Student and Teacher

Relating to Meditative Experiences

This edited excerpt is from oral teachings given by Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche during Ligmincha's Tenth Annual Summer Retreat, July 2002, and was included in a VOCL from 2002.

Sometimes during meditation practice you find you are looking for experiences. You want something, whether it is great bliss or perhaps a kundalini experience. And when you have an experience in practice, you often completely forget about the basis of the experience and instead become totally involved in the experience. With any kind of meditative experience, it is important to feel the space of the experience.

We need to ask, is the experience or the experiencer more important? According to dzogchen, the experiencer is more important. Even if you are having an incredible experience, if you lose the basis of that experience, there is no particular benefit of having that experience. It is important to abide in the self and not be deluded by experience.

Dzogchen talks a lot about experiences, such as sit this way, breathe that way, get into this position to have that experience. Fundamentally, though, one of the main principles in dzogchen is not to introduce experiences but to introduce the experiencer. If that point is not understood, when you have an experience in meditation you lose the space. Then it is easy to get caught up with the experience. In the conventional sense you may enjoy the experience, but ultimately, that experience didn't really serve the purpose of introducing you to your natural mind.