selflessness of all experience free of conceptual elaboration practiced by
bodhisattvas for the purpose of attaining buddha is the concentration that is the
virtue of the tathagatas. More on this topic is contained in other texts, so I will stop
writing about it here.
2.3 DISPOSITION OF MEDITATION
Let me now give a Dzogchen pith instruction, or secret precept: the method of
maintaining the view is called “meditation.” When we are convinced that all
experience of phenomena is apparent yet not truly existent, like magical illusion,
then as each separate emotion arises, it is free of the need of a separate dose of
emptiness as an antidote because neither the affliction nor the antidote have ever
existed. Whatever appears, however, should remain loosely in perception just as it
is; sustaining that disposition is called “meditation.”
If someone asks, “Why in Dzogchen is meditation called ‘nonmeditation’?” the
answer comes that all phenomena are seen as space. But how can we “hold” space
as an object of focus? Space has no specific characteristic, so there is nothing to
meditate upon. The nature of mind is primordially unborn and free of any
conceptual elaboration, so nothing can arise there upon which to meditate. Here
no effort is made to distinguish any difference between the object of meditation
and the mind that is meditating—what difference could be found since there is no
meditation and no one who meditates? This disposition of mind in its natural state
is called “nonmeditation” in Dzogchen.
What is the meaning of “in its natural state”? When mind is disturbed by
thoughts, its nature is unclear in the same way that a pail of dirty water is unclear
after it has been stirred: the bottom of the pail is then imperceptible. When mind
is kept unmodified in its natural state, like a pellucid pail of undisturbed water,
the nature of mind is pure presence. As the reality or “suchness” of all phenomena
is ascertained in the view, there is now no need of any scrutiny or investigation of
the nature of mind, and therefore simply to abide in the natural state of whatever
appears is labeled “meditation.” This nonmeditation that is the meditational
disposition of Dzogchen is the crux of practice. When we stay in nonmeditation
without drifting away, all the points of reference of our internal discussion vanish,
and the bright pure presence of self-arising primal awareness dawns
spontaneously.
Some may say that this is a mind-constructed meditation because it does not go
beyond mental experience. But the temporal mind of the ordinary being who is
the meditator is not the meditating mind—the “meditator” is self-arising primal
awareness free of all conceptual elaboration. Even though the ear-sense is engaged
and mind perceives sound, this sound is in itself an utterly unelaborated empty
echo; likewise, even though in meditation it is the mind that is engaged, this
meditation is free of all elaboration.
But, then, on the other hand, as Ju Mipham says in his Reply to Refutation,
The inexpressible nature of being is experienced and understood as a mere