Free Awakening the Luminous Mind: Tibetan Meditation for Inner Peace and Joy by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

openness, awareness, and warmth, you are naturally able to express generosity, experience forgiveness, feel love, or have compassion. The single experience of resting in the refuge gives birth to so many positive experiences. According to the dzogchen teachings, if you abide in the inner refuge, positive action will naturally arise. It is not that you need or want to give; rather, generosity spontaneously arises because nothing is obscuring or blocking it from arising.
    Let’s look at each of the three refuges referred to in the poem in Chapter 2 —body of emptiness, body of light, and body of great bliss—and the distinct gift that each has to offer.
    T HE G IFT OF O PENNESS : T HE B ODY OF E MPTINESS
     
    As you practice drawing your attention again and again to stillness, it is important to allow your thoughts and feelings to arise without judging or changing them in any way. As you simply host whatever you experience in openness, and continue to maintain awareness of the openness itself, this sense of unbounded self that you experience not only is a gift that benefits you, but can also be a great gift to another. You have the power to let others be as they are. As you feel that unbounded space in yourself, you allow others to be, without having to manage or manipulate yourself or them. You are able to allow their experience fully because you can allow your own experience fully. Whenever family, friends, or co-workers express stress, tension, fears, or expectations, you are able to be there fully without judging or reacting. If you do not feel that space in yourself, how can you give it to anyone else? But if you do experience the unbounded space of the first inner refuge, it becomes a great gift to offer to another. Their experience, whether joy or suffering, does not activate your pain body, and so you are able to offer them openness. The openness that gives rise to confidence and fearlessness within you can inspire others to discover their own sense of confidence.
    Perhaps you have been trying to help a particular person in your life, but your efforts are unsuccessful or have led to tension or misunderstanding. If you look closely at the situation, you will see that your pain body is being activated in response to that person, and this causes your words or actions to come off as controlling and manipulative instead of caring and supportive. Sometimes even our good intentions conceal a wish to control others. Any sense of discomfort within you is a clear sign that you need to go back within and connect with the refuge of unbounded space. You need to feel that space within yourself first, before you can influence others positively. As you experience inner space, you will naturally radiate a sense of spaciousness by your very presence. As you become aware of that unbounded space, as you feel and connect with that unbounded space, you impart the gift of openness by allowing others to be who they are. It is not that you give someone space by going away and leaving them alone; rather, you are fully present with them, while allowing them space to be as they are. The space of refuge is not given by anyone to anyone else; it is a naturally existing gift. To recognize this gift is to receive it. It is simply the recognition of this gift that has been lacking. I am reinforcing the idea that inner refuge is a gift that you both receive as well as offer to others. When you are in the refuge, the gift is naturally there. As you recognize this gift, not only is everything you need right there within it, but as you connect with this sense of richness and worthiness within yourself, you will naturally become aware of opportunities to benefit others. All positive qualities arise spontaneously from this inner space and become available in our interactions with others. But it is important to know that we are not trying to give. This is not a dualistic process in which one person is the active, enthusiastic giver while the other is a