LPA47: Overcoming Obstacles for Achieving Shamatha

Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Mentor

Tsongkhapa begins by pointing out that we have all the basic requirements for being able to do such practice: We have the precious human rebirth, we’ve met with the teachings of the Buddha, and we have spiritual masters, and we have the intelligence and ability to discern between what we need to adopt and what we need to reject and get rid of. We need to actually engage ourselves with the Buddhist teachings, and to do that we need to rely on guidance from a properly qualified spiritual master — one who knows what are the various states of mind that we need to develop, which are the ones we need to get rid of; not add anything, not leave anything out; and knows the order in which to develop these and how to accord that with the level of each individual student. The teacher needs to have gained certainty about all of this by having been trained in the same way himself or herself by their own spiritual teacher. And all of the study and practice needs to be based on the great Buddhist classics.

The Motivating Mental Framework

As for how to begin the practice, Tsongkhapa quotes Nagarjuna — that the main thing to start with, the most fundamental thing, is to tame our mind, and this means to develop the proper motivating mental framework. For this we have the graded stages for how to do this as explained in the lam-rim: 

• We have the initial scope, in which we turn our interest away from just the happiness and pursuit of various material things for this lifetime and think in terms of future lifetimes. In order to do that we need to put the safe direction of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha in our lives and refrain from destructive behavior and engage in constructive acts.

• Then, on the intermediate level, we think of all the sufferings and disadvantages of all the various rebirth states and how important it is to get beyond that, and so we develop renunciation of that, the determination to be free. In order to gain liberation from the disturbing emotions and the karma that drives our samsaric rebirth, we need to develop the higher training in ethical discipline, concentration, and discriminating awareness of voidness.

• But then, on the advanced level, we think of the sufferings of all beings, how we are interconnected with everybody, and the kindness that we’ve received from everybody, and how horrible it is that they are in the same situation of uncontrollably recurring rebirth. We develop love, compassion (love for them to be happy, compassion for them to be free of their sufferings and difficulties). We develop an exceptional resolve to take the responsibility to help them not just on a superficial level but all the way to enlightenment. Then we develop the bodhichitta aim to achieve enlightenment ourselves in order to be able best to guide others to that goal. And in order to reach that enlightened state, our understanding of voidness needs to be backed by not only bodhichitta but the far-reaching attitudes, these so-called paramitas or perfections.

How To Meditate

Then we need to actually develop these motivating mental frameworks in an uncontrived manner, not just have an intellectual understanding of them, and in order to do that we need to meditate on them in order to build them up as beneficial habits of mind. Then Tsongkhapa goes through a very wonderful, detailed explanation of how to do this, how to meditate. We need to know the causes for developing each of these types of motivations, the stages that one goes through that we need to build up in order to generate these states of mind (in other words, what it depends on). We need to know all the detailed aspects of each of these states of mind, what are the various mental factors that accompany them. We need to build up a tremendous amount of positive force and cleansing away of obstacles in between sessions in order to gain a state of mind that’s most conducive for developing them. Also reinforce this by reading various scriptural texts concerning these states of mind. We need to know what’s going to be helpful for developing them, what’s going to be detrimental for developing them. We need to know what to focus on in order to develop them, how our mind relates to that object, how it takes that object that we’re focusing on. And we need to know what the result will be when we develop these states of mind, what will it help us to do and what will it rid us of. These are incredibly helpful guidelines for how to meditate, how to build up these states of mind, and I must say we don’t find these explained so clearly very easily elsewhere.

Then Tsongkhapa says we need to maintain these motivating mental frameworks… By mental framework we mean a goal that we’re aiming toward, an intention to achieve it, and the emotion behind why we want to achieve it that helps drive us to that goal. We need to have these states of mind all the time, not just at the beginning of the meditation session, not just throughout the meditation session, but all day and night.

The Ethical Self-discipline of Keeping Vows

Then for involving ourselves in the tantra practice, Tsongkhapa says: first of all, in general, for any type of Buddhist practice, we need to enter it through keeping the set of vows that are particular to each of these types of practice. In general, we have the pratimoksha vows for individual liberation — this is common to all Buddhist practice — either the vows for a monk or a nun or the vows for a layperson. For Mahayana in general, both sutra and tantra, we have the bodhisattva vows. And for the two higher classes of tantra, we have the tantric vows. We went through all of them, and we saw Tsongkhapa explained how we restore and revitalize these vows if we have weakened them or given them up completely.

Then in order to actually engage ourselves in the practice of the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga, we need to receive an empowerment specifically for that type of practice. Again, Tsongkhapa emphasizes the importance of having a foundation of pratimoksha vows for that, vows for individual liberation. Ideal for that would be practice as a monk or a nun, full monk or nun, but at minimum to have the five vows of a householder, and that will give us the foundation for having the most success.

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

Also, once we have received the empowerment, then we have to keep the vows, the bodhisattva vows and the tantric vows, and engage ourselves in the two stages of practice, the generation stage and the complete stage. It’s very important to do these in the proper order: Tsongkhapa emphasizes very much how the generation stage is the basis for the complete-stage practice and how it is impossible to gain any type of success in the complete-stage practice if we don’t do the generation stage first.

Then we spoke about the generation-stage practice. This is the practice that we do with visualization. The visualization is of ourselves as a Buddha-figure, so-called deity. We discussed how, on the basis of visualizing ourselves as this Buddha-figure within the context of the understanding of voidness, we do in our imagination practices that resemble the death, bardo, and rebirth process as a way of mimicking how we get down in our minds to the most subtle level, the clear-light level, and on that basis we arise in very subtle forms (like bardo) and then grosser forms (like waking up), and how this acts as a cause for being able to actually do that with our subtle energy-system on the complete stage. If we’re able to do that, that acts as the immediate cause for being able to achieve the various bodies of a Buddha: Dharmakaya on the basis of the clear-light mind, and then the subtlest energy-wind of that clear-light mind appearing in subtle and gross forms of Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya.

How To Visualize in Tantra Practice

Tsongkhapa then went through — and this is where we are now — a very detailed explanation of how to actually visualize ourselves as one of these Buddha-figures, and not just as the central Buddha-figure but all the figures of the entire mandala (which is a palace in which these Buddha-figures live) and all the environment around it. Within that palace or mandala, we are not only the central figure. Very often the central figure is a couple. We are both members of the couple, not one or the other, and we are all the various other figures that might also be in the mandala building itself. We are not only that, but we are the environment. We are everything. And since all of this is generated from the subtlest wind and the subtlest energy of the clear-light mind that constitutes our mental continuum, then this is a valid basis for labeling me. 

We have the pride of the deity — which is labeling me on top of all of this, actually trying to feel like this — and the clarity of replacing our ordinary appearances (together with an appearance of a truly established existence) with this more pure, stable appearance and with at least an understanding, if not an appearance, of lacking truly established existence. Although it’s not going to actually be possible to have it completely free, without appearing truly existent, until we are much more advanced on the complete stage, but here we imagine that it is.

For the actual visualization, Tsongkhapa explains that first we generate a vague picture of the entire visualization and then progressively start to fill in the details one by one. In terms of doing that, we try to have this without any mental wandering. We have to keep a careful watch on our state of mind. If a few of the details are no longer clear, we hold our attention on whatever is clear. And if we have lost the majority of the visualization, then we have to generate it again.

In these very complicated visualizations, which have all sorts of microscopic detail within our bodies as well as very enormous detail around our bodies and around the mandala building, once we have been able to get some clear image of the whole thing, then the way that we practice — Tsongkhapa doesn’t say this, but my own teacher Serkong Rinpoche explained this — we start within a vague feeling of the whole thing with the innermost element or aspect of the visualization, and go from inside out. On each level… 

I mean, very often you’ll have in your heart another figure, and in the heart of that figure you might have a seed syllable, and in the dot on top of that you might have another seed syllable, and in the dot on top of that seed syllable you could have lots and lots of figures. We could start with that innermost thing and then what’s around it — a smaller syllable, then outside of that a larger syllable, outside of that a moon, etc., in the heart of a small figure, and then outside of that a larger figure, and all the various figures in that body, and then the various figures in the mandala, the building, all the various things, various types of protection wheels and often cemeteries and so on outside — and go from inside out, adding one after another, and then sweep back in to reaffirm it down to the smallest detail. This is known as the lion gazing (seng-ge ’gying-ba’i lta-stangs) type of concentration, in which we establish a more stable visualization by going in and out that way in terms of reaffirming the clarity. All of this will develop as a function of our level of concentration; the more concentrated we are, automatically the details will come more in focus.

Then Tsongkhapa says that in this meditation we have to use our mental faculty of detection to detect what is going on (the general details of our state of mind in the meditation) and use all the various types of mental factors to be able to get rid of mental dullness and flightiness of mind, etc., and gain something at least resembling the stilled and settled state of shamatha. All of this is very, very important when we try to do this generation stage. And when we expand our visualization with more and more details, then we need to be sure that we don’t drop our visualization and concentration on the details that we have already established.

Conducive Conditions

Then we went into a more detailed discussion of how to gain shamatha, a stilled and settled state of mind, and we went through what are the conditions that are conducive for this: 

• We need a conducive place. 
• Very little attachment to people, friends, etc. 
• Contentment with food, clothing, the weather, etc. 
• Being rid of any type of busywork that we might have to do, distracting activities, worldly activities (cooking, chatting with others, email, etc.). 
• Keep pure ethical discipline. 
• Be rid of obsessive prejudiced thoughts about what we like to do and what we don’t like to do, such as watch television or read novels.

Then we also went into what are the qualities of the place that will make it most conducive: 

• We have to have easily available food and water. 
• Optimally it should be a place that has been approved and sanctified by our spiritual mentor or other previous masters who have meditated there. 
• It has to be secluded and quiet, have a long-distance view.
• We need to have around us people who are similarly engaged living nearby, so that in our environment things are conducive for that (we don’t have people in the apartment upstairs playing techno music or that type of thing). 
• We need to have the full teachings and instructions of what we are doing and have thought about them and understood them and have asked all our questions and be free of doubts before we start to do an intense meditation retreat.

The Five Deterrents to Concentration

Then we spoke about the five deterrents to concentration. What are the things that are going to be the obstacles that we have to work on to get rid of? 

1. We have laziness, three types: (a) putting meditation off until later because we don’t feel like doing it, (b) clinging to trivial activities or negative thoughts [and (c) feelings of inadequacy]. 
2. Forgetting the instructions or losing the object of focus. 
3. Having mental flightiness or mental dullness. 
4. Not applying the opponents to them. 
5. Not stopping applying the opponents when they’re no longer necessary.

Levels of Mental Flightiness and Mental Dullness

Then we went into the explanation of the different types of mental flightiness and mental dullness. These are the main obstacles that we have to work on, the ones that are the most difficult to overcome. Last time we had a little bit of practice of trying to identify them in our own experience. This is very important, to be able to identify them. What we were dealing with was flightiness of mind — the mind flies off to an object of desire or attraction (it’s a subcategory within mental wandering or distraction). Dullness is when we lose the clarity of mind. 

What we are dealing with now, then, is the mental hold on the object. When we have mindfulness, mindfulness is to maintain the mental hold on the object and not let go. But that mental hold has two aspects. There’s mental placement, which is sort of staying on the object, and what’s called clarity, which is the making of an appearance of a state of mind or a visualization. When we have flightiness of mind, that is a fault in the placement, the mental placement on the object. With gross flightiness, we completely lose the placement because our mind… the hold is too weak. With subtle flightiness, we keep the placement, the hold on the object, but there’s an undercurrent of thought at the same time about something else. And with the subtlest flightiness, there isn’t that undercurrent of thought but an itchiness to leave. In that case, the hold is too tight. In the other cases, the hold was too loose — the placement was too loose, I should say.

Mental dullness is an interruption due to a fault in the appearance-making, the generating of the state of mind. With gross mental dullness, we lose the object completely; our mind is not able to generate it. This can be with foggy-mindedness, which is a heaviness of body and mind, or in addition with sleepiness, in which we withdraw from all sense cognition and fall asleep. The middle level of mental dullness: we’re able to generate the object — there’s an appearance — but the hold isn’t tight, so it lacks sharp focus. And with the subtlest mental dullness, it’s still not sufficiently tight, and so we are not fresh; each moment is not vivid or fresh.

The Eight Composing Mental Factors

Then we spoke about the composing mental factors that we use to overcome these. 

The Four Factors for Overcoming Laziness

We need to have, to overcome laziness: 

1. Belief that facts are true in terms of what the advantages are of gaining concentration. 
2. That will lead to having a conscious intention to concentrate. 
3. Being happy about that, joyful perseverance (we’re happy to make an effort in doing it).
4. A sense of fitness that gives us the flexibility to actually apply ourselves to the practice. 

The Four Supports and Two Forces to Enhance Joyful Perseverance

• We also work with having a firm aspiration that we get from being convinced of the benefits of developing this and the drawbacks of not achieving this state of mind, so our aspiration to achieve it becomes firm; it can’t be swayed. 
• That give us a sense of steadfastness and self-confidence. We’ve examined ourselves — Am I capable of doing this? — so that we can apply ourselves steadily. 
• We have joy in advancing. We’re not just satisfied with a little progress, but we are happy to do the practice. 
• We know when to take a rest to refresh ourselves. 
• We naturally accept the difficulties and hardships that are going to be part of the process. 
• And we take control of ourselves and apply ourselves to what we want to achieve. 

These are the supports and forces.

The Factor for Overcoming Forgetting the Instructions or Losing the Object of Focus

Then we need to have mindfulness, which is the glue to hold on to the object. That’s the main thing that we work with. This is what we’re up to now. Now we’ve covered what we have discussed up until now. I was a little bit detailed in our review, but since we have a new person joining us in the class today, I thought it would be good to review in more detail.

For what we’ve discussed just now, these opponents are all the things to overcome laziness. To overcome forgetting the instructions or losing the object of focus, we apply mindfulness (dran-pa). Mindfulness is the most important aspect here in developing concentration. Mindfulness is defined as that mental factor that helps us to maintain a hold on the object of focus (dmigs-rten). It’s like a mental glue and prevents us from letting go, from forgetting. That’s what mindfulness is. It is the same word as to remember, to recall. We recall the object; we keep it in our memory. We’re not talking here about remember in the sense of storing information. We are referring to remembering in the sense of actively reminding… Being mindful of something, remembering it, not the act of bringing that up into memory or putting it down into memory. That prevents us from losing the object of focus or forgetting the instructions.

The Factor for Overcoming Mental Flightiness or Mental Dullness

To overcome mental flightiness and mental dullness, we have to apply alertness (shes-bzhin). Alertness keeps a check on the condition of our mindfulness. There’s a difference here between detection and alertness. There are so many very, very finely differentiated mental factors that are involved in the analysis of how we practice. This detection (rtog-pa) or scrutiny (dpyod-pa) is how we keep a check on the object. Detection would be a rough detection. Remember the difference between detection and scrutiny is described in the texts of when you go into a gallery or a temple with a lot of paintings in it, a lot of thangkas in it, detection is to just look at them roughly, get a general idea of what is there, and scrutiny is you go up to each one and look at the tiny details.

In the meditation process, Tsongkhapa makes a point of using the word detection, rough detection. We don’t have to use this very, very tight type of scrutiny. Mind you, that doesn’t mean that we’re lazy. We detect any faults that are there, but if you put too much effort into scrutinizing what’s going on, then most of your attention is put on that, concentration is put on that, rather than on the state of mind that we’re trying to generate. 

This detection is how we keep a check, and alertness is like the alarm system. We’re alert, so we’re ready to act to correct the situation. If we detect a fault with detection, alertness is what is going to trigger (it’s the alarm system) attention (chad-cing ’jug-pa’i yid-byed, restoring attention). We’ll get to this, but there are many different types of attention (yid-la byed-pa), which is in this case what will reset the mindfulness. The fault is in the mindfulness. We check — how do we check? — with detection. Alertness is the alarm system to then use attention to reestablish the correct amount of mindfulness. 

This is the mechanism that’s involved, and it’s important to understand all of that and be able to detect it, identify it, distinguish these different types of mental factors in order to see and understand what the fault in our meditation practice is and what do we need to correct. If we have a very precise understanding of how our mind is working in order to gain concentration, then we can fix any problems. 

It’s like if you have a car and it’s not running properly. To say, “There’s a problem in the engine,” is generally correct, but it doesn’t give us a very good method for being able to fix the car so that it runs properly. But if we know all the different parts of the engine, and we say, “It’s the carburetor (or it’s this or it’s that little piece of the engine) that is malfunctioning,” then we can go in and repair it successfully. It’s the same thing with our minds and all these mental factors. 

It’s important, I think, to realize that this whole analysis is not just some sort of intellectual game but is very, very useful practical advice for meditation practice. With the restoring attention that we use to reestablish the mindfulness, we know within that what are the subcategories of what we need to correct. Do we need to correct the mental placement aspect of the hold or the appearance-making aspect of the hold? Was it too tight? Was it too loose? These type of things. And that we will be able to identify from having recognized what level of flightiness or dullness we’re experiencing. 

These are all very, very useful technical points — again something that we have to really contemplate, understand, and remember. When we talk about mindfulness and not forgetting the instructions, these are the types of instructions that we need to remember and then overcome the laziness with which we don’t remember them. It’s very, very easy in meditation to just sit there and nothing much is happening in the meditation. You’re mentally wandering or falling asleep, and we don’t even know what to apply in order to correct it. This is quite hopeless. And then you sort of just hit yourself, if you even bother to do that, and maybe set the intention: “OK, I’m going to try to concentrate.” But if we haven’t identified what the problem is, then we don’t know the specific type of opponent to apply. This is very important.

The Factor for Overcoming the Deterrent of Not Applying the Opponents for Them

Then in order to overcome the deterrent of not applying the opponents for them, something that comes — what I was just explaining — we need to use the composing factor which is known as readiness to apply the opponents (’du-byed). We’re just ready to apply it. This comes from the two powers to enhance joyful perseverance: naturally accepting what has to be done and what has to be gotten rid of and taking control to apply ourselves.

If we accept that, OK, gaining concentration, meditating properly, is difficult, it’s not something easy — don’t just sit there and relax and be cool and everything is cool and fine — but it’s a lot of hard work. We have to be able to accept the reality of that. We accept that it’s hard work (that’s the first thing) and accept that I’m going to have to clear my mind of all the garbage that’s in it and be disciplined in order to generate these beneficial states of mind (which I’m convinced of, that they’re beneficial). I then take control of myself. This is what we would call self-control. “Come on! Get your act together. Do this.” Using that, then we will have the readiness to apply the opponents. Then we will be able to apply them. This is a very helpful guideline.

The Factor for Overcoming Not Stopping Applying Opponents

Then to overcome not stopping applying the opponents when they are no longer necessary, we have to use relaxation of the opponents (’du mi-byed). This refers to knowing when to take a rest, knowing not to push more than is appropriate. When our meditation is going smoothly, we don’t have to be so on guard, but we know to just relax into the meditation. This is a very interesting point, I must say.

Mindfulness and Alertness in the Context of Ethical Discipline

What comes to my mind is the fact that Shantideva in Bodhicaryavatara, Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior, explains these factors of mindfulness and alertness in his chapters on ethical discipline. That’s where you learn these. Then it’s applied to gaining concentration, mental stability. The same instructions apply with ethical discipline: that we need to detect when we are acting in a destructive type of way or coming under the influence of a destructive or just simply a disturbing emotion or attitude, detect that; be alert and ready to apply some opponent; ding-ding-ding, bring our attention back to how we’re speaking, how we’re acting, how we are interacting with others; and then mindfulness to hold on to the correct type of behavior, the correct type of speech, correct state of mind. Rather than thinking with incredible greed as we look in the window of the bakery shop at the chocolate cake, we are able to stop that whole train of thought of thinking about it and walk on (or just go in and buy it if we deem that that’s something which would be appropriate). But especially in terms of refraining from destructive behavior, that’s very important. 

And when you look at people who (especially young people) involve themselves with the Dharma (but not exclusively young people), most people go through a stage, an early stage of Dharma practice, in which they become quite fanatic — I’m talking about those who are serious about Dharma practice — quite fanatic about the vows and about their ethical behavior and are so worried about making any mistake. They want to be perfect. They’re very, very stiff, and it takes quite a while to relax into the Dharma practice, to relax into the discipline to be able to be flexible in the sense of knowing when it is appropriate to act in one way or another way. This is quite a similar process with gaining concentration. They’re at the stage, when they’re not relaxed, of really being the policeman with themselves, the police. 

It is very important to know when to — as it says here — to drop the opponents. When we have been successful in integrating the type of ethical discipline and keeping of the vows into our daily behavior, then it’s very important to be relaxed with that. If you look at most of the Tibetans — I’m talking about the ones who are good practitioners — they’re extremely relaxed. They keep excellent ethical discipline but are very, very relaxed about it. They’re not stiff and uptight.

The Three Higher Trainings

This is interesting, how Shantideva then presents all these instructions that we find about concentration in the context of ethical discipline and our behavior. This is why we have this structure of the three higher trainings:

1. First you have to train in ethical discipline. 
2. On the basis of that, then you can train in higher concentration. 

If you’re able to discipline your gross behavior of your speech and your body — that’s the main emphasis here with the ethical discipline, although of course there’s the destructive ways of thinking — but if you’re able to exercise control and refrain from negative behavior with your body and speech, that gives you the strength to be able to do it with your mind in terms of not just avoiding destructive thoughts of covetousness and malicious type of thinking — how can I hurt somebody and how can I (greedy) get what they have — or distorted antagonistic thinking (those are the destructive states of mind), but also to avoid and eliminate what we work with with concentration, which is flightiness of mind and dullness of mind, let alone laziness and these sorts of things.

3. When we have that concentration, then you can apply it to higher discriminating awareness. 

In other words, that understanding of voidness — in order for it to be effective, we have to be able to stay focused on it and retain our mindfulness on our understanding, not just have it for one moment and then our mind wanders all over the place.

The description is: If you want to cut down a tree, the axe has to be sharp (that’s the discriminating awareness). But you have to be able to hit the mark; even if the axe is sharp, it’s not going to work if it doesn’t hit the mark (for that you need concentration). Even if you have perfect aim and can hit the mark, if you don’t have the strength to pick up the axe and use it you won’t be able to chop down the tree (that’s the training in higher ethical discipline).

These instructions that we have here for gaining a stilled and settled state of mind are very helpful beyond the sphere of gaining concentration.

Features of Mindfulness

Then a very interesting point, that I’ve only heard really His Holiness the Dalai Lama explain in detail, is that in order to achieve shamatha, we need to put our main energy on maintaining the mental glue, the mindfulness, on our object of focus. This means making an effort primarily of holding on to the object. Hold on. If you are able to hold on, then automatically you have concentration. 

The mental glue and the concentration are merely two ways of describing the same mental activity, His Holiness explains. The mental glue describes it from the point of view of the mental hold on the object of focus, and the concentration describes it from the point of view of the mental placement, the staying on the object. If you’re holding the object, you’re staying on the object, so the mindfulness and the concentration are talking about the same mental activity. What you place your focus on, your efforts on, is not staying on the object — it’s holding on to the object (if you can differentiate that in your experience in meditation).

Also, in terms of alertness, keeping a watch and stuff like that, being ready to correct the thing, His Holiness explains — and I think he gets this from some text (I don’t know which one) — he says if the mindfulness or the mental glue is like the sun, then the alertness is like the sunlight. It’s automatically there. If you’re able to maintain a mental hold on the object of focus with the mental glue, that implies that you’re automatically keeping a check to see if the hold is proper. Again, that means that the main effort is on holding on. That’s something you have to identify. 

It is like for instance when you’re on a diet and you walk past the bakery shop with all the cakes. Rather than put your emphasis on being alert in case you start to think about the cake, the emphasis would be to hold on to the diet. If you hold on to the diet, then you will walk past the bakery, or just look at it and enjoy the beauty of the cakes and walk by (that would be a tantric way of transforming attachment and desire into bliss, but that’s a bit more advanced, to be able to do that without being overcome by desire for the cake).

This helps us to not be too distracted by being the police in the meditation practice. That can be a big obstacle. The main thing is to hold on. Occasionally you have to apply the second type of alertness — there are many different types of alertness — which is to make a spot check of the condition of the mental hold, rather than constantly being on guard. Occasionally you make a spot check of what’s going on, the detection and so on, but if you’re maintaining the hold — if you’re able to maintain the hold — then you are ready to correct it. When you do make that spot check, you only use a corner of the attention so as not to be distracted from having the main focus, the attention, be on the object of the meditation.

That is the general instruction. These things start to become very, very delicate in the practice. It’s one thing to try to do this with a visualization. It’s another thing to try to do this with mahamudra meditation, for instance, on the nature of the mind and the mental activity that’s happening. Do you become distracted from that when you are using alertness to do the spot check of what’s going on? These are very, very delicate points that one has to deal with. Because, for instance, when you have dullness and you’re focusing on the nature of the mental activity that’s going on, how can you focus without dullness on the dullness? These are very deep meditation questions that I will not give the answer to at this point. It requires a lot of experience actually and working with a true meditation master (which I am not).

Any questions about these instructions? 

The main thing is to hold on. If you can remember that it will help very much in the meditation process. Holding on, everything else will follow. OK?

Participant: His Holiness meant that with every kind of meditation — visualization, zhinay?

Dr. Berzin: He meant that with every kind… In general — visualization, love, compassion, zhinay. Zhinay (zhi-gnas) is shamatha, for those who don’t know. That’s the Tibetan word. You can achieve shamatha in every possible type of meditation.

Participant: Including visualization.

Dr. Berzin: Especially visualization.

Participant: I just wanted to make sure.

Dr. Berzin: Especially visualization or in focusing on the thought of love, that state of mind, or focusing on impermanence or voidness. I should bring in sometime — I don’t have it in my memory — the list of all the possible types of objects that are used for developing shamatha.  There’s quite a list. We find that in Lam-rim chen-mo, the Great Presentation of the Stages of the Path, by Tsongkhapa. He goes into all of that detail. OK?

Now the next thing to discuss is the nine stages of settling the mind into a state of shamatha. If we know what these stages are, then we have an idea of how we progress and what are the ways in which we progress, and we can check what stage we are on. For each of these stages, there are going to be different powers. There’s a set of six powers and four types of attention that we use.

Identifying Faults in Meditation

Actually, let me explain something first before we go into these stages. This has to do with identifying the faults in the meditation, and it comes from looking at the defining characteristic of the mind or mental activity. Talk about mind, we’re talking about mental activity, what’s happening moment to moment to moment, and its defining characteristics are three: what’s usually called mere clarity and awareness (gsal-rig tsam), but these words don’t convey so clearly what we mean here. 

Clarity (gsal) is appearance-making, making an appearance of a mental hologram of something. Awareness (rig) is cognizing it in some way or other. And that arising of a mental hologram and cognition, being aware in some way or another, that is the same activity described from two points of view. The making of a mental hologram is what is the actual cognition. It’s like we don’t first generate a thought and then think it; generating the thought and thinking it is the same thing. Mere (tsam) means “only this” — there is no separate me that is making this happen or observing it, and there is no separate instrument called the mind that is doing this, although there is a physical basis, a physical counterpart, for what’s going on.

Now if we look at these three factors, then in terms of concentration (we had this before, earlier today):

• A fault in the appearance-making is a fault of mental clarity (there’s dullness).

• A fault in the cognizing thing is mental placement, a fault in mental placement. If you’re not staying with the thing, you’re not cognizing it. If the hologram isn’t appearing, then there’s the fault of dullness. The mental clarity is at fault.

• If there’s a problem with this factor of mere, then we are not mindful of the voidness of the three spheres involved.

The three spheres involved in the meditation are (1) the one that’s doing it, (2) the object that we’re focusing on or the state of mind that we’re generating, and (3) the meditation itself or the activity of meditating. If we are meditating in a very dualistic type of thing of “Me, I have to be the policeman” and “Ooh, this state of mind that I have to achieve” and so on, that’s going to be a big block, a big problem in the meditation.

If there’s a problem with mental clarity, the problem is mental dullness. If there’s a problem with the mental placement, it’s flightiness of mind is the problem. If there’s a problem concerning the voidness of the three spheres, then we have the grasping for true existence of what’s going on and dualism in the meditation. These are the things we have to work on and watch out for, and that’s how we derive it from the characteristics of the mind.

What’s really important here is to recognize in terms of the fault of mental dullness — which is that we’re not having clarity (we’re not generating the hologram) — to identify all the components of that in conceptual meditation, which is every meditation that we are doing until we achieve a super-advanced state. We shouldn’t kid ourselves. Visualization is conceptual at the stage that we’re… by definition it’s conceptual; we are generating it. 

Now you get into the analysis of what is conceptual cognition. It is cognition through a category, and we have two types of category — an audio category (sgra-spyi) and a meaning category (don-spyi) — and together in that moment of cognition there are also mental factors. 

Audio category, if we extend it, it’s not just a word but it also would be a visualization. When you’re doing a sadhana practice, what you need to have going, being generated — the clarity aspect, the appearance-making aspect — would be the visualization and the words of the recitation that you’re doing. If those aren’t going on, then you have the problem in the general area of the audio category. 

Then you have to keep in mind also the meaning category: What do they signify? What do they represent? It’s not enough to just have the visualization. Everything in the visualization represents something, so we need to keep in mind the meaning category as well: What does it mean? You can have the audio category of the word compassion, but if you don’t know what it means — or the audio category of the words now everything becomes void — but you don’t have the meaning category with it, then the meditation is in error; it has fault.

Then you have to have the mental factor that goes with it. I say, “Now may everybody be free of suffering and all the causes of suffering” — immeasurable compassion. You can say the words, but you have to know what it means, and you have to have the mental factor of compassion, a feeling, what we would call a feeling, with it — love, discriminating awareness of voidness, whatever the mental factor is that’s necessary there. 

These are the three things in a conceptual meditation — which is what we are all doing — that need to be there. 

What would be in the general area of the audio category — the visualization, the words — it could also be the words of a mantra. You’re reciting a mantra. You have to have the words of it (the audio category if you’re saying it in your head); the meaning, what it means; and the mental factor that goes with it. And you could have a fault of clarity, not enough clarity (you’re not generating it), and a fault of placement (you’re not staying with it). These are the big obstacles that come up in doing tantric meditation, especially with visualization.

Very easy to just go “Blah blah blah” through the sadhana: you have all the words and no meaning whatsoever and no feeling with it. Usually that’s accompanied with subtle flightiness of mind, that you’re thinking about something else at the same time. That for most people becomes their standard tantric meditation, and that is very inadequate. One can easily get very complacent about it and just stay with that for years, and you’re not getting anywhere in the meditation except developing discipline. It’s beneficial for discipline, and you’re quieting down as you’re sitting, and something sinks in, and you’re not visualizing horror movies and tortures and stuff like that or pornography, but the meditation is flat; there’s no meaning in it and there’s no feeling in it.

If we understand all these mental factors and so on, we can analyze where the problem is. The problem is in this aspect of mental activity generating something and cognizing it and in staying with it. In all these areas, we can have all these different faults of dullness and flightiness of mind. And for each of these areas, we need to apply these opponents. OK? That’s important. 

All right. Any questions about that? Does it make sense to you? I mean, you do some of this kind of practice. All right.

Participant: It’s easy to forget to apply the opponent force when the mistake is happening.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s very easy to forget applying the opponent force when the mistake is happening because you are doing something, you’re going through the whole — you’re doing the mantra, for example.

Participant: But like you say, it can just go without any meaning. Just mechanical.

Dr. Berzin: Go without any meaning, without any feeling whatsoever. Mechanical. Exactly.

This analysis, by the way, I came up with. I didn’t find it in a book. I hope that it is correct. It makes sense to me. 

The Nine Stages of Settling the Mind

All right. Now the nine stages of settling the mind (sems-gnas dgu):

1. The first stage is called setting the mind (sems ’jog-pa), and it means setting the mind on the object of focus. At this stage we’re merely able to set or place our attention on the object of focus but are unable to maintain it. 

With a visualization, you can sort of get it going, but then you lose it immediately. That’s the first stage.

2. The second stage is called setting with some continuity (rgyun-du ’jog-pa). Here we are able to maintain our mental hold on the object with some continuity but only for a short time before losing it. It takes some time before we recognize that we’ve lost the object and before we can reestablish our focus. 

This I think is probably the most common stage that most of us stay at for a long time. (These are true, by the way, whether we’re doing focus on the breath or visualization or whatever.) You’re able to hold your attention on it for a short time, then you lose it, and it takes a while before you recognize that you’ve lost it and bring it back.

3. The third stage is called resetting (glan-du ’jog-pa). Here we’re able to recognize as soon as we’ve lost our mental hold on the object, and we’re able to reset or restore our focus immediately. 

You can see already this is pretty advanced for most of us. As soon as you notice that there’s a fault, that you’ve lost it — whether because of dullness or flightiness — you bring it back immediately. Obviously, we could be halfway between the second and third stage, that sometimes we’re able to do quite quickly, other times it takes us a while. 

This is really what you need to work on in the early stages of meditation, is recognizing more and more quickly when you’ve lost it and bringing your attention back. That really can be quite a long process. Some days it’s better than other days. Again you have to go back to intention, conviction that this is beneficial: “I really want to do it. I’m happy to do it.” It’s not “Oh my god, I have to sit down and meditate. When is it going to be over?” If you have the support of this and you recognize that it’s hard, it’s difficult, you accept that. You don’t complain about it. That’s another big obstacle. I’ve come across so many people who say, “Oh, it’s so difficult,” and they complain like a little baby. “It should be easy.” It’s not easy, so forget about it being easy. It’s not. 

An example that’s brought up is that when you start to meditate and get into meditation practice, all of a sudden you realize how much garbage goes through your head all the time, and it’s something which people sometimes feel that it’s increased but it hasn’t actually increased. They say if you lived in a busy street and you never bothered to count the number of people or the vehicles that go by in ten minutes, and then all of a sudden you sat there and you counted, you would think that there were more than usual. It’s just that you never paid attention to how many there are. The same thing with the thoughts that go through our head. 

This is the real hard work, to get from that second stage to the third stage of how quickly you recognize that you have lost the object, you’re no longer concentrating, and you immediately bring your concentration back.

4. Then the fourth stage is called closely setting (nye-bar ’jog-pa). Here we don’t lose our mental hold on the object, but because of the subtle mental flightiness of an undercurrent of thought and the middling level of dullness that’s not sharply focused are strong dangers — they can still occur — we need to maintain their opponents very strongly. 

OK. What does that mean? That means that we are able to bring our attention back as soon as we lose the object. In fact, at this stage we don’t lose the hold on the object — you’re able to keep the hold on the object — but you still have the problem of undercurrent of thought or things are not in sharp focus. Remember, sharp focus here doesn’t mean… We’re not only talking about the details of the visualization. Remember, we’re also talking about sharp focus on the meaning and sharp focus on the feeling, whether it’s compassion, whether it’s discriminating awareness, understanding, whatever it is. Any of these things can be at fault. We have the hold on it at this stage, but it’s not clear, and there’s a little bit of undercurrent of thought, so we need to maintain their opponents very strongly.

5. Then the next stage is called taming (dul-bar byed-pa), the fifth stage. Here we no longer experience gross flightiness, the subtle flightiness of an undercurrent of thought, or gross or middle dullness. OK, so that’s really advanced now. We don’t have an undercurrent of thought. We don’t lose the sharp focus. However, because we’ve overstrained to concentrate and have sunk too deeply inwards, we’ve relaxed the appearance-producing factor giving rise to the appearance of the object of focus. Consequently, we experience the subtlest level of dullness. We need to refresh and uplift (gzengs-bstod) the mental hold by remembering the benefits of gaining shamatha. 

It means that we don’t have the undercurrent of thought, we don’t lose the sharp focus, but it’s not fresh in each moment, it’s dull. 

Participant: It’s kind of a trance.

Dr. Berzin: We’re keeping the meaning in mind, but it’s a little bit like a trance. It’s not quite… not fresh. It’s not vivid. It needs to be vivid. That’s the most difficult thing, actually, to recognize, is this subtlest level of dullness. They say it’s very easy to just, in that state of mind, to build up causes to be reborn in one of these formless realm things in which you’re just sunk in a trance. We have to be quite careful here. That was the sixth stage — no, the fifth stage, taming.

6. The sixth stage is called stilling (zhi-bar byed-pa). There’s no longer great danger of the subtler mental dullness, but nevertheless in uplifting the mind we become too excited, and the mental hold becomes too tight. Consequently, we experience the subtlest form of flightiness, which is this itchiness to leave. We have to use strong alertness to detect this and relax our mental hold slightly. 

We get very good concentration — there’s no undercurrent of thought, there is no lack of focus — but it’s not fresh. To make it fresh you have to pick yourself up a little bit but picking yourself up a little bit — you go to the other direction and then you become a little bit too tight, so there’s this itchiness, this unease, that’s there. Now you have to relax a little bit. It’s like tuning the strings of a musical instrument.

7. The seventh stage is called complete stilling (rnam-pa zhi-bar byed-pa). Here the danger of that subtle flightiness or subtle dullness is minimal, not so much danger of not being fresh or being itchy, but we still need to exert effort to rid ourselves of them completely. 

8. Then the eighth stage is single-pointedness (rtse-cig-tu byed-pa). Here by just relying on a slight effort to apply the mental glue at the beginning of the session, we’re able to sustain our concentration without interruption throughout the session, without experiencing any level of flightiness or dullness. 

That’s single-pointedness. At the beginning just put a little bit of effort to set that state of mind, the mental hold, and then it goes without any problem.

9. Then the ninth stage, absorbed setting (mnyam-par ’jog-pa). Here we’re able effortlessly to maintain concentration, free of any interruptions, throughout the entire session. (Which means four hours, by the way. That’s the definition. We’re not talking about a half hour.) This is the attainment of absorbed concentration (that’s samadhi (ting-nge-‘dzin)).

It’s effortless. You’re able to do it for four hours with no problem whatsoever. 

But, you see, that’s still not shamatha. In addition to absorbed concentration, to samadhi, when we gain the mental factor of an exhilarating sense of mental and physical fitness to concentrate perfectly on anything for as long as we wish — when you gain that, then it’s shamatha. This becomes… I mean, having never experienced it, so I can’t really speak from experience of what it is, but it seems like it is an exhilarating (but not disturbing) state of mind of feeling fit. That’s the word, fit. You can get a little glimpse of that: When you are physically fit, it feels good, both physically and mentally. Or when you’re very well trained as a musician, you can play anything. Or trained in anything — you feel that you can do anything, without being arrogant or anything like that. It’s an exhilarating and uplifting feeling which is very serene and tranquil. It’s not disturbing in any way. It’s not like a high from a drug or like anything… our ordinary type of happiness, which is disturbing in some way. 

Remember all of this should be accompanied with understanding the voidness of the three spheres involved, especially if we’re doing tantric meditation. No dualism here of me and what I’m meditating on — the agent and the object — and what I’m doing, the three spheres. They arise dependently on each other, and none of them exist as independent, findable things being established from their own side. That would be a big obstacle for being able to really… 

I mean, obviously you can gain shamatha with grasping for true existence. The non-Buddhists achieve this. You have these instructions. These aren’t exclusively Buddhist instructions. You find this everywhere in Indian philosophical thought, but not with the understanding of voidness. That’s a very important component that we need to have here. Otherwise, we’re just developing a tool that everybody develops. Mind you, it’s better to have the tool even without the understanding of voidness than to forget about the tool. But for it to be proper we need the understanding of voidness there, at least some level of the understanding.

Participant: Like what you said before: If you’ve perfected that without understanding voidness, it would set up the conditions to go to a god realm.

Dr. Berzin: Right. If you set it up without the conditions of the understanding of voidness and without an aim, a motivation, to achieve liberation or enlightenment with this, then it just gets you a rebirth in one of the higher god realms, either the form or the formless realms.

That’s the general presentation, then, of the nine stages. Obviously, we’ll have to review that next time, because then we have the list of the six powers and the four types of attention that we employ for achieving these various nine stages, and that will complete our discussion of concentration. OK? 

These teachings, by the way, come from the Indian Buddhist sources. You have them explained in Asanga’s texts and then, later, Kamalashila, his Stages of Meditation, etc. These are very ancient teachings. And as I say, we find similar things in the various Hindu and Jain scriptures as well. 

OK? Any questions? Good. Then let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever understanding we’ve gained, 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.