The Yogacara school says if we want to understand the nature of existence we should look to our actual experience.
Fundamental nature of our experience. Whatever we experience is a “world” made up of mental images whose source is the mind. (when we think about the holiday we just had, the source of this experience is mental images or memories).

Normally we operate with the assumption that our internal world and our external world are completely separate. But the Yogacara says otherwise, they are just two poles in a unified field of experience, as if we have been looking at the two faces of a coin, experiencing them as separate, when in reality they are two aspects of the same thing. If on the most fundamental level we realised that the internal and the external world are just two poles of a unified field of consciousness, we would be Enlightened.

Authentic Practitioners Abandoning Attachment

The main thing is that you must abandon any interest in mundane life. For if you do not abandon all interest in this life, saying that you are a practitioner is nothing more than hypocrisy. This is not in accord with the character of a bodhisattva.

Svasti!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, although you may have attained the rank of a geshe and are an expert of the scriptures, you are no more than a monk paying taxes. Upholding the Buddha’s teachings is difficult!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, although you might be a fearsome tantrika reciting HUM, you are just striking cymbals and beating the drum until they crack. Achieving the essence of practice is difficult!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, even if you behave like a yogi, you are just a fool adorned with a HUM in your topknot. To be in harmony with the conduct of a buddha is difficult!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, even if you are a guru sitting on a high throne, the thunder of your dharma teachings is no more than an echo. It is difficult to give rise to the compassion that benefits others!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, although you may think you are a great meditator who stays in retreat, it is not enough to practice outer meditation assiduously. It is difficult for the realization of inner meaning to dawn!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, you may imagine yourself as a siddha walled up in a cell, but this is nothing more than a vibrant display. It is difficult to attain the final goal of buddhahood!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, although you wander on pilgrimage to the holy places of all lands, you just keep killing the little worms of the earth beneath your feet. It is difficult to attain the siddhis of these sacred places!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, even if you dwell in the monastic schools of the vinaya, even if you presently observe your vows carefully, ultimately, genuine monastic discipline is difficult!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, although you are the nephew of an excellent lineage, you’re just enjoying your wealth and food. It is difficult to be of the excellent lineage of the Buddha!

If you do not abandon attachment for food and clothing, although you have received extensive teachings both short and long, you think only about wealth and feast. It will be difficult for the essential teachings to arise in your mind!

Drukpa Kunley
The Eight Worldly Dharmas and Songs of Renunciation

Drukpa Kunley's reply is clarifying that maintaining the self-confident idea of 'I am a practitioner.' regardless if you follow the path of an fully-ordained monk, nun, a non-celibate male or female ngakpa or naldjor, or even if you are a learned geshe, enthroned guru, rinpoche, incarnation, or a powerful siddha-like practitioner, is challenging.

Therefore, for becoming an authentic and perfect practitioner "the main thing is that you must abandon any interest in mundane life. For if you do not abandon all interest in this life, saying that you are a practitioner is nothing more than hypocrisy."

Moreover, as long as a practitioner is "not abandoning attachment for food and clothing" he or she cannot be regarded as an authentic and perfect practitioner.

Thus, the yogic practices of inner heat and pleasurable sensations, tummo (gtum mo), and extracting the essences, chülen (bcud len), are essential.

Who Taught Dilgo Khyentse Tsalung Trulkhor?

According to the famous autobiography of Dilgo Khyentse known as Brilliant Moon it was Drubwang Künga Palden aka Kyedrub Kunga Palden (grub dbang kun dga' dpal ldan, 1878-1950) who instructed him in Tsalung Trulkhor, the yogic practices of illusory and magical movements related to one's subtle channels, vital energies, and vital essences (rtsa rlung thig le) according to the Dzogchen Longchen Nyingthig tradition. In this respect Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche states:

When I reached my eleventh year my legs were burned, and I came close to death. At that time the holy guru Künga Palden performed the ablution ritual, conferred the layman’s vows, and carried out a longevity practice for a month.

In particular, he granted an elaborate and detailed explanation of the whole of The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel of the Guru’s Inner Essence, beginning with The Stages of Guru Practice: The Ocean of Attainments right up to the final inventory. I also received practical guidance from him on the channels, winds, and physical yoga practices of The Heart Essence of the Great Expanse. He told me that I should "focus on practice as my main activity and, as a supplement to this, grant instructions to those who seek the teachings.”

He also gave me his own copies of the Seven Treasuries, which he had studied for his entire life, and his personal copies of the Trilogy of Natural Ease and cared for me with immeasurable compassion.

“Brilliant Moon: The Autobiography of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche”

Translated by Ani Jinpa Palmo

"So it is very important to understand what it means by perfection. It means the simplicity of appearance before interpretation."

~ James Low

Illusion-Like Thoughts

“All of our different activities are projections of the mind, created by our thoughts. If you follow these deluded thoughts, there will be no end to your mind being upset by delusion, just as when the wind blows over the surface of a lake, the crystal clarity of the water is masked by ripples.”

~ HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Zurchungpa's Testament, pg 267 – on Wisdom – Snow Lion Publications

If you have attained bodhichitta,
It's good for you when you're sick; it's good when you're dying,
It's good when you study; it's good when you contemplate.
Whatever you do, you are good.

Khunu Lama Rinpoche

“Bodh Gaya is little more than a slum and most visitors are shocked by the dust, dirt, beggars and poverty – although (unfortunately) conditions are slowly improving. What many experience when they leave the madness behind and enter the inner circle is that the atmosphere created by the Mahabodhi Temple is so powerful that it feels as if you are hypnotised. There you will see the Vajra Asana (also known as the Diamond Seat), where, after years of searching for the truth and six years of penance on the banks of the Niranjana River (now known as the Falgu River), Siddhartha finally discovered the Middle Way and attained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree.

The actual Bodhi tree under which Siddhartha sat was destroyed centuries ago, but a seed from it reached Sri Lanka and grew there so that its fruit could later be brought back to India (there are many wonderful stories about how this seed was obtained) and planted in the same spot as the original tree. The Bodhi tree is important to Buddhists because it is a symbol of enlightenment. Although there were many trees, caves and temples in the area, Siddhartha chose to sit under the Bodhi tree and it was there that he destroyed his final defilements to attain enlightenment and become the liberator of the Three Worlds – the desire world, the form world and the formless world. It is believed that all one thousand Buddhas of this Bhadrakalpa will attain enlightenment there. All of this means that paying homage to the Bodhi tree is not like worshipping the spirit of a tree like a shaman, but rather a recognition of the wonderful event that took place under its branches.

Bodh Gaya is not special only because it is where all the Buddhas will attain enlightenment. According to Tantric Buddhism, everywhere in the world and every phenomenon that exists outside of us has a corresponding existence within our bodies. Good practitioners and Yogis, in their practice, can visit the sacred sites, which reside in the chakras and channels of their bodies, and in this way progress on the path to enlightenment. Those of us whose practice is not so advanced can at least visit the outer reflection of these inner holy sites, the heart of which is often considered to be in Bodh Gaya.”

- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

The Preparation: The Four Wheels



PREREQUISITES FOR THE PRACTICE



[1]

People who embark upon the path of the Mahayana, the supreme path of beings of great scope leading to omniscience, should try to acquire four circumstances.



They should



(1) live in solitude, in a place that has all the necessary conditions and is in harmony with the Dharma.



They should



(2) frequent a teacher who is learned in the Tripitaka and steeped in the practice of the three trainings. By doing this, they will avoid the inferior attitudes of ordinary folk as well as the wrong behavior that leads to suffering, and they will acquire all the good qualities deriving from the Dharma of transmission and realization.



They should in addition



(3) nourish an intense wish to practice in accordance with the teaching expounded by their master



and should



(4) zealously adopt the supreme protection afforded by the merit accumulated in their past and present existences.



The venerable Nagarjuna refers to these four conditions as the “four wheels,” the idea being that, just as someone riding in a (horse-drawn) chariot can cover in a short time a distance that would take many days for a cow or ox, a Bodhisattva taking advantage of these four conditions will progress speedily toward omniscience. Nagarjuna refers to them in his Suhrllekha when he says:



Your dwelling place befits the task,

You keep the company of holy beings.

With highest aspirations and a store of merit,

You have indeed the “four wheels” all complete.









Quintessence of the three paths commentary by Longchen Yeshe Dorje, Kangyur Rinpoch

Treasury of Precious Qualities By Jigme Lingpa, Shambhala Publications.

Orientalist Studies of the Ḍākinī

When Western scholars and spiritual seekers have encountered partial artifacts of the esoteric traditions of ḍākinīs, the potential for confusion and projection has proliferated, following orientalist habits that appropriate the ḍākinī for Western agendas. Those who longed for a sacred feminine seized on the gender of the ḍākinī as being most significant, indiscriminatingly appropriating her meaning as a divine savioress or a construction of patriarchal fantasy. The
earliest gendered interpretations of the ḍākinī were influenced by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who wrote “psychological commentaries” on newly discovered Tibetan tantric texts implying that the ḍākinī is like the anima. The overt associations between the ḍākinī of Tibet and the Jungian anima were not explicit until 1963, when Herbert Guenther (1963, ii–iii) commented on the appearance of the ugly hag to the scholar Nāropa, surmising, “all that he had neglected and failed to develop was symbolically revealed to him as the vision of an old and ugly woman,” remarking in a footnote that “this aspect has a great similarity to what the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung calls the ‘anima’.”
In critique of this depiction of the “fantasy of opposites,” neo-Jungian James Hillman (1985, 7) reflected that there was a rich trade in which “smuggled hypotheses, pretty pieties about Eros, and eschatological indulgences about saving one’s soul through relationship, becoming more feminine, and the sacrifice of the intellect” provided fertile ground for New Age appropriation of ḍākinīs for orientalist agendas. (…)

(…)A second feminist perspective identified the ḍākinī as a goddess figure in an Indian gynocentric cult in which females were the primary cult leaders and males were their devoted students, asserted by Miranda Shaw (1994). She suggested that in India, women served as gurus and ritual specialists, but as Buddhism spread to Tibet, this role changed and women no longer played ritual or teaching roles. She argued that Tibetan patriarchy shaped the ḍākinī symbol into an abstract patriarchal ideal which serves the spiritual paths of male yogins only, betraying her Indian historical roots. Both of these feminist critiques drew from orientalist agendas, seeking a sacred feminine to meet Western longings and measuring the ḍākinī against her relevance for the spiritual lives of Western practitioners.

(…)Dakini’s Warm Breath followed the construct of phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur (1967, 9, 237) who identifies three levels of a symbol, important for interpretations of meaning: primary, secondary, tertiary. The primary level is experienced preverbally through dreams and visions or through meditative realization and constitutes what Ricoeur called symbol. In this, her most essential aspect, the ḍākinī is called the formless wisdom-nature of the mind itself at the heart of all Vajrayāna practice, overtly associated with her Indian roots in the Prajñāpāramitā literature. In its “tantric phase” (Conze 1973, 201), the sūtra called Perfect Wisdom in One Letter distills the entire teaching into the syllable A. This Sanskrit syllable becomes the representation of the formless ḍākinī, called by Nyingma master Dodrupchen Jigme Tenpa Nyima (1865–1926) (Gyatso 1992, 185 n. 😎 the “empty letter door that displays emptiness.” Sādhanas often invoke this meaning of the ḍākinī through the syllable A. Twentieth-century Nyingma teacher Chagdüd Tülku Rinpoche (1930–2002) explained, “Knowing the nature of emptiness nondualistically is liberation. Whether you call it emptiness, the absolute, or the ḍākinī makes no difference. All are liberating” (Chagdud, 1989). On a primary level, ḍākinī also refers to the yogic subtle body network of channels and winds activated in the inner practices of Tantra. The esoteric name for the subtle body is ḍākinījāla, the invisible network of the ḍākinīs. Synchronizing body and mind through the subtle body(…) manomaya-kāya) in tantric meditation generates powerful realization of the true nature (Simmer-Brown 2001, 172–176, 290).

Arising from the experience of the primary, Ricoeur’s secondary level of a symbol is found in myth and ritual—the narrative or poetic expressions or in ritual practice, one step removed from nonconceptual experience but often imbued with the power to evoke this primary experience. Records of mythic encounters appear in hagiographies or namthar like Shabkar’s, above, where she is depicted in a personified manner as an unpredictable semiwrathful dancing spirit-woman. Often her appearance is accompanied by the bestowal of realization, prophecy, or admonition, experienced somatically by the practitioner as nonconceptual bliss and insight. Her demeanor changes in various contexts: she may be playful, nurturing, or sharp and wrathful, especially when cutting through spiritual arrogance or protecting the integrity of tantric transmission. She is also a fierce protector who guards the most private details of the practice, so that only those with the purest motivation are able to penetrate their essence (Simmer-Brown 2001, 116–121).
Visionary ḍākinīs also are important meditational deities or yidams (iṣṭadevatā) in tantric rituals or sādhanas or drup-thap (sgrub thabs) that manifest the secondary level of the ḍākinī symbol, where they are deities in their own right, or they appear as consorts and members of the retinue of male yidams. The most famous of ḍākinī yidams is Vajrayoginī, also known as Vajravārāhī, who appeared to Shabkar in the dream above. While the ḍākinī counterparts, the wrathful male consort heruka “blood drinkers” or trak-thung (khrag ‘thung) sometimes remain unnamed, all represent the wisdom dimension of enlightenment joined with masculine compassion and skillful means. Subtle body yoga practices in sādhana practice may include visualizations in deity yoga creation stage practice (utpattikrama, kye-rim, bskyed rim), movement of energy through the channels of the body in completion stage practice (sampannakrama, dzog-rim, rdzogs rim), and the practice of sexual yoga (karmamudrā, lekyi chag-gya, las kyi phyag rgya) (Simmer-Brown 2001, 216–221). Tibetan Buddhism safeguards these aspects of advanced meditation, holding them private in the oral transmissions from the personal guru; the true meaning cannot be accessed nonconceptually without guidance from the guru. When ḍākinīs are invoked as deities in ritual practice, they represent the direct realization of the innate wisdom mind, the authenticity of the guru lineages that transmit them, the methods of practice—whether ritual, yogic, or direct—by which the wisdom mind is uncovered.
Tertiary forms of the symbol take the form of theology, philosophical expression, or societal usages where they are influenced by conventional notions of gender imposed by culture. Appellations of ḍākinī status to human women fall into this category of the symbol. As contemporary Nyingma lama Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche (b. 1964) cautioned, attributing ḍākinī status to human women is “not really dharma, more like folklore” influenced by many factors of culture.5 In traditional Tibet, these women were often considered jetsünmas (rje btsun ma), an honorific title signifying powerful practice, great realization, and exemplary teaching. Whether as the mother, sister, or consort of a renowned guru or as a teacher in their own right, these jetsünmas populate the history of the major yogic lineages of Tibet, demonstrating that the essence of the ḍākinī can be found in the lives of actual women. Generally restrained by patriarchal custom from the full monastic education, public teaching roles, or the recognition of being an incarnate tülku, these human ḍākinīs have nevertheless been revered and treasured in Tibetan Vajrayāna for the unique ways they have propagated the dharma.
Taken together, honoring the feminine and women are considered foundational in traditional Vajrayāna tantric commitments (samaya, damtsik, dam tshig).

As patriarch Sakya Pandita (1182–1251) (Willis 1987, 103) described as the fourteenth “root downfall” associated with samaya in classic fashion: If one disparages women who are of the nature of wisdom, that is the fourteenth root downfall. That is to say, women are the symbol of wisdom and śūnyatā, showing both. It is therefore a root downfall to dispraise women in every possible way, saying that women are without spiritual merit ... and made of unclean things, not considering their good qualities.
Honoring the ḍākinī paradigm on all these levels connects the practitioner more closely with Vajrayāna devotion and realization.
In summary, in Tibetan Tantra the ḍākinī principle has at least four polysemic levels of interrelated meaning, correlating with various dimensions of transmission, practice, and realization. These levels of the ḍākinī symbol relate to the “spiritual subjectivities” of women and men, illuminating the intimacy of personal experience in meditation as the essence of its meaning.

Source: ”The Ḍākinī in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism - Judith Simmer-Brown

"Once you recognize that Buddha nature is inherent in you to the point where you actually believe that; inherent, already present, the sense of relief is overwhelming. That's how you can know if you've got this. A feeling of relief and joy, and that you don't have to keep scrambling; trying to get something that always seems to be a step ahead of you. You can relax, it's right there. Relax again and again.

'Mind-mind seeing'. Without trying to figure out whether you are one or many, whether we are all one or many, simply follow your own thoughts home. And that; the not finding; the finding of the not finding; ineffable open awareness where all thoughts come and go, arise and vanish; without ever leaving or becoming.

Relax. There is nothing to stabilise because it is never going away. Your distraction by the minutiae of daily life and your emotions, is just a surface layer that will fall away the more you notice. So find your mind; the thinker of the thoughts, the feeler of the feelings, the perceiver of the perceptions; and relax. Don't try to keep it, don't try to push everything away. It's a subtle change of focus from focusing on the minutiae of this's, and that's, and the other thing, and the letters in the book you are reading, and the video game, and the "what do I have here?" That's your minutiae of daily life that you obsess with all the time."

From Lama Lena's teachings on "The Flight Of The Garuda."

Khandro Kamala said:

“There are two great holy spots in the Himalayan region for practicing Guru Rinpoche in the form of Dorje Drolo.

One is at Tso Pema in India, where His Holiness, the Lord of Refuge Dudjom Rinpoche built this marvelous image in the 1950's.

The other is in Bhutan at the Tiger's Nest, Paro Taksang, where H.H. Khyapje Chatral Rinpoche constructed the statue of Dorje Drolo, at about the same time, shortly after leaving Tibet.

These statues were built to provide unmatched security for these vast areas and the whole world, and the Dharma in those regions, and to protect all people from suffering and to provide them with happiness.

Both of these holy places have equal and unparalleled blessings and power.

Practicing here will provide unmatched limitless abilities with the four activities of Pacifying, Increasing, Controlling and Subjugating/Destroying.

Here, everyone knows about this, but for the benefit of my many Western friends, I am writing this short explanation.”