Practitioners of buddhadharma should know that although many different and diverse names exist, they all point to one essential meaning. All these names—and the concepts and practices associated with them—should lead one towards the ultimate goal of enlightenment. 

Cutting Through Mind’s Wandering
Our fear, anxiety, and other emotions are completely intertwined with mind’s awareness—and many practitioners do not realize that the on-going struggle to separate these tendencies from the true essence is unnecessary.

The true nature of mind is allowed to completely arise when the mind’s awareness is not distracted from its core essence by accumulated habitual tendencies. Just as the very nature of the sky is not obscured or destroyed by clusters of clouds, similarly the primordially pure nature of mind itself is not obscured by those temporary tendencies of our neuroses.

The primordially pure essence of the true nature of mind is within all sentient beings at all times, from the beginningless beginning. But because it is temporarily veiled by obscurations, this essence is not recognized. It’s like the famous metaphor in The Melodious View of Trekchö of the presence of butter in milk. The butter in milk is there intrinsically; we do not have to add anything to the milk. Nevertheless, the milk does still need to be churned before butter can actually form.

In the same way, the sugatagarbha essence lies within all sentient beings. But until we do the practice that cuts through our grasping tendencies, we continue to fixate—and as long as fixation and duality continue, the sugatagarbha essence cannot arise in its pristine pure nature.

Therefore, use the trekchö practices to truly cut through, so the mind’s constant wandering to various tendencies ceases. This should be the intention with which a practitioner approaches these teachings. 

Nondual Nature and Genuine Revulsion
The key to meditating is not in doing something; it is in not doing anything, other than allowing the natural flow to be completely free from the interference of our deliberation.

As a dzogchen practitioner, you must cultivate trekchö practice in your life constantly, not just while sitting on a cushion in formal meditation posture. If you don’t do this, your understanding of the nondual nature will only be temporary and not a genuine separation from samsara. And instead of genuine revulsion, your revulsion will be misdirected to the environment—to places and people—rather than to your own ignorance, or ma rig pa, and your own mind’s tricks of extreme attachment or aversion.

Then the mind begins to have aversion to things, rather than to the mind that makes these things important or unimportant. Instead of genuine revulsion to ignorance, that wrong direction gives you a sense of wanting to separate from samsara because you’re tired of people, things, emotions, the environment, the “other.” But when you tire of the other, there is a self that gets tired of the other—and then you try to come to an understanding of nonduality by making it dual.

Most practitioners are frightened at leaving samsara behind, because they mistakenly apply trekchö to things instead of working with themselves. By applying trekchö to the person perceiving these things, you begin to get to the bottom of it. And by applying teachings to this practice, humor comes in. You are able to laugh at the stupidity of having made things so very sad, tragic, happy, or whatever they may seem to be in the moment.

The Melodious View of Trekchö, by Her Eminence Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche. © 2008 by HE Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche. www.vkr.org.