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Teachings on the Practice of
Meditation
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| Introduction
to Meditation
I would like to begin by expressing my appreciation
at your sincere interest in, and wish to practice
genuine dharma in general and meditation and
Vajrayana dharma in particular. This is all
delightful to me. |
Pursuing this practice
of meditation and the study of Vajrayana is
extremely beneficial and useful, because in
general, all of the goodness of the human life
and all of the ability within the context of
the human life to actually benefit others and
affect others in a positive way comes from a
cultivation of dharma in general and in particular
from the practice of meditation.
Next, in accordance with the custom of our tradition,
the Karma Kagyu, I would like to chant the supplication
to the teachers of my lineage. Now, the particular
lineage supplication which we use is used in
all the Tibetan and overseas practice centres
of our tradition, and in fact, it’s used
by individual practitioners as well. The reason
is that this particular liturgy was composed
by Penkar Jampal Zangpo, who was a disciple
of the Sixth Gyalwa Karmapa, Tongwa Donden,
and the root guru of the Seventh Gyalwa Karmapa,
Chotrag Gyamtso. Penkar Jampal Zangpo lived
for eighteen years on an island of which he
was the only inhabitant. He lived in a cave
on that island and the island is in the middle
of a lake in the north of Tibet called Sky Lake
or Namtso. For the eighteen years of his living
there, he devoted himself entirely to meditating
upon Mahamudra, of which he generated a decisive
realisation. At the end of these eighteen years
of retreat, he composed this lineage supplication,
and therefore we regard it as embodying the
result of all of his experience and we consider
it to have great blessing. So now please recite
it with a recollection of its significance and
with confidence. Now please generate the pure
motivation of bodhichitta, which is the thought
that you will receive these teachings in order
to be able to properly practice dharma in order
to be of benefit to all beings who fill space.
The essence of the buddhadharma, the teachings
of the Buddha, is practice. When we say practice,
we mean the practice of meditation, which can
consist of either the meditation known as tranquillity
or that known as insight. But in either case,
it must be implemented in actual practice. The
reason we practice meditation is to attain happiness.
This means states of happiness in both the short
term and the long term. With regard to short-term
happiness, when we speak of happiness we usually
mean either or both of two things, one of which
is physical pleasure and the other of which
is mental pleasure. But if you look at either
of these pleasant experiences, the root of either
one has to be a mind that is at peace, a mind
that is free of suffering. Because as long as
your mind is unhappy and without any kind of
tranquillity or peace, then no matter how much
physical pleasure you experience, it will not
take the form of happiness per se. On the other
hand, even if you lack the utmost ideal physical
circumstances of wealth and so on, if your mind
is at peace you will be happy anyway.
We practice meditation, therefore in part, in
order to obtain the short-term benefit of a
state of mental happiness and peace. Now the
reason why meditation helps with this is that
normally we have a great deal of thought, or
many different kinds of thoughts running through
our minds. Some of these thoughts are pleasant,
even delightful. Some of them however, are unpleasant,
agitating and worrisome. Now, if you examine
the thoughts that are present in your mind from
time to time you will see that the pleasant
thoughts are comparatively few, and the unpleasant
thoughts are many— which means that as
long as your mind is ruled or controlled by
the thoughts that pass through it, you will
be quite unhappy. In order to gain control over
this process we therefore begin with the meditation
practice of tranquillity, which produces a basic
state of contentment and peace within the mind
of the practitioner.
An example of this is the great Tibetan yogi
Jetsun Milarepa, who lived in conditions of
the utmost austerity. He lived in utter solitude,
in caves and isolated mountains. His clothes
were very poor; he had no nice clothes. His
food was neither rich nor tasty. In fact, for
a number of years he lived on nettle soup alone,
as a result of which he became physically very
thin, almost emaciated. Now if you consider
his external circumstances alone, the isolation
and poverty in which he lived, you would think
he must have been miserable. Yet as we can tell
from the many songs he composed, because his
mind was fundamentally at peace, his experience
was one of constant unfolding delight. His songs
are songs that express the utmost state of delight
or rapture. He saw every place he went to, no
matter how isolated and austere an environment
it was, as beautiful, and he experienced his
life of utmost austerity as extremely pleasant.
In fact the short-term benefits of meditation
are more than merely peace of mind, because
our physical health as well depends to a great
extent upon our state of mind. Therefore, if
you cultivate this state of mental contentment
and peace, then you will tend not to become
ill, and you will as well tend to heal easily
if and when you do become ill. The reason for
this is that one of the primary conditions which
brings about states of illness is mental agitation,
which produces a corresponding agitation or
disturbance of the channels and energies (Skt.
prana) within your body. These generate new
sicknesses, ones you have not yet experienced
and also prevent the healing of old sicknesses.
This agitation of the channels and winds or
energies also obstructs the benefits which could
be derived from medical treatment. If you practice
meditation, then as your mind settles down,
the channels and the energies moving through
the channels return to their rightful functioning,
as a result of which you tend not to become
ill and you are able to heal any illnesses you
already have. We can see an illustration of
this also in the life of Jetsun Milarepa, who
engaged in the utmost austerities with regard
to where he lived, the clothes he wore, the
food he ate and so on throughout the early part
of his life. Yet this did not harm his health,
because he managed to have a very long life
and was extremely vigorous and youthful to the
end of his life. This indicates the fact that
through the proper practice of meditation, the
mental peace and contentment that is generated
calms down or corrects the functioning of the
channels and energies, allowing for the healing
of sickness and the prevention of sickness.
The ultimate or long-term benefit of the practice
of meditating is becoming free of all suffering,
which means no longer having to experience the
sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death.
Now this attainment of freedom is called, in
the common language of all Buddhist traditions,
buddhahood, and in the particular terminology
of the Vajrayana, the supreme attainment, or
supreme siddhi. In any case, the root or basic
cause of this attainment is the practice of
meditation. The reason for this is, again, that
generally we have a lot of thoughts running
through our minds, some of which are beneficial
—thoughts of love, compassion, rejoicing
in the happiness of others and so on—and
many of which are negative—thoughts of
attachment, aversion, jealousy, competitiveness
and so on. Now there are comparatively few of
the former type of thoughts and comparatively
many of the latter type of thoughts because
we have such strong habits that have been accumulating
within us over a period of time without beginning.
It’s only by removing these habits of
negativity that we can free ourselves from suffering.
You cannot simply remove these mental affliction,
or kleshas, by saying to yourself, “I
will not generate any more mental affliction,”
because you do not have the necessary freedom
of mind or control over the kleshas to do so.
In order to relinquish these, you need to actually
attain this freedom, which begins, according
to the common path, with the cultivation of
tranquillity (Tib. shinay, Skt. shamatha). Now
when you begin to meditate, when you begin to
practice the basic meditation of tranquillity
meditation, you may find that your mind won’t
stay still for a moment. But this is not permanent.
This will change as you practice and you will
eventually be able to place your mind at rest
at will, at which point you have successfully
alleviated the manifest disturbance of these
mental afflictions or kleshas. On the basis
of that then you can apply the second technique
which is called insight (Tib. lhaktong, Skt.
vipashyana)—which consists of learning
to recognize and directly experience the nature
of your own mind. This nature is referred to
as emptiness. When you recognize this nature
and rest in it, then all of the kleshas, all
of the mental afflictions that arise, dissolve
into this emptiness and are no longer afflictions.
Therefore the freedom or result, which is called
buddhahood, depends upon the eradication of
these mental afflictions, and that depends upon
the practice of meditation.
The practice of tranquillity and insight is
the general path which is common to both the
paths of sutra and tantra. In the specific context
which is particular to the Vajrayana, the main
techniques are called the generation stage and
the completion stage. These two techniques are
extremely powerful and effective.
Generation stage refers to the visualization
of, for example, the form of a lineage guru,
the form of a deity or yidam, or the form of
a dharma protector (Skt. dharmapala). Now, initially
when first encountering this technique it’s
not uncommon for beginners to think, what is
the point of this? Well, the point of this is
that we support and confirm our ignorance and
suffering and our kleshas through the constant
generation of impure projections or impure appearances,
which make up our experience of samsara. In
order to transcend this process we need to transcend
these impure projections together with the suffering
that they bring about. A very effective way
to do this is to replace these gradually, replace
these projections of impurity with pure projections
based on the iconography of the yidam, the dharmapala
and so on. By starting to experience the world
as the mandala of the deity and all beings as
the presence of the deity, then you gradually
train yourself to let go of mental afflictions,
let go of impure projections and you create
the environment for the natural manifestation
of your own innate wisdom.
Now all of this occurs gradually through this
practice of the generation stage. The actual
deities who are used can vary in appearance.
Some of them are peaceful and some of them are
wrathful. In general, the iconography of the
wrathful deities points out the innate power
of wisdom and that of the peaceful deities the
qualities of loving-kindness and compassion.
Also there are male deities and female deities.
The male deities embody the method or compassion
and the female deities embody intelligence or
wisdom.
For these reasons, it’s appropriate to
perform these practices of meditation upon deities.
Because these practices are so prevalent in
our tradition, if you go into a Vajrayana practice
place or temple, you will probably see lots
of images of deities—peaceful deities,
wrathful deities and extraordinarily wrathful
deities. Also you’ll see lots of shrines
with some very eccentric offerings on them.
Initially, if you’re not used to all this,
you might think, “What is all this?”
You might feel, “Well, the basic practices
of tranquillity and insight make a lot of sense
and are very interesting; and all these deities,
all these rituals, and all these eccentric musical
instruments are really not very interesting
at all.” However each and every aspect
of the iconography, and each and every implement
you find in a shrine room is there for a very
specific reason. The reason in general is that
we need to train ourselves to replace our projections
of impurity or negativity with a projection
or experience of purity and you can’t
simply fake this, you can’t simply talk
yourself into this, because you’re trying
to replace something that is deeper than a concept.
It’s more like a feeling. So therefore,
in the technique by which you replace it, a
great deal of feeling or experience of the energy
of purity has to be actually generated, and
in order to generate that we use physical representations
of offerings, we use musical instruments in
order to inspire the feeling of purity and so
on. In short, all of these implements are useful
in actually generating the experience of purity.
That is the first of the two techniques of Vajrayana
practice, the generation stage. The second technique
is called the completion stage, and it consists
of a variety of related techniques of which
perhaps the most important and the best known
are Mahamudra and Dzogchen or “the great
perfection.” Now sometimes it seems to
be presented that Dzogchen is more important,
and at other times it seems to be presented
that Mahamudra is more important, and as a result
people become a little bit confused about this
and are unsure which tradition or which practice
they should pursue. Ultimately the practices
in essence and in their result are the same.
In fact, each of them has a variety of techniques
within it. For example, within Mahamudra practice
alone there are many methods which can be used,
such as candali and so forth, and within the
practice of Dzogchen alone there are as well
many methods, such as the cultivation of primordial
purity, spontaneous presence and so on. But
ultimately Mahamudra practice is always presented
as guidance on, or an introduction to your mind,
and Dzogchen practice is always presented as
a guidance on or introduction to your mind.
Which means that the root of these is no different
and the practice of either Mahamudra or Dzogchen
will generate a great benefit. Further, we find
in “The Aspiration of Mahamudra”
by the third Gyalwa Karmapa, Lord Rangjung Dorje,
the following stanza:
It does not exist, and has not been
seen, even, by the Victors.
It is not -non-existent, it is the basis of
all Samsara and Nirvana.
This is not contradictory, but is the great
Middle Way.
May I come to see the nature which is beyond
elaboration.
That is from the Mahamudra tradition. Then,
in The Aspiration for the Realization of the
Nature of the Great Perfection by the omniscient
Jigme Lingpa, an aspiration liturgy from the
Dzogchen tradition, we find the following
stanza:
It does not exist, it has not been seen,
even by the Victor.
It is not non-existent, it is the basis of
all Samsara and Nirvana.
It is non contradictory, it is the great Middle
Way.
May I come to recognize dzogpa chenpo, the
nature of the ground.
In other words, these two traditions are
concerned entirely with the recognition of
the same nature.
So both short-term and ultimate happiness
depend on the cultivation of meditation, which
from the common point of view of the sutras
[the point of view held in common by all traditions
of Buddhism] is tranquillity and insight,
and from the uncommon point of view of the
Vajrayana is the generation and completion
stages.
© Copyright Khenchen
Thrangu Rinpoche, Shenpen Osel & Zhyisil
Chokyi Ghatsal Publications 2002.
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