Self-arisen and self-liberated

Melvin McLeod: What does "self-liberated" mean?

Khenpo Rinpoche: Self-arisen and self-liberated means that when a thought arises, it's like a wave coming up from the ocean of luminous clarity. And it dissolves back into that luminous clarity. It never leaves being of the nature of luminous clarity, just like a wave never leaves the ocean.

That means, basically, that whatever appears is always luminosity. For example, your thoughts don't come from anywhere and they don't go anywhere. But, at the same time, they appear and they manifest. So that appearance, that arising, is called self-arising and self-liberation because it's nothing other than luminosity itself that's liberated.

From an interview with Khenpo Rinpoche in Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, Spring 2004, p. 27.