Beginner’s Dzogchen Practice

Dzogchen is often considered the pinnacle of the Buddhist path, yet its essence is simple. You do not need to have mastered elaborate visualizations or spent years in retreat to begin.

For beginners, Dzogchen practice begins with the body, the breath, and the recognition of the ground of our true nature that is already present.

Posture: The First Instruction

The lineage masters remind us that posture is more than a formality. Jamgön Kongtrul, in Heart Essence of the Mother and Child, writes that the body is like a city, the channels like streets, the winds like horses, and the mind like a rider. If the city streets are blocked, the horses cannot move, and the rider becomes trapped. In the same way, if the body is not stable and open, the mind has no freedom to settle.

This is why the masters always began with posture. Sit upright, in the seven-point posture of Vairocana. Your body should be balanced but not tense, grounded like a mountain, steady but relaxed. Ordinary postures—slouching, leaning back, lying down—shape the mind for dullness. A well-set body allows insights to naturally unfold.

The Last Testament puts it simply:

“Become adept in resting in the natural state — physically, verbally, and with the mind.”

Cleansing the Winds

Before settling in the natural state, expel the stale breath. Kongtrul describes the nine-round breath as a way of clearing out obscurations and obstacles: gently, more strongly, then powerfully through the left nostril, then the right, then both. In following sessions, do one round each. As you breathe out, imagine all negativities leaving your body, like rinsing a vessel before filling it with something precious.

This simple practice prepares the body as a clear container. The stale breath leaves, the fresh breath enters. Your mind begins to feel lighter, more awake, ready.

Settling into Awareness

Once posture and breath are established, the instruction is simple: do not block whatever comes up, do not chase thoughts. Leave your senses open and clear, limpid like the moon reflected in a lake. Longchenpa, in The Excellent Path to Enlightenment, says:

“Do not rest on the appearances of what you perceive, but rest focused on their empty nature, free and relaxed, in a state of wide-open clarity.”

Whatever appears—sounds, sensations, thoughts—let them be as they are. Neither grasp at them nor push them away. Rest in a state of vivid awareness, awake and fresh, where perceptions of subject and object are inseparable.

As the siddha Kotalipa sang:

“Let this weary traveler, the mind itself, rest in a state free of elaborations— the great seal: fresh, innate, natural, and uncontrived.”

Recognizing the Ground

Garab Dorje’s pith instruction points the ground out directly:

“Your present mind, free of all contrivance, all distortion, all antidotes, is awareness.”

This awareness is not produced by effort. It is not found by chasing a special state. It is the bare and ordinary awareness of this very moment–lucid, clear, uncontrived. When thoughts arise, recognize that they do not truly arise from anywhere. When thoughts dissolve, notice that awareness remains, unchanged.

The Natural State

Longchenpa, in Natural Openness and Freedom of the State of Equality, describes the mind as rootless and beyond time:

“Uncreated buddhahood, spontaneously present. If you rest within it, leaving it just as it is, you dwell within equanimity.”

This is the heart of Dzogchen practice for beginners and advanced practitioners alike: leaving things as they are, resting openly without fabrication.

Padmasambhava reminds us that even thoughts themselves are dharmata, the true nature of reality. There is no need to wait for them to subside. Recognition can happen in the midst of whatever arises.

The Tantra of Penetrating Sound offers the same key point:

“At this time, the key point of body, speech, and mind is for the practitioner to settle in the natural state.”

How to Begin

Begin simply.

Sit upright, body like a mountain, breath natural, eyes open, resting in the field of awareness, open and spacious.

Expel the stale breath. Breathe in fresh air.

Relax into the natural state, without grasping or rejecting whatever arises in your experience.

Notice the ground of spacious awareness that is already present—uncontrived, fresh, awake.

Rest in the immediacy of that awareness. 

This is enough.

Over time, the simplicity of posture, breath, and recognition opens naturally into the vastness described in the tantras and commentaries. Dzogchen begins not with complexity, but with the courage to rest as you are.

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