LPA38: Explanation of the Anuttarayoga Method

Participant: When you spoke about the method to do the opposite of grasping, when you try to deconstruct it, you said that… You gave a pretty advanced definition, for me, of grasping, and then you said, “OK, the opposite of it is that you just deny it.” You just deny it if I understood it right. But can you please explain this a bit more?

Dr. Berzin: OK. He’s asking a very important question, which is to elaborate a little bit more on applying a mutually exclusive state of mind to grasping for true existence, truly established existence, which is an impossible thing. The term from Tibetan, coming from Sanskrit, that’s involved here is usually just translated as “grasping for true existence” (bden-par ’dzin-pa), this word grasping (’dzin-pa, Skt. graha). Grasping, however, is not a very good translation (but I can’t think of any better one), because it [’dzin-pa] implies two things that are going on, and when we get rid of grasping, we get of rid first one part of it and the other part is still there. Underlying this grasping for true existence is that, due to the habits of that grasping, our minds make appear an appearance of impossible ways of existence, as if there was something on the side of the object that by its own power is establishing it as its existence and its identity as what it is, independent of anything else. 

For instance, when we see an elderly person, the appearance is that they’re just an elderly person, that’s it, from their own side, as if being old was established just like that. We don’t think in terms of their entire life, the whole aging process, all the experiences that they’ve gone through. What is considered old in one society… I have a student, a friend, one of these very enthusiastic Dharma practitioners, that I met when he was fourteen years old. I’ve met a few of them that come to a Buddhist center. They are the most enthusiastic, they ask the best questions, they are the sharpest, and so on. And I have continued to correspond to this guy. Now he just had his twenty-first birthday, and I exchanged “Happy Birthday” email with him, and he was complaining that now he’s so old, at twenty-one, and so from his point of view he now is an old person. Then I wrote him back that “In a few weeks I’m going to be sixty-four,” and from my point of view that’s a rather odd perception of what it means to be old. 

Anyway, it seems as though somebody’s old just from their own side. OK. That’s impossible, but our mind makes it appear like that. So, there are two things that are involved here. One is to perceive that appearance, that impossible appearance, and the other is to believe that it corresponds to reality. Grasping, this word grasping, dzinpa (’dzin-pa) in Tibetan, means literally “to take” or “to hold.” To take or hold in a cognitive sense means just to perceive it, but also it has the additional meaning of believing it. How do you translate a word like that? Very difficult. First we have to get rid of believing that it corresponds to reality, but still we’ll perceive it because we haven’t gotten our minds to stop projecting it. When you achieve liberation, you don’t believe in this garbage that the mind produces, but the mind still produces it. Because you don’t believe in it, you don’t react to it, and so you don’t get any disturbing emotions, and then eventually you get the mind to stop producing it. 

The opposite of that — what’s mutually exclusive — is the understanding that there’s no such thing. That’s voidness. And when you focus on “No such thing” what appears is nothing. You don’t have an appearance of this impossible way of existing, and you don’t believe that it refers to anything real as well. It is the mutually exclusive state of mind, the total opposite, of both perceiving an impossible appearance (deceptive appearance we call it) and believing in it. That’s why it’s very important to understand what it actually means to focus on voidness. It doesn’t just mean to have a blank mind.

Participant: I have a question about these two aspects of grasping. You mentioned that when you reach — did I understand it correctly? — when you reach liberation, you’ve already stopped believing these appearances. Is that true according to Prasangika?

Dr. Berzin: Right. According to Prasangika, we stop believing in these…

Participant: Even as an arhat?

Dr. Berzin: As an arhat you are free from unawareness; you’re free from ignorance. I mean, there is a distinction here. They are not totally equivalent, grasping for true existence and unawareness. Unawareness is a disturbing emotion, so it’s a mental factor. The grasping could be either a primary mind or a mental factor. When it has the meaning of just perceiving deceptive appearance then it’s not unawareness.

Participant: Tthat’s the only facet that would still be present?

Dr. Berzin: That’s the only facet that would still be present. Yes.

Participant: Which facet?

Dr. Berzin: Perceiving the impossible way of existing.

Participant: When one attains liberation, one still perceives that?

Dr. Berzin: You’re not free of the cognitive obscurations. Cognitive obscurations are the habits of that grasping which still make that appearance, and you still perceive it… 

Participant: This is Prasangika?

Dr. Berzin: Prasangika. 

But you don’t believe it: “This is garbage.” But because you perceive it, the way things appear is — what I have used several analogies for — one analogy is that it seems as though things are encapsulated in plastic; the other one is periscope vision. We can’t see the interconnectedness of everything. Because you can’t see the interconnectedness of everything, particularly in terms of cause and effect, and particularly in terms of the three times [i.e. we invalidly impute a continuum on a result that is not yet happening, a result that is presently happening, and a result that is no longer happening], then you don’t know what are all the causes for this individual person’s problems and what would be the effect of anything that I teach them so that I can choose what would be the most effective thing to teach. Therefore, if you want to become a Buddha, you have to get your mind to stop making these impossible appearances so that you can perceive all at once the interconnectedness of everything. Because what you teach one person will have an effect not only on that person but on the way that that person interacts with everybody else for countless rebirths and how they will respond to other people. I mean, it mushrooms out, the effect of anything that we do. 

That is ultimately what we want to do, is to gain that nonconceptual cognition of voidness. When we have a conceptual cognition of voidness then we are understanding it through a category, a fixed category. A fixed category is like a fixed idea that we have of voidness. Then we understand it through the medium of that fixed idea and of course understanding it through that medium of a fixed idea makes voidness into a thing, and so you have to get rid of that.

Participant: Just a question. Maybe it’s a stupid one. I don’t know. But how do you see interconnectedness? OK, so you teach me something and it changes my life, or it has an effect on me, and I spread the effect further, to other people, with my behavior. But where does it start and where does it end? I mean, of course it can take several lifetimes or so. But where does the interconnectivity start? If, let’s say, I walk down the street, but you stay teaching here, do we have any interconnectivity? Or does it need something more (let’s say sitting here in a Sangha to get a teaching)?

Dr. Berzin: Right. The question is: When we are trying to gain the omniscience of a Buddha, where does the interconnectivity or interdependence start? How immediate does it have to be? Not at all. We’re talking about the interconnectedness of everything, with no beginning and no end. That obviously is, to use the terminology, inconceivable, what that actually would appear like. 

I wrote a very long, detailed, and admittedly extremely difficult article on my website — those who have tried to read it are now giggling — called What Does a Buddha Perceive When a Buddha Sees the Past, Present, and Future? 

Participant: I’ll have to read it. I’ll have to try it.

Participant: Good luck.

Dr. Berzin: “Good luck,” you wished him. Thank you. You have to read... There’s one article right before it in the menu of the website, which is Time is a Temporal Interval — the Buddhist concept of time is talking about a temporal interval — without that as the basis, then it’s a little bit more difficult to understand the article. I mean, that’s one of the most difficult things to understand, is what actually is going on in terms of a Buddha perceiving the three times, and are they real, is it existing somewhere, does it imply predetermination — what does it imply? Something that one has to work on. I can’t pretend that my article is 100% correct and definitive, but anyway I pestered some of the greatest learned masters in India to try to get a more precise understanding of it, so there it is. Right. Anything else? 

We want to gain that understanding, that nonconceptual understanding, with the clear-light mind, which is automatically going to be more subtle than any level on which we would perceive things through categories, or it would be accompanied by disturbing emotions, or the mind would make appearances of false existence. It’s more subtle. It doesn’t necessarily understand anything by itself though. You have to generate it into an understanding of voidness. If that weren’t the case, then all you would have to do is die in order to gain liberation and enlightenment. It’s not so simple. 

Now the next thing to clarify is that to purify something so that we can be rid of it completely is… Again there’s a variety of methods that are used in Buddhism. We have to see what we are not doing. 

• One method would be that we’re not trying to end the continuity of death, bardo, and rebirth in the sense of merely burning the seeds for them, like we do in Vajrasattva purification to rid ourselves of negative karmic potentials (you sort of burn the seeds so that they are inactive). We’re not trying to do that. 

• We are not opposing death, bardo, and rebirth directly, like having some elixir of immortality that would prevent us from having anymore death, bardo, and rebirth. 

• And we’re not using a mutually exclusive exact opposite of death, bardo, and rebirth to end them. (It’s hard to actually conceive of what would be exact opposite of death, bardo, and rebirth.)

Rather we are working to break the continuity of death, bardo, and rebirth by meditating with a pathway mind that is similar to the three. This is a very, very tricky and clever method, but it is the key to understand what we’re actually doing in tantra, and so this is important to try to understand. What we’re trying to do... We are generating a pathway mind — in other words, we’re doing something in meditation — that is going to imitate death, bardo, and rebirth (it’s similar to it) in order to get past certain blockages to get down to the foundation of the three. It accesses the mechanism that underlies death, bardo, and rebirth, and gets rid of the cause that’s causing death, bardo, and rebirth, and instead has that basis generate the three bodies of a Buddha. That, in one sentence, is what we’re trying to do. 

Now we have to explain in much more detail what we’re talking about here. In a structural form, we have a basis and a result that are analogous to each other. With death — if you think of the structure with death — we go down to the subtlest level of mind. With bardo, then we have an appearance from that subtlest level, which is subtle, in the bardo (the in-between state). And then we have a gross appearance with rebirth. We have a similar structure in sleep: You have deep sleep, in which you go down to a very subtle level; you have dreams, in which you have a subtle appearance; and then you have the awake state, where you have grosser appearances. It’s the same type of structure. Dream yoga, sleep yoga, is all done on the basis of this being analogous. 

Similarly, when we talk about the three bodies of a Buddha, the three corpuses of a Buddha, the Dharmakaya… Here we’re talking about a “corpus that encompasses everything.” It’s the omniscient mind of a Buddha and the voidness of that mind — let’s just leave it at the mind of a Buddha. The omniscient mind of a Buddha is also this clear-light mind. It’s the subtlest level, like what you have manifest at death, but it’s generated as omniscient — get rid of all the habits of grasping for true existence and all that sort of stuff. By the way, in the clear light at death, those habits are there but they are not actively producing an appearance of true existence, but they’re still there; so they’re not actively functioning. 

Then within Dharmakaya, within the state of Dharmakaya, there are the subtle appearances of Sambhogakaya, a “corpus of bodies of full use” that are... The way that it’s described in sutra is that these are very subtle forms that only appear in pure lands, Buddha realms, whatever they are, these pure realms that are filled with arya bodhisattvas (bodhisattvas who have nonconceptual cognition of voidness), and it is teaching them just Mahayana, and they have all the physical signs of a Buddha, the thirty-two and eighty, and they remain until the end of samsara of everybody, which means a very, very long time. These are very subtle forms. 

In tantra, Sambhogakaya is referred to as the corpus, or collection, or network of Buddha’s speech, enlightening speech, which also is a subtle appearance. When we talk about appearance, it doesn’t have to be visual; it’s just something arising as an expression of the omniscient mind. The expression of the omniscient mind can either be in subtle forms or it can be in a movement of speech. 

I guess I didn’t explain this, but when we talk about mind, talk about mental activity… Mind in Buddhism is referring to mental activity, activity that’s going on from moment to moment to moment, and that activity can be described from a physical point of view, and it can be described from a subjective, experiential point of view. When we talk about mind, usually we’re talking about the experiential, subjective point of view of the mental activity. But from another point of view there’s something physical going on, and on a gross level we can speak of brain activity and all that sort of stuff. But on the subtlest level, there is the subtlest energy. There’s an energy aspect to this mental activity. This subtlest energy is the energy that... One of its characteristics is that it radiates, and so it — you have this term in dzogchen — it will spontaneously establish appearances (lhun-grub). On one level it establishes subtle appearances, so it can either be like the Sambhogakaya in sutra, these subtle forms, or it could be speech, which is also a subtle movement of wind, of energy-wind. And so we have this subtle speech. That’s how it’s described in tantra — highest class of tantra, I should say (anuttarayoga). 

Then we have Nirmanakaya, which is called a “corpus of emanations” (it’s emanations of the Sambhogakaya literally). Then these subtle forms in sutra emanate grosser forms that somehow will have their basis in terms of grosser bodies that people with the karma to meet with them can meet with them, like Buddha Shakyamuni. So we have these grosser appearances. 

These three are not sequential — Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya — the way that death, bardo, and rebirth are sequential. The attainment of them is simultaneous. Nevertheless, the structure is there of something very subtle, then subtle appearances, and then grosser appearances. These two are analogous. What is the basis for both of them? In Sakya systems we refer to the two of these things that I just described as the appearances of samsara and the appearances of nirvana. Or in other terminology they can be called pure and impure appearances. There are many different ways of referring to them. But the basis for it is our individual clear-light minds. Everybody has their own individual continuity of a clear-light mind.

Participant: The foundation for the basis and the result.

Dr. Berzin: That is the underlying foundation for the basis and the result, right, and will be for the pathway as well. When that foundation, clear-light mind — and now we’re talking about Buddha-nature factors that enable us to become a Buddha — when that foundation, the clear-light mind, is mixed with unawareness or confusion, then it will generate death, bardo, and rebirth, as is described with the twelve links of dependent arising and all this sort of stuff that we learn about in sutra. In the highest class of tantra there’s a whole description of how the death process occurs, etc., and how the rebirth process occurs, in very fine detail. 

When the mental continuum of that clear-light mind is free of unawareness and free as well of the habits of unawareness — now we get into technical differences of opinion of at what stage, but let’s speak in terms of free of all these stains (both the unawareness and their habits) — then it gives rise to the three bodies of a Buddha. What we want to do is to get down to that clear-light mind and get rid of the habits of grasping for true existence. If we can get down to that clear-light mind level and rid it at that level, with that state of mind, of the habits of grasping for true existence, then it will no longer give rise to death, bardo, and rebirth, but instead the natural tendency of it will be to then give rise to Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya.

Participant: A structural question. Can you really say that the clear-light mind is the basis for the three kayas, or is it that the clear-light mind of a Buddha is actually the Dharmakaya?

Dr. Berzin: Can we say that the clear-light mind is the basis for the Dharmakaya of a Buddha or is it the Dharmakaya? That would be a question for debate. When we say clear-light mind, what you would have to say is the clear-light level, because the clear-light level has both the subjective, experiential side as well as the energy side. From the so-called mental side, we would get the Dharmakaya. From the energy side we would get the Sambhoga- and Nirmanakayas. I’m not talking about the Kalachakra system and all this sort of stuff. Let’s stay with the simple... with the main system. Basically, it has to be the same, no matter what system we’re talking about, even if they don’t explain it in these terms. 

The clear-light mind is not pervasive with the Dharmakaya. We call the clear-light mind the clear-light mind whether or not it has imputed on it the habits of grasping for true existence. And when we speak about rigpa (pure awareness) in dzogchen, that’s speaking about just the unstained clear-light mind. Those two are not pervasive, clear-light mind and rigpa. Clear-light mind could be stained or unstained. Rigpa, pure awareness, is the unstained aspect of it. However, even rigpa is not pervasive, mutually pervasive, with the Dharmakaya, because rigpa has to be made to recognize its own face (rang-ngo shes-pa) it’s called, which means that it has to understand its own nature. It has to understand voidness. It doesn’t automatically understand that, so it has to be activated in a way that understands it. They have all sorts of different classifications within rigpa. What happens is that the clear-light mind is generated into a Dharmakaya, but it is not already a Dharmakaya on the basis level. OK? 

We have the basic structure: Subtlest level, subtle appearance, gross appearance. Death, bardo, rebirth. Deep sleep, dream, awake. Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya. What we want to do is meditate in analogy with that, with both a basis and result, to enable us to get to that foundation, that clear-light level, so that at that clear-light level we can apply the understanding of voidness to, in a sense, to turn the switch so that instead of giving rise to the samsaric situation, it gives rise to the Buddha situation. 

What we do on the generation stage is work with our imaginations. We imagine that appearances dissolve in stages similar to the type of dissolution of appearances that we have at the time of death. We imagine that we are experiencing the clear-light mind. We apply our conceptual understanding of voidness. Then we arise in a simple form, which could be as a seed syllable, it could be as a simple figure, it could be as a shaft of light, it could be as a dot. Depending upon which system we’re practicing, it will take many different, various forms. It really is irrelevant which form or which system we are practicing in terms of the basic structure. The simple appearance, and then a full appearance (with tons of arms and legs and faces and a whole assortment of various figures around us). That is the basic structure which is similar to death, bardo, and rebirth and is going to be a pathway mind for achieving the Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya. It’s called taking death as a pathway for attaining Dharmakaya, taking bardo as a pathway for achieving Sambhogakaya, and taking rebirth as a pathway for achieving Nirmanakaya. That’s the basic structure that we have. 

In the generation stage we do this with our imaginations. And on the complete stage, once we have perfect concentration — that means shamatha and vipashyana, which are achieved through special methods in the generation stage with these visualizations (incredibly complex visualizations and visualizations on a microscopic level and so on) — once we gain mastery of that then we have the tools… That’s why we call it the generation stage; we’re generating all of this in our imaginations through visualization. On the complete stage… It’s called complete; it doesn’t mean completion, the way that it is usually translated. It’s not that we’re completing the process. It’s that all the tools are now complete for being able to do the real thing, the real analogy, which is the get down to the clear-light state of mind, to actually get down to the clear-light stage of mind, by working with the subtle energy-systems, and so dissolving the winds and so on (there are several methods which are used). But it’s only at this stage, when we have perfect concentration and laser-beam type of concentration on a microscopic level, that we can visualize the subtle energy-system and actually move the energies within it. This is why if you don’t have the laser scalpel to be able to move them, etc., and then you start to do various exercises to try to work with them, all you’re going to do is really mess up the energies. 

Then you move the energies in such a way that they actually do dissolve, and you get to the subtlest level. We get to that subtlest level but not completely to the subtlest level — it’s still slightly conceptual — but from that then we have access to these energy-winds. We actually generate it in some sort of subtle form, called illusory body (sgyu-lus), and then can generate it in a grosser form, which is called emanation body (sprul-sku) in tantra. Eventually we want to get that to be the actual clear-light state of mind so it’s nonconceptual — in all these cases we’re applying the understanding of voidness here — and within that state then generate a pure illusory body (dag-pa’i sgyu-lus), which is still not a body of a Buddha, because we still haven’t gotten rid of the habits of grasping for true existence. But we generate a pure illusory body, a pure emanation body, of the path, and that will act as what’s called the obtaining cause (nyer-len-gyi rgyu) (in other words, the immediately preceding cause) from which we will obtain the actual bodies of a Buddha. 

This is the process. The generation stage is what will prepare us for actually doing the complete stage. 

I made a cute — I hope it’s not too cute — analogy for the whole process. Let me read it to you.

There is a house with two rooms, one and two, which share a common basement. Room one is a prison cell. Room two is the palace chamber of a Buddha. (You get it? A samsara one and a Buddha state.) Each room is connected to the basement by its own elevator. The electricity for both elevators comes from the basement, but now it is only connected to elevator one, the elevator to the prison cell. Elevator two to the palace chamber has no electricity. Because of that, only elevator one works; elevator two doesn’t function. We are a prisoner in the cell. We have an endless lifespan and are locked in the cell forever. Every hundred years, we take the elevator down to the basement, get a change of clothes, and go back up to our prison cell. This is the prison routine. 

Our aim is to sabotage the electric system of the house so that we cut off the electric supply to elevator one and connect it to elevator two. If we accomplish our mission, the elevator to room one will go out of order, and the elevator to room two will start working and we can use it to enter and live in the palace chamber. To carry out our mission we have to get to the basement. Although we normally make a trip to the basement once every hundred years, we can’t wait that long. Our misery in prison is awful, but even more unbearable is the suffering of the countless other prisoners who are each locked up in their own cells. 

In order to break into the basement from our prison cell, we need to follow the customs of both rooms of the house: we need to access the basement by taking an elevator. To do this and get past the guards, we need to wear a disguise. Someone from the palace chamber in our house comes to help us. He comes for a visit and secretly gives us a palace uniform and instructs us on how to get to the basement on our own. If we pretend to be from the palace, we can fool the guards, activate the elevator in our cell, and reach the basement. 

We follow the instructions. First, we practice in our imaginations going down to the basement, carrying out our secret operation of reconnecting the electric wires, and then coming back up into the palace chamber via elevator two. Once we are able to visualize the operation perfectly and have practiced sufficiently, we are then able actually to break into the elevator in our prison cell and use it to go down to the basement. After many trials of taking the elevator down and almost reaching the basement before having to come back up again, we finally succeed in reaching the basement. There we disconnect the electricity from the elevator that goes to the prison cell and reconnect it to the elevator that goes to the palace chamber. Having accomplished this, we then take elevator number two up to the palace chamber and from there help all the other prisoners to escape. 

In this more extended analogy, the prison cell is samsara. The basement is the subtlest level of our continuum — our clear-light mind and subtlest energy-wind. The guards are our emotional and cognitive obscurations. Going from the prison cell down to the basement occurs with death, being in the elevator going back up to the cell is bardo existence, and being back in the prison cell is rebirth. The palace chamber is the enlightened state of a Buddha. 

When we are in the elevator to the palace and it is in the basement, this is Dharmakaya. Being in the elevator going up to the palace is Sambhogakaya, and being in the palace chamber is Nirmanakaya. This part of the analogy is not exact, since Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya are simultaneous, not sequential. What is analogous is that the appearances of the three enlightening corpuses of a Buddha have three levels of subtlety.

The visitor from the palace chamber is the tantric master. Giving us a disguise is conferring a tantric empowerment. The disguise is as a Buddha-figure. Wearing the disguise and practicing the operation in our imaginations is generation-stage practice, during which we visualize ourselves in this Buddha-form. Actually, taking the elevator and eventually succeeding in reaching the basement while wearing the disguise is complete-stage practice. 

The electric connection to the elevator going to the prison cell is held in place by our grasping for truly established existence. What disconnects it from there and reconnects it so that the electricity flows to the elevator going to the palace chamber instead is the nonconceptual cognition of voidness. Finally reaching the palace chamber of a Buddha is our attainment of enlightenment.

Cute, clever — I hope not too clever. But anyway, I think that describes the process fairly accurately.

Participant: That’s on your website?

Dr. Berzin: It is in an article called Methods Used in Buddhism to Rid Ourselves of Problems and Their Causes. I think that’s what it’s called. Anyway, that’s what I have it labeled here. You can find it in the English section New Materials. It’s one of the newer articles that’s up there. [Now called The Purification Method Used in Anuttarayoga Tantra.]

Participant: We go in the Buddha elevator to the palace.

Dr. Berzin: The Buddha elevator, right. 

This is what we’re doing in tantra, in anuttarayoga tantra. I mean that’s the core of the practice. Then there are various things around it that fill it out, but we’ll discuss that next time. Any questions? But I think this makes it fairly clear why the generation stage practice is absolutely necessary for complete stage practice. And next time I’ll go through — I have a list that Tsongkhapa wrote of the advantages and the benefits of the generation stage, of what are the essential factors that we gain from it.

Participant: I have a question about the thing that you mentioned earlier when you explained the vows. There was one of meditating on voidness every day. Is there some sort of recommendation, a traditional one, of how long at least that should be? What’s the measure of properly doing that?

Dr. Berzin: We have in one of the tantric vows to meditate or be mindful of voidness six times a day, which is a euphemism, I suppose, for trying to be aware of it all the time. But at least remind ourselves of it. How much do we actually meditate on it? I mean, this is hard to say, because it depends on the individual, really depends on the individual. His Holiness always says that when we generate an understanding of voidness… 

We get a little bit of insight into this from the Gelug Prasangika analysis, or presentation, of ways of knowing, lorig (blo-rig). In this we have inferential understanding — I mean as the valid ways — inferential understanding (rjes-dpag) and straightforward cognition (mngon-sum). (Here it’s different from the other systems, where it’s bare cognition. I call it straightforward in this case because it’s defined differently.) Inferential means that we rely on a line of reasoning, and there are the various lines of reasoning — neither one nor many, etc. Initially we need to rely on that line of reasoning in order to generate a state of conviction. In other words, focus on it with certainty. It’s a state of mind that is both correct, or accurate, and with conviction. I mean, you can be convinced in something that’s wrong. It has to be accurate. It could be accurate but you’re not sure. So it has to be both. It’s going to be conceptual, through a category: voidness. 

When we have hearing, thinking, and meditating, the difference between thinking and meditating is that with thinking we are not yet convinced that it’s true. We don’t have certainty. We’re going through it again and again, the analysis and so on, the line of reasoning, to become convinced that this is really so. A little bit of indecision here. In other words, what we want to get through the thinking process is both the accuracy (the correct understanding) and the certainty that it’s correct: we’re convinced. Then the actual meditation is to absorb that, to integrate it. What’s called analytical meditation (dpyad-sgom, discerning meditation) is to go through that line of reasoning again but just to generate freshly the valid inferential cognition. When we still need to go through that line of reasoning in order to get that final inferential understanding, and then you let it sink in, so you have the... What do I call it? I forget what I call it, but the stabilizing meditation (’jog-sgom) where you just focus on it. Then you have to do that over and over again. And that’s conceptual. 

Now, in the non-Gelug, non-Prasangika schools you only have that and then you have nonconceptual cognition (that’s called bare perception). In the Gelug-Prasangika system it differentiates, and we have what’s called straightforward cognition. Straightforward cognition is the same term in Sanskrit and Tibetan as bare cognition, but it has two phases (one is conceptual, one is nonconceptual). The main characteristic of it is that you don’t have to rely on the line of reasoning in order to generate the focus on it that’s accurate and with conviction. That means you can just go to it like that [snaps fingers], but it’s still conceptual, so still through a category. And then eventually it becomes nonconceptual.

Participant: But the same word is used for this?

Dr. Berzin: Same word is used as bare. 

Participant: Whoa!

Dr. Berzin: Whoa is right. That’s why you have to know the definition in the system that you’re talking about, because the definitions differ. 

You ask: How much do we have to spend on trying to get some sort of understanding of voidness? It depends what stage we’re at. If we are at the thinking stage, we probably need to spend quite a bit of time thinking about it. If we’ve already understood it and we’re convinced, then the question is: How deeply do we have to understand it and how deeply do I have to be convinced? That’s very difficult to measure, that really is. How accurate is my understanding? We also have a bodhisattva vow, I think it is, of never be satisfied with our understanding: it can always go deeper and deeper. Never think you’ve meditated enough, until you reach the stage of no more training (mi-slob lam), obviously. That’s really hard to say. And I must say, from my own faulty experience, that it’s very easy to say, “OK, I have some understanding of it,” so I just sort of instantly focus on voidness without really going through the line of reasoning. It’s very easy to do that, especially if you’re in a hurry. You just sort of “OK, now voidness.” 

Or at least what’s helpful is, in the sadhanas themselves, each sadhana will have some sort of verse or line for its meditation on voidness at this point where you’re doing the practice of death, bardo, and rebirth as the three kayas it’s called. At that point there is a verse — and it’s going to be slightly different in each sadhana system — and that is very useful. Because for that at least it says, for instance, the voidness of causes, the voidness of effects, the voidness of… it will list things like that (or you need to understand what the line means, that it’s referring to that) so that you can just vaguely go through at least the line of reasoning. In the actual sadhana practice, you’re not supposed to stop and start to do an analytical meditation of thinking about it and coming up with examples and stuff like that, because that would break the continuity of the sadhana practice. 

Sadhana (sgrub-thabs), by the way, is the name that’s given to this whole practice on the generation stage, basically like an opera — a visualization where you recite step by step what you’re doing. It comes from the word “to establish.” You are establishing yourself as the deity, as the Buddha-figure. 

In the six-session practice, there is a part where you get down to voidness and then generate yourself… the guru dissolves into you and then you arise as the Buddha-figure. There you’re supposed to think in terms of voidness. Even if you’re not doing a sadhana, you would do it there. 

It really is optional. What I do, what most people do, is if you’re doing it three times together in a row in the morning and three times in the evening, that one of the times, the first time, you have it a little bit more going through a line of reasoning, and then the other times you remind yourself of it. In my own personal practice, I do quite a lot of sadhanas, and in each of those sadhanas it has the voidness meditation, and I find that personally very nice, because each of them approaches it in a slightly different manner, so it looks at voidness from a different type of angle. At least one would try to remember voidness (even if you don’t go through a line of reasoning) to try to bring it back up. It’s called mindfulness, the same word as remember. 

This is an important point. When you focus on voidness, meditate on voidness, there is the voidness which is like space (nam-mkha’ lta-bu’i stong-pa nyid) and the voidness which is like an illusion (sgyu-ma lta-bu’i stong-pa nyid). Space-like voidness is when, through a line of reasoning, you get to the thing of “No such thing,” so then there’s no appearance of anything, an appearance of nothing, with the understanding that there’s no such thing as truly established existence. Then when you come out of that — what’s often translated as the post-meditation, which is terrible (because you’re still in meditation), but the subsequent attainment, or subsequent realization is literally what it means — so subsequently, when you come out of that deep absorption, then the realization that you attain is that the mind makes these appearances again but it’s like an illusion: it doesn’t correspond to anything that’s real. 

What you have to avoid is skipping the space-like voidness part and just doing the illusion-like part. Because that’s very easy to do. You’re sitting there and you’re doing your visualization and so on, and then you remember that everything is like illusion, and you think that that’s enough, that it appears to be truly existent, but it isn’t. That’s not enough. The subsequent attainment (rjes-thob) — the word subsequent is very important, subsequent — first you have to dissolve the ordinary appearance, and that’s very much specified in the sadhana practice: dissolve ordinary appearance, focus on “No such thing,” and then illusion-like. It needs to be in that sequence. Otherwise, it’s not really building up the habit of your mind having what’s called in the Gelug system explicit focus (dngos-su rtogs-pa) on voidness. We have instead, with the illusion-like voidness, implicit focus (shugs-la rtogs-pa) on voidness. It’s not the explicit thing that appears to the mind, and you want to have it explicitly appearing to the mind so that it builds up the habit of not giving rise to an appearance true existence. This is emphasized very much, that you need to have the space-like voidness first when you’re doing voidness meditation. Clear?

Participant: Lots of difficult points, but I have a vague outline.

Dr. Berzin: I mean, you get the idea now. To actually implement it is difficult, but the instructions are the important part. OK?

I think that brings us past the end of our class. Let’s end here with the dedication. By the way, next week we won’t have class. I have to go to Poland to give some teachings at a conference. But the following week we’ll have class. 

We end with the dedication. Whatever positive force has built up from this, whatever understanding, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.