Three Paths of Meditation as taught by Dudjom Rinpoche

By Nicky Poole, Yoga Community Leader

I am reading a great book right now called Yoga Spandakarika, an essential text from the Kashmiri Shaivist Tradition, translated by Daniel Odier.  Odier is a French master of tantra, buddhism and zen since 1968, and has studied with the worlds greatest Chinese, Tibetan and Himalayan masters.  Odier is now a highly sought after teacher in his own right.

He writes of meeting with his first master, Dudjom Rinpoche in Northern India when Odier was just a naive young man of 22. “He was a man who had an open gaze on the infinite, and an almost feminine gentleness allied with a gripping powerfulness.  He had long hair and wore a western shirt under a blue Tibetan robe”. Odier was lucky enough to receive three full days of personal teachings from Dudjom Rinpoche marking the beginning of his life as a seeker and student of the dharma. Odier continues to say that  it would be over thirty years before he would truly understand how vast, simple and direct his enlightened instruction had been.  The description of the three meditation techniques are incredibly simple, but obviously very powerful.  I wanted to share them here with you, taken in full from Odier’s website.

Three paths, three ways of meditating:
The first Tantric master I met was in 1967,  the great Dzogchen master Dudjom Rinpoche.  Dudjom Rinpoche taught me three very simple ways of meditating  just as it was introduced into Tibet in the eighth century by Padmasambhava :

Non-meditation.

“Surround yourself comfortably with calm and silence, sit down with a straight back, completely relaxed, breathe normally, in a soft and gentle way, and place your attention on a state of absolute presence without letting your mind wander for the count of three. This is the natural state of the mind, which spontaneously remains in a state of non-distraction, non-production and non-meditation.”

The heart meditation.

” If you are unable to enter this state straight away, concentrate on a bright red letter, placed in the centre of your heart, any size which feels right to you. Allow this image to be vividly present, without forcing it. Allow it to absorb all your attention.’

Concentration and calming the mind.

If this meditation is difficult, take a simple object like a stone or a piece of wood, place it in front of you, gently focus on the object without blinking, allow nothing else to take hold of your mind, and gradually become totally present in a natural and relaxed manner. Look at everything which occurs to you without holding on to it, and gradually you will become peaceful. Everything which rises up will subside of its own accord, without any forcing on your part. Soon you will not be able to leave this non-conceptual state, and you will no longer want to move. This is a sign that you are becoming more familiar with the state of becoming peaceful, and you will reach a state of spontaneity.

This teaching, given as it was to a complete novice, was vitally important to me, and I have since never come across anything as simple and as profound. Even now I practice and teach in this way.