Table Of Content

2012–07–15 Dzogchen Meditation The practice of Dzogchen Meditation is centered around the recognition of Natural Awareness. Natural Awareness refers to the true nature of our mind when it is free from habituation. Ordinarily in our day to day lives our minds are continually involved in habitual thought and projection. This habitual mode of being is generally how we operate and what keeps us trapped in a cycle of ignorance, delusion and suffering. This habitual thought and projection is what obscures Natural Awareness. Therefore we can understand Dzogchen Meditation as a practice which purifies the mind of habituation thus allowing us to recognize Natural Awareness. Since our habitual mind depends on constant movement, distraction and manipulation of what arises in experience, the fundamental form of practice in Dzogchen is to sit still and be undistracted – to leave whatever arises in our field of awareness as it is – that is, not to manipulate or strategize our thoughts or the sounds and sensations that we feel. To practice Dzogchen meditation we sit on a cushion or chair in the meditation posture. The spine is straight, not leaning to the right or left, front or back – comfortable and relaxed but upright, alert and awake. The eyes are open either looking straight ahead or slightly downward about six feet in front. We aren't looking around with our eyes or staring intently at anything. We aren't engaging the sense perception of sight particularly. The mouth is open slightly and the breath naturally goes in and out. The basic idea here is that what we do with our body affects our mind. This posture helps our mind to recognize and 'let be' in the present moment which is essentially the complete practice. There is nothing else that we are doing. From the practical point of view it is helpful to set aside a practice space which is tidy and quiet. It is also helpful to have a meditation timer with a bell rather than using a clock or other device that one checks constantly. Set the timer and do the practice until the bell rings and the time is up. This is how we do the essential practice of realizing Natural Awareness. How much time should we practice? If we think about how much time we spend reinforcing our habitual mind on a moment–to–moment basis then it becomes quite obvious that we need to spend quite a lot of time undoing that habituation through practice. Two hours a day is a good place to start. As beginners we may need to work up to that commitment and it does help to find a place where people engage in this practice and create the atmosphere of discipline together. Beyond that, meditation is like running – we really don't need to invest in lots of stuff. We just need to do it. Just thinking about doing it doesn't help, talking to people about doing it doesn't help, and meeting people who are famous for doing it doesn't help either. In order to realize Natural Awareness and stabilize that Awareness we need to do the practice ourselves. We need to make the time. Recognizing Natural Awareness One traditional practice instruction states that when one thought has ended and the next has not yet begun we can recognize uncontrived natural awareness. When we are doing our practice and we get caught in a habitual pattern of thought – some daydream – at some point we realize "I am thinking" and in that instant we are back in uncontrived Awareness. As Tsele Natsok Rangdrol writes, at this point we "let be" in that awareness: "When it happens that you do get involved in thoughts that recollect the past or entertain the future, then let be directly in awareness. If a thought pattern continues, there is no need for a separate antidote since whatever takes place is liberated by itself." This is a moment of recognition of Natural Awareness. It is completely uncontrived in that we didn't manufacture this awareness. We weren't 'meditating' in the sense of doing some kind of rigidly focused form of concentration. Rather, we noticed a gap in the progression of discursive habitual thinking and 'let be' in that. To 'let be' in this case has a quality of disowning. We are not attempting to fixate or grasp on to that gap or maintain it in any way. We simply let it be as it is for as long as it lasts. And that is how we train in Dzogchen Meditation. In the beginning we use a form of meditation taught by Trungpa Rinpoche which helps us to remain present and not space out during the practice. First we place our awareness on the outbreath. We go out with the outbreath, dissolve. Then the inbreath happens naturally. We don't place any particular emphasis on it. Then we go out with the outbreath and place our attention on the breath going out and dissolving. At some point a thought will come up and before we know it our awareness is captured in a daydream of discursive habitual thought. When we realize this we label this daydream 'thinking' and return to placing our attention on the outbreath, and dissolving. Labeling the discursive story 'thinking' gives us a bit more leverage over it and allows us to come back to the awareness of the outbreath. This technique allows us to clearly differentiate between being aware of our outbreath and being caught in 'thinking'. There are other profoundly helpful elements to this technique that should be noted. First, placing an emphasis on the outbreath as the main technique or main focus of concentration allows us to develop the constancy of mindfulness. There is an automatic sense of feedback. If we are not aware of the outbreath then we have probably spaced out. Spacing out or not being aware of what we are doing is fundamental ignorance – the root problem with which we are working in meditation. So being aware of the outbreath gives us a constant technique to sharpen our awareness. By not continuing this state of mindful attention, by breaking it with the inbreath and allowing a gap in that 'fabricated' technique, we allow a natural awareness to develop and this is really the remarkable element of this practice because that built–in gap destroys our tendency to turn our meditation practice into a way of repressing 'thinking'. "Cast away the fixation of rigidly meditating upon a reference point and instead release your awareness into carefree openness!" — Tsele Natsok Rangdrol Both foundational Schools of Buddhism like the Shravakas and Pratyekabuddhas and non–Buddhist schools of meditation use concentration techniques in an effort to calm the mind. In Buddhism this practice is known as shamatha and it is seen as a limited practice in the sense that it can create many more obstacles to realization than it solves. On the plus side, the practice of one–pointed shamatha allows us to slow down the speed of discursive thought and by accomplishing this the practitioner can experience uncontrived awareness if they have had the "pointing out instructions" from a qualified master and know what to look for. On the negative side shamatha practitioners can become attached to the 'stillness' of nonthought and mistake that for realization. They may also cling to the experiences found in the cessation of discursive mind brought about by stopping thought through the application of concentration techniques. By using one–pointed concentration to squash the arising of 'thinking' all kinds of peaceful and blissful states arise. Because they are pleasurable on a very refined level shamatha practitioners often cling to these experiences. The habitual attachment and clinging to these meditation states keeps shamatha practitioners trapped in samsara. It is for that reason that the Dzogchen practice instructions recommend 'short moments many times". One can establish a schedule of intensive practice. We can set our meditation timers and sit for a half an hour or 45 minutes – Trungpa Rinpoche recommended lots of sitting meditation – but we always need to remember that we are not attempting to induce some kind of trance state of concentration. There is no deep introspection but rather gap after gap in discursive thinking. So the instruction is 'fresh start' over and over. Every moment of experience is fresh by its very nature and the recognition of that is training in Dzogchen. Awakening from the Daydream "When you rest nakedly and naturally in the great openness of this awareness, do not be concerned with your old archenemy, the thinking that reflects, has myriad attributes, and has never given you a moment's rest in the past. Instead, in the space of awareness, which is like a cloudless sky, the movement of thoughts has vanished, disappeared collapsed. All the power of thinking is lost to awareness. This awareness is your intrinsic dharmakaya wisdom, naked and fresh!" — Dudjom Rinpoche Even though the basis of our experience has always been the primordial perfection of Natural Awareness, up until we engage in Dzogchen practice we have been living in a habitual daydream. Everything that arises in our field of awareness is conditioned by a habitual discursive dream state that we believe is reality. We take our projected habitual thoughts to be our reference points – the story we tell ourselves of what happened yesterday and the story we tell ourselves of what we will do tomorrow, of who we love and who we hate – all sorts of scenarios and schemes that are just habitual discursive thoughts. In our confused state we take these habitual reference points as solid and real, but of course, they aren't solid and they are not real. They are just thoughts and just discursive thinking. They have no solidity and no reality outside our discursive habitual mind. What happens when we begin to dissolve this fiction through meditation practice? The solidity of our habitual reference points begins to get quite shaky and as a result the entire samsaric structure that we maintain is shaken to its foundation. We become very aware of impermanence and of loneliness. Fear begins to arise along with a feeling of immense space. The habitual reference points have begun to fall apart and awareness has expanded. As Dilgo Khyentse points out, the barrier that comes up at this point is a reaction to that larger awareness of space and energy – the habitual reaction to this feeling of groundlessness, of no reference point – is generally fear. The way we work with this fear and groundlessness is to let be and open out into it without attempting to change it or manipulate it. We lean into the direct experience and continue to open and cut through any habituation or defense mechanisms with greater openness and awareness: "Clarity of awareness may in its initial stages be unpleasant or fear–inspiring; if so, then one should open oneself completely to the pain or the fear and welcome it. In this way the barriers created by one's own habitual emotional reactions and prejudices are broken down. When performing the meditation practice one should develop the feeling of opening oneself out completely to the whole universe with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind, ridding oneself of all protecting barriers." — Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche Beyond Meeting and Parting: Meeting the Guru's Mind "Awareness is first pointed out by your master. Thereby, you recognize your natural face, by yourself, and are introduced to your own nature. All the phenomena of samsara and nirvana, however they may appear, are none other than the expression of awareness itself. Thus, decide on one thing – awareness!" — Dudjom Rinpoche Reading practice instructions like this can be very helpful. There is a tradition within the 'practice lineage' of speaking simply and directly about what we experience in practice and how we should accomplish our training. For practitioners this type of instruction is more beneficial than getting into scholarly treatises or philosophical texts. There are many ways to receive the 'pointing out instruction' of Natural Awareness in the Tantric tradition. Depending upon the openness and receptivity of the student it can be through words, through the symbolic transmission of Tantric initiation, or through direct mind–to–mind transmission. The Guru's mind is the mind of the Buddha and of the lineage of genuine masters who have thoroughly realized unhabituated mind – enlightenment. In this way he or she is a living manifestation of the Buddha and, even better, they are someone we can meet and with whom we can develop a direct relationship. The Guru's mind is completely unhabituated Natural Awareness and that is what we recognize in the Guru. We also meet this mind every time we 'let be' in Natural Awareness in our practice. When there is a genuine meeting between an authentic teacher – one who has realized Natural Awareness and completely stabilized that realization – and a student – someone who has ripened themselves through practice – this authentic transmission can take place. Meeting with an authentic teacher and receiving transmission is said to be the only way to attain realization. The reason for this is that students can often become mistaken especially when encountering the fear and nakedness of the unhabituated mind. This is the particular meaning behind the Tantric practices of Guru Yoga and Sadhana. It is also the point of our Samaya Vow. What we have recognized in the Guru is our inspiration to go forward on the path even when we are feeling groundless and vulnerable. It is the mystery of nonduality that what we see in the Guru is what we are – Natural Awareness. Devotion and love are actually our only means to go beyond our hesitation and meet the Guru's mind. Meeting the Guru's mind is the most direct form of transmission of the wisdom of the Buddha. It is also no different from recognizing Natural Awareness. The good news is that there are still genuine teachers to meet. We are very lucky to live in a time and place where this genuine meeting is still possible. Our job is to continue to ripen ourselves through diligent practice, humility and heartfelt devotion. When we do this the Guru's mind is always 'beyond meeting and parting'. As Dudjom Rinpoche wrote — "My own guru said to me: I have no thought besides the guru. I have nothing to chant besides supplication to him. I have nothing to practice besides nonaction. I simply rest in that way. Now I am in a happy state – open, spacious, and free from reference point. For accomplishing the permanent goal of one's wishes, The profound instruction of Dzogchen is enough in itself." 2012–10–26 Minding the Gap: Knowing the Crucial Point of Recognizing Natural Awareness One traditional practice instruction states that when our habitual involvement in one thought has ended and we have yet to become engaged in the next thought we have the opportunity if we are attentive to recognize uncontrived natural awareness. This is a very simple instruction and yet it is the key point of practice. Without knowing this key point all of our efforts in practice will essentially be worthless. So what is it saying? How does this moment feel experientially? When we are doing our practice there are moments of simple awareness and there are periods of time when we are distracted and essentially caught in a daydream. Ordinarily in our day to day existence we go from one daydream to the next with very little awareness. Sometimes they are big daydreams with lots of emotion and discursive storyline and sometimes they are very subtle daydreams. But the main element of the daydream or delusion is that we are completely unaware of where we are and what we are doing in reality. We lose that basic awareness. The daydreams however are not permanent and they naturally degrade and fall apart – at some point we fall off the edge of the daydream and 'awaken' temporarily. This is a naturally occuring phenomena. When we sit and practice with unbiased awareness we become aware of these gaps between the distraction of daydreams. That is the gap we are recognizing again and again in our practice. As Dudjom Rinpoche writes, we simply gain confidence that thoughts and distraction are "self–liberated": "Just as waves on the ocean subside again into the ocean, gain confidence in the liberation of all thoughts, whatever may arise. Confidence is beyond the object of meditation and the act of meditating. It is free from the conceptual mind that fixates on meditation." The practice is to simply to recognize the gaps in discursive thinking and to come back again and again. There is no need to apply some kind of conceptual meditation technique but rather we 'let be' in awareness that is undistracted by the usual habitual picking and choosing, accepting and rejecting of what arises. As Tsele Natsok Rangdrol writes: "When it happens that you do get involved in thoughts that recollect the past or entertain the future, then let be directly in awareness. If a thought pattern continues, there is no need for a separate antidote since whatever takes place is liberated by itself." The point Tsele Natsok Rangdrol is making is that we do not need and we should not attempt to apply an antidote when we are caught in habitual thought. The habitual thought will actually fall apart on its own. We simply have to pay attention with an unbiased awareness. Any attempt to apply an antidote at this point carries with it a huge kind of hangover because we are trying to 'fix' our meditation state which is really just another habitual, discursive thought. The profound fact of kusulu meditation is that we are sitting there doing nothing and occasionally, if we pay attention, we realize that we are sitting there doing nothing! In the beginning we use a form of meditation taught by Trungpa Rinpoche which helps us to remain present and not space out during the practice. First we place our awareness on the outbreath. We go out with the outbreath, dissolve. Then the inbreath happens naturally. We don't place any particular emphasis on it. Then we go out with the outbreath and place our attention on the breath going out and dissolving. At some point a thought will come up and before we know it our awareness is captured in a daydream of discursive habitual thought. When we realize this we label this daydream 'thinking' and return to placing our attention on the outbreath, and dissolving. Labeling the discursive story 'thinking' gives us a bit more leverage over it and allows us to come back to the awareness of the outbreath. This technique allows us to clearly differentiate between being aware of our outbreath and being caught in 'thinking'. There are other profoundly helpful elements to this technique that should be noted. First, placing an emphasis on the outbreath as the main technique or main focus of concentration allows us to develop the constancy of mindfulness. There is an automatic sense of feedback. If we are not aware of the outbreath then we have probably spaced out. Spacing out or not being aware of what we are doing is fundamental ignorance – the root problem with which we are working in meditation. So being aware of the outbreath gives us a constant technique to sharpen our awareness. By not continuing this state of mindful attention, by breaking it with the inbreath and allowing a gap in that 'fabricated' technique, we allow a natural awareness to develop and this is really the remarkable element of this practice because that built–in gap destroys our tendency to turn our meditation practice into a way of repressing 'thinking'. "Cast away the fixation of rigidly meditating upon a reference point and instead release your awareness into carefree openness!" — Tsele Natsok Rangdrol Both foundational Schools of Buddhism like the Shravakas and Pratyekabuddhas and non–Buddhist schools of meditation use concentration techniques in an effort to calm the mind. In Buddhism this practice is known as shamatha and it is seen as a limited practice in the sense that it can create many more obstacles to realization than it solves. On the plus side, the practice of one–pointed shamatha allows us to slow down the speed of discursive thought and by accomplishing this the practitioner can experience uncontrived awareness if they have had the "pointing out instructions" from a qualified master and know what to look for. On the negative side shamatha practitioners can become attached to the 'stillness' of nonthought and mistake that for realization. They may also cling to the experiences found in the cessation of discursive mind brought about by stopping thought through the application of concentration techniques. By using one–pointed concentration to squash the arising of 'thinking' all kinds of peaceful and blissful states arise. Because they are pleasurable on a very refined level shamatha practitioners often cling to these experiences. The habitual attachment and clinging to these meditation states keeps shamatha practitioners trapped in samsara. In other words, shamatha meditation can stop disturbing emotions and thoughts and we can experience a blissful peace based on an absorption in a type of concentrated trance. The habitual patterns have not been undone, they have simply been interrupted by the mind's preoccupation with something else – in this case the concentration technique itself. As soon as we stop concentrating on the object of meditation we immediately resume our habitual patterns of thought and our disturbing emotions engage us in another samsaric daydream. In contrast to this, Dzogchen and Mahamudra meditation use technique only to establish an unbiased reference point for awareness. We notice that we are daydreaming, label it 'thinking' and come back. At the point of noticing we have already come back to an unfabricated, undistracted awareness. Through doing this again and again we begin to recognize a quality to that awareness that permeates all of our experience. What begins to bleed through is what is called "vipashyana" – or "clear seeing". We begin to perceive thoughts, feelings, emotions and objects beyond the obscuration of our habitual patterns of thought. What begins as a gap between discursive, habitual daydreams expands and undermines all of our delusive patterns. What we first notice only by experiencing the boundaries between habitual patterns of thought begins to undermine those daydreams much like the ocean eroding the mainland. 2013–03–19 Dzogchen Meditation Recognizing Natural Awareness The practice of Dzogchen Meditation is centered around the recognition of Natural Awareness. Natural Awareness refers to the true nature of our mind when it is free from habituation. Ordinarily in our day to day lives our minds are continually involved in habitual thought and projection. This habitual mode of being is generally how we operate and what keeps us trapped in a cycle of ignorance, delusion and suffering. Habitual thought and projection obscures our recognition of Natural Awareness. Therefore we can understand Dzogchen Meditation as a practice which purifies the mind of habituation allowing us to recognize Natural Awareness. Since habitual mind depends on constant movement, distraction and manipulation of what arises in experience, the fundamental form of practice in Dzogchen is to sit still and be undistracted – to leave whatever arises in our field of awareness as it is – that is, not to manipulate or strategize our thoughts or the sounds and sensations that we feel. This is called the "resting meditation of a kusulu". "Keep your body straight, refrain from talking, open your mouth slightly, and let the breath flow naturally. Don't pursue the past and don't invite the future. Simply rest naturally in the naked ordinary mind of the immediate present without trying to correct it or replace it. If you rest like that, your mind–essence will be clear and expansive, vivid and naked, without any concerns about thought or recollection, joy or pain. That is awareness (Rigpa)." — Khenpo Gangshar To practice Dzogchen meditation we sit on a cushion or chair in the meditation posture. The spine is straight, not leaning to the right or left, front or back – comfortable and relaxed but upright, alert and awake. The eyes are open either looking straight ahead or slightly downward about six feet in front. We aren't looking around with our eyes or staring intently at anything. We aren't engaging the sense perception of sight particularly. The mouth is open slightly and the breath naturally goes in and out. The basic idea here is that what we do with our body affects our mind. This posture helps our mind to recognize and 'let be' in the present moment which is essentially the complete practice. There is nothing else that we are doing. From the practical point of view it is helpful to set aside a practice space which is tidy and quiet. It is also helpful to have a meditation timer with a bell rather than using a clock or other device that one checks constantly. Set the timer and do the practice until the bell rings and the time is up. This is how we do the essential practice of realizing Natural Awareness. "One can define meditation as a process of letting go, of giving up conflict, not in a passive, spineless sense, but in the sense of being present yet not manipulative. So we are faced with the moment–to–moment alternative of either opening to space, of being in harmony with it, or of solidifying and fixating it." — Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche How much time should we practice? If we think about how much time we spend reinforcing our habitual mind on a moment–to–moment basis then it becomes obvious that we need to spend a lot of time undoing that habit through practice. Most of us are unused to the idea of spending a lot of time meditating. Instead we spend most of our time trying to make money, finding a mate, or engaged in other "worldly affairs". In order to engender the correct motivation for our meditation practice it is important to contemplate our situation. We possess a certain amount of leisure time and we have the freedom to pursue whatever interests we want. If we wanted to we could devote much of our time to spiritual activities. This is a unique situation called a "precious human birth". It is unique and precious because most sentient beings are not able to actually contemplate the ultimate meaning of their lives – they are so engaged in the struggle to survive. So we have a precious human birth. But it will not last long – time passes "like an arrow shot from a bow". So this time when we have the leisure to contemplate the spiritual nature of our lives is rare and fleeting. "Death comes without warning, this body will be a corpse." "Sincerely take to heart the fact that the time of death lies uncertain. Then, knowing that there is no time to waste, diligently apply yourself to spiritual practice!" — Tsele Natsok Rangdrol As we grow older, more and more, death comes closer to us. In our culture we try to push death away – but the contemplation of our own death is really a great motivation to persevere and realize our true nature through meditation practice. If someone told us today that we have two years to live then we would really apply ourselves to our spiritual practice. When we really understand that death comes without warning, then we place the correct emphasis on our meditation practice. When we contemplate the fleeting quality of our precious human birth it becomes easier to focus our lives on our Dharma practice – we recognize the urgency and don't become complacent. This type of motivation is important because we need to do a lot of practice and in the beginning it isn't easy. We need to sit and look at our minds directly. And when we first do this it is shocking to see how crazy our discursive mind is. Our first notion of meditation is that this crazy mind is the problem and that we need to stop its activity in some way. In fact most people believe meditation is about stopping discursive thought. Actually discursive thinking itself isn't the problem. The problem is that because of unawareness or distraction (marigpa in Tibetan) we habitually react to thoughts as they arise in our minds. In this way every thought that arises in our mind habitually conditions and obscures our awareness. Through Meditation practice we become aware of how our habitual mind operates and we begin to differentiate between the simple, open awareness of Natural Awareness and the distraction of habitual thought. Eventually, through meditation training this habitual conditioning is seen through completely. At that point, whether there is discursive thought or not the true nature of our mind, Natural Awareness, is no longer obscured. Minding the Gap: Knowing the Crucial Point of Recognizing Natural Awareness "When your past thought has ceased and your future thought has not yet arisen and you are free from conceptual reckoning in the present moment, then your genuine and natural awareness, the union of being empty and cognizant, dawns as the state of mind, which is like space – that itself is dzogchen transcending concepts, the cutting through of primordial purity, the open and naked exhaustion of phenomena. This is exactly what you should recognize. To sustain the practice means simply to rest in naturalness after recognizing." — Shechen Gyaltsab, Pema Namgyal One traditional practice instruction states that when our habitual involvement in one thought has ended and we have yet to become engaged in the next thought we have the opportunity if we are attentive to recognize uncontrived Natural Awareness. This is a very simple instruction and yet it is the key point of practice. Without knowing this key point all of our efforts in practice will essentially be worthless. So what is it saying? How does this moment feel experientially? When we are doing our practice there are moments of simple awareness and there are periods of time when we are distracted and essentially caught in a daydream. Ordinarily in our day to day existence we go from one daydream to the next with very little awareness. Sometimes they are big daydreams with lots of emotion and discursive storyline and sometimes they are very subtle daydreams. But the main element of the daydream or delusion is that we are completely unaware of where we are and what we are doing in reality. We lose that basic awareness. The daydreams however are not permanent and they naturally degrade and fall apart – at some point we fall off the edge of the daydream and momentarily touch the ground of awakened mind – Natural Awareness. This is a naturally occuring phenomena. When we sit and practice with unbiased awareness we become aware of these gaps between the distraction of daydreams. That is the gap we are recognizing again and again in our practice. In this way meditation practice can best be understood as a process of familiarizing ourselves with Natural Awareness through recognition of these gaps. As Dudjom Rinpoche writes, as we continue our practice we gain confidence through this process of familiarization that the distraction of habitual thoughts is "self–liberated": "Just as waves on the ocean subside again into the ocean, gain confidence in the liberation of all thoughts, whatever may arise. Confidence is beyond the object of meditation and the act of meditating. It is free from the conceptual mind that fixates on meditation." The practice is simply to recognize the gaps in discursive thinking and to come back again and again to a basic awareness of being. There is no need to apply some kind of conceptual meditation technique but rather we 'let be' in awareness that is undistracted by the usual habitual picking and choosing – accepting and rejecting – of what arises. As Tsele Natsok Rangdrol writes: "When it happens that you do get involved in thoughts that recollect the past or entertain the future, then let be directly in awareness. If a thought pattern continues, there is no need for a separate antidote since whatever takes place is liberated by itself." The point Tsele Natsok Rangdrol is making is that we do not need nor should we attempt to apply an antidote when we are caught in habitual thought. The habitual thought will fall apart on its own. We simply have to pay attention with an unbiased awareness. Any attempt to apply an antidote carries with it a huge kind of hangover because we are trying to 'fix' our meditation state which is really just another habitual, discursive thought. The profound fact of kusulu meditation is that we are sitting there doing nothing and occasionally, if we pay attention, we realize that we are sitting there doing nothing! In the beginning of our practice it is useful to use a form of meditation taught by Trungpa Rinpoche which helps us to remain present and not space out. First we place our awareness on the outbreath. The outbreath becomes a very light–handed reference point for our basic awareness. We go out with the outbreath and dissolve. Then the inbreath happens naturally. We don't place any particular emphasis on it. Then we go out with the outbreath and place our attention on the breath going out and dissolving into the space around us. At some point a thought will come up and before we know it our awareness is captured in a daydream of discursive habitual thought. When we realize this we label this daydream 'thinking' and return to placing our attention on the outbreath, and dissolving. Labeling the discursive story 'thinking' gives us a bit more leverage over it and allows us to come back to the awareness of the outbreath. This technique allows us to clearly differentiate between being aware of our outbreath and being caught in 'thinking'. There are other profoundly helpful elements to this technique that should be noted. First, placing an emphasis on the outbreath as the main technique or main focus of awareness allows us to develop the constancy of mindfulness. There is an automatic sense of feedback. If we are not aware of the outbreath then we have probably spaced out. Spacing out or not being aware of what we are doing is fundamental ignorance, marigpa, distraction – the root problem with which we are working in meditation. So being aware of the outbreath gives us a constant technique to sharpen our awareness. By not continuing this state of mindful attention, by breaking it with the inbreath and allowing a gap in that 'fabricated' technique, we allow our recognition of Natural Awareness to develop and this is really the remarkable element of this practice because that built–in gap destroys our tendency to turn our meditation practice into a way of repressing 'thinking'. "Cast away the fixation of rigidly meditating upon a reference point and instead release your awareness into carefree openness! Decide that whatever you experience is the playful expression of awareness; don't try to improve good or correct evil!" — Tsele Natsok Rangdrol In other words, we look directly at what arises without attempting to engage it or repress it and in that way whatever arises is the manifestation of Natural Awareness. There is no idealized meditation state that we are attempting to achieve by rejecting what we are experiencing right now. Our experience is always perfect and complete as it is when we look directly at it with no attempt to strategize or manipulate it – or, as it says in the Heart Sutra, "...the bodhisattvas have no attainment, they abide by means of prajnaparamita. Since there is no obscuration of mind, there is no fear. They transcend falsity (delusion) and attain complete nirvana. All the buddhas of the three times, by means of prajnaparamita, fully awaken to unsurpassable, true, complete enlightenment." Both foundational Schools of Buddhism like the Shravakas and Pratyekabuddhas and non–Buddhist schools of meditation use concentration techniques in an effort to calm the mind. In Buddhism this practice is known as shamatha and it is seen as a limited practice in the sense that it can create more obstacles to realization than it solves. On the positive side, the practice of one–pointed shamatha allows us to slow down the speed of discursive thought and by accomplishing this the practitioner can experience uncontrived awareness if they have had the "pointing out instructions" from a qualified master and know what to look for. On the negative side shamatha practitioners can become attached to the 'stillness' of nonthought and mistake that for realization. They may also cling to the temporary experiences found in the cessation of discursive mind brought about by stopping thought through the application of concentration techniques. By using one–pointed concentration to repress the arising of 'thinking' all kinds of peaceful and blissful states arise. Because they are pleasurable on a very refined level shamatha practitioners often cling to these experiences. The habitual attachment and clinging to these meditation experiences keeps shamatha practitioners trapped in samsara. Shamatha meditation can stop disturbing emotions and thoughts and we can experience a blissful peace based on an absorption in a type of concentrated trance. The habitual patterns have not been undone, they have simply been interrupted by the mind's preoccupation with something else – in this case the concentration technique itself. As soon as we stop concentrating on the object of meditation we immediately resume our habitual patterns of thought and our disturbing emotions engage us in another samsaric daydream. In contrast to this, in Dzogchen and Mahamudra meditation we use technique only to establish an unbiased reference point for awareness. Because the technique is to be aware of our breath we can actually notice when we have been daydreaming, label it 'thinking' and come back. At the point of noticing we have actually already come back to an unfabricated, undistracted awareness. What we are training in is the recognition of that moment. There really is nothing more to do when we come back to that simple awareness – in fact if we attempt to force ourselves to stay present we taint that uncontrived awareness. The most difficult aspect of our practice is learning to "let be" once the daydream falls apart because there is a tremendous habitual urge to jump on to the next thought. It is only through doing this again and again that we wear out this tendency to jump. Many teachers recommend "short moments many times". But this type of instruction only works when you are in a longterm retreat. If we just practice for short periods between checking our Iphone or facebook page we never wear out our habitual patterns. So we recommend "short moments many times for a long time". Just sit there and wear out the boredom and frustration, the fascination and exhilaration. We only gain confidence in our Natural Awareness through watching every reaction arise, dwell and dissipate over and over again. Eventually we become quite 'shinjanged' – which is a tibetan meditation term for completely processed out. Our shocking thoughts no longer shock us. We see them just as thoughts. We can see everything that arises in our mind and we no longer react habitually as though the thoughts were real. There is no substitute for sitting for long periods of time – none. That is why we offer 10 day Dzogchen Meditation retreats here at the Center four times a year. There really is no other way to directly penetrate the profound teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche's practice lineage. Gradually through doing this practice we begin to recognize a quality to awareness that permeates all of our experience. What begins to bleed through is what is called "vipashyana" – or "clear seeing". We begin to perceive thoughts, feelings, emotions and objects beyond the obscuration of our habitual patterns of thought. What begins as a gap between discursive, habitual daydreams expands and undermines all of our delusive patterns. What we first notice only by experiencing the boundary between periods of daydreaming and Awareness begins to expand. Trungpa Rinpoche used the analogy of the vast ocean of Natural Awareness undermining the mainland of habitual mind until it collapses into the ocean. In other words – the boundaries are undermined by Awareness until there

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43 Pages·2018·0.588 MB·English
by  Karma Tashi Wangchuk
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2012–07–15 Dzogchen Meditation The practice of Dzogchen Meditation is centered around the recognition of Natural Awareness. Natural Awareness refers to the true nature of our mind when it is free from habituation. Ordinarily in our day to day lives our minds are continually involved in habitual thought and projection. This habitual mode of being is generally how we operate and what keeps us trapped in a cycle of ignorance, delusion and suffering. This habitual thought and projection is what obscures Natural Awareness. Therefore we can understand Dzogchen Meditation as a practice which purifies the mind of habituation thus allowing us to recognize Natural Awareness. Since our habitual mind depends on constant movement, distraction and manipulation of what arises in experience, the fundamental form of practice in Dzogchen is to sit still and be undistracted – to leave whatever arises in our field of awareness as it is – that is, not to manipulate or strategize our thoughts or the sounds and sensations that we feel. To practice Dzogchen meditation we sit on a cushion or chair in the meditation posture. The spine is straight, not leaning to the right or left, front or back – comfortable and relaxed but upright, alert and awake. The eyes are open either looking straight ahead or slightly downward about six feet in front. We aren't looking around with our eyes or staring intently at anything. We aren't engaging the sense perception of sight particularly. The mouth is open slightly and the breath naturally goes in and out. The basic idea here is that what we do with our body affects our mind. This posture helps our mind to recognize and 'let be' in the present moment which is essentially the complete practice. There is nothing else that we are doing. From the practical point of view it is helpful to set aside a practice space which is tidy and quiet. It is also helpful to have a meditation timer with a bell rather than using a clock or other device that one checks constantly. Set the timer and do the practice until the bell rings and the time is up. This is how we do the essential practice of realizing Natural Awareness. How much time should we practice? If we think about how much time we spend reinforcing our habitual mind on a moment–to–moment basis then it becomes quite obvious that we need to spend quite a lot of time undoing that habituation through practice. Two hours a day is a good place to start. As beginners we may need to work up to that commitment and it does help to find a place where people engage in this practice and create the atmosphere of discipline together. Beyond that, meditation is like running – we really don't need to invest in lots of stuff. We just need to do it. Just thinking about doing it doesn't help, talking to people about doing it doesn't help, and meeting people who are famous for doing it doesn't help either. In order to realize Natural Awareness and stabilize that Awareness we need to do the practice ourselves. We need to make the time. Recognizing Natural Awareness One traditional practice instruction states that when one thought has ended and the next has not yet begun we can recognize uncontrived natural awareness. When we are doing our practice and we get caught in a habitual pattern of thought – some daydream – at some point we realize "I am thinking" and in that instant we are back in uncontrived Awareness. As Tsele Natsok Rangdrol writes, at this point we "let be" in that awareness: "When it happens that you do get involved in thoughts that recollect the past or entertain the future, then let be directly in awareness. If a thought pattern continues, there is no need for a separate antidote since whatever takes place is liberated by itself." This is a moment of recognition of Natural Awareness. It is completely uncontrived in that we didn't manufacture this awareness. We weren't 'meditating' in the sense of doing some kind of rigidly focused form of concentration. Rather, we noticed a gap in the progression of discursive habitual thinking and 'let be' in that. To 'let be' in this case has a quality of disowning. We are not attempting to fixate or grasp on to that gap or maintain it in any way. We simply let it be as it is for as long as it lasts. And that is how we train in Dzogchen Meditation. In the beginning we use a form of meditation taught by Trungpa Rinpoche which helps us to remain present and not space out during the practice. First we place our awareness on the outbreath. We go out with the outbreath, dissolve. Then the inbreath happens naturally. We don't place any particular emphasis on it. Then we go out with the outbreath and place our attention on the breath going out and dissolving. At some point a thought will come up and before we know it our awareness is captured in a daydream of discursive habitual thought. When we realize this we label this daydream 'thinking' and return to placing our attention on the outbreath, and dissolving. Labeling the discursive story 'thinking' gives us a bit more leverage over it and allows us to come back to the awareness of the outbreath. This technique allows us to clearly differentiate between being aware of our outbreath and being caught in 'thinking'. There are other profoundly helpful elements to this technique that should be noted. First, placing an emphasis on the outbreath as the main technique or main focus of concentration allows us to develop the constancy of mindfulness. There is an automatic sense of feedback. If we are not aware of the outbreath then we have probably spaced out. Spacing out or not being aware of what we are doing is fundamental ignorance – the root problem with which we are working in meditation. So being aware of the outbreath gives us a constant technique to sharpen our awareness. By not continuing this state of mindful attention, by breaking it with the inbreath and allowing a gap in that 'fabricated' technique, we allow a natural awareness to develop and this is really the remarkable element of this practice because that built–in gap destroys our tendency to turn our meditation practice into a way of repressing 'thinking'. "Cast away the fixation of rigidly meditating upon a reference point and instead release your awareness into carefree openness!" — Tsele Natsok Rangdrol Both foundational Schools of Buddhism like the Shravakas and Pratyekabuddhas and non–Buddhist schools of meditation use concentration techniques in an effort to calm the mind. In Buddhism this practice is known as shamatha and it is seen as a limited practice in the sense that it can create many more obstacles to realization than it solves. On the plus side, the practice of one–pointed shamatha allows us to slow down the speed of discursive thought and by accomplishing this the practitioner can experience uncontrived awareness if they have had the "pointing out instructions" from a qualified master and know what to look for. On the negative side shamatha practitioners can become attached to the 'stillness' of nonthought and mistake that for realization. They may also cling to the experiences found in the cessation of discursive mind brought about by stopping thought through the application of concentration techniques. By using one–pointed concentration to squash the arising of 'thinking' all kinds of peaceful and blissful states arise. Because they are pleasurable on a very refined level shamatha practitioners often cling to these experiences. The habitual attachment and clinging to these meditation states keeps shamatha practitioners trapped in samsara. It is for that reason that the Dzogchen practice instructions recommend 'short moments many times". One can establish a schedule of intensive practice. We can set our meditation timers and sit for a half an hour or 45 minutes – Trungpa Rinpoche recommended lots of sitting meditation – but we always need to remember that we are not attempting to induce some kind of trance state of concentration. There is no deep introspection but rather gap after gap in discursive thinking. So the instruction is 'fresh start' over and over. Every moment of experience is fresh by its very nature and the recognition of that is training in Dzogchen. Awakening from the Daydream "When you rest nakedly and naturally in the great openness of this awareness, do not be concerned with your old archenemy, the thinking that reflects, has myriad attributes, and has never given you a moment's rest in the past. Instead, in the space of awareness, which is like a cloudless sky, the movement of thoughts has vanished, disappeared collapsed. All the power of thinking is lost to awareness. This awareness is your intrinsic dharmakaya wisdom, naked and fresh!" — Dudjom Rinpoche Even though the basis of our experience has always been the primordial perfection of Natural Awareness, up until we engage in Dzogchen practice we have been living in a habitual daydream. Everything that arises in our field of awareness is conditioned by a habitual discursive dream state that we believe is reality. We take our projected habitual thoughts to be our reference points – the story we tell ourselves of what happened yesterday and the story we tell ourselves of what we will do tomorrow, of who we love and who we hate – all sorts of scenarios and schemes that are just habitual discursive thoughts. In our confused state we take these habitual reference points as solid and real, but of course, they aren't solid and they are not real. They are just thoughts and just discursive thinking. They have no solidity and no reality outside our discursive habitual mind. What happens when we begin to dissolve this fiction through meditation practice? The solidity of our habitual reference points begins to get quite shaky and as a result the entire samsaric structure that we maintain is shaken to its foundation. We become very aware of impermanence and of loneliness. Fear begins to arise along with a feeling of immense space. The habitual reference points have begun to fall apart and awareness has expanded. As Dilgo Khyentse points out, the barrier that comes up at this point is a reaction to that larger awareness of space and energy – the habitual reaction to this feeling of groundlessness, of no reference point – is generally fear. The way we work with this fear and groundlessness is to let be and open out into it without attempting to change it or manipulate it. We lean into the direct experience and continue to open and cut through any habituation or defense mechanisms with greater openness and awareness: "Clarity of awareness may in its initial stages be unpleasant or fear–inspiring; if so, then one should open oneself completely to the pain or the fear and welcome it. In this way the barriers created by one's own habitual emotional reactions and prejudices are broken down. When performing the meditation practice one should develop the feeling of opening oneself out completely to the whole universe with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind, ridding oneself of all protecting barriers." — Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche Beyond Meeting and Parting: Meeting the Guru's Mind "Awareness is first pointed out by your master. Thereby, you recognize your natural face, by yourself, and are introduced to your own nature. All the phenomena of samsara and nirvana, however they may appear, are none other than the expression of awareness itself. Thus, decide on one thing – awareness!" — Dudjom Rinpoche Reading practice instructions like this can be very helpful. There is a tradition within the 'practice lineage' of speaking simply and directly about what we experience in practice and how we should accomplish our training. For practitioners this type of instruction is more beneficial than getting into scholarly treatises or philosophical texts. There are many ways to receive the 'pointing out instruction' of Natural Awareness in the Tantric tradition. Depending upon the openness and receptivity of the student it can be through words, through the symbolic transmission of Tantric initiation, or through direct mind–to–mind transmission. The Guru's mind is the mind of the Buddha and of the lineage of genuine masters who have thoroughly realized unhabituated mind – enlightenment. In this way he or she is a living manifestation of the Buddha and, even better, they are someone we can meet and with whom we can develop a direct relationship. The Guru's mind is completely unhabituated Natural Awareness and that is what we recognize in the Guru. We also meet this mind every time we 'let be' in Natural Awareness in our practice. When there is a genuine meeting between an authentic teacher – one who has realized Natural Awareness and completely stabilized that realization – and a student – someone who has ripened themselves through practice – this authentic transmission can take place. Meeting with an authentic teacher and receiving transmission is said to be the only way to attain realization. The reason for this is that students can often become mistaken especially when encountering the fear and nakedness of the unhabituated mind. This is the particular meaning behind the Tantric practices of Guru Yoga and Sadhana. It is also the point of our Samaya Vow. What we have recognized in the Guru is our inspiration to go forward on the path even when we are feeling groundless and vulnerable. It is the mystery of nonduality that what we see in the Guru is what we are – Natural Awareness. Devotion and love are actually our only means to go beyond our hesitation and meet the Guru's mind. Meeting the Guru's mind is the most direct form of transmission of the wisdom of the Buddha. It is also no different from recognizing Natural Awareness. The good news is that there are still genuine teachers to meet. We are very lucky to live in a time and place where this genuine meeting is still possible. Our job is to continue to ripen ourselves through diligent practice, humility and heartfelt devotion. When we do this the Guru's mind is always 'beyond meeting and parting'. As Dudjom Rinpoche wrote — "My own guru said to me: I have no thought besides the guru. I have nothing to chant besides supplication to him. I have nothing to practice besides nonaction. I simply rest in that way. Now I am in a happy state – open, spacious, and free from reference point. For accomplishing the permanent goal of one's wishes, The profound instruction of Dzogchen is enough in itself." 2012–10–26 Minding the Gap: Knowing the Crucial Point of Recognizing Natural Awareness One traditional practice instruction states that when our habitual involvement in one thought has ended and we have yet to become engaged in the next thought we have the opportunity if we are attentive to recognize uncontrived natural awareness. This is a very simple instruction and yet it is the key point of practice. Without knowing this key point all of our efforts in practice will essentially be worthless. So what is it saying? How does this moment feel experientially? When we are doing our practice there are moments of simple awareness and there are periods of time when we are distracted and essentially caught in a daydream. Ordinarily in our day to day existence we go from one daydream to the next with very little awareness. Sometimes they are big daydreams with lots of emotion and discursive storyline and sometimes they are very subtle daydreams. But the main element of the daydream or delusion is that we are completely unaware of where we are and what we are doing in reality. We lose that basic awareness. The daydreams however are not permanent and they naturally degrade and fall apart – at some point we fall off the edge of the daydream and 'awaken' temporarily. This is a naturally occuring phenomena. When we sit and practice with unbiased awareness we become aware of these gaps between the distraction of daydreams. That is the gap we are recognizing again and again in our practice. As Dudjom Rinpoche writes, we simply gain confidence that thoughts and distraction are "self–liberated": "Just as waves on the ocean subside again into the ocean, gain confidence in the liberation of all thoughts, whatever may arise. Confidence is beyond the object of meditation and the act of meditating. It is free from the conceptual mind that fixates on meditation." The practice is to simply to recognize the gaps in discursive thinking and to come back again and again. There is no need to apply some kind of conceptual meditation technique but rather we 'let be' in awareness that is undistracted by the usual habitual picking and choosing, accepting and rejecting of what arises. As Tsele Natsok Rangdrol writes: "When it happens that you do get involved in thoughts that recollect the past or entertain the future, then let be directly in awareness. If a thought pattern continues, there is no need for a separate antidote since whatever takes place is liberated by itself." The point Tsele Natsok Rangdrol is making is that we do not need and we should not attempt to apply an antidote when we are caught in habitual thought. The habitual thought will actually fall apart on its own. We simply have to pay attention with an unbiased awareness. Any attempt to apply an antidote at this point carries with it a huge kind of hangover because we are trying to 'fix' our meditation state which is really just another habitual, discursive thought. The profound fact of kusulu meditation is that we are sitting there doing nothing and occasionally, if we pay attention, we realize that we are sitting there doing nothing! In the beginning we use a form of meditation taught by Trungpa Rinpoche which helps us to remain present and not space out during the practice. First we place our awareness on the outbreath. We go out with the outbreath, dissolve. Then the inbreath happens naturally. We don't place any particular emphasis on it. Then we go out with the outbreath and place our attention on the breath going out and dissolving. At some point a thought will come up and before we know it our awareness is captured in a daydream of discursive habitual thought. When we realize this we label this daydream 'thinking' and return to placing our attention on the outbreath, and dissolving. Labeling the discursive story 'thinking' gives us a bit more leverage over it and allows us to come back to the awareness of the outbreath. This technique allows us to clearly differentiate between being aware of our outbreath and being caught in 'thinking'. There are other profoundly helpful elements to this technique that should be noted. First, placing an emphasis on the outbreath as the main technique or main focus of concentration allows us to develop the constancy of mindfulness. There is an automatic sense of feedback. If we are not aware of the outbreath then we have probably spaced out. Spacing out or not being aware of what we are doing is fundamental ignorance – the root problem with which we are working in meditation. So being aware of the outbreath gives us a constant technique to sharpen our awareness. By not continuing this state of mindful attention, by breaking it with the inbreath and allowing a gap in that 'fabricated' technique, we allow a natural awareness to develop and this is really the remarkable element of this practice because that built–in gap destroys our tendency to turn our meditation practice into a way of repressing 'thinking'. "Cast away the fixation of rigidly meditating upon a reference point and instead release your awareness into carefree openness!" — Tsele Natsok Rangdrol Both foundational Schools of Buddhism like the Shravakas and Pratyekabuddhas and non–Buddhist schools of meditation use concentration techniques in an effort to calm the mind. In Buddhism this practice is known as shamatha and it is seen as a limited practice in the sense that it can create many more obstacles to realization than it solves. On the plus side, the practice of one–pointed shamatha allows us to slow down the speed of discursive thought and by accomplishing this the practitioner can experience uncontrived awareness if they have had the "pointing out instructions" from a qualified master and know what to look for. On the negative side shamatha practitioners can become attached to the 'stillness' of nonthought and mistake that for realization. They may also cling to the experiences found in the cessation of discursive mind brought about by stopping thought through the application of concentration techniques. By using one–pointed concentration to squash the arising of 'thinking' all kinds of peaceful and blissful states arise. Because they are pleasurable on a very refined level shamatha practitioners often cling to these experiences. The habitual attachment and clinging to these meditation states keeps shamatha practitioners trapped in samsara. In other words, shamatha meditation can stop disturbing emotions and thoughts and we can experience a blissful peace based on an absorption in a type of concentrated trance. The habitual patterns have not been undone, they have simply been interrupted by the mind's preoccupation with something else – in this case the concentration technique itself. As soon as we stop concentrating on the object of meditation we immediately resume our habitual patterns of thought and our disturbing emotions engage us in another samsaric daydream. In contrast to this, Dzogchen and Mahamudra meditation use technique only to establish an unbiased reference point for awareness. We notice that we are daydreaming, label it 'thinking' and come back. At the point of noticing we have already come back to an unfabricated, undistracted awareness. Through doing this again and again we begin to recognize a quality to that awareness that permeates all of our experience. What begins to bleed through is what is called "vipashyana" – or "clear seeing". We begin to perceive thoughts, feelings, emotions and objects beyond the obscuration of our habitual patterns of thought. What begins as a gap between discursive, habitual daydreams expands and undermines all of our delusive patterns. What we first notice only by experiencing the boundaries between habitual patterns of thought begins to undermine those daydreams much like the ocean eroding the mainland. 2013–03–19 Dzogchen Meditation Recognizing Natural Awareness The practice of Dzogchen Meditation is centered around the recognition of Natural Awareness. Natural Awareness refers to the true nature of our mind when it is free from habituation. Ordinarily in our day to day lives our minds are continually involved in habitual thought and projection. This habitual mode of being is generally how we operate and what keeps us trapped in a cycle of ignorance, delusion and suffering. Habitual thought and projection obscures our recognition of Natural Awareness. Therefore we can understand Dzogchen Meditation as a practice which purifies the mind of habituation allowing us to recognize Natural Awareness. Since habitual mind depends on constant movement, distraction and manipulation of what arises in experience, the fundamental form of practice in Dzogchen is to sit still and be undistracted – to leave whatever arises in our field of awareness as it is – that is, not to manipulate or strategize our thoughts or the sounds and sensations that we feel. This is called the "resting meditation of a kusulu". "Keep your body straight, refrain from talking, open your mouth slightly, and let the breath flow naturally. Don't pursue the past and don't invite the future. Simply rest naturally in the naked ordinary mind of the immediate present without trying to correct it or replace it. If you rest like that, your mind–essence will be clear and expansive, vivid and naked, without any concerns about thought or recollection, joy or pain. That is awareness (Rigpa)." — Khenpo Gangshar To practice Dzogchen meditation we sit on a cushion or chair in the meditation posture. The spine is straight, not leaning to the right or left, front or back – comfortable and relaxed but upright, alert and awake. The eyes are open either looking straight ahead or slightly downward about six feet in front. We aren't looking around with our eyes or staring intently at anything. We aren't engaging the sense perception of sight particularly. The mouth is open slightly and the breath naturally goes in and out. The basic idea here is that what we do with our body affects our mind. This posture helps our mind to recognize and 'let be' in the present moment which is essentially the complete practice. There is nothing else that we are doing. From the practical point of view it is helpful to set aside a practice space which is tidy and quiet. It is also helpful to have a meditation timer with a bell rather than using a clock or other device that one checks constantly. Set the timer and do the practice until the bell rings and the time is up. This is how we do the essential practice of realizing Natural Awareness. "One can define meditation as a process of letting go, of giving up conflict, not in a passive, spineless sense, but in the sense of being present yet not manipulative. So we are faced with the moment–to–moment alternative of either opening to space, of being in harmony with it, or of solidifying and fixating it." — Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche How much time should we practice? If we think about how much time we spend reinforcing our habitual mind on a moment–to–moment basis then it becomes obvious that we need to spend a lot of time undoing that habit through practice. Most of us are unused to the idea of spending a lot of time meditating. Instead we spend most of our time trying to make money, finding a mate, or engaged in other "worldly affairs". In order to engender the correct motivation for our meditation practice it is important to contemplate our situation. We possess a certain amount of leisure time and we have the freedom to pursue whatever interests we want. If we wanted to we could devote much of our time to spiritual activities. This is a unique situation called a "precious human birth". It is unique and precious because most sentient beings are not able to actually contemplate the ultimate meaning of their lives – they are so engaged in the struggle to survive. So we have a precious human birth. But it will not last long – time passes "like an arrow shot from a bow". So this time when we have the leisure to contemplate the spiritual nature of our lives is rare and fleeting. "Death comes without warning, this body will be a corpse." "Sincerely take to heart the fact that the time of death lies uncertain. Then, knowing that there is no time to waste, diligently apply yourself to spiritual practice!" — Tsele Natsok Rangdrol As we grow older, more and more, death comes closer to us. In our culture we try to push death away – but the contemplation of our own death is really a great motivation to persevere and realize our true nature through meditation practice. If someone told us today that we have two years to live then we would really apply ourselves to our spiritual practice. When we really understand that death comes without warning, then we place the correct emphasis on our meditation practice. When we contemplate the fleeting quality of our precious human birth it becomes easier to focus our lives on our Dharma practice – we recognize the urgency and don't become complacent. This type of motivation is important because we need to do a lot of practice and in the beginning it isn't easy. We need to sit and look at our minds directly. And when we first do this it is shocking to see how crazy our discursive mind is. Our first notion of meditation is that this crazy mind is the problem and that we need to stop its activity in some way. In fact most people believe meditation is about stopping discursive thought. Actually discursive thinking itself isn't the problem. The problem is that because of unawareness or distraction (marigpa in Tibetan) we habitually react to thoughts as they arise in our minds. In this way every thought that arises in our mind habitually conditions and obscures our awareness. Through Meditation practice we become aware of how our habitual mind operates and we begin to differentiate between the simple, open awareness of Natural Awareness and the distraction of habitual thought. Eventually, through meditation training this habitual conditioning is seen through completely. At that point, whether there is discursive thought or not the true nature of our mind, Natural Awareness, is no longer obscured. Minding the Gap: Knowing the Crucial Point of Recognizing Natural Awareness "When your past thought has ceased and your future thought has not yet arisen and you are free from conceptual reckoning in the present moment, then your genuine and natural awareness, the union of being empty and cognizant, dawns as the state of mind, which is like space – that itself is dzogchen transcending concepts, the cutting through of primordial purity, the open and naked exhaustion of phenomena. This is exactly what you should recognize. To sustain the practice means simply to rest in naturalness after recognizing." — Shechen Gyaltsab, Pema Namgyal One traditional practice instruction states that when our habitual involvement in one thought has ended and we have yet to become engaged in the next thought we have the opportunity if we are attentive to recognize uncontrived Natural Awareness. This is a very simple instruction and yet it is the key point of practice. Without knowing this key point all of our efforts in practice will essentially be worthless. So what is it saying? How does this moment feel experientially? When we are doing our practice there are moments of simple awareness and there are periods of time when we are distracted and essentially caught in a daydream. Ordinarily in our day to day existence we go from one daydream to the next with very little awareness. Sometimes they are big daydreams with lots of emotion and discursive storyline and sometimes they are very subtle daydreams. But the main element of the daydream or delusion is that we are completely unaware of where we are and what we are doing in reality. We lose that basic awareness. The daydreams however are not permanent and they naturally degrade and fall apart – at some point we fall off the edge of the daydream and momentarily touch the ground of awakened mind – Natural Awareness. This is a naturally occuring phenomena. When we sit and practice with unbiased awareness we become aware of these gaps between the distraction of daydreams. That is the gap we are recognizing again and again in our practice. In this way meditation practice can best be understood as a process of familiarizing ourselves with Natural Awareness through recognition of these gaps. As Dudjom Rinpoche writes, as we continue our practice we gain confidence through this process of familiarization that the distraction of habitual thoughts is "self–liberated": "Just as waves on the ocean subside again into the ocean, gain confidence in the liberation of all thoughts, whatever may arise. Confidence is beyond the object of meditation and the act of meditating. It is free from the conceptual mind that fixates on meditation." The practice is simply to recognize the gaps in discursive thinking and to come back again and again to a basic awareness of being. There is no need to apply some kind of conceptual meditation technique but rather we 'let be' in awareness that is undistracted by the usual habitual picking and choosing – accepting and rejecting – of what arises. As Tsele Natsok Rangdrol writes: "When it happens that you do get involved in thoughts that recollect the past or entertain the future, then let be directly in awareness. If a thought pattern continues, there is no need for a separate antidote since whatever takes place is liberated by itself." The point Tsele Natsok Rangdrol is making is that we do not need nor should we attempt to apply an antidote when we are caught in habitual thought. The habitual thought will fall apart on its own. We simply have to pay attention with an unbiased awareness. Any attempt to apply an antidote carries with it a huge kind of hangover because we are trying to 'fix' our meditation state which is really just another habitual, discursive thought. The profound fact of kusulu meditation is that we are sitting there doing nothing and occasionally, if we pay attention, we realize that we are sitting there doing nothing! In the beginning of our practice it is useful to use a form of meditation taught by Trungpa Rinpoche which helps us to remain present and not space out. First we place our awareness on the outbreath. The outbreath becomes a very light–handed reference point for our basic awareness. We go out with the outbreath and dissolve. Then the inbreath happens naturally. We don't place any particular emphasis on it. Then we go out with the outbreath and place our attention on the breath going out and dissolving into the space around us. At some point a thought will come up and before we know it our awareness is captured in a daydream of discursive habitual thought. When we realize this we label this daydream 'thinking' and return to placing our attention on the outbreath, and dissolving. Labeling the discursive story 'thinking' gives us a bit more leverage over it and allows us to come back to the awareness of the outbreath. This technique allows us to clearly differentiate between being aware of our outbreath and being caught in 'thinking'. There are other profoundly helpful elements to this technique that should be noted. First, placing an emphasis on the outbreath as the main technique or main focus of awareness allows us to develop the constancy of mindfulness. There is an automatic sense of feedback. If we are not aware of the outbreath then we have probably spaced out. Spacing out or not being aware of what we are doing is fundamental ignorance, marigpa, distraction – the root problem with which we are working in meditation. So being aware of the outbreath gives us a constant technique to sharpen our awareness. By not continuing this state of mindful attention, by breaking it with the inbreath and allowing a gap in that 'fabricated' technique, we allow our recognition of Natural Awareness to develop and this is really the remarkable element of this practice because that built–in gap destroys our tendency to turn our meditation practice into a way of repressing 'thinking'. "Cast away the fixation of rigidly meditating upon a reference point and instead release your awareness into carefree openness! Decide that whatever you experience is the playful expression of awareness; don't try to improve good or correct evil!" — Tsele Natsok Rangdrol In other words, we look directly at what arises without attempting to engage it or repress it and in that way whatever arises is the manifestation of Natural Awareness. There is no idealized meditation state that we are attempting to achieve by rejecting what we are experiencing right now. Our experience is always perfect and complete as it is when we look directly at it with no attempt to strategize or manipulate it – or, as it says in the Heart Sutra, "...the bodhisattvas have no attainment, they abide by means of prajnaparamita. Since there is no obscuration of mind, there is no fear. They transcend falsity (delusion) and attain complete nirvana. All the buddhas of the three times, by means of prajnaparamita, fully awaken to unsurpassable, true, complete enlightenment." Both foundational Schools of Buddhism like the Shravakas and Pratyekabuddhas and non–Buddhist schools of meditation use concentration techniques in an effort to calm the mind. In Buddhism this practice is known as shamatha and it is seen as a limited practice in the sense that it can create more obstacles to realization than it solves. On the positive side, the practice of one–pointed shamatha allows us to slow down the speed of discursive thought and by accomplishing this the practitioner can experience uncontrived awareness if they have had the "pointing out instructions" from a qualified master and know what to look for. On the negative side shamatha practitioners can become attached to the 'stillness' of nonthought and mistake that for realization. They may also cling to the temporary experiences found in the cessation of discursive mind brought about by stopping thought through the application of concentration techniques. By using one–pointed concentration to repress the arising of 'thinking' all kinds of peaceful and blissful states arise. Because they are pleasurable on a very refined level shamatha practitioners often cling to these experiences. The habitual attachment and clinging to these meditation experiences keeps shamatha practitioners trapped in samsara. Shamatha meditation can stop disturbing emotions and thoughts and we can experience a blissful peace based on an absorption in a type of concentrated trance. The habitual patterns have not been undone, they have simply been interrupted by the mind's preoccupation with something else – in this case the concentration technique itself. As soon as we stop concentrating on the object of meditation we immediately resume our habitual patterns of thought and our disturbing emotions engage us in another samsaric daydream. In contrast to this, in Dzogchen and Mahamudra meditation we use technique only to establish an unbiased reference point for awareness. Because the technique is to be aware of our breath we can actually notice when we have been daydreaming, label it 'thinking' and come back. At the point of noticing we have actually already come back to an unfabricated, undistracted awareness. What we are training in is the recognition of that moment. There really is nothing more to do when we come back to that simple awareness – in fact if we attempt to force ourselves to stay present we taint that uncontrived awareness. The most difficult aspect of our practice is learning to "let be" once the daydream falls apart because there is a tremendous habitual urge to jump on to the next thought. It is only through doing this again and again that we wear out this tendency to jump. Many teachers recommend "short moments many times". But this type of instruction only works when you are in a longterm retreat. If we just practice for short periods between checking our Iphone or facebook page we never wear out our habitual patterns. So we recommend "short moments many times for a long time". Just sit there and wear out the boredom and frustration, the fascination and exhilaration. We only gain confidence in our Natural Awareness through watching every reaction arise, dwell and dissipate over and over again. Eventually we become quite 'shinjanged' – which is a tibetan meditation term for completely processed out. Our shocking thoughts no longer shock us. We see them just as thoughts. We can see everything that arises in our mind and we no longer react habitually as though the thoughts were real. There is no substitute for sitting for long periods of time – none. That is why we offer 10 day Dzogchen Meditation retreats here at the Center four times a year. There really is no other way to directly penetrate the profound teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche's practice lineage. Gradually through doing this practice we begin to recognize a quality to awareness that permeates all of our experience. What begins to bleed through is what is called "vipashyana" – or "clear seeing". We begin to perceive thoughts, feelings, emotions and objects beyond the obscuration of our habitual patterns of thought. What begins as a gap between discursive, habitual daydreams expands and undermines all of our delusive patterns. What we first notice only by experiencing the boundary between periods of daydreaming and Awareness begins to expand. Trungpa Rinpoche used the analogy of the vast ocean of Natural Awareness undermining the mainland of habitual mind until it collapses into the ocean. In other words – the boundaries are undermined by Awareness until there

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