pleasures and renounced the mundane world.
In short, it is very important that no matter what we do in body, speech, and
mind, we should be free of attachment. Even regarding the activities to which we
are not attached, when suddenly some happiness or suffering arises in them, be
aware of it immediately and without modifying anything in any way, hang loosely
in that perception, letting the mind settle into its own place, like a huge wave
returning again to the ocean.
All good or bad thoughts that arise, whether happy or sad, are all creativity.
Creativity is essentially pure presence and the authentic characteristic of self-
arising and reflexively released conduct. We need to engage in that training of
arising and liberating wherein thoughts have no previous or subsequent phase.
When we have such praxis, we need not conscientiously abandon bad thoughts or
cultivate good thoughts. If we realize that whatever thoughts arise are all released
right from the instant of their arising, we know that such thoughts are the food of
naked empty pure presence—the creativity of the dharmakaya. Even though there
is no object of meditation, we are not distracted for even a second, and we are
called a “meditation practitioner,” although there is no meditation. Since there is
nothing for us to do—we are simply looking at the essence of the thought as it
arises and falls—there is no better way or easier meditation than this.
Likewise even though the way emotional affliction arises in yogins and yoginis
is similar to that in ordinary beings, the manner of liberation is unique to
Dzogchen yogins and yoginis. There is no need, however, to stress its superiority.
3.10 PRACTITIONERS OF THE LOWER APPROACHES ARE BOUND BY STRENUOUS EFFORT
Nothing that is taught in the sutras and tantras—the emptiness free of conceptual
elaboration, the creative stage, fulfillment stage, the fulfillment stage with signs,
energy control and yoga, and so on—goes beyond eliminating, modifying, or
transforming thought. When we actually look at those lower-approach meditators,
all of whom make distinctions between antidotes and what is to be rejected, we
see that, from the perspective of effortless Dzogchen, they are all afflicted by the
sickness of subtle striving.
No matter how profound the stages and paths of these lesser approaches, during
the main practice of meditation on the view, some thoughts are sent off only to be
welcomed anew, or one set of thoughts is exchanged for another. There can be no
going beyond this subtle dualistic clinging to thoughts. Longchenpa, in The Heart-
Essence of Vimalamitra, quoting the rigzin Garab Dorje, says, “Intellectual control
of meditation that opens upon the view is so fatiguing!” If only our thoughts were
naturally released instantaneously as they arise, like a drawing written in water,
then informal contemplation itself would become the antidote to our most subtle
proclivities toward dualistic perception. Conduct assimilated on the path of
practice during the present period of training, which sustains the reflexive release
of whatever arises during informal contemplation, is the condition of buddha—the
complete identity of formal and informal contemplation.