The following text is an edited excerpt from a talk given to new ngöndro students by Patrick Sweeney on March 1, 2002 in Ojai, CA.

The Essence of Samaya
As the path begins to unfold, the whole notion of samaya becomes the essence of the practice. The samaya bond is to be nailed continuously to the wisdom of transmission, which is inseparable from the experience of sacredness. If you can reduce vajrayana down to one statement, that's it. Because you’ve had the experience of having the very nature of your mind pointed out to be the trikaya, to be the inseparability of emptiness, luminosity, and unimpeded responsiveness or compassion, you're actually able to glimpse sacred world, sacred outlook. As a result of that glimpse you can never say you haven’t experienced yourself as Buddha. The fact that you've been bound to that experience of Buddhahood becomes the very basis of your path. That experience becomes like your heart. You cannot live without a heart. As a vajrayana practitioner you can't live without continuously maintaining and refreshing your samaya, which again, on an absolute or essential level, is returning over and over again to the wisdom mind that is demonstrated over and over again through relationship with the teacher, the teachings, and the lineage practices.

Communication
So obviously the first issue we have to explore when we enter into vajrayana is the issue of commitment. The issue of devotion, really. If there is no commitment, if there is no devotion, there can be no communication. If there is no communication we are wasting our time. As you look at the thangka of the Karma Kagyu lineage and you see the five progenitors of the lineage, Tilo, Naro, Marpa, Milo, Gampopa, you think of Trungpa Rinpoche and the Vajra Regent. And when I think of my own relationship to the Vajra Regent, I look around the room and I see other people who have had a relationship to them. This is really the fundamental dynamic. Where are we, in terms of the availability or openness of communication?

Progressing Along the Path
What does it mean to progress along the path? We don't say "I am progressing on the path", we don't say "you are progressing on the path". When we look at it objectively, what we really see is that our ongoing experience of reality is what is progressing along the path. We move from an experience of reality which is based on centralization around an illusory concept of self to an experience of reality which is based on complete, liberated awareness which is not centralized, nor is it projected onto an external centralizing agent. It's completely free. It is an experience of reality which is the same as the dharmakaya, the same as Vajradhara, Tilo, Naro, Marpa, Mila, Lord of Dharma Gampopa, Trungpa Rinpoche, the Vajra Regent, Thrangu Rinpoche, etc. However, in between, as we work to move from a constipated egoic experience of reality to an experience of reality which is based on the complete freedom of awareness, we have to go through the difficulty, the great pain of letting go of a contracted, uptight experience of reality.