Perceiving Your True Nature

by Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche

While realisation is the prerequisite to true meditation, it seems to be something few people are familiar with. Realisation has a variety of meanings. We use the word to express becoming aware of something we weren’t aware of previously. In everyday language we say things like “I just realised I forgot my keys.” Realisation means we see the truth. Ultimately, it is realising our true nature or realising the nature of reality. This is often translated as “the view.” The word in Tibetan is tawa, and in the Dzogchen teachings it’s also referred to by the term rigpa. Realisation and meditation work together very closely.

Realisation is getting in touch with and accessing the pristine mind that is our innate nature. Realisation is how we access the happiness that lies within us always, and how we can see it so that we don’t just have an intellectual understanding of it, but actually experience it. Being in direct contact with your nature of mind, getting in touch with it experientially, actually accessing it, is called realisation.

The mind is like a blue sky, fundamentally; eventually you will discover that.

The mind is flawless; eventually you will experience that.

The mind is pristine, pure; eventually you will directly enter that.

This is the most wonderful thing that will happen in your life

Perceiving, experiencing, glimpsing your true nature, your normal, natural, unfabricated state of mind is called realisation, and this is just the beginning. The entire path to awakening starts here.

When we remain in Pristine Mind meditation for twenty to thirty minutes, or for however long, we are perceiving or experiencing that fundamental mind, not mental events, but the fundamental, natural state of mind. We directly perceive that. We are face to face with the nature of mind, our flawless awareness.