Radical Openness: Life as Meditation - the four noble truths and the eightfold path from the song of the owl headed dakini

This day will explore the Sutric teachings on the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path from the radical perspective of Dzogchen as revealed in The Song of The Owl-headed Dakini.
The Buddhist teachings can sometimes be misunderstood to mean that the world, and our experience of life, is suffering – the usual translation of dukkha. But dukkha does not mean physical suffering – it means the pervasive and recurrent sense of unsatisfactoriness caused by the self-defeating cycles of duality - duality being the mistaken attempt to relate only to the form attributes of existence while attempting to eliminate the emptiness aspects. This Dzogchen view of experience is explained in The Song of the Owl Headed Dakini (’ug gDong mKha’ ’gro sNying thig mDo) a cycle of teachings received in vision by the great female teacher Aro Lingma who lived in Tibet from 1886 – 1923. These teachings bring out the radical non-dual nature of the essential Buddhist themes which have been handed down from the time of Shakyamuni Buddha and the Mahasiddhas, and show the heart of Dharma as it can be applied in all aspects of everyday life.

The teaching of the Four Noble Truths, or Four Fundamental Certainties (denpa nam-zhi) was called the first turning of the Wheel of Dharma, the first teaching Shakyamuni Buddha gave after fully realising the non-dual state. From the perspective of Dzogchen we are all beginninglessly enlightened, and because of this our own non-dual state points to itself through the experience of dukkha - unsatisfactoriness. Through understanding that unsatisfactoriness is something we create ourselves, we can undermine this creation and allow the sparkling through of our realisation to illuminate our lives.

The fourth fundamental certainty is that there are 8 methods (the 8 fold path or path of alignment) to realise the cessation of the experience of unsatisfactoriness. The eight modes are evolutionary and provide a way of opening to the world rather than trying to manipulate it.
The eight modes of the path are: whole-hearted perception, intention, communication, conduct, vocation, effort, attention, and presence which can open us to the point of complete integration where life itself is meditation.