Let the Dharma Live Through You

There is a light in you.

I can see it. At times, I can even feel it. You may even sense it is there.

Everyone carries this light in them. And yet it is kept hidden, tucked away, lost to the world.

From a Buddhist perspective, I am not waxing poetic, it is a statement of fact. We all possess buddhanature: the innate capacity for awakening, wisdom, and compassion. Everything is complete in the ground of our being. Nothing essential is missing.

And yet, almost everyone hesitates to share this light with the world.

We wait until we feel ready. Until we feel certain. Until we feel authorized by time, experience, or someone else’s permission.

Dharma practitioners are no different. In fact, we often become especially skilled in the art of delay, dressing it up as humility, discipline, or respect for tradition.

Most of us come to the Dharma with a sincere wish to understand this nature and awaken the heart. We read, listen, take notes, and try to place ourselves correctly in relation to a vast and ancient practice. This is good. Preservation of the teachings and these lineages is more important than ever in this world. Without careful transmission, the teachings lose their clarity and power and eventually all is lost.

And yet, if we stop there, something even more important is lost.

A living, revelatory lineage

The Kagyu and Nyingma practice lineages were never meant to be preserved as relics of the past. They are living practice traditions. More than that, they are revelatory traditions, lineages in which realization is not only preserved, but expressed.

When we look closely at the masters of the past, this becomes unmistakable. This is a lineage of writers, poets, visionaries, and synthesizers. Their realization did not remain private or lifeless, nor were they merely custodians of prepackaged ideas.

Longchenpa is remembered as a great yogi-scholar, seemingly spending his whole life in retreat, while also leaving behind a systemization of the Dzogchen teachings and over 270 texts on Dzogchen thought and practice.

Jamgon Kongtrul who lived about 200 years ago, is best known as one of the great compilers of the Tibetan Buddhist lineages. He was a prolific writer, poet, physician, and polymath, producing more than ninety volumes of work. Among them, the Five Great Treasuries continue to form the core foundation for practice and transmission in both the Nyingma and Kagyu traditions.

Chogyur Lingpa was one of the most prolific tertons in Tibetan history, revealing thirty-seven major termas and filling more than forty volumes of text. What is often overlooked is how little time it took. He revealed his first terma at thirty-one and died at forty-one. In a single decade, his realization expressed itself as a near continuous outpouring of Dharma

The same is true of the earlier masters. The 84 Mahasiddhas left behind songs of realization based on their lived experience of Mahamudra. Saraha left behind a treasure trove of Mahamudra instruction in the form of poems and songs. Tilopa gathered and synthesized a wide range of completion stage practices into a coherent system of practice. Milarepa sang thousands of songs of liberation as the natural expression of his insight and wisdom, his heart.

He didn't sing the same song every day. He met the day. Met the conditions. Met the world, with bodhicitta, with compassion, with love.

We should do the same.

Your light is meant to be shared

It is easy to imagine awakening as something transcendent or beyond description. An inner realization that happens in our practice, after which we might eventually be qualified to speak and share our experience of the path.

But in the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, realization is not lifeless. It is not stored in texts reserved for monasteries or retreat huts. When the limiting views of a narrow conception of the self fall away, a wealth of generosity appears. When fixation falls away, every moment is an opportunity for revelation. Not because we are trying to teach, but because wisdom naturally moves outward through our speech, our actions, and relationships.

This is why awakening is not only wisdom. It is also compassion. It shows up as responsiveness, care, and a wish to share what is alive in one’s own experience.

Still, most of us hesitate.

We tell ourselves we lack the realization of great masters, their depth of practice, their authority. We imagine a future version of ourselves, more polished, more complete, more worthy. One day, when we are ready and have finished the work to be done, we will have something meaningful to share.

But that day never comes.

Let me say it plainly: this hesitation is not humility. It is self-grasping reframed in spiritual language. And yes, I call bullshit. Our lineage masters would too.

The Dharma does not live in the future. It lives now, in the immediacy of our hearts and minds.

There is only today’s session. Today’s insight. Today’s understanding, however partial or incomplete it may feel. Wisdom is not something we accumulate and slowly perfect into a finished product. It arises fresh, in the moment, as a response to the circumstances of our life.

When we wait too long, what we eventually offer is not wisdom but a memory. Once we step outside the heart of the moment, we are left repeating words and ideas whose life force has already passed. What remains is just the heartless repetition of words and ideas.

What we see again and again, is that the Buddha's teachings thrive amidst creativity and the revelation and translation of the Dharma into the present. Periods of rigid thinking and codification inevitably led to decline. The outer forms of the teachings remain, but the life blood drains away.

Let your light shine

The deepest offering we can make in this world is to let the dharma live through us, through our actions, through our words, and yes, through our creative work.

This does not mean inventing teachings or abandoning discipline. The example of the lineage masters of the past protects us and keeps us honest.

But lineage was never meant to mute lived expression. Preservation without revelation leads to a path of perpetual decline. Revelation without lineage loses the structural authority and trust necessary to be an authentic source of refuge. The Kagyu and Nyingma traditions survived because they held both at once.

To translate the Dharma into this time and place is not a betrayal of the tradition. It is an act of devotion, expressed from the depths of the heart.

So how do we do this?

Quite simply: wherever you are in your practice, that is enough.

Maybe you are just beginning and still learning how to sit, how to rest, how to be present with your own mind. Maybe your practice is steady and something you return to each day, mining for wisdom and awakening the heart. Maybe you are already teaching, guiding, or helping others find their footing. Wherever you are, there are others in a similar spot on the path.

As much as we might wish for perfect instructions or the perfect teacher to appear when we are lost or confused, that is not how life usually unfolds. Awakening often arrives through ordinary people who have walked a little farther down the path and are willing to turn back and say, “This is what I’ve seen. This is what helped. This is where I stumbled.”

As much as we might think our experience on the path is insignificant or of little benefit, awakening often arrives through ordinary people who have walked a little farther down the path and are willing to turn back and say, “This is what I’ve seen. This is what helped. This is where I stumbled.”

Those people are not mythological beings. They are us.

You know something now that you didn't know before. You have sat with your own confusion and felt it loosen, even briefly. You have learned what does not work. You have found practices that steady you and perspectives that soften you. That experience has value, not because it makes you special, but because it makes you useful.

Meeting someone where they are does not require mastery. It requires presence. It requires remembering what it felt like to be at that fork in the road and speaking from there, not from an imagined future perfect self. This is not about building an identity as a teacher or being seen as wise. It is about being a good human being with a good heart.

When you share from lived experience, you are not elevating your position. You are standing beside someone and saying, “You’re not alone. This landscape is workable.” That simple act, offered without ego, without status, without performance, is one of the most faithful expressions of bodhicitta there is.

This is how the Dharma continues to light up the world, not only through the work of the great masters of the past, but through people who care enough to let it live through them.

That is the essence of the practice lineages.