Why I Work With the Poisons 3: Where We Separate Is Also Where We Meet

Where We Separate Is Also Where We Meet, Part three of three, September 2026

There is a line I love, from the Nyingma lamas Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen: “Every activity becomes the consummation of the love affair with emptiness and form.” They go on to describe being free of reference points as objects of desire, and burning with a wisdom-fire of centrelessness that extends realization to everyone.

What it means is to be deeply rooted in the fact that nothing is solid; it is all empty of any inherent existence. We are like the empty sky. Alive, present, vast, with no beginning or end, and at the same time, here we are, manifesting as this very body, these very appearances. Both are true simultaneously. Ungraspable, wondrous! When, instead of being driven by self-centered desires, we zoom out and realize we are nothing but emptiness and form right now, the heart breaks into a thousand pieces, and there is just awe, love, and more love. Amazing that we are here at all, experiencing this ungraspable presence right now. This eternal moment, in this very body that can feel and think. What a gift. We have no clue why we are here, or what it means not to be here.

So instead of accepting only certain manifestations and dismissing the rest as wrong, we begin to realize that we are all of it. There is nothing outside this very manifestation, right now. Nothing is outside this moment, or the next. This is it. And so it is all me.

That is what the love affair means. The heart cracked wide open. Trungpa called it the cosmic wound.

Why a wound? Because it is so painful to keep holding on to something that is an illusion and cannot be captured. Thereby we suffer unnecessarily. We suffer by holding on to the part we believe is specifically us, and closing down to the parts we think are not. It is exhausting and not real, like trying to hold on to the waves you prefer while refusing the rest of the ocean.

And this holding on is not wrong. It is what we do.

This is what it means to say the poisons are contracted states of awakened qualities. Held on to, they are poison. Released from the contraction, the same energy reveals their awakened qualities.

I believe we are here to wake up through our conditioning, through our karma. What else is there? And consciously doing this together has a powerful effect.

When we commit to showing up together, we inevitably stir the depths of our being. What is unconscious begins to surface. Our wounds, our reactivity, our fears and unresolved pain, these too are part of the field. The clarity of practice shines a light on all of it.

This is why doing this together, and not only alone, can have such a transformative effect.

Here is what it looks like in the room. Someone gets hooked in front of the group, and rather than discuss it, we stay with it while it is still hot. We let the reaction speak in its own voice. And when it has said what it needs to say, what it was protecting becomes visible: a contraction older than anything happening in the room. Nobody is being fixed. We are simply looking at it together. The story falls away as the energy itself, say resentment, is recognized and owned. It turns into clarity and deep relaxation. The contraction is released, and insight emerges.

In seeing our shared conditioning together, we recognize its impersonal nature; as the stories fall away, its emptiness is revealed, the energy self-liberates, and the heart opens as we recognize ourselves in one another.

Compassion grows here. Compassion for our shared humanity. It becomes so clear that we are all doing our best.

The sangha becomes not only a mirror for awakening, but a field for transformation and integration of our shadows.

When we listen to one another this way, something impersonal begins to show through. You hear someone describe their reaction and recognize it as your own experience, being spoken by someone else.

What emerges is unity in differentiation. One awareness, no separation, and everyone still entirely themselves.

As the group becomes aware of this happening, it becomes aware together. Presence amplifies. The stillness thickens. And you feel more yourself than ever: relaxed, awake, completely here.

Then people begin to see through patterns they have never seen before. My insight becomes yours, and yours becomes someone else’s, and it keeps going.

I don’t really know what to call this. I call it the sangha waking up to itself.

Much of my work is simply to notice when it is happening. As the shared space of listening amplifies, and the experience of Oneness as the Many starts to emerge, that is the moment to turn the group’s awareness toward itself. It does not have to be mine to do. It can be anyone who suddenly notices.

This is not an idealized community. It is awakening in the middle of things.

Where we separate is also where we meet.

Because every relationship grows out of one relationship:

Our relationship to our own mind.

—

Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, *Spectrum of Ecstasy: Embracing the Five Wisdom Emotions of Vajrayana Buddhism*, ch. 8, “Red Khandro-Pawo Display” (Shambhala, 2003; first published Aro Books, 1997), p. 149.

This is the work I do with people, in silence and in conversation. If you would like to sit with it rather than only read about it, Silence by the Sea meets on the first Sunday of each month in Waldport, and I work with people one to one, in person and online.