken machine

- James Low

Look, listen and learn. This is very good advice. We give it to 3 year olds but as adults we ignore this advice. How can...
06/11/2025

Look, listen and learn. This is very good advice. We give it to 3 year olds but as adults we ignore this advice. How can I look at what is here when I keep telling what is here what it is. 'I' never have fresh experience because 'I' make the world stale. 'I' tell the world what it is. The freshness of each moment shows itself but through my apprehension, but through my holding it, putting it into the little templates that I have of interpretation, I mix the fresh and the stale, the new and the old. So the apparitional form is beyond grasping and everyone is beyond grasping. So if we don't grasp at ourselves we start to have more liberation. Self knowledge is a terrible thing. To know yourself is to turn yourself into a thing. A knowable entity. A commodity. We don't know who we are. Why would we have to know who we are. Because we become according to circumstances

- James Low

There is no such thing as communication. There are only two things: There is successful miscommunication, and un-success...
05/11/2025

There is no such thing as communication. There are only two things: There is successful miscommunication, and un-successful miscommunication

- Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

This modern obsession that we have with health is highly egotistical because its based on the notion of knowledge. I kno...
02/08/2025

This modern obsession that we have with health is highly egotistical because its based on the notion of knowledge. I know what other people need, I know what food you should eat in order to be healthy but each culture has different readings of this. We don't know. From the buddhist point of view whether they are healthy or not depends on their karma. That is to say that the buddha said if you want to know about your previous lives look at your body, if you want to know about your future body in future lives look at your present action. This doesn't mean that if you have orange juice for breakfast it will make you healthy. The theories about what makes us healthy or not healthy are floating on an ocean of ignorance. We don't remember our past lives, we don't know what we did, Out of this ocean of ignorance suddenly a big shark arrives and jumps up and bites you. You have a pain in your side you go to the doctor, they send you to the hospital, bad news. How could this happen. All these vegetables I have eaten, even my best friend is called broccoli, but you have cancer. Where did it come from. Past life. This is very different. This is not to say that you shouldn't do yoga and exercise and so on but the ego seeks certain things, it seeks omniscience and omnipotence and if it can have this it feels safe. I know how it works and I can make things happen on my terms . This is not the buddhist understanding The buddhist understanding is the ego is a confusing force full of deluded ideas

- James Low

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The Valley Retreat
Truro
TR11TW

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+447966237344

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