In Buddhism, the quality of our lives are what are known as form and emptiness – the dynamic two-in-one expressions of existence. Our experience is made up of security and insecurity, permanence and impermanence, pattern and chaos, continuity and discontinuity, masculine and feminine, definability and ambiguity. We fall into neurotic mind states when we try to make our life one or the other; grasping onto security, rejecting our vulnerability. The pre-occupation with dividing from reality manifests all over our lives in big and small ways. It is the underlying assumption that separates us from reality as it is, from our Buddha-nature. When we attempt to make our life purely secure and controlled, we fail. Life is as it is, whether we relax into it or not. The more we deny what is, the more separated we become from clear, direct experience and the more we live life in an altered state.
Yogic Buddhism explores the interrelationship of form and emptiness and all that we think of as opposites. We practice expanding our perspective to allow the play of these qualities to manifest in our lives without struggle, complication, dissatisfaction and confusion. We befriend things as they are and learn to dance in the play of non-duality that colors our experience and shows us what we are. We find immense freedom and authenticity as we allow and appreciate our life for the whole of what it is, leaving behind the schizophrenia of dualism.
– Excepted from public teachings by Pema Khandro