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Studstill: Cybernetic Approach to Dzogchen 351details.” 184 Tantric practices in particular are simplified, with focus beingon “the generation of concentration rather than any quality of the techniquein and of itself.” 185Dzogchen Practice ProperThe various preliminary techniques of Dzogchen are generally consideredessential means of turning the mind from its habitual egocentrictendencies, and as Dzogchen evolved historically (especially from theeleventh century onwards) they became increasingly important based onthe recognition that holding to simple awareness requires prior practice instabilizing the mind. 186 From the perspective of Dzogchen, however, atsome point in one’s spiritual maturation such practices stop being an aid toawakening and instead become an obstacle. Reality (the Ground) is unconditioned,while these practices are themselves conditions that by definitionmust conceal the Ground, through both the structures of the practicesthemselves and the dualistic presupposition of path and goal. From aDzogchen perspective, an additional “practice” is necessary: “a techniquefree immersion in the bare immediacy of one’s own deepest levels ofawareness,” 187 transcending the dualistic conditions of “path and goal,”“meditation and non-meditation,” and “quiescence and activity.” 188 In asense, the “method” becomes liberation itself, since the only way to realizea non-dual state is through non-duality itself. 189 At this level, practicebecomes non-practice. As Dilgo Khentse states, “One must realize that tomeditate is to pass beyond effort, beyond practice, beyond aims andgoals and beyond the dualism of bondage and liberation.” 190 Paradoxically,this non-dual, non-practice constitutes the complete severing ofone’s ties to the mundane through the radically non-ordinary state ofuncontrived presence.Dzogchen rhetoric notwithstanding, its rejection of practice (at least asan ultimate ideal), valorization of goalessness, and entire cosmology turnout to function as practice. The Dzogchen view constitutes an orientingframe of reference that actively shapes contemplative (and non-contemplative)experience and uproots the more subtle levels of conceptualduality (the persistent sense that one is a “practitioner” going somewhere)that are still active as one approaches the threshold of enlightenment: thepoint where practice leaves off and pure awareness is realized. As notedabove, to existentially embrace the idea that everything, including ourselves,represents the presencing of Being and is therefore primordiallyperfect and already enlightened has direct implications on one’s relationshipto life and one’s own experience. First, it encourages a non-discriminatingattitude toward the world of phenomenal appearances. Since “whateverarises has arisen as the play (Rol-Ba) of the ultimate nature,” one