29 The Central Role of Shamatha on the Buddhist Path

Olaso. For this afternoon’s meditation session, I’d like to return back to straight shamatha. In a very simple, very kind of honest, basic, straightforward, no nonsense method of shamatha, and that is mindfulness of breathing.

[00:27] In the Pali Canon there was no meditation that the Buddha taught more frequently than mindfulness of breathing. According to the Pali Canon on the night that he achieved enlightenment, he was practising mindfulness of breathing and on the day that he achieved parinirvana, he was practising mindfulness of breathing. So it couldn’t be that trivial. Couldn’t be just for beginners. In fact it turns out to be really quite extraordinarily deep.

[01:04] And in terms of posture, we see it classically depicted in the cross legged sitting posture, the vajra [?] Padmasana or the full lotus position. For very, very good reason. It is classic. It is very effective, but of course he didn’t die in that posture. He chose to lie down. He could have, I think he had it in him to sit up if he wanted to, but he chose not to, and he lay down and maybe that was to show a bit of flexibility.

[01:28] So between these two postures that we’ve been exploring, the sitting and the supine, I really like to encourage everyone, those here and those listening by podcast, don’t give up on the shavasana. Don’t give up on that one. Except for two cases. Then maybe it’s really not so important. For those of you who are quite sure you are not going to die. And those quite sure you are never going to be injured or sick again. [laughter]. For you then maybe not so important. But for everybody else, if you’re seriously injured or sick or you are dying, chances are not very high you would be upright in the full lotus. You might. I wouldn’t bet on it. You’d probably be lying down and it’d be really a shame if when that day comes, you had still not learnt how to meditate in the supine position. [laughter]. Because that guarantees you’re going to, you know, check out from this life, you know, and check out in the economy class. [laughter]. Not nice. I know economy class.

[02:35] And years ago in the early 80s, 1981, I trained for about 3 months, 2 and a half, 3 months, with B K S Iyengar in his ashram in Poona. Very intensively, like practicing yoga for about 5 hours a day and I had a fair amount, I was fortunate enough to have a lot of personal instruction from him. And he made a number of comments, I remember it vividly but one I remember in particular was that he said you’re not ready to meditate until you have mastered shavasana. Anybody, anybody can just lie down. But that’s not shavasana. It’s not just a physical posture. It is clearly … it’s a yogic practice. It’s not just nap time. And so it means that you’re fully aware, you’re fully present, you’re conscious, you’re conscious in your body, you’re aware of that whole embodiment, after having finished all your other asanas, and this is your culminating asana. And you’re there and he taught it with the same precision that he taught any other asana, which means a lot! And you’re fully present, and then you master that, then he said, ok, then you can consider moving on to pranayama and meditation and so on. It was very sequential, very much a Lam Rim-pa, you know, following the Lam Rim within the yogic tradition. I think there’s a lot to be said for that. To know what it’s like to be so profoundly relaxed, so deeply relaxed in your body that it is total meltdown, and yet not even have a dip in the level of your clarity, your cognisance, your wakefulness, but you are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as they say in English, very very bright, clear and yet body totally relaxed. This is not something that comes naturally, especially to us living in our modern world. We are not at all. And so that’s worth cultivating. And in that and of course the chest is open, the spine is straight, everything is open, even the palms are up, which opens up the hinges here of your shoulders, so everything is open, and in that, in that total relaxation, you can really see what it is like, with no impediment, no constraints, no constraints on the breathing at all. Just wide open. Right.

[04:50] And so the breathing then, is … your posture is such that the breathing can really flow unimpededly and effortlessly. You can really taste what it means like to breathe egolessly, releasing all control, breathing with a total sense of surrender, not only during the out-breath which is not that difficult, but a total sense of relax and release and surrender during the in-breath. The in-breath is just coming in, but not pulled in, not inhibited, and there is no agent doing it, There is no inhaler. It’s just anymore if the breeze is blowing this way we are not inhaling the breeze this way. It’s just flowing this way. It’s just happening. And so if you’ve mastered that, if you’ve really tasted that, and then you know how to slowly roll out of the shavasana, you don’t jerk yourself up, but you roll over onto your side and then you face down and then you use your lower hip as the pivot, and you gently roll, smoothly roll out of that posture for example into the sitting posture, if while sitting, you have virtually the same degree of release, of softness, of relaxation and you are sitting upright, that is good, that is excellent. Then you can have the same unimpeded flow of the breathing. It’s really crucial. But if you don’t have that in the sitting, go back to the supine. And stay. Continue practising until you’ve really mastered that. And until you’ve broken the habit of, ‘I am in the supine I get drowsy’, it’s just a Pavlovian response, it’s just a habit, that’s all it is. It’s just a habit. And that’s why I suggest never use shavasana for anything other than practice. So by habit every time you’re in that posture, it must be for yoga or meditation. Any other supine position, any other lying down position, that’s fine. Watch television, read a book, fall asleep whatever you like but not this one. This is like … taken.

[00:06:50] Now here’s a hypothesis that you can test. Go back to a parallel I’ve drawn before, that I basically keep emphasizing, that we know that in settling the mind in its natural state, when you are putting 8, 10, 12 hours in a day, day after day, month after month, what happens. Well, you know that over time your mind is settling in its natural state with a lot of spikes, and ups and downs and spikes and upheavals and so forth, outer, inner and secret and so forth, but overall the trajectory is you are going from, if you remember the metaphors, from a cascading waterfall to a mountain brook rushing quickly down a mountain gorge, to a river flowing serenely in the valley, to an ocean unmoved by waves to Mount Meru. Mount Meru, total stillness. So in terms of the activity of the mind, it is called javana, you might recall the term, the activity, the kinetic energy of the mind, the movements of the mind, they are going from being very rambunctious and sporadic and up and down and upheavals and calm and happy and sad, good day, bad day and then over time, it is just evening out, evening out, until your mind slips into its natural state, mental activity goes zero, you’re left with the substrate, substrate you invert your awareness in upon your substrate consciousness, and you’ve achieved shamatha. That was the whole path right there.

[00:08:12] So you see that at any given day it could be a spike, it could be a dip, it could be an upheaval, it could be a really happy day, but overall that’s the trajectory, that’s how it works. That’s how it works. And here’s … so that’s that. I mean that’s just … that’s experience that has been corroborated thousands and thousands of times. It’s a very well run experiment. So the data are in. They’re published. It’s a done deal. Now we’ve mindfulness of breathing and I am suggesting a parallel here, which can be tested, and that is, especially with this full body awareness, but I would not confine it to that particular method, that when you go into this type of sense of ease, this type of sense, exactly the same quality of awareness that you bring to the mind, and the emotions, memories, desires coming up, not trying to regulate, not trying to suppress, not trying to accentuate, not trying to fix the mind, you’re just bringing the awareness to it. And the awareness you tweak in terms of overcoming excitation and laxity but the contents, what’s happening in the mind, you don’t mess with it. Right. That’s settling the mind. We’ll get to it soon but I think I’ve given away the plot, and so similarly with the breath, that when you go into that mode of relaxation, which is most easily accessible in the supine position, but can be sustained in the sitting, but watch the flow of the breadth and see if the following is true. Okay. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. Maybe it is. Check.

[00:09:40] And that is, as you go into that type of meltdown, that type of total release, but total presence, same quality of awareness, stillness observing motion, simultaneous experience of the stillness of awareness and the movements within the body, and it could be just at the apertures of the nostrils, but here I’ll just emphasize Asanga’s method, the movements, the fluctuations corresponding with the respiration, watch the fluctuations, watch the spikes, and here is the suggestion, it might turn out like this. That when you first sit down, the breathing is fairly, fairly strong, so long in-breath, long out-breath and then on occasion, it might slip into short breath, short breath. Long in-breath, short out-breath … bah bah bah bah bah.... short in-breath, long out-breath, long out-breath, pause pause pause … in-breath … kind of like the mind at the beginning, a cascading waterfall. All kinds of stuff coming, okay, a lot of variation and don’t mess with it, you are watching your body balance itself by way of the respiration, you’re watching your subtle body, which is all about the flow of energies balancing itself out, and what you’re seeing on the surface is breath but this is the body balancing, healing itself. Then over time, and here’s the hypothesis you can test if you like, over time as you’re really experiencing not only the physical ease but a sense of mental ease, just looseness like, ahhh, loose, relaxed, calm, like that, just like loose, relaxed, comfortable, then you may find, ohhh, the breath is getting more rhythmic now, the initial kind of spikes, and up and down and variations and so forth of long breath, short breath and pause and pause and all that kind of business, that kind of sorted itself out and now I am getting a nice long in-breath, long out-breath, long in-breath. Maybe that’ll happen, maybe that corresponds to the first three of the qualities of shamatha and that is relaxation. Maybe. Could be. Continue. Then just simply continue, noting long in-breath, long out-breath, ohh long in-breath long out-breath, you don’t have to talk about it. You should know that without having to conceptualise it. And you have that basis, you now, you’ve got that basis, that ease, that relaxation, loseness, comfort, and you are just noting, ohh, nice, long in-breath, long out-breath, ohh, and then of course as the mind is at ease, relaxed, then the turbulence of the mind, the amount, the sheer volume, the amount of rumination, obsessive compulsive ideation subsides, the amount of coarse excitation where you’re just losing the object entirely, your mind got thrown out, and spin of into excitation of this and that, that’s subsiding. And as the mind is really calming down, excitation subsiding, stability’s increasing. Then there’s less wear and tear on the mind, less friction, less effort, and you may find now the body is really calm, relaxed and quiet, the mind in terms of the volume of rumination and so forth, getting really really quiet, which means that you’re just are not giving much effort, which means that you don’t need as much air. As you’re approximating falling asleep now, as far as the body knows, the body doesn’t know anything but metaphorically, the body says, ‘I think we’re falling asleep now.’ And the mind is getting really calm. And so then you may find that either suddenly or gradually may find, ohh, short in-breath, short out-breath, short in-breath, short out-breath, short in-breath, short out-breath. Shallow. Short. And not sporadic. Not a bit short, then long. Long long long. Short short short. Long, long. Not like that. Short short short short short. Maybe that corresponds to stability. Could be. Wanna check.

[00:13:55] If that happens, then recall what the Buddha said. After he said, when the in-breath is short, note that it is short, when the out-breath is short, note that it is short. Then he said, attending to the whole body, breath in; attending to the whole body, breath out. Now’s the time for continuity. When you slip into that shallow breathing, and it is really quite consistent, it’s a flow of shallow breathing, short breathing, who knows, might be 15 cycles per minute, ah, when that happens, you would say okay now I know my marching orders, I know what to do now, stay with it. Now’s the time you know just be there, like the rider on his mount, like the horseman on his horse, stay with it. Stay with the whole in-breath, out-breath, in-breath. Just stay with it. Stay the course. Maintain the continuity. Deepen that stability. Deepen that stability. And that may be corresponding to, out of the relaxation, stability and clarity. That may correspond to stability. And your breathing may correspond very, very closely to that type of breathing you slip into, when you’re in normal non-lucid dreamless sleep. Right. And here‘s a hypothesis, I’m giving one hypothesis after another, I betcha, here’s my working hypothesis, that when you’re in deep dreamless sleep, and you do slip into this fairly rapid but shallow, very restful breathing, 15 cycles or so per minute, I betcha if you are deep asleep for an hour or an hour and half or what have you, I betcha over that hour and a half, I’ll bet it does not get shallower and shallower and shallower. I bet it doesn’t. I bet it just kinda steady-state out, that cycle and that same amplitude, I betcha that’s my expectation. I don’t know but I betcha. I think so. And that’s as good as it gets. That‘s what you get deep sleep for and you wake up fresh, fresh as a daisy, the mind’s clear, body is rested. And I had a good night’s sleep. Right. That’s as good as it gets. But shamatha is not just to get a good night’s sleep. Shamatha is to achieve shamatha. That’s accessing the substrate, the substrate consciousness, which you do access in deep dreamless sleep but not knowingly. And why? Clarity is not there. Clarity is not there. You got relaxation, stability but you got no clarity, you don’t even know you’re asleep, that’s not much clear, you’re not clear about anything. And no explicit awareness of anything. And so that’s where shamatha and deep sleep part paths. And imagine now you’re really, you’re fully cognizant, you’re clearly luminously aware, in a continuous way, attending to the whole breath, whole body I breathe in, attending to the whole body I breathe out.

[00:16:49] And now, you really refining, you‘re fine-tuning, fine-tuning, fine-tuning that clarity which is getting sharper and sharper and sharper. Stability getting finer and finer and finer, relaxation is getting deeper and deeper and deeper. Which now is not happening in deep dreamless sleep but does happen in shamatha. You’ve now set out on uncharted ground. In that regard, then on the shamatha path, then the breath is getting shallower and shallower. Same frequency but really really fine. Really fine. In other words, if you’re attending those tactile sensations whether they’re at the nostrils or the full body, they’re getting subtler. And if you remain engaged, your mind’s going to get subtle. And then the sensations will get more subtle, because less air is coming in. And your attention will get more subtle. The loop, the feedback loop. And you’re getting really really subtle. Until …you know … then you achieve shamatha. And your awareness of the body of tactile sensations vanishes. And you’re just resting in the substrate consciousness, and you can if you wish, still be aware of the rhythm of the breath. Even without being aware of the tactile sensations. So maybe that’s true. Don’t know. Let’s check. Let’s practise.

Pause.

[00:18:31]. It will be a silent session. Let’s focus on mindfulness of breathing.

[00:18:48] Bell rings.

[00:20:13] Olaso. And so we’re now going to switch tracks to a little surprise entry. For a retreat which was supposed to be focusing on Panchen Rinpoche’s text and Naked Awareness by Karma Chagmé, we’re introducing a special guest, a special guest star from an entirely different text, but again one composed by Karma Chagmé Rinpoche and as you can see from the footnote down at the bottom of the page, this presentation is what 20-pages or so, this presentation is chapter 15. I never saw the first 14. Rinpoche just went right to 15. Of Karma Chagmé’s great commentary to Mingyur Dorje, this was his premier disciple, an incredible prodigy. His disciple’s text called Buddhahood in the Palm of the Hand [?21:04 Sangye Lachang] … and the great commentary to Buddhahood in the Palm of the Hand and so as I mentioned previously I’ve known Gyatrul Rinpoche for a few years, really because his principal attendant and his wife was one of my oldest friends in dharma, a woman named Sangye Khandro and we’ve known each other since about 1972 in India. So old, old dharma buddies. And so we’ve an ongoing friendship very much alive to this day. And so I would drop in on her once every year, 2, 3, whatever. And she would be with her lama and then I would meet with Gyatrul Rinpoche and we would chat. And I was kind of checking him out but then it was in 1990 when I first went to receive teachings from him and this was in San Jose as I recall in California, and Sangye Khandro was his interpreter, she interpreted for him for years, and the topic for that first teaching was dream yoga and I received teaching on this previously from Zong Rinpoche back when he taught the Six Yogas of Naropa, Six Dharmas of Naropa, back in 1978, but again it was just way over my head and Geshe Rabten said, ‘don’t even try to practise it, forget it.’ And so 12 years went by, and Gyatrul Rinpoche taught it, and then it just really struck home, and I asked him to be my lama, just like, ho, I get it. I get it. I get it. The dream yoga is really both … it’s vipassana practice. Dream yoga is vipassana practice. There is daytime dream yoga and nighttime dream yoga. Daytime dream yoga is daytime vipassana practice and nighttime dream yoga is nighttime vipassana practice.

[00:23:01] And it really struck home and so I felt I‘ve found another lama that I want to have a strong connection with. And so … then not long after that, then Gyatrul Rinpoche invited me to ask me to come down with him to Hollywood to the centre there just for a weekend retreat. And to serve as his interpreter. I wound up having the privilege, the great privilege of serving as his primary interpreter in the Bay area for 7 years, but this was the first teaching and it was not in Bay area, it was in Hollywood. And he was … it was entirely up to him what to each. And he chose this chapter and then the next chapter was on vipassana but this was the first one he taught. So the first teachings I received from him and for which I was serving as his interpreter. And I was reflecting on it for a little bit and going back for me to the early day and it was 1972 that I received my first instruction, detailed, quite definitive, systematic, clearly laid out teachings on shamatha, the 9 stages, everything crystal clear presentation by Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey. And he gave this teaching and it blew me away ‘cause I’ve never heard anything like this before. We just don’t have this in the West. We’ve nothing like this. You’d have to go back to Pythagoras but even he didn’t teach it, he probably realised shamatha, almost certainly did, didn’t teach it, we don’t know what he taught much.

[00:24:14 ] So Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey taught shamatha and it made a very deep impression on me and then when he was coming towards the end of his teaching, then he says, well let’s practice a little bit, we’d have these one hour session every morning, one hour sessions 6 days a week and he just immersed us in dharma. So he says, ‘oh let’s practice a little bit.’ There were about I think 8 of us, we were in the one-year class, 8 of us, as I recall. And so we said, ‘Oh cool, let’s practise, let’s practise shamatha.’ Good. Good. So Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey is up there on his little dharma throne and we’re sitting on our cushions. He sits down there like a stone buddha just … booom .. . and we are sitting … mmm … booom … and 15 minutes goes by, and I won’t speak for the other ones, I’m not clairvoyant. But I thought that was good. That was fine, good. Good. That was a good thing. Half an hour goes by. And my body getting pretty uncomfortable. That was nice. [laughter]. An hour goes by. My body is wracked with pain. [laughter]. 2 hours goes by. It’s excruciating ‘cause we’re not supposed to lie down, he never talked about supine position. 3 hours goes by. He’s sitting like a stone buddha, not a flinch. And I am just writhing in agony, pretending to sit in meditation, when what I’m really hearing is my body just screaming, ‘what the hell are you doing?’ And after 3 hours, sitting like a stone buddha, he then just goes like this [makes a face] … “shamatha is not so easy.” [laughter]. That was my introduction to shamatha. I went off and clap my hands for a couple of years. Buddhist School of dialectics. When I was tired of doing that I meditated for a year and half, went off to Switzerland with Geshe Rabten, trained with him for 5 years. Served as his interpreter for 5 years. And then he again, he taught many topics but he taught shamatha and so the nail was sunk and Geshe Rabten countersunk the nail. Just hammered it in. So I got really inspired. And I was also kind of saturated with undigested knowledge, studying flat out for 10 years pretty much. And so I wrote to the His Holiness who was already my root guru at that time, he gave me full ordination, and I said, ‘I just want to meditate and I want to practise shamatha. What shall I do? Shall I go back to America, no visa problems, stay in Switzerland? But I know Geshe Rabten will be calling me back soon. Or shall I go to India?’ He said, ‘come to India and I will teach you.’ So I zipped off to India and went into my first shamatha retreat and it was directly under the guidance of His Holiness. After 6 months, then I had a non-renewable visa, the Indian government told me to get out. So but I had 5 months of strict retreat. His Holiness was guiding me and my nearest neighbour was [? 27:12] the yogi. He spent about 25 years in retreat. So I got doused there, doused in shamatha there. Went down to Sri Lanka where I got the enormous good fortune to come under the guidance of Balangoda Ananda Maitreya. He was like the greatest teacher in the whole country, great monk, great scholar, great meditator. And he had retired and so he’s living out in a little temple. And he let me come and stay with him and so he trained me in shamatha.

[00:27:41] And then I trained with Iyengar in yoga, and then after some time went back to America and organised a one year retreat and (?) Rinpoche came, the one that I met. He came, he led a one year shamatha retreat. And so he and I living together for a year. And he taught shamatha, spectacular, he gave a lot of personal guidance and I did a lot of interpretation for him. And then a couple of years go by. And then I receive teachings, dream yoga, from Gyatrul Rinpoche and then the first teaching he gives is shamatha. Right. So if you’re wondering why I’m a shamatha junkie, I’ve been kind of moulded that way from Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey and His Holiness Dalai Lama and Geshe Rabten and [?28:20] and Gyatrul Rinpoche. They just, you know … so if I emphasize shamatha, there’s good reason for that. That’s what happened to me. Hahaha. I’m very happy it happened to me. I mean this was all voluntary. Nobody has coerced me in any way. Just if you like it, you like it. If you don’t like it, scoot. Whatever. So that’s where this is coming from. So this is the chapter that he taught.

[00:28:53] And Shambala set it in 1991 probably. 1990, 1991 like that. So you see chapter 15, so we know, we can kind of surmise that what comes before this a whole bunch of presentation on preliminary practices and what comes after is definitely vipassana. I know that because he taught this. What comes after that, well, this is Mahamudra Dzogchen. So we know what’s coming after that in principle. The text as far as I know has never been translated and I was not able to find it on the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Centre.

[00:29:24] So here we go, The Cultivation of Shamatha by Karma Chagme. Definitely in the 17th century, he was a contemporary of the 5th Dalai Lama and, one of the greatest, he’s cited by both Nyingmapas and Kagyupas as a great scholar and contemplative, a master, true master, and his erudition is utterly amazing, which he shows. So here we jump right in.

Then …, [so here we are, after the first 14 chapters, he says,] Then first of all on the presentation of the instructions on the actual topic. So there we go, the actual topic, remember that, you have the preliminaries and then you have the actual topic and then you maybe have some concluding stuff like dedication of merit and what have you. So actual topic, well, then now we know, we’re going into the main show, the main event, and it’s starting with shamatha. The actual topic, that’s what that means, the [?] … so there are, now we are going to the main body of practice, the centrepiece, there are instructions on the breakthrough. Nowadays I translate this as cutting through. Either one is fine. Cutting through is Trekchö, the first of the 2 phases of Dzogchen practice, bonafide, classic Dzogchen practice, consists of two phases - the cutting through to the original purity of pristine awareness. That’s realizing rigpa. And the Tögal the direct crossing over to the spontaneous actualization of all the qualities of buddhahood. And the direct crossing over here is actually leaping from one bodhisattva bumi to another. It’s called the leap over or the direct crossing over. Ordinarily go from 1st bumi, 2nd bumi the third bumi, boom boom boom, like marching along. In this, you leap from the 1st to the 5th, from the 5th to the 8th, like a deer. Much faster. So if you are fully qualified, as (? Rinpoche) says, if you’re fully qualified Trekchö practitioners, you are actually .. that’s what he said, … if I say anything incorrectly, if I got it wrong, actually do feel free to correct me. Please do correct me. It’s [?] Rinpoche.

I don’t want to mess with what he said. If you are fully qualified Trecho practitioner, you can dwell in rigpa. Okay. And optimally you would be a vidyadhara and then he said, With full time practice, 20 years, you should be a buddha. by practising Tögal remember, 20 years. But the fine print was if you are fully qualified. [laughter]. I can take a walk. I can take at least some months, or years, or decades or a lifetime, so here we are. So There are instructions on the breakthrough, so now he’s placed this now in the context of Dzogchen. Breakthrough is Dzogchen terminology. It’s not Mahamudra terminology. There are instructions on the breaththrough or cutting through, which are common to shamatha, Mahamudra and Dzogchen. Okay. So common ground. Mahamudra from the Kagyu tradition, Dzogchen from Nyingma tradition, so these are common. Shamatha’s common to all 3. And the teachings here are common to both Mahamudra and Dzogchen, specifically the Trekchö itself, the cutting through itself you find that which is equivalent to that in Mahamudra that which is that in Dzogchen. And there are the uncommon direct crossing over instructions, those are unique to Dzogchen. You don’t find it in anywhere else. Not the Highest Yoga Tantra. Not in the Guhyasamaja. Not in Mahamudra. Not in the Six Dharmas of Naropa. You won’t find it anywhere. It’s unique and it’s therefore in the Nyingma tradition, anyone is welcomed to practise it. You don’t have to become a full fledged Nyingmapa. But they are the wellspring of that. It goes back to Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra and so on. So that’s, he’s laid out the big picture here but very briefly. Moreover in the first of these, that is in the cutting through, the first of the two major phases of Dzogchen meditation, in the first two of these, between the cutting through and the direct crossing over, there are the three topics of shamatha, vipassana and the union of the two.

[00:33:27] Shamatha predated the buddha by centuries. Vipassana was invented by the Buddha, discovered by the Buddha and the union of the two, and the powerful efficacy of the union of shamatha and vipassana was discovered by the Buddha. That was one of his great innovations in the contemplative heritage of India. I think that’s simply a true statement. It will be very hard to contest. It did not exist before him. After him, anybody’s welcome to borrow it. But he gets the credit for that. The union of shamatha and vipassana is that which purifies the mind irreversibly.

So among those 3 topics, First there is the presentation of shamatha For without shamatha, the mental afflictions are not suppressed, or one can say, subdued, either way you like. Without shamatha, the mental afflictions are not suppressed. The virtues of extra sensory perception do not arise various types of clairvoyance, knowing others’ mind, recalling your past lives, remote viewing, remote hearing, clairaudience clairvoyance, you don’t get those in a robust continuous durable fashion. You might get spikes, flashes, but they are not dependable. Unless you have shamatha. The virtues of extra sensory perceptions do not arise and wisdom does not realise emptiness. Once again you may get spikes, you might get glimpses. Sure, why not? You could. You could get glimpses of rigpa, glimpses of no self, of identity, glimpses of non- duality. Yeah for sure. But wisdom does not realise emptiness, that is wisdom just where you‘re living in it, you’re sustaining it. Without shamatha, it’s not going to happen. Without shamatha, there is no path. First of all, shamatha must be cultivated, as stated in the Bodhicaryavatara, the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by Shantideva, the most widely studied, taught and practised text in all of Tibetan Buddhism. I think that’s a safe statement. ‘Cause all 4 traditions practise it, teach it. There’s no text that is more strongly emphasized. And there are a lot of texts. Thousands and thousands of text. This is the classic of classics. This is the text that His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, requested from Khunu Lama Rinpoche.

[00:35:50] And so there states in the beginning of the 8th chapter, which is on jnana, on meditation but the name is jnana. Jnana that’s in first jnana, the second jnana and so forth. There Shantideva says right at the beginning of the chapter A person whose mind is distracted dwells between the fangs of the mental afflictions. One can really linger here. A person whose mind is still prone to attention deficit hyper-activities disorder, falling into excitation, mind wandering, rumination, and then you get tired, you fall into dullness, you get some coffee and you go back into excitation again. This person dwells between the fangs of mental afflictions. A very vivid image. And what he’s saying here in modern vernacular is your psychological immune system is shocked. Now we know if your physical immune system is shocked and you sit next to somebody on an aeroplane who has a cold, guess what? You are going to get a cold. Right. If your immune system is strong, you wind up leaving the aeroplane healthy and remaining healthy. Same virus. Both exposed to the same virus. Maybe he sneezed right at you. But not everybody who is exposed gets a cold. And that’s not only for the cold but for many, many other diseases. If your immune system is down of course, pretty much anything can kill you. And if it’s up, other people may be getting cholera, getting all kinds of stuff, and you may not. Right. So that’s physical. We all know about that. And we emphasize keep your immune system strong, strong, strong, strong. And then we have no reference at all, even the notion … has anyone seen a clinical psychology textbook that refers to your psychological immune system? Anybody? Anybody? Why not? It’s more important to us than our physical health. And it’s … am I talking, you know, LA, lala-land, goofy stuff. Or is this actually something that is meaningful. That is, if you encounter somebody who is belligerent, arrogant, aggressive, and they launch into you, do you become defensive, angry, defensive, sad, angry, agitated and so forth? And in which case, then your immune system is down. ‘Cause you caught what they had. If the person next to you, maybe, you’re going on vacation is just full of craving, hedonic carving and so forth and so on, are you going to fall into the same thing? If they are very jealous, if they are very … they read the news, they watch the electoral campaign in the United States, they start to be filled with contempt and disgust and hatred, you know, you fall into the same thing. They are contagious. You don’t get theirs but theirs triggers yours because we all have the seeds for these, right, and these are mental afflictions. Whoever is running for the president of the United States, and if we are feeling contempt, that’s our mental afflictions, not his problem. It’s mental afflictions. It’s contempt, hatred, disgust. That’s incompatible with loving kindness. So it does not matter who’s running, that’s our mental afflictions. Right. Simple.

[00:38:36] So what we can do to bolster, to strengthen our psychological immune system so even if people around us are displaying them in spades, that is flamboyantly, like mob mentality. It’s happened in multitude cultures. Where it’s ok to wipe out a whole race. It’s okay to wipe out Jews. It’s okay to wipe out Native Americans. It’s okay to treat black people as luggage. It’s okay because we all agreed. We all agreed it’s okay. Therefore it’s ok. But not everybody, not everybody, not everybody, that’s the hope. Not everybody in America thought it was just fine. Not all the Germans in Austria, not all by any means. Not everybody thought enslaving other human beings was okay, some people not, they didn’t fall. How come? They didn’t succumb. Everybody else around them thought it was fine. They didn’t. Those people we need to learn about,because they are the hope for humanity. The others are the ones with low psychological [immune system]. They will follow a monster. I am not referring to one country. I am referring to multiple countries through history. ‘Cause their psychological immune system was down. This is how to bolster your psychological immune system - develop shamatha. When it’s down like that, [blows] Phoo! That’s about how much vulnerability you have. You are a dandelion seed in the wind. [blows]. Phoo! Blown away. Right. The stakes are high here. When he says you dwell between the fangs of mental afflictions, that’s not a happy image.

[00:40:14] So we go from Shantideva to another one of the greatest of the greatest and that is Atisha, in his Bodhipathapradipa .. and that is, The Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment by Atisha. And he writes, and this again a classic text, the root for all lam-rim literature, stages of the path literature in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism, this is it, this is the first one, he wrote it for Tibetans, and he writes, Without the achievement of shamatha, extra-sensory perception does not occur. And again footnote, not robustly, not continuously, not dependently, doesn’t occur. You need that. Accordingly without the power of extra sensory perception, the mind is incapable of performing its tasks. In other words, your mind is not serviceable. That’s what they are really saying. They say it in so many words.

[00:41:02] I think at one point, Tsongkapa says once you have achieved shamatha now you have a mind. Whereas until before then, the mind had you. The mind jerks you this way, jerks you that way, tramples you, beats you up, mugs you, gives you a sugar candy and then beats you up again. You know. Who is in charge, you or your mind. Well, shall we practise mindfulness breathing for another 24 minutes and find out who’s boss. [laughter].

So there it is. I mean he is laying it out. This is necessary. So far we have, we have Shantideva, Atisha. Both of these are universally regarded as tremendous authorities in all schools of Tibetan buddhism and among their Indian peers. Atisha was a great renowned. He was tremendously revered in India. And Shantideva, goes without saying. So. And then the Suhṛllekha oh now we go to Nagarjuna. So we are hitting the heaviest of the heaviest in the Indian Mahayana tradition.

Next to Nagarjuna, this is the Suhṛllekha, letter to a king, one of his great classics, and there he writes to the king, without jnana, there is no wisdom. Well, he is referring to the 6 perfections. The 6th perfection is jnana. The perfection of jnana, of the 5th one, the 6th perfection is wisdom. And he said you don’t get to the 5th without the 6th. Right at the top, without jnana, there’s no wisdom. That’s kind of like nope, not being open to interpretation, that’s what he said. That’s Nagarjuna.

So there are many people nowadays who are dismissing, marginalising or even ridiculing shamatha and that’s fine, but then you have to know that you are ridiculing and marginalising Shantideva, Atisha and Nagarjuna. So you are welcome to do that but if you are calling yourself a Mahayana Buddhist, then you look like an idiot.

[00:43:03] So Karma Chagme, now we are back to the Kagyu tradition. The benefits of shamatha … this is like believing in relativity theory but thinking Einstein was kind of a nitwit. One or the other. Either let him be a nitwit and don’t believe in relativity theory or believe in relativity theory and give that guy a break. He invented it. He knows what’s he talking about.

So The benefits of shamatha are immeasurable. Craving for mundane activities is averted. Just generally speaking, your hedonic fixation really is subdued. It’s tamed. It’s intimidated. It’s really calmed. For a very simple reason, you’ve found something so much better. But there is no asceticism here. There’s no asceticism at all. It’s just like if you experience the bliss of your substrate consciousness and then you come out and look at what people in the desire realm consider as bliss … what do I need that for? You are all dining at McDonalds, and I’m dining at a 3 star hotel, a 5 star hotel with a 3 star restaurant, I mean why would I want to eat junk food when I got this. I’ve got gourmet food here. You people, oh, gee, you are no longer attached to McDonalds. [laughter]. Right. The pleasures of the desire realm are junk food.They are bad for you but they are also very addictive. So there, Shamatha’s the remedy. [laughter]. Okay. ‘Cause you got something better. It’s not like you have become some really kind austere, dried up, tight-lipped monk. I got renunciation. [laughter].

Not like that at all. You are a really happy camper. And what do you need that for? So there’s the first one. That’s one of the 5 obscurations you know. Fixations on hedonic pleasure. Fixations on the allures of the desire realm. Out for the count. Like step right on the job … on the floor, out. Many … so that’s averted … Many avenues of concentration or samadhi, open up in your mind stream. You now have a serviceable mind for the first time, you have a mind fit for action. Which means you can enter into the samadhis of the 4 immeasurables, of bodhichitta, of vipassana. A wide array at your fingertips. Now it’s kinda like, come on in, the water’s fine. ’Cause you’ve got a mind that enter into any of these effortlessly I mean very effectively.

Mental afflictions, kleshas, are calmed. They use the words very carefully here. This is professional literature. This is not a popularised document. This is the straight professional literature. A point to recognize that. Mental afflictions are calmed. It does not mean they are dispelled. Eradicated. Uprooted. It means you’ve knocked the wind out of them. They’re really subdued. They arise very rarely and when they do rise, they don’t have much punch. They don’t have much ability, power. So they’re still there. They can come back, but they’re really intimidated. Or speaking anthropomorphically or again your psychological immune system is so robust, that they have a hard time getting a handle hold, catching you, and getting you in their grip.

[00:46;37] So, Compassion arises. In a way this is kind of intuitively obvious. You can imagine that if you’ve come to this place where when you just go into your room, you sit down, you [makes a sound] just effortlessly you go right into samadhi, effortlessly any time you wish you slip right into the substrate consciousness. You experience bliss, luminosity, and non-conceptuality. You can stay as long as you like and you can go back whenever you like, and it is effortless. And you get all three simultaneously—bliss, luminosity and non-conceptuality— and then you come out of meditation, you look and what you got? What does everybody else have? You see them screwing around for more money and trying to get a bit more sex, and a bit more food, and a bigger house, and a bigger car, and the latest cell phone. Gee, you poor people. You are looking out there for something, for thrills, we call that luminosity where I live. You’re going out there for pleasure, I call that bliss. You’re going out there to buy, you know, put a bit extra security around your house and you got life insurance and so forth, have a sense of safety, I call that non-conceptuality. And none of yours work. And all they’re guaranteed to fail. And all of this ends in sadness and you’re all running around like deers in the headlights, thinking this is going to work out well. This is going to go great. I’m going to be happy. And I can already see the end of the novel and that gives rise to compassion.

[00:48:14] Gyatrul Rinpoche who’s now 91, 92 years old. The last message I’ve seen from him since he set out from dharma centre, very touching, he’s very frail, very frail, and he said, all these activities of the world are like child’s games, everything’s like child’s games. So if you feel compassion, compassion arises even without having to cultivate it. I mean, just like, wah. Wisdom realising the meaning of emptiness, this also arises. I mean you are primed for it. You are right next door. Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey again said when he went into vipassana, ‘cause that’s what he taught in the lamrim, the first teaching he gave us, he covered everything prior to shamatha and then he discussed shamatha in detail, then he went to vipassana, insight, wisdom. And he commented if you’ve achieved shamatha, vipassana is easy. He said that. Achieve shamatha, vipassana is easy.

[00:49:17] So we cited Shantideva, Atisha, Nagarjuna, and now we go to the Prajna, one of the Prajnaparamita treatises. It’s a sutra, yeah, (inaudible?) here, so that’s 7, this is one of the great Mahayana, Mahayana Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, the Prajnaparamita Samjhayagatha. Now we’re into the Perfection of Wisdom, what does he say here, what does Buddha say here, Due to jnana, you disparagingly reject attraction to the desire realm. You just have no taste for it. You turn away from them casually, with no interest, And you manifestly accomplish reasoning, extra-sensory perception and concentration. The reasoning I put down before but I am not sure what that means. But I think I do. Reasoning. That is your mind, your intelligence works really, really well. Noise to signal ratio. A lot of our stupid reasoning, illogical reasoning ‘cause of a lot of noise, bias, prejudice, crap, preconceptions, unexamined assumptions. It’s noise. It’s lots and lots of noise. Calm all of that down. Scrape it all the way down to the substrate consciousness imbued with the 5 jnana factors and that includes coarse investigation and subtle analysis. Those are 2 of the 5 jnana factors. And you have them at your fingertips and now you have them uncluttered. Coarse investigation, subtle analysis, bliss, well-being and single-pointed focus, single-pointed attention. Those are the 5 jnana factors. They are now at your fingertips. So yeah, you should be reasoning more clearly ‘cause the mind is clean. It’s gotten well cleansed of all those obscurations. And you achieve extra-sensory perception and samadhi. Okay.

[00:51:02] Back to the Bodhicaryavatara, Shantideva states: Recognising that vipassana combined with shamatha overcomes mental afflictions, (dot dot dot) So he’s showing here, if you want not only to subdue mental afflictions, but overcome means eradicate irreversibly. That’s exactly what it means. No knowledgeable buddhist reads that in any other way. Then overcomes, this union of shamatha and vipassana is designed - this is liberation. This is eradication. Expulsion. Total abandonment. So no matter what happens to you in this or any future lifetime, they can never, ever, ever return. That’s what overcomes means. And it happens with the union of shamatha and vipassana. So then that’s Shantideva. He speaks with tremendous authority. But then we just go right back to the sutra, the Dharma Sangiti Sutta. One of the great classics. Back to the teachings of Buddha.

[00:52:06] The mind settled in equipoise, ’cause of course is referring to samadhi, to shamatha sees reality as it is. It leads right up to and invites you into the practice of vipassana to know reality as it is. To realise the unconditioned. To realise nirvana. Due to seeing reality as it is, this is again an ontological insight into the nature of emptiness, the nature of nirvana, due to seeing reality as it is, the mind of the bodhisattva dwells in great compassion for sentient beings. And now you know exactly what great compassion is. We have a 24 minute immersion in that, yeah. So it is not a lot of compassion. It is something very specific. And he said, bodhisattva, this is not on the sravaka path. This is bodhisattva path, great compassion, mahakaruna. Mahakaruna.

[00:52:58] One more. The … oh, another great classic. The Mahayanasutralamkara. This is one of the 5 works by Maitreya. Again considered to be absolutely definitive for all schools of Tibetan Buddhism. One of the great classics. It was written down, translated by Asanga but the source is Maitreya. The Ornament of the Mahayana Sutras. Mahayanasutralamkara, one of the 5 works by Maitreya, states, so again, absolutely authoritative, By this very jnana, all living beings are established in 3 kinds of enlightenment. By this very jnana, so at least the first, ‘cause if you haven’t achieved the first jnana, you’ve not achieved jnana at all. There is the first jnana, the second, third, fourth. Beyond that you have the absorptions called the samapattis. So by this very jnana, at least, the first, all beings are established in the 3 kinds of enlightenments. So what do you want to become a sravaka arhat, you need jnana, at least, the first. If you want to become a pratyekabuddha, then you need at least the first jnana. If you want to become a buddha, you follow the bodhisattva path, you need the first jnana. All beings are established in any of these 3 types of enlightenment.

So, time to pause a little bit, because we’ve just hit solid gold. I mean it just does not get any better than that for all the whole Mahayana tradition India, Tibet, Mongolia, everywhere and this goes out to Chinese Buddhism and so on. You just couldn’t have drawn on a more authoritative, profound, august, extraordinary individuals including the Buddha himself — Shantideva, Atisha, Nagarjuna, Maitreya, Asanga. It just doesn’t get any better than that and they’re all saying the same thing. So one might think then that those following Mahayana tradition will be really strongly emphasizing shamatha. One may come to that wild conclusion. Ahhh, oddly enough that’s not the case. And when you go to the Theravada tradition, it is very common to find vipassana centres everywhere, all over. Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, America, Argentina, Brazil, vipassana centres are everywhere. It’s wonderful. Shamatha, or in Pali, it’s samatha. Well there are … multiple schools within Southeast Asian buddhism, within Theravada buddhism. One very prominent, very loud voice is from Burma, from a school there in which the principal teacher there who has now passed away Mahasi Sayadaw said, well, you don’t really need shamatha. Despite everything we’ve just read, you don’t need shamatha, vipassana is enough. Try vipassana. In terms of samadhi, momentary samadhi is enough. Momentary samadhi. So they pretty much skip shamatha and go right to vipassana. And this really got very popular. ‘Cause who doesn’t like a shortcut after all. I like short cuts. Who doesn’t like a short cut. If there is a long way, an arduous way, and there’s a straight way that’s easier, who‘s going to take the long way? You’d have to be stupid.

[00:55:57] So starting in the 1960’s or so, then vipassana, vipassana, vipassana. So we had Western going to Burma and to North Thailand. Vipassana, vipassana, vipassana. Hardly any shamatha. And then what’s vipassana? Well, I read a lot of buddhist literature and I’ve had … I’ve trained with teachers,one trained in Thailand, another one in Burma, another one in Sri Lanka and I am not entirely out of the loop. And in the popular literature, now we are dealing with the professional literature, and then what happens when we want to bring this back to the West, where people have jobs, and they have full time … and they’ve maybe children, maybe they’re Christians, maybe they’re Jewish, maybe they’re agnostics, maybe they’re atheists, maybe they’re materialists and you want to bring in the customers, right. Kinda to be very blunt here. You want to bring in the customers. Then you better make this successful to a wide range of people. So popularise it. Don’t make it too complicated. People will get confused and they won’t come back. So simplify it, dump it down, commodify it. Commercialise it. And then vipassana winds up being equated to mindfulness. Well, that’s just flat out false. But if you tell people who don’t know anything, they will believe you. That’s not even remotely true. It’s never been true. There’s no school of buddhism that says that. Otherwise practising shamatha you are already practising vipassana, so who can practise shamatha without mindfulness. It’s crazy. So now any distinction between shamatha and vipassana has vanished. So we’ve just dumbed it down to … retarded. And then we … so there’s mindfulness so we have definitions of mindfulness in the Pali canon, in the Theravada, in the Indian, and they are very much in accord with each other.

[00:57:58] But let’s dumb that down too to. Let’s just say mindfulness is just bare attention. Well, that’s not true. That does not accord with any definition of buddhism, of mindfulness in any school of buddhism, but it’s simple, people can get it. Oh I got that. So now if it is retarded, now I don’t mean to use it in any … I know it’s probably not politically correct, but it is dumb. So you make it dumb by equating vipassana with mindfulness and then you make it dumber by equating mindfulness with bare attention. Now this does not bear any resemblance to vipassana. It’s not even shamatha. And now we’re equating that and then everybody says that and then everybody believes it. Because everything is saying it. And it sells. And a lot of people come and they’re all beginners pretty much and they come for a 10-day vipassana retreat. And they are practising maybe a little bit of mindfulness of breathing, not quite sure if it is shamatha or vipassana but they are being mindful. And now let’s spice it up a little bit ‘cause the mind is so distracted and to calm the mind a little bit, so it’s not going into wild rumination and mind wandering, why don’t you slow it down a little bit by labelling, so oh there’s a sound, there’s a thought, there’s a twinge in my knee. Okay, it’s very crude. Ahh, but if that helps you ruminate less, sure why not? Anything that works but then they call that vipassana. If that’s vipassana, birdwatching is vipassana. [laughter]. I am serious. oh, that’s a swallow, that’s a crow, that’s a quail, that’s a seagull. Oh I am practising vipassana. Oh I guess I must be a buddhist. It’s just gets dumb and dumber. Why does anybody think just calling a kneecap a kneecap is vipassana, or a feeling is a feeling. This is just a very primitive basic technique to help your mind stop ruminating so much and now it is called vipassana.

[01:00:12] So I remember before, if you call a tail of a dog a leg, is it … how many legs does a dog have? [laughter]. 4. Yeah just call … ‘cause … tail already has a meaning. Leg already has a meaning. Just calling it a leg does not make it a leg. I am a buddhist. I like granola. It does not make granola buddhist food. And now we have some vipassana teachers who went off to study with Krishnamurti. A very interesting guy. He invented a method called choiceless awareness. He is not a buddhist, at all. Doesn’t claim to be. But these vipassana teachers liked it. So what happens. Choiceless awareness is now vipassana. It is basically whatever they like becomes vipassana. Oh, Come on. Is there any limit to this? Whatever happened to the teachings of the buddha. Because we cannot even see the trail. So this has become very very common. If you like it, just call it vipassana, what the hell. Who would notice? ‘Cause we’re living in a contemplative very primitive society and most people don’t study much including teachers of vipassana. Not all but many. So there’s a problem. I’ve just completely diluting almost to the point of homeopathic dosage what vipassana is. And then shamatha is marginalised. Well never mind that. Just practise momentary samadhi. And then, and then it’s commonly stated, I heard this 20-30 years ago, oh go to a one year retreat, practise vipassana for a year or two, go into a retreat, you probably become a stream enterer, with no shamatha, no jnana. And then we find people calling themselves stream enterer, regarded as stream enterer or even once returner, and then totally screwing up, getting into sexual misconduct and so forth, and now we have stream enterers, and once returners, and so forth, screwing up physically in sexual misdemeanours, another crap. And it makes all of buddhism look like stupid and degenerate.

These are not low stakes. This is a tradition that’s been around for 2500 years and we’re fucking it up in one generation. I‘m sorry that’s really crude language. But I think it’s very crude what’s being done. ‘Cause everything gets … the credibility of the whole tradition gets screwed. You know. So I don’t feel … I do not feel equanimity about this. It has to be called. Call it. If what I‘m saying is wrong, then good, show me. Show me. Show me your sources.

[01:02:36] If one thinks it’s different in Theravada tradition … I’ve just put online two outstanding works. One is by an excellent scholar, he’s a Theravada scholar (? spelling) He’s really really good and he wrote a 90-page long essay on shamatha, vipassana, shamatha, vipassana in the Pali canon. And I think he definitively shows the first jnana is indispensable. This whole notion of momentary samadhi being sufficient is just … [pause] not correct. Let’s put it that way. And it’s proven not to be correct. By pointing out one person after another and claiming they’ve become stream enterers and they haven’t. They clearly demonstrate they haven’t. By their behaviour. So it’s showing empirically that they’re wrong and then [?name spelling] shows with his enormous knowledge of the Pali canon and the commentaries, they are wrong, wrong, wrong, in every way. In scriptures, logic and experience, it’s wrong. It’s a big mistake and he wrote an essay specifically on that, taking up this position, is momentary samadhi sufficient? He said no, you completely decontextualize Buddhaghosa’s reference to momentary samadhi. He placed this very high, very late in his text. Assuming you’ve already achieved jnana and you take it out of context, you dumb it down and then tell everybody this is enough.

If it were enough, then why didn’t Buddha just have two higher trainings, ethics and wisdom, and throw out the middle one. You know. He didn’t. Why did the buddha throughout the course of his teaching emphasize jnana, jnana, jnana? How enormously important this is? Why would he do that if anybody got a quick fix, momentary samadhi, that’s enough. And Why did the buddha never mention it? He mentioned jnanas innumerable times. Where’s the point where the Buddha said, oh, yeah, momentary samadhi that will do you. That’s no where there.

[01:04:381] So this is kinda discouraging, you know, for people who really cherish the enormous majesty, the depth, the efficacy. It’s like medicine that works and then we’re finding this stuff … this is like sugar. This is placebo. Makes you feel better. But the buddhadharma is lost and you don’t even notice it.

Because people who are presenting themselves as speaking with authority, are completely misrepresenting the very nature of vipassana and the relationship between shamatha and vipassana. That’s too really too bad I think that’s shameful. Sorry but I really do. These are precious teachings and this is not confined to Mahayana, this is core Theravada. There’s no difference. No difference at all.

And then we go to shamatha we go to jnana and the same dog gone thing is happening. If you look at the Pali canon, it is very clear. If you achieve the first jnana, here it is, it cannot be debated. If you fully achieve the first jnana, the 5 obscurations are down. They are out for the count. Any kind of sensual craving, forget about it. Ill-will not happening. Not eradicated but it’s subdued. It’s like you hit, you chloroform them all. They are out. Laxity and excitation, laxity and dullness, ehhh, ehhh, not happening. Excitation and anxiety. Not happening. Afflictive uncertainty. Not happening. And the 5 jnana factors, robust, durable; you’ve got them. They are your tools. There cannot be any disagreement by any knowledgeable person on this point.

Somebody contacted me just recently. His teacher told him that he’d achieved the first jnana. He said, ‘I’ve achieved the first jnana but I’m experiencing enormous lust. What shall I do?’ [laughter]. I don’t like being critical. I don’t find it fun. I like talking about Andre Linde, not talking about Michio Kaku. Andre Linde has these breathtaking statements of consciousness, and Michio Kaku says there’s no mind body problem, because there’s no mind. I don’t enjoy that. That’s … [blows] … Phoooo! Let’s get back to the good stuff. You know.

[01:06:53] But because this is on the table and to ignore and pretend it’s not there, I think, it’s just wallowing in ignorance and delusion. So not fun stuff to talk about. But it’s not me. This is Buddhaghosa and so distinctions are being made now. Made up 20th century manufacture. Well there’s the people having, saying this with a straight face, well, there’s the Buddha’s account of the jnanas, but then there’s and that’s from the Pali canon, from the Nikayas, and then we have Buddhaghosa. As if these were 2, like … Buddhaghosa was smoking dope and he came up with, you know, something, another version.

There is no commentator in the whole history of the Theravada tradition who compares to him. And he was living 1500 years ago when buddhism was robust, there were people achieving all over the place, jnanas, achieving arhatship. I mean, it was really really strong. 5th century India? It was really strong back then. Much stronger than it is now. Anywhere on the planet. And moreover he’s not just some clever guy, he was a great systematiser and he did with enormous erudition, not only in the thorough knowledge of the suttas, all of the vinaya, the suttas, and abhidhamma.

But also he cites so many accounts of yogis in that tradition achieving this, achieving that. His path of purification is just filled with narratives of individuals achieving this, that, and the other thing. So it’s rich with the oral transmission, enormous erudition and the most brilliant systematiser of the Theravada tradition in history, and now we have 20th century people, in the 20th century, the age of materialism, and we’re saying, some of them are saying, Buddhaghosa got it wrong. We got it right, we’re actually looking right at the teachings of Buddha. And of course their notion of the Buddha’s teaching of course is orders of magnitude less than what Buddhaghosa came up with.

So they’re telling me you’ve achieved the first jnana according to the Pali canon, but not Buddhaghosa, no no that’s something separate, and thinking that’s better. Well, anybody heard the difference between gold and fool’s gold? Gold, and I checked that out on the internet, it’s iron pyrite. Pyrite. It’s just a mineral, but if you really don’t know minerals at all, and get it in the right light, it looks like gold. But if you try to sell it like gold, people will laugh in your face, because it’s fool’s gold. Right

[01:09:18] There are people nowadays teaching jnana weekends, telling you in a weekend you can achieve jnana. How many? In a weekend. Or I heard one, one East Asian teacher giving a one month seminar in the Bay area and telling people they would achieve jnana in a month. Then they lost it somehow. Funny that. Like spare change. Pick it up. Lose it. It’s making this whole thing like a farse, where you can’t take anything seriously. Because they are drawing these pseudo distinctions between the majestic, definitive, incisive, precise, amazing writings of Buddhaghosa, drawing on the first thousand years of buddhism when it was the strongest in the Theravada tradition, overriding him saying, oh I don’t look at him, I just go to the Pali [canon] as if our insights can be greater in the 20th century. That’s just pomposity, almost to an unbelievable level.

And then I’ve heard another pseudo distinction. A person who claimed that he achieved the 4th jnana, the 4th jnana, by training under somebody in Burma and I said, oh really, so your breathing stopped, you can remain in samadhi for a couple of weeks. He said, no, no. no. I have achieved the 4th jnana, but I haven’t mastered it. [laughter]. There is no such distinction. He or his teacher made it up. So you can walk around thinking I have 4th jnana, I have 4th jnana, but then not have the abilities of the 4th jnana. Which we’ll see tomorrow. This is just made up. Achieving and mastery. There’s no such distinctions. They just made it up.

So you can walk around thinking that you’ve achieved the 4th jnana when you are not even in the same ballpark. You are not even close. But this is really common. There’s fools’ gold everywhere and especially in the popular literature including Buddhist journals. So if one is really actually seriously intent on the path, you really have to distinguish between fool’s gold and gold because it is very easy to mistake the 2 and especially when people presenting themselves as authority, I will give you one more and then I’ll stop. 6 o’clock.

So very well known vipassana teacher, this was several years back, practising for 40 years, checked his own mind continuum, how he was doing after 40 years of practice, and this is vipassana without any shamatha. Not legitimate shamatha. Not real shamatha, maybe pseudo shamatha. Maybe that. But not the real deal. And his vipassana is kinda mindfulness, mindfulness. We’re back to dumbed down vipassana to dumbed down shamatha. 40 years of that, and then he checked out his mind stream and found that his mental afflictions were not gone. He checked out with his other vipassana and Zen buddies and found he did not see any evidence of any of them had eradicated, were completely free of mental afflictions. Well, okay.

[01:12:05] So you have two options, you have multiple options there. One is, to say, well, maybe we’re missing something. We, Zen people, we,vipassana people, after 40 years our mental afflictions are still arising, arising, maybe we should go back to the drawing board and check out, are we missing something important? That will be very humble. Maybe this is just a very long path and 40 years is like an eye wink, you know. Short for short time. That will be humble. That will be okay. Or you can do what this person did.

Well, the Buddha did not really mean that when you become an arhat, you’re free of mental afflictions. He said more you can manage them. They come up and they don’t bother you anymore. So he did a Freudian interpretation because Freud never thought we could ever be free of neuroses. He did a Freudian interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings and said this is what arhatship is, the mental afflictions come up but they just don’t bother you anymore. Well I know a lot of people who have mental afflictions and they don’t bother them at all. [laughter]. They don’t give a shit. And then he gives out honorary arhat degrees. You know, my 40 year old chums, you know. If we pretty well handling our mental afflictions quite well, thank you very much, well, we’re just going to give you an honorary degree, you’re going to be an arhat, and I am an arhat, let’s all be arhats together. [laughter] And all those references for 2500 years in all schools of Buddhism, saying then if you are an arhat then you are totally free … don’t take that literally, take me literally.

[01:13:37] (breathes) Breathe deeply Alan. Do not experience contempt or anger, but compassion. ‘Cause these people are not intentionally deluding anyone, but they are self deluded and they are deluding an awful lot of people. And if people don’t really care about the path one way or another. Maybe that’s not a big deal. They don’t really care about Buddhism. They don’t care about refuge. Don’t care about achieving bodhichitta or reaching the path. They don’t care, that’s okay, give them whatever you like. Call it secular buddhism. Call it whatever you like. Doesn’t matter. They don’t care. I don’t care. But if there is someone out there who actually cares, who actually wishes to be free, we should not deceive them. That I feel very strongly. We should know what we’re talking about. And if we make a statement, we should know that it’s in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha, the great arhats, the great bodhisattvas and that we are not violating, eviscerating, castrating, and defiling the buddhadharma in the 20th century such that it will be unrecognisable one generation, two generations away. I can’t imagine any greater disservice to buddhadharma than that. And if our generation does it, shame on us. That’s my feeling. So people are free to disagree but that’s the conclusion I’ve drawn.

Olaso. Enjoy your afternoon. See you tomorrow. [01:15: 08]

Transcribed by Shirley Soh

Revised by Kriss Sprinkle

Final edition by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Special Thanks to Jon Mitchell for contribution of partial transcripts.

Discussion

Ask questions about this lecture on the Buddhism Stack Exchange or the Students of Alan Wallace Facebook Group. Please include this lecture’s URL when you post.