Home Page: Inspirations of Love and Hope

Category: Dzogchen

  • A Glimpse of Rigpa: The True Nature of Our Mind

    A Glimpse of Rigpa: The True Nature of Our Mind

    Yesterday Rinpoche gave me the simple instruction: to keep my thoughts in the room.
    As I practiced, the winds of memory and worry fell quiet, and what remained was a stillness like a pond untouched by breeze. In that moment I glimpsed the unity of ordinary and pristine mind—waves arising, yet nothing but ocean.

    Beloved Rinpoche,

    I write with gratitude for the instruction you gave yesterday, which opened a new door for me into the experience of Rigpa. Your words were simple, yet carried such profound kindness: to keep my thoughts in the room.

    As I sat in meditation, I followed your guidance. Thoughts about the ceiling, the plants, the breath, even the quiet pulse of tinnitus—all of these belonged to the room. They could be held gently within awareness without struggle. But when thoughts drifted toward memories of the past, or worries of the future, or stories beyond this room, I could see them clearly as outside. And so, with care, I let them go and returned to what was here.

    This way of practicing felt so different—so much more tender. Instead of wrestling with ordinary mind, I could simply remain rooted in this space, in this moment. And in that resting, the movements of the mind, the vrittis and pratyayas, began to settle of their own accord. Like a pond no longer stirred by wind, a natural stillness revealed itself. Within that stillness, I began to glimpse what you have pointed to again and again: the open clarity of pure awareness.

    In that glimpse, awareness shone with very little disturbance. An “I” was still present, but the usual fluctuations of thought were momentarily quiet, allowing the stillness of pure awareness to appear directly. To rest, even briefly, in that clarity was both humbling and wondrous.

    I could sense then that ordinary mind and pristine mind are not two separate realities, but two sides of the same coin. The waves of thought arise, yet they are nothing other than ocean. The ordinary shines as the pristine. To realize this in a living way, even if for only a moment, fills me with wonder and gratitude.

    Rinpoche, I bow in thanks for this precious instruction. It has shown me that Rigpa is not distant or hidden, but present in the immediacy of the room, in the simple presence of what is. May I return to this again and again, and may this glimpse ripen into lasting recognition.

    And may whatever merit arises from this glimpse and this practice be dedicated to the benefit of all beings everywhere. May it ease suffering, open hearts, and become a cause for the enlightenment of all sentient beings throughout time and space.

    With devotion and gratitude,
    Richard

    🙏✨️💛✨️🙏

    If you would like to learn more about the teachings of Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche and explore Dzogchen practice in greater depth, you can visit his website at pristinemind.org.

    In this talk at Google, Rinpoche offers instruction and a guided meditation based on his book Our Pristine Mind: A Practical Guide to Unconditional Happiness. He introduces a unique form of meditation called Pristine Mind meditation and explains how cultivating a Pristine Mind can transform every aspect of our lives.

    By resting gently in the fullness of the present moment, allowing the mind to settle naturally, and recognizing its luminous, pristine nature, one opens to profound serenity and enduring contentment.

  • Letters to Rinpoche: Reflections on Ngöndro

    Letters to Rinpoche: Reflections on Ngöndro

    The following is a personal reflection written during my practice of Dzogchen Ngöndro, shared here as part of my ongoing journey with these teachings.

    I am very new to studuing and learning Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche and his teachings. My first introduction was through reading Our Pristine Mind a few years ago, which proved extremely helpful. The way ordinary mind and mental events are described brought clarity, resolving many years of confusion I had about sems and sems nyid.

    I have been studying and practicing Tibetan Buddhism as a lay practitioner since 1985–1986, after receiving the Kalachakra initiation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Bodhgaya, India. At this stage, I am not sure I can yet call myself Rinpoche’s student, as I understand that in the Tibetan tradition there is often a period of mutual discernment, where teacher and student come to know one another. For now, I am simply following his request to practice Ngöndro, and through this I am seeking to cultivate the beginnings of a student–teacher relationship, should that become appropriate.

    Insight from Contemplating the Eight Freedoms

    “The hungry ghost is not merely a being with desire, but a being entirely without contentment.”

    While reflecting on the Ngöndro contemplations, I focused on the second freedom—not born as a hungry ghost.

    As a human, I also experience desire, but I have the capacity for contentment. Even small moments—a quiet breath, the peace of stillness—remind me that not everything is consumed by craving.

    This insight brought me to a thought: perhaps it is not desire itself that causes suffering, but rather the inability to rest in contentment. Contentment softens desire, transforms it, and allows the heart to rest.

    Contemplative pause:
    Take a moment to notice where contentment may already exist in your life, even amid desire or difficulty.

    I am deeply grateful that such insights arise through the Ngöndro practice, and I wanted to record and share this reflection as part of my ongoing journey.

    Updates on Practice and Retreat Plans

    Although I had registered for the five-day Dzogchen retreat in August, I was not aware of the Ngöndro prerequisite and will therefore be withdrawing. I am now following Rinpoche’s guidance by studying and practicing the online Dzogchen Ngöndro program.

    I look forward to seeing him on October 11th at the one-day online Dzogchen retreat.

    Living with My Practice in Daily Life

    I have been living with a chronic illness called myalgic encephalomyelitis for many years. At first it brought great suffering, but over time I have come to see it as a powerful teacher on the path—almost like a spiritual friend.

    Because of this condition I am mostly homebound, and so I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to study and practice with Rinpoche through the modern blessing of online communication.

    Even when our circumstances feel limiting, spiritual connection and insight can arise through patience, presence, and accessible practices.

    🙏✨️💛✨️🙏

    If you would like to learn more about the teachings of Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche and explore Dzogchen practice in greater depth, you can visit his website at pristinemind.org.

    In this talk at Google, Rinpoche offers instruction and a guided meditation based on his book Our Pristine Mind: A Practical Guide to Unconditional Happiness. He introduces a unique form of meditation called Pristine Mind meditation and explains how cultivating a Pristine Mind can transform every aspect of our lives.

    By resting gently in the fullness of the present moment, allowing the mind to settle naturally, and recognizing its luminous, pristine nature, one opens to profound serenity and enduring contentment.

  • When the Ringing Remains: Finding Peace Amid Tinnitus 🌿

    When the Ringing Remains: Finding Peace Amid Tinnitus 🌿

    The ringing remains,
    yet the mind’s tight grasp dissolves —
    only sky holds all.

    For many, tinnitus feels like a constant companion — a high-pitched ring, a persistent hum, a sound that refuses to vanish. It can shadow every quiet moment, every attempt at rest, every space of stillness. We search for a cure, for silence, for relief. And yet, sometimes the greatest liberation does not come from changing the sound, but from changing the relationship to it.

    I have walked this path. The ringing did not leave. What changed was me.

    At first, tinnitus feels like an enemy. We grasp at it, resist it, curse it. We add suffering to suffering: “Why me? Why won’t this stop? How can I bear it?” The sound itself may be mild or sharp, occasional or persistent, but the mind’s reaction amplifies it, creating a firestorm of agitation.

    Then comes a subtle discovery: the fire is fueled by attention and resistance. The ringing itself is not the problem — the problem is our insistence on struggling with it.

    If we pause, soften our attention, and allow awareness to expand around the sound, something shifts. We realize:

    The tinnitus may continue.

    The mind may notice it, even name it.

    But the grasping, the mental fight, the suffering about the suffering — that can dissolve.

    It is like a leaf floating on a stream. The water moves; the leaf moves; yet no one is trapped. The leaf does not resist the current. The leaf does not need the current to stop in order to be free.

    Through this practice, tinnitus becomes a teacher. It is a doorway to awareness, a mirror reflecting our habit of clinging. By letting go of the self that struggles, we enter a spaciousness where the sound exists, but the suffering does not.

    This is not denial. This is not wishful thinking. It is simple noticing:

    The ringing arises dependent upon body, mind, and attention.

    The mind can soften.

    Awareness itself remains unshaken, vast and unbounded, like sky in which clouds drift freely.

    To rest here, all that is required is attention that softens rather than grips:

    1. Breathe and notice the sound. Don’t push it away; simply allow it to be.
    2. Relax the “I” that judges or resists. Let the self that struggles dissolve into spaciousness.
    3. Rest in the field of awareness. The ringing is present, but it is no longer a problem.

    In this way, liberation does not depend on the sound ending. It depends on the mind letting go. The sound may continue, but the fire of suffering has gone out.

    For anyone who lives with tinnitus, this is a path open to you. The ringing may remain, but your suffering need not. The self that once insisted on fighting can rest. The heart can soften. The mind can breathe. The sky remains.

    And in that sky, even tinnitus becomes part of the vast, untroubled whole.

    A Haiku for Reflection

    The ringing remains,
    yet the mind’s tight grasp dissolves —
    only sky holds all.

    Or a Meditative Verse

    Tinnitus hums on,
    unchanged, persistent, steady.
    I let go of “I.”
    The struggle falls away,
    and only vastness remains.

    The key here is compassion for your nervous system. Your brain is trying to protect you; it just needs reassurance that these vibrations are safe, ignorable, and not urgent. Over time, the mind can learn to treat tinnitus the way it treats the hum of a refrigerator: present, but mostly unnoticed.

    It’s not about conquering, changing, or escaping the vibrations—it’s about sitting gently with them, recognizing them as part of the living moment, and letting your mind rest in spacious awareness.

    All that arises is fleeting,
    all that appears has no fixed self.
    The hum, the thought, the breath—
    they come, they linger, they fade.
    I rest in the space between,
    spacious, still, free.
    No need to hold, no need to push—
    only presence, only now.

    🙏✨️🙏

  • 🌌 Where All Directions Bow to Stillness

    🌌 Where All Directions Bow to Stillness

    A Gaze Beyond the Gaze: In the spirit of sky-gazing

    Lie back beneath the vaultless dome,
    Let clouds drift by like thoughts unknown.
    Release the mind, release the name,
    No watcher here, no self to claim.

    Let sky be sky, and mind be wide,
    No grasping hand, no need to guide.
    Just openness, so vast, so clear—
    What you are looking from is here.

    Into the Mystic

    At the very top of the world, if one were to sit in silence at the North Pole, something curious happens. The compass loses its ordinary song. North, so long held as our guide, vanishes beneath your feet. South radiates in every direction. East and West dissolve—not into chaos, but into the poetry of motion. Clockwise becomes East, counterclockwise becomes West. And you, the still point, are held at the axis where meaning begins to soften.

    This is not just a geographic curiosity. It is a mirror of the mind.

    In the Dzogchen tradition, we are invited to rest not merely in the knowing mind (sems), but in that which knows mind itself—sems nyid, the nature of mind. It is not something we manufacture through effort, nor something distant to be attained. It is nearer than near, always already present—like Polaris in the night sky, unmoving, while all else revolves.

    To sit at the North Pole and gaze upward is to dwell at a kind of worldly axis mundi, a symbol of rigpa, the primordial knowing that does not grasp, does not fabricate. From this point, every direction—every thought, every emotion, every arising—moves outward as “South”: the play of relative reality (kun rdzob), full of beauty, full of sorrow, full of form. But the upward gaze, the still recognition of what-is, lifts us toward don dam, the ultimate view.

    It is not about choosing one over the other. Dzogchen does not ask us to abandon the world or reject the compass. Rather, it invites us to see clearly—to understand that East and West only appear when we begin to walk. That what we call “direction” arises with perception. That what we call “self” arises with identification. And when we rest, utterly still, not pushing, not naming—we begin to recognize what has always been there.

    The pristine mind

    Pure like the Pole Star. Silent like the snow. Empty of essence, yet luminous with love.

    Here, the relative view—the dance of thoughts and roles and rotating worlds—becomes the compassionate display of awareness itself. And the absolute view is not elsewhere. It is this, ungrasped, unspoiled, ever-present.

    The moment we stop insisting on where we are going, we arrive.

    And from that still place, compassion flows—not as a moral stance, but as a natural warmth. Wisdom arises—not as accumulation, but as clarity. Loving-kindness becomes the language of space itself. We begin to see, not through the eyes of effort, but through the vision of what the Tibetans call lhun grub: spontaneously present, effortless, free.

    Let us walk, then, not to reach a place, but to circle gently like the sun, like the stars, around the stillness at the center. Let us live our days as if the compass rose were etched in light upon our hearts. Let us love without needing direction, forgive without needing map.

    At Earth’s bright peak where compass spins,
    “Up” becomes where silence begins.
    Polaris keeps her vigil there—
    a lantern hung in starry air.

    And you, dear traveler, have never been far from it.
    Even now, it calls you home.

    🙏🕊🙏