LPA13: Keeping Motivation throughout Meditation Sessions

Review of Previous Sessions

We are studying a letter that Tsongkhapa, the great Tibetan master who lived at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, wrote to his friend Konchog-tsultrim, a great accomplished meditator. This friend had asked Tsongkhapa to write to him some practical advice about how actually to practice sutra and tantra, specifically how to meditate. 

We have seen that in his answer, Tsongkhapa starts with the way that lam-rim usually starts (the graded stages of the path) — in fact, the official title of this text is A Brief Indication of the Graded Paths (or Graded Pathway Minds) to Enlightenment — and he says we’ve found an excellent working basis (that’s the precious rebirth), and we’ve met with the teachings, and we’ve been cared for by spiritual teachers, and we have the power of mind to discern what’s to be adopted and rejected. And so, we need to take advantage of those opportunities that we have, and to do that we need to engage ourselves with the Buddha’s teachings. For that, we have to rely on a spiritual teacher. 

This is always emphasized; the importance of the spiritual teacher and that the spiritual teacher be qualified. And although there are many lists of qualifications that the teacher needs to have, here because Tsongkhapa is speaking about how to actually meditate and how to put the teachings into practice, he emphasizes these qualities of a teacher that are relevant to that. The teacher has to know the difference between what are the actual paths of mind that we need to develop and what are not (in other words, get the correct ones) and know all their details (in other words, not add anything extra, not leave anything out) and also know what the graded order is and how to evaluate each student’s level to know where to start, how much to emphasize, and to go on from there. 

It’s very interesting when we look at that point — I don’t think I mentioned this before — but even if a student is very advanced, if you look at the way that the Tibetans teach, they always go back to the beginning and make sure that the foundation is sound. Even though they might not give very much detail on the stages leading up to where the student is, they always will review that to make sure that the foundation is firm and also to reassert or reaffirm the whole structure of the entire development of the person and the mind. This is very important to have, the full context, the full breadth of it, see things in context. We have one type of meditation, which is called glance or review meditation, in which we go over all the stages of the path, from the beginning to the end. This is something that we find, for instance, in the Lama Chopa (Bla-ma mchod-pa, The Guru Puja), in which we review all the steps. Or if we look at any of the tantra sadhanas, at the end there’s always a long prayer, and that prayer — like what we have at the end of the Lama Chopa — reviews all the stages of the path according to that tantra system but always starting with the sutra levels. That is important, no matter how advanced we are, not to lose the whole context of the development. 

Then Tsongkhapa goes on to speak about how the teacher needs to have gained confidence and certainty about all these points from having been led by his or her own teacher. That emphasizes the point about lineage, that there be an unbroken lineage of teachers having studied with qualified teachers, and going back and back like that, to ensure that everything has been done properly. And the teacher needs to have been trained according to the Buddhist classics This is emphasizing the point that the lineage needs to go all the way back to the Buddha and through the various great Indian masters — and Tibetan masters as well, but the emphasis is always on the Indian masters. And it’s important to realize that practice is based on the text; it isn’t that the texts are just for study and that practice is something else. 

Then, as for how we begin our practice, Tsongkhapa quotes Nagarjuna and Aryadeva saying we need to tame our minds. And tame our minds here is referring to not just getting rid of disturbing emotions and distractions and things like that, which are certainly the main point in terms of taming our mind, but how we begin that process is by making the shape of the whole process. ? the shape of the whole process has to do with the motivation, and so — actually they use that expression in Tibetan “to shape the mind,” in a sense, when we’re training ourselves — and so we need to have the motivating mental framework. Then Tsongkhapa starts his more detailed explanation on this point. 

The mental framework of the motivation has to do with a much broader and much more complex state of mind than simply what we might call motivation in our Western languages. We include here having an aim (what are we aiming for?), what is the intention (what are we going to do with that goal that we’re aiming for?), and what is the set of emotions that will drive us toward that goal, support our reaching that goal. When we’re aiming for a goal, it’s based not just on emotion but also on understanding of what the benefit is of that goal, and what we’re going to do with that goal, and what we need to overcome or reject in order to reach that goal. All of that is involved in what often is just summarized by the word motivation. That’s why I call it a whole motivating mental framework. The structure for that is the three scopes or three levels of motivation that we are familiar with from the lam-rim, the graded stages of pathway minds leading to liberation and enlightenment. 

The first level: our goal is to improve and guarantee that we have better future rebirths. And the better future rebirths here are not just speaking about being reborn in a heaven, although that could be included here in terms of what would be common with other religions. We certainly have that in other religions, other systems, to be born in a heaven. But here, although there are certain benefits that can be gained from such a rebirth, the main point is to have a precious human rebirth in all our lifetimes. What is the reason for wanting that? The reason for wanting that is so that we can continue on the spiritual path, that we will have the best opportunity to be able to do that. 

We also have to know, by the way, with the motivating framework, what we need to do in order to reach that goal. And so, the motivating emotion here is that we realize that we could go to a worse state of rebirth (we’ll lose all the opportunities), and we dread that happening. And we also know that if we — now here’s the method — if we put the safe direction in our life of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and particularly refraining from destructive behavior and making prayers to be born with a precious human rebirth, and especially, as I say, keeping strict ethical discipline (in other words, using that faculty that we have as human beings to be able to know what to adopt and what to reject and to be able to then exercise self-control in terms of that), then we can reach that goal of continuing to have a precious human rebirth. 

Then the second level is thinking in terms of how even if we continue to have a precious human rebirth, we’re still going to have all the problems that are associated with uncontrollably recurring rebirth, and so we aim to gain liberation from that uncontrollably recurring rebirth, realizing that we’re never going to really be able to gain peace of mind and so on if we still have all the disturbing emotions and so on that drive our samsaric existence that we’re still going to have with the precious human rebirth. We definitely want to get out of that. We are disgusted and fed up with all the various types of sufferings of uncontrollably recurring rebirth — that’s the emotional component of it — and we know that we’ll continue to have that if we continue to be under the control of disturbing emotions and the karma that is brought on by it. Then we need to follow… what will get us to gain that liberation is the three higher trainings in higher ethical discipline, concentration, and discriminating awareness or voidness, based on, all of these, renunciation (turning away, be willing to give up — wanting to give up — samsara and its causes) and determination to be free. We have that on the intermediate level. 

And then on the advanced level we are thinking about the suffering of everybody, how terrible that is, and we’re not the only one. It’s not sufficient to gain liberation ourselves. We’re completely interconnected with everyone. Therefore, we need to become a Buddha in order to overcome not just the emotional obscurations but the cognitive obscurations (so we know fully cause and effect) so that we know how to help others as fully as possible. We’re driven emotionally by love and compassion for others. We understand the reason why we need to achieve enlightenment in order to benefit others (so that we can become omniscient, that’s the point). The method for that is bodhichitta, which is aiming for our future enlightenments, which have not yet happened, with the intention to reach it and benefit everybody by means of that. The way we will do that is with the six far-reaching attitudes (pha-rol-tu phyin-pa, Skt. pāramitā) that we commit ourselves to practicing in full. Generosity, ethical discipline, patience, joyous perseverance, mental stability or concentration, and discriminating awareness or wisdom. 

These are the three levels of motivation. We also saw that we can understand them in terms of the mental continuum, and I used that angle for explaining it because I think it’s very relevant for understanding how we meditate on bodhichitta. We need to understand and accept... When we use the word that’s usually translated as “faith” in the translations, which I think is a terrible translation, it means to believe a fact to be true. We’re talking about something which is a fact, and you’re convinced that this fact is true, like the earth is round or something like that. That’s not faith; that is a belief in a fact. And so we have to have that state of mind with respect to beginningless rebirth, beginningless and endless mind, that the mental continuum has no beginning and no end, and that’s not very easy to understand. But without going into that, that is the basis here. 

On the basis of that, then, when we think of the initial scope, we’re thinking of always having a precious human rebirth in terms of that beginningless and endless individual mental continuum. For the intermediate level, we are thinking how the emotional obscurations — that’s the unawareness of voidness or reality and all the disturbing emotions that go with it, etc. — that those are just fleeting stains, they’re not an intrinsic part of that mental continuum. For the advanced scope, we realize that the cognitive obscurations as well are not an intrinsic part of that mental continuum, of the mental activity. 

When we talk about mental continuum, we’re talking about moment-to-moment sequence of mental activity: the arising (or making arise) of a mental hologram or an appearance, and the cognition of it. These two being two sides of one activity and not occurring without a separate me or a mind that is making it happen. We also understand that all the mental continuums are interconnected while still maintaining their individuality. Now, we have this view together with our motivating mental framework. 

Then Tsongkhapa says that it’s important to have these motivating mental frameworks in an uncontrived manner. In other words, we need to be able to have them sincerely and we need to have them not just in words. In order to actually have these motivating mental frameworks, we have to meditate. Meditation (sgom) means to build it up as a beneficial habit. Then the question is, of course, how do we do that? That now becomes the next major topic that Tsongkhapa discusses. He says that we need to know the causes for any particular state of mind that we want to generate, what are the various things that it depends on, all the aspects of it (in other words, all the parts of it). 

For instance, if we think of compassion, great compassion (snying-rje chen-po), which is aimed at everybody, we have to have all the causes for that, which is equanimity, etc., and not being attracted to some, repelled from others, or indifferent to others. The aspects — all the different types of suffering that others have. The way of taking that to mind, which is the wish for them to be parted from that. What is beneficial for developing that, which is recognizing our connection with everybody (everybody’s been our mother, kind to us, etc.). What’s detrimental to that? Selfish concern, etc. What do we focus on? We focus on others and their suffering, etc. How each of these states of minds will function? Compassion will function to rid us of our self-centeredness, our depression, etc., the unhappiness that we have of just thinking “poor me.” It functions to enable us to actually build up a tremendous amount of positive force in terms of ourselves, help others as well, and draw us to bodhichitta, to reaching enlightenment. 

There are all these sorts of things that we need to know. And we need to supplement that by gaining confidence in these methods in between sessions by reading the various scriptural texts that describe these methods and states of mind, describe the lives of previous masters and Buddha himself, in which we gain inspiration from the examples of how they have done this. 

Also, although Tsongkhapa doesn’t express it explicitly here, what helps with all of this is a fully qualified spiritual master, to actually see a living example of someone who embodies what we’re aiming for. This is very, very important. When we work with a spiritual teacher, what we need to do is to… without denying any shortcomings that the person might have (we don’t want to encourage naivety), but to say “That’s OK, but I’m not going to focus on that.” Because if we focus on someone’s negative qualities, all we do is get into a negative state of mind of complaining, criticizing, and it’s a very unhappy state of mind and usually a very arrogant one. Rather than that, what we focus on are the good qualities (yon-tan) of the teacher, what that represents, etc., and that keeps us focused on Buddha-qualities, because to actually focus on the list of qualities of Buddha himself or herself is something that’s quite difficult to relate to. 

We also need to build up a tremendous amount of positive force and cleanse away negative force in between sessions, all of that. 

This is what we have discussed so far, and I think it’s important to review this each time and really to keep it in mind, because this is very, very important practical advice. 

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