Karma Kagyu Mahamudra: Shamatha and Vipashyana

Shamatha means a stilled and settled state of mind. When we talk about shamatha and vipashyana – vipashyana being an exceptionally perceptive state of mind – those aren’t necessarily Buddhist practices; we find those in various other Indian traditions as well. In fact, almost everything within Buddhism in terms of actual methodology – particularly concerning concentration and various types of yoga, and so on – are pan-Indic types of things. 

What really makes it the Buddhist presentation, the Buddhist version of all of this, is the bodhichitta aim, to become a Buddha to benefit everybody as much as possible, and the understanding of voidness, in other words, what is the actual state of unawareness, or confusion, or ignorance, however we want to translate it, that is the root of a problem. When we talk about these methods of shamatha and vipashyana, be aware that just as a method itself, doesn’t necessarily make it Buddhist; it’s the envelope within which it’s practiced that makes it a Buddhist practice. 

Now, stilled and settled state of mind. We always have in the Buddhist presentation the three higher trainings, and again, that’s not exclusively Buddhist. In any case, these are a very helpful foundation for structuring what we need in order to gain liberation or enlightenment. This is training in higher ethical discipline, higher concentration and higher “discriminating awareness,” and that’s often just translated as “wisdom,” but here we’re referring specifically to the awareness with which we can discriminate between what is reality and what is not reality, what’s the actual way in which things exist as opposed to the way that they don’t exist, and also in a broader sense, what’s helpful, what’s harmful, etc. 

The analogy that’s used is if we want to chop down a tree, we need a sharp axe, and that’s the discriminating awareness, which will actually do the cutting. However, we need to be able to always hit the mark, so that’s the concentration. In order to be able to lift the axe to chop the tree and hit the mark, we need discipline, the strength of ethical self-discipline. Two of the main factors that are going to be involved in getting the stilled and settled state of mind are factors that we already develop with the practice of ethical discipline. 

Stilled and settled state of mind, it’s stilled of flightiness of mind and mental dullness. Flightiness of mind is a subcategory of mental wandering. It is when our mind wanders after an object of desire, because that is what is the most compelling of the objects that cause us distraction. We can get pretty angry about something, and our mind can wander to that, but for most people, it’s desire, whether it is for sex, for food, for changing our position because our knees hurt, or for sleep. It’s very, very strong. It’s far more compelling than just being annoyed with something. So, that is specified here as a major obstacle. 

It’s stilled, the state of mind is stilled of this flightiness – flying off after an object of desire – and of course, all mental wandering, and stilled of being dull. There are many grades of that that are presented, many more, increasingly subtle levels that one needs to identify. And it’s settled, it’s settled either on an object, or it’s settled into a state of mind, like love. Love isn’t an object that we focus on like a Buddha-figure. It’s a state of mind. We want to stay in that state of mind and not have our mind wander off after, “What are we going to have for lunch?” or “What do I have to do later in the day?” or all the various types of mental wandering that we have. 

What are the factors that we’re going to really use in order to gain this concentration? As I say, these are factors that we already develop with ethical self-discipline. Ethical self-discipline is to avoid acting in a destructive manner. “Destructive manner” is defined in many, many different ways, but the principal way of defining it is acting on the basis of greed, desire, attachment, anger and hostility, or naivety, like coming late, and being naive, we don’t even think that it matters to the other person. We don’t even think of the other person who’s waiting. This is naivety, not realizing that it might hurt somebody’s feelings, so we just say something, whatever comes to our mind, and are naive that it might hurt somebody and are cruel. Obviously, acting out of greed or hostility or anger, that’s a little bit easier to understand how that can be destructive. These things are self-destructive. 

One can never be sure how our actions are going to affect somebody else, what their response is going to be. They may be very happy if we steal their car because they wanted to get rid of it and they want to get the insurance. We don’t know how it’s going to affect the other person, but we can be quite certain if we act on the basis of these disturbing emotions, that we’re going to suffer further on in the future, and it builds up a very strong negative habit. 

Sometimes people find it a little bit strange that Buddhists, for example, will try not to kill anything. If there’s an insect or something like that that we don’t particularly want to share our space with, we try to catch it in a glass with a piece of paper underneath and take it outside, something like that. People might criticize and say, “Well, come on! This is a bit much, isn’t it?” Especially when we rescue a fly from the toilet with our hand, which is a very good test to see how devoted we are to this principle of nonviolence and helping others. 

In any case, if the first thing that we do, if we’re dealing with something that we don’t like, is to kill it, that builds up a very strong habit of reacting in that way. Maybe we don’t kill, but having total intolerance for anything we don’t like and using a violent method to get rid of it, although it might seem very trivial – swatting that fly and so on – it’s the habit that is important here in terms of destructive ways of acting based on a disturbing emotion. It could manifest in anything that annoys us. We yell at somebody, that’s the same type of behavior. 

So, what do we need to use? We need to use what is translated as “mindfulness” and “alertness” and “attention.” These are different mental factors, and it’s very important to get the definitions straight so that we know what we’re talking about here. We apply it first to our gross behavior; that’s why these factors are introduced in the discussion of ethical self-discipline. We apply it first to our gross actions of body and speech, primarily, and then in meditation when we’re trying to gain concentration, we apply the same methods to what’s going on in our mind. 

Mindfulness is the most important factor, and that, I think, is easiest to understand if we think of it as a mental glue. That’s what it is; it’s what keeps us on an object. It is the same word as the word “to remember.” We have mindfulness meditation, but that’s not really mindfulness; that’s paying attention to what’s going on, that’s something else. Here we’re talking about the glue to just hold on. It’s like, for instance, we’re on a diet, and we walk past the bakery, and there are all these cakes. They’re really delicious. And fudge brownies, and all these sorts of naughty things in the window. We want to just hold on – here is mindfulness – hold on to that diet and to that thought, “I’m not going to eat this.” We restrain ourselves and walk by. It’s this mindfulness, the mental glue to stick to an object. Here, in terms of ethical discipline, it’s to stick to discipline, the discipline to keep our diet; for example, to say, “No, thank you,” when they’re serving our favorite cake or passing around something that we like very much but is against the diet. It’s the mental glue that’s the most important thing. 

Then there is alertness. Alertness will come automatically if we have that glue. The alertness is to watch out for when the hold of that mental glue is either too tight or too loose. It’s always described as tuning a stringed instrument. If it’s too tight, if we’re holding on too tight, then we get very, very “uptight,” and so we become nervous. We become tense, and our mind will very quickly jump off into extraneous thoughts. If not, the energy becomes very, very nervous and tense, and that’s not at all a conducive state of mind. 

The hold of that mental glue – actually, the glue sticks to us there, there’s another factor called the actual “hold,” and they’re related to each other – if it’s too tight, that’s no good. If it’s too loose, of course, then we become sloppy. We need to adjust the hold of the mind either on the discipline or in meditation. This is why one of the things that I was referring to last night when there was a question, I brought up the thing about not being a fanatic. If we’re a fanatic, we’re holding on too tightly, and we’re not relaxed. Obviously, if we’re too relaxed, then we can lose everything. 

The alertness is like the watch out; it’s the alarm system. If we have a strong mental glue, the alarm system will be there automatically, so the main emphasis is on the glue; it’s not on being a policeman. This is very important, very, very important because if we spend too much effort on being the policeman in our meditation or in our ethical discipline, then we have a dualism here, which is very artificial and really very screwy, I must say, that there becomes now a “me,” like the ego, and then there’s the superego who is the controller; we have one part of “me” looking at another “me” and “I want to be good,” and “I want to watch out that I’m not bad,” and “Ugh! You’re being bad,” like that. 

Now, that becomes very, very neurotic, and falls into a heavy sense of dualism, which is completely a confused way of understanding how we exist and what is going on. Without a sense of a solid “me” that is keeping this discipline or watching that we keep the discipline, we just do it. That is one of the major keys to the whole Buddhist practice, and it’s particularly emphasized in mahamudra, but certainly not exclusive to mahamudra; we just do it, without feeling “I am doing this,” and without “I have to make myself do that.” 

That’s really weird if we think about it structurally, “I have to make myself,” as if that’s another person, “do something,” and then “I have to watch to make sure that I do it and I do it right.” That’s very neurotic, so don’t put all the focus on the alertness, being alert, the alarm system. If we’re maintaining the mental glue, the alertness will be there. The main emphasis is on the glue, so hold on. 

Then, when the alarm system goes off, it’s the mental factor of attention that reestablishes the mental glue. That’s the mechanism, if we want to speak about it technically, in terms of what the Buddhist terminology actually means, what they’re talking about. We have the mental glue that holds on. The alertness is the corner of the mind that is there, that knows whether it’s too tight or too loose, or if it’s lost it completely, and then sets the alarm. Attention is the factor that reestablishes paying attention. That’s what paying attention is referring to, to bring our attention back. All right? 

Now, that we train first in ethical discipline, in terms of how we act and our body, physical behavior, our mental behavior, and it carries over into maintaining a posture in meditation. Obviously, far more important than the posture is that we don’t go around hitting people and screaming and yelling at them and so on. To act in a horribly destructive way but be able to sit perfectly in meditation is not exactly our goal here. 

Once we gain this in our external behavior, then we have the tools. The whole approach is always in terms of “build up the tools!” We built up some tools like our context with the preparation, and then we have to build up these tools through ethical discipline that we can then apply in getting a proper state of mind. 

Now, what are we trying to accomplish with shamatha? As I said, a stilled and settled state of mind. It’s not just perfect concentration, what’s called absorbed concentration, that’s the Sanskrit word samadhi. Shamatha is a step beyond that, which has, in addition to absolutely no flightiness of mind or mental wandering, and absolutely no mental dullness or sleepiness, it has another factor which is a factor of a “sense or a feeling of fitness.” 

I think that’s the closest word that we might have. It’s a very exhilarating feeling, a very joyous, but joyous in the exhilarating sense of feeling totally fit, like when we are an athlete and we feel fit that we can run a mile, or we can do 50 pushups, or whatever it is that we can do, we are fit. Or a musician, they’re fit; they can play any type of music and play it for as long as they want. This type of sense of fitness, and it’s a fitness that “I can concentrate.” 

Serkong Rinpoche, my teacher, used to say, it’s like having a jumbo jet, that if we set it in motion, it’s going to fly; if it sits on the ground, it’s going to sit there. Similarly, if we need to concentrate and focus on one thing, it will stay. If we need to concentrate and focus on an activity, like during the day when we’re involved with various things, it’ll stay with that, not wander off, and not get dull. We’re not talking exclusively about just the passive settling of the mind on one thing. 

Particularly in this approach in Karma Kagyu mahamudra, we look at both the settled and the moving minds, because obviously, we can’t just function if we’re focused on one thing and that’s it. We have to live in the world, obviously, so we have to deal with many, many things and stay focused. This exhilarating sense of fitness is the characteristic mark of shamatha beyond a state of just absorbed, perfect concentration. 

Vipashyana, which is the second part here, the exceptionally perceptive state of mind, is based on shamatha. We have to have shamatha first, then vipashyana adds on top of that a second sense of fitness. That sense of fitness is the fitness that the mind is exceptionally perceptive: it can perceive anything, exactly the way it is, in all its detail. Often that’s attained in terms of understanding voidness, but it doesn’t have to be just with voidness; it could be with so many different things. 

As I said, it’s not exclusively Buddhist. We have this in other systems as well. It could be gained, like in some tantra practices, we gain vipashyana by focusing on a little drop or a dot at the tip of our nose, and then in the next row, there are two dots while we keep that one dot, and then four, and then eight, and then 16, and 32 and so on. We keep all of them clear and straight in our focus, and then draw them back. Well, if we can do that, our mind is pretty perceptive, pretty able to keep any detail, any amount of detail very clear, which is important to be able to do in order to understand the complexity of our lives. 

The world and everybody in it is very complex, so we’re not going to have a simple type of solution to be able to help everybody. I’m just thinking of an example of psychologists or psychiatrists who have to keep everybody’s story straight, and they have to remember people’s names, details and things. That’s a good example of where one would really need to have that skill of an exceptionally perceptive state of mind, to not get everything mixed up, to keep it clear. There are practical applications of these things as well. 

Now, to get this stilled and settled state of mind, we can focus on many, many different things. Here, we’re talking about the nature of the mind. This is mahamudra practice, so it’s dealing with the nature of mental activity. Remember, mind is not some sort of tool in a box that a “me” which is separate from it uses to understand things. That is the cartoon version of what actually is the case. It’s not like that at all, but it’s just mental activity. It’s not some separate “me” that’s doing it, or anything like that. It’s just happening; it’s functioning, and there is certainly a sense of a “me” that is there, but it’s not as though it’s some separate entity, separate from it. 

Now, if we follow a Gelugpa approach, one would deal with what are the defining characteristics of this mental activity and try to actually stay focused on the defining characteristics, so that one doesn’t get caught up in the content of the mental activity, but in the mental activity itself. That’s quite difficult, actually, to recognize what in the world are they talking about, and we’re not discussing the Gelugpa approach to mahamudra, but that is one approach. In Karma Kagyu, the approach is to quiet down. The Karma Kagyu approach is a little bit more passive; the Gelugpa approach is a little bit more active if we can use those parameters of active or passive. Passive in the sense that we want to quiet down – there are many, many terms for it, let’s just keep it simple – the natural state, the uncontrived state of the mind. 

There are many, many colorful adjectives that are used for that, and that’s not so easy; it’s not so easy at all. One must not trivialize the practice. How do we trivialize it? We trivialize it into something that is not so trivial, which is basically to shut up the voice in our heads. We tend to think, if we could accomplish that – which, mind you, is a major, major accomplishment, and very, very difficult – but if we do that, that is certainly not enough. That’s not what they’re talking about; that’s just a first step. We have to go much more deeply than that in order to really get down to the uncontrived, natural state of the mind. 

For this, one needs to understand the Karma Kagyu definition of “non-conceptual.” What are we talking about when we speak about “conceptual” and “non-conceptual” cognition in Karma Kagyu? It’s different from Gelugpa. In the Karma Kagyu approach, which is actually shared with Nyingma and Sakya, we have sense perception. Let’s say we look at an object, we look at this object here on the table, what we would call “a glass,” and what do we see? We see a colored shape. That’s what we see; it’s a colored shape. Now, if we turn our head away and we hold this object, what do we perceive? We perceive through physical contact the physical sensation of a physical shape. If we clink it with our finger, what do we perceive? We perceive a sound. So, what is the glass? 

Karma Kagyu would say that that is a mental construct on the basis of all the various sense information. A glass is not just a colored shape, and a glass is not just a cylindrical physical shape, a volume that we feel in our hand, and it’s not a sound, and if we put it to our lips, that’s another physical sensation. Is that the glass? The “glass” is imputed on all of that. It’s conceptual, according to Karma Kagyu. That’s pretty profound, actually, if we think about it, and it affects so many things. 

If we think about language, did you ever wonder how language works? It’s amazing. We only ever hear one tiny little sound at a time, the sound of maybe a consonant and vowel. That’s all we hear at one time, and when we hear the next consonant and vowel, we don’t hear the first one anymore. How in the world do we understand language? How do we understand the whole sentence? We don’t hear a whole sentence at once. It takes an interval of time, and so that’s conceptual. It is a mental construct; it is put together in the mind in the manner of a mental hologram, if we want to speak of it that way. Objects that extend over various senses, and that last over a period of time, and language and these sorts of things are mental constructs. 

If we want to quiet down the mind, we have to get past the level of just not talking in our head. We have to get way, way down to just dealing with the information from different senses and not conceptualizing “glass” or “watch” or these sorts of things. Now, that starts to get very tricky. How in the world would we function in this world if we only stayed on that level and didn’t put the information from various senses together into objects? This is why a Gelugpa objects to this whole presentation and says, “You see not only a colored shape, you actually do see the commonsense glass. You can’t say that you don’t see the glass, that’s just too fragmented.” 

However, it is indicative of the mental process, and that’s what is important here, the mental process of putting things together. What we’re trying to do here is to quiet down the mind to the level where it’s not doing that, in order to be able to actually investigate, how does that mental activity work? That is just basically dealing with information; it’s very, very interesting, especially if we study informatics, this science of information, what’s involved. We try to quiet down the mind to the uncontrived state, whatever that is, and we go deeper and deeper and deeper. 

We can do that with many different methods, and the text that I’m using as a reference here goes through a whole slew of different methods. First, how do we do this? Well, as I indicated a little bit last night, we don’t do this with our eyes closed, never with the eyes closed. Our eyes are open because obviously, we want to observe and investigate the nature of the mind, and the nature of the mind perceiving things, not with our eyes closed. Also, if we’re trying to do any sort of concentration meditation with the eyes closed, there is a very severe danger of falling asleep, so we don’t want to keep our eyes closed. 

The eyes are looking forward, relaxed, but in focus. It always becomes an interesting question for those of us who wear glasses or contact lenses. Do we want to meditate with glasses on or glasses off when our eyes are open? That’s an interesting question. With the glasses on, things tend to be in focus, at least for me. Now, with my glasses off, everything is a blur. Do we want it to be a blur, or do we want it to be in focus? I think that’s an individual choice, but certainly worth experimenting with, to see what is the effect of having our glasses on or having our glasses off. In general, if we want to understand something, I find that if we’re doing an analytical type of meditation, glasses on makes the mind sharper because things are in focus. 

Again, it becomes an interesting question when we’re doing visualization because visualization practice is not done with the eyes. Our eyes look down, but we’re visualizing in front of us, or all around us, or what we ourselves look like, if we’re doing tantra visualization of ourselves as a Buddha-figure. It’s not visual. That’s a hard one, actually, to convince ourselves of that and to stop trying to make it visual. I mean by that using the eyes as the major vehicle. 

Here, eyes are forward, relaxed, but in focus, and we concentrate first of all – and they suggest a visual object – and quiet the mind of thoughts, flightiness, or dullness. The text suggests a Buddha statue, even a stone, or a flame, or a visualized OM AH HUM, whatever feels comfortable. This is a little bit odd from the point of view of some other meditation systems in Buddhism, because they don’t generally recommend just staring at something as a way to gain concentration. 

Again they say here, the eyes are relaxed, but in focus, that means not staring. They’re just sort of looking at something as a way to keep our eyes from moving, basically, if we think about it. It’s not that we’re really focusing on the object, that’s not the point. We want to use that as an anchor, almost, and quiet down. Now that is very, very difficult to do without spacing out, because that’s what happens. We sit there, and we’re looking at something, and we sort of lose focus and space out. 

Now, “space out,” that’s a hard thing to translate. I always have a problem with that. Most of the time, I’m not speaking to a native English audience, and that’s not an easy term to translate, because they don’t have quite equivalents. If we say “your head is in the clouds,” which some other languages have that expression, that’s not quite it either, is it? I try to explain it like being in a daze. I think that’s the closest. We’re not quite in focus, not quite paying attention. We sort of get a glassy look in our eyes. Sometimes we can notice it when somebody is with us, and they’re completely spaced out, not paying attention to what we’re saying. Their eyes are sort of glaze over, but they’re not falling asleep, so we have this lovely expression in English, “spaced out.” 

That’s what happens when we try to do this meditation, and we have to watch out for that. Again, we need to have cultivated mindfulness and alertness to watch out for that. I can’t stress enough that this is difficult to do, because we maintain the mindfulness again and what happens? We get caught up in looking at the object, which is not the point of looking at the object; it’s just our anchor. It’s very, very delicate between not getting lost in the object and not getting lost in being spaced out and quiet down. 

It says, “Use whatever is comfortable.” That’s a very good instruction, very helpful. It’s not that one size fits all. Buddha statues are very good to use, or a Buddha painting – although that’s not the point here – because of being mindful of the qualities of a Buddha and so on. Because there are methods to gain shamatha, which are not mahamudra methods, which are to visualize a Buddha, which helps us for refuge, safe direction, and bodhichitta, all these sorts of things. However, it’s something to look at that makes a good impression on the mind, as opposed to looking at some naked person that will just increase our desire, for example. That’s not what we want to look at in trying to gain this state of mind. Or some horrible, bloody massacre picture or something like that. 

So, there’s a Buddha statue, a stone. Why we would want to look at a stone, I don’t know, but that’s based in the text. A flame – a flame is a difficult one because that moves, so that’s not so good. Moving water is never recommended from what I’ve seen. It’s very relaxing. If there’s a fast-moving stream and we stand on the bridge and look at it, that’s a guarantee of getting spaced out, so that’s to be avoided; we’ll definitely get spaced out looking at that. 

To visualize OM AH HUM, that’s always a good one, if we can visualize it. Of course, there’s always the question of what alphabet are we going to use? My teacher was very liberal in that and said, “Use any alphabet. The Tibetans certainly don’t use the alphabets that were used in India at the time when they got it,” which are not the same alphabets that they use now in India, so dealer’s choice on that one. 

Let go of hopes, expectations, worries, and even let go of the thought, “I am meditating.” Not easy. When we want to quiet the mind down, we want to quiet it not only of verbal thoughts, not only of conceptualizations, but of various distracting emotions. That’s much more difficult. It’s difficult even to identify some of these emotions because they can be quite unconscious, like a hope or an expectation that something is going to happen, or that it’s going to work, or a worry that maybe our mind is going to wander off again, or a worry that maybe we’re not doing it correctly. 

So, these things we have to let go of, and it’s not easy, especially if we are the type of person who’s a chronic worrier, and of course, being nervous and all of that, and self-conscious, “I am meditating,” having a mirror in front of us, this type of thing, a video camera. We don’t want that either. We just sort of do it. That’s the first step. 

We’re not starting at a baby level here. We’re talking about a very difficult type of practice, and I can’t emphasize that too much, because then we don’t have a false expectation that, “Oh, hey, this is easy, I’ll do this.” It’s not easy. 

There is a practical application to this – people often want a practical application – and this is dangerous though. It’s a dangerous practical application: it’s that it’s a good way to fall asleep. We don’t want to fall asleep in the meditation, but when we’re lying in bed, wanting to fall asleep, because we have to get up in a certain amount of hours and go to work, so we don’t want to lie there for an hour trying to fall asleep, a simple solution is to quiet our mind. 

Not so easy, is it? “Just shut up” in our head, and without this worry, “Will I be able to fall asleep in the next minute or five minutes?” Or the hope, “Oh I really wish... oh, come on now, fall asleep, fall asleep...” None of that. Just really, really relax and be quiet, and then we’ll fall asleep. Now, we don’t want to do that in our meditation. This is the danger. I always find it really funny. It is funny, actually, that people get in the habit of reading in order to fall asleep at night. That builds up a very poor habit, that even during the day we start to read and we fall asleep. 

The practical application here is a dangerous one, although I tell you, it works, particularly on an airplane, when we have an overnight flight. This is a trick. I’ll give you a little trick: if we can sit there with our eyes closed and our mind quiet, it counts as sleep. Even though we don’t fall asleep, it rests our body, if we have to deal with a whole day afterward when we arrive. Being able to quiet the mind is a very, very useful skill. Don’t expect it to be perfect, because it’s not going to be perfect. It is very difficult. 

I’ll just go through the methods, and then we can try it a little bit, but I want to get to vipashyana as well this evening, so our time is limited. We then focus on other sense objects. Initially, we were using eye consciousness, so then we can do this with ear consciousness of listening to something and just using that as a focus. I certainly would not recommend listening to music. Music is far too enticing, and so we get caught up in it. If you’re anything like I am, I can’t listen to music without then becoming like a cricket or some sort of insect that involuntarily will repeat that song over and over in my head for the next day or two after I listen to it. 

One has to watch out when listening to music if it is something that has a deep impression on you, like for me, having been a student in the sixties, play a Beatles song, and I’m gone for a week singing it in my head. We don’t want to do the practice listening to something like that, but the tinkling of a bell, or chimes, or something like that, this sort of sound, or a clock ticking, or just the traffic noise of cars going by, or if we live in a nice, tranquil place, the sound of the birds outside. In India, you always have the sound of birds. 

We can do this with smells, with tastes, with physical sensations. Then, practice without an object, which is the main type of practice that is done. We don’t want to spend too much time with these anchors, but get sailing without an anchor of a sense object and practice without an object. For this, stare into space, so the eyes are a bit even more in focus, with open eyes and not blank-minded – it’s very, very difficult, actually, very difficult – and rest in an uncontrived state of – here’s another jargon term – here-now, “Just be there,” this type of thing. 

Obviously, when we’re practicing this way, we still haven’t quieted the mind even of verbal thoughts, but thoughts don’t have to be verbal. They can be emotional types of things; they can be picture types of things. Different people’s minds work in different ways. That is always an interesting discovery, if our minds are very verbal, to find out that there are some people whose minds aren’t verbal. Obviously, people who are deaf and dumb and don’t know verbal language don’t think verbally; there are a lot of people – artistic type of people – that think in images. So, we want to quiet the mind of that too. 

We try to then recognize thoughts for what they are – this is a big method here – as a way to be able to quiet the mind down to this uncontrived, “unchurning” state. What is recommended is to just stare at them, in a sense, and to not follow them out, as they will naturally dissolve. 

Not an easy one. Why is it not easy? What does it mean not to follow out a thought? 

No movie? 

Not only no movie, but no sentences. Because usually when we have verbal thinking – if we pay attention to that here as our topic – then it’s a string of words. Not to follow it out doesn’t mean the grosser level of following out a logical line of thinking, and one thought leads to another, but just stare at it where it is. Again, this becomes very, very delicate. There’s another method, which is to actually use discipline and stop it, that’s one method. That’s not the method which is used here. It’s not just “slam the door on it,” but to just look at it, and it’s sort of like a mouse, we look at it and then it runs away type of thing. However, here it’s not that it runs away, that gets into the vipashyana thing, “Where did it go?” We have to examine, did it go into the mouse hole in our head, and is waiting to come out as soon as we let go of our vigilance? That obviously is a crazy way of looking at it, but sometimes it feels like that, doesn’t it? That it’s sort of bursting to come out. We’ve got to think this nasty thought or whatever. 

Here it’s just to look at it, and it naturally dissolves – that one can only appreciate by actually doing it and seeing, “Well, what’s going to happen? Just repeat over and over again the word?” If we’re thinking about… What thought comes up? It’s very interesting, if we say, “Now think something!” Isn’t it amazing how quiet the mind is when put on the spot and asked to think something? Amusing, isn’t it? If we’re thinking a line, let’s say... All right, I’ll just read what I have here, “Common preliminaries in Karma Kagyu are the four thoughts that turn the mind to Dharma,” so, “They turn the...” OK, so we stop, “They turn the...” If we sort of stop there, it can’t go anywhere if we just look at it, can it? It’s not going to get stuck at “turn, turn, turn, turn...” It’s not like a stuck record, is it? No, so we look at it without letting it go on – although not as a control freak of not letting it go on, but just sort of “there,” look at it. There’s nothing else that it can do except dissolve, and it doesn’t go off into a hole in our head. That is the method. 

Another method, which is a very helpful method, because that first method actually requires tremendous discipline – mindfulness, to remember to do it, and to actually do it – but the second method is to recognize that a thought is just a wave of the mind, that the mind is like an ocean, and these thoughts are just waves of the ocean. The wave is not different from the ocean, and the ocean itself is just water, and so it doesn’t disturb the depths of the ocean, no matter how turbulent the waves are; it’s just a wave. 

That, by the way, is a very, very helpful method for dealing not so much with verbal thoughts, although it can be helpful with verbal thoughts, it’s very helpful with music going on in our head, which can be a horrible distraction; or, even more significantly, emotions – a wave of an emotion, which could be anger, it could be jealously, it could be attachment, greed, missing somebody, this type of thing, or a wave of sadness – which is a different category than emotion from a Buddhist point of view, but anyway – a wave of sadness comes up, a wave of depression comes up – it’s just a wave on the ocean. 

Don’t get caught up in it. Don’t be the surfer, surfing on the top of it, as if we were separate from it. Don’t become the submarine, that we have to go down below and escape it. We are the ocean, in a sense, and this is just a wave. Don’t get caught up in it. It’s very good for things like menopause and so on, or flashes of emotion that come up. It’s only a wave, no big deal, so what? That’s the attitude. So what? So I feel that. It’s a wave, big deal, and it will pass, and even if it repeats, so what? It’s just a wave. 

That can be very, very helpful, especially when we are emotionally distraught, or irrational waves of emotion – or sadness, or whatever – come up. We do this by just looking ahead, and if this becomes too difficult, which it may, then we can focus on the breath to help the process. Focusing on the breath is not suggested as the first method here, but is suggested as sort of a last resort if we can’t really handle any of the other methods, “OK, let’s go back to just focusing on the breath,” as an anchor. 

Remember, it’s an anchor; it’s not that that is what we really want to have all our attention on. It’s not the breath; it is to quiet down within that context and then eventually settle into a nonconceptual state – that means without putting together objects, without that sort of stuff – neither too tight, nor too loose. If we’re actually able to get that, then that sense of fitness that we get – that is the defining characteristic of shamatha – will have three characteristics to it, three flash experiences we might call them. They’re not a deep realization; it’s not that they last, but it’s sort of a flash thing that occurs. They are a feeling of bliss, of clarity, and of bareness or starkness. It is very exhilarating, very blissful, but not, to use the idiom, “blissed out”; in other words, we shouldn’t be spaced out with bliss, but it’s very blissful, very joyous. 

Clarity does not mean that everything is in focus. When we hear the word “clarity” in the Buddhist teachings, it’s referring to the ability for things to just arise. Being in focus, of course, is helpful, but it can be not in focus also. It can be clear that there’s an emotion, it can be clear that there is a thought, that whole aspect of a clear space that allows for a fresh arising of a mental hologram, in a sense. That’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about clarity, so it’s very subtle, not just “everything is focused.” 

And starkness or bareness means that it’s free of all the frills, all the conceptualizations, all the words, all the negative emotions. We don’t want to discount compassion and patience and these sorts of things, but it’s free of these disturbing emotions. 

Thus, we get these three flash experiences, and they emphasize very much in the texts not to get attached to them. If we get attached to them, then there are the god realms, these various divine rebirths, celestial realms, and if we get too much caught up in the blissful aspect and attached to them, that can result in a rebirth as one of the desire realm gods. If we get too caught up in the clarity aspect, then as one of the form realm gods, and too much in this bareness thing, then as the formless realm gods. So, those things are to be avoided. 

That’s shamatha. I’m a little bit fearful of asking for questions because that might then leave absolutely no time for anything else, but one or two questions, if you have, about this topic, not about something else, please. 

When we use these anchors of visual objects or sound objects and so on, do we do them one at a time or all together?

There are various methods that we can use. Usually, we do it one sense at a time; it’s up to you. Obviously, in the beginning, we want to just use one, so that we get familiar with that. Once we have become familiar with one, because when we get into vipashyana practice, then we want to see what’s the difference between a visual perception and a sound perception. That’s particularly emphasized when we’re working with the Gelugpa approach of the defining characteristic of mental activity, and it’s the same whether it’s seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and so on, but here as well we want to see that with any of the senses we can get down and there’s no big difference between them. So, one can do one sense at a time and then go through, let’s say a repertoire, and then we can also just – again, this is more in the Gelugpa approach – just anything that’s happening.

That’s a very interesting, very, very interesting thing to observe, because, in fact, we’re getting information from all the senses at the same time. It’s just a matter of attention, how much mindfulness and attention we have of all the senses. There’s information coming from the eyes; we’re hearing the traffic on the road; we’re smelling the air; we have a taste of the saliva in our mouth; we have physical sensations... Have you ever focused on the sensation of your tongue in your mouth? It’s a weird one, actually, not just when we have a cut on our tongue, but there’s this thing in our mouth, that’s pretty weird, actually. Obviously, we have to not be emotionally unstable to focus on something like that, but all these sensations are there – the sensation of our clothing on our body, of the chair underneath our backside, if we’re sitting on a chair and so on – and to be aware of all those senses simultaneously is actually very loud and very interesting. 

To see what is mental activity, and as I say, it’s more the Gelugpa approach, but there are various things from these approaches which can be incorporated. As I said in the beginning, don’t be sectarian about this thing. There are many, many ways of trying to recognize what is the state of the mind. It’s just that rather than defining it with specific characteristics, which is the Gelugpa thing, Kagyu tends to say, “Well beyond words, beyond concepts,” and so on. They don’t really define it for you, and it’s more just sort of “quiet down into it.” Because if we point out its defining characteristics, then we tend to try too hard to see them, and we have our own idea and preconception of what they would be, and that could be a hindrance. 

How long does it take to quiet down?

How long does it typically take to quiet down? Obviously, we may never accomplish it in this lifetime, or we may be able to do it very quickly. It depends on different people and of course, the preliminaries, these preparations are very important. As I say, we need to cleanse the mind of gross obstacles first, mental blocks, and have our mind be very open and flexible. If the mind is uptight, we’re never going to quiet down. 

As you’re trying to get down there and at least superficially quiet yourself a little bit, one of the issues that I sometimes have is: there are some days where I don’t feel any physical pain, and I can get my mind a lot quieter, and there are other times when I’m just hurting, or I’m really hot. 

Well, hurting or feeling hot when we try to quiet down, it’s just a wave on the ocean. So what? Big deal, so what? It’s just a sensation, no big deal. I’m hot – don’t be a fanatic, take off your sweater, take off your shirt, take off your pants if you want to, what difference does it make? Open the window, what difference does it make? Deal with it. 

So, moving around is OK? 

Don’t be a fanatic on the one hand; on the other hand, don’t be a baby. “Oh, the baby,” and “It doesn’t want to sit,” and “Poor me,” and “My legs hurt,” and “Pick up the baby and rock the baby in your arms so it’ll be OK.” Don’t baby yourself; you’ll never get anywhere babying yourself. Don’t complain – that’s a big obstacle, complaining – and we don’t have to have an audience to complain, we’re very good at complaining in our own heads. That comes into the category of “no hopes, no worries.” We can add to that “no complaints, no disappointments.” We just do it and don’t expect anything. 

It will go up and down, and that’s the waves of the ocean, just “No big deal.” This is very, very important as an attitude to have in life. Somebody steps on our toe when we’re walking, or bangs into us, or we bang our foot against the table, or stub our toe, or whatever, and “So what?” We just go on. Don’t make a big deal out of it. We check that we didn’t break anything, so it hurts, so what? It will go away. Ignore it. We have to do that, otherwise we spend our whole life being miserable because we’re going to get bumped around all the time, and it doesn’t have to be physically bumped around, it can be emotionally bumped around. So what? It’s just a wave on the ocean. If we can do that and be sincere, it works; it really does. No big deal. 

The reincarnation of my teacher, the young Serkong Rinpoche – he’s 23 now – the line that he always used since he was a little boy was, “Nothing special; it’s nothing special.” I went with him around America for a month doing the whole Disneyland, Statue of Liberty number when he was 20, and at the end, “Rinpoche, what did you think of America?” “Nothing special; it’s nothing special.” “What was your favorite thing?” “The Holocaust Museum in Washington.” That was his favorite, the highlight of the whole trip, because it reminded him so strongly of compassion. It was a better highlight than Disneyland. 

When you have a sense consciousness, like the noise of a car going by, and then you have a mental formation, and the next step, “It’s a car,” where do you go from there?

When we’re using the sense of sound as an anchor, we don’t identify what we’re hearing, “That’s the sound of a car,” “Now a bird,” “Now the clock ticking.” No, not at all. Don’t follow it out. Don’t get caught up in the object, not in the slightest. It is – I can’t think of any other descriptive word except – an anchor, it’s not our focus. The aim is to quiet the mind down, and that just helps to not wander so much. 

Thoughts, but no thinking? 

No. It’s not the thought, “No thoughts, no thoughts.” It is just “stay in place,” in a sense. We want to do it for a short time, otherwise, it gets very discouraging, short little sections, a couple of minutes, and then we take a rest, pause, do another couple of minutes, pause, something like that. If we try it for too long, especially at the beginning, it’s not going to work; it’ll be counterproductive. 

It’s sort of like in Zen, “looking at the wall.” That type of thing. It’s not that we’re examining the wall. It’s just an anchor. Try it.

[Meditation]

OK, now let me describe to you, maybe as a help, my experience in doing this, and then we can do it again. I’m looking at the floor as an anchor, and what do I see? There is a maroon colored shape, which is the rug. There is the brown colored shape, which is the linoleum, and there are sort of these blue cylindrical shaped objects, which are the socks of the person in front of me on their feet. These are colored shapes, and all that is in my field of vision is colored shapes. I’m not thinking, “rug, floor, feet, socks” – don’t put it into an object – it’s just colored shapes to keep my head looking forward. 

Now, first big obstacle, breathing. I tend to give in my head a sound illustration to my breathing, so it’s not just the sound of the breath, but it’s sort of “Aah-haa, aah-haa.” I add a vocal aspect to the breathing in my mind, which is actually very stupid and annoying, but I find that that sort of happens. Try to go beyond that; go deeper than that. 

Next thing, what is there? My heart beating. I can feel my heart beating, the temperature of the room, and these sorts of things. It’s hard to just stay focused on one sense because the information comes in from these other senses that we normally don’t pay attention to, but as we quiet down, we notice them. That’s why the process is described in very colorful terms in Tibetan of “dropping down,” “rang bab” (rang-babs). We automatically drop down to the basis level. It’s like a cylinder of water is being shaken up, and it has to sort of settle down. 

That’s what we want to do, settle down, and not get caught in all this more subtle and subtle type of information coming in from the senses as we quiet down. These are the things we have to watch out for. Obviously, I’m talking about after we’ve stopped talking in our head, as that is the most basic level. That’s why I say people tend to trivialize this practice and think that it’s only to quiet the voice in our head; it’s far deeper than that. Now, we’re just talking about step number one here. This dropping down to the natural state is talking about something that is very, very subtle, and we need to really go deeper and deeper. 

Don’t make any big deal out of your breathing and your heart beating and all these other things that really can become distractions. You can quiet your mind of talking; you can’t really quiet the sound and sensation of your heart beating or breathing. It’s important not to make that into an obstacle, and not to make it into a focus. That’s not the focus. Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, he was always very sarcastic, used to say, “If you spend all your time focusing on that, you’ll be reborn as a lizard on a rock, just sort of breathing there,” you know how the gullet of a lizard goes in and out? That’s not the point; we want to go much more deeper than that. 

Let’s try it again for another two minutes, and then we’ll get into this vipashyana. 

[Meditation]

Now, I think that perhaps we can appreciate the importance of renunciation here. One has to renounce and let go of our ordinary thoughts, worries, hopes, nervousness and tension, and all that we’re so familiar with. We have to be willing to let go, and it’s the same with this nonsectarian thing that’s emphasized in the text, not be uptight about anything. Because unless we can let go, and are willing to let go, by understanding the benefit of letting go, we’re not going to be able to drop down to this natural state, no way. 

It is more than just relaxing our muscles, and they don’t even mention that, but that obviously has to be there before. We can’t have our shoulders way up at a tension and our neck all tense, and our brow furrowed with intensity, this type of thing, and worry. All of that has to be totally relaxed, so it’s very important that the posture is relaxed as well in a way that is not an artificial strain. Artificial strain is if we don’t have our hands in our lap, but they’re up six inches from our lap – boy, does that strain the muscles in our upper arm if we do it like that. Don’t do that. So, just simple things. 

With vipashyana, we have already achieved shamatha. One can do facsimiles of shamatha meditation beforehand, but then that’s not vipashyana. That’s practicing similar to vipashyana. Vipashyana, we achieve upon the piggyback of shamatha. 

Here, the eyes need to be more intense, “looking slightly upwards” are the instructions. It doesn’t mean having our eyes rolled up at the top of our head in some unbelievably strained eye position, but with shamatha, we tend to look slightly down, and that’s the more common posture for the eyes. When they say toward the tip of our nose, it doesn’t mean cross-eyed looking at the tip of our nose, it just means in the direction of the tip of our nose, which means towards the floor in front of us, but here the eyes are slightly up, so it’s a little bit more intense. One always wants for vipashyana for the mind to be more intense. In Gelugpa, we are actually really supposed to stare, but here it doesn’t say stare. 

The mind should be “at its own level” – that’s another jargon term that is used in Karma Kagyu Mahamudra – at its own natural level, uncontrived, unselfconscious. “Make it more intense,” it says; make it more intense, tighter awareness, and look at the nature of the settled mind, the mind that is in the state of shamatha. Obviously, we can’t do that unless we’ve achieved shamatha, or at least something similar to shamatha, even if it’s only for a few moments. 

Now, that becomes an interesting question, what in the world does that mean, “to tighten your awareness”? How do we do that? One of the ways to do that seems to be with our eye muscles. Have you ever tried to sort of increase the tension toward the rear of your eyes with the muscles? Like when we’re having trouble reading the fine print on a bottle of something? Especially when it’s in raised white letters on a white plastic background, it’s a really challenging thing to be able to read the very important instructions. We sort of scrunch our eyes a little bit to try to get it more in focus. 

I’ve never heard that instruction from somebody, but it seems to me that that’s the way, that when we do that, our mind is a little more intense, without being “tight” in a negative sense. Then, the method here is to ask various questions. Well, that’s a form of analytical meditation, so let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that Karma Kagyu does not have analytical voidness meditation. It does. It’s just not in the form of logical syllogisms, but it sure has it, for example: “Is it inside?” “Is it outside?” “Does it have a color?” “Does it have a form?” “Is it nothing, or is it just something that can’t be put into words,” and so on. 

Well, this quickly becomes incredibly trivialized if one doesn’t really have a background in having studied Madhyamaka and so on. This is not our first step of looking at how things exist. “What color is your mind?” “Well, it’s not blue; it’s not green; it’s not up my nose; it’s not in my ear; it’s not in my bellybutton. So what?” That’s trivial. That’s not what they’re talking about. Don’t trivialize it. So, what are they talking about? What about Madhyamaka philosophy? 

We have words and concepts. Here is the clue. Is it something that can’t be put into words? That’s the clue here, words. We have to differentiate two things when we talk about words or mental labels. Words have meanings; there’s no such thing as a word without a meaning. Then, it’s a sound. A word has a meaning associated with it, so words refer to things, but there is nothing that corresponds to words. That’s the clue. 

If I say “red,” “red” refers to something. It has a meaning; it refers to something, but out there on the color spectrum, are there definite boundaries and lines that say, “One angstrom on this side is red, and one angstrom on the other side is orange?” That would be what corresponds to words. What corresponds to words is a universe which is structured like a dictionary, with everything in boxes, “It’s in this box; it’s in the box of red,” “This is in the box of orange,” “This is in the box of good, bad,” whatever. There aren’t things that correspond to words. 

“The universe is beyond words, beyond concepts.” That’s what it says, but, of course, words refer to something. They have meaning, and we have to use them for communicating. Then, what are we looking for here? We’re looking for “Is the mind a thing corresponding to the word ‘mind’? Is it that there’s a separate ‘me’ that’s using it as a tool in my head?” So you see, if we don’t understand this in the context of the whole theory of words and meanings and mental labeling and so on, it’s totally trivial. Of course, the mind isn’t yellow or green and isn’t in our left elbow. Of course, it isn’t; that’s stupid. One needs to look on a much deeper level what this questioning process is. 

For this, it says very importantly to work with a guru, with a teacher, if we happen to have the good fortune to be able to work personally with a teacher. For most of us, that’s not so readily available. The teacher will pay more attention to someone who is sincere and really is properly motivated than to someone who is just fooling around and not so serious. Often we have the expectation, many of us, that we are great Milarepas, and we are special, and we should have special treatment. Well, if we really are a sincere practitioner, the teacher will pay attention, but if not, we have to grow up. This isn’t kids’ stuff, and nobody is going to baby us. If they are babying us as a teacher, they’re not really doing it in the traditional way. The traditional way is nobody babies us. We don’t grow by being treated like a baby. We have to develop the character ourselves. That’s the way it is. 

We look then at the nature of this settled mind. Settled mind means in the state of shamatha, with these flash experiences; it doesn’t mean that it’s only an instant, but it’s not a stable thing, and we don’t have it all the time. It’s blissful, as there is this clarity of “anything can arise,” and it’s bare and stark. Then, we look at it like that, and “Is it a thing, corresponding to words like a color, form, etc.? Or is it something which cannot be... words don’t actually encapsulate it?” We say, “beyond words, beyond concepts.” It’s not in a box of a word. 

In that same state of bliss, clarity and bare non-conceptuality, then we look at the moving mind with thoughts. What is the nature of the thoughts? Do thoughts have an arising, an enduring and a cessation? How do thoughts exist? That’s a very interesting question. Is it that they’re sitting offstage in our mind, and then they march out on stage, and “Here we are,” and then they march off and go back into our memory or something like that? Or our imagination? Somehow our Western way of conceptualizing almost implies that “Something came up from my unconscious,” as if it was sitting there waiting offstage. “It came up from my imagination,” “It came up from my memory.” Scuza, pardon me, where is it? Can we actually find it? 

In the Gelugpa presentation of Madhyamaka Prasangika, when they’re talking about, we “can’t find” something, again, don’t trivialize that. That’s the same thing as, “Is your mind up your nose?” Can you find it? Well, that’s referring to a referent “thing” in a box. Can we point to it? There are no things out there in boxes. That’s what it means, “is it findable?” Is there a thought? It’s very clever, they’re covering the same material as we would get in Gelugpa, but just not putting it in the terminology, in the jargon, because they’re very mistrustful of that type of jargon. They use their own jargon. We’re left with jargon in the end anyway, such as “fall to your own state,” “the natural...” all these words, which are just jargon in the end. Anyway, don’t tell anybody that. 

Do the thoughts leave a trace, like footprints in the snow, or something like that? Do they come from somebody? One method is to question it to death so that the impelling force is gone; that’s one way of looking at this questioning process, but I think it really is more an analytical process in the end. They don’t want to say that it is, but in the end it really does come down to that. It’s just they don’t give us the answers ahead of time, except for the fact of “everything is beyond words, beyond concepts,” so one tries to see it a little bit more clearly. It’s more difficult this way, actually. Can we put our understanding into words? No, we can’t put it into words because things don’t exist in boxes. Can it be expressed in words? That’s another question, because if it can’t be expressed in words, can we ever communicate it? 

So, we have the questioning; we question the thing, and we try to understand, “What is it?” We see that it is a clear, blissful, bare awareness, even when it’s moving with thoughts, this mental activity. It’s not really the Zen, the Rinzai Zen thing of profound doubt, which is a whole another method of questioning, in which we just ask one question, “What is it?” or something like that, to gain a state of vipashyana that is always exceptionally perceptive by always questioning “What is it?” It’s not that; it’s quite a different method from Rinzai Zen. It’s more analytical, and seeing that “OK, things don’t fit into boxes.” 

Then, we look at the mind and the appearances of sense objects, so the mental activity and the content of mental activity. What’s the relationship of appearance-making and appearance? “Appearance,” that’s a very difficult word. The way that I like to clarify that is more in terms of mental holograms. That’s actually what’s going on, even from a scientific point of view, these electrical impulses and chemical stuff. What do we actually see is more like a mental hologram. The mental hologram and the actual perception, are those two different things, or is making a mental hologram actually what perception is? 

It’s the old question, does a thought first arise and then we think it? It’s not like that, is it? Or does a sight first arise and then we see it? We analyze this type of thing. Are they the same, are they different? Do the same with our bodies and minds, with feelings and the mind. Then, we look at the difference between the settled and moving minds. Is it that there’s just sort of a clear voidness, or absence, or void, in a sense, and the thoughts just pop out from nothing, and then go back to a nothing? This type of thing. Or is it a truly existent nothing? How can a nothing become a something? 

Here we are, back in our Madhyamaka analysis of causes and effects. Do things come from nothing? How does a something come from a nothing? Can a something go back to being a nothing? When does it stop being a something? We can really start to investigate these things. One understands that things don’t exist as clumps, encapsulated in plastic, encapsulated nothing, and then, all of a sudden, they become something. It’s not like that. So one looks at all these things, and ultimately what we come to is that they can’t be identified as a “this,” or a “that.” It’s mental activity. It’s not in a box of a word. It’s beyond words, yet it functions with no obstruction. 

We’re getting into what Gelugpa calls, “You see voidness in terms of dependent arising and dependent arising in terms of voidness.” It’s not that nothing really exists, and everything is just voidness; that’s absurd as well. One tries to see that there’s no obstruction. Even though there’s nothing findable, since it can’t be put in words, nevertheless, everything functions. There is a knowing; there is a clear, vivid arising and knowing of mental holograms, and so on. It’s been there all the time; it’s never not been the case. This is getting to the basic Buddha-nature, and there’s no obstruction, which means that it can be aware of anything. This type of thing. 

Without coming from somewhere, going from somewhere, there is no discontinuity. It’s not a total blankness, no matter whether it’s moving, whether it’s thinking, etc. Clear, stark, brilliant, this type of thing. The text goes further and further, but I think you get a general idea then of what is really involved here with this type of practice, this type of meditation. In order to really investigate the nature of mental activity, it needs to be in this stilled and settled state; otherwise, the mind is too chaotic, too noisy to really be able to investigate clearly. 

That’s vipashyana, and on the basis of this understanding, that brings us to the understanding of voidness, which is in the context of bodhichitta, so aiming to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all. By applying this type of opponent of being able to stay with this understanding of the nature of the mind, then disturbing emotions and so on don’t arise anymore. We’re able to get rid of them without having to smash them with a hammer, in a sense, we go below them almost. 

Raise them up? 

No, it’s not that we raise them up, it’s that there’s no basis for them to arise; we’re below them, and it’s not that they’re sitting there waiting to arise. It’s not that either, and that now we have fooled them by going below where they are. It’s not like that. That’s why I was saying, not the analogy of a submarine, that we are in our protected space in a bubble, a submarine, below the surface of where all the agitation is. It’s not like that. It’s not like that at all. 

This is just to give you a taste. Obviously, this requires a great deal of thought. First, think it over, chew it over, what it’s talking about, and then gradual practice and experience. 

It’s very, very important to have a teacher that can correct us and help in this process, because it’s very easy, as I said, at the very beginning to just sit there and space out and we’re never going to get anywhere with that, not at all. In fact, it’ll be quite detrimental. One needs to be slapped around a little bit by a teacher. Good teachers are not gentle; good teachers slap us around, so that we don’t fall asleep or get complacent. That’s out of compassion, of course, but we can’t always be told, “Yeah, yeah,” “Good girl,” “Good boy,” and get a pat on the head. That doesn’t help. That doesn’t help at all. It’s like that.

What part of the mind is doing the observing after the calming? 

There is no separate mind that’s doing it. This is the whole point why we’re saying that we don’t want the dichotomy of the policeman part of the mind checking the other part of the mind. It’s just one mental activity. That’s what it’s saying.

If you think about it, your question is a very excellent question because it’s trying to understand well, where is the mind and what is it? Because here is mental activity questioning about the nature of mental activity. Is there a mental activity separate from the mental activity of questioning that is the object that we are investigating? There isn’t. Now is that mental activity looking at itself? Well, in what way? Then we have this analogy that a knife can’t cut itself, so what are we looking at? These are the types of things that a teacher helps us with, or we discover ourselves as we’re thinking about it, “What am I looking at?” “There is no something that’s separate from the looking,” and, “Is there a ‘me’ that’s separate from all of that, that’s doing the looking with a tool in my head?” That then becomes really, really weird. 

Although we can express it that way, it doesn’t exist that way. That’s what we’re investigating, does it exist that way in which we conceptualize it? I, a separate entity, am looking at – so there’s a looking – the nature of the mind, so that’s three things. Are there three things there? Where are they? We don’t get frustrated; we gave that up long ago in doing the shamatha practice. No hopes, no worries, no disappointments. We don’t get uptight about the whole thing, but investigate and realize that, “Hey, the way that I imagined things exist is not referring to anything actual.” 

Any other questions? Good. Then let’s end here. I’ve silenced them all. It’s like my Aunt Ethel when she would make a huge family feast. The sign of success was that nobody could get up from the table, and nobody could say anything, then it was a total success. She’d floored them. So, no questions. A good sign. 

We end with a dedication. We think that whatever positive force, whatever understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for everybody to be able to really understand the nature of the mind – it’s there all the time – and through that realization and staying in the natural state of the mind, be free from all this garbage that produces so much suffering and problems, so that we can be of the best benefit to everybody. 

Thank you very much. 

Read the original text “Mahamudra Eliminating the Darkness of Ignorance” by The Ninth Karmapa.