Our Pristine Mind

I picked up Orgyen Chowang's very accessible introduction to Dzogchen meditation because it was recommended reading for Michael Taft's fundamentals of non-dual awareness class.  Chowwang takes a tact almost diametrically opposed to the dense and philosophical one we saw from David Loy.  Our Pristine Mind aims to be a completely practical, jargon free meditation manual.  Chowang is at pains to make his language as simple as possible, to use similes that anyone can easily understand, and to avoid almost any reference to all religious or philosophical traditions.  In fact, I don't think he even mentions that what he's explaining is the basics of Dzogchen until the final chapter!  This makes the book so breezy and accessible that you can hand it to anyone, a style which fits perfectly with the minimalist approach of nondualism.  

Minimalism, however, is often, and in a sense rightfully, accused of being repetitive.  And, at least as a book, Our Pristine Mind suffers from this same problem.  Chowang does a great job of introducing the concept of Pristine Mind and distinguishing it from ordinary mind by explaining that we ordinarily identify ourselves with "mental events" such as our thoughts and emotions and perceptions.  But then he goes on to say that developing our connection to Pristine Mind is the cure for literally everything that ails us.  Feeling bad?  Return to PM.  Getting arrogant?  PM.  Relationship got you down?  World on fire?  Mini-bread catastrophe?  Yep, all you need to do is reconnect with your innate Pristine Mind.  Seriously though, while perhaps the path is really this simple, perhaps we just keep repeating It's Gonna Rain till the magic happens, it makes for a bit of a boring book by conventional standards.  

Nevertheless, I found myself very excited about the first half of the book.  Having had a few glimpses of the mindset that Chowang is describing, I found that his description of it was the simplest I've come across.  You are not your mental events!  If you are anything, you are the space in which those mental events take place -- the empty space of Pristine Mind.  All of our thoughts and emotions arise and pass away within the immanence of this space just as the clouds float across the clear blue sky.  They are empty in themselves, mere effects, like special effects, not causes.  If you have never experienced this change of perspective, this shift in identification, you may rightfully wonder what it means and if it's even possible.  Unfortunately, Chowang can't immediately help you with that doubt because these ideas only begin to make sense when you meditate on them and experience them for yourself.  Until that point Pristine Mind is as tangible as Never Never Land.  Fortunately though, Chowang does provide both the framework that gives you an image to aim for, as well as the simple step-by-step recipe his master taught him.  Don't follow the past.  Don't anticipate the future.  Remain in the present moment.  Leave your mind alone.  This pacifist and minimalist program seems to be the core of many different schools of nonduality.  Like minimalism, while it may take a long time to develop into something, when it does, you feel like you've gotten something beautiful from absolutely nothing.