Lam-rim 6: Mind Comes from Mind; Meditation on the 18 Situations

What is left, then, is to conclude that, if the mental continuum, this mental activity, comes from a prior moment of something that is of the same category of phenomena as itself – namely, mental activity – there are only three possibilities: it comes from the mental activity of a creator god, it comes from the mental activity of the parents, or it comes from the previous moments of its own mental activity, in other words, itself. 

It Comes from a Creator God

Buddhism goes into a great deal of discussion, which we don’t need to go into here, to disprove the existence of a creator that is omnipotent and independent, meaning that it is beyond the influence of any causes and conditions. Such a being would be static. It could not possibly create anything because to create something, there needs to be the desire or intention to create. In other words, that being would be affected by something and, so, would not be acting independently. So, there are a lot of contradictions involved in postulating that type of creator.

It Comes from the Parents

The next alternative is that the mental continuum comes from the mental continuums of the parents. If that is so, how and when would that happen? Does it arise in the sperm? Does it arise in the egg? Does it arise when the sperm and egg join? Or does it arise at a later stage, for example, when the placenta is developing? It would be very hard to describe a mechanism by which that would happen.

Participant: Just because you can’t describe the mechanism is not a reason for refuting it. 

Dr. Berzin: I am presenting the Buddhist point of view. You would have to come up with a pretty good argument to prove that it comes from the parents. And you’d have to be able to say how it does. Not to know and just to say, “Well, it just happens,” would not be a very satisfactory answer. Then, too, there’s the whole issue of karma. The karmic patterns and so on of the parents certainly don’t transfer to the child.

Participant: But that presupposes the Buddhist world view.

Dr. Berzin: What do you mean by that?

Participant: I mean that you can’t prove the continuity of consciousness just by saying, “It has to be like that; otherwise, Buddhism wouldn’t work.”

Participant: That was also the argument last time.

Dr. Berzin: Well, Buddhism is an internally consistent system; everything within it fits. 

The whole point of Buddhism is to overcome suffering and to overcome it in such a way that it doesn’t recur. And that has to be demonstrated by people who’ve actually put the teachings into practice in a sincere and proper way. Can it be demonstrated that Buddhism brings about that result? This is the question. One would have to say that it certainly does. Whether or not it brings about final enlightenment and so on is very difficult for us to judge. But, certainly, from our experience of working with it very sincerely, we can see that it does decrease suffering. So, that adds a certain weight to the Buddhist explanations of things. 

Without rebirth, the Buddhist teachings do not make sense. If there were no rebirth, how would you explain karma, how would you explain the nature of the mind, etc.? All of these things fall apart without rebirth.

Participant: I’m also wondering if a purely philosophical approach is sure to erase all one’s doubts about this.

Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s a very good point.

Participant: I am more inclined to believe in rebirth because of the many stories of people who remember past lives. There are many, many other indicators as well. That kind of adds weight to the whole issue.

Dr. Berzin: Exactly. What Dirk says is that just the philosophical arguments might not and probably do not convince anybody. That was certainly the case with me. However, when you’re going back and forth in your mind about it – so, having indecisive wavering – the philosophical arguments tend to put you more on the side of “maybe it is true” rather than “maybe it isn’t true.” They can help to give you what is called in English the “benefit of the doubt.” This is how I went about it. I said, “Well, I will provisionally accept that it is true and then see what follows.” And, certainly, more weight is added to the side of “probably there is rebirth” when you take into account all the various stories and examples of people who have not only remembered past lives but who have also checked and confirmed that what they remembered was true.

What took me from thinking “maybe it is” to being quite sure that there is such a thing as rebirth was my experience of knowing my teacher Serkong Rinpoche in two of his lifetimes – experiencing the new Serkong Rinpoche remember me when he was four years old, for example, and having the whole relationship with him being equally close and strong as with the old one. The relationship is not exactly the same, obviously, because of the age difference. The new Serkong Rinpoche is now twenty-five. This personal experience has really convinced me very much. 

So, I think you’re very right when you say that logic alone is not going to take us all the way. The issue of rebirth is a very difficult one. Even if we say, “Yes, I’m convinced of rebirth,” what will we actually think a few minutes before we die. Will we think, “Is there really rebirth or not?” Death is a critical time, and it really brings out what we actually believe.

But I don’t want to spend a whole class, let alone many classes, on this issue. It was just brought up as a side topic. All I’m doing is introducing the various points that one needs to think about. Sure, the Buddhist position always has a type of circular logic to it. But just to say, “Well, I don’t think so,” without being able to give a logical argument to disprove the statement is not a valid disproof. One has to come up with some alternative. 

So the point is, do mental continuums come from the parents? Well, how do you get the individual mental continuums of two people to combine to produce one? Could it come from the mental continuum of just one of the parents? And what about test-tube babies? What about cloning and all this sort of stuff? This starts to become quite difficult.

Participant: What about twins?

Dr. Berzin: Identical twins are genetically identical, I believe, but their experiences, their personalities, and these sorts of things, are quite different.

Participant: The mental continuums of the parents would have to join and then split.

Dr. Berzin: Right. They’d have to join and then split, like the genetic code. Also, it would be difficult to explain what would happen to the contents of the mental continuums of the parents – memories, habits, etc. – in the twins.

It Comes from the Previous Moments of Itself

Anyway, what one is left with is that the mental continuum is a continuity of itself. His Holiness uses a very interesting explanation for this. First of all, as is also the case with the continuity of a material thing, there is an obtaining cause (nyer-len-gyi rgyu), like the seed that gives rise to the sprout, and simultaneously acting conditions (lhan-cig byed-pa’i rkyen), like the soil, the water, sunlight, etc. However, a continuum of mental activity involves an additional set of conditions.

There is the focal condition (dmigs-rkyen). There needs to be an object of cognition (yul, cognitive object). You can’t have awareness without having something to be aware of. There’s always content to mental activity. There is content to experience: you experience something. There is also a dominating condition (bdag-rkyen), which has to do with the type of sensor that’s involved. The sensor dominates the type of cognition – sight, sound, smell, tactile sensation, etc. Then there is an immediately preceding condition (de-ma-thag rkyen). The immediately preceding condition is what provides the continuity of the essential nature of mental activity. That’s how His Holiness has defined it. The immediately preceding condition is the immediately preceding moment of awareness; it gives rise to the next moment of awareness as its result. So, what provides the continuity is the moment before. His Holiness said that the moment before is probably the obtaining cause as well.

Now, to reach the clear light mind in tantra meditation practice, the subtlest level of mind, you go through an eight- or ten-step dissolution process. There’s no need to mention all the steps, but the last step before attaining the clear light mind acts as the immediately preceding condition for that first moment of clear light mind. That moment of clear light mind is the same level of mind that you have during the death phase, what’s called “the clear light mind of death.” Now, again, how do you prove that? I don’t know. In any case, what is of importance here is that, when you come out of that clear light mind meditation and begin the reversal process in which the energy-winds start to become grosser again, the last moment of the continuity of that clear light mind acts as the immediately preceding condition for the first moment of awareness in the reversal process. So, if it’s the case that the clear light mind acts as an immediately preceding condition for a next moment of mind, of awareness, in meditation, there’s no reason why it should be different in the case of the clear light mind of death. This is the reasoning that His Holiness used. 

One could wonder if this explanation is really so. Well, you have the logic: Each moment of awareness, of mental activity, is both a result of the previous moment and the cause of the next moment. So, how could something that is a result – like the last moment of this life – not also be a cause? And how could something that is a cause – like the first moment of this life being a cause for the next moment – not also be a result? In other words, how can something that participates in the cause-and-effect relationship be only one or the other? This is another point that you need to think about in this discussion. 

Analyzing further, one could say, “Well, at the time of death, you don’t have the physical body to support mental activity. Though the physical body doesn’t produce the mental activity, it’s a necessary condition. If that necessary condition isn’t there, then there can’t be mental activity.” This, I think, is a Western argument that one might use. The reply to that from a Buddhist point of view is that there is a subtlest life-supporting energy. This becomes the real problem here because, first of all, as I said, it would be very difficult to demonstrate that the clear light mind that one experiences in tantric meditation is the same level of mental activity as that of the clear light mind of death.

In any case, according to the Buddhist view, there is a subtlest life-supporting energy. What is interesting about that is that it doesn’t exist as something separate from the subtlest clear light mind. Just as mental activity can be described from the point of view of a giving rise to a mental hologram as well as a cognitive engaging with that object, from another point of view, it can be described as a very subtle energy. So, it isn’t that subtle energy and mental activity are separate entities and that subtle energy could be either present or absent. It’s that they describe one phenomenon from two points of view – from the energy point of view and from the experiential point of view. 

Now, do you just have to accept that explanation and believe it? Or does it make any sense to say that there a life-supporting energy and that it is an aspect of mental activity? Establishing or disproving rebirth, I think, comes down to this question – at least in my own personal analysis of it. If you accept that mental activity must and does have some sort of physical or energy basis, can you say that when death occurs and the gross physical body can no longer be a support for mental activity, mental activity can still occur? 

That is all that really I wanted to say about rebirth. It’s not an easy topic by any means. And it’s certainly not an easy thing to become convinced of – which also raises the question about what it means to be convinced of something. At what point are you able draw the line and to say, “Now I’m convinced”?

Participant: When no argument would work against the explanation.

Dr. Berzin: But that assumes that you accept the logic – which isn’t something that one can assume. Shantideva, if you remember, said that the only way you can have a successful debate is if the other person accepts your system of logic. If they don’t accept your system of logic, there’s no point in discussing with them because, no matter what you say, they won’t be convinced. You would have to use their system of logic to convince them. The two opponents in a debate have to agree on one system of logic, and not everybody accepts Buddhist logic or Aristotelian logic.

Participant: I did not say that everybody should accept it.

Dr. Berzin: Well, to say that you would become convinced when there are no arguments against the explanation means that there are no arguments in your own system of logic, which, within Buddhism, could be a circular system, as we were saying.

Participant: If nobody could bring up an argument that would bring you away from the position that you are sure about…

Dr. Berzin: But your conviction could be based on faith and not at all on logic. There are plenty of people who have absolutely unshakeable faith in something who don’t base their faith on logic.

Anyway, let us not dwell any longer on this. I think that we need to get back to our meditation course. 

We had been discussing the precious human rebirth. I would like to put together all the steps that we covered into one meditation. What we’ll do is to go through the list, since we probably don’t all remember the complete list. 

First, we think of what we have respites from. “Respite” means a temporary relief from something unpleasant or difficult. The dominant situation for the majority of sentient beings is being in the worst situations of no leisure. We’re just on a short vacation from these situations, and we’re about to go back. We try to feel not only the absence of those situations but also a tremendous relief. It’s like someone taking a terrible burden off your back or like taking off tight shoes – something like that. There should be a feeling of relief, a feeling of lightness that goes along with this feeling of an absence. 

We’ve discussed that it’s quite difficult, actually, to meditate on an absence of something, because an absence feels like nothing; however, the absence is an absence of something. But this feeling of relief is something that helps us to experience in a palpable way these temporary absences that we have. 

Then, with that sense of freedom from these terrible situations, we feel how enriched we are by all the positive qualities and opportunities that the precious human rebirth affords us. That’s how we do the final step of this part of this meditation on the precious human rebirth. We put all the steps together and then we have this combined feeling of absence and enrichment. This, as we’ve said, fits in with the whole structure that we find over and again in the Dharma: the third noble truth, the true stoppings, is the removal or an absence of something, and the fourth noble truth, the true path, is the enhancement or an enrichment of something. That is also the case with the nature of the mind: it’s free from the stains and filled with good qualities. So, it’s the same structure.

Participant: Wasn’t it that, first, you visualize yourself as a being in a hell realm or as a human being that’s tormented, and, then, you kind of come back to your meditation cushion, look around, and see how peaceful and precious everything is in comparison?

Dr. Berzin: Now you’re going back to the earlier steps that lead up to putting it all together. Each of those steps was to imagine being in each one of these terrible situations and then to have the feeling that we’re not there – first, appreciating that we don’t have that situation, then, appreciating the situation that we do have. But to do the final step of the meditation, we need to be aware of all the different freedoms and enrichments that we have without having to go through the list. We want just instantly to have the recognition and feeling of appreciation of the precious human life. That’s what we’re aiming for – to have this awareness all the time without having to build it up by going through the process step by step.  

What we’re aiming for in all the lam-rim meditations is not to have to build a certain state of mind up but to be so familiar with it that we can just instantly go to the final step with a full experiential feeling and understanding. This is why we meditate. Meditation is the practice of building up the habit of viewing the world and ourselves in a beneficial way so that, eventually, that way of viewing becomes part of us. It’s not only that it happens instantly, but also that we don’t even have to remember it: it’s there all the time. That’s what we’re aiming for here: effortless, continual awareness of the value of the precious human rebirth. It would be the same with bodhichitta, with voidness, with impermanence, with refuge, with whatever. OK?

I’ll go quickly through the list once to remind us of it, and then I’ll go through it slowly as we build up that awareness. 

The non-human states of no leisure, the situations that we are free of, are: 

• a hell creature, or a trapped being in a joyless realm
• a desperately clutching ghost
• a creeping creature, or animal 
• a long-lived god

Then the human situations of no leisure are: 

• a barbarian in a savage border region 
• in a land where the Dharma’s unavailable 
• having severe learning disabilities 
• instinctively holding a distorted outlook on life, being very negative and antagonistic toward anything spiritual 

Then the five personal enriching situations are being:

• a human 
• in a central Buddhist region where there are full monks and nuns, laymen and laywomen 
• with complete mental and physical faculties
• not still experiencing the repercussions from having committed the most extreme destructive actions, in which all sorts of negative things would be happening to us all the time
• having an instinctive belief in what is true

Then the five social situations:

• where and when a Buddha has come 
• has taught the Dharma
• the Dharma is still maintained 
• with a monastic community following Buddha’s example
• with others compassionately supporting the monastic community

 Let’s now do the meditation.

• First, we quiet down.

I won’t do it quickly so that you can have a little bit of time. If you need to do as we did before, first imagining being in this worse situation and then being free of it, that’s fine. If you don’t need to spend so much time on that, that also is fine. There should certainly be a short remembrance of this terrible situation so that when you feel an absence, it’s an absence of something that you have some understanding or experience of. To just say, “Well, I’m not in this situation” – like, “I’m not in Argentina,” when you’ve never been to Argentina – doesn’t actually mean anything. Also, I think it’s important to think in terms of “no longer like this” rather than “I’m not like this,” because we have been like this, and now we’re temporarily out of that situation.

• I’m no longer a hell creature, a trapped being in a joyless realm, being tortured by heat and cold and experiencing terrible pain.

Then you have the feeling of relief, like when the dentist stops drilling your tooth when the root canal work is finally done.

• I’m no longer a hungry ghost, desperately clutching ghost, tormented by hunger and thirst and never able to get what I want.

Try to feel these freedoms as a cumulative thing. It’s not that you forget about one and then go on to the next one; rather, it’s like more and more weight is being taken off your back.

• I’m no longer a creeping creature, a cockroach that everybody wants to step on.

In order to keep the whole thing in your mind, you might want to think just for one second, “Joyless realm, clutching ghost, creeping creature,” so that you have it all together. 

• I’m no longer a long-lived god.
• I’m no longer a barbarian in a savage border region where everybody’s fighting and killing each other.
• I’m no longer in a land where the Dharma is unavailable.

For those who lived in Communist countries, that last one might be more meaningful.

• I no longer have a severe learning disability.
• I no longer instinctively hold a distorted outlook, having a very negative, antagonistic mind toward anything spiritual.

Those are progressive weights off your back: hell creature, clutching ghost, animal, long-lived god, barbarian, where the Dharma’s unavailable, learning disability, strong negative and antagonistic attitude. 

Instead:

• I’m a human.
• I’m in a central Buddhist land, and there are monks, nuns, laypeople. 
• I have complete faculties of mind and body. I’m able to understand the Dharma, read it, hear it, or able to compensate if I can’t see or hear. 
• I’m not experiencing strong repercussions of negative karma and having everything going badly for me all the time. 
• I have instinctive belief in what’s true, what’s beneficial. I’m drawn toward spiritual things.

That’s incredible. 

• I’ve been born where and when a Buddha has come, 
• where a Buddha has taught, 
• where the Dharma is still maintained, 
• where there’s a monastic community trying to follow Buddha’s example,
• and where there are others who compassionately support the monastic community and the Dharma centers that make it possible for me to study and practice.

How utterly incredible.

Try to have a strong feeling – with understanding – of both the temporary freedoms and the temporary enrichments that we have. If that feeling gets weak, you need to review the list again.

Any questions or comments?

Participant: Is the main point to just go through it and try to develop an emotion about it? Or is it also that you kind of check really hard whether it is really true or really the case?

Dr. Berzin: First, you go through and really check, and then you have the emotional feeling. So, it’s both.

You see, the emotional feeling, if we can use that term, is basically letting the realization sink in that this situation is really the case, that it really is true that I have this. Eventually, the emotional state of appreciating these freedoms and enrichments and the rarity of having them becomes so strong that I am determined to take advantage of my precious human rebirth – to practice now and not just waste all my time. So, there certainly needs to be some emotional content to it, at least at the end. It’s what we’re building up to. 

It’s important to have both an intellectual understanding and an emotional feeling. Of course, people are different. For some people, the emotional feeling comes much more easily than the understanding; for others, the understanding comes much more easily. But I think one needs to develop both. 

Now, you could explain to someone how to get an understanding through logic and analysis. But how do you explain to somebody how to get an emotional feeling? That’s much more difficult, isn’t it? You could say, “Relax, quiet down” – in a sense, let your defenses down – “and there will be some emotional feeling there,” but I don’t know that that always is the case. It’s hard to describe. 

Usually, when we think of emotion, we think of a disturbing emotion. But, here, we’re not talking about a disturbing emotion: we’re talking about a positive one. It’s like the relationship with the spiritual teacher. If you have a sincere, deep relationship, there is an emotional component to it, which is a nondisturbing emotional component. A proper relationship with the spiritual teacher is without attachment, jealousy, and clinging – you don’t get angry when they don’t have enough time for you and stuff like that. The emotional component is described as clear-minded belief in the teacher, trust in the teacher. It clears the mind of the disturbing emotions. I think when you have that basis of trust, you are able develop positive, nondisturbing emotions more easily. 

Also, when they talk about the spiritual teacher and the relationship with the spiritual teacher being the “root” of the path, understand that “root” means that this is what you get energy from. It’s not where you start. The plant doesn’t start from the root – it starts from the seed – but the root is what anchors it and gives it its strength and energy. That can be understood on many different levels, but one of them, I think, is just getting some level of feeling in a nondisturbing way. That emotional component needs to be there in any so-called realization or insight. Insight is not just intellectual. But, of course, an intellectual understanding needs to be there as well, so we always have the two: compassion and wisdom. You’ve heard that innumerable times. 

So, that emotional component is one aspect of what relating to the spiritual teacher as the root of the path is talking about. There are people who develop it by thinking of the founders of the lineages and historical figures – Milarepa or whomever – but I think that, generally speaking, the emotion in that case is not as strong as it is with a living human being. That takes on quite a different dimension. 

The next step in the meditation is to recognize the importance of the precious human lives that we have. This is explained in terms of three points, which are that with it we can:

• Accomplish our temporary goal 
• Accomplish our ultimate goals 
• Each moment, we can come closer to achieving these goals 

We’re talking about spiritual goals here.

The temporary goal – “provisional,” I think, is a better translation than “temporary” – is to have better rebirths. That’s the initial scope motivation. Specifically, it’s to have a precious human rebirth, not to take rebirth in a god realm. 

What is the main cause for a precious human rebirth? It is ethical behavior: refraining from destructive behavior. That would be very difficult to do without a precious human rebirth. How would we be able to do that as a hell being, a clutching ghost, an animal, or a god realm being? We’d be overwhelmed by pain, hunger, fear, anger, desire, and so on. The disturbing emotions would be too strong. The precious human rebirth, then, is the rebirth that affords us the best opportunity to engage in ethical behavior and to achieve our temporary or provisional goal. 

The ultimate goals are liberation and enlightenment. What is the basis for achieving liberation and enlightenment? It is keeping the vows, the vows for individual liberation and the pratimoksha vows. Whether it is lay vows or monastic vows, some sort of vowed behavior is necessary to build up more and more positive force. It’s that basis that serves as the foundation for the various practices that bring us to liberation or enlightenment. To be able to keep the bodhisattva vows and the tantric vows, we need the precious human rebirth. So, the precious human rebirth is very important from the point of view of the ultimate goals as well as the provisional goal.

It is also important because, each moment, we can come closer to achieving these goals. We can do spiritual practices – prostration, mantra, meditation, whatever. We’re able to do all of that with the precious human rebirth and, so, come closer and closer to achieving the goals. 

The example that’s always mentioned is that of the sea travelers who go off to The Island of Jewels but who then return empty-handed. This would be very foolish. Having achieved a precious human rebirth is like arriving at The Island of Jewels. We need to recognize its value and importance and take the essence of it with us. That’s the whole point of appreciating the precious human rebirth.

Now, how does one meditate on that? I think it’s just a matter of letting that understanding sink in. We first try to recognize, “Well, what can I do with this precious human rebirth that I wouldn’t be able do without it?” and then just to have the feeling, “Wow, this is really important! This is really valuable.” So, there’s both an understanding component and an emotional component to it. 

If that feeling is hard to generate, we have to think about what we consider to be really, really important and what it feels like to consider it really important and then to extrapolate what the feeling is from that. Then we try to see whether whatever it is that we value and consider to be really important – a good job, a good marriage, and so on – is something that can bring us a better rebirth. Is it something that can bring us liberation and enlightenment? It might be helpful to have the financial support of a good job and to have the emotional support of a good relationship, but when it comes to achieving these spiritual goals, it’s the precious human rebirth that’s the most valuable. OK? 

So, let’s think about these three points – the importance of the precious human rebirth from the point of view of achieving our provisional goal, from the point of view of achieving our ultimate goals, and from the point of view of being able, each moment, to come closer and closer to achieving these goals by doing meditation practice, helping others, and these sorts of things.

[meditation]

Participant: I had a very strong feeling of wanting to have another human life. But, basically, I have a lot of attachment to this idea, and attachment would probably not result in the best karma. It might bring about the opposite.

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good point: becoming too attached to the precious human rebirth, wanting it too much might be counterproductive. The same would be true of wanting liberation or enlightenment too much – making a solid thing out of it and becoming very attached to it. 

You see, aiming for the provisional goal is just the first step in the whole process. That’s why it’s called a graded path. Eventually, we go on to the step of what’s called “renunciation,” the determination to be free. This is actually quite a difficult step to understand fully. We could sincerely be working for a precious human rebirth – we could be thinking, “I really, really want one. I take it very seriously, and I’m convinced of rebirth,” and are always praying, “May I have a precious human rebirth, have all the circumstances, and be able to meet with my gurus again and all my Dharma friends” – but in fact all of it is based on great attachment. So, we’re not thinking so much about the importance of the precious human rebirth and how we can use it; we’re thinking of it more as a vehicle for being with our friends and our teachers.

Participant: It’s both.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s very hard to have a pure motivation. But this is why we need  renunciation. We think, “Yes, it’s a precious rebirth, but it’s a samsaric rebirth. So, there are all the sufferings that go along with that – growing up, getting sick, growing old, getting frustrated with various things, wondering how to make a living, etc.” 

Real renunciation entails having a clear idea of what it would be like to be a liberated being, as opposed to just thinking in terms of the things we have to renounce and having no idea of what it means to be a liberated being. Understanding that being a liberated being is even better than being a human helps one to get the perspective that the precious human rebirth is just a stepping-stone, a vehicle. In the beginning, though, there will be that attachment. That’s why we can’t just stay on the initial level of motivation. 

As you point out, there’s a very real danger with the initial level motivation. But of all the shortcomings, it’s necessary, in a sense, to work through that phase of attachment to better rebirths. You have to really want liberation in order to overcome that attachment. 

Participant: I’m wondering if it’s OK to use images, like green scenery or something, to illustrate the emotion you’re trying to feel.

Dr. Berzin: Yes, it’s perfectly fine. Some people repeat words about the precious human rebirth and its importance – so, keeping mindful of it in terms of some verbal cue. But it can also be in terms of an image. 

To be able to focus on something, you need to have an object that represents what you want to focus on. It’s like when you are focusing on bodhichitta and your own future enlightenment that you’re aiming to achieve: you can represent that with a visualization of Buddha Shakyamuni or of a lineage guru – whether Tsongkhapa, the Karmapa, Guru Rinpoche, or Chenrezig. Who it is doesn’t matter; it’s just a focal object to represent what you’re aiming for. It’s hard to just meditate without having a focal aim. If you are able to do that, you’re doing mahamudra meditation. That’s rather difficult to do – to meditate without a focal aim. Usually, you have a focal aim to represent what you’re aiming for.