.................................................................................
H.H. DILGO KHENTSE RINPOCHE.
.................................................................................
The everyday practice of dzogchen is simply to develop a complete carefree acceptance, an openness to all situations without limit.
We should realise openness as the playground of our emotions and relate to people without artificiality, manipulation or strategy.
We should experience everything totally, never
withdrawing into ourselves as a marmot hides in its hole.
This practice releases tremendous energy which is usually
constricted by the process of maintaining fixed reference points.
Referentiality is the process by which we retreat from the direct
experience of everyday life.
Being present in the moment may initially trigger fear. But by welcoming the sensation of fear with complete openness, we cut through the barriers created by habitual emotional patterns.
When we engage in the practice of discovering
space, we should develop the feeling of opening ourselves out
completely to the entire universe.
We should open ourselves with absolute simplicity and nakedness
of mind. This is the powerful and ordinary practice of dropping
the mask of self-protection.
We shouldn't make a division in our meditation
between perception and field of perception. We shouldn't become
like a cat watching a mouse.
We should realise that the purpose of meditation is not to go
"deeply into ourselves" or withdraw from the world.
Practice should be free and non-conceptual, unconstrained by
introspection and concentration.
Vast unoriginated self-luminous wisdom space is the ground of being - the beginning and the end of confusion.
The presence of awareness in the primordial
state has no bias toward enlightenment or non-enlightenment.
This ground of being which is known as pure or original mind is
the source from which all phenomena arise.
It is known as the great mother, as the womb of potentiality in
which all things arise and dissolve in natural self-perfectedness
and absolute spontaneity.
All aspects of phenomena are completely clear and lucid.
The whole universe is open and unobstructed - everything is
mutually interpenetrating.
Seeing all things as naked, clear and free from obscurations,
there is nothing to attain or realise.
The nature of phenomena appears naturally and is naturally
present in time-transcending awareness.
Everything is naturally perfect just as it is.
All phenomena appear in their uniqueness as part of the
continually changing pattern. These patterns are vibrant with
meaning and significance at every moment; yet there is no
significance to attach to such meanings beyond the moment in
which they present themselves.
This is the dance of the five elements in which matter is a
symbol of energy and energy a symbol of emptiness.
We are a symbol of our own enlightenment.
With no effort or practice whatsoever, liberation or
enlightenment is already here. The everyday practice of dzogchen
is just everyday life itself.
Since the undeveloped state does not exist, there is no need to
behave in any special way or attempt to attain anything above and
beyond what you actually are.
There should be no feeling of striving to reach some
"amazing goal" or "advanced state." To strive
for such a state is a neurosis which only conditions us and
serves to obstruct the free flow of Mind.
We should also avoid thinking of ourselves as worthless persons -
we are naturally free and unconditioned. We are intrinsically
enlightened and lack nothing. When engaging in meditation
practice, we should feel it to be as natural as eating, breathing
and defecating. It should not become a specialised or formal
event, bloated with seriousness and solemnity.
We should realise that meditation transcends effort, practice,
aims, goals and the duality of liberation and non-liberation.
Meditation is always ideal; there is no need to correct anything.
Since everything that arises is simply the play of mind as such,
there is no unsatisfactory meditation and no need to judge
thoughts as good or bad. Therefore we should simply sit.
Simply stay in your own place, in your own condition just as it
is. Forgetting self-conscious feelings, we do not have to think
"I am meditating."
Our practice should be without effort, without strain, without
attempts to control or force and without trying to become
"peaceful."
If we find that we are disturbing ourselves in any of these ways,
we stop meditating and simply rest or relax for a while. Then we
resume our meditation.
If we have "interesting experiences" either during or
after meditation, we should avoid making anything special of
them.
To spend time thinking about experiences is simply a distraction
and an attempt to become unnatural. These experiences are simply
signs of practice and should be regarded as transient events. We
should not attempt to re-experience them because to do so only
serves to distort the natural spontaneity of mind.
All phenomena are completely new and fresh, absolutely unique and
entirely free from all concepts of past, present and future.
They are experienced in timelessness. The continual stream of new
discovery, revelation and inspiration which arises at every
moment is the manifestation of our clarity.
We should learn to see everyday life as mandala - the luminous
fringes of experience which radiate spontaneously from the empty
nature of our being. The aspects of our mandala are the
day-to-day objects of our life experience moving in the dance or
play of the universe.
By this symbolism the inner teacher reveals the profound and
ultimate significance of being. Therefore we should be natural
and spontaneous, accepting and learning from everything. This
enables us to see the ironic and amusing side of events that
usually irritate us.
In meditation we can see through the illusion of past, present
and future - our experience becomes the continuity of nowness.
The past is only an unreliable memory held in the present.
The future is only a projection of our present conceptions.
The present itself vanishes as soon as we try to grasp it. So why
bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?
We should free ourselves from our past memories and
preconceptions of meditation. Each moment of meditation is
completely unique and full of potentiality.
In such moments, we will be incapable of judging our meditation
in terms of past experience, dry theory or hollow rhetoric.
Simply plunging directly into meditation in the moment now, with
our whole being, free from hesitation, boredom or excitement, is
enlightenment.
.................................................................................