The Profound Treasury of The Ocean of Dharma Volume One: The Path of Individual Liberation by Chogyam Trungpa

Editor’s Introduction:

Hinayana refers to individual development and the path of the arhat (“worthy one”)

Mahayana refers to the joining of wisdom and compassionate action and the path of the bodhisattva (“awake being”)

Vajrayana refers to fearless engagement and spiritual daring in the path of the siddha (“holder of spiritual power”).

The Hinayana

The term Hinayana means “lesser or smaller vehicle.” According to Trungpa Rinpoche, “The hinayana is called the smaller vehicle, not because it is simpleminded or lacking in vision, but because it is a pragmatic, deep-rooted approach.” The hinayana introduces core Buddhist teachings on the nature of mind, the practice of meditation, the reality of suffering, and the possibility of liberation.

The hinayana path is based on training in mindfulness and awareness, cultivating virtue, and cutting grasping. Those who accomplish this path are called arhats, worthy one who have completely severed their ties to this world of confusion and suffering, or samsara, and attained peace, or nirvana.

The Mahayana

The mahayana, or “great vehicle,” rests on the foundation established by the hinayana. This nana emphasizes the cultivation of wisdom through the view and experience of emptiness, or shunyata, in which all phenomena are seen to be unbounded, completely open, graspable, and profound. From the ground of shunyata, compassionate activity is said to arise naturally and spontaneously. In addition to mindfulness and awareness, the mahayanist practice lojong, “or mind training,” based on the cultivation of the paramitas, or “transcendent virtues”: generosity discipline, patience, exertion, mediation, and prajna, or “knowledge.” As a component of lojong, tonglen, or “sending and taking,” is practice in order to increase maitri, or loving-kindness.

The Vajrayana

The vajrayana, or “diamond vehicle,” is also referred to as tantra…the formal acceptance into the vajrayana is marked by a vow, in this case the samaya vow. There is an emphasis in this yana on the student-teacher relationship and on the quality of devotion. Teachings are transmitted directly from teacher to student. Students must complete preliminary practices, called ngondro, to prepare themselves for initiation into the vajrayana path. There are empowerment ceremonies of many kinds, called abhishekas.

The tantric path requires complete engagement and fierce dedication. It is said to be a more rapid path, but it is also more dangerous. There is a quality of directness, and wholeheartedness. Tantrikas, or vajryana practitioners, recognize that the most challenging aspects of life, the energies and play of confused emotions and frightening obstacles, can be worked with as gateways to freedom and realization. Accomplished practitioners of vajrayana are called siddhas, which means “those who have power.”

The hinayana can be looked at in terms of discipline, meditation, and knowledge, or shila, samadhi, and prajna. Discipline is of prime importance, for the path is a do-it-yourself project.

Trungpa Rinpoche uses the term mindfulness to refer to the calming and settling of the mind, and the ability to hold the mind steady or to concentrate. He uses the term awareness to refer to the way that the mind naturally expands out once it is settled, and develops spaciousness and clarity. In his approach to meditation instruction, Trungpa Rinpoche points to a progression from mindfulness, to awareness, and then to the inseparable union of mindfulness and awareness.

Shamatha: The practice of mindfulness. Shamatha practice is not simply a mental exercise, but is transformative and infused with magical power and energy.

The four foundations of mindfulness: mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of life, mindfulness of effort, and mindfulness of mind.

Trungpa Rinpoche makes use of the teachings on the four foundations to “create a total picture of mindfulness.” He emphasizes their value in freeing meditation practitioners from overly self-conscious involvement in their practice.

Vipashyana: The practice of awareness. Vipashyana has a quality of inquisitiveness and positive doubt. Vipashyana is the insight that leads to the realization of agelessness and glimpses of emptiness. Although vipashyana is often used to refer to intellectual analysis, the emphasis is on vipashyana as a direct meditative experience of panoramic awareness.

PART ONE: ENTERING THE PATH

Encountering the Dharma

1 Beginning at the Beginning:

Hinayana is like building a castle on rock. It takes great vision as well as great discipline and practicality. Without this deep-rooted approach, it would be like building a castle on ice: when the ice melted, the castle would go down the drain.

The spiritual path is a journey from neurosis to sanity.

2 The Frozen Space of Ego:

The skandhas present a complete picture of ego. According to Buddhist psychology, the ego is simply a collection of skandhas or heaps—but actually there is no such thing as ego. It is a brilliant work of art, a product of the intellect, which says, “Let’s give all this a name. Let’s call it ‘I.’”

Although confused mind would like to view itself as solid, it is only a collection of tendencies and events. This collection is referred to as the vice skandhas, or five “heaps”: form, feeling, perception/impulse, concept/formation, and consciousness.

The First Skandha: Form

Solidifying space. In the beginning, there is open space belonging to no one, and within that space is primeval intelligence, or vidya, so there is both intelligence and space. As you dance, you want to experience the space more and more, to enjoy the dance and the openness. But at this point, space is no longer space, as such. It has become solid space because of your unnecessary urge to contact it. When you try to cling to space, to grasp it, the whole perspective is completely changed. You have solidified space and made it tangible. That sense of self-consciousness is the birth of duality. Spaciousness has become solid space, and you have begun to identity yourself with the “I.” You are identified with the duality of “I” and space, rather than being completely one with space. You have become self-conscious, conscious that “you” are dancing ins pace. This is the birth of the first skandha, the skandha of form.

The Second Skandha: Feeling

Having managed to transform space into solidness, you would then like to possess it and grasp it. Having solidified the duality of self and other, you try to feel the qualities of that “other” in order to reassure yourself that you exist. You reach out to sense whether that “other” is seductive, threatening, or neutral. You think that if you can feel something “out there,” then you must really be here. The mechanism of feeling you set up is extremely efficient.

The Third Skandha: Perception/Impulse

In the act of perception, having received information about the outside world from the skandha of feeling, you respond to that information in three ways: by drawing in, pushing away, or being indifferent. The skandha of feeling transmits its information, and you make judgments, you react. Whether you react for or against or indifferently is automatically determined by this bureaucracy of feeling and perception. So perception/impulse is an automatic impulsive reaction to intuitive feeling.

The Fourth Skandha: Concept/Formation

The automatic reaction of the third skandha is not enough of a defense to protect your ignorance and guarantee your security. In order to protect and deceive yourself properly, you need intellect, the ability to name and categorize things. With intellect, you can label things “good,” “bad,” “beautiful,” “ugly,” and so on. With each of the skandhas, the structure of ego is gradually becoming heavier and stronger. Up to this point, ego’s development was purely based on action and reaction, but from this point on, the ego is becoming more sophisticated. You use your intellect to confirm your experience, to interpret weakness as strength, to fabricate security, and to verify your ignorance. So although primordial intelligence is happening all the time, it is being employed by ignorance, by dualistic fixation.

The Fifth Skandha: Consciousness

Consciousness is an amalgamation of the intuitive intelligence of the skandha of feeling, the energy of the skandha of perception/impulse, and the intellectualization of the skandha of concept/formation. That combination produces thoughts and emotions. So at the level of the fifth skandha, we find emotional upheavals and the uncontrollable and illogical patterns of discursive thought. With the development of discursive thoughts and fantasies, the whole thing is completely secured.

3 The Path of Individual Salvation:

The path of dharma is unlike the ordinary conception of religion as separate from secular life. Usually when you talk about business, you assume your business hat, and when you talk about religion you assume your spiritual hat. But in this case, you don’t wear two hats, you have one one hat—in face, you have no hat.

The Hinayana is referred to as the path of individual salvation, or pratimoksha.

Shila, samadhi, and prajna represent the three types of learning: first, trusting in oneself; second, practicing one’s trust in a meditative way; finally, expressing what one has trusted and learned. Discipline is the teacher as well as the teachings, the Buddha as well as the followers of the Buddha.

In Hinayana…the four marks of view: impermanence, suffering, agelessness, and peace.

Impermanence. The first make of view is the impermanence of time and space. Time and space could not exist if there were no limitations put on them—and if there were no understanding of those limitations, time and space would be incomprehensible.

Suffering. The second mark of view is that whatever you create could be regarded as a source of pain and suffering. The ongoing suffering resulting from the futility of creating anything permanent. Pain cannot exist by itself. It exists if you have produced a comfortable situation with the idea that such perfection of comfort will continue.

Egolessness. The third mark of view is that all dharmas, or experiences, are regarded as free from the fixation of ego. All dharmas are free from ego in their true nature. Nobody can be saved because there’s nobody home. Egolessness means that the situation is already clear. There could be a God, but who would worship God if there were no worshiper? The point is that you yourself do no exist, rather than that God does no exist and you are just sort of dangling. There could quite possibly be a house with furniture, but there is no one to occupy it. That is a far more important nontheistic reference point than believing that there is no God. From this point of view, all dharmas can be regarded as egoless. Saying that all dharmas are egoless means that everything we handle, feel, perceive—everything we do—has no receiver. You might find that somewhat outrageous, but it’s true.

Peace. The fourth mark of view is that freedom from defilement is peace. Nirvana transcends the pain of fixation, of holding on to ideas. It was our efforts to express our individuality that led us into misery.

The Buddha is referred to as sugata, “he who has gone joyfully on the path.” The Buddha is not referred to as “he who sat painfully,” or “he who felt bad about himself,” or “he who managed to get through his pain and has now attained buddhahood.” He is referred to as joyful.

4 Opening the True Dharma:

Dharma is good at the beginning because it is fresh thought, inspired by the Buddha…The dharma is good in the middle because the process goes along in a very ordinary way. You have the sense that you are on a journey…The dharma is good at the end…[Although] to say that the dharma is good in the end is deceptive, because there is no particular end. The onion of an end is purely a conceptual construct.

In mediation all thoughts are regarded simply as discursive thoughts. None of them are regarded as at all valid or real. However, although such thought patterns are not that important, because they come and they go, you should regard them as part of your dharma practice. But there is something that is not purely brought pattern, which is hearing the dharma.

It is very simple and basic. Your entire life is filled with dharma. You are brought up with the dharma of your parents, who raise you in the dharma of bringing up children. You enter into the dharma of school, and after that you begin to take on the dharma of a certain profession of the dharma of dropping out of college and becoming a rebel, ascetic, or bandit. You get married, and have the dharma of marriage; fall in love, and have the dharma of love; start your own household, and have the dharma of raising children. The list of dharmas is very long. Basically it is just what happens in your life. Dharma involves facts, but those facts are not conceptual mathematical, or analytical facts—they are realistic facts, personal experience, facts as they are. We seem to have a problem facing the facts of life straightforwardly, but dharma is both straightforward and ordinary.

In part we become emotionally attracted to our version of the teachings, and in part we have genuine insight into the teachings. A true presentation of the the dharma is based on trying to wipe out the first part and keep the second. It is based on wiping out our habitual neurotic pattern of being inspired by the dharma purely insofar as it fulfills our expectations, and keeping the part of being inspired because dharma is related to our inherent insight. Generally, the sorting-out process takes place through sitting practice.

Your personal inspiration to promote your own individuality, your so-called uniqueness, becomes questionable when you begin to study the dharma. True dharma is a the same time both loving and threatening.

The accomplishment of discipline is based on renunciation, and renunciation is inspired by experience that is beyond samsara, beyond both the theistic and non theistic worlds.

Shila, samadhi, and prajna. All dharma that has been taught in the universe has the qualities of these three trainings.

Dharma is said to be good at the beginning, good in the middle, and good at the end.

Dharma is good at the beginning because it is fresh thought, inspired by the Buddha.

“Good in the middle” is much more sober and subdued. The dharma in the middle because the process goes along in a very ordinary way. The path is straightforward. It is straight and narrow. It is extraordinarily dull and uninviting. Only people who by unusual circumstances would like to surrender their ego can take part in this particular path. people who do not want to surrender their ego would regard taking part in this path as ludicrous. They would think that you had gone outright mad, which could be true. The dharma is “good in the middle” because it is presented without too much effort. It is presented without the extremes of eternalize or nihilism, the idea that either everything is eternally good or the idea that everything is fatally bad. Neither of those extremes is included in the presentation of the dharma.

The dharma is good at the end because it is passionless. It leads us out of our bargaining mentality. To say that the dharma is good at the end is deceptive, because there is no particular end. The notion of an end is purely a conceptual construct. Dharma is the realization that ending is not possible. You cannot just give up and find salvation: there is no end, and nobody is going to be saved.

The dharma is experienced by the threefold logic of personal experience, theory, and confirmation. When you hear the dharma, in the beginning it is joyful; in the middle it is simple and true; in the end it transcends passion.

There are ten traditional definitions of dharma: dharma of what is knowable; dharma is the path; dharma is freedom from pain; dharma is the perception of mind; dharma is a sense of reward; dharma is a sense of time; dharma is doctrine; dharma is a complete true message; dharma is prediction or prophesying; and last, dharma is particular religious beliefs. You could use the word dharma for all of those meanings. Nine of those ten definitions refer to the common meaning of the term dharma. They are very personally oriented, based on things like finding salvation, extending the life span, or telling the future. The only definition that refers to the buddha dharma, or saddharma, is the tenth one, which refers to doctrine in the sense of a religious sect. That notion of doctrine could be said to be the true dharma.

When two big rivers emerge from two big valleys and meet, the two big rivers become an even bigger river. That sense of things reaching a greater scale is sutra. Sutras are considered to be one of the three components of the Buddha’s teachings, called the Tripitaka, or “three baskets.” Altogether, the Tripitaka is comprised of the vinaya, or teachings on monastic discipline; the sutras, or dialogues of the Buddha; and the abhidharma, or teachings on Buddhist psychology.

The presentation of dharma should be very simple and workable. It should be somewhat elementary, not out of disrespect for the audience, but out of respect for the simplicity of the dharma.

5 Joining the Study and Practice:

Intellect and intuition both play an important role, so you cannot negate either or them. You cannot purely rely on meditation practice alone, without experiencing a sharpening of your basic intelligence, and in order to understand the sense behind the words, you have to have personal meditative experience. So those two approaches are complementary.

Since you are not going to spend all your time alone, all by yourself, you should be thinking in terms of helping others sooner or later. In fact, you should expect it. You cannot purely rely on meditation practice alone; you also need to sharpen your basic intelligence, and in order to understand the sense behind the words, you have to have personal meditative experience. So those two approaches are complementary. Learning and practice are the essence of the Buddhist way. The mark of practice is lessening of the kleshas, or neurotic thought patterns. In mindfulness practice, your concentration is a very thin, sturdy wire going through all your clouds of thoughts. The practice of going back to the breath, back to reality, is taking place all the time. So it is very necessary for you to practice mindfulness utterly and completely.

The mark of learning is gentleness.

How to be in your life is meditation practice; how to understand your life is scholarship.

Categorize the Buddha’s teachings into vinaya, sutras, and abhidharma: monastic vows and discipline, discourses and dialogues, and philosophy and psychology. However, these categories are simply different aspects of the mind of the Enlightened One.

Desire is the excess baggage of mind. So in order to tame desire, the mind has to be tamed. Therefore, sitting practice is known as the practice of taming: we are taming ourselves.

6 Achieving Sanity Here on Earth:

With discriminating awareness, comforts of all kinds, including the religious experiences of spiritual materialism, begin to turn into something else. We begin to feel that we are engaged in a much more profound project—a project that has depth and brilliance. When we realize that, we are no longer spiritual materialists.

You can’t be a Buddhist if you keep looking for different means of comfort. Spiritual comforts, such as tweeting minutes of soothing meditation, may make you feel happy, carefree, gleamy, or euphoric, but that’s it. That’s the end of it. It is naive to approach spirituality as another way of looking for comfort in one’s life.

In the theistic approach to dharma, the object is to achieve eternity and avoid the possibility of death. The basis for doing so is the belief in your own existence. But you then need someone else to confirm your existence—and conveniently, you find a friend.

The discovery of a being who constantly cares for us, loves us, and creates things for us, including our own plastic toys, is a convenient trip of theism. The problem with that approach is that we are constantly preoccupied with that, so we being to forget this, meaning ourselves. We feel that we do not have to look into ourselves.

The first aspect of non theistic dharma view, includes the four norms of dharma: impermanence, suffering, egolessness, and peace.

The theistic approach to peace is to cultivate tranquility or euphoria. But for nontheists, peace is the absence of pain and grasping—it is the absence of everything. The process of things dropping away is peace. The four norms of non theistic dharma have to do with how to view reality. According to these four norms: reality is impermanence; reality is suffering; reality is agelessness; reality is peace.

The second aspect of non theistic dharma is gompa, which means “meditation practice.” Any meditation practice we might be doing, such as shamatha-vipashyana practice, should transcend even the highest concept of spirituality. In meditation we are not trying to overcome or to defeat anything, and we are not trying to gain any level of high spiritual achievement for the sake of pleasure. Since the practice of meditation is not at all geared to pleasure, its achievement should also be beyond pleasure—and since it transcends pleasure, it also transcends pain.

The third aspect of non theistic dharma is action. Your actions should transcend the extremes of austerity and indulgence. There is a quality of moderation and celebration.

The fourth aspect of non theistic dharma is the result—having nothing to give up. Actually, everything just goes away rather than having to be given up, so the idea of giving up does not really apply. You begin to realize that the neurosis you are still trying to ward off is not happening anymore; it has just gone away. This happens naturally because of the very fact that you have practiced beyond any theistic or spiritually materialistic fashion.

According to theism, you are threatened by the “forces of evil,” by temptations of all kinds. But according to nontheism, evil does not exist and temptation does not exist. According to Buddhism, you yourself are the tempter.

7 The Path, the Vehicle, and the Traveler:

In the midst of this samsaric countryside, a path has been cut, which we might call the spiritual path. Once the path has been prepared for us, once it has been cut and laid out, with an occasional bridge or tunnel, we need to have some form of vehicle by which to travel along that path. That vehicle is the body of the teachings….The sophistication of a particular vehicle depends on our situation and our state of mind….So we have the path as life experience, the vehicle as the teachings, and the traveler as the student.

The teachings are connected with our basic state of existence, and the sophistication of a particular vehicle depends on our situation and our state of mind. At the hinayana level the mode of transportation may be fairly slow and functional. At the mahayana level it may be somewhat more accommodating and easier to get into. At the vajrayana level the vehicle is highly accommodating, but it may be too efficient for the riders. So we have the path as life experience, the vehicle as the teachings, and the traveler as the student.

8 Relating with a Teacher:

The Teacher is made heavy by his or her own learning, wisdom, and discipline. On top of that, they are able to carry other people’s neuroses, or burdens, on their back. If people have to be ferried across the river of samsara, the teacher will carry them all in one bundle. It is like carrying a sack of ten thousand little sentient beings across the border.

9 The Painful Reality of Samsara:

Samsara starts from one tiny little thing and then becomes exaggerated into all kinds of conditions. By thinking, “Because this is this, therefore that should be that,” and so on and so on, we are continuously escalating our world of samsara, the karmic world.

By discovering the truth of samsara you are discovering nirvana. In fact, the reality of samsara is equally the reality of nirvana. Truth does not depend on formulas or alternative answers, but truth is seen to be one truth without relativity.

Bhavachakra. The wheel of life is a portrait of samsara. Therefore, it is also a portrait of nirvana, or the undoing of the samsaric coil. The wheel of life represents the compulsive nowness in which the universe recurs, as the death of one experience gives birth to the next within the realm of time.

The image of the wheel of life is always shown as being held by Yama, the personification of death, who provides the space and time for birth, death and survival. Yama provides the basic medium in which the different nidanas, or chain reactions, can be born and die. The image of a wheel held in the jaws of Yama is based on the teachings of the four noble truths. The outer ring portrays the nidanas as the evolution of suffering; the inner ring portrays the six realms as the perpetuation of suffering; and the center of the wheel portrays the three poisons of passion, aggression, and ignorance as the origin of suffering.

The Outer Ring: The Twelve Nidanas

The outer ring of the wheel represents the evolutionary stages of suffering in terms of the twelve nidanas. The nidanas represent how chance occurrences can evolve to a crescendo of ignorance and death. The ring of nidanas may be seen in terms of causality, or as accidents that lead from one situation to the next. They represent an inescapable chain of coincidence that brings imprisonment and pain. You have been processed through this gigantic factory as raw material, and although you do not usually look forward to the outcome, there is no alternative.

1. Ignorance / Blind Grandmother. The first nirvana is avidya, or ignorance. It is represented by a blind grandmother, who symbolized the older generation giving birth to further generations, but remaining fundamentally blind. A blind grandmother has no chance to see her grandchildren. She has her own concepts and ideas about how the world should be, and she struggles constantly, trying to communicated with her grandchildren. Indulgence is something intangible and trying to confirm what is intangible leads to a sense of solidified space. It is the beginning of self-consciousness, which is based on clinging to intangible qualities as if there were solid.

1. Formation / Potter’s Wheel. The next nidana is called samskara, or “conceptual mind.” It can slo be translated as “formations.” Samskara is represented by the image of a potter’s wheel. This nirvana is based on impulsive accumulation: we turn the potters wheel constantly. That wheel keeps turning, again and again, and with that wheel we could produce a pot, a sculpture, a cup, a teapot, a vase — all kinds of nice shapes. That shaping process represents conceptual mind forming itself into certain patterns. It is the pain at which karmic creation begins. Karma is created by two situations: the sense of I-ness and the sense of other. They are like the water and clay that are mixed together to form the mud thrown onto the potter’s wheel. The potter’s wheel is the sense of obligation that we should make our life into something, that we should become a poet, professor, engineer, or social worker. Whenever we say, “I should become…” the potter’s wheel is spinning. By means of the speed of the potter’s wheel, we make ourselves into something—and as the revolution of the wheel goes on and on, it produces further speed.

1. Consciousness / Monkey. The third nidana, vijnana, or “consciousness.” They symbol of consciousness is a monkey—a very busy monkey—who says, “I am a monkey!” Then that monkey begins itself further: “I am a monkey; therefore I should climb trees and eat bananas.” Things slowly escalate in that way, Samsara starts form one tiny little thing and then becomes exaggerated into all kinds of conditions. By thinking, “Because this is this, therefore that should be that,” so so on and so on, we are continuously escalating our world of samsara, the karmic world.

1. Name and Form / Person in a Boat. The fourth nidana, nama-rupa, or “name and form,” which is symbolized by a person in a boat. Your give yourself a name and function. This nidana is a gesture of hope and of a dream coming true. When an object has a conceptualized name, it becomes significant. When you name a person, you are providing a home for that person. Names and forms serve as political and philosophical reinforcement.

1. Sex Sense Faculties / Six-Windowed House. At this point, you can no longer simply exist alone without relating with the rest of the world, which leads to the next nidana, shadayatana, the “six sense faculties.” You develop the six senses and you build a dwelling place for those senses. This nidana is represented by a monkey in a six-windowed house. The six windows represent the five sense of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, as well as the sixth sense of mental faculty. The six sense faculties are connected with the corresponding sense organs of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.

1. Contact / Married Couple. The need to maintain this project leads us to the next nidana, sparsha, or “contact,” represented by a married couple. Sparsha is symbolized by the contact between the masculine and feminine principles, which complement each other. By trying to capture this fascination and make it into a solid thing, you develop personality. You develop self-respect that is not based upon domestic affairs alone, but also upon forging relationships.

1. Feeling / Arrow Through the Eye. The next nidana, vedana, or “feeling,” presents itself. Feeling is symbolized by an arrow through the eye. Having made contact, you get a refund or echo from the world. The world outside reacts to you…Feeling is a very penetrating and painful experience, as if someone had shot an arrow into your eye.

1. Craving / Drinking Milk and Honey. The next nidana, trishna, or “craving.” Although craving is traditionally symbolized by drinking milk and honey, it is more like eating ice cream or rice pudding—it is like food that you do not have to chew or even lick. It just comes into your mouth, you taste it, and it goes right through your body. You do not even bother to swallow; it is more as if it had swallowed you. With craving, you don’t know what happened; you just did it. Milk and money just go into you without even inviting them. It is instant, rather than deliberate. There is no intellectualization at all. Craving just happens to you—and it happens to you constantly.

1. Grasping / Gathering Fruit. The next nidana is upadana, or “grasping,” symbolized by gathering fruit. You have a courtship with the world. You are demonstrating youthful exuberance—demonstrating how far you can jump, how sharp your youthful teeth are, and how good your muscles are. You are playing a game, like when kittens let a mouse go, them jump on it, then let it go, and then jump on it. You begin to regard life as a big joke. At the same time, it is enormously fun. Your life is so good, so absolutely good, that you are falling in love with it.

1. Becoming / Copulation. At this point, there is an inevitable tendency to feel that someone else could possibly share this experience, that at least there might be someone to relate to. That loneliness and longing for companionship leads you to the next nidana, bhava, or “becoming.” The traditional picture for “becoming” is copulation. In this nidana, you have finally been caught. Instead of dancing around, listening to sweet music and enjoying everything, you have been captured by this life. Instead of continually roaming around in the orchard, you have found one apple, and you sit down and begin eating it. You are taking life more seriously, adopting a somewhat more defined form. You are actually getting into your life, into the nitty-gritty of things. Traditionally, we call this making love. You were expressing so much freedom, but now you have ended up with one apple You have a relationship with it, and at the same time you are stuck with it. So there is a faint quality of discomfort, although it is being suppressed because of your excitement. The nidana of becoming celebrates the achievement of relating with another mind/body. Experiencing the shapes and sculptural qualities of the world is extremely satisfying. You develop a tremendous awareness of things, a heightened quality of vision and other sense perceptions.

1. Birth / Woman in Childbirth. It seems that copulating is the only way of appreciating the organic natural world—but at the same time such sensual overindulgence invites valid proof. You want the evidence of being a father or mother to provide legitimacy, which leads to the next nidana, jati, or “birth.” With the nidana of birth, becoming has gone into action and produced karmic results. Birth is a fact of life. It is the truth. Cause and effect are actually happening; truth is taking place. Having given birth to something, a feeling of power begins to develop. The simplicity of being creator of the universe is not far away.

1. Old Age and Death / Funeral Procession. The twelfth nidana is jara marana, or “old age and death.” This is symbolized by a funeral procession. Having had so much fun playing with phenomena, finally birth and death become very close to one another. Death includes the physically overpowering situation of having too many things to manage. Once upon a time that was exhilarating, but that excitement has become questionable. The many objects and relationships you have created become the inspiration for the charnel ground.

The Inner Ring: The Six Realms

The inner ring shows how the confused mind finds different styles of occupation, which are called realms. Such realms can be said to refer to psychological states, rather than external situations such as heaven above and hell below. These realms are known as the whirlpool of illusion, or samsara. According to abhidharma, or Buddhist psychology, we can take birth into any of these psychological realms in a matter of a sixtieth of a second. Furthermore, the concept of time itself is also dependent on our involvement in ignorance.

HUMAN REALM. The human realm is said to be the land of karma, because human beings can perceive and work with karmic force. The constant search for pleasure and its failure pushes the inquisitive intelligence into neurosis. The human realm presents the rare opportunity of hearing the dharma and practicing it. Changes happen only as the karmic force of the hallucination wears out.

JEALOUS GOD REALM. In the realm of the asuras, or jealous gods, the ambition of gaining a victory and the fear of losing a battle cause you to feel alive, as well as cause your irritation. You lose the point of an ultimate goal, but in order to keep the driving force, you have to maintain the ambition. There is a constant desire to be the best, but the possibility of losing your game is too real.

GOD REALM. The realm of the gods, also known as heaven, is the product of self-indulgence in ideal pleasure. This realm has different degrees, and each degree of intensity of pleasure is based on a corresponding degree of maintenance of the pleasure and fear of losing it. The reason the realm of the gods is regarded as an impermanent state is that it is based on ego’s game of maintenance, in which meditation is seen as separate from your own being.

ANIMAL REALM. The stupidity of the animal realm is more one of laziness and of dullness. It is the refusal to venture onto new ground. There is a tendency to cling to the familiar and to fight your way from one familiar situation to another. This approach does not have the quality of openness or dance. This realm is marked by stubbornness and by intoxication with yourself.

HUNGRY GHOST REALM. The hungry ghost realm is one of an intense state of grasping in the midst of continual, overwhelming psychological poverty. The definition of hunger in this case is the fear of letting go. On the whole, the pain of this realm is not so much that of not finding what you want; rather, it is the frustration of the wanting itself that causes excruciating pain.

HELL REALM. The realm of hell is not only the extreme of aggression and its passionate expression, but it extends beyond that. It backlashed and creates not only a force of energy, but an all-pervasive environment of aggression that is so intense it is unbearable.

The Center or the Wheel

The center of the wheel of life, which represents the origin of suffering and the path.

IGNORANCE / PIG. The pig represents nondiscrimination perception. You relate purely to the sense of survival, consuming whatever comes up to be consumed. With ignorance, you are always grasping for what is comfortable and snug.

PASSION / ROOSTER. Passion feels inadequate, so it presents its spiky, sharp point in order to draw in objects of desire. It consumes and attracts attention at the same time.

AGGRESSION / SNAKE. The only possible way of accomplishing the process is to subjugate the object of passion, either by putting out poison to paralyze it or by overpowering it. This is much the way a snake would proceed, either projecting poison through its fangs or coiling around the object of desire until it has been completely subdued. Thus the snake is the symbol of aggression. The pattern of aggression and passion is seen as capturing that which is close and destroying that which is beyond our control.

The wheel of life seems to be a complete portrait of the karmic situation, of how we end up here.

It has nothing to do with transmigration of the soul. The truth of death is the truth of life. So death is not regarded as an escape from or an ending to our life, but death is the beginning of another birth—and that process takes place constantly.

10 BUDDHADARMA FEVER:

We take refuge in order to effect our freedom. We are willing to admit to buddha dharma fever. Understanding that we have a choice, we want to take that step properly and formally. We know that when we take refuge, we are no longer just making a promise to ourselves, but there is some kind of magic involved. In taking the refuge vow, we can request that magic to enter into our system so that we could become worthy Buddha-like, dharma-like, sangha-like people.

By taking refuge, you are trying to liberate yourself from basic anxiety, from samsara. You realize that without individual salvation you are trapped, but you also recognize that you could free yourself and practice delightfully. You find dharmic messages quite fitting, and you begin to feel very fortunate. But that goodness has to be shared. It is good to have a jar of marmalade, but it would be better to spread it on a slice of bread and offer it to your friends to eat. So first you share the goodness with yourself, then you share it with others, but in doing so you maintain your own sense of satisfaction. In that way, you become a true refugee.

With both theism and non theism, it is possible to fall into extremes. In the extreme of theism, although you desire salvation, you think it can only be achieved by some greater power that exists outside you. In the extreme of non theism, you think you can achieve salvation by hard work alone, purely by yourself. Instead of falling into such extremes, you should join together your effort and energy to try to be awake.

It is important to realize that when we take refuge in the Buddha, we are not viewing Buddha as God.

Humbleness is not about being subservient—it is about being a simple and direct person without any preconceptions due to arrogance or pride.

11 TAKING REFUGE IN THE THREE JEWELS:

First, we take refuge in the Buddha as an example. The Buddha alone realized that neither spiritual trappings nor materialistic, worldly trappings are ultimate salvation; and having realized that, he abandoned all such trappings…. Secondly, we take refuge in the dharma as path…. What the Buddha taught become the path we journey on, and we find tremendous truth in it…. Finally, we take refuge in the sangha as companionship…. accepting our dharma brothers and sisters, those with whom we practice, as true friends.

To take refuge requires strength and willingness. It means you must give up your individual preoccupations and obsessions—the personal favoritisms that maintain your existence. If a would-be student of Buddhism has a particular talent that is not pure talent, but an ego-oriented talent that has helped that person maintain his or her existence all along, that has to be given up. You have to become an ordinary citizen. That is the true definition of humility.

The dharma is known as passionlessness. Passion is based on struggle, aggression,  and longing. It is based on hunger and thirst, on poverty mentality. We wish we could be better; we wish we could get something greater. That quality of wanting—wanting more, wanting to get something greater—is passion. Once the message of dharma has been transplanted in us, we are no longer so very hungry. We see that pushing too hard does not help. However, not pushing at all does not help either, so a medium level of aspiration is preferable. You could be highly interested and open and somewhat hungry, but not just looking for the pleasure of one day becoming a happy person.

Taking refuge in the dharma means giving up your individual intellectual and metaphysical speculation. By taking refuge in the dharma, you are giving up your intellectual stronghold.

Not needing an audience is an expression of egolessness.

12 THE SUTRA OF THE RECOLLECTION OF THE NOBLE THREE JEWELS:

Trungpa Rinpoche expanded his discussion of the three jewels in the form of a commentary on the traditional sutra entitled the Sutra of the Recollection of the Noble Three Jewels, or in Sanskrit the Arya-ratnatraya-anusmriti-sutra. This short sutra is traditionally chanted as a way of increasing a student’s devotion to the Buddha, trust in the dharma, and respect for the sangha. Trungpa Rinpoche included this chant in the meal liturgy he created for extended group meditation retreats, such as Vajradhatu Seminaries.

13 THE BUDDHA:

When we study the Buddha, we realize that the Buddha is quite different from us, that we are not the Buddha. We have the potential, but not the realization or the proclamation to make. At the same time, buddha is what we are. That is why we sit upright and breathe as Buddha breathed, very simply. We too do not have to imitate anything, for buddha is in us already.

The ordinary concept of pleasure is to please oneself and abandon others, but the sugata’s concept of pleasure includes others’ pleasure, as well.

14 THE DHARMA:

We could say quite simply that the first thought of human beings is dharma, the second thought is dharma, and the third thought is also dharma. Without that kind of dharmic depth, nobody could think comprehensibly at all. It is very simple. Before neurosis, there is just that first, simple, innocent thought.

Dharma means the “teachings.” It means “truth,” “law,” or “path.” The related term, dharma chakra, means the “constant revolving, or constant motion, of the dharma.” It means that the dharma is ceaselessly turning. If you had dharma without dharma chakra, it would be like a weapon not employed by a warrior. The practitioner and the dharma should be walking side by side—that is the idea of dharma chakra. Dharmachakra is the driving force that inspires us and makes spiritually ambitious.

The Buddha is like a charioteer who knows the way, the path is the dharma, the rider is your companionship with the Buddha, and the chariot is your meditation cushion.

15 THE SANGHA:

The sangha usually is very gentle and genuine; therefore, the sangha is a great field of merit. By giving in to, respecting, and following the Buddha, the sangha has developed merit….Merit is simply a field of openness, which allows individuals to realize that when the proper intentions are put into the proper situations, those intentions rebound and are automatically resolved.

Any theistic way of saving yourself is completely out of the question.

PART TWO DISCIPLINE / SHILA

16 THE LONELINESS AND JOY OF DISCIPLINE:

You cannot develop yourself properly unless you give up your need for companionship. Once you give up your search for companionship, you can make friends with your loneliness. At that point, you become a genuine practitioner.

When you have developed renunciation and become willing to restrain yourself from unwholesome actions, you begin to develop discipline. Discipline here is defined as “that which cools off neurotic heat.” When the heat of neurosis is cooled, body, speech, and mind are at their best. Discipline is not quite ethics. It does not have to do with common law, but with individual salvation. Buddhist ethics are not a matter of good and evil; they are more a matter of tidiness and sloppiness. The Buddhist approach is not necessarily to make the world a good world, but to make the world a decent world. If you are tidy, then you are not creating chaos for others.

As discipline becomes a reality, it actually abides as an entity in your state of mind. The various Buddhist schools all agree that discipline is an entity of its own. Discipline develops because you are willing to be good in the sense of being pragmatic, precise, and realistic. On the Hinayana path, the unnecessary complications and confusions that occur in your state of mind can be overcome by the practice of meditation. In turn, proper discipline could develop. Therefore, you are able to develop individual salvation.

Unless you have a sense of aloneness, you cannot develop wakefulness. If you really understood loneliness, you could become a tantric student. Loneliness is a link between hinayana and vajrayana.

Aloneness seems to be the heart of discipline. According to the Buddhist tradition, seeing the helplessness of one’s own experience is the only way to look at things helpfully.

The point is that you cannot develop yourself properly unless you give up your need for companionship. Once you give up your search for companionship, you can make friends with your loneliness. At that point, you become a genuine practitioner.

17 TAMING THE NEUROTIC MIND:

A basic point of hinayana is the conviction that you can practice along with your problems. It is not because you can solve your problems that you can do it, and it is also not because somebody else suddenly became enlightened. The point is that you can do it because somebody else did not become enlightened and still was a follower of the path.

The hinayana begins with taming the mind. Taming the mind is very straightforward: you just related with things as they are. You don’t try to stock up. You don’t collect more weapons in case you might need to defend yourself, or more food so that if you run out, you would have something to live on. You are not making sure that if you are kicked out of one organization, you have another organization to join. Trying to stock up and to make sure that there is some kind of security is the opposite of taming: it is aggression.

In sitting practice, you experience the mind, the body, and the breath working together. Anything except the breath itself, the body itself, and the awareness of the body and breath has to be somewhat excluded as extra paraphernalia. One has to regard anything else that comes up during meditation as simply concepts. Taming the mind is at the heart of the hinayana practice of discipline. Taming the mind is the definition of dharma; there is no other dharma than taming one’s mind. so the questions is, what is meant by mind?

The Four Mental Obstacles: Stupidity, Mindlessness, Emotional Upheavals, Lack of Faith

Shamatha practice, the development of peace. In shamatha, you witness your stupidity, your unawareness, your emotional upheavals, and your faithlessness. By doing so, you are taming your mind.

18 CUTTING THE ROOT OF SAMSARA:

The minute you wake up in the morning, when you have to struggle to swallow a big piece of meat, or when you have a gigantic sneeze—there are always occasions when a gap occurs in your mind and you think, “What’s next?” Those are the occasions when you can plant something positive in your mind, when you can plant shamatha in your mind in the form of mindfulness-awareness.

Discipline is said to cool off the heat and neurosis and bring about the best behavior of body, speech, and mind. It is what delivers us to individual salvation. The logic of the Buddhist approach is to cut karma altogether at its root, and the way to do so is by means of mindfulness, discipline, and renunciation.

19 CONTINUALLY GNAWING ROCK:

Discipline is not based on feeling guilty or trying to avoid painful situations and cultivate pleasurable ones. It is a natural process that binds together body, speech, and mind. When your mind is together, your body and speech will also be together. You entire state of being will be in harmony, which makes a wholesome human being.

Twofold egolessness, the egolessness of self the egolessness of phenomena, as a process of simultaneous loss and gain. You develop detachment from outer, or “am,” and inner, or “I.” Freedom from attachment to outer and inner naturally begins to bring about a sense of desolation. You can’t be here and you can’t be there, so you feel desolate. When that occurs, there is a feeling of perfect unity. There is a complete world that does not feed you and does not starve or reject you.

It is impossible to develop discipline if you don’t have a taste of the nonexistence of both “I” and “that.” Discipline begins to evolve and develop because you are not trying to fight any enemy and you are not trying to conquer anything. You are here. For what? That’s it—for what. That is the question as well as the answer.

To have a meditation cushion is no “I”; to have a sitter on the cushion is no “am”; so sitting on a cushion is a no “I am” situation.

You cannot understand the real teachings of Hinayana completely if you have no full and proper understanding and experience of discipline.

In Buddhist terminology, body, speech, and mind are described as the “three gates.” They are known as the three gates because with body, speech, and mind, it is possible to enter into discipline.

Genuine commitment arises out of taking delight in practice.

20 BECOMING A DHARMIC PERSON:

You can automatically recognize somebody who is tamed by the dharma. He or she is a different kind of person from those who are not tamed. Becoming a dharmic person means that in your everyday lift from morning to morning, around the clock, you are not trying to kid anybody.

The Seven Characteristics of a Dharmic Person: Passionlessness, Contentment, Fewer Activities, Good Conduct, Awareness of the Teacher, Propagating Prajna, Attitude of Goodness, Remembering to be Dharmic

Passionlessness: The first characteristic of a dharmic person is passionlessness. Passionlessness means that instead of trying to create an overly comfortable situation for yourself, you reduce that desire. You are always looking for ways to solve your boredom—your boredom problem. In contrast, passionlessness means experiencing boredom properly and fully. With passion, you always need some kind of sustaining power, whereas with passionlessness, you are able to maintain yourself.

Contentment: The second characteristic of dharmic person is contentment. You don’t have to expand yourself; instead, you are contained in your own existence.

Fewer Activites: The third characteristic of a dharmic person is not engaging in too many activities. You are reducing unnecessary activities, reducing nonfunctional talking and entertainment mentality. When you are too chummy with your world, it becomes endless.

Good Conduct: The fourth characteristic of dharmic person is good conduct. Good conduct is based on mindfulness and awareness in which you see whatever you are doing as an extension of your sitting practice. Awareness is not self-consciousness; it is simply looking at what you are doing. When you reflect that sense of constant sunrise, when you are always awake and aware of what you are doing, that is good conduct.

Awareness of the Teacher: The fifth characteristic of a dharmic person is awareness of the teacher.

Propagating Prajna: The sixth characteristic of a dharmic person is propagating prajna, or intellect. You should find out what your mind is made out of, what your mind’s projections are made out of, and what your relationship with your world is made out of. In doing so, the abhidharma teachings on Buddhist psychology will be very helpful.

Attitude of Goodness: The seventh and last characteristic of a dharmic person is an attitude of goodness, which comes from studying the dharma.

Remembering to Be Dharmic: To the seven characteristics of a dharmic person we could add an extra step: remembering to do all of these!

21 REFRAINING FROM HARM:

It is good to take the precepts. The practice of taking the five precepts is not just a liturgy or purely ceremonial. You should pay heed to what you are doing. This is definitely the starting point of hinayana, and you should do it properly. You could become sane, spread the dharma, and work for others.

The discipline of pratimoksha, or individual salvation, actually enters your system or your state of existence when you take the five precepts, or pancha-shila.

The Five Precepts: Refraining from Killing, Refraining from Stealing, Refraining from Lying, Refraining from Sexual Misconduct, Refraining from Intoxicants

In the hinayana, in order for a precept to be considered broken, the intention, the application, and the fruition of that intention and application all have to be fulfilled. For instance, in order to break the precept of not taking life, you have to scheme in such an away that you actually manage to kill something. Only at that point is your vow broken. In order to break the precept of not stealing, you have to take control of the whole team. To break the rule of not lying, somebody actually has to believe you. You have to convince them that what you have told them sounds feasible or more than feasible. To break the precept of not indulging in sexuality, you have to actually engage in some form of sexual intercourse, and to break the precept of not using alcoholic beverages, you have to actually get drunk.

PART THREE MEDITATION / SAMADHI

22: SIMPLICITY:

Shamatha is both simple and workable. We are just not retelling myths about what somebody did in the past. Just being here without perceptions is possible. In fact, it is much simpler than having all kinds of adornments and paraphernalia. Mindfulness practice is not particularly religious; it is not even a practice. It is a natural behavior that one beings to develop in a very simple manner.

Shamatha practice is designed for the mendicant and for the simple life. Vipashyana is the basis for scholarly learning and the communication of knowledge.

The world may seem complicated, but it could not be complicated unless it had a pattern, and that pattern is simplicity.

Shamatha does not make metaphysical or philosophical demands on our intelligence; it is just being here in the present.

Shamatha practice is based on the three principles of body, speech and mind.

Body is the most obvious and direct. It is related to the hell realm and anger. In the hell realm, physically you experience hot and cold temperatures, and psychologically you feel separateness between you and the other.

Speech is related to the hungry ghost realm and desire. Speech is like a wind that communicates between the phenomenal world and yourself. In the hungry ghost realm, speech is connected with hunger and the emotion of wanting something. It is related with ego’s need for entertainment and continual occupation.

Mind is related to the animal realm and discursive thoughts. In the animal realm, mind is chattering and discursive. This realm is marked by stupidity: the mind is not open and you are in the dark. The three lower realms are bound by their own neuroses, and by our not wanting to relate with them but instead to get away.

23 FOLLOWING THE EXAMPLE OF THE BUDDHA:

The sitting practice of mindfulness is regarded as one of the most profounds and fundamental disciplines you could ever achieve. By doing this practice, you find that you become less crazy. You begin to develop more humor, more relaxation and ultimately, more mindfulness.

In order to experience, you have to tame your mind.

Three aspects of sitting practice: The purpose of meditation is to teach you how to be. It has three aspects: posture, technique, and joy.

Posture organizes your being and makes you a true human being with good head and shoulders.

The second aspect of sitting practice is technique. Basically speaking, the technique is to be spacious and not wait for anything.

The third aspect of sitting is joy, or appreciation. Sitting practice is joyful, but not in the usual sense. It is hard joy, tough joy, but you will achieve something in the end. Joy is connected with hard work and exertion: you appreciate working hard and you are not trying to escape from pain.

On the whole, the practice of meditation is about being here precisely, with joy and humor.

Basically, motivation is the willingness to give in. It is the willingness to be open and work hard.

We are crazy. Everybody is crazy, I’m sorry to say. Even the psychologists are crazy! We are all crazy, including the animals, worms and fleas. We are crazy and we have created this crazy world, which we think is fabulous and terrific. Nonetheless, we are all crazy. How do we get out of that? Purely by sitting. You could try it right now. You could hold up your posture this very moment! You could imitate Buddha.

Mindfulness practice depends on your cheerfulness. You should not regard yourself as being punished for your crazy outlook, or feel that you have to cleanse yourself. You do not have to regard sitting practice as a punishment, like going to church and sitting on a hard bench to purify your sins you have committed. It is not like going to confession and saying, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.” Instead, the idea of mindfulness and sitting practice is joyfulness. If you regard sitting practice as a joyful experience, even the pains in your back and in your legs diminish.

If you regard spiritual discipline as a punishment for having done something bad, you are in trouble. You are still in the theistic framework. The more you suppress, the more reactions you get; therefore, you become less controllable. The more relaxation and humor there is, the more you begin to understand.

Once you are fully here, with mindfulness and awareness, it is known as holding buddha in the palm of your hand. Buddha is right here.

There is no way one can attain freedom without sitting practice. To work with egolessness, we need training in letting go of our ground. There is no need for the rug to be pulled out from under our feet. Meditation is the only way to do that.

When you sit, you sit; when you do not sit, you do not sit. You may be doing activities around the environment of sitting, but that is not sitting. We cannot say that when you do not sit, you are still sitting, because you are not sitting. Even though what you are doing may be compassionate activity for a good cause, even though you may be working to bring the buddhadharma to the West, we still would not regard you as a good sitter. We could regard you as a a good missionary or a good householder. But when you do not sit, you do not sit.

We need to recognize, realize, and manifest our ego problems properly, fully, and thoroughly; without sitting, we have no way of doing that.

Meditation practice has to be considered the highlight of all your activities, the most important and best thing you do.

It is a grim picture. Sitting practice is not always going to be smooth, pleasant, comfy, and nice—it is also going to be very painful.

24 THE BASIC MINIMUM:

In sitting meditation, you are dealing with body, speech and mind simultaneously. You are developing a sense of precision and accuracy. There is no room, none whatsoever, for imagination or improvisation.

In meditation practice, discipline is not how many hours you sit; it is your total involvement in the practice. In shamatha, body, speech, and mind are completely and totally involved in the sitting practice. In vipashayana, there is also total involvement of body, speech, and mind; in addition, you are also completely aware of the environment around you. When you are involved so much that there is no longer an individual entity left to watch itself, that is the shunyata, or “emptiness,” level of practice. Shunyata, or emptiness, is a central realization of Mahayana Buddhism in particular. It is also sometimes described as complete openness, and is considered to be devoid of any limitation or falsity.

Chitta means “mind,” or “heart.”

We are perpetually being turned off and turned on by this particular thing called mind. We are stuck with this mind, like having chewing gum stuck on our fingers, and the way we are going to free ourselves, or free “it,” is with dharma. It is the dharma that is going to liberate us. Therefore, we are practicing meditation.

Why will meditation free us, and how is it going to work? It works by picking up our end of the stick. Rather than by tackling mind as an enemy or a friend, you work gently, using the system developed by the Buddha, which is to let go and to tighten up. You loosen, or let go, by means of the out-breath; you tighten up, or concentrate, by using the body. Working with posture is the means to release the tension and frustration that exist in the mind. Straightening your posture will satisfy it, just like giving milk to a crying baby, or opening the doors and windows in a stuffy room. By using those two techniques of loosening and tightening, you will be able to free the mind.

The approach of my lineage, the Kagyu lineage of Buddhism, is surprisingly close to the Theravada school of Buddhism and to the Soto Zen tradition of Japan. The Zen tradition practice Hinayana Buddhism in the light of Mahayana inspiration; in Tibetan Buddhism, we practice Hinayana discipline in the light of vajrayana.

You breath out, dissolve, and—gap. By creating a gap area, there is less strain. Once you breath out, you are sure to breath in, so there’s room for relief. It is a question of openness. Out-breathing is an expression of stepping out of your system. It has nothing to do with centralizing in your body. Usually everything is bottled up, but here you are sharing, you are giving something out. All that is associated with the out-breath.

The out-breathing is an expression of being. In-breathing is a confirmation of being, because we need oxygen to live. Psychologically, however, it helps to put less emphasis on the thinness, and more on the ongoing process of going out. Also, strangely enough, you find that the attention on physical being, the awareness of body, becomes more precise if you begin to feel that sense of going out. Relating with yourself in terms of going out is automatic confirmation that you are breathing without any difficulties.

25 TAKING YOUR SEAT:

The meditation posture is quite universal. It is not particularly Buddhist. You can see this posture, this royal pose, in Egyptian sculptures and in South American pottery. It is not mystical or magical. The idea is to be a complete human being. In order to imitate the Buddha, you start with posture.

Having an upright back is natural to the human body; slouching is unnatural. Slouching is giving in to neurosis, which we call “setting sun.” By sitting upright, you are proclaiming to yourself and to the rest of the world that you are going to become buddha, or awake, one day.

26 BREATHING OUT:

In meditation practice, the body becomes insignificant, and space and breathing become more important. In fact, the breath is the most important part of the practice. Thoughts come up with the sense of body, the sense of “me” being here. However, if there is no central authority, if your practice is purely activity in space, thoughts become transparent.

Boredom is important because boredom is anti-credential, anti-entertainment—and as we develop greater psychological sophistication, we begin to appreciate such boredom. It becomes cool and refreshing, like a mountain river. That very real and genuine boredom, or “cool boredom,” plays an extremely important role. In fact, we could quite simply say that the barometer of our accomplishment in meditation practice is how much boredom we create for ourselves. Cool boredom is rather light boredom: it has its uneasy quality, but at the same time it is not a big deal. Cool boredom is simply another expression of the experience of well-being. Cool boredom is like what mountains experience. With cool boredom, thought processes become less entertaining—they become transparent.

27 LABELING THOUGHTS:

Don’t regard yourself as good or bad. You are just you, thinking and coming back to the breath. You are not trying to push thoughts away, nor are you trying to cultivate them. You are just labeling them “thinking.” No matter what thought comes up, don’t panic; just label it “thinking”—stop—and come back to your breath.

In meditation practice, you regard everything that takes place in your mind—every little detail, every little explosion—as thinking. You are not trying to separate thoughts from emotions.

A large range of thinking goes on, but in terms of sitting practice, it does not matter whether you have monstrous thoughts or benevolent thoughts, sinful or virtuous thoughts—any thought is just thinking. So please don’t be shocked by your thoughts, and don’t think that any thought deserves a gold medal.

We have to accept that all experiences are just thought patterns. Buddha said that when a musician plays a stringed instrument, both the strings and his fingers are his mind. Once you realize that everything is thought process, you can handle your life because nothing is complicated. Everything is thought.

As far was the Hinayana is concerned, no Mahayana exists. Everything is Hinayana, the narrow path. In shamatha practice, you regard everything as thought. When you sit, you should think, “There are no non thoughts.” Even techniques are thoughts. That is straight shamatha, without soda and ice.

28 TOUCH AND GO:

Touch is the sense of existence, that you are who you are. You have a certain name and you feel a certain way when you sit on the cushion. You feel that you actually exist….That is the touch part. The go part is that you do not hang on to that. You do not sustain your sense of being, but you let go of it.

As an individual person, you relate with what is happening around you. We could use the phrase “touch and go.” You touch or contact the experience of actually being there, then you let go.

The approach of touch and go is not so much trying to experience, but trying to be. Experience is not particularly important. Experience always comes up as along as you touch. But you don’t hang on to your experience; you let it go. You intentionally disown it. If we cling to experience constantly and don’t let go, we are going to be gigantic, enormous. If we bottle up everything within ourselves, we cannot even move! We cannot play with life anymore because we are so fat.

29 ENCOUNTERING PROBLEMS:

By meditating, you are doing something very honest, something that was done in the past by the Buddha himself. You could do it very literally, absolutely literally. There are no tricks and no magic. Everything can be very smooth, simple and ordinary. You are just being. It is like floating in the Dead Sea.

If you close your eyes when you sit, it becomes like switching on to meditation when you shut your eyes, then switching it off when you open them again. There is too much contrast between meditating and not meditating, which is not particularly recommended.

If you feel very high or heady, that is often the result of too much body orientation. You should relate with any trancelike state as another thinking process, just a thought. Then it is just another sensation, no big deal.

Meditation has to be simple, otherwise we are creating another world. When we do so, we then need to create something else to resolve that other world, so we are perpetuating a huge snowball. Why can’t we handle the world very simply, as human beings sitting down and meditating, breathing and trying to pass the time?

If you are trying to understand something, pushing doesn’t help.

30 LEADING A SPOTLESS LIFE:

The practice of meditation is not so much concerned with the hypothetical attainment of enlightenment, but with leading a good life. In order to learn how to lead a good life, a spotless life, you need continual awareness that relates with life constantly, directly, and very simply.

Walking meditation is a bridge between sitting and post meditation.

Mindfulness practice is not just about what is happening to you individually and personally—it is about how much you are going to transmit your sanity and your insanity to the rest of the world.

What I recommend is a sense of totality. Once you are involved with practice, that involvement begins to remind you. There is nothing particularly formal about it. Instead, it is as if you were haunted all the time—positively haunted. A total environment of practice is important. Once you experience that environment of totality, that environment echoes back on you.

There is always another shift of gear, a constant attempt to please, the pathetic gesture of trying to cheer oneself up each moment. It is like climbing a staircase: when you come down the staircase, you have to climb back up, then you come back down again and climb back up and come back down. In this approach, you never face life. Not only is it pathetic, it drives people mad.

The practice of meditation is not so much concerned with the hypothetical attainment of enlightenment, but with leading a good life. In order to learn how to lead a good life, a spotless life, you need continual awareness that relates with life constantly, directly, and very simply. You do not have to be so poverty-stricken about your life. You don’t have to try to get a little chip of chocolate from your life. If you try to hold on to that little chip of pleasure, all the rest will be sour. However, if you understand the meaning of pleasure as a totality, you see that such an approach is punishment, an unnecessary trick you play on yourself. With a view of totality, sitting meditation, postmeditation practice, and studying are a blanket approach, a gigantic pancake stretched over your life. If your body is hot and you dip your finger in ice water, it feels so good and so painful at the same time.

Without postmeditation experience, your practice is like beads without a thread: if there is no thread, you can’t wear the beads on your neck. It is like a picture without a nail: you cannot hang a picture on the wall without a nail. It is like taking a bath without soap. It is like wearing shoes without tying your shoelaces. Sitting meditation without post meditation discipline is like the sun without its brilliance. It is like a kind without a court. Postmeditation is an integral part of meditation practice. That is why we do walking meditation; that is why we practice mindful eating; that is why we sit on a toilet; that is why we comb our hair; that is why we smile with our teeth. Postmeditation practice is regarded as absolutely important, particularly when we are in the midst of our own so-called world.

31 RESTING IN SHAMATHA:

Shamatha discipline is the best way for you to work with your mind so that your mind and your body can be properly coordinated, and you can eventually attain enlightenment. The idea is the greatest idea ever thought of, thanks to Lord Buddha. He did it himself. We could thank the Buddha, our teachers, our lineage, and everybody who has done that. They all achieved enlightenment, and personally, I feel there is no problem—we could do it too!

When we are too tight, we are so enthusiastic that we apply the discipline too vigorously and burn ourselves out. When we are too loose, we couldn’t care less about trying, and we avoid the whole issue. These are the two main problems that people face in sitting practice.

If you don’t have a good relationship with yourself, you cannot understand the dharma, and your body and mind will not be properly coordinated.

There are three techniques for thoroughly pacifying yourself. Whenever the heat of aggression comes up, you put more emphasis on the outgoing breath, on the simplicity and windy, airy quality of your breath. Whenever you are distracted by passion or lust, you put more emphasis on the solidity of your posture, on your head and shoulders. Whenever you feel the drowsiness and dullness of stupidity or ignorance, you try to bring together the feeling of the space of the hall you are sitting in, your companions around you, your breath, and your head and shoulders. You broaden things out.

32 IDENTIFYING OBSTACLES TO SHAMATHA:

The six obstacles to shamatha are all temporary, like clouds covering the sun: they can be removed to let your basic goodness shine through….You commit yourself to the dharma because you feel that you have something basically good within you. So dharma is available to everyone. It is reasonable, workable, and true. It does you good, and it makes you feel wholesome.

There are six main obstacle to shamatha practice: Laziness, Forgetfulness, Drowsiness and Depression, Wildness and Craziness, Carelessness, Lack of Coordination

Laziness—The first obstacle to shamatha is laziness. In terms of shamatha practice, laziness is a feeling of heaviness in which you have no appreciation of your existence. It is not seen as rebelliousness or a lack of speed. Instead, it is that you have no appreciation of being a human being on this earth who is able to listen to the teachings and to practice. In contrast to such laziness, exertion has a quality of enthusiasm or joy. With exertion, you do not see meditation as a struggle, an ordeal, or an endurance test, and you don’t see it as a competition. Instead, your meditation cushion is seen as an invitation, and shamatha practice is regarded as a way to wake yourself up.

Forgetfulnness—Laziness is the difficulty in getting to your meditation cushion, whereas forgetfulness happens once you are already sitting on your cushion. Forgetfulness means feasting your mind on discursive thoughts, day dreams and fantasies…

Drowsiness and Depression—The third obstacle to shamatha is connected with the three lower realms: the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, and the animal realm. The lower realms are accompanied by the physical sensation of drowsiness.

Wildness and Craziness—The fourth obstacle to shamatha is wildness and craziness. Your fantasies become absolutely too much, and you develop elaborate schemes. There are three types of wildness: lust, aggression and regret.

Carelessness—The fifth obstacle to shamatha is carelessness. You know what should be overcome and what should be cultivated, and you have had some experience of that, but you couldn’t be bothered.

Lack of Coordination—The sixth obstacle to shamatha is lack of coordination. As you practice sitting meditation, you become so tender, so soft, so vulnerable that you are willing to give in to any distraction.

33 ANTIDOTES TO THE OBSTACLES TO SHAMATHA:

You should always bring yourself back to awareness and to mindfulness with the attitude that you are workable. However crazy you may be, you are still workable. In applying the antidotes, you cane experience cheerfulness, because you are not stuck with your own little stuff, but you can be reshaped. You are not giving up on your mimd, but reshaping it.

The obstacles to shamatha practice have eight antidotes. These antidotes are based on coordinating mind and body on developing a cheerful attitude. Developing a cheerful attitude means appreciating the dharma. It means that the atmosphere of the dharma has entered into your whole being. You feel fundamentally worthy and fortunate.

The first obstacle, laziness, has four antidotes: faith, respect, effort and shinjang.

Faith. Faith is based on rightness and healthiness. You feel that the dharma fits, that it works, that it is the right thing for you to do. Faith mens that you have real trust in the dharma and forward vision.

Respect. With respect, you see that everything is sacred. When you are a dharmic person, the very cushion you sit on is sacred, every breath you take is sacred. The definition of sacredness is that your actions are not based on trying to embellish your own ego. Instead, you are willing to let go of your ego. You develop meekness. You have given up “mine,” “my territory,” “my world,” “my privacy.” Therefore, you experience sacredness and you are surrounded by gentleness.

Effort. You cannot just bliss out on faith and sacredness; you have to go beyond that, you have to exert yourself. You cannot just plop down and expect something to happen. Effort is necessary with any discipline. Any discipline of freedom that has ever been presented to human beings requires that you expose yourself to discomfort. It takes effort to appreciate the dharma. The dharma actually mocks your ego. In fact, according to the dharma, you have to do something quite painful: you have to let go of the fundamental hang-up called ego.

Shinjang. The fourth antidote to laziness is shinjang. Shin means “thoroughly,” and jang means “processed,” or “purified”; so shinjang means “thoroughly processed,” or “supple.” In this case, shinjang means experiencing virtue, the absence of ego, and the feeling of freedom that goes along with that. Such virtue frees you from a depressed state of mind, from the depression of the lower realms. With shinjang, you know how to ride your own mind. At first, you learn how to tame your mind. Then, having tamed your mind, you learn how to make friends with it. Having made friends with it, you learn how to make use of it. That is what is meant by riding your mind.

The antidote to the second obstacle, forgetfulness, is developing a folksy attitude toward your mind and your practice.

Developing a Folksy Attitude. When you have put toothpaste on your toothbrush, you don’t forget what you do next; you automatically brush your teeth. You naturally develop such folksy and ordinary behavior patterns. Whether you are sitting on your cushion or talking with someone afterward, you naturally and automatically maintain mindfulness. Mindfulness has become a natural process, almost a habitual pattern. Dharma is sometimes referred to as the most sacred thing of all. But if you make too much of it and put it on a pedestal, it becomes unworkable. The dharma is ourselves and we are dharma. That is what is meant by taking a folksy attitude. It is very direct.

Drowsiness and wildness, the third and fourth obstacles, have a mutual antidote: a light-handed warning system.

Light-Handed Warning System. This warning system is similar to a fire alarm, but it is warning you of your drowsiness of your wildness. That alertness or warning system comes up naturally, whenever you recognize that you are drowsy or wild. Therefore, when those obstacles occur, they are no longer regarded as obstacles, but as reminders of their opposites. You are not a victim of those obstacles; instead, whenever they occur, you are automatically warned and reminded of them right away. This early-warning system is based on wakefulness and cheerfulness, which come automatically from good posture on your meditation cushion.

Obstacle number five, carelessness, is connected with both wildness and drowsiness. The antidote for carelessness is bringing yourself back into mindfulness.

The antidote to obstacle number six, lack of coordination, is equilibrium. Coordination comes from proper discipline. It is often said that discipline is like tuning the strings on an instrument: if you tune the strings too tightly, they break; if you tune the strings too loosely, nothing happens. That is, if you push yourself too hard, it doesn’t work; and if you are too loose, there is no discipline at all. So proper tuning, or proper discipline, has balance or equilibrium.

Working with the Antidotes. Altogether there are eight antidotes to the six obstacles to shamatha, and they are all applicable to you today. There is no myth about them, no philosophy, no guesswork. The practice of applying these untidiest has been done for centuries by many people, and it has worked. It has taken effect in the past and it is still very powerful today. Working with the antidotes is a way of getting into the dharma altogether. It is how you become a dharmic person. You begin to realize that your whole being can be steeped in dharma, that there are no longer any little corners left for you to be a non-dharmic person. You are ripe for dharma; dharma is possible, and you could actually experience a glimpse of it.

34 CUTTING THOUGHTS AND SHORT-CIRCUITING THE KLESHAS:

A sense of knowing, or seeing, always happens. If you are willing to acknowledge its existence, there is the potential of being wakeful, open, and precisely there constantly. This is not based on being a sharp person, a smart person, or a very careful person. Rather, it is about being a person who can actually be—by yourself, very simply.

The six kleshas: ignorance, aggression, passion, price, jealousy, and avarice. (The six kleshas are an expansion of the three poisons as depicted in the wheel of life in the form of a rooster, a snake, and a pig, symbolizing passion, aggression, and ignorance.) Kleshas intensify your claustrophobia and pain. They are the density of your mind, which brings further denseness, like a sponge soaked in oil. They are blockage.

35 AN ELEMENT OF MAGIC:

Magic is the cause, and it is what we are creating in the simple practice of meditation. Through meditation we are putting that particular miracle into effect. So let us not regard meditation as a purely mechanical process that leads one to enlightenment. Instead, the essence of meditation is tuning oneself into higher truth or magic.

36 TRANSCENDING DUALISTIC MIND:

This world is mind’s world, the product of mind. Although you may already know that, you might remind yourself. It is important to realize that meditation is not so exclusive, not something other than this world. In meditation, you are dealing with the very mind that built your glasses and put your specific lenses in the rims.

The Tibetan word for mind is sem, which means “that which can associate with other.”

There are several definitions of mind in Tibetan terminology. Mind has been described as sem, as rikpa, and as yi. However, this does not mean that there are three types of mind, but that one mind has three aspects. There are numerous other aspects of mind, but these three principles are the most important to be aware of, because you are going to deal with them as you practice.

Sem is the equivalent of mind as we generally think about mind. However, instead of using the word mind as a noun, we could use it as a verb, as in “minding.” Minding is an active process. In other words, you can’t have mind without an object of mind; they work together. Mind only functions with a relative reference point.

Rikpa literally means “intelligence,” or “brightness.” If somebody has rikpa, or what we call rikpa trungpo, that means he or she has a clever and sharp mind. Rikpa is kind of a sidekick that develops from the basic mind, or sem. Rikpa is the ability to see how things work, how things function. It is judgment.

The third aspect of mind is called yi. Traditionally yi is known as the sixth consciousness, or mental consciousness. The five sense consciousness are sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch, and the sixth is mind, or yi. Yi is mental sensitivity, and is largely connected with the heart. It is a kind of balancing force, acting as a switchboard for the other five senses. Yi is not as intelligent at manipulation as sem. In relationship with the world, sem is more political, whereas yi is more domestic. In relationship with the world, sem is more political, whereas yi is more domestic. Yi is just trying to coordinate this and that, is that information filters through constantly and you have no problem of miscommunication. One’s basic intelligence is based on sem. Sem maintains the reference point of split between subject and object, while at the same time trying to hold them together.

37 REDISCOVERING YOUR OWN MIND:

Through meditation, you begin to understand the eight consciousnesses and to know their functions inside out and outside in. You begin to understand the five skandhas as well….Relating intelligently with the technique of meditation does not have to be a project of sticking out your neck and looking beyond what you are. You are not trying to avoid or to transcend anything.

In the traditional way of counting, first you have the six types of sense consciousness (which includes yi, or mind consciousness); the seventh, or nyon-yi, is the subconscious; and the eight or alaya-vijnana, is the unconscious. The eight consciousnesses are usually said to be components of the fifth skandha, or consciousness, but are present as potentials within the first skandha, or form.

You can practice the dharma by making use of the eight types of consciousness as vehicle, ground, food, shelter, inspiration, and information.

38 MIXING MIND WITH SPACE:

One of the problems meditators experience is that there is a slight, almost subconscious, guilty feeling that they ought to be doing something rather than just experiencing what goes on. When you begin to feel that you ought to be doing something, you automatically present millions of obstacles to yourself. Meditation is not a project; it is a way of being. You could experience that you are what you are. Fundamentally, sitting there and breathing is a very valid thing to do.

39 MINDFULNESS OF BODY:

In mindfulness of body, you are simply trying to remain as an ordinary human being. When you sit, you actually sit. Even your floating thoughts begin to sit on their own bottoms. At that point, there is no problem: you have a base, solidness, and a sense of being, all at the same time.

The four foundations are usually presented as “mindfulness of body,” “mindfulness of feeling,” “mindfulness of mind,” and “mindfulness of mental contents.” That presentation has a slightly philosophical orientation, but in this discussion of the four foundations the emphasis is on meditation practice. Therefore, I have translated the four foundations as “mindfulness of body,” “mindfulness of life,” “mindfulness of effort,” and “mindfulness of mind.” The first foundation includes the body and other solid things, so I have called it “mindfulness of body.” The second foundation is about relating with life as a whole, rather than simply with the skandha of feelings, so I have called it “mindfulness of life.” The third foundation is based on the idea of mental concentration, so I have called it “mindfulness of effort.” The fourth foundation is based on “mindfulness of mental contents,” and since the abhidharma definition of mind is “that which can perceive its own contents,” I have called this foundation “mindfulness of mind.”

The four foundations of mindfulness are not four different practices, but four stages of shamatha practice

In terms of samsara nobody is a beginner—everybody is a professional.

An ordinary person’s experience of the body, known as the psychosomatic body, is largely based on concepts or ideas of body, whereas an enlightened person’s attitude toward the body, known as body-body, is a simple, direct, and straightforward relationship with the earth.

It is your psychosomatic body sitting on the ground, because somehow sitting on the ground gives you ideas. You are doing the sitting down, but at the same time you are not doing it. Your mind is shaping itself in accordance with your body, so your mind is sitting on the ground, your mind is wearing a pair of glasses, your mind is having a certain hairdo, or wearing certain clothes. It is all mental activity. From that point of view, everybody is a self-portrait. That is known as the psychosomatic body. Since that psychosomatic body exists, activity takes place according to that body.

40 MINDFULNESS OF LIFE:

Well-being of body is like a majestically solid mountain with no mist and no rain. Well-being of speech is like a stringed instrument disengaged from the strings so that it no longer has any desire to communicate with the musician. Well-being of mind is like a Great Lake with no ripples, no waves and no wind. Well-being is simple, majestic, and uninterrupted.

In the second foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of life, you begin to appreciate the details of what goes on in your own body, speech, and mind, but you are not yet venturing into the world outside.

Whenever there is a fear of death, a love of life comes along with it.

Well-being is based on appreciating your own existence, rather than being conditioned by that or this.

In the second foundation of mindfulness, you relate with irritation as an expression of well-being. With physical sensations, such as an itch on your shoulder while you are meditating, the automatic reaction is to scratch and get it over with. But there is another approach. Instead of trying to get away from that particular itch, if you related with it, that itch could become an expression of well-being. In other words, if you feel irritated and tense, then feeling that irritation and tenseness by doing something to get rid of it does not help—not at all! Instead, you could relate with that irritation as expression of survival.

41 MINDFULNESS OF EFFORT:

With mindfulness of effort you are clearly on the path. Effort is like the wheel of a chariot, which connects the chariot and the road. It’s like an oar in a boat, which connects the boat to the water. Effort is the connection that makes things move forward and proceed. So mindfulness of effort—the sudden reminder or sudden jerk of mindfulness—is extremely important for the practice of meditation.

The third foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of effort. You might feel that mindfulness of effort is a contradiction of the well being of the second foundation, to the organic familiarity with meditation and the appreciation of sitting practice. However, although it might seem contradictory to develop effort and well-being at the same time, the effort of the third foundation of mindfulness is extraordinary.

Right effort is instant effort.

Meditation is a life’s work. You cease to sit and meditate in this life when the last breath runs out of your body, on your deathbed.

With mindfulness practice, if you add in a spiritual implication, you create a greater goal, which is a greater problem. So you should be simply mindful, purely mindful, with nothing further being implied.

If there is less effort to create effort, then effort becomes self-existing. Such effort stands on its own two feet rather than needing another effort to trigger it.

Effort means that you are not looking for entertainment, but you can entertain yourself through the very non-entertainment-inspiring quality of sitting meditation.

The problem with entertainment is not only that you are entertained, but that you become weakened, softened, unable to handle situations. One entertainment makes you addicted to the next entertainment, so you become unable to face whatever pain or suffering comes up. That is what is traditionally known as bad karmic creation. It is regarded as bad karma because it sows further karmic seeds, and it encourages further involvement with the samsaric world. You are not able to cut the root of samsara. Any practice without effort, any practice base don impatience, leads to the creation of further karmic imprisonment. So effort, particularly the effort of the third foundation of mindfulness, is extremely important.

42 MINDFULNESS OF MIND:

The transcendental watcher purely looks at the present situation. It does not speculate about the past or future, but purely looks at what is happening in this moment. That sort of heedfulness of what is happening at this very moment is the purpose of the fourth foundation of mindfulness.

The fourth foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of mind, is the self-conscious awareness of what is happening to us as we sit and meditate. This awareness brings up all kinds of choices and directions. Mindfulness is often referred to as watchfulness, watching what is happening, but that is misunderstanding. Mindfulness of being watchful, rather than watching. Mindfulness of mind has a quality of intelligence, rather than a purely mechanical process. It has both right-handedness and balance. It is like opening the windows and doors a little bit to allow in the freshness from outside.

Mindfulness of mind is not exactly a discipline; instead, it is the end result of mindfulness practice. Mindfulness of effort could be said to be the gardening that brings it about. So mindfulness of mind is the result of strict discipline. It is the result of forbearance, endurance, and continual practice, the result of not quitting because of irritation or physical and psychological discomfort. Mindfulness of mind is a result of constantly keeping up your practice. You continue to practice whether it is raining or snowing, hot or cold, whether you are depressed or excited, satisfied or frustrated, hungry or full. The meditator should be like a rock in the mountains: a rock is never tired of being a rock. It lives through the snows, the rains, and the four seasons. Unless you have that same kind of endurance, you cannot put into practice the techniques of mindfulness or develop ideal mindfulness.

In the case of mindfulness of mind, surrendering means being on the dot. You are even surrendering any notion of surrendering. There is nothing but just this—this existence. Such surrendering is completely unfabricated and genuine.

The term divines does not mean that a foreign agent is coming to help us, but that a super ordinary watcher supersedes the ordinary watcher.

Knowing intelligently what is happening is still not complete freedom from the point of view of Mahayana or vajrayana; nevertheless, it is the only way to develop the potential of prajna, or discriminating-awareness wisdom.

Just be aware of what you are doing. Just be there and then disown: touch and go. You don’t have to utilize that experience for something spiritual or metaphysical. You see it. That’s it. Disown it. Don’t cling to it. Just continue. Just look at yourself. Look! That is all the mind can accommodate at that time. We are not secularizing mindfulness by doing this; instead, we are creating sacredness out of the secular. Whatever you are doing does not have to be a religious act—but whatever you do is dignified.

Death and birth are taking place moment to moment. Let us work with that rather than work toward eternity.

A realization is something that stays with you as a result of having practiced meditation, whereas experiences are temporary. Real, solid realization is like a mountain, whereas experience is like a mist over the mountains.

Nyam…”a temporary flash of experience.”

There are five basic nyam. In addition to these five, there are three further, more fundamental categories of nyam, making eight altogether. All eight of these nyam are temporary as opposed to permanent. The first five nyam are experiences of temporary physical or psychophysical sensations, rather than more fundamental states of being, or states of mind.

Brook on a Steep Hill. Within the first set of nyam, the first nyam is the speed and movement in your mind, which is like a brook on a very steep hill. The first nyam is very busy, like water rushing down from the hills with no turbulence, none whatsoever, just like a pipe running from a gravity feed.

Turbulent River. In the second nyam, your relationship with your mind is like a turbulent river in a gorge between two rock valleys. This river has lots of rocks with waves hitting all kinds of big stones. The second nyam has an appreciation of its existence. The turbulent river hitting those rocks reemphasizes the wateriness of it, whereas the rushing brook is very speedy, very fast, but also quite nonchalant.

Slowly Flowing River. In the third nyam your mind is like a slowly flowing river. The thought processes that go on in your mind have become familiar and easy to live with. You are familiar with what’s happening with your practice, so there are no particular problems and no particular speediness. It is smooth, like a big river slowly flowing.

Ocean Without Waves. The fourth nyam is the experience of absolute stillness. It is an experience of meditative absorption, which is like an ocean without waves.

Candle Undisturbed by the Wind. The fifth nyam is somewhat extra. It is a reconfirmation of the accomplishment of the fourth. That is, the fifth nyam confirms that what you have experienced as stillness is real stillness, like a burning candle undisturbed by wind. If you look at these experiences from the ordinary point of view, you might think the fourth nyam is nicest, the third is nice, and the others are undesirable. But in actual fact, they are all temporary experiences, so all of them are the same. They are just experiences that occur in your state of mind, rather than one state of mind being higher or more spiritual than another. So there are no differences, none whatsoever, absolutely not! They are all just temporary experiences.

The second set of nyam is more fundamental, in a sense. These three nyam denote the progress you are making, although the experiences themselves are by no means permanent. You are still not arriving at, or achieving, a permanent state of realization. These temporary experiences are the landmarks, somewhat, of one’s growth, one’s spiritual path, and one’s meditation.

Bliss of Joy. The first of the three fundamental nyam is bliss, or joy. In Tibetan it is dewa. In the first fundamental nyam, the experience of bliss is romantic and flimsy. It has a flowing quality. The only solidity would be if you were self-perpetuating it and you began to feel that it was ongoing. In sitting practice, your experience is a tremendously pleasant one of radiating love and kindness to everyone. It feels extraordinarily rewarding to sit and practice, and you feel that you are worthy to be here. The first fundamental nyam includes all those extraordinary good and absolutely splendid feelings. However, the experience of bliss could be an obstacle if you regard it as permanent.

Luminosity. The second fundamental nyam is luminosity. The Tibetan term selwa means “luminosity,” “brilliant light,” or “clarity.” However, luminosity does not mean that you literally see a brilliant light; it means that you are able to work with a tremendous amount of energy. You are able to create a link between your body and mind, a link between the psyche and your physical existence. It is as if you were the mechanism to run the universe. You create the link between that and this. You feel very able, extraordinarily able, in the sense that you could order the universe.

Nonthought. The third fundamental nyam is called mitokpa, which means “nonthinking,” or “without thought.” This does not refer to a complete state of being without thoughts, but rather to a quality of stillness.

The fourth foundation of mindfulness is the measure of intelligence that covers all our meditative experiences, and keeps track so that we will not be led astray by such extraordinary experiences. The fourth foundation of mindfulness, or the transcendental watcher.

43 THE FRESHNESS OF UNCONDITIONAL MIND:

First there is shamatha to tighten up your practice, to make it definite and ordinary. Beyond that, you try to let go of any notion of inhibition…while still retaining the heart of the practice. The precision is carried over, but a sense of freedom is added on.

Vipashyana refers to the sense of precision that could arise from the sitting practice of meditation and slowly infiltrate our everyday life. There are two different schools of vipashyana: the analytical contemplative way, and the non analytical experiential way.

Taking shelter in shamatha is a perversion of shamatha discipline, so it is very important to convert the relaxation of shamatha meditation into the postmeditation activity of vipashyana.

Vipashyana awareness arises from several different conditions, but fundamentally it comes from being without aggression. The definition of dharma altogether is the absence of aggression. It is a way of dealing with aggression, and shamatha is the starting point. Shamatha brings clear thinking and slows you down, because the only thing you have to work on is your breathing. Because aggression or anger is based on speed and confusion, shamatha leads to the absence of aggression. So shamatha is the development of peace.

Ego is not a constantly smooth-running, highly secured situation at all—there are psychological gaps of all kinds. Those gaps allow disorder for the ego, and at the same time, allow the possibility of ego reasserting its position. In fact, a gap of non-ego goes on constantly, and within that we rebuild the ego again and again, from the first skandha up to the fifth skandha.

44 BEYOND PICKING AND CHOOSING:

Whatever you do is sacred action. By sacred action we do not mean magical or God-ridden, but shamatha-vipashyana-ridden. There is always room for precision and there are always vipashyana possibilities in whatever you do. Nothing is regarded as unsuitable. That approach is very helpful. So please pay attention to everything!

45 THE ART OF EVERYDAY LIVING:

In vipashyana, a kind of intimacy is happening with our daily habits so that as we go through the day, our life is a work of art. That is why I call vipashyana “art of everyday life.” In vipashyana, we are able to see the uniqueness of everyday experience every moment.

In the case of shamatha, we are developing an acute and precise mindfulness. Although we are just touching the verge of the breathing and there is a quality of freedom, there is still a feeling of duty and restriction. In contrast, vipashyana is based on appreciation. Nothing is hassling us or putting demands on us; instead, we simply tune in to the phenomenal world, both inwardly and outwardly.

In vipashyana, we are able to see the uniqueness of everyday experience every moment. That seeming repetitiveness becomes unique every day. In vipashyana, a kind of intimacy is happening with our daily habits so that as we go through the day, our life is a work of art.

The more you feel that an experience is important and serious, the more your attention to the development of vipashyana is going to be destroyed. Real vipashyana cannot develop if you chop your experience into categories or put it into pigeonholes.

That attitude of speed and aggression, your desire to be faster and quicker than others, goes against the natural pace of the cosmos. You are so uptight, upset, and angry at the world that you want to see summer in the middle of winter.

Being able to see the shadow of one’s watcher is based on being patient.

A bodhisattva, the most supreme, highest-society person you could ever imagine. The bodhisattva is known as the great host, the ship, the bridge, the highway, the mountain, the earth—all those images deal with interactions with people.

Genuine art cuts the speed and aggression of the ego.

46 GLIMPSES OF EMPTINESS:

Vipashyana experience and practice is absolutely necessary for a person who follows the Buddhist path and really wants to understand the dharma. Both intellectually and intuitively, vipashyana practice is necessary. You have to make an acquaintance with yourself. You have to meet yourself, to know who you are and what you are. Without vipashyana experience, you do not have any idea of who you are, what you are, how you are, or why you are, at all!

47 INVESTIGATING THE SUBTLETIES OF EXPERIENCE:

Our teachers have taught that is is necessary to conquer both undisciplined mind and individualistic mind. Undisciplined mind is conquered by shamatha practice; individualistic mind is conquered by vipashyana.

Vipashyana is the insight that brings you to realize things very clearly and fully. The greater reference point of vipashyana includes both the meditation and the postmeditation experience. With vipashyana, there is no gap of any kind between sitting and non sitting. Your entire life, twenty-four hours a day, is pure awareness.

With vipashyana, you are looking at dharmas directly and finding out how they arise, dwell, and disappear in your life and in your mind. That is why vipashyana is referred to simply as insight, or clear thinking. It is very clear thinking.

Even if they do not disappear, the first flash disappears, and you have the chance to see the second flash coming into your state of mind.

Vipashyana is based on dealing with the ego. Wandering mind, confusion, and the inability to discipline oneself—all of those factors derive from the fundamental principles of ego.

48 SHARPENING ONE’S PERCEPTION:

Vipashyana is the heart of the buddhadharma. It sets the general tone of the psychology of Buddhism. A Buddhist has clear thinking and an objective view of the world He or she is able to recognize and use relative logic. There is no chance that such a person will be swayed by fascinations or extremes. With vipashyana, everything becomes very precise and very direct.

49 SELF-PERPETUATING AWARENESS:

Vipashyana exists within us, and although we may not yet have experienced it, there is such a thing as complete awareness beyond the technique of simple breathing meditation and walking meditation. We might not expect that there could be a state that is completely clear and empty, spacious, without any problems. However, it is possible and we could experience it.

Fixed concepts, shapes, and colors arise, but they are like firewood. That firewood is an aspect of one’s intelligence, or discriminating awareness; and the fire is the discipline that burns the fabric of discriminating mind. That is, through the experience of vipashyana, apparent phenomena are seen as fuel. Such firewood should be burned so that there is no difference between the phenomenal world and its occupants—they are one. When the fuel of fixed concepts is burned up by the fire of disciplines, we have nothing to hang on to. When the firewood has burned up, the original fire and wood no longer exist. They have dissolved into open space, which is very real to us and very personal.

PART FOUR THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

50 THE SNOWBALLING OF DECEPTION:

Instead of just having our own anxiety, we produce a further state of anxiety in others. We generate their anxiety, and they also generate it themselves; and we end up with what is known as the “vicious cycle of samsara.” Everybody is constantly making everybody else feel bad. We have been participating in this tremendous project, this constant mishap, this terribly bad mistake, for a long time—and we are still doing it.

51 RECOGNIZING THE REALITY OF SUFFERING:

Seeing our pain as it is, is a tremendous help. Ordinarily, we are so wrapped up in it that we don’t even see it. We are swimming in oceans of ice water of anxiety, and we don’t even see that we are suffering. That is the most fundamental stupidity. Buddhists have realized that we are suffering, that anxiety is taking place…Because of that, we also begin to realize the possibility of salvation or deliverance from that particular pain and anxiety.

What we find is that the more into ourselves we are, the more we suffer, and the less into ourselves we are, the less we suffer.

Whenever we look for pleasure, it is always painful pleasure.

You are in samsara and you actually have to realize that.

The only way to work with this anxiety is by means of the sitting practice of meditation: it is by taming your mind, or shamatha practice. That is the basic idea of pratimoksha, or individual liberation: taming yourself.

52 DISSECTING THE EXPERIENCE OF SUFFERING:

The first noble truth, the truth of suffering, is the first real insight of the Hinayana practitioner. It is quite delightful that such a practitioner has the guts, bravery, and clarity to see pain in such a precise and subtle way. We can actually divide pain into sections and dissect it. We can see it as it is, which is quite victorious.

Suffering is regarded as the result of samara and the origin of suffering is regarded as the cause of samsara. The path is regarded as the cause of nirvana, and cessation of suffering is regarded as the result of nirvana.

In order for us to understand who we are and what we are doing with ourselves, it is absolutely necessary for us to realize how we torture ourselves.

In terms of the notion of self, we are not actually one individual entity per se, but just a collection of what are known as the five skandhas. Within this collection, each mental event that takes place is caused by a previous one; so if we have a thought, it was produced by a previous thought. Likewise, if we are in a particular location, we were forced to be there by a previous experience; and while we are there, we produce further mental events, which perpetuate our trip into the future. We try to produce continuity. That is what is known as karma, or volitional action; and from volitional action arises suffering.

Altogether we have eight kinds of suffering: birth, old age, sickness, and death, coming across what is not desirable, not being able to hold on to what is desirable, not getting what we want, and general misery.

Being unable to settle down in a situation is painful. You think you can settle down, but the minute you begin, you are exposed and given another birth.

As we get older, we are not getting the entertainment we used to get out of things.

The pain of old age refers to that general experience of decay.

Death is a question of leaving everything that you want, everything you so preciously possessed and hung on to—including the dharma, quite possibly.

We cannot experience just one thing, without having some contrast to it. That is the highest experience of spirituality: there is a little bit of sweet and sour always. All-pervasive suffering is connected with constant movement: flickering thoughts, latching onto one situation after another, or constantly changing subjects.

Suffering can also be described in terms of the three patterns: the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and all-pervasive suffering.

All-pervasive suffering is the equivalent of the eighth type of suffering, or general misery. Our condition is basically wretched because of the burden of the five skandhas, which perpetuate our neuroses and our habitual thought-patterns. Because to that, we begin to find that, on the whole, we have never experienced any real happiness. There is one particular point that I would like to make: there is no such thing as real happiness. It’s a myth. In the way we go about it, there is no such thing as real happiness at all. We’ve been striving so hard for it, trying all the time to cultivate so much goodness, so many pleasures—but we started at the wrong end of the stick from the very beginning. Something went wrong as we began ourselves. We are trying to entertain ourselves in the wrong way—by having an ego, by having fixation. But we can’t go get any pleasure out of fixation; and after that, the whole thing goes dow the drain. However, we could start a the right end of the stick, without fixation, without clinging—that is always possible. That is what is called the second half of the four noble truths: the truth of the cessation of suffering and the truth of the path.

By the way, the first noble truth is not quite the same as the theistic concept of the original sin. You have not failed, and you are not being punished or thrown in jail. You just started at the wrong end of the stick. Therefore, what you experience is a general sense of pain, the source of which you cannot find. If you could find out where it came from, you could probably solve it, but you haven’t been able to do so. In contrast, the right end of the stick is to start properly, with lots of discipline. By becoming more sensitive to all-pervasive suffering, you have the chance to overcome it.

53 THE POWER OF FLICKERING THOUGHTS:

Everything starts on a minute scale at the beginning and the expands. Things begin to swell and expand until they become very large—immeasurably large, in a lot of cases. We can experience that ourselves. Such minute shifts of attention are what create the emotions of aggression, passion, ignorance, and all the rest. Although those emotions are seemingly very heavy-handed, large-scale, and crude, they have their origin in the subtle twists that take place in our mind constantly.

Understanding suffering is very important. The practice of meditation is not designed to develop pleasure, but to understand the truth of suffering; and in order to understand the truth of suffering, one also has to understand the truth of awareness. When true awareness takes place, suffering does not exist. Through awareness, suffering is somewhat changed in its perspective. It is not necessarily that you do not suffer, but the haunting quality that fundamentally you are in trouble is removed. It is like removing a splinter: it might hurt, and you might still feel pain, but the basic cause of that pain, the ego, has been removed.

54 THE DEVELOPMENT OF SET PATTERNS:

One way to deal with suffering is to understand its mechanics, how it develops and functions. However, we are not just presenting successive lists of problems and letting it go at that, without going on to discuss the cure for such problems. At the same time, if we began by immediately discussing the cure, it would not particularly help. First, you have to slow down and take the time to understand how suffering originates. There is no other cure for suffering at this point, except to understand its makeup and psychology.

Suffering can also come from using your awareness discipline as a means of securing yourself by developing set patterns in life.

There are seven ego-oriented patterns that arise from both attitudes and actions, and lead to suffering: regarding the five skandhas as belonging to oneself; protecting oneself from impermanence; believing that one’s view is best; believing in the extremes of nihilism and externalism; passion; aggression; and ignorance.

Protecting Oneself from Impermanence. Although you know that your body cannot last forever, you hope to at least make your spirit last forever by seeking a spiritual master and asking to be saved.

Believing That One’s View Is the Best. Spiritually materialistic approach to holiness.

Believing in the Extremes of Nihilism and Eternalism. The extreme of nihilism comes from the philosophical belief that if you don’t believe in anything at all, you are free from everything. It is connected with the shunyata experience of no form, no speech, no emotions, and so forth. Every experience is completely philosophized. That nihilistic philosophy is reinforced by saving that you should appreciate everything as an expression of emptiness. In the extreme of externalism, you think that everything is everlasting and secure. However, instead of just thinking everything is going to be okay, you feel that you have to make a connection with what is happening around you. You feel that you have to be one with the earth and the trees, one with nature, which is eternal. Purely enjoying something, appreciating it, and saying nothing is a problem, doesn’t help—you have to get into the details and make it more personal. You have to eat the right food, do the right kind of exercises, wear the right kind of clothes. You have to get into the right kind of yin-and-yang rhythm. You believe in a norm or law that governs our life, and the idea is that you should connect with that, be on the right side of the cosmos, so that you do not have any problems or hassles. Once you begin to believe in one of those two extremes, you feel that you do not need to sit and meditate; instead, meditation comes to you.

Passion, Aggression, and Ignorance. The problem of passion comes from its not being pure and complete passion, which would be straightforward and true. The passion or lust we experience in the realm ego is quite the opposite. There is a touch of hatred in it, which brings wantingness, grasping, and possessiveness.

There is no other cure for suffering at this point, except to understand its makeup and psychology.

55 PERPETUALLY RE-CREATING SUFFERING:

Our habitual pattern is that whenever we encounter anything undesirable and unappealing, we try little ways within ourselves to avoid it. We could watch ourselves doing that. The little things we do, the little areas in which we try to entertain ourselves—that process which takes place all the time—is both the product of suffering and the producer of suffering. It is the origin that perceptually re-creates suffering, as well as what we are constantly going through as the result of suffering.

The origin of suffering, kunjung, is based on the belief in eternity.

There are two types of kunjung: the kunjung of kleshas and the kunjung of karma. The kleshas are one’s state of being, one’s state of mind. Kleshas such as passion, aggression, arrogance, and ignorance are all internal situations; they are purely mental events. The kunjung of karma is acting upon others as a result of such kleshas. The kunjung of kleshas could be said to be an embryonic expression of the kunjung of karma.

The unmeritorious karma arising from fundamental aggression is composed of what are known as the ten evil acts, which are divided into three sections: body, speech, and mind.

Unmeritorious Karma Connected with the Body. The first three acts, which are related to the body, are taking life, stealing, and sexual misconduct.

Unmeritorious Karma Connected with Speech. The next four of the ten evil acts are connected with speech. Number four is telling lies. Lying with the intention to promote your own prosperity or your own security.

Number five is intrigue, which is based on trying to divide. When you find that the world is too solid, that it has developed a united front against you, you try to break it down by intrigue. You make somebody your friend and somebody else your enemy. You try to win by drawing some people to yourself and putting off others.

Number six is negative words. You hope that your words will give you power over others.

Number seven is gossip, for that matter, anything other than functional talk. You gossip great exertion and discipline. You would like to break their discipline and bring them down to your level.

Unmeritorious Karma Connected with the Mind. The last three of the ten evil act are connected with mind. Number eight is envy, which is connected with wishful thinking and poverty mentality.

Number nine is deliberately hoping to create harm, or having bad feelings about somebody.

The last of the ten evil acts is disbelieving in truth, or disbelieving in sacredness.

Next we have the ten meritorious deeds of karma. Although they are meritorious, nevertheless you should still regard all of them as producing further suffering, further karma. Whether you act virtuously or whether you act in a degraded manner, you are still producing pain and suffering. This continues until you realize the alternative, until you grab the other end of the stick. The ten meritorious deeds are very simple: they are the reverse of the ten evil acts. Instead of taking life, you develop respect for life. Instead of stealing, you practice generosity. In your sexual conduct, you practice sexual wholesomeness and friendship. Instead of telling lies, you practice truthfulness and develop wholesome speech. Instead of intrigue, you practice straightforwardness. Instead of harsh words, you practice good wisdom. Instead of useless speech, or gossip, you develop simplicity: you speak very simply, and what you say is meaningful. Instead of wishful thinking and greediness, you have a sense of openness. Instead of destructive thoughts and bad feelings, you practice gentleness. Instead of disbelieving in sacredness, you commit yourself to understanding sacredness. Those are the ten wholesome deeds.

The Six Types of Karmic Consequences:

1. The Power of Volitional Action

2. Experiencing What You Have Planted

3. White Karmic Consequences — The third major type of karmic consequence, white karmic consequences, refers to good karmic situations that are perpetually growing. It has three subcategories. The first is emulating the three jewels—the Buddha, dharma, and sangha. You continuously get good karmic results out of that, naturally and perpetually. The second subcategory is emulating and appreciating somebody else’s virtue. That also leads to good karmic results and a well-favored situation. When you are inspired by somebody’s wakefulness, you become wakeful as well. That is the virtue of influence. The third subcategory is practicing the dharma. Even though your mind might be wandering, you are still practicing the dharma. Due to the fact that you are sitting on your cushion and practicing, you are not committing any sins. So you have a good karmic situation in spite of the wandering of your mind.

4. Changing the Karmic Flow by Forceful Action — There are second thoughts happening each time you act. There is hesitation, and from that hesitation, or gap, you can go backward or forward. Changing the flow of karma happens in that gap. So the gap is very useful. It is in the gap that you give birth to a new life.

5. Shared Karmic Situations — The fifth karmic consequence, shared karmic situations, falls into two subcategories: national and individual karma within national karma.

6. Interaction of Intention and Action — The sixth and final karmic consequence is the interaction of intention and action. It is divided into four subcategories.

1. White Intention, White Action.

2. Black Intention, Black Action.

3. White Intention, Black Action.

4. Black Intention, White Action.

In Hinayana, in order to cut the root of samsara, the strategy is to unplug or disconnect everything. We could actually unplug the refrigerator of samsara. It might take several hours to defrost; nevertheless, as long as we have unplugged that particular refrigerator, defrosting is going to happen. So we shouldn’t feel that we are stuck with those karmic situations. We should feel that we always have the opportunity to interrupt the flow of karma. First, we have to interrupt our ignorance, and secondly, we also have to interrupt our passion. By interrupting both our ignorance and our passion, we have nothing happening in terms of the samsaric world. We have already unplugged the refrigerator.

56 AWAKENING AND BLOSSOMING:

It is possible to experience a moment of nirvana, a glimpse of cessation. That is what Buddha taught in his first sermon in Sarnath, when he delivers the teaching of the four noble truths, which he repeated four times. The Buddha said that…suffering should be known; the origin of suffering should be renounced; the cessation of suffering should be realized; and the path should be regarded as the truth to resolution.

57 MEDITATION AS THE PATH TO BUDDHAHOOD:

The path of meditation also leads to shinjang, being thoroughly processed or trained, which is the result or achievement of shamatha-vipashyana meditation. Although you haven’t experienced the final development yet, it is no big secret that there is a final development. You can’t pretend that the Buddha didn’t exist and still talk about his teachings, because he actually did it—he achieved enlightenment.

In the technique of meditating on the breathing, there is automatically and naturally such a contrast. You realize that something is alienating in you, that your sanity and your insanity are alternating. You experience a gap. Relating to that gap is relating to the contrast between samsara and nirvana.

In the vajrayana, or tantra, the different levels and styles that people operate with are categorized. But as far as Hinayana is concerned, it is simply a question of experiencing basic liberation.

The reason the Hinayana is known as the “lesser vehicle” is because it is straight and narrow.

Whenever you take an ego-oriented approach, you become allergic to yourself. There is no other way but to step out of that. So attaining individual salvation does not come from seeking salvation—salvation simply dawns. Cessation and salvation come to you as you become a reasonable person. You become reasonable and meticulous because you cease to be sloppy and careless. Therefore, there is a sense of relief. Meticulousness is exemplified by oryoki practice, a formal style of serving and eating food that has its origins in Zen Buddhism. In this practice you are aware of everything that is being done, every move. At the same time, you are not uptight, for one you become self-conscious, you begin to forget the oryoki procedures. This logic also applies to keeping your room tidy, taking care of your clothing, taking care of your lifestyle altogether. Being meticulous is not based on fear, it is based on natural mindfulness.

In working with yourself, you start with the outer form; then that outer form brings an inner freedom; and finally that inner feeling brings a deeper sense of freedom. So it is a threefold process. This same process could apply to anything you do. In the beginning, it is mostly a big hassle; in the middle, it is sometimes a hassle and sometimes it is natural; then finally it becomes natural. With sitting practice as well: first it is a struggle; at some stage it is both a struggle and a relief; and finally it is very easy. It’s like putting on a new ring: for the first few days, it feels like it is in the way, but eventually it becomes part of your hand. It is that kind of logic.

58 TRANSCENDING SAMSARA AND NIRVANA:

Cessation means transcending the turmoil and problems of life and the neurosis that goes along with them. However, we try so hard to transcend all that, that we are unable to do so, because the very fact of trying so hard is the way we got into trouble in the beginning. So in regard to cessation, definitely the most important point is that it transcends both samsara and nirvana. By transcending both samsaric and nirvana possibilities of confusion, we are transcending cessation itself, so there is no ground….Bu that groundlessness itself could become a very powerful expression of cessation.

The Sanskrit word for “cessation” is nirodha, and in Tibetan it is gokpa, which in verb means “to stop,” or “to prevent.”

The logic is that when you are meditating, you are actually boycotting the process of furthering anything at all.

The Twelve Aspects of Cessation

1. Nature — The first topic is the nature of cessation, which has three categories: the origin, what should be given up, and what should be cultivated.

1. The Origin: Meditative Absorption. The origin of cessation is meditative absorption, a pure state of mind beyond ignorance. You begin to understand the nature of reality by developing meditative absorption through the practice of shamatha discipline, which reduces kleshas.

2. What Should be Given Up: Neurosis. What should be given up, over-looked, or transcended is neurosis. Through mindfulness and awareness, you experience the possibility of not committing yourself to the kleshas. You are beginning to develop a sense of goodness and toughness, which automatically prevents you from being sloppy.

3. What Should be Cultivated: Simplicity. What should be cultivated is simplicity. Simplicity means that you keep everything to a minimum. You keep your life very simple: you could get up, practice, eat breakfast, go to work, come back, have dinner, practice again, and go to sleep. Ideally good practitioners are supposed to sandwich their lives between morning and evening meditation practice. This simplifies things and cuts through unnecessary entertainment. In terms of sitting, you don’t create any conditions at all, such as asking, “Should I sit in the morning? Should I sit in the evening?” There is no question about it. You are totally and completely influenced by your shamatha practice and by the simplicity of your involvement with the buddhadharma.

2. Profundity — The second topic is profundity. Profundity means developing subtleness in your attitude toward cessation, understanding that cessation is nobody’s property. Cessation does not come from elsewhere, it is part of you; and at the same time, seemingly, it is not particularly a part of you. Basically, what is part of you and what is not part of you are always questionable. The dharma is not absolutely everything and it is not absolutely nothing—it is both. It is not even both, it is absolutely not neither. Dharma is not yours and it is not others’. Dharma is both yours and others’. At the same time, dharma is not made of out both you and others jumbled together, like a sweet-and-sour dish. Therefore, you and the dharma are not one, nor are you and the dharma completely separate. So what do we finally have? Very little, or quite a lot. The only possibility is that at one and the same time, the simplicity of the practice can be developed with respect to the tradition and discipline, and your intuition can be developed according to your own basic understanding of life. That is the point of profundity.

3. Sign — The third topic is sign. The sign that you have achieved cessation, or gokpa, is that the kleshas have begun to subside.

4. Ultimate — The fourth topic is ultimate. It is based on applying the understanding and discipline of prajna, or knowledge, in our approach to life.

5. Incompletion — The fifth topic is incompletion. When you reach a certain level of spiritual achievement, or cessation, you begin to understand that although you have been able to reach that level, things are not properly completed. You understand that although you have overcome problems and obstacles, you have not yet blossomed.

6. Signs of Completion — The sixth topic is sign of completion. Arhats have already restrained what should be restrained and developed what would be developed. Your learning is completely accomplished and you have reached a state of non learning. To review, in the Hinayana there are stream-winners, once-returners, nonreturners, and arhats. When students first enter the path, they are called stream-winners. Since stream-winners and once-returners emphasize meditative absorptions, or dhyanans (or jhanas), they remain within the realm of passion. Nonreturners are able to conquer the realm of passion, but they are still working with samsaric mind and with the Hindu notion of attaining divine achievement. They continue to work with that until they become complete arhats, when finally they cut the whole thing. Nonreturners are incomplete because they are still in the process of not returning.

7. Without Ornament. The seventh aspect of gokpa is without ornament, without embellishment. At this stage, although you have developed prajna, which has led you to fully overcome emotions, you are not adorned with any sign of holiness or dignity. You have accomplished much on a personal level, but you do not manifest that to the rest of the world.

8. Adorned. The eight topic is adorned; it is gokpa with embellishment or ornamentation. At this point, you have become a teacher. You have developed confidence and flair, and your individual discipline has also developed. Having already overcome the veil of neurosis and the veil of karmic obligations, you have achieved power over the world.

9. With Omission. Number nine is with omission. Although you have transcended the passions and neurosis of the human realm, you are still unable to accomplish real sanity completely and properly. You have also transcended the world of form, the realm of the form gods. But you have not transcended the formless world, the realm of the formless gods.

10. Without Omission. The tenth topic is without omission. Without omission means that you have transcended even the majestic and mystical concept of Godhead or brahmahood. You have finally conquered the whole theistic world. Here, all the neuroses and habitual patters are transcended. However, that does not mean that you are becoming a bodhisattva or a buddha.

11. Especially Supreme. The eleventh topic is known as especially supreme, or extraordinary. At this level, you have transcended both samsara and nirvana. You do not mingle in samsaric neurosis, but you have also transcended the potential of nirvana neurosis.

12. Beyond Calculation. The twelfth topic is beyond calculation. When we actually experience cessation properly, we realize that whatever needed to be overcome has been overcome. We attain an ultimate state of peace, relaxation, and openness, in which we are no longer hassled by the samsaric world.

Buddhists have a different concept of peace than the theistic world might have. Peace is energetic; it has immense power and energy. Actually, that is the source of a sense of humor, which is also a definition of cessation.

59 THE DOUBTLESS PATH:

The nature of the path is more like an expedition or exploration than following a road that already has been built. When people hear that they should follow the path, they might think that a ready-made system exists and that individual expressions are not required. They may think that one does not actually have to surrender, or give, or open. But when you actually begin to tread on the path, you realize that you have to clear out the jungle and all the trees, underbrush, and obstacles growing in front of you. You have to bypass tigers and elephants and poisonous snakes.

The Sequence of the Path. As you begin your path, you encounter impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and agelessness as a sequential process. These could be viewed as problems or promises. The first thing to overcome is the notion of eternity. In order to transcend the concept of eternity, we have the wisdom of importance. The wisdom of impermanence applies to whatever is subject to becoming, to happening, or to being gathered together. It is all very transitory. The second thing to be overcome is our constant search for pleasure. It is connected with the problem of spiritual materialism. In order to overcome that obstacle to the path, we have the slogan: “Because everything is impermanent, everything is always painful and subject to suffering.” Once there is suffering, a sense of desolation takes place as you begin to realize that both the things that exist outside you and the things that exist inside you are subject to impermanence and suffering. You realize the possibility of emptiness, a gap of nothingness—pure, plain emptiness. Having realized emptiness, you also begin to realize that there is no one to hag on to that realization or to celebrate that experience. You encounter agelessness. Dignity is not based on self and other, but comes from heaven down to earth—and the more you let go, the more dignity takes place.

Four Qualities of the Path. The path has been described as having four qualities: path, insight, practice and fruition. Altogether, the nature of the path is more like an expedition or exploration than following a road that already has been built.

1. Path: Searching for the Real Meaning os Suchness: The first quality of the path is that it is, a path: it is a search for the real meaning of dharma, the real meaning of isness or suchness. However, you do not try to pinpoint the isness—and if you try not to pinpoint it, you are doing it already. But this is getting beyond the hinayana, becoming more Zenny.

2. Insight: Through Clarity, Transcending Neurosis: The second quality of the path is that it is a path of insight. This may seem like a somewhat goal-oriented approach, but at the Hinayana level, there is no other choice. The sitting practice of meditation is based on shamatha discipline, which provides immense clarity and the ability to relate with situations very fully, precisely, and completely. Any neurosis that comes up becomes extremely visible and clear—and each time a certain neurosis arises, appropriate to the time, that neurosis itself becomes a spokesperson to develop further clarity. So a neurosis serves two purposes: showing the path and showing its own suicidal quality. That is what is known as insight, knowing the nature of dharmas as they are.

3. Practice: Associating with Basic Sanity: The third quality of the path is known as practice. Practice enables us to relate with misconceptions of the dharma, such as externalism and nihilism. Once you are able to relate with sitting meditation you find that sitting practice is not an endurance contest or a way of proving who is the best boy or girl. Instead, meditation practice is about how you can become a rock or an ocean—a living rock or a living ocean. Through meditation practice, you are associating yourself with basic sanity, which takes place continuously.

4. Fruition: Permanent Nirvana: The fourth quality of the path is fruition. In the Hinayana approach to life, fruition is the idea of a permanent nirvana. Permanent nirvana means that we have learned the lesson of neurosis and its tricks, which are played on us all the time and take advantage of our weakness.

60 THE FIVE PATHS:

The path does not really exist unless you are available. It is as if you are the road worker, the surveyor, and the traveler, all at once. As you go along, the road gets built, the survey’s done, and you become a traveler.

From the practitioners point of view, there’s an interesting link between the first noble truth and the las noble truth: the first noble truth could be described as the ground on which the fourth noble truth is founded. That is, the realization of suffering brings an understanding and discovery of the path. The problem with the word path is that we automatically think that the road has been built and the highway is open, so we can drive nonstop. There’s a possibility of taking too much comfort in having a path, thinking that since the path has already been laid down, you do not have to choose which path to take—there’s simply the path. That attitude seems to be the product of misunderstanding or cowardliness on the part of the student. In fact, the path does not really exist unless you are available. It is as if you are the road worker, the surveyor, and the traveler, all at once. As you go along, the road gets built, the survey’s done, and you become a traveler.

1. The Path of Accumulation

The path of accumulation is based on getting acquainted with the teachings and the teacher. You are putting in a lot of hard work in order to learn the teachings. It is the layperson’s or beginner’s level. The first path, the path of accumulation, is finding your foothold in the teachings as a layperson.

1. The Path of Unification

The second path is the path of unification, in which your actions and your psychological state are beginning to work together. The second path is called the path of unification because we going our mind and body and all our efforts together. It has five categories: faith, exertion, recollection, one-pointedness, and intellect.

1. The Path of Seeing

In this path you develop further clarity in distinguishing or discriminating the different approaches to reality according to the buddhadharma. There are seven categories in the path of seeing, known as the seven limb of enlightenment, or body: recollection, separating dharmas, exertion, joy, being thoroughly trained, samadhi, and equilibrium.

1. The Path of Meditation

On the path of meditation, you begin to cut karma. Karma is based on fundamental ignorance. Whenever there are two, you and other, that is already the beginning of a karmic situation. When you not only have “you” and “other,” but you begin to elaborate on that, you are at the level of the second nidana, or samsara (formation or concept). You have begun to roll the wheel of karma. There are eight categories of the path of meditation, which are collectively known as the noble eightfold path. The eight limbs of the noble path are perfect view, perfect understanding, perfect speech, perfect end of karma, perfect livelihood, perfect effort, perfect recollection, and perfect mediation.

1. The Path of No More Learning

The final path is the path of no more learning, which is the attainment of enlightenment.

In Buddhism, we talk about decreasing neurosis, which automatically means decreasing ego-oriented pain.

PART FIVE THE HINAYANA JOURNEY

61 SHRAVAKAYANA: THE YANA OF HEARING AND PROCLAIMING:

Loneliness is the essence of shravakayana disciple. It is like suddenly being pushed from a centrally heated house onto the top of Mount Everest. There is a sudden chill. Not only is there a sudden chill, but it is also very sharp and penetrating. In fact, it takes your breath away, it is so refreshing.

The nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism divides the path into nine yanas, or vehicles, of which the first two—shravakayana and pratyekabuddhayana—are in the Hinayana category. Within the Hinayana, the first yang the shravakayana, is basic Buddhism. It provides the background for understanding the foundations of Buddhism—its expressions, wisdom, and discipline. The shravakayana is simple and understandable. Its approach is somewhat analytical: you are analyzing samsara and the need for nirvana.

In the shravakayana, ethics are based on renunciation. By means of renunciation, we cease causing harm to others. We refrain from harm and from its original foundation. The idea of renunciation is to develop a sense of aloneness, or loneliness.

Renunciation means that we do not cause further harm to others and ourselves, and we do not continue to create the origins of harm. That is what real and proper renunciation is.

The attitude of the shravakayana is that you personally want to get out of this particular disease called samsara. There is a sense of alarm. You are freaked-out about the prospect of samsaric heel and misery, and you are delighted to hear that individual salvation exists and is possible.

By means of prajna, or discriminating awareness, a person begins to realize the nonexistence of individual ego. Although you fix on life situations such as pain and pleasure, they are not really such a serious matter. You realize that the individuality itself is the confusion, and you begin to experience the nonexistence of “I.” The “I” who wants to attain individual salvation is the problem. That problem of individuality has to be solved, gone beyond. This “I” is based on rejecting any possibility of realizing anything beyond itself.

The ego of dharmas is related with the idea that there are further subtleties of ego beyond the ego of self. [Trungpa Rinpoche also referred to the ego of the self as the “ego of individuality” and as the “ego of individual existence.” He referred to the ego of dharmas as the “ego of phenomena.”] Actually, the ego of dharmas helps you to realize the agelessness of self. It is like being on a boat and using a rope to pull yourself in: you hang on to the ego of dharmas to eliminate the ego of self. It is not a bad approach. You can’t be totally independent. To give up one aspect, you have to take on another aspect; to get rid of this thing, you latch onto that thing.

At the shravakayana level, but using one aspect of ego, a subtler form of ego, you try to eliminate crude ego completely. So at this point you still believe in some kind of continuity. You believe that the continuity of time is a reality, the continuity of atoms is a reality, and the continuity of subtle consciousness is a reality.

Shravakas realize that solid things are not all that solid. Their approach to agelessness is to break things into smaller and smaller parts, and reduce them into individually existing atoms or particles. So while they question the solidity of existence, they still believe that atoms exist as the finest level of things, and that infinitesimal moments exist as the finest level of time. So at the finest, finest level, some reference point still exists, and there is continuity of some kind. For that reason, shravakas are sometimes accused of being externalists.

In the shravakayana, you apply mindfulness to everything that you do. You are always practicing mindfulness. When you walk, you see that neither the place you walk nor the walking itself is solid. When you breathe, you see that it is not really one breath, but questionable breath. You see everything with microscopic vision. If you actually can experience that this tree or this rock is not monolithic, but is made out of little atoms, it is a beautiful discovery. You are learning to sort things out. Time is made out of little moments strung together, and space is sort of bouncy. If you push it, it bounces back, as though the whole world were made out of rubber. Everything is made out of particles. Nothing is solid. Can you imagine experiencing that?

Some shravakas experience reality as if they were using a microscope: they see that atoms are filled with and surrounded by little spaces. They say that even though we might think of ourselves as having existence, time, and consciousness, each moment of consciousness is surrounded by space, just as physical atoms and bits of time are. There is space, and within that are birth and death.

Although they no longer believe in the existence of the ego of self and they are able to cut through concepts, they only manage to cut through up to a certain point. They still believe that the cutting itself is real. That causes them to put a lot of emphasis on discipline, both monastic and lay discipline. They talk about virtue as being real, and they view sin or wrongdoing as real also, as something one should get rid of.

That is precisely what mindfulness means—taking yourself out.

The achievement of the shravakayana has two categories: the wearing out process and non birth. The wearing-out process means that, when the shravakayana has been practiced fully and properly with proper shamatha discipline, you no longer have the occurence of conflicting emotions. Nonbirth means that such emotions not only do not occur, but they do not plant seeds for the future. They will never be born again. The ultimate attainment of the practice of wearing out and non birth is called arhatship.

62 PRATYEKABUDDHAYANA: THE YANA OF INDIVIDUAL SALVATION:

When you beomce a pratyekabuddha person, you become fully sosotharpa-ized, completely individually liberated. That may sound mean-spirited, but without that approach you would not have any notion of how to develop maitri toward yourself, which is a problem, and could lead to difficulty on the Mahayan level. The very notion of compassion begins with feeling kindness toward yourself.

The idea of pratyekabuddhayana is that the awakened state of mind could be achieved by oneself alone, without working with anybody else.

Pratyekabuddhas are very individualistic. They do not want to relate with anybody above, nor to be under anybody’s directions. Instead, they would like to search for themselves. They do not want to relate with any hierarchy, organization, or institutionalized setup. It is the self-made-person approach. Quite possibly such people would appreciate nature and poetry as well as hardship and industrious work. They do not like any kind of religion, preferring to search in their own way by their own means.

For pratyekabuddhas, everything is very cut-and-dried, very individualistic. You regard your discoveries as your own property, and although you may be nice, you do not believe in letting people be involved in your life. Compassion means inviting people into your territory which is very hard to do.

On the shravakayana level, you are simply entering into the four noble truths. It is the level of dharmic gossip. On the pratyekabuddha level, you are actually doing it. Who are you doing it to? You are doing it to yourself. That is why we call it individual salvation. You practice Buddhism in yourself, by yourself, and for yourselff.

THE LESSER PATH OF ACCUMULATION:

As a student who has no idea of dharma and no mind training, you decide to commit to the path and to train yourself. As you train your mind, you begin to see all kinds of things. What you see is not so much the inspiration of a glimpse of enlightenment, or buddha nature. Instead, the first thing you see is what is wrong with samsara.

On the lesser path of accumulation, you are predominantly working with the four foundations of mindfulness and with shamatha-vipashyana practice. Meditation practice at this level is a way of developing greater mental and psychological sharpness, so that dharmas could be perceived properly. You are becoming aware of your psychological hang-ups and confusionsl and discovering all kinds of insights into the teachings.

A person on the level of the path of accumulation has to develop simultaneously the three ways of learning: hearing, contemplating, and meditating. “Hearing” is thopa. Tho means “to hear,” as in to hear intellectual studies, to hear the dharma. “Contemplating is sampa. Sam means “to think or contemplate.” You are pondering a subject you have learned, such as the nature of impermanence—and since such information is received from a teacher in the beginning, you are also working with thopa. “Meditation” is gompa. Go means “meditation.” In all three terms, the suffix pa makes the term into a noun. On the path of accumulation, you have to go through thopa, samba, and gompa—all of them simultaneously. You hear a message from your teacher, you contemplate that message, and you meditate all at the same time. That prepares you for further thopa. Because your mind is more readied, you are able to hear more teachings. So it is a constant, ongoing process. That is how it works on the path of accumulation.

The student on the path of accumulation develops a greater vision and knowledge of the three marks than someone purely learning from books.

There is nothing paramita, or “transcendental,” about it—you just practice bare attention to breathing, and bare attention to mental activities.

You begin to appreciate the teachings, the opportunity to practice, the teacher, and the unique circumstances that brought you to the teachings, you also realize you might lose these precious things, and you begin to get paranoid

In order to realize this more subtle form of impermanence, some traditions have a formula about impermanence that you repeat again and again, in an attempt to let it seep into your subconscious mind that you cannot cling or hold on to anything. Once you begin to realize that psychologically you cannot hold on to anything, seemingly solid phenomenal objects also cease to be solid, because these objects have to be confirmed by conscious analysis. In order to solidify an object, one’s thoughts have to be solidified, one’s being has to be solidified, but you cannot solidify your basic existence in any way at all. It is like a rushing river; you have nothing to hold on to. We could call this experience “developing an empty heart.” The whole thing is horrifically, frightening empty—and trying to hold on to any of it breeds further empty heart. It is as if you are a person who is highly susceptible to heart attacks who must be very attentive to whatever you do. Even lifting a cup of tea and sipping is uncertain. You do not know whether you will last long enough to finish the cup of tea. So there is a tremendous sense of groundlessness. You are fully and utterly haunted. In that state, even fear could be said to be security, for if you could develop real fear, real panic, you would have something to hold on to. But you are not even capable of experiencing fear, because you have nothing to be fearful of, and because everything is moving so fast that nothing sticks and there is nothing to hold on to. At this level, the experience of impermanence is so fundamental that is it almost mystical.

Psychologicaly, when you experience ego, you experience it as other than yourself. Philosophers say this is your ego, that is your ego; but in experiential terms, in your immediate experience, you begin to realize that there is no one to keep you company, and you have no hold on anything.

You are constantly looking for confirmation, for a moderator to qualify your existence, but you discover none. That is the notion of egolessness.

The logic that says, “Because ego does not exist, therefore you should not suffer,” does not work. In fact, the reason suffering is so acute, so oppressive, and so painful is because suffering has no root. If there were a root, if there were a case history, you could follow it back. Suffering would become vulnerable. But suffering is, in fact, indestructible and self-existent. Therefore, it happens to be real, unlike the nonexistence of ego. Suffering is the most real thing in one’s realm of experience. Suffering is the only solid thing there is; otherwise we would not suffer. The idea of the path is that you don’t fight back at the suffering, but you learn to make yourself at home with the suffering. Reality is suffering. Even at the tantric level, we talk about maha duhkha, or great suffering. Suffering is what made the Buddha turn the wheel of the dharma. And when he opened his mouth, the first word he spoke was duhkha. In the sutras, it is said that we survive in suffering; we work in suffering; we dwell in suffering, in a state of woe. The realization of suffering is the starting point. It is the seed of awakening. That is why it is called the first noble truth: it is for ordinary folks, people on the path of accumulation, people from the street, so to speak.

They enjoy in the suffering; they suffer in the suffering; they function in the suffering. This is the definition of samsara, going around and around in the ocean of pain. Even seemingly pleasureful things are actually pain. Not only do they bring pain later, but they are actually painful by nature. The reason the nature of pleasure is suffering is because pleasure is so claustrophobic; as a result, pleasure has an element of imprisonment in it.

It is the vipashyana experience of seeing impermanence, egolessness, and suffering in the fullest sense. As far as Buddhism is concerned, that is the total picture of the samsaric world, which is why it is called the three marks of existence. The three marks are a synopsis of the nature of the world. It is important to remember that the world we are referring to here is the phenomenological world. It is the world we perceive, according to our phenomenal experience. If we were not here, there would not be a world, as far as we are concerned. However, that doesn’t mean that when we die, the world will disappear. However, our version of the world will not be there anymore, so far as we are concerned, we create our own world. That is our experience, and at this point it is important to stick with experience and not become too philosophical.

Purely learning on the intellectual level alone is like revving the engine but not shifting it into gear: your truck only begins to move when meditation is engaged in everyday life.

64 THE MIDDLE PATH OF ACCUMULATION:

On the middle level of the path of accumulation, you begin to realize the virtues and faults of your behavior. Your neurosis and sanity are clearly seen….But you first need inspiration. You need to identify with the teaching and feel that you are a part of the lineage—that it is your family wealth, your heirloom….From that conviction, and with tremendous faith and directness, you then automatically behave in an ethical way.

As an ordinary practitioner, you enter the second stage of the path of accumulation when you have managed to cut the cause of being born in the lower realms—the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, and the animal realm.

On the middle realm of the path of accumulation, you are slowly and surely moving away from ordinary religious or spiritual practices of purely saving yourself and reaching a higher level of spirituality. You are slowly moving away from the theistic approach with its notion of a savior. The lesser level of the path of accumulation is the common yana, one which theistic traditions that believe in an external deity could also follow.

65 THE GREATER PATH OF ACCUMULATION:

We need both devotional virya and ongoing virya. Those two viryas seem to be important. They are the basic core of the shamatha-vipashyana marriage—and shamatha-vipashyana is recommended as the vanguard of the Mahayana practice of shunyata.

At the level of the greater path of accumulation, a person begins to develop not only isolated awareness or mindfulness practice, but the practice of being aware and mindful at the same time, or shamatha-vipashyana. Having started with shamatha, you may have begun to place more emphasis on vipashyana—but you then begin to realize the limitation of dwelling on vipashyana alone, so you go a step further, and you happen to rediscover shamatha.

Shamatha-vipashyana is recommended as the vanguard of the Mahayana practice of shunyata. Shamatha-vipashyana is the way you step out of the path of accumulation onto the path of unification, the second of the five paths. The combination of shamatha with vipashyana is the leverage.

You cannot practice shamatha-vipashyana unless you have gone through shamatha first and vipashyana afterward. You need to have training in both practices separately before coming to shamatha-vipashyana practice, because combining the two takes a lot of effort.

66 THE PATH OF UNIFICATION:

The path of unification is complete preparation for the Mahayana, but it is not the Mahayana as such. On the path of unification, you have sensed the possibility of treading on the path of the bodhisattva and becoming a Mahayanist who is fully dedicated to working with sentient beings, so tremendous conviction comes up. You are excited by the possibility that you might enter into the mahayana at some point.

You realize that the idea of shunyata and the idea of losing one’s concept of self, or ego, is no longer fearful. In other words, you begin to realize that you have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. That is the first hint of shunyata experience.

The reason you may find it very difficult to practice and to put into effect whatever you have learned and studied is not because you are stupid and unable to comprehend. It is not that you are lazy, slow, or pleasure oriented. None of those reasons apply. The only reason you are not able to relate with the teachings is that you are unable to identify with them as personal experience. If you are able to identify with the teachings as personal experience, your intellect naturally flows out, and your meditation experience and awareness flow out as well. Energy and joy in practice flow out because there is devotion to the path, which has become an integral part of your existence. In order to create and effective marriage, a couple has to develop love for one another. Similarly, you need to personalize the teachings in order to unite with them and bring them into your system, into your whole being. The teachings are based on personal experience, personally applied to individuals, rather than on theoretical speculation or metaphysics. When you identify with the teachings as personal experience, there is well-being and ultimate security. The teachings are alive, and they apply to your day-to-day living.

The five powers are as follows: faith never needs to be sought; exertion never needs to be sought; recollection never needs to be sought; one-pointedness never needs to be sought; and the intellect never needs to be sought.

The path of unification is complete preparation for the Mahayana, but it is not the Mahayana as such. On the path of unification, you have sensed the possibility of treading on the path of the bodhisattva and becoming a mahayanist who is fully dedicated to working with sentient beings, so tremendous conviction comes up. You are excited by the possibility that you might enter into the Mahayana at some point.

PART SIX KNOWLEDGE/PRAJNA

67 EGO: THE THOUGHT THAT WE EXIST:

The approach of non theism is to realize fully and learn to acknowledge egolessness. In fact, one definition of the Buddhist path is egolessness. If you don’t understand egolessness, when there is no ego, when you have cut through ego—that is the cessation of suffering, it is the definition of nirvana.

By perpetually overlapping one level of consciousness with the next, we try to make ourselves solid, but the result is just patchwork.

From a distance, we may appear to be one big sheet, one solid block, but if you look closely, you see that we are made out of fragments, which survive only momentarily.

We constantly confirm ourselves through sense perceptions.

Mindfulness is simply looking at ourselves and cutting the roots of bewilderment and jumpiness.

68 CUTTING THROUGH THE NUMBNESS OF EGO:

When you develop awareness, there is no one who is aware. It is like a movie screen without an audience. It is like a television in an empty room. The clarity of awareness is like plastique, or dynamite, which takes down the walls of ego. Such clarity does not allow any obstacles to get through or to project out. Clarity is like a light shining out.

When you are meditating, as you are trying to tune yourself in to the breath or to mindfulness, you may find that suddenly there’s a problem and you can’t do it. The reason you can’t do it is because there is a sense of “me-ness,” this “I-ness.” The obstacle comes from holding on to yourself.

Whenever you write your name on the dotted line, you are proclaiming your warfare to somebody. You are trying to prove yourself and your existence. “I do exist. I am writing this letter to somebody to complain, to say hello to my relatives, to be nice to my girlfriend or boyfriend.” All the time, you are trying to occupy territory.

69 TAKING THE TEACHINGS TO HEART:

Prajna is both sharp and gentle….When your knife is sharp, it is very easy to cut meat. It is gentle, but dramatic….So the sharper, the gentler. Shamatha-vipashyana discipline brings out tremendous power in you. It sharpens prajna and brings out your respect for learning. You should not be afraid of being sharp, but take pride in sharpness. That is your practice manual,….the practitioner’s way of experiencing the Hinayana path properly and fully.

It is possible to create a dharmic world in which every aspect of your sense perception is used. In such an atmosphere, you can smell the dharma, you can feel the dharma, you can hear the dharma, you can smell the dharma, you can touch the dharma. Everything in such an atmosphere is real and direct and simple. In such an atmosphere in which there is no time off, you can learn well. The dharma is a part of your daily existence.

Sometimes people have the idea that Buddhist wisdom tells you to keep everything quiet and peaceful. They think that if you ignore everything, meditate, and wander in the mountains, everything will be all right. But that approach is slightly naive. So it is important to emphasize prajna. But that approach is slightly naive. So it is important to emphasize prajna. With prajna, or discriminating awareness, you see that samsara is black and quite terrible; and freedom from samsara, or nirvana, is extremely white and immaculate. You have to face that fundamental Hinayana truth. You have to realize that.

With the first prajna, hearing, you are studying and learning; with the second prajna, contemplating, you are sharpening your knowledge; and with the third prajna, meditation, your knowledge becomes workable. Those are the three prajna-principles. But none of those disciplines can arise unless you become a refugee and practice shamatha and vipashyana.

TERMS:

Hinayana = small vehicle

Mahayana = big vehicle

samsara = suffering

shunyata = emptiness

bodhisattva = true mind “awake being”

arhat = worthy one

lojong = mind training

paramitas = transcendent virtues: generosity discipline, patience, exertion, mediation, and prajna

prajna = knowledge

tonglen = sending and taking

maitri = loving-kindness

ngondro = preliminary practices

tantrikas = vajrayana practitioners

siddhas = those who have powers

abhishekas = empowerment ceremonies

sadhanas = ritual liteurgies

shila = discipline

samadhi = meditation

shamatha = practice of mindfulness

vipashyana = practice of awareness

skandhas = heaps: form, feeling, perception/impulse, concept/formation, and consciousness

vidya = primeval knowledge

avidya = ignorance

pratimoksha = individual salvation

saddharma = satya + dharma; that which tames the mind

satya = truth

sugata = he who has gone joyfully on the path

klesha = neurotic thought patterns

bhavachakra = the wheel of life

samskara = conceptual mind

vijnana = consciousness

nama-rupa = name and form

shadayatana = the six sense faculties

vedana = feeling

trishna = craving

upadana = grasping

bhava = becoming

jati = birth

jara marana = old age and death

pratimoksha = individual salvation

chitta = mind or heart

nyam = a temporary flash of experience

dewa = bliss, joy

selwa = luminosity, brilliant light, clarity

mitokpa = nonthinking, without thought