MEDITATION
If our inner being is obscured by good or bad thoughts, it is the same; the point is to experience our true self beyond the conceptual mind: this is Dzogchen.
Many people use meditation to reduce tension and improve health, but this is not the purpose of meditation; its purpose is to achieve enlightenment. And what is enlightenment? Enlightenment means becoming a complete human being. We are in samsara, which is a state of consciousness in which we can easily get angry or jealous, and in which we can easily have a very changeable mood, and thus we can continue for many lives. This is samsara; we are in samsara.
People who practice meditation want to escape samsara and overcome limitations, to be liberated like a bird from its nest. And those who realize that happiness is not found in samsara seek it within themselves, going to their deepest selves to discover themselves, finding a Master, opening their hearts, receiving sacred teachings, and applying them as a whole. This is how we will achieve the enlightenment that is within ourselves; this is how we will achieve the state of Buddha within ourselves. We all have the Buddha within us and need to discover it. Regardless of our nationality or religion, we all have it; we can call it, if we wish, God within ourselves.
The way we find it is not solely by praying; we need to practice active meditation, applying our own mind, our own body, and our own speech. We cannot ignore our body, we cannot ignore our speech, and we cannot ignore our own mind either. It is not enough to say, "God, help me!"; it doesn't work that way; we must act within our own existence.
Three Systems of Meditation
I will now explain the three systems of meditation: Sutra, Tantra, and Dzogchen. All three have the same goal: to achieve enlightenment by overcoming obstacles and connecting with wisdom, but each has a specific way. The first, Sutra, we call the path of renunciation; the second, Tantra, is the path of transformation; and the third, Dzogchen, is the path of self-liberation.
What we renounce, what we transform, and what we liberate is the same: it is the darkness caused by our ignorance, by our limitations, by what we call "negative emotions" (ignorance, hatred, attachment, jealousy, and pride); the five negative emotions are the cause of suffering, and if we do not have them, we will not have suffering.
Depending on the way we decide to work, we will follow one or another of these paths. To illustrate the three paths, I will give an example: there are different ways to combat the poison of a plant; the first is that of someone who renounces the poison and discards it or stays away from the plant because it is poisonous. This would be the Sutra approach, the approach of renunciation. The second path is transformation; this would be, for example, the approach of a doctor who does not have to renounce the poisonous plant but decides to transform it: they take the plant, boil it, dry it, and turn the substance of the poison into medicine. In Tantrism, in tantric practices, things are transformed. The third path is liberation; it is not the path of one who renounces nor of one who transforms, but consists of directly touching negative emotions. This would be like what the peacock does, which eats the poison directly: it changes nothing, nor does it renounce; on the contrary, the poison increases its vitality instead of killing it as usually happens to ordinary people.
We can see that the approaches regarding negative emotions are different in the three systems, but all three are valuable and very useful teachings for various people.
In Dzogchen, nothing is transformed, nor is renunciation sought. When trying to transform things, we tend to replace them with an antidote, which is not correct in itself because it is a conceptualized idea. It is a good thought, but it is also a problem. In terms of the mind, good and bad thoughts are the same: both are conceptualizations, and for this reason, they distract us from the natural state of the mind. To make it clearer: if you hit your head with a gold ball or if you hit it with a stone, you feel pain; the blow from gold is not better than the blow from stone. If our inner being is obscured by good or bad thoughts, it is the same; the point is to experience our true self beyond the conceptual mind: this is Dzogchen.