Unique Dzogchen Mindfulness and Vigilance

Everyone is familiar with mindfulness. Mindfulness is often described as focus or attention directed towards a particular object. We can be mindful of our breath, mindful of the way we walk or our daily activities, like washing the dishes. In this sense, mindfulness is synonymous with attention or focus.

Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as paying attention on purpose, in the present and without judgment. That is a useful definition, but again here the indirect meaning is that we are paying attention to some thing.

In Dzogchen we also employ mindfulness, but in Dzogchen there is no object of focus. The practice of Dzogchen is said to be without support. 

How do we be mindful, but not mindful of any thing?

We can define mindfulness in the Dzogchen tradition as an uncontrived, open presence free from judgment.

It is uncontrived because we are not directing our attention towards anything in particular and we are not trying to make anything happen. It is open presence because we are alert and aware, here and now. It is without judgment because we are not concerned with the contents of what is arising in our experience, whether it is good or bad, painful or pleasurable.

We simply rest in uncontrived, open presence free from judgment.

At first this takes a lot of effort. The habitual instincts of our mind is to be engrossed and fixate on our experience. We chase after sights and sounds. We follow trails of thought and get caught up in a web of stories. Our attention picks out objects, clings to them and gets caught up in distraction. This is where vigilance comes into play.

Vigilance is a clear, alert peripheral awareness that guards our meditation. Vigilance can be both extrospective and introspective awareness. We are aware of various appearances to our senses, but we also clearly see the array of thoughts and emotions coming up in our internal experience. In this way, vigilance is like a transparent looking glass, it sees everything but doesn't react to it. It is mindfulness which does the fine tuning, when it is necessary.

Vigilance notices when our attention has strayed towards an object or appearance. Noting that we have strayed, we use mindfulness to again rest in the uncontrived, natural state. As we train ourselves to rest in the natural state, the wandering of attention becomes less and less, eventually giving way to effortless mindfulness.

In effortless mindfulness, the strength of vigilance becomes further intensified and more powerful. It is like a sharp razor that cuts through appearances in all their variety. As we continue our training, eventually effortless mindfulness gives way to baseless mindfulness and the actual path of Dzogchen.