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#3545 -
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Dzogchen Practice in
Everyday Life
by HH Dilgo Khyentse
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.