LPA43: Detecting Faults in Visualization; Visualizing a Mandala

We also have discussed how we visualize. Tsongkhapa points out that the way of visualizing which is the most conducive is to try to get a general image or feeling of the entire figure roughly and then fill in the details one by one within that general form. Remember we spoke about how, when we talk about visualization, it’s really more imagination. We try to actually feel that we are this Buddha-figure. And it’s not concerning the eye consciousness; it’s concerning the mental consciousness of how we, in a sense, conceive of ourselves. This is visualization. It’s conceptual.

Let’s go on. We’ve gone over and over these few lines in the last classes, so I don’t want to repeat them yet again. Tsongkhapa writes: 

For beginners in these (visualization practices), it has been said that if the meditation sessions are too long, we will not at all progress in the most direct fashion. This has also appeared to be so (from experience as well). Therefore, if we have meditated holding as many extremely short sessions as possible, our development of absorbed concentration will be without fault. 

That’s a very interesting point, because what Tsongkhapa is saying, and what my teachers always emphasized, is if we’re working to get absorbed concentration or single-pointedness of mind or any of these states of concentration — there are a lot of technical terms involved to describe different levels of concentration, but in any case — if we’re going to try to do that, what is said is that it’s best to have very short, frequent sessions rather than a long one.

The analogy that is used is that if you are with a friend and the friend stays for too long, then you can’t wait until they leave and you’re not very happy for them to come back so quickly. Whereas if the friend stays for just a short time and leaves while you would still like to spend more time with your friend, then you will be very happy to see that person again. That analogy is used for your meditation seat actually. If we meditate too long so that it becomes an ordeal and you’re just sitting there thinking over and over again “I can’t wait until it’s over,” then we’re not going to be very keen to sit down and meditate again. 

A meditation session should not be a torture session or something that we regard as an ordeal or horrible. It’s recommended in the beginning to just try to meditate — especially if we’re trying to concentrate (and in the beginning of course our minds are going to wander a great deal) — to just try to focus for maybe two minutes or three minutes, up to maybe five minutes, and then take a break. And so often in meditation courses they will do walking meditation or something like that in between so that you will be fresh again when you sit down. 

I know that there are a lot of meditation courses and meditation teachers who teach sitting for many, many hours a day, sitting for long periods of time at a stretch, even for beginners, and I really wonder how successful that is in terms of this advice that the Tibetans give and Tsongkhapa repeats. (Tsongkhapa isn’t the only one who has said this, but Tsongkhapa says that this appears to be so from his own experience as well.)

So, frequent short sessions are recommended. Of course, when you do that, then what we need to do is to then extend it slowly. If you start out doing three minutes at a time and then take a five-minute break and then three minutes again, something like that, then you can increase it to five, then you increase it to ten, something like that. You increase it gradually. In general, that is a method for accustoming ourselves to anything. 

For instance, I used to sleep much longer than I do now, between seven and eight hours, and I thought that that was too much and that I wanted to decrease the amount of sleep that I needed each night. My teacher Serkong Rinpoche said this is something very good to do. And the way to do it is to cut down fifteen minutes at a time. Sleep fifteen minutes less, and when your body gets used to that so that you don’t get tired by sleeping fifteen minutes less, then decrease it by another fifteen minutes. But if you try to decrease it all of a sudden by an hour or something like that, you’re going to be very sleepy during the day and it will be a torture. 

Just as we would work like that in increments, the same thing is true with the length of our meditation session, particularly if we’re trying to do single-minded concentration types of meditation, because for sure your mind is going to wander a great deal. As I say, there are some people that recommend and some teachers that recommend “Just sit there and work through it.” But I don’t know. I mean, you seem to have experienced using that type of method, to just sit there for a longer period of time, even for beginners.

Participant: Gradual.

Participant: It depends on the beginner really. I wouldn’t say that there’s a fixed way that any beginner should begin. It depends on their… I mean, some people have better concentration than others; whereas others feel they need to get control of their body more than their mind.

Dr. Berzin: She’s saying that it depends very much on the individual, that the teacher… I mean, what’s implicit in what you’re saying is that the teacher work with each student individually so that it can be personally guided. Unfortunately, in a lot of these meditation courses there’s such a large crowd of people that it’s impossible.

Participant: That almost never works for everybody.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Such types of large courses don’t work for everybody. That’s inevitable. Optimally, just as we might have a trainer at a fitness club, a personal trainer, also for meditation it is optimal if we can get a personal trainer who at least in the beginning is going to work with us. This is what Tsongkhapa said in the beginning of this text, that you need a teacher who knows the graded stages of the path and how to apply them to each individual person.

Participant: The other thing is it’s not just a physical thing and a mental gymnastics. When each person meditates, they will have certain experiences that they need to talk about with someone to help guide them through it. If you just think of it as a mechanistic skill to learn, it doesn’t work. I mean, that’s why you need a personal…

Dr. Berzin: Right. Then he added that when we begin to meditate, each person is going to have their own individual difficulties that come up, and it’s very necessary to have personal guidance that can help you to deal with these various difficulties that come up. Again, in this day and age that’s very rare to get that type of personal guidance, very, very rare. But if one can, that is certainly optimal. 

It’s interesting when Tsongkhapa said (and he emphasized so much) in the beginning that you need to have personal guidance — “rely on guidance from a teacher.” How personal is that? If you look in the case of the Tibetans — very often they don’t have actual instruction so much on meditation, from what I’ve seen. They will have instruction on how to do rituals. They will certainly have debate instruction. And if you are an incarnate lama, a tulku, then you would have your private teacher. Otherwise, in most cases, you don’t have an individual private teacher. You have your own teacher, but you would be in a class with a number of other students, not a one-to-one type of thing that tulkus get. In rare cases, if the student is very, very keen and very talented, then a teacher might work with that student individually. But actually, for meditation they pretty much just tell you to sit down and do it. 

From what I’ve seen, Tibetans are very shy to actually discuss their own personal experiences. If they have different types of problems or questions, they might go to a teacher. I mean, I know that the meditators who are in many, many year retreats or lifetime retreats in the caves above Dharamsala, they used to come down to Serkong Rinpoche for instruction or in many cases to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but Serkong Rinpoche was quite involved with these people. I don’t know. From what I saw — I mean, I was there at one of the things that he did with them. He was mostly giving them larger instructions, not one to one of very special retreat instructions or things like that, following a text and giving the transmission of it and these types of things. I wasn’t present when maybe he spoke with any of them one by one. I know that there are because His Holiness relates that there are some very advanced practitioners who relate certain experiences to His Holiness. Obviously, that must be in the context of them asking questions or His Holiness sort of checking them out to check out what they have experienced. But we as Westerners have a little bit of a romantic vision of somebody sort of holding our hand as we go through things and really giving us very personal type of attention. At least the Tibetans, and I would think most Asian people, don’t have that same expectation of things being so individual and personal. Here in the West, things will probably change a bit in terms of that type of attention or treatment. 

One of the things that is a very important lesson to be learned, and the Tibetans are very good at teaching you that, is that nobody’s special. In the West, particularly in the last decades or so, particularly in the United States, all the children are taught how special each one of them is. And Tibetans are the exact opposite: nobody’s special, nothing’s special, and so “No big deal.” That actually, I think, is a far healthier attitude in terms of not having such great preconceptions and high expectations that we are so wonderful. That often is not fulfilled in real life as we get older.

Participant: I think I agree completely with your opinion about the Tibetan method being suitable in this idea of anti-individualism and to get the idea across of not any one individual is greater, more special than the other. For people who were raised in that culture, it works. But then if you try to transfer that over to an entirely individualistic culture, as the West is, then that’s where you get the clash in the culture and where you find you’re going to have to make modifications. Because as honorable and, again, perfect an idea that is, when you’re dealing with people who are raised in the West with this individualistic idea that everyone is special, that’s where you get this clash of trying to transfer that. But unfortunately — and I say unfortunately because I think it is unfortunate — but unfortunately you do, to a degree, have to deal with whatever things might come up with the different students or individuals because they have this preconceived notion that that is requisite in the way that they were raised. If you don’t, you risk being considered a real bastard of a teacher. You can risk that. But you might not get very far if you really do want to help them.

Dr. Berzin: Right. She’s saying that although the Tibetan method is very suited for Tibetans and she finds it very admirable, nevertheless it might not be suited at all for dealing with Westerners, in which everybody, or many people, have been raised with the idea that they are special, and everybody is special. Also, I might add “I’m more special than other people.” Everybody thinks they’re more special. But in any case, this is an area of great clash if you try to follow the Tibetan approach with Western people, and if you do so then people will resent that (she used stronger language) in terms of not thinking that you’re such a great teacher. You really risk being able to successfully work with people.

Yes, that’s the case. I think one of the biggest problems, though, is that the classes are so big. It’s like in a school: if the class is too big, the students don’t get individual attention. Likewise, particularly for a meditation thing, if the classes are too big then it really becomes very difficult to give individual attention. I think some sort of middle path is important. 

Also, what’s a big difference is that most of the meditators — not just meditators, but most of the students of Dharma in a Tibetan situation are monastics, and most of them became monastics at around the age of seven or eight years old, so they don’t have a personal life from a family that is going to be a dominant factor in their personalities. Everybody’s background that the teachers are dealing with are people who are living together in a monastery, so we don’t have as many individual issues in the Tibetan context as when, in a Western context, you have a class full of nonmonastic adults who have an enormous amount of personal history that is going on. Again, that has to be taken into account in terms of teaching and teaching methods and particularly in terms of meditation. 

Because in meditation, when you try to quiet down, or even if you’re not trying… Let’s say when you try to focus, because it comes up in a mantra retreat as well, in which your mind is quiet of extraneous things but it’s very active. But in any of these things, what comes up is all the garbage. This is everybody’s experience of any type of intensive meditation practice, because you’re sitting there and your mind wanders anyway. It’s rather unrealistic to think that it’s not going to wander. In fact, I’ve heard His Holiness say that this is some of the more beneficial part of doing a retreat, is that it gives you the opportunity to work through a lot of the garbage that comes up. And it’s emotional garbage that comes up, and the emotional garbage that comes up is about your life and your experiences in life, because you have a period of time in which you are separated from your normal activities, and you have a lot of time to reflect on it. It might not be that you’re sitting down and “Now I’m going to reflect on it.” That’s not often the context of it. It sort of just comes up while you’re trying to do a different type of meditation.

The Dharma method is basically “You work it out yourself. Here are the methods, here are the tools, and you do it yourself.” I make a big point of this in my book on relating to a spiritual teacher. A Buddhist teacher, at least in its traditional model, is not a therapist. It’s not somebody that you come to and you, as the student, do most of the talking about your problems. That’s not at all the model. The model is you say nothing about your problems. You listen, and the teacher teaches you and explains and gives you the methods, and then you go home, and you work on it. If you have questions, you ask questions. It’s a very different model.

Participant: When you said with a meditation session that it should be very short, I would agree, especially for concentration meditation. But I think what you said now, I think it has more to do with… Working through these things is also necessary. So, when you sit eight hours a day or something and you can’t stand up or something, the beneficial thing is probably to go through all those things that happen and work them out and not walk or run away from them.

Dr. Berzin: Right. I would agree. What he says is that short sessions are for beginners, and what I was just explaining, where you work through a lot of garbage, was in the context of doing a retreat, in which you are in fact sitting many, many hours a day. Yes. Therefore — conclusion — don’t do a retreat until you have meditation experience. A long retreat — or even if it’s not so many days, but a retreat in which it’s a full day of sitting there — when you have no experience is going to be torture. It’s going to be torture. For some people it works to jump in the deep end and just sit there for ten hours a day when they’ve not done that before, but for a lot of people that’s really, really difficult, and they come away either loving it or hating it.  

When you are at that point where you are able to undertake a retreat — you have enough experience — then you sit there and you work through it, you work through whatever things come up, because a lot will come up. Also, people look at these retreats as a purification type of thing in the sense that things come up, you deal with it and hopefully get over it and resolve it. We do like that. Then you can do the real retreat, which is when you’re actually concentrated on the material, and you don’t have all the garbage to work through. There are many, many levels of doing intensive practice.

Participant: Do the Tibetans also have this idea to first work through things?

Dr. Berzin: Do the Tibetans have this idea of first work through things? Nobody talks about it. People don’t talk about their personal experience. Just as on a regular level, Tibetans don’t talk about their emotions and their feelings. Nobody would ask a Tibetan child, or an Indian child, for that matter, “What do you feel about that? What would you like to have for dinner? What would you like to wear today?” You know? Very, very different cultures. People don’t talk about their feelings, their emotional states, what they’re going through. It is true, isn’t it? 

Participant: In Mauritius, we don’t… we’re not even aware that we have emotions.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Our friend from Mauritius says that they’re not even aware, in Mauritius, of the emotional state.

Participant: You don’t think about it.

Participant: I think it’s a concept of Western psychology that doesn’t exist in other cultures.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s a concept of Western psychology that doesn’t exist in other... That doesn’t mean they don’t have emotions; they don’t have feelings. 

Participant: They have them.

Dr. Berzin: Definitely have.

Participant: We have learned to understand, to respect, and not to show it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. You learn, she says, to respect, to understand, but not to show it, and probably also not to conceptualize so much about it.

Participant: Not sit and talk about it forever.

Dr. Berzin: To conceptualize means to have words and terms for all of it, and think in terms of it, and that you have to express it, and that — what is very narcissistic — everybody else is actually interested to know what you feel (which, in most cases, people don’t care).

Participant: Another thing I think that ties in with what you’re saying about the monastic tradition in most Asian Buddhism countries:  In the West, Asian teachers or Tibetan teachers very often don’t realize how fickle their supposed students are. They’re many times dealing with students who yesterday were at a Sufi workshop, and before that they were looking for Atlantis. They assume they’re teaching someone who’s already decided the Dharma is right, but they’re always actually being judged: “Oh, I don’t know. Last week I learned about talking with dolphins, and that was even better.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. What he’s saying is that many of the Asian teachers also aren’t aware of the fickleness of initial Western students — that last week they were doing some Sufi meditation, and then they were looking for Atlantis, and maybe they think learning to speak to dolphins is more important than the Dharma, etc. But yeah. I mean, there’s… Let’s not spend our whole class talking about the difference of teaching Westerners and teaching in the West. It is very different and very challenging. 

However, the point in the text — to get back to the text — is, in the beginning, short frequent sessions are better than a long ordeal. OK. They can be just separated by five minutes or two minutes. That’s OK. That’s perfectly OK. But not sit there and “Oh, I can’t wait till it’s over” type of thing. All right.

Then Tsongkhapa says:

Furthermore, in the beginning, we must also have kept (our mental faculty of) detection (rtog-pa) alert and held tightly.

It’s interesting that he uses the word detection here. It’s a mental factor that basically… There are two mental factors. One is called detection (rtog-pa, gross detection); one is called scrutiny (dpyod-pa, subtle discernment). They are not usually mentioned in the context of the shamatha instructions that you find in the lam-rim, for example. (Shamatha being this stilled stable state of mind, a very advanced state of concentration.) Detection is described as when a child goes into a temple with a lot of thangkas, a lot of paintings, and sort of just looks and they get the general idea. And then scrutiny is when you really, really look carefully. Detection would be to just sort of look through a page when you’re reading it, and scrutiny would be like you’re really proofreading to see that every comma and everything is in place. 

He uses the word detection rather than scrutiny, so don’t be overly fanatic about being the policeman or policewoman, because then you’re not focused on the topic of the meditation; you’re focused on being the policeman. He says use detection. 

He says: 

Furthermore, in the beginning, we must also have kept (our mental faculty of) detection (rtog-pa) alert and held tightly. This is because if we have not carried out our meditation while having carefully checked whether or not we have come under the power of mental dullness or flightiness of mind, we might have passed a great deal of time in a muddled state. Since, by having held (our focus) in meditation with (only) the roughest detection (of faults), we will never develop in our entire lifetime any absorbed concentration as we had wished, I beg you, please, keep a careful check (with detection for any meditational faults).

He’s saying that we need strong detection but not fanatic (scrutiny), and I think that there’s a difference there. Tsongkhapa doesn’t choose his words lightly; he chooses them very specifically. We have so many mental factors that are involved with the meditation process, and the point is to know what’s going on in your state of mind while you’re trying to meditate (and he’s talking here about trying to gain single-pointed concentration on the visualization). 

Now, we have mindfulness (dran-pa), we have alertness (shes-bzhin), we have attention (yid-la byed-pa), and now we have detection (rtog-pa) Tsongkhapa brings in. What are the differences? Flightiness of mind (rgod-pa) and mental dullness (bying-ba), all the faults — we’ll go into that shortly, maybe not today, but I want to go into a fairly detailed presentation of how you learn to concentrate, since it seems an appropriate occasion to do that.

Mindfulness is the mental glue. It’s what maintains the hold on the object so that you don’t let go. That’s the most — His Holiness always emphasizes that is the most important factor in trying to concentrate, learning to concentrate. Concentrate is when the mind is fixed on a certain object — it has placement — and mindfulness keeps the hold. That’s what you’re trying to do all the time, is to hold on and not let go. 

And what you are checking, what detection is watching, is that is that hold too tight or too loose. It could be too loose so many other thoughts come in. It could be too loose so that you get dull. There are many manners in which it could be too loose. Or it could be too tight, there’s tension there, which also is an obstacle. That’s what you’re maintaining. Detection, Tsongkhapa is pointing out, knows what’s going on. 

Alertness is like the alarm system. Before I actually went through, word for word, this text, I always thought that alertness was the one that kept watch, but actually alertness is the alarm system. You use detection to detect that something’s wrong. Alertness is now you’re alert to do something about it; it’s not just “Oh…” Because there are some types of meditation methods which say, “Just be aware that you are mentally wandering, and don’t do anything.” That’s not the method that’s used in — at least the way that Tsongkhapa explains how to meditate — in what you find in the Indian texts, The Stages of Meditation (sGom-rim, Skt. Bhavanakrama) by Kamalashila and Asanga’s earlier texts on this as well. There you want to correct if you have dullness or flightiness or mental wandering, not just observe it, not just detect it. This detection is to detect “Ah, something’s wrong.” Alertness: “Ah, I’m going to do something.” It’s the alarm system, so it goes ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. 

Then attention is what places the concentration back on the object and with the mindfulness to hold it there. Attention — there are many different kinds of attention. Attention is just another way… It’s, in some contexts, an easier way of translating... The word literarily means “to take to mind.” It’s taking the object to mind. The alarm system goes off, and then attention restores — you pay attention again — so it restores your focus on the object.

These are the things that are involved. And it is important to know the different mental factors so that if one is not working or not working in proper order, you know what to fix. This is a bit of a “fix it” mentality here that one has. It is not sort of “Just experience it” type of thing. But the emphasis here, at least in this approach, is very much to know exactly what’s involved, know exactly what the mental factors are. 

This is the same thing if you have some disturbing emotional state — to analyze it, to know what are the disturbing emotions that are involved here, what are the various things, so that you know how to work on it. I mean, it’s the basic Buddhist approach: know the causes, and then get rid of the causes. If you’ve analyzed the causes very well, then you can get rid of this stuff. OK.

This word scrutiny, by the way — that I said there’s detection and then scrutiny — scrutiny is the same word that’s translated in different contexts and used in different contexts as analyze. You’re looking at the fine details, very fine details. Eventually you may need to do that, but he’s talking about for beginners. He started the sentence “In the beginning, we need to use detection.” So, in the beginning don’t be so uptight.

This is a very interesting phenomenon. You had a question about this?

Participant: I’m thinking about whether scrutiny is the same as analyze. I don’t think so. I think scrutiny is more like, as you described it, a picture and you have a magnifying glass, and you go to see the details. But you don’t think about how it was painted, or which technique was involved. That’s more analyzing, I think. Scrutiny is more really focusing on a smaller scale but not applying…

Dr. Berzin: Right. OK. He said that scrutiny and analysis are not quite the same. Scrutiny is like looking through a magnifying glass, and analysis means you’re applying reason and so on. That’s why I don’t like to translate the word as analysis or as analytical meditation. I translate it usually as discerning meditation; you’re discerning something in a very specific way that you have thought about before (you’ve gone through a line of reasoning). 

There’s listening (thos-pa), thinking (bsam-pa), and meditating (sgom-pa), this trio.

• First you hear some teaching; otherwise, you don’t even know what in the world you’re supposed to be doing. 

• Then you have to think about it. Think about it means go through lines of reasoning, the various… There are four different things, the ways of checking it, the so-called four axioms, and you check according to all of this — how does it function? Does it make logical sense? What is it supported by? Does it deal with the nature of things? These four — so that you understand it and that you’re convinced that it’s correct and that this is something that I want to adopt. That’s what comes at the end of the thinking step. 

• Then meditating, build it up as a beneficial habit. The discerning meditation is… In the beginning, you need to work through a line of reasoning for developing it, that state of mind — “Everybody’s been my mother in previous lives,” etc., these type of steps — and then at the conclusion of that, you discern, you actually are able to see things or understand things through the magnifying glass of that attitude, of that understanding. And when it becomes what’s called unlabored (rtsol-med) state, you don’t have to build it up on that line of reasoning; you can just do it.

Participant: A book said investigate.

Dr. Berzin: Investigate. That’s like looking through the magnifying glass. There are many different ways. Every translator has his own definition. But investigate has a little bit of the connotation as though you are looking for something. You investigate a murder to find out who committed it.

Participant: I think investigation has the term invest in it, which means “engage” or which means some action, like a detective or something that goes after it, and that I think is not the same as scrutiny.

Dr. Berzin: Scrutiny or discern things in a…

Participant: Because then if you want to investigate, you don’t… It’s different if you go to a painted hall to scrutinize pictures or to investigate pictures. It’s completely different.

Dr. Berzin: Right. He says it’s quite different. Investigate is not only what a detective does, but the connotation implicit in it is that you’re investigating because something’s wrong. You investigate for a flaw. You investigate…

Participant: You go after something. 

Dr. Berzin: You go after something. Right. Anyway, let’s not worry about how you translate. 

But an interesting point, I don’t know how relevant it is, but an interesting point that I’ve observed is that… We talked about ethical discipline. In the beginning — after you’ve shopped around for a spiritual tradition and you decide upon Buddhism, for example — very often what happens is that you become quite a fanatic in terms of the vows, the ethical discipline. In a sense, you are scrutinizing every tiny little thing about your behavior because you want to be perfect and not do anything wrong. And it takes a while before you relax with the vows, with the discipline, with everything, so that you are relaxed with it. Tibetans are very, very relaxed with all their ethical discipline, you know? Look at His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He’s laughing — he’s joking — in the most serious of teachings. He’s not sitting there with a very, very sober-looking face and posture. They’re relaxed. This is also what Tsongkhapa is hinting at here. Use detection, use strong detection, but it’s not this fanatic uptightness. I think. I think there’s a reason why he chose that word and not the word for scrutiny. Anyway, he says to work with that. Then Tsongkhapa goes on. 

I mean, this detection is also in Shantideva, in his chapters on ethical discipline. The first chapter is about — it’s even called — this caring attitude (bag-yod), if you recall, caring attitude in which you have to care about, you take seriously, your behavior, so that you are going to be careful with it. I take seriously that there’s going to be effects of how I behave and it’s going to affect me. That’s the basis for ethical discipline. If you don’t have that, if you don’t give a damn, then you’re not going to engage in any type of ethical discipline, not refrain. First you have to care about it, which also has the meaning of being careful. It has this double sort of meaning. 

Then he uses the word alertness (shes-bzhin) as the title of the second chapter on ethical discipline. Why is it alertness and not detection? Because as I explained, detection… We say “insight,” “Have insight (and things like that) to know when I am coming under the influence of a disturbing emotion,” “Try to be introspective and know what’s going on in your mind,” and so on. But alertness I think is a very good English word for it, because it means that you are on your toes, which means that you’re ready to do something once you detect that something is wrong, something is not proper.

Participant: What would be the German word for detection?

Dr. Berzin: What would be the German word for detection? I have no idea. This is your department. Right. Smoke detector… (Now the class is discussing — for those who are listening to this as a podcast — they are discussing how to translate this into German, these technical terms, and that’s not so simple.) Entdecken? Is that more “to discover”? 

Participant: We should bring a dictionary.

Dr. Berzin: Dictionaries are not always the best source. But these are awfully difficult words to translate in the various different languages.

Participant: What is the Sanskrit and Tibetan word for detection?

Dr. Berzin: For the one that I’m using for detection? It’s dogpa (rtog-pa) in Tibetan, and I don’t remember what the Sanskrit is — vitarka or something like that. I’d have to look it up. I don’t have that at the tip of my tongue. It’s dogpa (rtog-pa) and jöpa (dpyod-pa) in Tibetan for detection and scrutiny. 

Participant: Does it really mean detection and scrutiny, or does it mean…

Dr. Berzin: Dogpa has many different meanings, and so this is the problem. I am just giving the definition and the example that’s used, and it’s in terms of the person going into the temple and looking at the paintings. That’s the example that’s used to describe the difference.

Participant: That’s like noticing. You notice these things.

Dr. Berzin: You notice it, or you really use the magnifying glass. Right. Noticing or really scrutinizing.

Participant: It’s important to know what mental state you’re aiming for. You really have to know.

Dr. Berzin: We need both actually. But what he’s saying for the beginning: start with the one that… I mean, just notice it. Anyway, let’s not go too far into the translation issue if you at least understand from the English what I’ve been talking about. The problem with the Tibetan translations… the word here, dogpa, that’s being used in Tibetan is a translation for many different Sanskrit words. It is also the translation, the Tibetan word, for conceptual cognition. 

I was coming across this example with the word nonattachment (chagmey). Chagmey (chags med, detachment) or togmey (thogs-med, unobstructed). This is interesting in Tibetan. It’s totally irrelevant to what we’re talking about, so maybe I shouldn’t go off on a tangent. But you know the name Asanga? Asanga is translated as togmey (thogs-med). Togmey means “without obstruction.” That same Sanskrit word, asanga, is the word for “detachment” (“no” [a] “attachment” [sanga]). Sometimes asanga is translated as “no obstruction” and sometimes it’s translated with “no attachment.” 

For instance, when they translate the power of a Buddha to be able to know the past, present, and future, it’s translated with the words “without attachment” and “without obstruction” using a different word for obstruction. But you have the two words in Sanskrit, which mean “without obstacle” and “without obstruction,” and you can understand that if you don’t have attachment, you don’t have an obstruction to liberation, so you could understand something like that. But then I’ve always translated it — before I scrutinized the Sanskrit yesterday (for some other reason that came up) — “Buddha’s able to see the past, present, and future with no attachment and no obstruction,” whereas the word attachment isn’t necessarily there. Because then, in another context, they talk about the definition of space, which is the absence of obstruction or tangibility, so obstruction — it’s the same word (asanga). 

Tibetans had the same problem as we have with translation. Sometimes they’re using, for one Sanskrit word, two different Tibetan terms, and then it gets confused. Which meaning actually, was it? When you read asanga in Sanskrit, again it could have two meanings. They’re both there in the dictionary. A translation…

Participant: It depends on the context.

Dr. Berzin: Depends on the context and depends on the commentator. Some commentator took it this way.

Participant: Like the Sakyas use compassion in a weird way, a mental quality. That isn’t what we usually mean.

Dr. Berzin: Oh, yeah. Actually, it’s the Nyingmas that use the word compassion (thugs-rje) as… It’s an aspect of rigpa, of pure awareness, that it goes out, that it irradiates out and communicates.

Anyway, I’m sorry for the tangent.

Participant: Now you made me curious.

Dr. Berzin: Now I made him curious. You woke up. Good.

Participant: But is it possible… Sanskrit was used very often in religious matters, I think. Religious texts were written in Sanskrit. I think, I believe — I don’t know — but it’s really a very skillful language, I guess.

Participant: Precise.

Participant: A full language, you know?

Dr. Berzin: Sanskrit? Yes.

Participant: And this highly evolved language came to Tibet, and maybe Tibetan was too primitive to actually…

Dr. Berzin: That’s right. It was. 

Participant: For all these really highly educated terms like this.

Dr. Berzin: It’s not so much… He’s talking about the difference between Sanskrit and Tibetan, that Sanskrit’s a very sophisticated, tremendous language, and Tibetan perhaps is too primitive to deal with some of these words. 

Not only do the Tibetans not have the words, but you could make up a word. The Tibetans made up a word. And they translated, in one of their styles… Sanskrit is like English or German, so you have prepositional prefixes to words. Under and stand — they would translate under and they would translate stand, and you put it together and it’s absolute nonsense in Tibetan. But if you know what the Sanskrit is that they’re translating, then you see how they derived the word, and then it becomes a word in the Tibetan language. They dealt with different terms. 

What is the real problem is that Sanskrit is a highly, highly inflected language, with many, many cases, many, many verb tenses, much more than any of our European languages actually (the only thing that comes vaguely close is maybe Russian in terms of cases and verb tenses). Tibetan doesn’t have that. Classical Chinese had even less. So you get real ambiguity in being able to express the actual tense of the verb. They can’t even do singular and plural. That’s where the big problem comes. 

Then there’s the argument: Do you go back to the Sanskrit? Is that really where you’re going to understand? Or do you rely on the oral teachings? There are some people who say, “The lamas don’t know what they’re talking about. I can read the Sanskrit, so I don’t need them.” And there are others who say, “But this is the living tradition that actually worked,” and so you rely on the Tibetans. I try to follow a bit of a middle path, which is to rely on the oral teachings but, in terms of terminology and things, try to correct a little bit at least the grammar in texts. I followed that in how I translated Shantideva’s text Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior. I followed the Tibetan interpretation, but I filled in all the verb tenses and singular and plurals according to the Sanskrit, because you can’t tell from the Tibetan. A combination I think is quite good.

With this example of “The Buddha sees the past and the present and the future without obstruction and without impediment,” the way that it says it in Tibetan… Pardon? The Tibetan makes it “without attachment.” I’m sorry if I didn’t say that correctly. The Sanskrit has two words “without impediment,” “without hindrance or obstruction,” so it uses pretty much very closely related words. Tibetan takes it as “without attachment” and “without obstruction.” Chinese — it gets very interesting — they don’t use two different terms. They put them together into one term, “without obstruction,” when the Chinese translated it, which makes one think that probably the Chinese understood what the Sanskrit was talking about in this case and just put it together into one term. 

Anyway, that’s a terrible distraction. I’m sorry. That’s the kind of thing that I like, however. Having studied all these languages, I might as well use them.

OK. Now Tsongkhapa goes on. Very interesting. He says:

Absorbed concentration (focused) on the general…

Absorbed concentration. That’s the word samadhi. That’s not quite shamatha. Samadhi is perfect concentration. Shamatha has in addition this sense of physical and mental fitness, this exhilarating feeling that the mind can focus on anything, and the body could sit there forever without moving. Absorbed concentration. 

And when you have the word… This is interesting. This is where Sanskrit helps. Absorbed concentration; that’s the word samadhi. What I call, then, total absorption, which Jeffrey Hopkins translates as meditative equipoise — completely different word from samadhi. Samadhi is tingneydzin (ting-nge-’dzin) in Tibetan. Absorbed concentration is nyamshyak (mnyam-bzhag) in Tibetan. However, the Sanskrit samadhi and samahita… samahita is the past passive participle of the verbal root that you get samadhi from. It’s the same word in a different inflection. If you know Sanskrit grammar, you know that it’s the same word, just inflected differently; it’s a different part of speech. That’s why I translate both with the word absorbed. 

Anyway:

Absorbed concentration (focused) on the general form of, for instance, the main figure has four defining characteristics:

This is important.

1. the powerful ability to have (the visualization) appear (clearly) whether it takes strong or easy effort,

Appear clearly. I mean, it actually arises; it’s there and it’s in focus.

2. the capacity to have that (visualization ability) extend throughout the (entire) session,
3. during that (session), no going under the power of either mental dullness or flightiness of mind,
4. contacting, by means of that, an exhilarating joy of body and mind and (thus) having progressed to resemble something in the direction of a stilled and settled state of shamatha.

When you have shamatha, you’re able to do it for four hours. So, this is almost there — not quite, but almost there.

Then he says… Maybe that’s enough, because then he goes on to another point. 

What are we trying to then accomplish in our meditation here for gaining absorbed concentration (samadhi) and eventually shamatha (stilled and settled state of mind)? You want to be able to, whether it takes a lot of effort or not… Whether it’s easy or not to visualize. What is that saying? It’s saying don’t cry and be a baby and say, “I can’t visualize,” and therefore that’s an excuse not to do this. It’s something that one can develop, and it’s very important to be able to use the powers of the imagination (we don’t have a word [in Tibetan] like we have imagination). But unless you can visualize the various channels and the various spots in the body, you’re not going to be able to activate the energy system and move energies through it that are located there. You need to be able to visualize these things, to picture these things that are there, and to be able to… 

I mean, the training is to visualize both on a huge, astronomical level and also on a microscopic level and to try to do both of them simultaneously. This is really a very unbelievable training, very difficult, that is heading in the direction of omniscience. If you want to become omniscient and you really think — if you’re convinced — that the mind is capable of becoming omniscient, then we’re all starting at different places in terms of our capacity, so don’t cry about it or complain about it. Wherever we are in our capacities, as a result of habits and things built up from previous lives, just get on with it.

So the powerful ability. Powerful ability. He uses a strong word here. 

the powerful ability to have (the visualization) appear (clearly) whether it takes strong or easy effort,

You have to have it going there. And then:

the capacity to have that (visualization ability) extend throughout the (entire) session,

These are problems that come up in any sort of visualization practice. It fades, comes in and out. When you’re trying to focus on something in front of you, a little Buddha-figure, it moves. To get the thing to stay still is quite an accomplishment, because as the mind wanders then of course the visualization is going to move as well, even if you’re able to maintain that visualization. Get it to stay. 

during that (session), no going under the power of either mental dullness or flightiness of mind,

The capacity to have that visualization ability extend throughout the entire session, and then not come under either mental dullness of flightiness of mind. Next time maybe we’ll get into the discussion of the different levels of that, so that one can recognize what it is, what are the different hindrances that we’re trying to work with to try to remove.

contacting, by means of that, an exhilarating joy of body and mind and (thus) having progressed to resemble something in the direction of a stilled and settled state of shamatha.

And then exhilarating joy of body and mind. You start to come in contact with that, which is a… Sometimes I use the adjective serenely with it: serenely stilled and settled mind. Not that I’ve attained it myself or that I really know what it is, but from the descriptions it’s not something which is overly excited. Not excited at all. It’s a calming, a calming which is nevertheless exhilarating. I think the English word serene comes close to what it’s describing here. It’s not like under amphetamine or some sort of drug where you feel “Rrrr. I can dance all night!” “I can sit here and read this boring book (or something like that) that I have to get through to prepare for my exam,” so I’m going to sit here all night with my teeth clenched, under amphetamine, and just do it, and I feel so exhilarated. We’re not talking about that kind of exhilaration or sense of joy. 

You recognize it? 

Participant: No. I wonder if it really works.

Dr. Berzin: But it’s much more serene, much more peaceful thing. To come in contact with that, that’s resembling, that’s coming — we’re getting close to shamatha. This is what we are aiming for.

Then to go on. Tsongkhapa says:

Once we have made (such absorbed concentration) stable, (focused) on that (general form of ourselves as the main figure of the mandala), as well as held our minds on its fine details, 

Now you’ve gotten all the details going.

we need to have transferred our focus to (include visualizing ourselves as) the other deities (in the mandala as well). 

You only start really… I mean, you get the general thing of everybody in the mandala, but first you have to get the main figure in focus and be able to sustain it.

But when (we have done so), 

When you transfer your focus to include the others.

we need to have expanded (our visualization) on top of (the basis of) not having given away our focus on that (main) deity, on which we had been previously (concentrated). 

That’s an important point. He spells it out very specifically.

Although that is the case, yet if we (have not done that and, instead) have held our focus on these latter (deities around the mandala) while having cast off (our focus on the main, central figure), how will it ever come about that we can (have absorbed concentration focused on ourselves) appearing as (all) those deities simultaneously? Therefore, since the generation stage like that is in fact an indispensable (part) of the subject matter of the precious tantras and an essential (part) of the mantra path, which has become very important and widely praised, it is extremely crucial to perform its meditations (correctly).

What is Tsongkhapa saying? He’s saying that if you’re going to work with a big mandala with a lot of figures in it, first get the general image or feeling of the whole thing. While holding that, focus on the main deity. 

We had a whole class discussing where, from an experiential point of view, is your point of view in all of this. It’s not that there is a findable me doing the meditation. Everything is supposed to be done within a context, of course, of the voidness of the so-called three circles (the one who’s meditating, what you’re meditating on, the process of meditation). Nevertheless, conventionally there is sort of a point of view — a perspective — here. 

Have the whole thing going roughly. Focus, pay attention, on the central figure. With that central figure, work eventually to try to get the various details in focus. 

Now it becomes an interesting question: Are you putting your effort into trying to get a detail or on trying to take care of the fact that you have mental wandering? Where do you put your focus? Obviously if you’re mentally wandering, if your hold is so loose that you lose hold of the visualization completely, then obviously you have to detect that, and then the alarm system goes off, and you have to bring your attention back. That could happen at any stage in terms of working on the details. But remember Tsongkhapa said — we had it earlier — he said:

we (first) need to visualize (ourselves) as the complete (deity), from the head to the feet, in merely the roughest form. When (this) has appeared, we need to have held (our attention) on just that, without mental wandering. If the general form of the body was clear, we need to have held that; and if the general (form) was unclear but a few of its parts were clear, we need to have held (our attention) on whatever was clear. 

So some may go.

If those (few parts of the body) have faded as well, we need to visualize the (entire) general (rough form once more) and have held that. 

Work on the mental wandering, at least the initial stages with the rough form, before you start trying to fill in, with perfect clarity, the details. Once you can hold that, at least to a certain level — we’re not talking about perfect — at least to a certain level, then you start filling in. And if you lose some of that, at least try to hold the whole thing. But if you lose the majority of it, then reset. Reset. That’s not so easy, because reset often means, in a sadhana context, reciting: if you don’t remember what it was, you have to read again. Tibetans will have memorized it, so they don’t have to read. Memorizing is much better, because reading… then completely your focus is changed. Although you could develop the skill to be able to read and visualize at the same time, but that’s a skill you have to develop that for most people doesn’t come automatically.

Participant: I wonder how important it is to have really correct visualization of something. For instance, for the channels and things. If you make mistakes, does it… Is it really important not to make mistakes? Because I was thinking about this recent discovery of acupuncture lines: they say you can just put the needles anywhere. Also, sometimes I have the impression… I don’t know. This description of the channels is something slightly different.

Dr. Berzin: She says: How important is it to have all the details correct? That question could deal with the architectural features of the mandala building, what all the deities are holding, etc. But you’re asking it in a much more significant sense with the chakras and the channels. 

Now you have a problem here, because the non-Kalachakra systems describe the channels and the chakras with a certain configuration; Kalachakra describes them differently — different numbers of channels coming out, different way in which they branch. How important is it to be able to visualize it precisely? What happens if you get it wrong? I cannot speak from experience. I have no idea in terms of that. Because the medical description in the medical tantras is different as well; it’s not the same as in the practice tantras. 

Which system is best or so on? I’ve heard it explained that “You have all the systems,” and it’s like this Sakya samsara-nirvana thing. There are many different quantum levels, and it just depends on what you have the strongest karmic connection with, in previous lives or whatever, which configuration of the energy channels will be the most dominant that you can actually work with in this lifetime. At least that was what was explained to me. 

Whether it’s Kalachakra or the non-Kalachakra system, for example — if we just speak about these two possibilities (and they may be more) — I don’t really know. The visualizations are unbelievably specific. For instance, in some of the visualizations you have, let’s say, the eight channels that come out of the heart chakra. Those seem to be the most significant. And you have syllables inside them. You have deities on top of them in various practices. In various practices — you have the five major chakras in the central channel, and some of them have thirty-two branches, some have sixty-four branches, and you have sixty-four figures standing on these sixty-four branches. It is unbelievable — colors are different, what they’re holding — I mean, it’s unbelievably complex. 

That seems as though it should be fairly precise. Does it ultimately make a difference? I don’t really know because, as you say, with acupuncture — that’s another energy system — they’ve discovered that a lot of it is placebo, that if you stick a needle anywhere it’s going to have the same effect. I don’t know. I have no idea. The tradition is very, very specific.

Participant: You wouldn’t say it’s dangerous to visualize the central channel wrongly? Some say it’s near the spine. Others say it’s an inch more in front.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Does it make a different how many centimeters from your spine you visualize the central channel?

Participant: Is there a wrong way?

Dr. Berzin: Is there a wrong way? I really… I couldn’t say. I don’t know.

Participant: In Hindu tantra, you’re taught that it’s important to get it right, but what you’re actually doing is mental training, and that it’s actually a form of meditation. By getting it perfect, it’s a very important change in consciousness that allows the chakras to work. It’s important to do to train your mind, not that it’s dangerous if you get it wrong, but to reach certain levels of consciousness, and I think it’s the same in…

Dr. Berzin: Right. What Shanti is saying is that in Hindu tantra, the emphasis is to train the mind to have the precision, and that state of mind that has that type of precision in terms of visualization will enable the movement of the various energies within the chakras, opening them or however you want to describe it.

Participant: I think be specific with whatever form you choose or is given to you. You still have to try to get that one right, because it will help your mind to do the actual process. That’s why it’s important.

Participant: Yeah, but how to decide what is right?

Participant: I think, like you said, the tradition is what you feel karmically drawn to.

Dr. Berzin: Yeah. I mean, this is the tradition. Whether you do it right… First of all, the question is: Which system are you going to use?

Participant: A teacher says, “You do this,” and then you do it.

Participant: If you have a teacher.

Dr. Berzin: Shanti says the teacher can tell you, “You do this or that.” My teachers didn’t do that; they relied much more on my reporting what I felt. But I had a very personal, individual relationship with my teacher, which was very rare, so he didn’t just say, “Do this or do that.”

Participant: Like focusing on the yidam and getting it right, it helps your mental state if you do that. That’s what I think.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Focusing on a yidam. It doesn’t matter which yidam that you do.

Participant: A mala in the right hand and a lotus in the left, and all that, is important.

Participant: That’s quite easy. But, for instance, to get the right place — where is the heart chakra exactly?

Participant: Because to get to reach omniscience, like you said — to actually reach that level — it’s a technique that has been given to us because it actually works if we do it.

Participant: But she’s saying: How do you know where…

Participant: Maybe it’s different for everybody.

Participant: Is there an exact place? That is the question. Is there really an exact place?

Dr. Berzin: Is there an exact place, or this or that? The point is, I believe, that when you are meditating on — even before the complete stage, if you’re doing it incorrectly you get what the Tibetans call lung (rlung), which is a disorder of the energy winds that causes you to feel… The symptoms are a very tight feeling around the chest, usually back pains, and a feeling of nervousness, and so something is wrong with the energies. 

They say very, very strongly… When you start to do some of these practices with trying to centralize the winds, or focus on various mantras and things, often it’s said don’t work with the heart chakra, because the danger is that you’re going to get lung very strongly — put it down at the navel; do it at the navel chakra. I think that there’s a certain level at which it can be wrong. But how precise, in terms of 2.3 cm as opposed to 2.5 cm? This I don’t know. This obviously will vary.

Participant: Part of it is to be sensitive about your body too and knowing where you feel it. I could say, “It’s 2 cm in front of your spine or 5 cm behind,” but you have to feel it there. It’s definitely in this region, but you have to feel it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. I mean, there are certain practices which are done focusing on trying to absorb the winds, the energies, at certain chakras, certain centers. That’s what I do at the beginning of the class when we say, “Focus on the point at the middle of the brow.” That’s where, from the Kalachakra explanation, the energies are most focused at the time of being awake. For dream yoga or something like that, you do the neck chakra; that’s where the energies are concentrated. For deep sleep or clear light, the heart chakra. So there are certain practices that are associated with these regions. But precise or not? I don’t know. But Miguel, you had a question?

Participant: Real quick I wanted to say that you were demonstrating just that. You notice that when he’s describing it, he touches a part of his body, but that’s because he has developed this sense of where they are. In a neurological way even, his hand automatically goes to where he knows they are. It’s because you’ve… What I’m trying to say is yes, they’re real, they are existing, and after you’ve worked with them to such a degree as I’m assuming Alex has,  you even automatically feel where they are. Do you know what I’m saying?

Dr. Berzin: Right. But I wouldn’t… The fact that I pointed to my brow and my throat and heart does not necessarily follow that I have a great deal of experience with these practices. Here I am pointing to it just to show you in general. That was not a demonstration of… of anything.

Participant: It was an unconscious demonstration that there’s a sensory…

Dr. Berzin: But I think it’s more general. It’s exactly what Tsongkhapa says. Tsongkhapa says it very well. Let’s go back to the source. He says, “General first. Rough, general first. When you’re able to focus on that and sustain the focus, then you can work on refining it.” You have the general area, and within that general area, as things start to get focused more and more, then you will sense more precisely where things are. As you say, the visualization of all these tiny, little channels and things and stuff inside your body and so on are, to an extent, to get the mind in a more focused state. I mean, you’re trying to get perfect concentration. 

There are practices in which you — on the complete stage — where you imagine things going through the channels; you move various things. You visualize, on the generation stage, deities at different parts of your body to be able to activate nodes, as it were, within the energy channels. That’s why you’re visualizing them there. But do they say precisely? No, they don’t. They say, “On your forearm.” Where on your forearm? It doesn’t give the precise location of it.

Participant: Then roughly you can say: if you get lung…

Dr. Berzin: If you get lung something is wrong. And often it’s not so much in terms of manipulating the energies. At the stage in which most of us are at, it’s because you’re trying too hard, you’re squeezing too hard — it’s like squeezing a balloon — and then the tension becomes more. This was the phenomenon that I explained with discipline as well. You squeeze too hard. You get what we call uptight in English. That’s why he’s using the word — I think why he’s using the word — this is my own interpretation of why he’s using the word detection and not scrutiny. Don’t be so uptight; you’ll just get lung. So many people get lung who enter into intensive meditation prematurely. They’re not ready.

One of you had a question?

Anyway, that brings us well beyond the length of our class, so let’s end here. I think that now we’re ready to get into the discussion of all the various factors that are involved in gaining concentration, and so we’ll start that next time.

Let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever understanding we’ve gained, whatever positive force, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.