LPA46: Concentration, Meditation, Karmic Connections

Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Mentor

Tsongkhapa starts by saying how we need to remind ourselves that we have all the basics for being able to practice: we have a precious human rebirth, we’ve met with the teachings, we have spiritual teachers, and we have the intelligence to discern between what we need to adopt and what we need to get rid of in ourselves. We need to actually engage ourselves with the teachings, get involved, actually do it.

For doing that we need to rely on guidance from a spiritual teacher who can show us the way. The teacher has to be properly qualified: knows what are the states of mind that we need to adopt, 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 for developing them. And the teacher needs to have been trained himself or herself by fully qualified teachers and along the path of the scriptural texts.

The Motivating Mental Framework

For how we actually begin our practice, then, the main thing to start with is to tame our minds, which actually means, in this context, to work on our motivating mental framework — what we’re aiming for and why, the reason, and what is the emotional background that draws us to achieve that goal. For this there’s the graded stages that we have in lam-rim: 

• First, we are aiming for having continuing precious human rebirths in all our future lives, because we dread being reborn in one of the worse states in which we’d have no opportunity to practice the Dharma. In order to achieve that goal, we need to refrain from destructive behavior and put a safe direction in our life.

• On the intermediate level, we’re aiming for liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth altogether. We’re driven to that by renunciation of all the various types of sufferings that there are in possible rebirth states. To achieve that we need to rid ourselves of all the disturbing emotions and attitudes. We need to gain higher discriminating awareness based on having higher concentration, based on having higher ethical discipline.

• Then, on the advanced scope, we’re aiming for the full enlightenment of a Buddha so that we can be of best help to everyone. We’re driven to that by love and compassion for others, taking responsibility to lead them all the way to enlightenment and developing a bodhichitta aim to achieve that enlightenment to be able to fulfill their purposes. And in order to do that we need to have our full understanding of voidness, together with the far-reaching attitudes, and driven by bodhichitta.

How To Meditate

Then, although we can speak about these motivating mental frameworks, it’s important to develop them in a sincere way, not just an intellectual understanding of that. To do that we need to meditate to build them up as beneficial habits. For this Tsongkhapa goes into a big discussion of how we meditate: We need to know the causes, the various things that each of these mental states depend on, and what are all its full aspects. We need to supplement all of this with reading texts about them and scriptures, and cleansing away obstacles and so on. We have to know what is going to be beneficial for developing these states of mind, what’s harmful for them, and what will be the function that we’ll use when we gain these states of mind, what will they enable us to do, what will they enable us to accomplish on the one hand and get rid of on the other hand. We need to know specifically when we meditate what do we focus on and how does our mind relate to what we’re focusing on. There are all these different aspects. And when we do further meditations, we have to have these basic motivations be steady and continuous throughout the session, not just at the beginning, and throughout the day, not just in meditation.

The Ethical Self-discipline of Keeping Vows

Then for getting into tantra Tsongkhapa emphasizes first of all that to involve ourselves with any level of the Buddhist practice, we need to have strict ethical discipline and keep that in regard to the vows that are associated with each of the levels of practice. We have the pratimoksha vows of individual liberation, which are kept in common with both the Hinayana and Mahayana. We have the bodhisattva vows, which are specific to Mahayana. And we have the tantra vows, which are specific to the two higher classes of tantra within Mahayana. We went through all of those. It’s important to know what are the various factors that will weaken them and what we do in order to restore and revitalize them.

Then in terms of his actual presentation of tantra, we have to receive an empowerment. At the empowerment, we need to take the various vows (there’s no receiving of an empowerment without the vows). For these it is best if we are fully ordained as a monk or a nun, second best is as a novice, and third best is as a layperson with the householder vows. This is essential not only for taking tantric vows but even for taking bodhisattva vows as well. 

The Proper Order of the Generation and Complete Stages of Anuttarayoga Tantra

Then once we have received the empowerment (which awakens the various Buddha-nature factors) and we keep the vows and — although Tsongkhapa doesn’t mention it, but he mentions it in terms of developing the motivating frameworks — we have built up a tremendous amount of positive force and cleansed ourselves of at least the superficial obstacles through preliminary practices and so on, then we involve ourselves with the generation and complete stage when we’re practicing the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga. Tsongkhapa emphasizes that these two stages are like rungs of a ladder (by quoting Buddha, who said that) and it is very important that we practice them in their proper order.

Then in terms of the generation stage, we’ve gone through a lot of detail about that. It’s where we work with our imagination to imagine ourselves going down to the — our minds getting more and more subtle — to the clear-light level, in analogy with death, because that’s the level of mind that’s going to be most conducive for nonconceptual cognition of voidness. We imagine that we get to that subtle level of mind (as in the stages of death), and then that subtlest energy of that subtlest mind appears in subtle forms (this is analogous to bardo) and then in grosser forms (which is analogous to waking up).

We have the visualization of ourselves in these Buddha-figures, which are involved with that appearance side similar to bardo and rebirth, and these will act as causes for being able to actually get down to that subtlest level of mind and generate what’s known as illusory body (at least in father tantra it’s called that), which will then be the immediate causes or direct causes for the various enlightening bodies of a Buddha. Dharmakaya in terms of that analogy of the clear-light mind of death, Sambhogakaya similar to the subtle forms similar to bardo, and Nirmanakaya similar to the grosser forms that are analogous with waking up.

How To Visualize in Tantra Practice

For visualization Tsongkhapa speaks in terms of how we do that. We have mandalas with many figures, and we work with having the rough visualization of the whole thing first and then fill in the details one by one. When we are working with multiple deities in a mandala, then it’s important that although we focus our main attention on the main deity first, we are actually all the figures in the mandala, and as we expand the clarity of the detail of the various other figures, we do that without losing the clarity of the details of the main figure.

Achieving Shamatha

Then Tsongkhapa mentions a little bit about how we concentrate, and this is how we gain a stilled and settled state of mind (or at least something which is similar to that or close to that) with the generation-stage practice. Our discussion of that last time — the last two times — we spoke about what are the conditions that are going to be conducive for gaining this shamatha, this stilled and settled state of mind or perfect concentration (let’s call it that in English for ease of expression). 

Then we spoke about the five deterrents to concentration, what are the things that are the obstacles that we have to overcome. We spoke about laziness, either forgetting the instructions or losing the object of focus, then mental flightiness and mental dullness, then not applying the opponents to them, and not stopping applying the opponents when they’re no longer necessary.

We also spoke about the different levels of flightiness of mind (or mental flightiness) and mental dullness and how it’s very important to be able to recognize what these are. We saw that we have the general category of mental wandering or distraction, which could be because of any cause, either desire or anger or jealousy or whatever. 

Within that, flightiness of mind is when our mind flies off to an object of desire. That has been experienced by the meditators to be the most compelling type of mental wandering, so it is usually singled out. 

• We have gross flightiness of mind, where our mind completely flies off and loses the mental hold on the — loses mental placement, I should say, because our mental hold is too weak. 

• Then subtle flightiness: we keep the hold, but it’s not tight enough, and so there’s an undercurrent of thought either about what we’re focusing on or about something else.

• And then a subtler — even more subtle — level like that, which is that there’s no undercurrent of thought but still the hold is a little bit too tight, so there’s like an itchiness to leave the object: we’re not relaxed.

The mental dullness is an interruption to concentration due to a fault in the appearance-making factor of the mental hold. Our mental hold has both a placement factor (and when that’s at fault you have flightiness of mind) and it has an appearance-making — generating that state of mind that we’re focusing on, whether it’s a visualization or a state of mind, like love, or we’re just focusing on some object, like staring at a candle or focusing on the breath. When there’s a fault of the appearance-making of the object, that is mental dullness. And it also has three levels: 

• Gross mental dullness, that we lose the object, we can’t generate it at all, because that appearance-making is too weak. It can be accompanied or not with foggy-mindedness (that’s a heavy feeling of body and mind) and with or without sleepiness, in which you drift off into… When the mind gets more subtle it leaves its reliance on the sensory apparatus as its basis when we have sleep, so we don’t hear or see and so on, at least not on a conscious level.

• With middling mental dullness we’re able to generate whatever it is that we’re focusing on, but the hold on it isn’t tight, it lacks a sharp focus. That focus doesn’t necessarily have to be in relation to a visualization where you see all the details, but focus also on a state of mind, like love — that it needs to be sharp, not just a vague type of love. Because when we speak about love, for example, love is the wish for others to be happy and to have the causes of happiness, so it’s not just a vague feeling; it’s with a certain attitude that is there. That needs to be sharp when we talk about the hold is not tight and it lacks the sharp focus, so there’s some understanding that’s there.

• With subtle mental dullness, there’s the appearance of the object, there is the sharp focus, but the hold is still not sufficiently tight — it’s too weak — and so the state of mind is not fresh in each moment; it becomes stale.

Any questions about that? Those are actually very important points. I’m just reviewing what we spoke about last time. But these are things that we really need to try to identify from our own meditational experience. 

OK, I’ll give you a little exam, a little question. Have you ever experienced when you’re speaking to somebody and then you start to say something and then you forget what you were going to say next? What is that? What’s the fault there? 

Participant: Flightiness.

Dr. Berzin: Flightiness? That’s part of it.

Participant: Lack of concentration.

Dr. Berzin: Concentration of course. It’s a fault in concentration, but which fault?

Participant: Too much concentration.

Dr. Berzin: Too much concentration? Oh, I don’t think so. Then you would remember what you were going to say next.

Participant: Too tight.

Dr. Berzin: Too tight? No, I think it’s too loose. It would be the gross level of mental dullness: you’re not able to generate what you were going to say next.

Participant: You’re thinking on two levels.

Dr. Berzin: Thinking on two levels? It could be that you’re thinking about something else, but I’m talking about you just… all of a sudden, it’s gone, what you were going to say next; there’s nothing going on in your mind. That would be this gross level of mental dullness, that you’re not able to generate the appearance here, which would be the next thing that you were going to say. As a result of that, you have the fault of losing the object of focus. 

What about when somebody is talking to us and we’re thinking about something else and you have to say, “What did you say?” What fault is that?

Participant: That’s flightiness.

Dr. Berzin: That’s flightiness. Which level?

Participant: I’m not sure.

Participant: It’s mental wandering.

Dr. Berzin: It’s mental wandering in general. It depends on what is drawing our thought to something else.

Participant: We’ve lost the grip on the object.

Dr. Berzin: We’ve lost the grip on the object, but it’s the middle level because we’re thinking about something else and, actually, we’re still hearing the person.

Participant: It might be a lack of interest as well.

Dr. Berzin: Now we get a lack of interest as well. These are the causes for not paying attention. These are the causes. We have to develop interest. If you develop interest, then you are happy to listen to what they are saying. You have perseverance, joyful perseverance. Perseverance means that you stay with it, and we have these factors that are going to be very helpful for that. In fact, we have these in the eight composing mental factors, the things that we use to overcome these interruptions. Yes, interest is very important.

How do you generate that interest if you’re just focusing on your breath? Is your breath really interesting?

Participant: I think you motivate yourself by remembering why you’re doing it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. You motivate yourself by remembering why, which means what are the benefits of doing it, and that’s belief in the fact of the advantages of focusing on this. If we understand the benefits, why we’re doing it, then we will take interest in doing it. If we take interest, we’ll stick with it. And if we stick with it, it gives us the flexibility to actually apply ourselves.

Participant: But isn’t it a distraction?

Dr. Berzin: Which is a distraction? 

Participant: A distraction from the placement.

Dr. Berzin: What’s the distraction?

Participant: Thinking about the benefits.

Dr. Berzin: Thinking about the benefits — isn’t that a distraction? Yes, if we have to remind ourselves of it. But that’s why, before meditating, you sit down and reaffirm the motivation of why I’m doing that, why I’m sitting here, and then set the intention that I’m going to try to… if my mind wanders, I’ll bring it back; if I get sleepy, I’ll wake myself up. These are the things you do first. Then you meditate. 

If you’ve done that before sitting down to meditate, then if your mind loses it you don’t have to think very much about the benefits and the intention — just for one moment. It’s not as though you have to verbally say anything in your head. You just “Oh, yeah” and then you bring it back. If you set that intention very strongly in the beginning and the motivation very strongly in the beginning, it should carry you through. But often you do have to remind yourself, but that reminding is quite short usually. The reason why it’s short is because what it says here in the beginning — the first composing mental factor, belief in fact — you have to be convinced of the benefits of doing this. If you’re not convinced that this is beneficial and that I really want to do it, then of course there’s going to be a lot of resistance, internal resistance. “Oh, I don’t really want to do this. Why should I do this? Why am I sitting here?” We have to be convinced that this is what I want to do and it will be beneficial, and not just beneficial in some abstract way but beneficial in a way that we can relate to.

How it would be beneficial to have more concentration? (Now we’re just talking general concentration, not necessarily on ourselves with a visualization.) Why is it beneficial?

Participant: Whatever you undertake, it’s easier to finish the job, because you’re much more focused.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Whatever you undertake, you’ll be able to finish the job; you’ll be more focused. You could be more efficient at work or, if you’re a student, in your studies. That’s one aspect. What about in terms of relating to people? If we’re more focused, then we can pay attention to other people, into taking care of them, without our mind wandering off to either selfish thoughts or completely extraneous thoughts. Isn’t that the case?

Participant: I think the motivation must be before. It doesn’t have so much to do with the ability to concentrate. You can help somebody with a selfish or a selfless motivation.

Dr. Berzin: We could help somebody, she’s saying, with a selfish motivation.

Participant: And being very concentrated. 

Dr. Berzin: And being very concentrated. Yes. We need both the motivation of why we’re helping somebody and being concentrated. I mean, it never says in the teaching that concentration is the only thing that we need. We also need discipline and perseverance, and we need to have some sort of skillful methods so that we know how to help them. There are many, many things that we need, but concentration is one of them. 

Motivation is certainly very, very important. But even if our motivation is selfish, do we help the other person anyway or do we wait until we have a better motivation? At what stage do we have a perfectly pure motivation?

Participant: When you’re a Buddha.

Dr. Berzin: When we’re a Buddha. Actually, when we’re an arhat, when we are liberated — when we’ve achieved liberation. Before that there’s always going to be some little element of selfishness there. That’s very important to realize, that even if there’s some selfishness there, even if there’s some disturbing emotions there, what do I expect? Nevertheless, I’m going to try to help anyway. That’s very, very important. Whatever our disturbing emotions might be, whether it’s attachment to the person, whether it’s pride of how wonderful I am, or whatever it is, still we try to help.

Remember, when we talk about the results of karma, the action and the motivation will have different types of results. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. That’s not quite accurate. A positive action with a selfish motivation will have a weaker result than the same positive action with a strong motivation, strong positive motivation. The motivation affects the strength of the karmic force, but still a positive act is positive.

Participant: Given what you just said, how can one measure the degree to which selfishness goes into the motivation without self-awareness in the first place? Many people believe they’re doing things for the right motivation, but they can’t even see… It’s a question of karma and its measurement, of how it ripens. You don’t know you’re being selfish. We’re unaware of our motivation.

Dr. Berzin: This is a very nice question. What she’s saying is that — because you were speaking quite softly for the recording — how do we know that we have a selfish motivation when we’re doing something helpful to someone else, because most of us are not self-aware, we’re not conscious, we’re not introspective enough, to realize that our motivation is selfish? How does this affect the karmic force? 

It affects the… I mean, there’s a whole list of thirteen factors that affect the strength of the ripening of karma, and one of them is whether or not we apply the opponent forces. If we are aware that part of my motivation is selfish, then we… I mean, you could obviously be aware of it and say, “So what? I don’t care.” Or you could be aware of it and then “I regret that. I’m working to diminish that, to get over that. I will try to have it be less selfish,” and so you apply the opponent forces. But if you are not aware that you are acting selfishly, then obviously you don’t do that. This will affect the force of the ripening.

Participant: Actually, even in this prayer that we begin with, it even has something to account for that, for all the deeds that we do unaware. It sort of covers that in a roundabout way.

Dr. Berzin: Right. When we do the seven-part prayer, there’s the line that “I openly admit to the negative things that I’ve done under the force of unawareness” — I wasn’t even aware that I was acting under the force of negative emotions and so on. Yes, that is good, but it’s very good to be aware of it at the moment. And even if I’m not able to correct it — like for instance I’m really attached to this person and that’s why I’m helping them, or I really would like them to like me so I’m helping them, and so on — nevertheless I regret that, I’m not too happy about that. That’s very different from feeling guilty. Certainly, we don’t want to feel guilty, which is a strong identification that “I’m not good enough. I’m not a good practitioner. What I’m doing is not good; it’s bad,” and then just holding on to that as something solid and not letting go. That’s guilt. This we don’t want.

Do you have to be conscious all the time of regret that “I’m being a bit selfish here”? Wouldn’t that prevent you from being a bit spontaneous?

Participant: You become neurotic.

Dr. Berzin: You become neurotic.

Participant: Always checking yourself to make sure.

Dr. Berzin: Always checking yourself. You’re being the policeman all the time. So that you have to watch out for as well. On the one hand we need to do that, but on the other hand not in a neurotic way.

Participant: Can you develop a kind of intuition to do it spontaneously?

Dr. Berzin: Can we develop an intuition to do it spontaneously? Yes, you do it spontaneously, whether we call it intuition or not (intuition is a very difficult word to define). But yes, you’re right that you do it: “I’m aware that I’m doing it. I’m aware that this isn’t the greatest, but this is where I’m at now. This is the level that I’m at,” and so just put my full heart into helping somebody without that selfish part of it being dominant, and I’ll work on the selfish part as best as I can.

When we talk about the motivation… Motivation in Buddhism means the aim plus the emotion that’s driving it. If we talk about the motivating emotion, there are stages of that. There’s the motivating emotion which actually causes you to go toward a certain action, like “I’m going to go over there and help somebody,” it gets you going toward that. Then there’s the motivating emotion with which you actually start to help them, and then there is the motivating emotion in each moment that sustains the action, and a motivating emotion with which you complete the action. That can change during the course of an action. It may be selfishness in the beginning, but as you’re doing it you’re not so driven by the selfishness anymore. This is important to know, that these sort of things change, so that we don’t beat ourselves thinking that the whole act is selfish.

Participant: From all the teachers you’ve dealt with, has anyone ever said to you what happens if you are genuinely trying to help someone, you’re not being selfish, but the person really doesn’t want to be helped? Where do you draw the line of…

Participant: What’s too much? It’s going too far.

Participant: Let’s say you’re trying to, for instance, help them learn the Dharma, but they couldn’t care less about that. When do you say, “OK, then I can’t help you”?

Dr. Berzin: He’s asking if any of my teachers shared with me experiences or teachings concerning when we try to help somebody and our motivation is pure, or at least relatively pure, and they don’t want our help or it’s not possible to really help them.

Participant: Or under those conditions.

Dr. Berzin: Under those conditions, etc. There are the teachings that it’s idle chatter to teach the Dharma to somebody who is not receptive or who has a negative attitude and doesn’t want to learn it. That’s idle chatter. In the context of bodhisattva vows it’s teaching voidness — and it doesn’t have to be just voidness — to people who are unreceptive, improper vessels. In tantra, sharing the secret, hidden teachings with those that aren’t qualified. That’s covered with that, but also, I remember very well with Serkong Rinpoche, my own teacher, two occasions:

One: There was someone who came to him — I was translating — who had some serious problem with what he imagined or what he said was ghosts or something like that haunting him. Spirits. Obviously, he was very disturbed, whether it was actually spirits or not is not the point. But Serkong Rinpoche said, “I don’t have the karmic connection with you to be able to help you, but this other lama does,” and he sent him to this other lama. If you’re someone as highly developed as Serkong Rinpoche was, you know; you can feel whether or not you have the connection with somebody to help them or not. That doesn’t involve the other person being receptive. It’s another factor, which is the so-called karmic chemistry between the two people. 

Another time, from one experience that I had: I needed his advice about something — I think I was sick or something like that — about which doctor or what type of medicine would help (because what I was taking wasn’t effective). And he said that “I’m not clear today,” and so he sent me to somebody else. There the problem was from his side, that he was not feeling well, and so he was very honest with that.

There are many different possibilities here why we can’t help somebody, either the problem on their side, the problem on our side, or the problem in the connection. Yeah, they spoke about things like that, at least Serkong Rinpoche spoke about things like that.

Participant: That’s very interesting. Your first example — I’m wondering if he said to the student, “I don’t have a karmic connection with you to deal with this particular issue, but here’s someone who does,” or “Here might be a better direction.” I don’t know if the student was Tibetan or a Westerner.

Dr. Berzin: Western.

Participant: OK. Did he feel some sort of disappointment that he said, “I don’t have the karmic connection with you”? Or was the student advanced enough to accept that that’s not a personal slight? Because I can see if you say that, someone who doesn’t understand that it doesn’t mean something negative could feel a rejection or something.

Dr. Berzin: She was saying that the student in the first example — who Rinpoche said, “I don’t have the karmic connection with you to help you with this problem, but this other lama does” — did that student, who was a Westerner, feel rejected? I didn’t get that feeling, because Rinpoche wasn’t rejecting him; he was giving him the solution to his problem. If he just said, “I don’t have the connection to help you with this. Sorry. Bye-bye,” that would be open to the guy feeling a rejection, but he sent him to somebody who was just down the road.

Participant: In that particular case, maybe it worked fine. But I can imagine too that maybe if a student had a particular need to want to have a particular teacher, then they have almost this idea in their mind that if the teacher said, “Go to this other teacher,” that they could perceive that…

Dr. Berzin: Yes. If the person was particularly attached to Rinpoche and wanting to have that connection, they could feel rejected, sure. But what can you do? 

Let’s extend this example. People ask you to do something to help them, and you don’t have time, or you don’t feel that you can really help this person and so on. There’s a big difference between saying, “Sorry. Bye-bye,” and offering them something else. That’s always the preferred thing, that you say, “I can’t really do this, but try this. Try this.” 

I had an example today. Somebody sent me an email saying that they read something in one of my articles on the website and they wanted to — they were doing research about something connected to it, and they wanted to know my source of information. It was about something historical dealing with the Soviet Union and its involvement with Mongolia. It wasn’t a Dharma question; it was a history question. And when I wrote the thing… I mean, with the website — I purposely have made the website not academic (with all the footnotes, etc.), and so I didn’t have a clear idea of where I got that piece of information from. I looked in all my notes, in my bibliographies and reading notes, of what could be the possible sources, and I couldn’t find it. I spent about maybe a half hour or an hour, and I saw this was not worth my spending the whole day on this, trying to search it. So instead, what I did was I sent the guy the bibliographic information, saying that “I can’t find the specific source, but look in these sources which speak about the topic and maybe you’ll find something.” It was like the example that I used last time, I think, of when somebody is asking for all your time and all your attention; you say, “I can’t give you all my time,” but you give them a little piece and you are reliable with that.

Participant: I was thinking of this example that you just mentioned. There was also a matter of time involved. It took too much of your time. Is it really so important a question? You have to weigh the importance of how much you… Because if you sacrifice too much of your own time, then that’s taking away from someone else that you could be helping.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Now you’re getting into another very big topic. In this example of my giving the reference to the guy in the email, the question is: If I spend too much time — I could have spent the whole day looking through all my reading notes to try to find the reference — it prevented me from doing anything else, and was it really of higher priority? This is a very important question. When you are an aspiring bodhisattva — and you might not even be an aspiring bodhisattva, but if you have a lot of people making requests and demands on your time, and we are not yet able to multiply our body into thousands of forms simultaneously, then what do we do? You have to prioritize. 

In terms of prioritizing… Because I’ve asked lamas about this, because for me it’s quite a serious question. First of all, you do things, His Holiness said, the Dalai Lama, you do things that only you can do (or there are a very, very few people who can do it other than you) and what you’re really good at. What you’re really good at where there aren’t many other people or any other people really doing that. And of course you have to look at long-term benefit versus short-term benefit. That as well.

Then I asked another lama, Ringu Tulku actually, and he said that also you could take into consideration what you like to do — what do you like? — even though that is a selfish part of the motivation (you’re not a Buddha yet). That actually plays a part in terms of how much energy you’ll be able to put into it, perseverance…

Participant: Joyfulness.

Dr. Berzin: And joyfulness. Exactly. Because if you don’t like doing it and you resent it, you’re struggling to overcome that negative emotion.

Then also (if you have the sensitivity): “Do I have the connection with this person to be able to actually help them? Are they really receptive?” But His Holiness also said that you try to give everybody a little piece, a little piece, even if it’s just directing them to somebody else. That becomes a very difficult thing to do in terms of if you have a problem of not being able to say no. Very difficult.

Participant: I think it’s also an issue that it’s difficult to judge… If the other person asks you to do something, to judge if this is important or not. It might be very important for this person. You think it’s just some little thing or it’s just bullshit or something, but for this person it might be very important. How to judge that.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Now she’s saying: How do we judge? Somebody asked us to do something, and especially if we don’t even know the person (they just send an email), how do we know that it’s important? For them it may be important; for us it may be trivial. That’s very hard to judge. The point is to take everybody seriously. We need to take them seriously, but if it’s… It’s hard to judge. Because also there are many cases in which it is more beneficial not to help them but to make them help themselves. 

I always remember this incident when I was at Princeton. I took a philosophy course with Walter Kaufmann, who was like the world expert on Nietzsche and existentialism and stuff, and he was a great teacher, and I went to him to ask him a question about Nietzsche or something like that. And I had mentioned that I had studied German a little bit, and rather than answering my question, he had me sit in his office, gave me the German book myself, and said, “Read it. Look it up yourself.” Which was actually a wonderful, wonderful teaching because it really pushed me in the direction that if I want to find out something, look it up — do it myself. This was a very good way of helping me. He did not answer my question.

Participant: That’s a way that makes you retain the information more, because if you’re just given the answer, it very often goes in one ear and out the other. But if you have to search for it, you’ll never forget.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Well…

Participant: Because you’ve made an effort.

Dr. Berzin: She says if somebody just easily gives you the answer, then it can go in one ear and out the other, as we say in English. But if you have to look it up yourself and put some effort into it, then it’s easier to retain. That’s now teaching methods. I’m getting distracted here. But this is a… I know it’s a problem for me. In teaching — especially teaching the Dharma — if you look at traditional teachers, they don’t give you the answer. They make you figure it out yourself, either in questioning back and forth (a Socratic method), or just giving you a little piece, or explaining it in a way that’s way over your head, or something else, and you have to work it out yourself. Because that weeds out if you really have the motivation or not, do you really have perseverance or not. Because the Dharma training is not just a training in information; it’s a training of your personality to develop that perseverance, that patience, that… Why do I want to know this? Not just because “Me, me, me. I want to know. I have to get the answer! You have to answer me. I paid the money to get in the door.” That’s very difficult as a teacher, not to just give the answer. I’m certainly guilty of that.

Participant: Maybe I can just go back to one thing you mentioned before. You talked about the karmic relationship. What is it exactly? I don’t have the karmic relationship to live with you or to help you now. How is it defined? What do you mean?

Dr. Berzin: Oh, that’s a wonderful question. Not a very easy one to answer. We spoke about karmic connection, that you either feel that you do have the karmic connection, or you don’t feel that you have the karmic connection to be able to help somebody. What are we talking about here? I can just say — I mean, I don’t know this from other people, but just from my own experience it’s a natural feeling of closeness and openness with somebody else or just a feeling of slight repulsion or no interest. 

What’s very, very tricky here is: Is that an accurate sense of a karmic connection or is it just a manifestation of disturbing emotions? You find somebody attractive, pretty, for one reason or another, and so you feel a connection, which is more a projection. Or there’s something about the person that you dislike. It could be based on what they look like, the color of their skin, or their race or whatever. It’s a disturbing emotion that makes you feel that you have no connection. This you have. Or you’re close-minded: “I’m too busy to even bother.” But you have to be very honest with yourself. 

But I feel it in myself almost like a magnet, a feeling of openness. That’s very hard to describe.

Participant: You do obviously need intuition, I think. Is there an affinity — can I deal with this person? Or is there a kind of resistance?

Dr. Berzin: Right. She’s saying the intuition: Can I deal with this person with ease, or do I feel a resistance? Yes, we would call what I was talking about intuition. I was just trying to describe what does intuition mean. That’s just a word, and it’s a very difficult word to know what it really means, intuition. But certainly, that’s what we would call it, intuition.

Participant: Following up on her question: Wouldn’t a repulsion or an aversion also be a side of a karmic connection too? Because it would be from negative experiences.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Repulsion is also a karmic connection. It’s a karmic connection in a negative sense. If there were no karmic connection, you wouldn’t feel anything; you would just totally ignore the person. 

But this is why — this is interesting — this is why you do these phenomenal Mahayana visualizations, which very often we forget to do, which is when I am explaining something or reading something… (The Tibetans always read out loud. Very, very rare to find a Tibetan that reads silently. They read out loud. Now, whether they’re doing the accompanying visualization or not, I don’t know.) But you’re supposed to visualize — you’re taught to visualize — millions of beings all around you that you are benefiting by reading this to them. When I’m teaching, that the room is filled — like when the Buddha was teaching the Prajnaparamita Sutras at Vulture’s Peak, hundreds of millions of beings were all around him. By visualizing (imagining) that, that builds up a karmic connection with that many beings (but it doesn’t have to be the specific beings). That is one of the causes for making karmic connections to be like a Buddha, who would have karmic connections to benefit — not everybody, because obviously there some people who have the karmic connection to be helped by Maitreya and not by Shakyamuni, and these sort of things. But you look at His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Ten, twenty thousand people come to listen to him every place that he goes. What is the cause for that? This is the type of cause. 

But it’s hard to describe what... I mean, haven’t you experienced that when you meet somebody you feel an affinity with them, and other people you feel nothing, or you feel something negative? But as I say, what’s difficult is to then differentiate that from the disturbing emotion of desire or repulsion.

Participant: But even if you feel repulsed, if this person then asks for help or asks for something from you, I think then…

Dr. Berzin: Right. If you feel repulsion with the person, let’s say a beggar in India, somebody with leprosy, who really… they have no nose and there’s just a stump of a hand and stuff like that…

Participant: I think this is easier.

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s easier. How about a drunk on the U-Bahn?

Participant: How about if somebody’s getting on your nerves, you know?

Dr. Berzin: Right. But let’s start with the example of somebody that — a drunk or a drug addict or something like that — that’s begging on the subway, on the U-Bahn. Then you apply the thing of “This person could be my mother. This person could be my child. Even though I am repulsed with their appearance and with their behavior, nevertheless this is a human being.” You try to apply that and not just say, “Piss off.” 

Now, somebody who really gets on your nerves? Then of course this is the teacher of patience. But can I really help the person, I mean somebody that really gets on our nerves? Hmm, I know what you mean. [laughs]

Participant: Be careful.

Participant: Yeah, but if a person asks for you, then I think one should work with that.

Dr. Berzin: Right. You’re saying if somebody who gets on your nerves asks for your help, and they are receptive to your help and you’re able to help them, then I think you go ahead and help them. Because getting on my nerves — that’s just the teacher of patience aspect. But if the person gets on your nerves and is not receptive to your help, then you aren’t able to help them.

Participant: It’s difficult to judge if I can help.

Dr. Berzin: It’s difficult to judge. 

Participant: But if you say, “I don’t have a karmic connection…”

Dr. Berzin: No. You can’t say “I don’t have a karmic connection” to somebody directly.

Participant: But thinking that, you know?

Dr. Berzin: I mean, Rinpoche didn’t say, “I don’t have a karmic connection.” He just said, “I can’t help you with this problem. There’s somebody else who can.” You wouldn’t say that directly.

Participant: Oh, I thought you said he did say that. OK. That’s different.

Dr. Berzin: That was the meaning behind it and what he explained to me. What we actually said to the person is “I’m sorry. I can’t help you with this problem, but this other person can.”

Participant: That’s a big difference.

Participant: But if you feel a negative karmic connection, should you try to overcome it?

Dr. Berzin: If you feel a negative karmic thing with somebody… We’re talking about a situation in which somebody wants your help, who asks for your help. I don’t know that somebody that you have a negative karmic connection with would ever ask for your help.

Participant: It’s a complicated thing. Because many times I have tried to help somebody and I have extremely negative intuition, but I do it, and then I realize this is really a bad karmic connection and I shouldn’t have tried. That’s an important thing to pay attention to. You should be careful. You don’t know what you’re getting into.

Participant: But should I try to overcome it? Or should I try to…

Participant: Ideally, you should be careful. Because sometimes I have tried to help someone and I’ve felt “Oh no, this is not good, but I’ll try to help you,” and then I did, and then I found out it’s really bad.

Dr. Berzin: Right. He’s giving the example that he felt a bad karmic connection, not a good karmic connection, he tried to help the person anyway, and it went bad. You have to pay attention to this. Or for instance you have a bad feeling about somebody, and they ask you, “Loan me ten thousand euros to invest in something, and we’ll make a lot of money, and I’ll give you back half.” They’re asking for your help, to loan them money, and you have a bad feeling about it. I’ve had that happen to me. In that situation you say, “I’m sorry.”

Participant: But it’s very easy.

Participant: I’m sorry. I have no karmic connection, but she has.

Dr. Berzin: Right. “I don’t have the karmic connection, but she has.” Right.

Anyway, we have gone far from our topic, but we’re within the general realm of our topic, which is to develop sensitivity to what’s going on in our minds and with our motivation and with the connections that we have with things. 

It’s the same thing with meditations actually. There are certain meditations that — well, that’s hard to say. That’s hard to say. Many meditations are like… I mean, we are instructed to view ourselves as a sick person, the teacher as the doctor, the Dharma as medicine. Sometimes the medicine doesn’t taste very nice, but you take it anyway because it’s going to help you. There are basic meditations which are very, very beneficial for everybody — love, compassion, concentration, patience, voidness, impermanence, etc. That’s standard.

But then — well, what am I drawn to? This is particularly relevant in terms of these various Buddha-figures, these yidams. There should be a certain feeling that you have that draws you to one or to another. When you look at a book with pictures or you look at thangkas, which one do your eyes go to, and you like to look at? That is a factor which is taken into consideration in terms of what Buddha-figure do I put my effort into working with. If I feel no connection with this… I mean, then again it’s a feeling of karmic connection: Do I like it? Do I feel comfortable? That, I think, is one of the things, a karmic connection. Do I automatically feel comfortable with this person and relaxed or I don’t (I feel sort of on my guard, that I have to protect myself)? 

Participant: More than like and dislike.

Dr. Berzin: More than like and dislike. Am I relaxed or do I automatically feel tense and I have to guard against being hurt?

Participant: In the case of the yidam, then is there an affinity? That doesn’t necessarily have to be like, like “This is a cool yidam” or “I like this yidam because of this factor,” but an affinity, like “I feel some likeness with this.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. With the yidam, do I feel some affinity with it? It might not be that we find it attractive, but do I feel… Again, I think you could describe that in the general category of relaxed with it. Does it feel comfortable? Especially if we’re going to visualize ourselves as this figure, it has to feel comfortable; it has to fit.

Participant: The part which I think is important for me is should I just follow my feelings, my intuition (or whatever you call it)? Or should I try to overcome it and find a different attitude? Maybe I don’t feel comfortable. Should I try to develop a feeling of being comfortable?

Participant: I think in the beginning you have to follow your intuition, because I think to try to overcome it when you’re not ready to try to do that could be harmful.

Dr. Berzin: She’s saying — let me just repeat — how do we know our intuition is correct? Do we try to overcome the intuition if it’s a negative feeling or do we just follow it out? And Zina was saying that in the beginning we need to follow intuition.

That’s very difficult. I think that you need to examine the intuition. Intuition could be correct or incorrect. Just because it’s intuition doesn’t mean that it’s correct. You would want to look for further evidence that would corroborate or reaffirm your intuition. I mean, you might start on the basis of intuition, but be critical to see, especially in terms of working with somebody else, how do they respond. Do they come back? Tibetans are always looking for auspicious signs: you go to see a lama and they are there when you arrive, or you go and they’re not there.

It’s very funny. I’ll give you an example. I have a student who feels very, very close to me, and I am very beneficial to this student (because he tells me that). He always calls me at the wrong time. He always calls when I’m either busy with somebody else or I have to leave or something like that. He consistently calls me at the wrong time. Is that a sign of… That’s an inauspicious sign, and I don’t feel so, so comfortable talking, but nevertheless I know that I’m very beneficial to this student and this student finds me very beneficial. There obviously is a karmic connection — there is something a little bit strained in the karmic connection — nevertheless I go against that and work with this student very, very much. There are many things that you have to take into consideration.

Participant: Maybe the answer to the question, from what you’re saying, is if you try to overcome your negative intuition and it has a positive effect on the other person, that’s probably worth doing.

Dr. Berzin: As he said, if you have… Here I don’t have a negative intuition, a feeling. I like the person very much. But if there’s some negative aspect (or let’s say not such a positive aspect) there, but you see that it’s beneficial and you get evidence back, feedback, that it is beneficial, then you go ahead. It comes under the category of working to overcome obstacles. You look at it as an obstacle rather than as a bad karmic connection; it’s just obstacles.

Participant: I just wanted to very quickly recap and clarify something that I was saying before about intuition. Because I think you’re very seriously trying to figure out should you, if you feel a negative feeling, should you try to overcome that and force yourself to get over it, or should you listen to it. What I said before: I think you have to listen to your intuition first, at the beginning, before… This is all I mean, is before trying to take the challenge of overcoming it, a person needs to have certain techniques in place, techniques of self-analysis, techniques of being able to determine is this intuition pure or is it being motivated by negative emotions or destructive emotions. Then when you have those in place, then you can give yourself the challenge to overcome it. But before you are really clear about what you’re doing, I think if you try to overcome it, it could be harmful. Do you see what I’m saying?

Dr. Berzin: Right. What she’s saying… Let me recapitulate for the recording, for the other people who are listening…

Participant: Before you make a mistake or before you try to push yourself beyond what you’re capable of doing yet, first take a moment to analyze your intuition and see where’s this coming from: Does it seem to be irrational? Or does it seem to, given the factors involved, make sense? Or various things. But before you try to overcome it, like a challenge — which is also a good thing to do, which is also even necessary to do eventually — I think you have to be careful.

Dr. Berzin: Right. She’s saying you have to be very careful with intuition. Intuition needs to be investigated if you have the tools to be able to — of introspection and honesty with yourself — to be able to differentiate: Am I just projecting out of a destructive emotion or is it really an intuition that I can go by? If you don’t have that, then to just act on the intuition — you could make a mistake. But meanwhile, before you have those tools, then OK, that’s the first — to use the analogy — it’s the first card that you play in the card game. You go by your intuition but try to really be observant of what are the effects and what is going on.

There are other things with intuition. I mean, this becomes an interesting question if you’re superstitious, which is, “My horoscope says for today that so-and-so” or “I met somebody…” This is serious stuff for a lot of people.

Participant: But this is not intuition.

Dr. Berzin: Oh, no. But what I’m saying is… Let me finish. “The horoscope says today’s going to be a great day.” “I went to the fortune teller. They did the tarot cards and they said that I’m going to meet somebody.” Or “I met somebody and then I threw the I Ching [yi jing] coins, and it says it’s going to be really good (or it is going to be really bad).” Then you have to deal with projections and expectations of this: “I expect that it’s going to be good” or “I expect that it’s going to be bad because my horoscope for today is not good.” This is a problem because sometimes that information from a horoscope or I Ching or tarot is correct and sometimes it isn’t.

Participant: But that could also be like a disturbing emotion.

Dr. Berzin: That could be a disturbing emotion of superstition.

Participant: It’s projecting a judgment.

Dr. Berzin: Projection of a judgment. But at other times it can be… I had a friend who was a very, very famous — world famous — psychiatrist. She was a personal disciple of Carl Jung. I mean, she died long ago. She dealt with disturbed children and disturbed people who would come to her and not communicate. Let’s say a parent has a disturbed child and they bring the kid, and the kid doesn’t say anything. So, she used numerology — she had learned some medieval system of numerology, a special system — with the kid’s name. And she did this as a start to confirm her intuition about the kid, so she had some way to start with these people. I’ve known others that use astrology in the same way. When is it useful, when is it not useful? It’s very easy to become very superstitious with these things. I’m guilty of that myself, I confess, with astrology. I confess.

Participant: From a Buddhist perspective, though, aren’t those things (even if they’re true) true on a relative rather than an absolute plane? They could be true, but do they matter on the highest level? Because they’re not true on the ultimate level.

Dr. Berzin: Oh, now he’s saying: These things may be true or not true on a conventional level, but on the deepest level they’re not true. That gets into a whole different level of discussing it. Of course, everything is, in terms of conventional truth, either accurate or inaccurate, and that’s what we are dealing with here. We’re not talking about whether it seems truly existent or not, but from a conventional point of view is it accurate or not accurate that I can help this person, that we have a connection?

Participant: I mean things like astrology, etc.

Dr. Berzin: Astrology? I love what Khedrup Je said about astrology. He was a disciple of Tsongkhapa. And he said that if astrology — now, Khedrup Je wrote a lot of commentaries on Tibetan astrology (he was quite an expert on it) — and he said that if astrology gives you the full picture of karma of someone, then a human and a dog born at the same place at the same time should have the same things happen to them in their life. Obviously, there’s much more going on with karma then what a few planets tell you.

Participant: That’s exactly what I meant.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It gives a little bit of a picture, but there are so many other factors which are there affecting what’s going on that it doesn’t give even necessarily the most important factors.

Participant: Understanding karma has to be more important for a Buddhist than…

Dr. Berzin: Right. Understanding karma is a more important thing. But if you want to train your intuition… I mean, this is how I used astrology actually. Now we have true confessions. I am very fond of astrology, and I used it, particularly in the beginning, to give me more confidence in my intuition about people and particularly in terms of my connection with people. I have found in many cases it was accurate, but in some cases not at all accurate.

Intuition I think is a very important thing to develop, but it’s not very easy to develop, and I think introspection is a big part of it. In the sensitivity training where I have a chapter on how to make difficult decisions in a sensitive way, I differentiate that you have to analyze: What do I want to do? What do I feel like doing? What do I need to do? What does intuition tell me? And why? For each of these. 

“I want to go on a diet for health reasons,” or whatever it could be — “because I want to attract a partner (out of desire)” — “but I feel like eating a kilo of chocolate and ice cream.” Why? It’s longing desire, greed. I need to go on a diet because it’s affecting my health, and what does intuition tell me? That probably I will not live very long if I’m obese. There are many things. 

It would be same thing in terms of “I want to help you, but I feel that I don’t have a connection. You need help, so maybe I need to find somebody else that can help you. An intuition says I really won’t be able to help you.” Then you analyze why. I want to help you. We have the bodhichitta motivation, love and compassion. So that’s there. And you need help, and you need help right now, but I don’t feel… I mean, it could be I don’t feel like doing it because I’m lazy. You analyze that. But intuition says this or that. 

You can be in a situation in which I don’t feel like helping you — and that could be because of laziness or I’m tired or whatever — but my intuition says that I could be of great help to you, and I want to, but I just don’t feel like doing it now. Need? Well, you could wait till tomorrow. Maybe there isn’t such a great need.

All these factors you need to analyze. I think that’s a very good, helpful scheme.

Participant: Where can one find what you were referring to?

Participant: I think it’s here in this library.

Dr. Berzin: Right. But it’s on my website. Developing Balanced Sensitivity. It’s the last chapter of part four — “Making Difficult Decisions” I think it’s called. You find that in the e-book section. There’s a section called e-books.

Participant: You don’t have to log in or be a member or something?

Dr. Berzin: No, my website — come on — my website is completely free. Anybody can read anything. The whole thing is the same. Everything is for free.

Participant: Should be under “e-books.”

Dr. Berzin: Under “e-books.” I think it’s in “unpublished manuscripts,” because it’s the revised second edition. Anyway, you just look for it. There’s not that many things there. Developing Balanced Sensitivity. There’s a German version as well, if that’s easier for you to read.

Good. Now we have gone all over the place in our discussion, but I think that it’s a helpful discussion that we’ve had. Does our whole discussion come into the category of flightiness of mind? It’s mental wandering. It’s a distraction. We became distracted. We lost the topic. It was the gross level of distraction because we completely lost the topic, which was concentration.

Participant: It was so helpful though.

Dr. Berzin: But it was helpful. But I’m trying to at least bring it back, in the last minutes, to the topic. Let me do that. This was an example of being distracted (“going off on a tangent,” we say in English). Because you can do this while you’re sitting and meditating, and then all of a sudden you start thinking about something else — you start analyzing a problem, and so on. At the end it’s very helpful — you solved your problem — but you didn’t actually do the meditation.

In retreats when you’re doing a long type of practice, whether we’re talking about a few weeks or a few years or just a whole day, this happens. All sorts of emotional garbage come up. And what usually will happen is that you no longer are saying your mantra or doing whatever, and you are sitting there, and you are dealing with the emotional junk that has come up, and analyzing it, and applying other things of your practice and so on. I’ve actually heard His Holiness say that this is part of the work of the retreat, that this is not something which is negative. Because most of us are not advanced practitioners who have dealt with all of this already and are ready to actually seriously sit down and do the practice. For most of us these retreats where you do a couple hundred thousand mantras with all the visualizations and so on — it’s something you’re going to have to do several times, because the first time, you’re going to have to deal with all the emotional junk that comes up. But it certainly is mental wandering. It may not be toward an object that you have desire for, but it certainly is losing your object of focus.

That doesn’t mean that when you’re doing meditation you should automatically use it for analyzing whatever problem comes up that you’re dealing with. But, you see, the problem here is that most people don’t take the time out in their lives to sit and examine “What’s bothering me?” So, if we have the habit of doing meditation, it’s usually then that it comes up. 

And what’s very funny… I mean, there’s this teaching, an oral teaching, which is that if you have this problem before you start your meditation, you say “OK mind, I’m going to give you a certain period of…” I mean, this is a very dualistic way of speaking of course, but “I’m going to give you five minutes. Wander, think about whatever in the world you want to think about, analyze whatever, and then we’ll get down to the meditation.” The example that’s used is that if you have a wild horse and you put it in a very closed pen or in a fence, it’s going to run round and round and round and go crazy. Whereas if you let the wild horse run free for a while, eventually it will get tired and stop. That’s the example the Tibetans use for that. But often what happens when you try that is you say, “OK mind, here you go. Think about anything,” and you don’t think about anything. Nothing comes up. It only comes up when you’re trying to do your meditation, and then it comes up. But anyway, that’s the piece of advice that we find with the example of the wild horse.

Participant: Wouldn’t it be possible to just let it run but don’t feed it anymore?

Dr. Berzin: You could let it run but don’t feed it anymore? You could if it’s a certain problem that comes up.

Participant: Yeah. Usually then you start arguing.

Dr. Berzin: Arguing this or that.

Participant: But if you don’t feed it… You have to break it, in a way.

Dr. Berzin: You have to break it? Everything depends on what is most beneficial. What is most beneficial at the time: My saying all these mantras? Or dealing with the fact that I am emotionally very hurt by someone or something that happened, and I need to get over it, and if I don’t get over it it’s going to be a big distraction, so I might as well deal with this problem? You have to judge yourself. That’s part of discriminating awareness, to discriminate what is beneficial, what is not beneficial. In the long term, doing this meditation is the most beneficial. In the short term, I have to get rid of this thing that’s bugging me, that’s bothering me, because it’s going to make a big obstacle in the meditation, and to just sort of say, “OK, I’m not going to think about this,” might be too difficult. You have to judge yourself.

This is why there’s a great deal of emphasis on preliminary practices. When you’re doing the preliminary practices, that’s when a lot of the garbage really comes up. But the preliminary practices as well: you’re doing a hundred thousand Vajrasattva mantras, whatever. It’s the same thing. 

But there’s a lot more to discuss about meditation and concentration, and we’ll continue with that next time.

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 to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.