Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche: Emotional Rescue

An Interview with Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche: Emotional Rescue

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, is a leading Buddhist teacher in North America and an advocate of American and Western Buddhism. A lover of music, art, and popular culture, Rinpoche is a tech-savvy poet, photographer, and visual artist, as well as a prolific author. He brings the essence of the Buddha’s message to modern audiences with humor and practicality. Rinpoche is founder and president of Nalandabodhi, an international network of Buddhist centers. He is also the founder of Nitartha International, a non-profit educational corporation dedicated to preserving the contemplative literature of East Asia. Rinpoche is most active at Nalanda West, in Seattle, Washington, which offers public programs by teachers from many traditions that support a meaningful, contemplative life. His previous books include Rebel Buddha: A Guide to a Revolution of Mind.

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is acknowledged as one of the foremost scholars and meditation masters of his generation in the Nyingma and Kagyu schools of Tibetan Buddhism. He is known for his sharp intellect, humor, and easygoing teaching style.

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is author of several books, most recently Emotional Rescue: How to Work with Your Emotions to Transform Hurt and Confusion into Energy that Empowers You (Other titles include Rebel Buddha: A Guide to a Revolution of Mind, Mind Beyond Death, Wild Awakening: The Heart of Mahamudra and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, and Penetrating Wisdom: The Aspiration of Samantabhadra. He is a frequent contributor to Buddhadharma: A practitioner’s Quarterly and the Shambhala Sun.

OMTimes is thrilled to share this interview with Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche.

OMTIMES: The subtitle of Emotional Rescue is “How to work with emotions to transform hurt and confusion into energy that empowers you.” What is it about our emotions that make them workable? They seem to be at the very center of our suffering. How can the energy of emotions empower you?

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche: At heart, your emotional energies are a limitless source of creative power and intelligence that’s “on” all the time—like the electrical current we put to so many uses. When you finally see straight to the heart of your emotions, this power source is what you see. Before an emotion escalates to a fever pitch or you’ve managed to chill it out, there’s a basic energy that gives rise to it. This energy runs through all your emotions—good, bad, or neutral. It’s simply an upsurge that’s been stimulated by something in your environment—like an upsurge in the voltage flowing through a power line. If it’s just a slight increase, you may not notice it, but if it’s a strong burst, it can give you quite a shock. That’s why we have surge protectors for our sensitive equipment. It’s too bad we can’t wear surge protectors to modulate our temper tantrums.

It may be something internal and personal that stirs you up—a memory evoked by a familiar song. Or it could be something external, like your partner telling that same dumb joke he knows you can’t stand. Think back to the last time you were really upset. Right before you got so heated up and the angry thoughts kicked in, there was a gap. Your mind’s regular chatter stopped for a moment—one quiet moment without thought. That gap wasn’t just empty space. It was the first flash of your emotion to be: the creative energy of your natural intelligence.

You might be thinking; I like the sound of all this, but it doesn’t apply to me. I’m not the creative type. But you are creating all the time. You create your world all around you.

You make choices, build relationships, and arrange the spaces you inhabit. You dream up goals, jobs, and ways to play, and envision the world you want. With a little help from the power of electricity, you can turn night into day. You can transform a cold apartment into a cozy home. In the same way, your emotions can brighten your world, warm you up, and wake you up with their vital, playful energy. When you feel lost, they can bring a fresh sense of direction and inspiration into your life.

So emotions don’t have to be a problem for you. Any emotion can bring a welcome sense of positive energy or the opposite—a dose of gloom and doom. It just depends on how you work with it, how you respond to the upsurge of energy.