Look for the mind: where a thought comes from, stays and goes

Examine your own mind the way the Dzogchen preliminaries do — searching for where a thought arises, where it stays and where it goes.

Por qué funciona

Before the introduction to rigpa, Heart Essence (Nyingtik) lineages commonly teach analytical preliminaries meant, in a phrase quoted in the translator Adam Pearcey’s introduction, to “destroy the house of the ordinary mind.” The most widespread of them investigates the mind’s coming, staying and going. Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö summarises the conclusion: search for the mind’s arising and you cannot find it, its presence has no reality, and there is nowhere it ceases. The texts insist this must become a felt certainty, not an idea, which is why the search is done repeatedly and slowly. Dodrupchen Jigme Tenpe Nyima suggests alternating analysis, while certainty has not yet arisen, with simply settling once it has. Some lineages also teach rushen, practices for separating saṃsāra from nirvāṇa — ordinary mind from pure awareness; these are taught by a teacher.

Cómo hacerlo

1. Sit and settle for a few minutes first.
2. When a thought appears, ask gently: where did this come from? Look, rather than reason about it.
3. Ask: while it is here, where is it? Does it have a location, a shape, a colour, an edge?
4. Ask: where did it go? Look for the place it disappeared into.
5. Notice what you actually find, and stay with not-finding rather than filling the gap with a theory.
6. Then let the looking go and simply rest for a while. Return to the search in other sessions; the tradition expects it to take a long time.

Evidencia

Pearcey’s introduction to Yukhok Chatralwa’s notes describes the common Nyingtik preliminaries — probing the root of the mind, searching for its hidden flaws, and investigating its coming, staying and going — and quotes Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö on what the search finds; it also mentions a tradition of spending three years on that investigation. Dodrupchen advises alternating analysis and settling. Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche explains Khordé Rushen as a preliminary separation of ordinary mind (sem) from pure awareness (rigpa) that makes the later introduction easier to recognise. Higgins examines the Dzogchen distinction between mind (sems) and primordial knowing (ye shes) philosophically. (anecdotal)

Instructions vary from lineage to lineage, and Yukhok Chatralwa himself criticised versions of this inquiry that lack precision. Rushen is taught within a lineage, and Lotsawa House marks Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche’s rushen text as restricted; this page describes them rather than giving them. The inquiry has not been studied.

Fuentes

• Yukhok Chatralwa Chöying Rangdrol. How to Practice the Path of the Great Perfection (notes on the analytical preliminaries), with translator’s introduction, trans. Adam Pearcey, 2018; first published on Lotsawa House, 2025.
• Dodrupchen Jigme Tenpe Nyima. Advice for Palseng (on mind, sems, and pure awareness, rig pa), trans. Adam Pearcey, 2015. Lotsawa House.
• Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche. Principles of the Dzogchen Practice of Khordé Rushen, trans. Adam Pearcey, 2018. Lotsawa House (marked there as a restricted text, for those who have received the relevant instruction).
• Higgins, D. (2016). On the rDzogs chen Distinction between Mind (sems) and Primordial Knowing (ye shes): Clarifications and Transcendental Arguments. Journal of Buddhist Philosophy, 2(1), 13–54.

Error común

Answering the questions with ideas — “thoughts come from the brain,” “the mind is empty” — instead of looking. The texts are clear that an intellectual conclusion is not the certainty the search is meant to produce.