Rest in Natural Great Peace

Faithful paraphrase of Sogyal Rinpoche’s guidance (the verse quoted is Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche’s, as he taught it):

1. Sit comfortably and quietly. A stable, relaxed posture; eyes may be softly open. Take a few natural breaths and arrive.
2. Acknowledge the exhausted mind. Notice honestly how driven, busy, and tired the mind is — “beaten helplessly by karma and neurotic thoughts,” tossed like waves. You are not fixing it; you are seeing it.
3. Let go of the technique itself — stop striving. This is the heart of it. Don’t try to concentrate, control the breath, empty the mind, or achieve calm. Drop the doing. Sogyal Rinpoche’s repeated word is release: relax, let go, and let be.
4. Let the mind settle by itself. Like muddy water left undisturbed clears on its own, an unforced mind settles naturally. Simply allow it. There is nowhere to get to.
5. Rest in the natural openness (“natural great peace”). When the striving drops, what remains is a spacious, undistracted ease. Rest there — relaxed, present, aware — without grasping at it or commenting on it. In Sogyal Rinpoche’s Dzogchen framing this open ease is a taste of the natural state of mind.
6. When thoughts return, don’t re-engage the struggle. Let them dissolve; gently, effortlessly relax back into resting. Recite the verse inwardly if it helps re-cue the letting-go.
7. Bring it into life. Use brief “drop and rest” moments through the day — at a desk, in a queue, between tasks — re-arriving in natural ease for a few breaths. (Sourcing note: the verse is Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche’s, quoted by Sogyal Rinpoche; the “stop striving / let the mind settle / rest in natural openness” instruction is Sogyal Rinpoche’s documented teaching in Natural Great Peace and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Faithful paraphrase with the verse quoted in full as a short attributed excerpt.)

The verse is by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche (1932–1999), a great Dzogchen master and a teacher closely associated with Sogyal Rinpoche, who popularised it as a guided “Rest in Natural Great Peace” meditation (booklet/audio Natural Great Peace).

It expresses the Dzogchen principle of resting in rigpa / the nature of mind without contrivance.; lineage. (Fair-use note: evaluate the teaching independently of later allegations against Sogyal Rinpoche.)

Dzogchen trekchö / “non-meditation” — the source: resting in innate awareness without effort.

• Mahamudra “ordinary mind, leave it as it is” — near-identical effortless-rest instruction.
• Zen shikantaza — “just sitting,” nothing to attain.
• Acceptance / “leaves on a stream” (ACT) — secular letting-go of the struggle with thoughts.
• Coué’s law of reversed effort — the same insight that forcing is counter-productive.
• Christian contemplative “let go and let God” — devotional surrender analogue.

Trying to “do” non-doing. The classic paradox: straining to stop straining. If you catch yourself working at it, that noticing is the cue to simply relax further.

• Chasing a peaceful state. Grasping for calm re-creates effort. Let whatever is here be here; peace arrives as a by-product of letting go.
• Spacing out / dullness. Effortless is not foggy. Keep a quality of relaxed alertness; a soft open gaze helps.
• Treating the verse as a mantra to repeat hard. It’s a reminder to release, not a focus object to grip.
• Only doing it on the cushion. Its power is in short, frequent “drop and rest” moments woven through ordinary life.