Within Dzogchen, meditation and contemplation are not aimed at constructing a special state, but at revealing and stabilizing the nature of mind that is already present. Conventional practices such as calm-abiding and analytical meditation are employed as skillful means to calm conceptual activity, weaken emotional reactivity, and clarify attention. These methods prepare the ground so that direct introduction to natural awareness, or rigpa, becomes possible and can be recognized without constant interruption. In this preparatory phase, contemplation may also take the form of examining mind and phenomena so that intellectual grasping is gradually exhausted and conceptual fixations loosen.

Once rigpa has been directly recognized through appropriate instructions, the emphasis shifts from doing something to resting in what is already complete. At this stage, contemplation no longer means thinking about reality but remaining in the naked, non-conceptual awareness that knows thoughts, emotions, and perceptions as they arise and dissolve. Meditation, in the conventional sense of maintaining an object or cultivating a state, is then seen as secondary or even unnecessary, because the natural state does not need to be produced or improved. Practice becomes an effortless presence, “meditation without meditator and object,” in which appearances are allowed to unfold within uncontrived awareness.

Over time, the role of both meditation and contemplation is to support the continuity of this recognition so that it permeates all situations. Formal sessions train stability, while the ultimate aim is to sustain natural awareness throughout daily activities, without relying solely on structured practice. In this way, the preparatory methods and the subsequent effortless abiding are not opposed, but form a single arc: from deliberate methods that clear obscurations to a spontaneous, continuous recognition in which the distinction between meditating and not meditating gradually falls away.