Review of Previous Sessions
We are going along in our study of this Letter of Practical Advice on Sutra and Tantra written by Tsongkhapa to one of his meditator friends who requested a very practical explanation of how to practice the combined path of sutra and tantra.
Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Mentor
Tsongkhapa says that we have the bases for this: we have the precious human body, we’ve met with the teachings, and we have spiritual masters, and we have the intelligence to discriminate between what to adopt and what to reject. We need to therefore just engage ourselves in the teachings. For that we need to rely on guidance of a spiritual teacher, a qualified one, who knows which are the states of mind that we need to develop, which are the ones that we need to get rid of; doesn’t add anything, doesn’t leave anything out; and knows the proper order of how to develop them, and knows this in accordance with each of the disciples. And this teacher needs to have gained all of this ability to teach like this from having gone through the training himself or herself from a qualified teacher and being based on the great classics.
The Motivating Mental Framework
To actually begin the practice, what we need to do is tame our minds, which means to get the proper motivating mental framework. For this we have the graded stages as explained in lam-rim: working to gain keen interest in improving future lives so we continue to have a precious human rebirth, and then working for liberation, and finally for enlightenment with a bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta) aim, thinking of how we can benefit all beings and help free them from suffering.
How to Meditate
We need to develop these motivating mental frameworks in an uncontrived way, not just an intellectual understanding, and for that we need to meditate, which means to make them part of our way of being, integrate them. For this we need to know how to build something up as a beneficial habit. We need to know what are all the causes for developing these motivations, what are the various things that it depends on that we need to develop first, what are all the different aspects or details of it. We need to know what helps in developing them and what is detrimental in trying to build them up that we have to avoid. We need to know what to focus on. We need to know how our mind relates to what we’re focusing on. And we need to know what the benefit will be, what’s the function of developing these states of mind. If we have all of this well understood, then it will be easier to meditate and integrate these motivating mental frameworks into our way of being.
We need to develop these motivations throughout the day, not just at the beginning of a session, not just during the session.
The Ethical Self-Discipline of Keeping Vows
Then, on this basis, if we want to engage in tantra practice, we first of all have to be sure that… The gateway for entering it is the vows. This is stressed with quite a lot of detail by Tsongkhapa, that we need some level of the pratimoksha (Skt. prātimokṣa) vows as a lay or a monastic — and best is being a monastic, Tsongkhapa says — and then the bodhisattva vows and the tantric vows. And for all of this, again he emphasizes more and more the benefit of approaching tantra (and even approaching just sutra Mahayana) on the basis of being a monk or a nun. Then we need to receive an empowerment, which is going to activate the Buddha-nature potentials to be able to gain the realizations. Again: at the empowerment, what is most important is taking the vows.
The Proper Order of the Generation and Complete Stages of Anuttarayoga Tantra
For the actual practice, then, we have in the highest class of tantra the generation and the complete stage. Tsongkhapa emphasizes that these are like the rungs of a ladder, that it’s absolutely imperative that we practice them in their proper order. He goes into a little bit of detail about what actually is involved in the generation stage. A great deal of it is dealing with visualization of ourselves as a Buddha-figure and then meditating in a way which is similar to the death, bardo, and rebirth process as a way of building up the causes for getting down to the clear-light mind and using that as the level of mind with which we focus on voidness. We’ve discussed all this in great detail.
How to Visualize in Tantra Practice
Then the text, the letter, continues with a discussion of how we visualize. Tsongkhapa says that although there are several ways, the main way is to visualize ourselves… Of course, all the visualization, all the practice, is done within the context of our understanding of voidness. What he recommends, the way which is most conducive for most practitioners, is that we first get a general visualization of the entire deity — not only the main figure that we are visualizing ourselves as but, if it’s a couple, the couple (if it’s a mandala (Skt. maṇḍala), a building or a palace filled with various other figures, the whole thing all at once) — and we hold the pride on being that. In other words, we label me on the basis of this entire visualization, as something which is not currently happening as an actual realization but is something that we can actually achieve on the basis of Buddha-nature, that our energies, etc., can manifest in these forms.
Tsongkhapa also says that in doing this visualization, we hold the whole general form very strongly, and when we’re able to maintain that then we start filling in the details one by one. We try to keep all of this clear, and if we lose a few of the points — OK, you still continue. If we lose the whole thing, then we need to reset our visualization.
It’s very important that we use the mental faculty of detection to detect when we are coming under the influence of mental dullness or flightiness of mind. Last time, we discussed all these mental factors that are involved with gaining perfect concentration. We have to detect, which means… Remember, this was the mental faculty of seeing if there are mistakes but not scrutinizing, not pressing really, really fanatically hard, but in a general way to see if we’re coming under the influence of dullness or mental wandering or flightiness. Then the alarm system of alertness goes off — ding, ding, ding, ding, ding — that our mindfulness, which is what we are actually watching, has loosened its hold or the hold is too tight, whatever it might be, either in terms of the generation of the image… We might lose the image, or it might start to move around or something like that. Then the alarm system goes off, and then we have to reset our attention on the object.
We also went through what Tsongkhapa says are the four defining characteristics of absorbed concentration on the main figure:
- This was the powerful ability to have the visualization appear clearly whether it takes strong or easy effort.
- The second was the capacity to have that visualization ability extend throughout the entire session.
Whether it’s difficult or not, we need to be able to visualize and hold that visualization extended throughout the whole session.
- Then third: during that session, not going under the power of either mental dullness or flightiness of mind.
- And then fourth: 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 (Skt. śamatha).
Then lastly what we covered is that Tsongkhapa says, “Once we’re able to hold our minds…” I’ll read the last paragraph of the text:
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, we need to have transferred our focus to (include visualizing ourselves as) the other deities (in the mandala as well). But when (we have done so), 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).
We don’t lose the focus on the main figure, ourselves as the main figure; we just expand our focus. We need to understand what we are doing here with visualization, which is done within the understanding of voidness. We are overcoming our attachment to our ordinary appearances and generating a pure appearance (which represents various aspects of enlightenment) with an understanding of its lack of truly established existence. In this way we build up the causes for overcoming the two obscurations: (1) the emotional obscurations (our attachment) and (2) an unawareness of how we actually exist, how we appear, as well as the habits of that unawareness, which cause our minds to make appearances of truly established existence.
This is what we have covered so far. That’s our review.
Also, in expanding our concentration, we want to have both a microscopic level of concentration that we can use for moving the various energies within our body as well as a macroscopic type of visualization in which we’re going to be able to expand our minds to have absorbed concentration, full concentration, eventually on everything when we are omniscient. We want to be able to expand the mind to remain focused on many, many things simultaneously, and we do this with the Buddha-figures having many arms and legs and faces, which represent different realizations and factors of the path, as well as visualizing all the various figures in the mandala, which also represent various aspects of realization.
Achieving Shamatha
What I wanted to start today is a discussion of the material on how to gain shamatha, a stilled and settled state of mind — that’s called zhinay (zhi-gnas) in Tibetan — which is what we’re trying to do with this generation stage practice, at least one of the things. This is discussed quite extensively in the sutra texts. The instructions for how to gain shamatha that we find in sutra are also completely valid for tantra as well; Tsongkhapa just adds the detail concerning tantra regarding how we gain this concentration on the basis of very extensive visualization.
Objects of Shamatha
There are many, many objects that we can focus on, or states of mind that we can focus on, for gaining shamatha. I didn’t bring the whole list with me, but you can find that on my website if you’re interested. There are many, many, many different possibilities, so we shouldn’t think of it as just being limited to focusing on the breath or the sensations of the body or on the nature of the mind or on a visualization of a Buddha in front of us or ourselves being a Buddha. There are an enormous variety of things that we can focus on for gaining concentration. Just a few examples: We can focus on the skeleton of a body in order to be able to develop through our concentration, at the same time, detachment. There are these types of visualizations and objects of focus for shamatha.
Shamatha, as I explained, I translate it as a stilled and settled state of mind. The Tibetan for it is zhinay (zhi-gnas). Zhi means “pacified” or “stilled” or “quieted,” so it is quieted of mental dullness and mental wandering, flightiness of mind. Then nay (gnas) means “stays settled,” “abides,” “stays in a place,” and so it’s staying focused on an object during a state of mind. That’s why some translators translate it as calm abiding. Rather than calm, I say stilled, because I think that stilled gives a more active sense — that we have stilled, we have quieted down, the obstacles to concentration. And settled is that it’s brought — so again I think that’s more active — that it has been settled down onto an object and kept there, staying there.
The defining characteristic of it is that we’re able to stay focused with no mental dullness, no mental wandering, no flightiness of mind, together with this exhilarating feeling of body and mind, that the mind is able to focus on anything for as long as we like, the body’s able to sit and not move for as long as we like. It’s a very exhilarating feeling of being well trained. That, on top of the perfect concentration, is shamatha. Sometimes I’ve added the word serenely stilled and settled, because serene also I think gives a little bit of the quality that this exhilaration feeling is not an excited whoopee! jump-up-in-the-air type of feeling but a very calm type of joyous feeling. Serene is a word in English that conveys that, I believe. In order to qualify for it to be zhinay, we need to be able to maintain such a state of mind for four hours straight. Not so easy.
The Six Conducive Conditions
In order to work to achieve shamatha it’s necessary to gather six conditions that are conducive for it. We find these instructions in the texts by Asanga (Skt. Asaṅga) and also later texts by Kamalashila (these are great Indian masters).
1. A conducive place
The first of these conducive circumstances is a place (yul) that is conducive. A place that’s conducive for gaining concentration — what does that mean? It means quiet, to start with. When we talk about quiet, then what is said to be not a conducive place is a place where there is running water, so by the ocean or by a stream with moving water. This is very non-conducive to gaining concentration because, on the one hand, it hypnotizes you (it is conducive for dullness), and also if you’ve ever looked at and just stared at a fast-moving stream, it very much affects your state of mind: it makes the mind again very, very hypnotized and moving along with the stream. Those are not good places to try to get concentration, although some people might think “Aw, a beautiful beach” and something like that. That’s no good. We want a quiet place that is going to be fairly comfortable. You don’t want to be in excruciating pain either in a place.
2. Little attachment
The second is little attachment. That’s very important. This means attachment to people, to friends and loved ones, food, clothing, our own bodies, affection (receiving or giving affection), comfort, praise, blame, sleep, and so on, because obviously if we’re very attached to these things our minds are going to wander off.
If you remember from our study of Shantideva’s Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior: in his chapter on concentration (mental stability), the first half of it he spoke on overcoming desire and attachment because that is the greatest obstacle to gaining single-minded concentration. Our mind wanders off after things that we are attached to. Shantideva emphasized attachment to a body that we find attractive, a sex object; and this for most people is the strongest object of attachment and desire.
Our attachment though could be to less strong objects — just to being with people in general. It’s very helpful to try to gain single-pointed concentration alone, not in a group. If we’re in a group, you get distracted by people: you look at them, you compare yourself to what they’re doing, you want to talk, etc. It should be a silence type of retreat, nobody to talk to. But it says that also it’s very helpful to have someone nearby in case we have questions that we can ask or when we get in trouble. That’s another thing.
But lessen our attachment to friends and loved ones. I’m sure that most of us have experienced that when we try to meditate, that our mind wanders off thinking about those that we are very fond of.
Little attachment to food. We’re not going to have great banquets. Most of the retreats that people do for gaining concentration — the Tibetans would just live on tsampa (rtsam-pa), this roasted barley grain, which of course you could be attached to (Tibetans like that very much), so that doesn’t cancel out the possibility of attachment to the food. But again, when we are trying to gain concentration, or even when you’re doing physical exercise, I noticed this — that the mind is wandering off after “When are we going to have lunch?” and “What am I going to have?” etc., “I can’t wait.”
We have to have little attachment to food, little attachment to clothing. Obviously, we’re not in retreat for fashion or anything like that. And so, the clothing… I mean, it’s just enough to keep us warm or cool, depending on the climate.
Our own bodies. That means we have to be a little bit tough. For most of us, we’re not used to sitting cross-legged or sitting still for a long time, and we want to shift our position all the time, we have pains in our knees, and so on, that we can often have very little tolerance for, we have itches — all these sort of things that, if we’re very attached to our body and very much paying attention to that, we’re going to be distracted by it. Even if we don’t scratch or move our knee which is hurting, still our mind will wander after it and think about it; it will cause us to lose our focus. We need to have less attachment to that.
Affection. A lot of people are very attached to affection, either receiving it or giving it. If we’re having a difficult time in the meditation, then we might want somebody to put their arm around us, give us a hug, comfort us, or someone that we can go to for sympathy and so on, and that’s another form of attachment. Of course there’s a human need, biological need, for affection, particularly when we are babies, but in trying to gain single-minded concentration, we need to have very little attachment to that.
It’s going to be rough; it’s going to be difficult, trying to gain concentration. It’s going to go up and down. There is no… we can’t go to other people for comfort. In a sense, you need to comfort yourself. Or think of the examples of the great meditation masters in the past: Milarepa didn’t have somebody to comfort him, to pat him on the back and say, “It’s going to be all right.” We need to not treat ourselves like babies.
Little attachment to comfort. I don’t think as Westerners it’s necessary to go out of our way to have an uncomfortable situation in which to do this type of practice. You know, in a freezing cold cave on the top of a mountain. I don’t think that that’s a prerequisite for gaining single-minded concentration. But again, comfort shouldn’t be a primary concern. As long as it’s a certain level in which we’re not always in pain, I think that that’s OK.
Praise, blame. We don’t need anybody to say how well we’re meditating, [get] attached to that or get upset that we’re not doing well. We don’t need somebody to scold us. A lot of people are attached to having other people instill the discipline, many people going to group retreats. These are Westerners. In general, I’ve never heard of Tibetans doing group retreats, but Westerners like that, and it often is for being able to gain the discipline. You want somebody to stand over you and “You have to be there” and “You have to do it” — sit for a certain amount of time and so on. That is a bit of attachment to having somebody else give us the discipline. It’s very important that we develop the discipline ourselves by our own motivation.
Little attachment to sleep as well. This is a major problem in meditating, that you get dull and you get sleepy. That’s a big, big obstacle, is struggling to stay awake while you are just concentrating on one thing. I think it’s quite different...
There are many different types of meditation. When you do a sadhana (Skt. sādhana) practice, in which you recite a text and are very actively changing your visualizations and changing the states of mind that you’re focusing on — now it’s compassion, now it’s voidness, now it’s this, now it’s that — it’s very, very fast. This is a very active type of a meditation process. For some people that is very good — their minds are fast, they’re able to concentrate as things change, so they don’t fall asleep. You could of course have mental wandering while you’re doing that as well so that you’re not so focused. That’s a danger that happens when you try to focus on the mind going quickly, that the mind then just goes quickly with all sorts of other things as well. But if you try to just have your mind be quiet and still on something, then very easy to fall asleep — very, very easy. This is something which is not so easy to overcome, so we need to be not so attached to sleep, not give in to it.
What does all of this indicate?
Participant: Quite an amount of renunciation.
Dr. Berzin: It indicates renunciation, quite a level of renunciation. That’s true.
Participant: Discipline.
Dr. Berzin: Discipline, that’s true.
I think the first thing that this indicates is that trying to do a retreat to gain single-minded concentration is not at all a practice for beginners, that already we need to be quite well trained and prepared for being able to undertake a process like this. To gain single-minded concentration (shamatha) the texts say, “You can get it in as little as three months.” I’d like to see somebody who got it in three months. I suppose it depends on where you start, but it’s very, very difficult. There are nine stages to it. Maybe we can gain a few of those stages, but to gain the perfect thing — there are very, very few people who actually have achieved shamatha.
I remember the old Geshe Rabten. He died many, many years ago. He was famous among the Tibetans for somebody who actually did achieve shamatha. The fact that somebody was noted for that indicates that it was very rare. I remember seeing him at teachings by His Holiness. He would sit there like a rock, not move for three hours, not at all. This I always thought was quite extraordinary. His Holiness rocks back and forth, and other teachers — they don’t do gross movements of their legs, because they’ve sat cross-legged for most of their life. But Geshe Rabten sat like a rock.
In any case, it’s going to take a long time. It’s a big effort. And we need to be very well prepared. To have little attachment means that we’ve worked on ourselves quite a lot already before going into retreat. To just do a little bit of shamatha meditation every day may be of help, but in order to really gain progress, we have to put in a period or a chunk of time devoted to this. Which means renunciation, as you say… What is renunciation?
You remember what renunciation is? What’s renunciation?
Participant: It’s a positive decision to go towards enlightenment.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Making a positive decision to go toward liberation. Determination to be free. It’s based on being disgusted and bored with all the problems that arise from disturbing emotions, etc., and being totally willing to give it all up, to give up what is causing all these problems. To give up our anger, to give up our attachment. We’re not talking about ice cream or these sorts of things. The object isn’t the point of what we are willing to give up. What we’re willing to give up is the state of mind, which is causing the actual problems, the disturbing emotions.
3. Contentment
So conducive place, little attachment. The third condition is contentment with the food, clothing, weather conditions, and so on, that we have. Be content. Whatever we have, whatever preparations we’ve made, the food, clothing — “We didn’t bring enough, and it’s cold” — well, be content with that. Don’t have your mind wander all over the place and leave and so on. Which means be well prepared beforehand, anticipate what we’re going to need, how much food we’re going to need, etc. Don’t complain about the weather. It doesn’t matter what the weather is. Be content whether it’s very cold, whether it’s very hot, whether it’s raining all the time. We’re not on a holiday in which the weather makes a difference and so on. Contentment.
4. Being rid of busywork
The fourth one is being rid of busywork (’du-’dzi), busywork of having many distracting activities, such as carrying out business and other worldly affairs. That means don’t bring your computer with. You don’t want to check email or answering machine messages or how your stocks are doing or anything like that. You don’t want to have distracting activities. There’s a whole list:
- Gardening. Gardening. It doesn’t matter. You bring your own food. You are not there to “Aw, the flowers,” and all sort of things.
- Elaborate cooking. You don’t want to spend a lot of time with cooking. This isn’t a gourmet retreat. You do very, very simple cooking. I mean, I know in my case — I cook basically once every three or four weeks. I have an enormous pot, I cook a huge amount of food, and I freeze portions of it and eat the same thing every day. That’s fine. Then I don’t have to waste time cooking every day. There’s very little time involved in heating something up. Be content.
- Chatting with fellow practitioners. That’s why it’s good to be by yourself while doing this. No cell phone, nothing like that. You don’t need to chat. No instant messaging, nothing like that — speaking on the telephone, writing letters, email, etc. Rid of all this type of busywork.
- Have your place be simple, small, so that we don’t have to spend a lot of time cleaning. As part of the preliminaries every day, of course there is sweeping the floor of your meditation room, setting up the altar, the water bowls and so on, but it doesn’t have to be something enormous. There is one preliminary practice, within the ngondro, of offering a hundred thousand water bowls. That’s something else. In a retreat have it be fairly simple so that we don’t have all this busywork taking care of these things.
5. Pure ethical self-discipline
Then the next condition is pure ethical self-discipline. That means as much as possible trying to refrain from at least the ten destructive actions while doing this.
What happens when we are meditating and there is a fly that keeps on buzzing around and landing on your face, or a mosquito, or these sorts of things? One has to follow pure ethical discipline. Otherwise, you might as well put on a pith helmet and a hunting rifle and go running around your room trying to find the mosquito or the fly and either kill it or catch it and throw it outside. We need discipline to be able to do that. If we are bothered by insects, if that’s a problem, meditate inside a mosquito net. Find some sort of solution to the problem (that we would have particularly in India) of insects, if we’re bothered by insects.
No stealing. No lying. We’re not talking to people, so that’s OK. Don’t lie to yourself.
Participant: Don’t steal from yourself.
Dr. Berzin: Don’t steal… well, steal from yourself? That’s relevant. If let’s say you plan to do meditation for sixty days and you have brought enough food for sixty days, stealing from yourself would be to take a little extra. That’s stealing from yourself.
It’s always recommended when we are doing an intensive meditation retreat to be totally celibate. No masturbation, nothing. That also because — again for the mental distraction and the energies of the body, etc.
There are various aspects of ethical self-discipline. Don’t get discouraged and start cursing and abusing — abusive language — toward the meditation, toward the practice, what I’m doing, etc.
As I think we’ve discussed, when you do intensive meditation practice what happens to most people is a lot of emotional turmoil comes to the surface. Things that maybe have been kept under the surface for a long time that have been bothering us tend to come up, and then it can be almost like some sort of demon that comes out and bothers us. We need to have some sort of discipline to be able to deal with that, not get angry, not get despondent, not get depressed. You know, people sometimes experience that things come up and they start involuntarily crying and so on during a meditation. Fine. Remember impermanence. Let it pass. These sort of things. Don’t let it break your spirit and determination to continue with the practice. Expect that a lot of garbage is going to come up when doing a retreat, especially if we don’t have too much experience (it’s our first or second retreat).
What is interesting, because I can tell you from my own experience: You may have done many retreats, and you may have been a Dharma practitioner for a very long time, for decades, and you thought that you had dealt with problems OK. And you’d go into the retreat, and all of a sudden, some old thing that you thought that you had dealt with comes up again, and there it is as strong as ever. That’s OK. Not to get discouraged. What is the main characteristic of samsara (Skt. saṃsāra)?
What’s the main characteristic of samsara?
Participant: Suffering.
Participant: It’s recurring.
Dr. Berzin: Suffering. Recurring. It goes up and down. Samsara goes up and down. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. No certainty in samsara. Not just no certainty of rebirth state, no certainty of friends, etc., but no certainty of how we feel. The main thing that karma ripens into is feeling happy or feeling unhappy. That’s going to go up and down all the time. Nothing special about it. We’re not going to be free of our disturbing emotions until we become an arhat, a liberated being. That is a long way away. Therefore, it is not surprising. In fact, it is outrageous to think that after just a little bit of the mediation that we’ve done, “Now I no longer have jealousy. I no longer have anger. I no longer have attachment. I’m rid of it.” Ridiculous. Arrogant to think like that.
Participant: Something always pops up.
Dr. Berzin: Something always pops up. The tendencies are there. The habits are there. It’s going to take a very long time to get rid of them.
Participant: And the maras too, right?
Dr. Berzin: The maras are… There’s the mara (Skt. māra) of the disturbing emotions, the mara of death. There are various types of maras, interferences, interfering spirits.
Pure ethical discipline. Just keep on going. Armor-like discipline. I mean there’s the armor-like perseverance, actually, that you’re just going to go on no matter what, and the discipline to do that.
6. Being rid of obsessive prejudiced thoughts
Then the sixth condition is being rid of… Now, this is a difficult word. It’s the word namtog (rnam-rtog). Here I translate it as obsessive prejudiced thoughts. That’s a little bit strong perhaps, but namtog is, in general, conceptual thoughts, but it also is used for prejudice. It’s also used for superstition in colloquial Tibetan: “This person has a lot of namtog.”
Participant: Judgmental?
Dr. Berzin: Not so much judgmental. It’s like always having to look at the astrology chart, always having to look at “What is the configuration of the clouds?” or things like that. Preconceptions.
Participant: Like analyzing everything?
Dr. Berzin: Analyzing? No, because analyzing can be very positive, to analyze…
Participant: Someone’s somewhat fearful too.
Dr. Berzin: Fearful? Well, there’s certainly insecurity there. But it also is the general word for conceptual thoughts, but it’s a little bit stronger… I mean, there’s another word for conceptual thoughts, just dogpa (rtog-pa). This is namtog (rnam-rtog).
Participant: Like compulsive.
Dr. Berzin: Compulsive. That’s why I translate it here as obsessive prejudiced thoughts about what we usually consider desirable to do, such as watching TV or videos, looking at the internet, listening to music, reading novels… There’s a namtog. “I have to have music playing to calm me down.” “I have to have my cup of coffee in the morning in order to be awake.” These are namtog. These are these obsessive thoughts.
Participant: Habitual.
Dr. Berzin: Habitual with a sense of a prejudice and a superstition. “If I don’t have my coffee, I can’t possibly meditate.”
Participant: To read the horoscope.
Dr. Berzin: To read the horoscope. All these sort of things.
Participant: Compulsive behavior is there.
Dr. Berzin: Compulsive is part of that as well. “Everything has to be just right in my meditation room. It has to be just like this.”
Participant: The right kind of incense.
Dr. Berzin: The right kind of incense.
Participant: But on the other hand, there is a protocol for how to set up the shrine and all this.
Dr. Berzin: There is a protocol on how to set up the shrine. Milarepa had nothing. He offered just some water in his cup that he used for tea. It’s not an absolute prerequisite that it be just so. That again is an attachment.
Contentment with what we have. If we have something that’s simple — the simpler the better, actually. If you can afford something nice, that’s fine. However, don’t let it become an object of pride. “How beautiful, how wonderful, my altar is.” “I’m so great because I have a golden offering cup.” This type of thing. “Ooh, I have to have fresh flowers every day as an offering.” That’s also a namtog. “It has to be like that.”
Participant: But can’t it also be uplifting to have something nice?
Dr. Berzin: It can be uplifting to have something nice, so long as it doesn’t become an object of attachment and mental wandering and pride. You try to make it… This is why I said — do you recall? — we don’t go out of our way to make an uncomfortable place for meditating. I can assure you that His Holiness’s meditation room in his residence is nice. That’s not the problem. If you can make it nice — sure, make it nice. But “I can’t meditate because I don’t have the right thangka. And I’m not going to go into a retreat until I can afford to buy the right wall painting and scroll painting and this and that.” That’s silly. If you have, fine. If you don’t have… What’s one of the circumstances that are conducive? Be content with what you have. Be content. If you’re doing a mantra retreat and you need to count — “I don’t have the silver things that are the counters.” Use rocks, a pile of rocks or stones, to keep count.
Participant: But nice stones.
Dr. Berzin: Nice stones. Matching designer stones. Right. But stones. Every time you go through the mala, a hundred mantras, you move a stone from one pile to another pile. That’s the simplest way of keeping count.
These are the circumstances that are conducive for gaining single-minded concentration.
The Five Qualities of a Conducive Place
Then in the Filigree of Mahayana (Skt. Mahāyāna) Sutras (Mahayana-sutra-alamkara) Asanga, the Indian master, gives the five qualities of the first of these six conditions, a conducive place:
1. Easy availability of food and water
A conducive place needs to have easy availability of food and water. If you have to haul everything up to the top of a mountain, that’s not so easy. Easy availability of food and water.
2. An excellent spiritual situation having been sanctified by masters
Two: an excellent spiritual situation (gnas) having been approved and sanctified by our own spiritual mentor or by previous masters who have meditated there. Not so easy to find. Not so easy.
Now this becomes a very interesting question. From experience (and this is not just my own experience but so many people’s experiences), if you go to a place where there has been a great meditator — the greatest example is under the bodhi tree in India where Buddha became enlightened — you can feel something special there. Now, to say that it is blessed by the person? I don’t like that kind of terminology. But somehow, without getting too New-Agey about this, it seems as though — and I think this has been demonstrated with the crystal structure of water that freezes in certain places — when somebody gets single-minded concentration or something very close to that, or super compassion or whatever, in a place, it somehow aligns the energy of the place and it leaves a signature behind in the place. And it’s something that, if you’re a little bit sensitive, you can feel. If we can be in a place like that…
I mean, I don’t know if you have visited great lamas, great masters, in India. You go into their room and you feel something. The whole energy of the place, even if the lama isn’t there, has a certain resonance to it, and that’s one of the qualities of… If you can find a place like that, that’s one of the best places to do a meditation retreat in.
Participant: I would even go as far to say that even not only to visit a place like that, but for example certain artifacts which have been transported, which have been in such an area, carry with them that energy also. For example, at the Dahlem Ethnic Museum there was a Tibet… What was the exhibition?
Participant: Treasures of the temples. They had never been seen. It was incredible, the power. It made you meditate, just to walk into the place.
Dr. Berzin: Right. I agree. Also, the various objects that have been the possessions of these people who have been great meditators, or in their homes, etc., they also seem to carry this signature to them of aligned energy that you can feel. Zina was mentioning that there was an exhibition recently at the Dahlem Museum here, an anthropology museum, ethnology museum, here in Berlin in which there were special objects from Tibet, from great temples in Tibet, and you could feel this energy of these things.
That is why great meditators give what’s called a hand elevation or heightening (phyag-dbang), sometimes called blessing (I don’t like that word). If you are doing a retreat with mantras, and you have a rosary, to do that, to blow on it. Their breath has a certain energy to it to get things very well aligned. They use that to blow on people to help in some sort of healing process. You have relics of great masters which are kept in stupas after they die, pieces of their clothing, etc., and that has a certain quality to it.
Participant: I have a question about it. Do we think the negation is happening as well? We live in Berlin and that’s a pretty historic place, which means…
Participant: Negative.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Yes. There is the negative side to this. This is why very often great lamas are called upon to come to a place and do purification type of rituals in order to, in a sense, settle the disturbed energy that has been left over in a place after a great deal of violence has occurred there. Also, if you are sensitive, you can feel that disturbed energy in places where a murder has taken place or there was a concentration camp or whatever.
Participant: Constant bombing.
Dr. Berzin: Right, constant bombing. Like that. And obviously if you live in a very busy city with a lot of traffic and a lot of hustle and bustle going on and so on. We’re not even talking about greed and disturbing emotions; just the actual chaotic motion, physical motion — it can be quite disturbing.
What’s interesting is that when you become more advanced in your practice then it’s said you should go purposely to these places to meditate. Meditate at busy crossroads (that would be the ancient Indian equivalent of places with a lot of traffic), in cremation grounds (scary “woo woo woo” type of places), all these sort of things, that this is, when you’re well trained, then this is going to train you even more, that you overcome more namtog, more superstition, more “Argh, I can’t stand this type of traffic,” and so on. Because we’re going to have to deal with that if we’re going to be a bodhisattva or a Buddha. You can’t just stay in nice, quiet places. But that is a more advanced level when you’re able to do that and it doesn’t bother you; in fact, it becomes a conducive circumstance.
Participant: What you were saying about the place, how important it is to have a place where there’s been some spiritual activity there before: I remember a Swiss monk who was doing training in concentration for quite a long time. He started in Spain in a very quiet spot, absolutely nothing around, but he said he came to a certain point and then he felt that he couldn’t go further there. Then he moved to India or… well, to some holy place, but it was a much more crowded place with more noises and whatever. But although it was louder, it went on better there than in the quiet place before.
Dr. Berzin: Right. What he’s saying is that he knows a friend who was trying to do concentration meditation. He was meditating in a deserted mountain place in Spain, but it wasn’t going so well. And then he went to India and was in a place which had a history of spiritual practice being done there, and although it was more chaotic and noisier, he found it more conducive. That’s very true. Bodhgaya’s certainly not a quiet place, for example. An extremely noisy place, and a lot of chaos going on around it. Nevertheless, it’s an extraordinary place for meditating.
There are these factors. That is two. An easy availability of food and water. The second one: an excellent spiritual situation.
3. An excellent geographic situation
The third: an excellent geographic situation (sa), being secluded, quiet, distant from people who upset us, with a pleasant long-distance view of nature, no sound of running water or the ocean to mesmerize us, and a good climate.
We’ve discussed secluded, quiet. That’s certainly the best. Away from people who upset us, so we don’t have to have that type of disturbance.
Pleasant long-distance view of nature. That’s very, very important. When we have a disturbance of the energy, called lung (rlung) in Tibetan, that is… When we have been pushing ourselves too hard, we get this. You’re squeezing too hard the energies in your body. Trying to concentrate and you’re not relaxed in your meditation, and so it’s like squeezing a balloon, and so it starts to pop out. A balloon pops out in between your fingers, in different places, and you feel very nervous, very tense, pain in the chest, usually pain in the muscles in your back. It’s like having too much caffeine, a little bit in that type of direction. One of the things that’s very helpful for that is to have a long-distance view, a nice view, like from a mountain or just over fields or something like that, because it relaxes the energy. The energy can expand. It’s been too tight and too confined in the meditation practice.
This is one of the easiest, simplest ways of diffusing that type of lung problem. There are certain things from Tibetan diet which also can be followed which helps with things like that. It’s not mentioned here, but I found this from my own experience. There are the guidelines in the Tibetan medical texts. There are also personal variants in that. Certainly, anything with caffeine is terrible for lung; that’s coffee, tea, chocolate, Coca-Cola, anything like that with caffeine just makes the lung worse. What I find very helpful for lung is this wonderful wholegrain dark bread that we have here in Germany. I find heavy wholegrain, for me personally, is wonderful for quieting down any type of lung. You have to experiment with yourself. But for sure the caffeine is terrible for it.
Participant: Would a nice view of an ocean help as well?
Dr. Berzin: No. The problem with the ocean is that it tends to hypnotize you and it makes noise. I don’t think that you could gain concentration rocking up and down in a boat in the middle of the ocean either. I think that would disturb the energy.
Participant: What about looking over a still body of water that doesn’t move, like a lake?
Dr. Berzin: A still body of water like a lake? That could be quite OK. That could be quite OK.
Participant: So long as it’s still.
Dr. Berzin: So long as it’s still.
Participant: There’s lots of Zen practices where you’re looking over a pond, a still pond.
Dr. Berzin: There are Zen practices where you look over a still pond, yes. It’s the motion and noise of the ocean, the waves breaking on… the ocean is loud.
Participant: What about physical exercises?
Dr. Berzin: Physical exercises? Indian texts and Tibetans never mention them. That certainly can be a help.
Participant: Because I once met these Goenka instructors. They were telling us it was forbidden.
Dr. Berzin: Forbidden to do physical exercise?
Participant: Yeah. Then one teacher told me it’s OK before 4 a.m. If it’s good for you and you need to do it, do it, but don’t tell anybody that. Strange, isn’t it? I don’t understand why they said it’s forbidden.
Dr. Berzin: Now he’s saying that he did a Goenka vipassana (Skt. vipassanā) type of retreat, one of these mindfulness retreats, and they strongly discourage and even forbid physical exercise. But he said that one person that was there encouraged him that it was OK. Why would you not want to do physical exercise? The first thing that comes up to my mind, why yoga would be better, which is not an active thing, is — by active I mean getting your pulse going and the heart beating very fast — is that if you do strenuous physical exercise then the energies are racing around your body, your pulse is high, your breathing is very much affected by it, and that might… Pardon?
Participant: Even a little bit, you know? I heard someone say that this outer kind of yoga… a person did some kind of yoga, and she was thrown out of this center.
Dr. Berzin: Right. He said some people got thrown out if they were doing yoga. I don’t know. Because also you have, in Theravada (Skt. Theravāda) tradition, walking meditation is alternated with sitting. Now, mind you, you walk so unbelievably slowly that you couldn’t possibly get out of breath doing that.
Participant: At this Hinayana (Skt. Hīnayāna) retreat, they didn’t want any exercise. They believe it will get you violent and angry and lustful.
Dr. Berzin: Right. He’s saying in Theravada… Again, they’re saying that if you do physical exercise while trying to do a meditation retreat, it can increase your aggression, your anger, etc. The energies are moving more quickly.
Participant: Theravada forbids it. Mahayana encourages it.
Participant: It depends on your teacher.
Dr. Berzin: You’re saying that Mahayana encourages it. Certainly, the Tibetans don’t encourage it. They’re very Mahayana. Maybe some Zen encourage it, with China, Japan. I don’t know personally whether those who train in… while you’re training and practicing martial arts, that at the same time you’re doing a practice to gain single-minded concentration. You certainly need single-minded concentration in your motion, but that’s a different type of object. That would be similar to, but in a different dimension, to gaining single-minded concentration on a very fastly changing visualization. There are many different forms of concentration and things that you can gain with concentration. Shamatha is always with the mind on a mental state or a mental focus. It’s not concentration while doing physical exercise or music or something like that.
You do have physical exercise in the tantra stuff as a preliminary for the six yogas of Naropa (Skt. Nāropa), which is for the complete stage practice, in order to loosen the energy channels. There is a set of exercises that are done for that, and there are various lists of those exercises (there are different lineages of it and so on). That’s done, but not that many people actually reach that stage where they would do it, and I haven’t come across very many teachers who teach it.
Participant: Like when you talked about opening the chakras. These kinds of exercises where you’re doing certain things with the limbs and the movement of the body in certain snakelike positions, so that you’re aligning the energies…
Dr. Berzin: Not the ones that I’ve been taught, that you are sort of snaking the body to get the chakras aligned. No. It has to do with… There’s some sort of breathing type of things. I don’t know. It’s hard to describe in words, but it’s sort of trying to get the channels a little bit looser. There are many variants of it and there are many, many different groups of exercises. Let’s not go into that. That’s another whole topic, of the physical exercises. But the Tibetans do have that, but it’s not something which everybody would practice, and it would be done for a specific purpose, for a specific length of time, and then go on to the next step.
As for physical exercise, I think personally it’s very beneficial in daily practice. But we’re talking about a retreat to gain single-minded concentration. In that context, maybe not. It depends. What can I say? It’s not mentioned here.
We have easy availability of food and water, an excellent spiritual situation, an excellent geographic situation.
4. The excellent company of similarly engaged friends
Then the next one is an excellent company of friends similarly engaged and either living nearby or practicing with us. That doesn’t mean a group retreat in which they are in the same room with us, in which you tend to be comparing and so on, but if you need help… (These meditators who are up in the caves above Dharamsala (Skt. Dharamśālā): There is a cluster of them. They’re not hanging out with each other and drinking tea and chatting.) But if there’s a problem, if there’s anything, there are people around who are similarly engaged, they understand what we’re doing, they’re available for help or for advice.
I mean, you don’t want to be doing it, let’s say, living in a family situation in which the other people in the house are playing loud rock-and-roll music and having parties and getting drunk and doing all sorts of things like that. You want to be in an area in which the people are similarly engaged. That’s why for us Westerners where they have these retreat huts in meditation centers (so long as it is a proper meditation center, not one in which they carry on with dancing and singing and all sorts of partying, but which is serious a Dharma center), which is conducive — easily availability of food and water — they bring it to you, this type of thing, then this is wonderful.
5. The items required for a happy bonding with the practice
Then the fifth item here is the items required for a happy bonding with the practice. The word they use is yoga, yoga with the practice. Yoga is the same word as to yoke in English, which is to make a bond, make a connection, to join with the practice. This means namely having the full teachings and instructions for the practice and having thought about and understood them beforehand so that we are free of questions and doubts. Very important. Clear up all your questions before you go into retreat.
Sometimes there have been some lamas who encouraged people to do retreats in order to become familiar with a practice. My teachers were very strong in saying that was improper, that was wrong. A retreat is not the time to familiarize ourselves with a practice; you need to already be familiar with it so that you don’t have any more questions and you just get on with the practice and do it.
That’s particularly true with sadhana practice, which is very complicated. You’re going through, as I said, the whole script — like an opera — of practice, that “And now you do the four immeasurables of love, compassion, and so on. And now refuge. And now think bodhichitta. And now voidness. And now…” one after another after another after another. You need to know how to do these things so that you can just do them.
Participant: It would be a waste of time to begin in a retreat.
Dr. Berzin: It would be a waste of time to begin in retreat. “What does this visualization look like? Where…” etc., etc. This should all be cleared up beforehand.
Questions and Answers
Participant: You talked about the Western approach and the Tibetan approach to retreats. Once before, in another lecture, you said that Tibetans normally don’t make group retreats, with the exception that when they were very poor (when they came from Tibet to India, they couldn’t afford anything else). I wondered, and still wonder — maybe you have an explanation for it — how come in the Western world, where they have such an individualized style of living, that they need leaders? Which means they need to group retreat. They need somebody who leads them, who guides them through practice. And in the Asian world, people are not so particularly individualized, but they can help themselves and they don’t need a leader in order to meditate or to practice. How come?
Dr. Berzin: He asks a very interesting question. He says that I’ve pointed out before that there are many differences in style of Westerners and Tibetans doing meditation retreat. Westerners like to do group retreat. Tibetans generally do individual retreats, unless they’re very, very poor and can’t afford the facilities and so people have to share (like when the Tibetans first came to India). It seems strange that Westerners are so individual, want to be individual, but they like a leader for things like a retreat and want to do it in a group. They have led meditations. There’s no such thing as led meditations among the Tibetans (I’ve never heard of it). Whereas Tibetans have more of a… not so individualistic, but nevertheless they’re able to do these retreats by themselves.
I can point out, by contrast: I go to a fitness club, sports club. There are classes and there is the individual equipment. The classes are led classes, in a group. 80-90% are women. And for the equipment, 80-90% are the men. You can say, “Are women more like this and men more like that?” I don’t know. My point being that I think the activity that’s involved here plays a very important role.
Westerners — I mean, aside from the difference of men and women in terms of macho or whatever type of things — if you’re doing like physical exercise and so on, Westerners are familiar with this. They know how to do it (or at least they can be shown once how to use the equipment) and they do it. Somehow, they have discipline. And I think that the discipline for that is basically around, for many, attachment — I want to look good, have big muscles, this type of thing, macho — which is again a big self-aggrandizement and so on. Some may do it for health or to lose weight, but I think there’s a little bit of a disturbing emotion there.
Meditation is something that Westerners have no experience with, no idea how to do, and it’s much more difficult than physical exercise, for most people, much more difficult. For that, people don’t have so much discipline. I think the main thing that they need is the discipline from the group to be able to actually do something that’s unfamiliar.
For the Tibetans, meditating and things like this are I think part of their culture, certainly not something alien. I don’t know… Your average Tibetan monk, for instance: When they do meditation… First of all, they don’t all meditate. They do their sadhana practices, they do these things. They participate in an awful lot of rituals. With the rituals, with the study, everything is in groups. They’re always in groups. They’re never alone. Those that go off to do a solitary retreat are very few. Most of them when they meditate, meditate by themselves, but it could be in a room with other people. With people who are similarly engaged, in a sense.
But you can’t really compare our situation with the situation at a Tibetan monastery. Debate, for instance. Debate. You have a hundred or more groups of two or three people debating at the same time, screaming at the top of their voices, sitting directly next to each other, everybody screaming something different at the top of their voice. When they memorize their texts as little children, everybody is screaming it out loud at the top of their voices, all next to each other. That forces you to have concentration and discipline. There’s no way that you can survive in that type of atmosphere without concentration and discipline. They have that already. They’re trained in that. If they’re going to do a meditation retreat, they just do it. They don’t need somebody else to guide them in that. Also, they’re not forced to do it. Sometimes in the West there’s almost like group pressure that you have to go and do this retreat. Tibetans study further and do meditation retreats and things like that only if they really want to, and not everybody wants to.
It’s very, very difficult to compare, very difficult. Also we’re not — I mean, most of us are not monastics, so to go into a retreat situation we are putting aside our whole life, our ordinary lives, and you need some sort of imposed discipline I think, for most of us, not to want to use the cell phone, not to look at email, not to listen to the news, not to do any of this stuff.
Participant: To reflect on your question, I think there’s two reasons why Westerners need groups and leaders, like you say, whereas the Asians tend not to. From my experience in seeing different religious traditions, including Buddhism: The Western education system is based on a teacher praising you and then you know where you stand in the pecking order. And I noticed that Westerners like to know “Oh yeah, you’re doing well. You’re not doing well.” Kind of showing off a little bit.
Dr. Berzin: He was saying that one factor why Westerners might like to meditate in groups and with a leader is that our education system in most Western countries is based on having a teacher saying you’re doing well or you’re not doing well. We like some external confirmation, praise, of how we’re doing. But if you remember in the Seven-Part Attitude-Training lojong, one of the pieces of advice there is to “take yourself as the main witness.” We know whether we’re doing well or not. You don’t need somebody else to tell us.
Participant: But that’s why I think people like to hear “Oh, you’re doing great.”
Dr. Berzin: He says people like to hear that you’re doing great or you’re not.
Participant: The other thing I think is, like you said, most Westerners are not monastics. From what I’ve seen, people use it because they’re lonely and want to meet other people and maybe get to know them. They might not even know that’s why they’re doing it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. He says that also in the West people are not monastics, for the most part, and they might go to a retreat also as a social thing, to meet other people, etc., even though it might be unconscious. Many of us lead very isolated lives, and so it’s nice to be in a group. I don’t know. There are many reasons, and it’s very individual.
Anyway, this is the discussion of the conducive conditions for meditating. That brings us to the end of the class, and then next time we’ll continue with the discussion of the deterrents to concentration (in other words, what are the things that cause obstacles in our concentration) and go into an analysis of all the different levels of mental dullness, mental flightiness, and so on, and then after that what we use to counteract that. OK?
Let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever understanding, whatever positive force has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.