Upcoming Meditation Workshop

Meditation Workshop:
Exploring the Mind

Event to be held at the following time, date, and location: Sunday, January 12, 2020 from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM (PST)  Wise Orchid Taijiquan & Qigong 2002 East Union Street Seattle, WA 98122 View Map

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Join us for a weekend workshop on the practice of vipashyana or insight. Learn how to meditate, ask questions, engage in dialogue with other practitioners. Learn the foundational practices for exploring the inner landscape of your mind, recognizing your own true nature, and setting yourself on a journey of self-discovery and awakening. No prior meditation experience necessary, all students welcome. Be introduced to the key points of exploring the nature of mind Learn how to explore the nature of mind using various techniques Learn how recognize the innate qualities of the nature of mind Understand how we stray in the practice and how to eliminate errors in our meditation Share this event on Facebook and Twitter. See you on the cushion!

Spacious awareness.

In Dzogchen, our true nature is introduced as rigpa, or awareness. When we receive the pointing out instructions, rigpa is what is pointed out in our own experience. Awareness is not such a great translation of rigpa, because we already have a constructed meaning for awareness. That is why in Dzogchen texts you often find rigpa (Tib. rig-pa) translated as intrinsic awareness, open presence, or simply left as rigpa.

Put a cup in front of you. Notice the experience of ordinary awareness. It's something like, "I, Greg, am aware of the cup." It's very dualistic, separate, distinct. There is the subjective awareness observing a perceptually real external object. This is not what we mean by awareness or rigpa.

Rigpa is not dualistic. Take another look at the cup. This time shift your attention to the space between you and the cup, around the cup, in the cup, the three dimensional space in which the cup is suspended. Mingle your awareness with that space.

Now look up and observe the room around. Mingle your awareness with the space in the room, such that your awareness and the space are inseparable. Rest in that state. Familiarize yourself with that state of open presence.

This is closer to the experience of rigpa. Not quite rigpa because you still have reference points, borders and limits, but you're quite close. As you gain stability resting in open presence and learn how to cut through fixation and grasping, eventually ever-present unobstructed awareness (rigpa) becomes fully evident.

In Dzogchen texts, you often find rigpa referenced as ying-rig. Ying (Tib. dbyings) means basic space, objective sphere, dimension, or field of reality. Rig means rigpa or awareness. So ying-rig means the inseparability of basic space and awareness, or the union of the objective sphere and awareness.

As Longchenpa states in the ninth chapter of the Choying Dzod:

Within the single expanse, supremely spacious by nature, awakened mind equal to space is pivotal.
Focus on this key point and distill it to its vital essence;
it is the greatest of the great- wholly positive and spacious enlightened mind. 
In its very essence, it thoroughly shatters the outer confines of reality. 
Within this single vast expanse, there is no duality of realization versus its lack, 
or freedom versus its lack, but a supreme state of equalness. 

Initially, it is hard to maintain this state of unobstructed awareness because we are easily ensnared by mind. Playing a game with a red dot can be an effective call to presence throughout your day, use it to mingle basic space and awareness. Eventually, everything in the phenomenal world becomes an ornament of awareness- whatever you think, see, hear, smell, taste, feel - as basic space and awareness mingle and become inseparable in a single non-dual expanse. 

Mingle your meditation with your daily life. Familiarize yourself with authentic presence on the cushion, and then skillfully carry it out into the world. 

Cut through the experience.

One meditation instruction from my teacher Younge Khachab Rinpoche that was really useful and had a profound impact on my meditation was to intentionally interrupt positive experiences of meditation.

This might seem counterintuitive, because we are trying to accomplish something in meditation after all, aren't we?

The instruction applies to the state of naturally abiding, or rang-nay. When we start to really feel like we have it, and maybe we are having some kind of positive experience, then we intentionally slightly interrupt that meditation. Shift your posture. Maybe circle your head, or shift your gaze. Then, settle right back into the natural state. Let go, rang-bab.

This subtle instruction breaks us from the bondage of clinging to positive experiences, and it also gives you more agility to seamlessly relax into the natural state. It is not a big, dramatic interruption. Keep it small, a few seconds really. Then rang-bab, settle into the natural state again.

You don't need to always apply this technique. Use it skillfully. Especially if you ever find yourself with your great and unmatched wisdom saying, "Ah, yes. This is it." Interrupt that grasping.

Distinguishing mind and awareness.

When resting in the natural state it is crucial that you distinguish between resting in mind and resting in awareness. If there is any struggle, any tension, any effort or striving, you can be sure that you are still resting in mind. If you are utterly relaxed in an open, expansive presence free from reference point, then you have relaxed into the natural state and can reveal the lucid clarity of awareness.

Recognize how you deviate into mind's play of appearances. Recognize how you get hooked by thoughts or feelings. The essence of deviating from awareness is a diminished presence. Whenever we are resting in the natural state and we start to fixate, reify or grasp to our experience, that is deviation and the result is a diminished presence in which we enter into mind and mental states.

Recognize the straying. Recognize the tension or struggle setting in. Then let go. There is no other method. There are a lot of other methods involving mind, but by relying on mental fabrication we cannot escape the cage of conceptuality.

Once we can rest in the natural state by simply letting go, we need instruction on how to maintain that state. Have settled naturally, we need to maintain the continuity of that natural state, which is the next instruction on rang-nay, or naturally abiding.

The opposite of awareness.

མ་རིག་པ་
Tibetan: ma-rigpa
English: ignorance, confusion, unaware, diminished presence, absent-presence (like you are here, but not really)

Dzogchen takes awareness (Tib: rigpa) as the path and that awareness takes the form of pure presence. It is a way of being in which we are open, receptive and dynamic. An excellent metaphor for this presence of awareness is dancing, in which we are responsive and in union with the arising of experience around us.

It can often be difficult to recognize that awareness since it is utterly beyond description and is groundless in nature. There is nothing to hold onto, and so we can never be quite too sure that we got it, or get it. Doubt can creep into our minds about if we are "doing it right."

We can be sure that if we are trying to do it right, or struggling to embody what we think of as 'presence', then we are still a bit mistaken and haven't quite grasped the key point. We cannot contrive or fabricate a state of presence.

It is often much easier to recognize when we aren't embodying open presence. The state of unawareness (Tib. ma-rigpa) is where we usually live out the course of our lives. The state of confusion about who we are and the nature of the world around us. This usual sense of diminished awareness, or stupor, or malaise that we carry through our days. I often find myself reaching for another cup of coffee to "turn up the lights" of my dullness and malaise.

We can easily recognize this state of diminished awareness. It is the struggle to break out, to break free, to move beyond ourselves and the imposed limits of our narrow mind. Do you ever get that feeling that you need to get out of your own way, but this heaviness inside keeps holding you back? Like you just can't muster up enough gumption to actually be present and responsive. I do.

Recognize these moments of malaise, hesitation and doubt. Recognize the holding back and the holding on to whatever is coming up in your experience. Recognize them for what they are- the state of confusion in which our presence in the world is diminished. We cannot be fully present when we continually give in to this inner struggle that is playing out in our hearts and minds.

When we recognize these moments, we need to follow the meditation instructions:

"Let go. Let it be as it is."

There is a gap that opens up. A gap between the moment of confusion and the awareness that recognized that confusion. In that gap is the state of pure open presence. Recognize the nature of your own awareness in that gap. Recognize the state of uncontrived, pure presence free from the confines of mind or mental states. It is in that moment that we can recognize the buddha within, our own buddhanature or buddha heart. 

It is in that moment that we abide in the world in a deeper way, and can discover the resources and utility to participate and contribute meaningfully to the world around us. It is in that moment that we discover that we have enough and that we are sufficient just as we are. In that moment, there is nothing to be added or taken away, nothing to accomplish and nothing to overcome, and so it is called the natural great perfection, Dzogchen.

Of course,

the story does not stop there.
The world keeps turning, and we must keep dancing.

Instructions for practice.

All of the Buddha’s teachings can be understood as instructions for practice. As practitioners, it is our work that reveals the truth of the teachings. Put them to the test, contemplate them, digest them, resolve your uncertainty and doubt, follow your curiosity.

We all have an opportunity to be more present in the world, to contribute from a place of abundance and to bring about tremendous benefit and change. To actually do that isn’t easy, so we must follow a path and commit to a life of practice.

Step by step, we learn to work with the hesitation and fear, we learn to open up, to be more vulnerable and understanding, and to recognize the gifts that we can share with the world- gifts of kindness, generosity and compassion.

Establishing the Ground: A Short Meditation

Take your seat in a comfortable position, back straight.
Relax your shoulders, neck, jaw.

Notice any tension or tightness in your body, relax.

Rest.

Start to notice your breath.

Naturally inhaling and exhaling,

feeling the breath fill the lungs. 

Take three long and slow inhales and exhales,

as you inhale, imagine breathing in a pure white light,

purifying and refreshing the body and mind, like a gentle breeze.

As you exhale, imagine exhaling all your stress and static energy,

exhaling all disease, illness and negativity.

Then relax.  Rest.

With your eyes closed, bring your awareness to your heart center.

Imagine in the center of your heart a brilliant white light,

like a brilliant star suspended in the expanse of the night sky.

As you inhale, imagine that light intensifies,

becoming more and more brilliant.

Maintaining that mental object, ride the inhale and exhale.

(Continue 5-10 minutes)

At the conclusion of the session,
imagine that brilliant light dissolves completely into space,

open your eyes,

rest in open, authentic presence.

Dedicate.