41 A Succinct Exploration of Shamatha

A Succinct Exploration of Shamatha

0:01
Olaso. So I’d like for this afternoon session, the meditation session to be focusing on the distinctive qualities of awareness and of space, which are profoundly related but not identical. Yeah? And we’ll do this in a very practical way, completely experiential way. So the words are just to guide us into experience and bring greater clarity to experience, but not to set us into a whole cogitative trip, spinning out in ideation.

0:36
I’d like for us to begin the silent session. It will be silent once we’ve begun. I’d like to begin this with the full body awareness, mindfulness of breathing. And I’d like to suggest an analogy I find very useful. And that is, when we do this, then we are letting our awareness in a manner of speaking, fill the space of the body, we’re aware of…we’re mindfully present throughout the entire space.

0:59
So the space is illuminating the entire space of somatic field, right? It’s all clear. But now the space itself, the somatic space, and the sensations that arise within it are non-conceptual. Concepts have referents. So when I think of Deanna, then, “Oh yes, she’s over there”, that’s just, it’s just a thought. It’s just a sound - Deanna - but it’s a meaningful thought, it’s a meaningful name. And it refers to the woman here. Correct? So it has a referent. So when I think ‘Deanna’ I don’t just think, I don’t just think, “Oh, sound”, like Feanna, Beanna, Veanna, no! It’s meaningful so it has a referent, yeah. So that’s, of course, the nature of concepts and words. They have referents. They’re meaningful, they’re semantic, yeah?

1:46
But the sensations arising - earth, water, fire, air, as well as the feelings arising - pleasant, unpleasant and neutral, they have no referent. They’re not about something else. They’re inarticulate, they’re non-conceptual. And so, as you let your awareness fill the space, you’re filling the space in which events are arising, but they have no referent. They have no referent. That’s important. So you’re letting your awareness be filled with or permeate a space that is non-conceptual. A lot of stuff happens - experiences, feelings, sensations - but they’re not conceptual. They have no referent. They do not, they’re not about something else. So they don’t naturally or inevitably trigger conceptualization about something other than themselves. If I think ‘Deanna’, that immediately just brings me to Deanna, I only know one. Oh, over there. Yeah. It triggers that, and then, how many times have I met her? and what was the last conversation? is she a really a wimp? or was I kidding? You know, [it] triggers thoughts, right?

2:48
The idea here is to let your awareness be filling a space that is quiet. That doesn’t talk. It’s non-conceptual, and it doesn’t… it’s not… it does not articulate, right? This - the metaphor I like a lot - is like having a vial or a glass vial, like like that, just so like bottle, filling it full of water to the brim, and then using a pump to suck out, forcefully suck out all the water. And what do you have left in that jar when you’ve sucked out all the water? [Student - Empty space.] Yeah, empty space, a vacuum. A vacuum, right? Fill the space of your awareness with inarticulate sensations and then direct it elsewhere. Suck out all the tactile sensations and attend to a space that’s empty, as you’d redirect from the somatic to the mental. It’s filled with the non-conceptual sensations. And then turn to the space of the mind, in which there are no somatic sensations. They’re not som…, there’s no earth element in, in mind. There’s no water element, and so forth and so on. So then direct it to that space, where you’ve already emptied out, the space to which you’ve been directing your awareness. You’re getting a fresh start, getting a fresh start as you attend to it, then you have a better chance of actually observing that space. Allright? If the space you’re attending to is from the very beginning filled with gnats and flies, and they’re bugging you, the thoughts, the memories, the desires…“Oh man…my mind’s such a mess, my mind is so cluttered, my mind is so agitated and so distracted, I can’t stand it.” Well, that’s like a room full of flies and gnats, you know, they’re yuck!

4:45 So go to a space where there’s no flies, where there’s just non-articulate, non-conceptual sensations arising, fill it with that and suck all of that out, direct to the space of the mind. So you’re starting from scratch. You’re starting from a clean slate. Now thoughts will arise, but at least you’re not overwhelmed by them. They arise here, and then there’s an interval. And another thought arises, it’s an interval. Then for the second half of the session, the second two thirds, whatever you like, I could… I’m wrap up… I’m…, I call this front loading the meditation session. So I’m talking about it now. So I won’t need to talk about it, and draw you into multitasking back and forth to meditation to me, don’t want that that’s not optimal. And so then when you go to the practice, then I’m encouraging. Here’s the instruction for the practice. When you shift to the second phase, whether it’s the second half, second two thirds, second, you know, the latter three fourths, whatever, it’s your choice, then attend to, take a special interest in the intervals between the thoughts. What’s left over? There was a thought. And now there’s no thought. There was an appearance. Now there’s no appearance. And now look at that. What’s left over when the appearance has faded away, as you remained a single-pointedly on the space of the mind, not wandering off to the visual, auditory, and so on. And now I make it easier. I know I put you on a tough spot this morning. You know, because you’re not, none of us, unless you’ve done this before, of course, this is the kind of, kind of in grilling or interrogation I give you this morning. You’re not accustomed to that. Right? And also many of you’ve never been exposed to Tibetan debate before. [AW laughs] Like that could be a little bit unsettling, you know, [laughter] do it two or three times, then you’ll get the hang of it. And you also know the mood of it. You know, that’s the most important, more important than anything else. This is not somebody winning or losing, somebody dominating, somebody being intimidated. If you thought that, then you missed the whole show. You saw a show I was never showing.

6:38
But here, now the instruction. I’m going to make it easier for you, before I describe what you saw, right? And now I’m going to give you a little bit more to work with. Because I’m going to pose questions here, that if you ask him of awareness, you might respond: “That’s a categorical error.” That question doesn’t make any sense, right?

7:00
So I’m going to suggest one fundamental difference between space and awareness. Space by nature, which is by the very meaning of space in English or any other translation into other language, space implies extension. If you have a little…, a point, a dot with no spatial dimension, right? Just, you know, like a mathematical point, a mathematical point. You say: “How big is it?” Well, the answer is, not big at all, it has no spatial extension. Space has extension. Space has extension, if it’s not, doesn’t have extension, it’s not a space. Right? So that’s for starters. Does awareness have extension? I don’t think so. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a categorical error. It’s like saying how big is justice? You know, is it, is it spherical? Is it flat? Is it… justice, you know? And you think, It’s a category error. The question doesn’t make any sense. Right? Justice does occur, we can witness it. We can observe when it doesn’t happen. But to say how big is it, or the extension of it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense to speak of the spatial extension of awareness, how big is it. Right? So there’s the first one.

8:18 Okay, now we have something, now we have the platform to ask further questions. If we all agree there, and I think, you know, what’s the debate? Space has extension, otherwise, it’s not space, right? Then we can start asking questions. These are the ones I invite you to ask of your experience, and not just get into cogitation and think out the right answers. As like a philosopher might write, you know, do research and write a paper. So all right, we’re going to start here. Space has extension, awareness doesn’t. Okay, good. Here simple questions. Okay, extension. There’s two-dimensional extension, there’s three-dimensional. A screen in a movie theater is two-dimensional, and a space, it’s this, it’s this wide and this high. Finished. But a 3D movie or virtual reality that also has extension but three-dimensional extension. Okay, so space of mind, is it 2d or 3d? That’s a simple question, okay? That’s an answerable question. There’s the first one. Second, space of mind does it have color? Now I’m gonna suggest there are two real options, nobody’s really going to think purple although that does once in a while come up. [laughter] But I’m going to say ‘wrong’ [laughter continues] But there are two that are viable, that you might really seriously consider. One is black - space of the mind is black, which frankly, is a color. It’s a very dark color, a bit darker than brown. [laughter] It’s color and the other one is transparent. So this may as well just kind of cut to the chase. Is the space of the mind black, like a pitch black room? Or is it transparent, which is not black at all? Transparent is not black. And both of those questions are meaningful questions, okay?

10:03
So there’s the second one. Now when we speak of spatial extension, we can ask two-dimensional or three-dimensional. But if we speak of extension, we can also ask well, okay, does it have a shape? Is it spherical? The sphere of the mind, is it actually spherical like a balloon? Is it cube? Is it tetrahedral? Does it have a shape? There’s a sec…, there’s a third one. As soon as we’re talking about shape, you can, you can ask: Doesn’t have a center? Maybe inside, in the center of your head, or in your body or in front of you, does it have a center? And does it have a periphery? A center or periphery? Like that. Those are, those are meaningful questions. As soon as we know we’re talking about something that has extension, these are not meaningless questions. That is not a categorical, categorical error. To ask whether awareness has a center or periphery is kind of odd, as whether awareness has a shape. That’s odd. Right? Awareness has a color? Who thinks it has a color? Who even thinks it’s black? It’s a categorical error. So we now see there a whole bunch of characteristics here that are very meaningful to ask about space, which just are not meaningful to ask about awareness. So they can’t be the same. Okay? So be prepared to report, okay? But now I’ve given you something much more precise, specific, but you can come up with a definitive answer. These are not, these are not some, you know, great koan, that you have to be enlightened to realize; flat or three-dimensional, that’s pretty straightforward, okay? These are answerable questions, but let your experience answer them for you. Rather than being very clever and coming up with you think is the right answer. Okay? Good. Let’s do it. 24-minute silence.

11:48 Meditation begins - silent session.

12:44
Olaso! So we return to the text. We return to the text, yeah? We were… My copy doesn’t have pagination, so I presume yours doesn’t either. But we’re on the page that has the large heading “The Cultivation of Shamatha with Characteristics”. And the last quotation that we read was “holding in mind the object of the beautiful protector of the world, whose body is like the color of gold, is called meditative equipoise of a bodhisattva.” So then we continue. So this is, again, just a reminder, the shamatha with characteristics is equivalent to shamatha with a sign. A sign means a target, something that you’re attending to outside of or something that is not identical to awareness itself. As soon as you’re attending to something, then it’s with characteristics.

13:45
So question, Mary Kay, the space of the mind. If you’re attending to the space of the mind, and you’re practicing shamatha, is that shamatha with characteristics or without characteristics? [jockingly] Looks like a deer staring at the headlights. [laughter] Just say something, doesn’t matter, it will be, will be true or false either way. [laughter continues] One of the two. [Mary Kay - Can you repeat the question?] Yep. Catch you off guard didn’t I? If your object of meditation is simply the space of the mind - that’s what you’re attending to, not whatever arises in it - just the space of the mind, and you’re practicing shamatha in that, in that manner. Are you practicing shamatha with characteristics or without characteristics? [Mary Kay - Without?] Well, you’re 100% wrong [laughter], but that was, that was a step in the right direction. Yeah. [laughter continues] And why? Because a reason of, does space have characteristics? [Mary Kay - no] Two for two! [laughter] We should start a support group. Completely wrong. David, [does] the space have characteristics? [David - Extension] Yeah, extension. Is it transparent or black or purple? [David - Transparent] Transparency, that’s characteristic. That’s obvious, isn’t it? [David - But I would say ‘no characteristic’ also].

15:01
Yeah, but then when you say it has extension, then it is a characteristic and you’re attending to something. That’s the simple point. There’s a vector. Now I’m using my, here’s just resting in awareness, here, here’s a, here’s awareness with the vector. Hey, hey, hey, hey, then it has a, you know, it has a referent, it’s attending to something, and not just resting in its own nature. That’s the nature of shamatha with characteristics. And even if that what you’re attending to is very subtle, very abstract, very intangible, - Well, okay, that’s cool - it still has characteristics. You can start listing them, is it flat or three-dimensional? Is it black? Is it transparent? Is it large, is it small, and so forth. That’s all characteristic and they’re not characteristics of awareness. Right? If you’re focusing on the sheer cognizance and luminosity of your own awareness, those two are characteristics but the characteristics of awareness itself, therefore it’s shamatha without characteristics, okay, without sign.

15:56
So we jump back in. But now we’re going from coarse to subtle and we need to contextualize this. We know this is a Mahamudra text, and so we know where this is going, right? This is like mundo. There’s like a preliminary to the main event within shamatha, which we’ll get to shortly. But right now he’s taking you through the shallow end of the pool. And so the meaning of this that is focusing on this image of the Buddha, the classic images like the one behind me, the meaning of this is stated in the Vajrapada, this so Vajrapada. Yeah. So the Vajra verses.

“Placing [placing] a statue, a stick or a belt in front of you, embrace the consciousness that imagines it [imagines it] as a deity. Do your best to maintain your mind in that state.”

16:42 This is an interesting practice. I’ve not encountered it elsewhere. Maybe it’s taught widely, but my knowledge is limited. But this is empty, you have a prop. You have a prop, right? It could be an actual statue, which might again look like Buddha Shakyamuni, but it’s still a prop. Or it could be a stick. Bear in mind, he’s talking to nomads. A lot of them sure could not afford a statue. So but a stick? Yeah, they can find a stick. A bell? A bell doesn’t look like a Buddha but it’s a prop, right? And then embrace it, you embrace it. “You embrace the consciousness that imagines it as a deity.” It’s a very interesting practice, but not encountered it elsewhere. So you’re taking something that may or may not look much like a Buddha, like a bell doesn’t. A Buddha image does. A stick doesn’t. But then you superimpose, you imagine it as a Buddha. That’s kind of ‘wait, you have something someplace to ground to anchor your awareness.’ So, okay, here’s the prop. And I’m going to imagine this as a Buddha. So the Buddha that appears to your mind, you know, it’s not in the visual domain. What’s in the visual domain is an image of a stick. Right? So if you’re looking at a stick and imagining it to be a Buddha, then the Buddha that’s coming to mind is in the mental domain. That’s kind of important. Okay. I know what I’m about to say is really corny, but I just can’t resist. Imagine me, okay here I am. I am thes prop. You’re ready, Christie? Especially the ladies, I’d like you to do this. [laughter] Imagine me as… You’re ready? This is gonna be fun. You’re ready? Imagine me as Robert Redford, like he looked 30 years ago. [laughter] I thought I’d get responses. You can hold that thought. In fact, you can carry it after the session if you like. [laughter continues] I know it’s a stretch. But you know, he has a head, I’ve got a head, two arms you know, pretty close. But, of course, the Robert Redford that appeared in your mind when looking at this old geezer here is, in some respects, not like the geezer here. So the Robert Redford was appearing there in the space of your mind. Okay, that was fun. [laughter] Let Robert Redford just for a moment.

18:50
Okay, so a commentary to that, taught by Avalokiteshvara states, sounds like a visionary teaching to me, probably received by Karma Chagmé himself. So here’s the commentary: “Placing in front of you any golden statue of the stage, or a lotus,” [a stick or a bell and so forth, there’s your prop] “imagine it as the Divine Sage, Vajrasattva, Samantabhadra or as Vajradhara.” Divine Sage refers to Buddha Shakyamuni, Vajrasattva as a sambhogakaya manifestation, Samantabhadra or Vajradhara these are basically synonymous as dharmakaya embodiment. So in the nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya, dharmakaya embodiments, embrace that consciousness, just as, as just previously described, and then do your best to maintain your mind in that state, okay? So, holding an image with the prop. Here is the meaning. So that was a direct quote from these teachings, probably visionary teachings from Avalokiteshvara.

19:47
And here’s Karma Chagmé, his commentary. It’s interesting. Here’s the meaning. And when this is in parentheses, he put the parentheses I don’t do that. If I add anything, it’s going to be square brackets. It’s a standard procedure for translators but this is just parentheses. So here it is:

“Placed in front of you or before a group of people a statue like if you’re a teacher, then [you know] you lay this out.[ If you do not] So in front of you or before you a statue. If you do not have one, [okay for poor nomads and so forth, use a pebble, a sticker or a flower, one of those should be available no matter what the season.] For just a few people [for just a few people], place a pebble in front of each one.”

This is really I think real nomad dharma. Right? One, everybody gets a pebble, okay? And there are four techniques for sustaining the attention. So there’s your prop, it’s a pebble, you’re out in the nomadic country, they’re dirt poor, give everybody a pebble.

“And then you’re attending to that prop you imagine it sustaining the attention on the nirmanakaya, sustaining attention on sambhogakaya, sustaining the attention on dharmakaya and sustaining attention on no object.” [Interesting, okay? Here one by one. So the nirmanakaya visualization]

“Now, imagine this statue, the pebble, lotus, or stick as a small body of the Lord, the nirmanakaya, Shakyamuni, just four-finger width tall.”

So you can, well, everybody knows what that is. So that’s what you’re imagining there right where let’s say the pebble is. You’re imagining there’s the Buddha Shakyamuni four-finger width tall. They generally encourage you to visualize fairly small for four weeks. It’s a nice starting point.

“Focus the intention on that single-pointedly and just for a moment, keep the attention there without distraction.”

So when you’re just starting, if you can keep it there, just for a few seconds, that would be a step in the right direction, okay? Don’t get too ambitious.

21:37
“Now, just for a moment, hold your attention on a coil [on the coil] of hair on Shakyamuni’s forehead.”

Okay, remember that? The hair that’s right here? This little coil? So if you’ve studied 32 major and 80 minor marks of the Buddha, then that’s one of them. So you would want to get, you know nobody is anyway. So you’re holding there but now just for a moment, focus now, kind of zoom lens, zoom in, in exactly that. Zoom in and just focus on that coiled hair right here between the eyebrows, okay? Just for a moment. Now for just a moment hold your attention on the, on the coil of hair on…so we just did that…yeah on, on his forehead.

“Now for just a moment focus the mind on the curl of hair on Shakyamuni’s chest.”

I didn’t actually know about that, okay, a little curl of hair there. So you bring it down.

“Now focus the mind on the vajra in front of Shakyamuni”, okay? The secondary visualization. “Now hold your attention on Shakyamuni’s entire body.”

So you’ll go focus, focus and then you go more wide angle, and see if you can sustain that mental image of the entire body - the meaning of this is stated in the Bavangayoga Avatara - or entering the, the meditation of yoga, or the yoga meditation.

“Cultivate an attraction for the [for the] body of the Buddha.”

That is, it shouldn’t be, should be something pleasing, something attractive to you. So,

“Cultivate an attraction for the body of the Buddha, yellow like refined gold, adorned with a major and minor marks emitting rays of light.”

So this is not static, it’s not a photo. But you imagine this three-dimensionally and you imagine there a bit of, a bit of activity, rays of light just emanating quietly out from the heart chakra, or from every pore of the skin as you wish.

“Get rid of desires and afflictions of the mind, keep the body straight and erect. Place in front of you a statue or a painting of such a body.”

Okay, so there’s your prop.

23:30
“If you attend to it continually, you will perceptually see that very form, or all its limbs and so on.”

So you’re going to perceptually see that form. With what mode of perception? Mental perception, especially if it’s just a stone you’re looking at, or a pebble.

“When you observe it, remain firm without distraction uninterruptedly throughout the day and night.”

So let’s continue and see if we can.

“If the mind becomes lax or excited, and so forth, or frivolous [just getting sloppy], take delight in yearning for the excellent qualities of a buddha.”

Remember that balance, samadhi and enthusiasm. So you’re doing the practice, you’re not getting all enthusiastic about it, you’re just doing it. But you start getting sloppy, frivolous, goofing off and so forth, just lackadaisical. Then take a step back from the practice, arouse the yearning aspiration, reflect upon the benefits of training your attention this way. So get enthusiasm revved up. And then go back to the practice and just do the practice,

“take delight in yearning for the excellent qualities of the Buddha. Practice diligently in that way. By so doing you will succeed. Moreover, if the mind lacking clarity [becomes lax and lethargic] direct the attention to the Buddha’s crown protrusion, the ushnisha, at the crown of the head.”

Uh, so and the point here you’ll see immediately is if your mind starts to become lax or lethargic, then elevate the focus, bearing in mind that the term for laxity in Tibetan is jingwa and jingwa literally means to sink, to sink. So, if it starts to sink, get heavy, then elevate it by focusing on the upper part of the visualization, right?

25:12 “If the mind cannot be made to settle down due to strong scattering, [and I’m going to do minor edits to this right now, scattering and excitation, because that’s a term I’ve always used] If the mind cannot be made to settle down due to strong scattering and excitation, direct attention to the Buddha’s navel [directing attention downwards, standard procedure], the soles of his feet or the edge of his seat [downwards]. If there’s no laxity or excitation, direct the attention to the curl of hair on the Buddha’s chest [so right in the middle, neither up nor down]. That constitutes directing attention to the nirmanakaya.”

So the Buddha was the Buddha Shakyamuni with his 32 major and 80 minor marks, manifesting as nirmanakaya, that’s your focus. But then we go to the sambhogakaya, more rarefied, subtle manifestation of the Buddha, that is perceivable, perceptible only to Arya Bodhisattvas and other Buddhas. So we can’t really imagine it but we can approximate it. And Vajrasattva is a classic example of that. So then you may place in front of you again the prop, is a pebble or a stick, or you may not, Do it with no prop, just visualize it. In either case, with or without a prop, imagine the Lord Vajrasattva his body white in color, holding a vajra, a vajra in his right hand, a bell and his left, four-finger width tall, adorned with jewels and seated in the bodhisattva posture. So, I mean, the images of Vajrasattva are everywhere on the internet. I’m sure you’ve seen it. But you’ll see that this is this kind of this, oohh, more celestial, more divine manifestation, wearing the crown, more kind of royal accoutrements, garments, ornaments and so on. Seated in the Bodhisattva posture, holding him in mind. Do your best to embrace that mind to hold and hold that thought. Hold that mind. So there’s sambhogakaya.

27:03
And here he interjects the nine stages, the nine stages leading up to what follows the nine stages and actually the full achievement of shamatha. He does so in an extremely concise way with no explanation. So these are like bullet points, each of which really needs to be explained, because they’re not self-explanatory. So now I shall give a lucid explanation, lucid but extremely concise explanation of the meaning of the teachings on the nine methods for placing the attention, which are taught by the Lord by the Buddha in the sutras. So there’s not something made up by Tibetans, or even by the great Indian pundits. This nine fold goes back to the Mahayana sutras, and there’s an abbreviated version in the Pali Canon. I think it’s only five, five points.

“When speaking of methods for placing the attention, they are that indeed, but these are also, they’re sequential.”

One commentator who just didn’t understand the material, thought that you could just kind of go from one to five to four to three to nine, and back to six and so forth. Completely missed the point. So don’t need to belabor that point. These are sequential. This is a natural evolution, and Panchen Rinpoche will get to this later. So the terminology is a little bit different than the standard ones that I’ve seen based on the lamrim literature and other related literature.

28:16
The first one: placement. So the first, the initial stage, entry level is placement or I call it simply focus attention.

“Entails focusing the mind single-pointedly on a statue or a stick, etc., so you’re able to find your target.”

You’re able to find your target, maybe at the sensations of the breath of the nostrils. Can you find it? Could you…? Have you made contact? If you have, well, then you’ve achieved the first one. We’ve just placed it, directed it, okay? There’s the first one. And then, this is called thorough placement here, these two things, somewhat different terminology. But they’re referring to the same thing.

“Thorough placement, maintaining that attention continually for a protracted period.”

Protracted - and I’ve received a lot of teaching in this oral transmission. The Attention Revolution really unpacks this. So does Gen Lamrimpa’s book simply called Shamatha, I think Shamatha Meditation, right? Shamatha Meditation, I think is called [Student - Calming the Mind] That was the earlier one, and it was later, I think called Shamatha [Meditation], but you’re right, Calming the Mind [Calming the Mind: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on the Cultivation of Meditative Quiescence]. Something like that, Gen Lamrimpa you’ll find it on Amazon. Yep. Gen Lamrimpa. But those were his one week of very condensed, very clear teachings, at the beginning of the one-year shamatha retreat 28 years ago, in 1988. It’s outstanding, and he’s speaking from enormous experience, and he’s a very fine scholar as well.

29:31 So but what he says there - and he’s really… it’s a whole flow of oral transmission here - is protracted period. Yeah, that means like up to a minute, that you’re actually, up to a minute, you’re not completely losing the object. Coarse excitation, this is really unpacked. And in fact, I’ll ask Sangay today, to put on the, on the post on the website for this retreat. I have about nine, I don’t know 6,7,8,9 pages of more detailed explication of these nine stages, which I standardly use when I’m leading week-long shamatha retreats all over the world. And so those will just be available for everybody. So I’ll keep clear on this because this is extremely concise. Okay? Unpacks it more. You want to see it more further unpacked, go to the Attention Revolution, or I think it’s called Shamatha Meditation or Calming the Mind by Gen Lamrimpa and all of the lam rim literature is also very, very good, of course, because that’s the basis. So here we are, there’s plenty of material out there. That second certain placement, otherwise it’s called patch-like placement and so forth, certain causes, certain placement. If the attempt… But you see the meaning is the same,

“If the attention is scattered by ideation,”

And I’m just going to, you know, I was looking at this and I know the word it’s, it’s rnam rtog [rnam rtog] in Tibetan or vikalpa in Sanskrit. I’m going to just change this homogeneously. And when you see ideation or conceptualization, the Tibetan term is, is rnam rtog, Sanskrit is a vikalpa. I’m going to be translating it homogeneously as compulsive thoughts, compulsive, (I’m sorry, mistake) obsessive thoughts, as obsessive thoughts. So,

“If the attention is scattered by obsessive thoughts, it is immediately drawn in with mindfulness and placed in meditative equipoise.”

This is where you note very quickly, when coarse excitation is set in and you’ve been, you’ve completely lost the meditative object. You’ve been carried away, but you recognize it quickly. So you stray for a second or two, and then you’re brought right back. Okay? That’s the third stage, okay?

31:26
So I’m going to do a little interlude here that I encountered this distinction a long time ago, more than 40 years ago, I think when I was still in Germany, and I found it - and I’m remembering now 40-45 years later - useful, I found it useful. And it’s three terms. So, I’d like to bring, I like precision, I like precision. This is precision, I think, very useful precision. There are three terms that can easily just be jumbled together and all blurred together. The first one, kalpana in Sanskrit, or rtog pa in Tibetan; I’m just going to translate it as thought. There’s nothing neurotic, or compulsive, or obsessive about it. Who is this person? Oh, her name is Lynn. No problem. I could be an Arya Bodhisattva and be thinking that. Who is she? Oh, yeah, her name is Lynn. She introduced herself as Lynn. That’s a thought. And then I stop thinking it, I’m done. That’s it; very useful. And that same term, rtog pa in Tibetan, is also used for coarse investigation, which is one of the five dhyana factors, obviously not a problem, right? You pick it up, you put it down. Uh, we need some groceries, what do we need today for groceries? And then you, you know, you say ‘I need this’. What’s wrong? And you just say,‘Oh,I don’t know I’m resting in space.’ [laughter] Think something, think something. So thought can be useful. It can also be terrible thoughts, planning to rob a bank and so forth and so on. But it, but it’s intentional, it’s deliberate. Boom. [It] can be wholesome, unwholesome, neutral. Then we have this term, which comes up a lot in meditative literature, comes up a lot in Buddhism: vikalpa, rnam rtog. I’m translating here as obsessive thinking. And you all know that’s like, you’re trying to focus in your breath and you keep on getting yanked away by this, that and the other thing and it’s obsessive. You didn’t choose to. There was no, there was no decision, there was no will, there was no even, you didn’t even want it. And it comes in anyway. Well, that’s obsessive. And that’s rnam rtog. And that’s always referred to as something not useful. The context is always ‘not useful’, right? rtog pa may be useful, or kalpana, but vikalpa, vikalpa; rnam rtog now, that’s what you’re already familiar with. And so I’m calling that obsessive thinking.

33:55 But many of you have heard me use the term OCDD, obsessive compulsive delusional disorder. I thought, well, let’s map this, it’s really quite close to the Sanskrit. The obsessive part, it just keeps on blah, blah, blah, blah, allright? Just thoughts coming up when we are ‘Please stop the cascading waterfall. Please stop, you know, I’m getting tired of it.’ That’s the obsessive part, but of course, in many, many cases, it’s not only obsessive But it’s compulsive in the sense that it drags us into the undertow; cognitive fusion. My mind is abducted. And now I’m thinking about this, that or the other thing, and I had no choice in the matter. That’s compulsive. Where not only arises obsessively, but compulsively compels me to be drawn in and I had no choice in the matter. And now I’m caught up in rumination. I can observe obsessive thinking.You can do that when you’re settling the mind in its natural state. You say, ‘Oh, I’m seeing the waterfall. Cool! I’m practicing. Blah, blah, blah, hello, mind, I see you blah, blah, blah.’ That’s obsessive. You’re not obsessive if your awareness is still. But as soon as it becomes compulsive, you’re not still, you’re caught up and carried away, right? That’s the compulsive part, okay?

34:42 And the compulsive is kundo rtog pa [? 34:43 Tibetan] or parikalpita, parikalpita, kundo rtog pa [? 34:45 Tibetan]. And this is where you become unhinged from reality. Right? I can observe obsessive thoughts and not be unhinged at all. I’m clearly seeing the obsessive thoughts arising in my mind. But when they abscond with me, they take me away, and I’m not even aware of it, I’m semi-consciously carried away by a thought. Well, that’s compulsive and it’s like a mini non-lucid dream. Which means, by definition, you’re just disconnected from reality. And I call it delusional, which often happens. And I still see this coming up. I think, ‘Wow, still happening.’ Where I thought about the future of another person. I mean, I keep it vague, but a thought of another person comes up and the thought of ‘this person might do this’. And if this person does this, I’m going to be so exasperated. And I get really exasperated at that person. This is delusional. I’m getting exasperated at this person for doing something he or she may or may not do in the future. But I’ve decided they’ve already done it. I’m already getting pissed off. [laughter] I might phone them up. ‘Why are you going to do that tomorrow? That really irritates me.’ And they’re calling 911 [laughter continues], I think Alan is having a breakdown, you know.

36:02 But has that ever happened? You know, where we get caught up in a thought and when we’re in the midst of it, exactly like a non-lucid dream. We can’t distinguish. We’re having the emotional response as if we’re responding to reality. And it’s completely made up, you know. And it may never ever happen. And even if it does it’s just by accident, it just happened that my psychosis fit some reality. [laughter] So that’s the delusional part and obsessive compulsive often includes the delusive. That’s parikalpita. So it’s a parikalpita, the third mode, I’m trying to think that is compulsive thoughts. The second one, which is blah, blah, blah, that’s obsessive. And just thinking, ‘Her name is Lynn’, that’s thought, okay? There we go. I find that really useful. And not just as an intellectual exercise, or to expand a category. See where the rubber hits the road. In your experience. This can be really useful. So you see, ‘Hey, Alan, that’s parikalpita Knock it off. Get real. Come back to, you know, throw some cold water in your face, have some hot coffee, something. Get real.’ Okay?

37:08
Okey dokey here we go to the fourth close placement:

“The mind of meditative equipoise is compounded with the earlier state and placed in equipoise.”

The longer version says now you’re no longer subject to coarse excitation, you can remain for half an hour, 40 minutes or whatever, without completely losing meditative object.

“The fifth one subduing delight is brought forth by being clearly mindful of the excellent qualities of sustained attention and you abide in that state.”

Here you’re really starting to enjoy the practice more than ever before. And, of course, your continuity, stability or so forth, the clarity is getting better. Whenever there’s clarity, that’s when the enjoyment starts to happen, you know, including bliss, clearly related to luminosity or clarity of awareness.

“Pacifying the sixth state, you recognize the individual conditions that gives rise to scattering to specific objects and by rejecting craving for them, attention is sustained.”

So this shows that you’re enhancing your ability of introspection, you’re fine-tuning the whole thing so the mind is becoming more stable.

"Fully pacifying [this is a big one] Fully pacifying, you recognize all the causes of distractions such as avarice, and all the results of distractions such as unhappy feelings, and they’re released by themselves. You become so stable - that unflickering candle flame - that you recognize the causes that could cause your flame to flicker. And you recognize all the distractions and even though they come up, they’re like tempters.

Tempters, I won’t give it a gender like temptress it’s not, no gender, but like, like they tempt you, tempt you to draw you away: ‘Wouldn’t you like to come this way? Isn’t that person really an idiot? Wouldn’t like to start having some resentment or contempt for him? Isn’t this person really attractive?’ And they keep on coming up and then they just die a natural death. You’re firm. Just like that. They come up; they don’t get any traction, right?

39:02
“The eighth one unification of the mental continuum also called single-pointed attention. By the power of such meditation, attention is focused on the meditative automatically. You need that tiniest bit of effort just to focus and it is sustained without reliance upon effort, or obsessive thoughts.”

So it now becomes effortless, you know. But once you’re in, then it’s effortless, tiny bit of effort to enter in, and then boom, you’re in. So now this is very, very good samadhi outstanding samadhi. And this state - and we’ll come back to this later, but remember this one - is called ‘unification of mental continuum’. It’s called single pointed attention. You can see it’s a very high state. It’s even beyond obviously the seventh. And here at this point - and this is straight from Gyaltrul Rinpoche - it comes later, is that when you’re in this eighth stage. You’ll still, your awareness will still be impinged upon by sensory appearances. If your eyes are open, you’ll still have some sensory input, your ears are clearly open with no noise cancelling headphones, sounds will arise, tactile sensations will arise. They’re arising but you’re not ascertaining them. You’re not, you don’t feel like you’re in a sensory deprivation tank. But a close, not a bad analogy, is if you’re reading an incredibly enthralling novel, let’s say one of those absolute page turners, or somebody else who may be watching a movie on an airplane, and you just love it, you’re totally engrossed in it. And you’re totally focused there. And the flight attendant is coming up and down and there may be some minor turbulence and the person over here you know, sneezes or whatever, they turn the page in their book. These are all arising to you. But then when you come out of your film or your book - samadhi -, if somebody asks you,: ‘How many times have the flight attendant come back? Did this person sneeze turn the page or not? Was there any turbulence, minor turbulence?’ And your answer might very well be, ‘I have no idea, I wasn’t paying attention.’ But you didn’t feel you were in a sensory deprivation tank. You didn’t you feel you’re in a dark room, disembodied, and that you’re deaf. That would have been memorable. But that’s not what you remember. Right? So they’re appearing but they’re not ascertained. [? 41:16 Tibetan]. Appearing but not ascertained, okay? That’s an eighth stage, we’re going to come back to that one, it will turn out to be important. Okay?

41:24
Ninth stage, you’re almost there. But this is not shamatha, shamatha follows this. Meditative equipoise, finally “there is no distraction whether or not you are in meditative equipoise.” Okay, you now, this means you’ve really, very largely overcome the five obscurations and then that includes excitation and anxiety, which is the fourth one, remember? So there’s no, so you really have a very, very composed, very composed mind now. Okay?

41:52
"Those are the nine methods for placing the attention. The practice that depends on the nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya entails a mind apprehending something external."Okay? You have a clear reference, something out there, a stick, a statue, a thangka, what have you. And then we have the, the dharmakaya, the dharmakaya method. This gets subtler and, of course, it’s going from course to subtle. The first one, you’re looking at a stick and imagining it as a Buddha, the second one, there may be no stick, visualizing Vajrasattva. And now you’re going to dharmakaya level.

“Here, the mind apprehends an inner object that is purely in the space of the mind, at the center of your heart” But of course, the center of your heart is completely a mental space. You’re not looking for heartbeat, you’re not feeling tactile sensations. You’re looking at the mental space where you imagine your heart is.

“At the center of your heart imagine”, so that means you’ve drawn into the mental space, not the somatic space. At the center of your heart, imagine the dharmakaya Vajradhara." Here Vajradhara is synonymous with Samantabhadra, who is personification of pristine awareness, primordial consciousness, or dharmakaya.

“Imagine the dharmakaya Vajradhara being the personification, the iconic representation, the archetypal manifestation of a purely symbolic manifestation of dharmakaya. His body deep blue and the size of the outer thumb joint.” So the final thumb joint, one, one and a half centimeters, or something like that, “the size of the outer thumb joint, holding a vajra and bell at his heart.” The vajra, of course in the right hand and they’re held like this. Okay? So the vajra is outside, held in the right hand, the bell is in the left hand, held inside, and they’re like this, as if embracing the consort. There’s no consort, yeah? It’s just like that, vajra and bell. So the consort is implicit because there is a union of dharmakaya and dharmadhatu. But, you know, like we used to say and happily don’t say so much more: ‘All men are created equal.’ Well, that terminology went well into the 20th century, when women were by law equal, in the marketplace, not so much. But by law. I think that by 1950, 1980 women did have equal status under the law. Is that correct? I think in the United States, I think so. But we still say ‘all men’, well, we’re including women in that. Vajrasattva or let’s see, here it is Vajradhara, ok? Male manifestation, but the, the female is there implicitly. It is, of course, not just primordial consciousness, isolated from, but primordial consciousness is non-dual from dharmadhatu. And then, often depicted in union Vajradhara, Samantabhadra, in union with Samantabhadri, in which case that is more explicit. Okay?

44:51 So “his body deep blue and the size of the outer thumb joint, holding a vajra and bell at his heart, seated in the vajra posture.” This is full lotus or you know what, you know what it is. “on a lotus and moon seat and adorned with silks and jewels. Do your best to maintain your attention on this without distraction.” Okay? So it’s still a visualization, but the most, now, the most rarefied and kind of deep archetype we have, of enlightened awareness, now pacified. Okay, now he’s giving the etymology of the Tibetan translation for shamatha. The Sanskrit shamatha simply means serenity, tranquility, quiescence, peace. There’s no abiding there. It’s just that: tranquility, serenity, quiessence, peace, any of those is fine, okay? But when they translated it into Tibetan, then it becomes shi né, shi né, and so ‘shi’ now pacified or calm. Shi means calm, or peace, or pacified. Now, pacified here - I would say, now, calm - refers to the calming of the scattering of mindfulness or mind, the scattering of mind towards various obsessive thoughts. Wait a minute, this is… no, this is just thoughts. This is rtog pa, you see in the footnote 34, “towards various thoughts”, okay? So I wouldn’t say conception, just thoughts, nice, simple, kalpana.

46:21 So in the shi né, calm refers to the calming of the scattering of mindfulness, the scattering of the mind towards various thoughts. So it’s that diffusion that scattering, that disintegration of the composure of the mind or mindfulness. And then Jeffrey Hopkins, years and years ago, has translated shi né as calm abiding, and it’s become quite uniform. It’s certainly not incorrect. He’s an absolutely outstanding scholar. He’s one of my own mentors as a Tibetan Buddhist scholar. So he translated as a calm abiding. I would mildly prefer - because it’s perfectly correct - presence, né means to be present. Present. Abiding is okay, but I think ‘calm presence’ is a bit more English English; ‘calm abiding’ is a bit contrived. We don’t, that’s, it’s not something that would pop up in an ordinary conversation. Calm presence. Presence means ‘not moving about’, just presence, né, presence. So ‘the mind’s presence radiantly, the mind’s present radiantly’, wherever it is, or the ‘mind’s radiant presence’, I think is better. The mind’s radiant presence, wherever it is focused, is shamatha. So it’s calm presence. I think I’d be mildly just kind of like a feel but I like it better than calm abiding. I’ve generally used quiescence but then I said, ‘Oh, when I say quiescence, people are saying: Oh, that, oh you mean shamatha’ So I just use shamatha, you know.

47:50 So there it is. He just gave the etymology. But the etymology is very useful. This last sentence especially. And that is there’s a calming here, but you’ve not only calmed scattering, you’ve calmed dullness. So there’s a radiant presence, the mind’s radiant presence, which of course is calm, that’s shamatha, okay? So that’s that, that’s, that’s a cultivation of shamatha with characteristics. But we know by context, in Dzogchen and Mahamudra, the shamatha with characteristics or with a sign is basically a preparation to the shamatha that is just immediate entry, just next door neighbor to really the vipashyana, the focusing in on the fathoming, the exploring of the nature of mind. Cutting through mind to the substrate, cutting through substrate to rigpa. So, sooner or later you’re probably, you will, you will want to get to shamatha without a sign, if you really have a passion, to immerse yourself in the practice of Mahamudra and Dzogchen. So this you see this very, very clearly in Natural Liberation. He starts with a stick or a pebble and then shamatha without a sign. You see it, in space of Path to Freedom, starts with a stick or a pebble and then he goes off to the very subtle, focusing on the mind, focusing on thoughts, or the samadhi of non-; the shamatha of non-conceptualization taught by Maitripa and he’s a major source of the Mahamudra teachings. Okay?

49:12
So it just makes really good sense. If your passion is to really immerse yourself and follow through to its culmination stage of generation practice, it makes really good sense to do a lot of visualization. You may as well achieve shamatha focusing on a Buddha image, nirmanakaya, sambhoghakaya, dharmakaya self-generation, develop shamatha there. That would make really good sense, you know, develop your visualization skills. You’re going to need these big time in stage of generation, whereas if your passion is ‘just give me a beeline to Mahamudra Dzogchen’, then you may as well just get down to it quickly and practice shamatha without characteristic. And that, the next, the nextdoor neighbor to that is ‘taking the mind as the path’, where you are attending your thoughts, and images [are] coming up, which means there is a referent.

50:01
Okay, here we go. We’re gonna keep, we’re keeping the pace of brisk today. So then “in shamatha without characteristics you direct the mind to Samantabhadra.” But now we see Samantabhadra, not his blue color, bearing a vajra and bell. But now - because that was the symbolic representation of Samantabhadra - now it says "do your very best to direct your mind to Samantabhadra'; Samantabhadra is rigpa primordial consciousness. That’s, you’re going to do your best approximation of that in this shamatha practice. So, what is this Samantabhadra, the actual Samantabhadra? “Samantabhadra is emptiness, emptiness of all appearances, devoid of form, color and substance.” Substance I think is a good translation here, something tangible, something substantial. Well, it’s insubstantial, colorless, formless. So we know now that we’re dealing with something much more subtle, intangible. For starters, “it’s an emptiness, an absence, a certain type of absence that is devoid, empty of or absent of, form, color and substance. The mind does not imagine or ponder anything.” Previously, we’re imagining the Buddha Shakyamuni. If you’re cultivating shamatha by way of loving kindness practice, you’re pondering the plight of sentient beings. You’re using your discursive mind, you’re using rtog pa - thought, not rnam tog, you’re not using obsessive thought or compulsive thought. But in the cultivation of metabhavana or another cultivation of love kindness, you are certainly using rtog pa, thoughts, and that includes imagining sentient beings, recalling sentient beings, arousing and so forth. That’s all rtog pa, is good. This is not doing either one. You’re not imagining or cogitating, thinking about.

51:48
The next phrase, I wish I could see the Tibetan and I just don’t have it with me, but I know what it means, even though my English is not clear here.

“The mind does not imagine or ponder things it does not cut off imprints from what has already gone by.” What he’s really saying is it does not linger on, it does not trace, it does not go back to, it does not do anything with, it does not engage with, it does not cut off or perpetuate that which has gone by., it just releases it, It just doesn’t go there, does not go to the past, it does not track or follow thoughts pertaining to the past. That’s the meaning of it. That I’m certain of my English here is not clear. If I had the Tibetan, I would retranslate it, I think. The next one’s straightforward.

“So it doesn’t linger in or get caught up in that which has gone by, nor entertain expectations about what is to come.” This is really core, you’ll see this come up in Panchen Rinpoche’s explanation of the practice. This is really, really central.

“The thoughts pertaining to the past or the future are bound to come up, those obsessive thoughts. Don’t go there. Don’t go there. Don’t be drawn away from the present, either into a past that is ceased or to a future that has not yet occurred, [Get real, stay real, the real is in the present moment] without rejecting or affirming anything relating to the present awareness.” So all the conceptual overlays, all the noise, all the, all the clothing, all the ways that we cloak, our immediate awareness of the present, don’t reject or from just [poof], don’t get caught up in any of that.

“Just stay in the present, the mind simply relaxes without distraction and is settled in that relaxation.” This is the entry point we’re going to see, he really elaborates on this. But this is the place to start. This is the culmination of settling body, speech and mind in the natural state. When you’ve set your mind at ease, simply relaxes in stillness without distraction. Don’t lose clarity, otherwise you’re just spacing out and you settle in that sense of ease, that stillness, and not yet having any referent at all. That is, you’re not looking inward, you’re not looking outward, you’re not trying to be aware of awareness, you’re coming to establish your baseline. Totally present, not put into gear yet, not practicing something yet, resting there. He’s going to go further but that’s the culmination of the initial settling of body, speech and mind.

54:23
The [r Tibetan], the Bhaddekaratta sutra[…expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. Gautama Buddha, Bhaddekaratta Sutta: An Auspicious Day, MN 131, (1997) source Wikipedia], okay, the sutra of fine characteristics. Bhadde is fine and karatta must be characteristic states. “You do not follow after the past and you’re without hopes for the future.” That’s really clear. That’s very much ‘settling the mind in its natural state’. and the Avaivarchakra sutra, [54:57 Tibetan] in Tibetan. Oh, okay, this sutra - of the cycles of non returning and not coming back - states: “The mind of the past is not found. And so it is for the future. You don’t find the mind of the past. You don’t find the mind of the future. Achieve equanimity regarding the events of the present.” Very pithy. Very interesting. “Mind in the past no longer exists and the mind of the future doesn’t yet exist. So rest in that equipoise, that equality, that balance, regarding the events of the present, hovering right there in the present moment.” Always fresh, always momentary, never a repeat performance. The Samdhinirmochana sutra, very famous sutra,[55:46 Tibetan], the definitive commentary on the view of the collection of the sutras states,okay, states:

55:44
“Lord, how many objects of shamatha are there?”

55:44
And he replied, “There is one. It has the form of no obsessive thoughts.”

55:44
“How is one to cultivate shamatha?”

55:44
“When with constant mental engagement, continually engaging with the mind itself.” So now we’re not just resting, we’re not just resting, we’re engaging with nothing outside the mind, we’re engaging with the mind itself. Okay? “When with constant”, in other words, you’re engaged, you’re not spacing out, you’re not waiting, you’re not spinning your wheels, you’re engaged. "…with constant mental engagement, continually engaging with the mind itself, there is samadhi uninterrupted by laxity or and excitation. That is flawless mental engagement with the mind itself. Okay? This is shamatha focused on the mind. And Gelugpas call it sems le mig be shiné [56:57 ? Tibetan], shamatha focused on the mind. That’s what’s described right there, okay? AKA also known as taking the mind as the path, settling the mind in its natural state, taking appearances and awareness as the path, okay?

57:12
The Prajnaparamita Samjaya Gatha[ 57:17 Tibetan], a synthesis of the sutras, states, “Bodhisattvas who do not attend to the past extreme, the future extreme, or events of the present, purify the three times. Attend to…” I think we can say, but no, it’s interesting, let’s not even interpret it… “do not direct their attention to the extreme of the past.” For this practice, that’s an extreme. There are times, of course, when it’s perfectly fine to recall the past, think about the past, not in this practice.

“You do not direct your attention to the past, you do not direct your attention to the future, but you do not direct your attention to events of the present either. This purifies the three times.” I think what it’s really getting at is ‘attend’ here it means to reify, because by and large when we attend, for us ordinary sentient beings, when we attend to something, we reify it, it just comes just naturally. I look over at Paola, I immediately reify Paola, I think she’s over there, she’s from her own side. That’s just what we do, you know, until we learn better. And so I think by the next sentence, I think that may be, may be deemed a reasonable interpretation.

“These Bodhisattvas, they experience the unconditioned, the non-composed of, the unconditioned without elaboration,” that means without conceptual elaboration, “and the experience, the supreme perfection of wisdom.” Well, as soon as we see that we know that we’re not just dealing with flat out shamatha. So ‘attend’ here must be something deeper, something more problematic then simply attempting to. Does the Buddha attend to events of the present? Of course, but the Buddha doesn’t reify anything. And when we’re referring here to the unconditioned, that refers to Nirvana, without elaboration, without being cloaked in the veils of conceptual elaboration or conceptual proliferation,[59:18 Tibetan] in Tibetan, and the experience is supreme perfection of wisdom. Well this means they’re realizing emptiness, and emptiness is Nirvana.

59:29
In the Kalachakra Mulatantra, the root tantra of Kalachakra, it is said: "The Mahamudra of individual withdrawal has the characteristic of empty space. There are six yogas. In the completion stage of Kalachakra, this is the first one, sor dud, it’s called in Tibetan [59:47 Tibetan]. And it’s an individual withdrawal, the individual withdrawal of the awareness from all of the various sense domains, one by one drawing inward to the end ]. Drawing inwards, what you wind up with is not cramped in a cluster of little tiny space, but has the characteristics of empty space, which is vast and open. Pandit [? 1:00:07 Tibetan name], he was cited earlier as one of the five great patriarchs of the Sakya tradition - [1:00:14 Tibean name] - “With a luminous” and we see he’s drawing, he’s drawing here, he’s throwing his net widely. He’s drawing it to sutras, to tantras, to a great Sakya, Sakya adept, great, great Yogi. And so he’s showing the that this is not a sectarian issue. It’s not just sutra or tantra, it’s not this school or that school. This is, this is a practice that got lot of emphasis in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism and going back to India, back to the teachings of the Buddha himself.

“With the luminosity of mindfulness of thoughts,” with the luminosity of mindfulness of thoughts, “luminosity itself is what appears.” So this would quite clearly - luminosity itself is what appears - this is where your awareness is inverting right in upon its own luminosity. The luminosity of mindfulness itself, let alone the luminosity of thoughts, some bright thoughts, some dull thoughts and so forth not attending to that. This is different from focusing right in upon that which illuminates thoughts, which is awareness itself. And so it is now very close to the bone very up close and intimate. This is definitely getting to shamatha without characteristics. You’re not attending to anything outside of awareness itself.

1:01:25 The Mahayana Sutra Alamkara, the ornament for the Mahayana sutra states, one of the five works out of Maitreya states: “The lucidity or the transparency of turbid water”, so has a lot of mud or silt in it, and the lucidity is transparency, you can look right through it like crystal clear, a lot like, like this this water right here is lucid, you see right through it. “The lucidity of turbid water does not arise from the beginning.” That is, you throw a handful of dirt in it, stir it out, it’s not lucid, but appears only with the disappearance of impurities and that is, all the impurities, the silt, the dirt settles to the bottom, and what’s above that is crystal clear water. It’s just like that for you.

1:02:06
So, when the, when we begin the practice for example of settling the mind in its natural state, we see a lot of, a lot of motion, a lot of activity, and then over the course of practice, the activities, the movements and so forth subside, and you wind up with a space that is empty and lucid. You achieve shamatha, you can do it quickly, that is, you can do it abruptly by cutting off these, the sedimentation of the mind, the movements of the mind, or you can allow it just to settle naturally as in settling the mind in its natural state. But one way or another, the sedimentation, the noise of the mind has to calm down, if you ever [want] to achieve shamatha.

1:02:52 The Samadhiraja sutra, the sutra of the king of samadhis also states: “Without obsessive thoughts, conceptualization without ideation, [I wish I could see the Tibetan, I can’t. So I have to guess, but I mean, it’s clear. So without thoughts, without thoughts. Yeah, this one I think we can say without thoughts, without compulsive thoughts] without an apprehended object, no target and nothing to display, the mind too is without an object.” So now we’re kind of really coming in. Here is, oh, shamatha without characteristics, with no outside referent, therefore, it’s called samadhi. Samadhi means unification of the mind. Sam a dhi. Sam means totally, a means really, and dhi comes from the Sanskrit verbal root ‘da’, which means to place. So you’re totally, really placing your mind, total composure, unification, and in this case, it’s samadhi on the mind itself, like a black hole draws in all the light in upon itself.

1:04:00 "If the Bodhisattvas Jinaputras, [these are Bodhisattvas sons or children of the Jinas]. “If the Bodhisattvas Jinaputras cultivate this king of samadhi as they go beyond thoughts, [which are ideation, conceptualization] which is difficult to transcend, and gradually non-conceptual primordial consciousness arises.” So they go beyond thoughts, which are difficult to transcend. Even real when you first realize emptiness, it will be conceptually veiled you’ll be realizing it, but by way of ideas, by way of conceptualization, when you first have a taste of rigpa, it will be almost certainly veiled by ideation or thoughts. It will not be unmediated, most likely. But as you go deeper, deeper into your realization of emptiness, you settle more and more deeply in your experience of rigpa, then eventually, sooner or later it becomes completely conceptually unmediated. And if you’re following the Bodhisattva path, that’s when you become an Arya Bodhisattva. If you’re following the Dzogchen path, that’s when you become a vidyadhara when you have a non-conceptual identification or experience of primordial consciousness.

So the theme of transcending thought is really, absolutely central, you see it basically comes up in every single citation here. So the kaya [1:05:18 Tibetan ] it’s the praise of the three bodies, of three embodiments: nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya and dharmakaya. So the praise of the three embodiments of the three kayas states: “Non-conceptual primordial consciousness alone is surged by the wise to be samadhi.” So they’re setting the bar very high. That’s, that’s what samadhi is really about, when you’ve transcended all conceptualization. Any other samadhi does not rest in reality, well it doesn’t rest in the reality of primordial consciousness, non-dual from dharmadhatu. So, setting the bar that high, relative to that, all other samadhi is focusing on the deity, focusing on the breath and so forth, that’s but a distraction. Any other samadhi does not rest in reality, but it is a distraction. It misses the mark. So it’s maybe a preparation, maybe a very useful preparation. But it’s not the, it’s not the goal. The Shata-shahasrika Prajnaparamita that’s back to, back to the hundred thousand verses Prajnaparamita states: “What is…” I think we’ll stop here. But I’ll read this and then we’ll stop. “What is samadhi in which the mind is still?” The Tibetan is nyepa [1:06:36?] and it can be still or stable. I think here still is better. “What is the samadhi in which the mind is still?” [unflickering candle flame…] “Abiding in that samadhi, the mind is unmoving”[ without ideation, without thoughts] and not despondent, [not heavy, not bored, not downcast.] “It does not become unhappy, there does not arise a thought, this is the mind. This is the samadhi called still mind.”

1:07:08 And since the quotation from the same sutra will continue: “When Bodhisattvas experience the perfection of wisdom they have the samadhi called isolation.” You’re freed from, you’re separated from something we’ll see what. “Bodhisattvas who experience that samadhi swiftly become perfectly enlightened, in accord with that, they have the samadhi that is without the mind, without mind, transcended mind. When you’re resting in rigpa, [of course, mind is nowhere to be found, the substrate conscious is nowhere to be found. The coarse mind is called coarse mind and the substrate consciousness is called subtle mind. This is rigpa, primordial consciousness.] they have the samadhi that was without mind, [without mental activity, unmoving] not attending to the essence of all phenomena. [it does not have a referent, it’s not called, caught up in duality and bifurcation, dualistic grasping] Bodhisattvas, [and this is where we’ll stop] Bodhisattvas, the great beings, Mahasattvas who experience that samadhi swiftly become perfectly enlightened. This is the excellent cause of dhyana and shamatha.” So he’s now given a very rarefied ‘raise the bar’. What is the dhyana that you really want to go for? [Shamatha] well, it’s that one. “It is profound due to its isolation. [Isolation from the mind itself, it transcends mind all the activities of the conditioned mind.] It is profound due to its isolation; profound because its depths are difficult to measure. Subhuti, this which is without form is the profundity of form. Subhuti … And now he’s going to go through the five skandhas. There’s the first one.] Subhuti, this which is without feeling [which transcends feeling], discernment, mental formations and consciousness is the profundity of consciousness. [Going down to the ground, clearly, the ground dharmakaya, ground rigpa. This is the profundity, this is the ultimate ground.] Subhuti, this perfection of wisdom is without thought, without ideation. The absence of ideation is called Buddha, the absence of ideation is called enlightenment.”

1:09:28
[phew!] Bit intense. Good, going right to the nucleus, just right to the nucleus, okay? So this is the first teaching, as I said, that Gyaltrul Rinpoche taught, for which I was able to serve as interpreter. Remarkably, he chose this one because he plucked it out of the great big text. This one chapter [boom!], and then from there to vipashyana. Very good. So I think our task is clear before us. This you can do. There’s just resting in awareness. If you wish you may attend to thoughts, a bit of a referent. Or if you wish, you may simply rest in awareness without referent. That’s a very nice way to end the day when you’re in bed under the covers lying in the shavasana. Especially if you’re not attending your thoughts. Thoughts may keep you awake, I think even arousing you, catching your interest and so forth, can keep you awake. But in my experience, if you’re just resting in awareness, it doesn’t arouse, doesn’t excite or agitate the mind. And it is a beeline, it’s a direct line to go consciously from the waking state right into deep dreamless sleep and enter dreamless sleep lucidly. That’s worth doing. Very good preparation for dying lucidly, entering the dead zone, the dark near attainment, lucidly, that’s really worthwhile. Really, really worthwhile. Good! [phew!] Enjoy your afternoon. See you tomorrow morning.

Transcribed by Kai Yee

Revised by Sueli Martinez

Final edition by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Discussion

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