LTF 37: The 5 Pathway Minds and 4 Close Placements of Mindfulness

In the section on discriminating awareness, which we have been discussing, we have been looking in detail at verse 45 concerning the brief account of the essence of the path. Verse 45 speaks of what we need to adopt. The next verse, Verse 46, will speaks of what we have gotten rid of. Verse 45 was:

[45] Belief in fact, joyful perseverance, and mindfulness, absorbed concentration, and discriminating awareness are the five supreme Dharma measures. Strive after them. These are known as the forces and the powers, and also what brings you to the peak.

What we noticed was that what is explained here is just part of the Mahayana path to enlightenment (actually, we find it in the Hinayana path to enlightenment as well). It is speaking about what we develop on the fifth of the five levels of pathway minds that we try to develop in ourselves. We saw that all of the five factors that are mentioned here – belief in fact, joyful perseverance, mindfulness, absorbed concentration, and discriminating awareness – are part of a longer list of thirty-seven factors that we develop on the path either to liberation as a shravaka or pratyekabuddha or all the way to enlightenment. All of these are directed at the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths. 

We have finished our discussion of those sixteen aspects. We went into it in quite a lot of detail primarily because they are so essential in terms of what we actually meditate on, on the path to liberation or enlightenment. 

Lam-rim or lojong (the attitude training) – these sorts of things are preliminary to all of this. They are not irrelevant to the thirty-seven factors,  but they are, particularly lam-rim, ways of helping us to develop the motivation to actually engage in all these practices because, as the motivation, we need either renunciation or both renunciation and bodhichitta. So, lam-rim is very necessary to train ourselves to be able to get onto this path, to develop these pathway minds. The lojong teachings, the attitude-training teachings, are to help us to change negative circumstances into positive ones so that we have fewer obstacles and problems along the path. 

What I thought to explain today was a little bit about these five pathway minds – what we actually do or develop on them, how we progress through them – so that we see the context of this verse, which is speaking about what we develop on the second of the five pathway minds. 

In order to reach that first level of mind, which acts as a pathway bringing us to liberation or enlightenment, we need to have either unlabored renunciation or both unlabored renunciation and unlabored bodhichitta. If we are doing it with the first motivation, renunciation alone, then we are doing it as a shravaka or pratyekabuddha working towards liberation. We do it with the second motivation, if we’re a bodhisattva. 

For those of you who are not so aware, the difference between a shravaka and a pratyekabuddha concerns when they are practicing. A shravaka is somebody who practices during a time when the Buddha’s teaching are available. The word “shravaka” literally means “listener” or “hearer.” So, it’s someone who actually hears the Buddha’s teachings from teachers and practices accordingly, whereas a pratyekabuddha is someone who lives in a dark age when the Buddhas’ teachings are no longer available – so, in-between the times when Buddhas are teaching and their teachings are flourishing. 

In the present eon, it is predicted that there will a thousand Buddhas who will teach world religions. In other words, they will teach Buddhism as a huge system that so many people will follow. But there are long periods of dark ages in between. So, the pratyekabuddhas are the ones who, either by themselves or in small groups, practice based on their instincts from previous lives of having listened to the teachings. Based on that, they have some idea of what to practice and then practice.

Unlabored Renunciation

Anyway, we need to have unlabored renunciation. That’s the determination to be free from samsara, from uncontrollably recurring rebirth. And as we saw, to be free from this all-pervasive suffering means wanting to be free from constantly being reborn and building up more and more causes for being reborn with a body, mind, feelings, etc. that are the basis for either gross suffering or our ordinary happiness, which never satisfies. That’s what we are determined to be free from, and we’re willing to give all that up. That’s renunciation. Of course, what comes with that, as we saw in these sixteen aspects, is being convinced that it’s actually possible. We’re convinced of what the causes are, convinced that it is possible to get rid of the causes, and convinced that there is a mind and understanding that will get rid of those causes. So, all of that needs to be there to have this determination to be free. 

Unlabored Bodhichitta

Then bodhichitta is the mind that is focused on our future enlightenment, which we haven’t attained but which can be attained on the basis of our Buddha-nature. We are focused on that because of love and compassion for others. We want them to be happy, not to be unhappy, to have the causes for happiness, and to be free of the causes for unhappiness, and we take responsibility to do something about that – to lead them all the way to the state where they are free of all of that and actually reach enlightenment. Based on that motivation, we focus on our future enlightenment, again, being convinced that it is totally possible to achieve it, and we strive to achieve that enlightenment. That’s bodhichitta. 

The unlabored level of those states of mind is when we are able automatically to generate those states of mind all the time, whether we are consciously thinking of it or not. That’s always what we are aiming for – either to be free from samsara or to reach enlightenment to benefit everybody. We don’t have to build ourselves up to having that by going through a line of reasoning. That’s one aspect that we need – this motivation – in order to reach that first level of pathway mind.

The First Two of the Three Types of Discriminating Awareness

The other thing that we need to have gained beforehand is the first two of the three types of discriminating awareness of the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths. There are three levels of discriminating awareness, what’s often translated as “wisdom,” but that’s too vague. 

There’s the discriminating awareness that arises from hearing correct information about the sixteen. So, we can differentiate – discriminate – between what actually the sixteen points are and what they are not. That would allow us to focus conceptually on the sixteen through an appropriate and accurate, what’s called an “audio category” (sgra-spyi, acoustic universal) – in other words, just the words. We have memorized the list, we know the list, and we could recite the definitions. We know what the list is, but without necessarily associating any meaning with it. That’s the first level of discriminating awareness. All the words and the definitions are correct, but we don’t really understand them.

The second type of discriminating awareness is the one that arises from thinking about or pondering these sixteen so that we understand them and can focus conceptually on them through appropriate, accurate meaning/object categories (don-spyi, meaning universal). So, there’s the audio category of the first noble truth, and there is the meaning of it. It’s not just the category, “first noble truth,” which is an audio one, a verbal one. So, we can focus on these sixteen aspects through some sort of meaning category – so, conceptually, with some level of understanding that is, at least, correct. It might not be in the most profound level, but at least it is correct. 

With those two levels of discriminating awareness of these sixteen plus the motivation, which we’ve built up with the preliminary practices of lam-rim, lojong and these sorts of things, we can develop the first level of pathway mind. OK. Is that clear? 

Participant: That’s the step before reaching the first…

Dr. Berzin: These are the steps that we need before reaching the first pathway mind.

Participant: That’s the path of accumulation?

Dr. Berzin: Yes, the first one is the path of accumulation, or the building-up pathway mind. We haven’t reached that yet. 

Often, we tend to think of lam-rim as encompassing the whole path, but actually, it just brings us to the path. And we in the West, usually need steps before lam-rim to bring us to the level of lam-rim because we don’t necessarily have belief in future lives. Many of us don’t even have any confidence in working to improve the later part of this lifetime – just live for the moment type of attitude. So, we need steps even before lam-rim.

In any case, once we get to this level – having developed the two types of discriminating awareness of the sixteen aspects and either unlabored renunciation or unlabored renunciation and bodhichitta – we have developed a building-up pathway mind (tshogs-lam). This has nine stages or levels: three initial, three intermediate, and three advanced. As you progress from one stage of mind to the next, what do we build up? That’s why it’s called “building-up,” or “accumulating.” 

Shamatha

What we build up (I think “build up” is a better term because it indicates progress rather than the accumulation of things that you put in the bank) is, first of all, shamatha focused conceptually on these sixteen aspects. 

Shamatha is a stilled and settled state of mind, sometimes called calm abiding. What is that? That is when our concentration is totally free of all distraction, such as flightiness of mind – our mind flying off to something that we find desirable or something that causes anger and things like that. It also has to be free of dullness. There are many levels of flightiness, many levels of dullness. There’s a big discussion about that. When our minds are totally free of these, then we have what’s called absorbed concentration, or samadhi. 

In addition to that, we have what’s called a “sense of fitness” (shin-sbyangs). We feel an exhilarating sense of both body and mind, a feeling that we can focus on anything for as long as we want without any distraction and that we can sit as long as we want without any distraction in terms of physical pain or things like that. That gives us a tremendous, exhilarating, joyous feeling, both body and mind. That’s a sense of fitness – “I can do it.” You need that in addition to perfect concentration. 

When you have the two of those together, you have what’s called shamatha in Sanskrit and zhinay (zhi-gnas) in Tibetan. Very often we hear it translated into English in many different ways: calm abiding, mental quiescence, etc. Literally, it means “stilled and settled” – stilled of all distraction, whether it’s flightiness or dullness, and it’s settled on an object. It’s zhi and gnas. 

Vipashyana

Now, we follow that… you know, in going through these nine steps, we follow that with attaining, or building up, to having a joined pair of shamatha and vipashyana focused on the sixteen aspects. Vipashyana (sometimes you hear the Pali version, vipassana) is something that is in addition to shamatha. You can’t actually have vipashyana, definitional vipashyana, without shamatha. It’s just one step beyond shamatha, which is that you have an extra sense, a second sense, of fitness. It’s the mental factor of feeling totally fit to understand anything, to analyze and understand anything. So, it’s not just that the mind is able to stay focused on something but that it is also able to understand and make very, very fine distinctions. 

This can be attained by focusing on these sixteen aspects. It could be obtained focusing just on voidness. It could be attained in tantra, for example, by doing unbelievably complicated, difficult visualizations of, let’s say, one dot at the end of your nose, then coming from that, two dots (while keeping that one dot), and then four dots, and then eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, etc. You keep them all completely in focus and in order and then dissolve them back row by row. And then, if you want to get really complicated, you can have a complete mandala with all the deities inside each of the dots. That would be the tantra way, the anuttarayoga tantra, the highest class of tantra, way of developing vipashyana. So, it’s not necessarily developed with an understanding of voidness, although in most cases in sutra and on the Mahayana path it is. In Theravada, it can be slightly different. Then there is the classical Theravada way. There is a so-called American vipashyana movement way, which is a little bit different. But I don’t think this is the place to go into that. Let’s just look at the standard Mahayana way of developing it. 

Although we might, before achieving shamatha, do analytical meditation and voidness meditation and these other meditations that are similar to vipashyana, we are not really developing vipashyana. As I said, we don’t really have vipashyana unless we have shamatha as its basis. 

OK, this is what we build up with the first pathway mind. 

What We Focus on in the Hinayana and Mahayana Contexts

• In the Hinayana context, we can either focus on these sixteen aspects themselves, point by point by point, or we can focus on the sixteen aspects as being devoid of an impossible soul of a person the way it is defined in Hinayana – in other words, there is no static, monolithic “me” independent of the aggregates that is experiencing the four aspects of suffering, that has the four aspects of the cause of suffering as part of the mental continuum, that can achieve the four true stoppings and cessations, and that can develop the four pathway minds. There is no impossible “me” that can do that or that can have that. So, we can focus either on the sixteen themselves or this on the lack of an impossible “me” that experiences these. 

• In a Mahayana context, we can either focus on the sixteen aspects themselves – which in the Mahayana system, we would call the superficial, or relative, or conventional truth of the sixteen – or we can focus on their deepest truth, which would be the voidness of each of them in general. So, that’s not just the voidness of the person who experiences those sixteen as defined in the different Mahayana schools but also the voidness of those sixteen themselves – the voidness of suffering, the voidness of the causes of suffering, the voidness of the true stopping of the suffering, the voidness of the pathway minds that lead to that. So, this is what we are focusing on. 

When we focus on these sixteen, wanting to get shamatha focused on the understanding… I mean, we are working here with the discriminating awareness that comes from understanding, from thinking. So, either we focus by being totally absorbed on these facts or, in addition to just focusing on the facts, we get the exhilarating feeling of being able to understand them. There is a whole long discussion about whether we can have these two at the same time or whether we alternate them. That’s a complex process, whether we do what’s called “analytical,” or “discerning” meditation (dpyad-sgom) (to discern all these things with understanding), or we do what’s called “fixating,” or “stabilizing” meditation ('jog-sgom) where we just fix on it, stay on it. There is a lot of detail with that. 

Now, what’s interesting (you should note) is that it is possible that you’ve already achieved shamatha and vipashyana focused on something else before you achieve this first pathway mind and go through the nine stages of it. So, some people have already achieved it focusing on something else, and others achieve shamatha and vipashyana for the first time with the building-up pathway mind. There are two ways of doing it. Obviously, if we have already achieved it focused on something else, the process of going through these nine stages on this path of accumulation, this building-up pathway mind, will be much speedier and more efficient.

Remember, shamatha and vipashyana are not exclusively Buddhist practices. All of these types of practices involving concentration are found in common in all the Indian systems – the Hindu systems, the Jain’s systems, etc. What makes it Buddhist is the four noble truths – being focused on the four noble truths either with renunciation alone or with renunciation and bodhichitta. That makes it Buddhist. Shamatha and vipashyana by themselves are just tools. They could be focused on anything. 

Let’s digest this for a moment before we go on. This is clear so far? Do you have any questions? 

Building Up Shamatha and Vipashyana with the Four Close Placements of Mindfulness

So, how do we actually meditate with this building-up pathway mind? What we do is to practice what’s called the “four close placements of mindfulness” (dran-pa nyer-bzhag, Skt. smrtyupasthana), satipatthana in Pali, which you might be familiar with. These can be practiced in several ways. There is a Theravada way of practicing them and a Mahayana way of practicing them. Here we will look at the Mahayana way of practicing them.

We can understand them in two ways in the Mahayana context. What are these four? The four close placements of mindfulness are focused on: 

1. Our bodies 
2. Our feelings – referring to feelings of happiness and unhappiness 
3. Our minds – referring to the six types of primary consciousness: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling physical sensations, and mental consciousness 
4. All phenomena – referring to everything else that is in our aggregates, such as the emotions, understandings, concentrations and these sorts of things. 

Participant: So, with this vipashyana mind, I meditate on the four placements of consciousness, right?

Dr. Berzin: No, it’s not just with the vipashyana mind that you meditate on the four placements. You do, first, shamatha and then shamatha and vipashyana. Or you can do shamatha, and you can do vipashyana, each of them one at a time – trying to discern the object of meditation and then focusing on it. But you won’t get actual vipashyana unless you have shamatha. It’s called vipashyana, but it is not the real vipashyana; it’s just a facsimile. 

Participant: So, we will fit these four placements into shamatha and vipashyana again? 

Dr. Berzin: The four placements are the topics for shamatha and vipashyana. You want to focus on these four. That will be the context within which you focus on the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths. I’ll explain how it goes together. You can meditate on these four in terms of just the various aspects concerning the first noble truth, or you can meditate on them in conjunction with the four aspects of true suffering (the first noble truth), the four aspects of true causes (the second noble truth), and so on. Like that. So let me explain it.

The Four Close Placements of Mindfulness Focused on the Four Aspects of the First Noble Truth

If we want to focus on them just in terms of the four aspects of true suffering and the four distorted views of true suffering, then what we focus on is: 

• Our bodies – as being unclean (impure, ugly) rather than as clean (beautiful, pure). So, we want to discern that; that’s a vipashyana type of meditation. Then, a shamatha type of meditation would be to just stay focused on that, on the conclusion. 

• Our feelings – as suffering (unsatisfying) rather than as happiness (satisfying). Remember, feelings refer to some level of happiness or unhappiness. Even happiness is a type of suffering because it doesn’t last and is not satisfying. So, what are we doing here? Each moment, we have a different level of happiness or unhappiness, so we are focusing on the sensations in the body. We want to have some understanding with it. The understanding is that the body is unclean, whether it is the inside of our nose, the inside of our stomach, the pain in our knees, whatever it might be. When we’re focusing on each moment of feeling as it’s changing – happiness/unhappiness – we are focusing on the fact that it is a form of suffering. There is an understanding here. That’s very important. 

• Our minds (referring to the six types of primary consciousness: seeing, hearing, etc.) – as nonstatic (impermanent), as changing all the time, rather than as static (permanent). So, here is where we focus on impermanence in terms of the consciousness – now we are hearing, now we are seeing, now we are smelling… It’s always something different. 

• All phenomena (referring to all the other mental factors and to the five aggregates in general) – as lacking an impossible soul of a person (gang-zag-gi bdag-med) rather than having one. So, there are all these other things that are happening – emotions, concentration, levels of understanding, etc. – but there is no solid “me” that is controlling them, that is separate from them, observing them, or anything like that. 

That’s the way you can recognize the four aspects and the four misunderstandings of the first noble truth. That’s one level of doing the four close placements of mindfulness. Is that clear? 

Let’s just review that: our bodies as unclean; our feelings as suffering; our minds, the primary consciousnesses – hearing smelling, thinking, etc. – as nonstatic; and all phenomena, meaning the aggregates in general, especially the emotions and understandings, and so on, as lacking an impossible “me” that’s separate from them, controlling them or observing them. OK? 

So, you want to discern that, which means that you observe that it’s like this and not like that. Then you stay completely focused on that decision that “it is like this; it’s not like that.” And as you do that, you are working on all the factors to gain shamatha – so, getting rid of the distraction, the flightiness of mind, the dullness, etc. And you work on that aspect of it in terms of fixing on the conclusion. 

Participant: These kind of practices – would they come after I gained some experience with lam-rim?

Dr. Berzin: Lam-rim is basically intended to develop motivation. That’s what lam-rim is all about – how to develop, first, the motivation to work to improve future lives so that you continue to have a precious human life every lifetime (that’s going to take an awful long time), then how to develop the determination to be free, and then how to develop bodhichitta. All the lam-rim practices are within that context. These are the three levels of motivation. 

Why would you want to focus on all of this, to do these meditations on the body, feelings and so on? If you do it just because everybody else is doing it and you want to be part of the in-crowd, just following everybody else without having much of a motivation (I mean it’s an ego motivation: you want to be accepted and so on), it’s not going to take you very far; you are not going to get much insight or understanding. 

Obviously, in order to focus on these things, you need to have thought about them first. Remember? You hear about these sixteen aspects and then think about them so that you understand them. Once you have understood them, then you do these four close placements of mindfulness to actually observe that, in fact, these are true. Here is where, in our Western terminology you would say, you get some actual experience. 

Now, could you figure out these sixteen aspects just by observing the feelings and the sensations of the body? I don’t know that you necessarily would. Maybe in some very rare cases you’d be able to figure them out for yourself – for example, if you’re Buddha or somebody like that. But not so easy, not so obvious. 

Participant: In the vipashyana system, they focus on the feelings of the body…

Dr. Berzin: Right, that’s the first step. 

Participant: But then it’s not the ugliness or the uncleanliness of the body.

Dr. Berzin: Right, in the Theravada system, you’re not focusing on the ugliness of the body and so on. It’s a different system. That’s why I said that we’ll focus here on the Mahayana explanation of this. Theravada has a slightly different explanation and presentation. I have two articles on my website, if you want to look in great detail about the Theravada system of the four close placements and the Mahayana system of them. It’s in the section called “Comparison of Buddhist Traditions.” 

In the Theravada system, one of the big emphases, when you’re focusing on all these sensations and feelings, is to notice that they are changing all the time. So, it’s not just focusing on them; it’s understanding that at least they are impermanent, that they change.

Participant: So, that understanding comes when you’re really…

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, the understanding comes when you observe it. Impermanence is fairly obvious. But these other things here – that the feelings are unsatisfying or that the body is not pure or beautiful or anything like that… when you look not just at the sensations but you go organ by organ inside you, and the digestive system and circulation system and respiratory system, you get a different view of the body when you do an anatomy exercise. 

Participant: How does lam-rim compare to ngondro in the Kagyu lineage?

Dr. Berzin: Ngondro, the preliminary, or preparatory, practices, has two aspects to it – what’s called the common and uncommon preliminaries. Lam-rim are the common preliminaries, in other words, what’s common to both sutra and tantra. In Kagyu, that would be covered by things like Jewel Ornament of Liberation, by Gampopa, which covers all the lam-rim material, just in a slightly different order and referring to topics like the precious human rebirth, death and impermanence, the disadvantages of samsara, and karma with slightly different terminology. The basis of all of that is that you have refuge, and you have bodhichitta, which also implies renunciation. So, it covers the whole thing. It starts off with Buddha-nature, whereas in the lam-rim, Buddha-nature is studied separately; it’s not part of the lam-rim. So, those are the common ngondro, and it’s exactly the same as lam-rim. 

Then, the uncommon preliminaries are prostration, Vajrasattva, mandala offerings, and guru yoga. Those are the four most common ones in Kagyu. These are preliminary for tantra practice. So, tantra practice also is, within Mahayana, going through these five levels of mind that one develops. You can develop those on a sutra level, or you can develop those on the level of each of the four classes of tantra. How you progress through them is going to be slightly different. What you meditate on is going to be slightly different on the tantra path. It has to do with visualizations. 

Now, in doing the tantra path, can you skip focusing on the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths? I don’t think so. I think that those also are part of the preliminaries. I mean, it says quite clearly that without the common preliminaries, it doesn’t work; you need both the common and the uncommon, the two sets of ngondro. 

Participant: So, you do the ngondro at a later stage when you enter tantra?

Dr. Berzin: Well, if you do the ngondro – not just do the hundred thousand repetitions but actually develop the common ones, which you’d develop to the level of unlabored renunciation and bodhichitta – then you would start the first path. But in tantra, you would need initiation, of course. 

Participant: For doing the ngondro?

Dr. Berzin: No, for doing specific a tantra path, a specific tantra practice. For the ngondro, you don’t necessarily need an initiation. You can have what’s called a “jenang” (rjes-snang,  subsequent permission) for Vajrasattva and for guru yoga. I have never heard of it for mandala offering or prostration. But it is not absolutely essential. Usually, what you need is the lung, the oral transmission. 

Participant: So, lam-rim is the general…

Dr. Berzin: The general sutra path. Lam-rim is the general sutra path that covers precious human rebirth, death and impermanence, the suffering of the six realms, refuge; how the disturbing emotions work; the twelve links of dependent arising; renunciation; the ways of developing bodhichitta – love, compassion, all of that; the six far-reaching attitudes and how to develop them; how to develop shamatha and vipashyana in conjunction with far-reaching concentration and far-reaching wisdom, or discriminating awareness. All of that is in lam-rim, or the common preliminaries – however you want to call them. There are lots of different names for them.

At the same time as you’re doing that, you could do the uncommon preliminaries, the prostrations and so on. Some teachers start you out on that very quickly, but most teachers would not advise that. That’s because you have no motivation; you don’t know what you are doing. If you have no motivation for doing it except to please your teacher or because your teacher told you so and you’re desperate – you want some miracle – then, usually, it’s not very effective. So, you would at least need to have some motivation that is a Dharmic motivation. You need to have some feeling of refuge, at least, which doesn’t mean just simply, the first day, going and having somebody cutting a little piece of your hair, giving you a name and giving you a red string. That’s not refuge. Refuge means, really deeply in your heart, putting the direction of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha in your life and understanding what it is. Then it’s refuge, what I call “safe direction.” You would need at least that to make the prostrations and so on have any spiritual meaning, any Buddhist meaning. 

Then there are many styles of doing the prostrations and so on. You can do them all together in one big event. You can do them when it fits into your schedule. You can do them all day long like the people who go to Bodhgaya and, for a month or two, do prostrations. You see the Tibetans doing that. Or you could do a Vajarasattva retreat. People do that. Or you could do just a little bit of them every day, not make a big, full-time event out of it. There are many different styles. 

Also, those preliminaries – the sets of a hundred thousand – can be varied. There’s a lot of variation; it’s not just the common four – prostration, Vajrasattva, mandala offering and guru-yoga. In Gelugpa, the standard thing is nine, not four. It’s much more complicated, much more difficult. And many other things can be substituted. So, there’s a lot of variation. It really depends on what your teacher tells you to do, advises you to do – if you have a close personal relation with a teacher. If you don’t, then, usually, you just do the standard ngondro. There are custom-made ngondros. So, it’s like that.

It’s true that a lot of people get tantric initiations and practice tantra before doing the ngondro. However, usually, you don’t make terribly much progress. The purpose of the uncommon ngondro is to – at least, to a certain extent – build up some positive force and get rid of some negative force. That’s the whole purpose of it. Well, you get rid of negative force through prostration and Vajrasattva, and you build up positive force with mandala offering and guru yoga – so, purification and building up so-called merit. 

That’s important because we have a lot of what in the West we would call “mental blocks,” what the Tibetans call both “emotional blocks” and “cognitive blocks,” or the Tibetans call “emotional obscurations” and “cognitive obscurations,” if you want a technical term. There are emotional blocks and cognitive blocks to understanding things, to making progress. That’s what you want to work on – to purify to a certain extent. But you’re not going to really purify things perfectly unless you have the understanding of voidness. So, that’s what’s involved. 

And the tantra path is really difficult. Don’t let anybody fool you into thinking that it’s easy. It’s not. It’s a fulltime endeavor in terms of changing your perception every single moment. In the initial stage, it means changing your way of conceiving what you are perceiving in terms of seeing yourself as a Buddha-figure and everything around you as a mandala and everybody else as Buddha-figures. It’s unbelievably difficult to sustain, even to remember to do, in terms of starting to recognize how your mind makes things appear in crazy ways. Therefore, you change your mind to demonstrate that how you perceive things can be changed in different ways. It’s very, very difficult to do. 

Participant: It’s difficult because you can get confused and…

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s difficult because you can get confused if you don’t understand. If you don’t have an understanding of voidness, it’s hopeless. Then you go crazy. Then it’s the same as a crazy person thinking they are Cleopatra or Napoleon. You’re not doing that in tantra. You understand full well that all of this is based on Buddha-nature, based on potentials – that it’s not actualized now. But it is a method that you are working with – for a purpose, some motivation. 

It’s not so easy because, also, Tibetans have a different attitude toward it. When they give initiations so easily and quickly in the West, it’s usually with the attitude, first, of planting seeds for future lives. That’s because they have no expectation that you’re actually going to practice anything. So, Tibetans think very much in terms of planting seeds for future lives. Also, they do it for a very worldly, samsaric reason in many cases, which is that, if they were to teach about death and impermanence, hardly anybody would come. If they give an initiation, a lot of people come. Then, they can raise money to feed the monks back in their monastery who put unbelievable pressure on them to bring back the money to buy the food and build the housing. That’s the behind-the-scenes thing that’s going on. You shouldn’t be naive about it. That’s the reality of the pressures that these geshes and lamas and kenpos face when they come to the West. There are huge expectations placed on them. Also, they receive letter after letter reminding them. I have traveled with them; I known from behind the scenes what goes on.

Participant: Do you recommend not attending any initiations? 

Dr. Berzin: No, I wouldn’t recommend that. 

There are different levels of attending. One can attend as an observer – His Holiness says that very clearly – without taking the vows and promises to practice. Actually taking the initiation involves taking  bodhisattva vows or, if it’s the two highest classes of tantra, both bodhisattva and tantric vows. You have to be prepared to keep them and, also, in many cases, to do a daily practice of, at least, reciting the mantra a certain number of times. So, you have to be prepared for that. So, you can go as an observer, but don’t kid yourself by thinking, “I’ve received the initiation,” because you haven’t; you haven’t taken the vows. It’s not bad to go; it could be very inspiring, very helpful. A lot of people go.

Also, if you are prepared to take bodhisattva vows or bodhisattva and tantric vows, you can go, even though you don’t have a firm foundation. That’s OK too because, also, one can also think in terms of planting seeds, maybe not necessarily for future lives (if we don’t believe in them) but for future stage of practice later in this lifetime. After all, who knows what is going to be available in the future? Death can come at any time. So, especially when somebody like His Holiness the Dalai Lama is giving initiations – and he is not going to live forever – it’s good to go, at least as an observer. 

But I think that you have to be very careful and really check, “Do I really want to receive this initiation from this teacher?” I’m not talking about being an observer; that’s something else. Taking an initiation from somebody establishes a very strong connection with that person. So, you want to check, “Is this person qualified?” Then, “Is this person somebody whom I can feel inspiration from?” It’s very, very important that a teacher in general, but especially a tantric teacher, inspires you. So, you check: are they qualified, and do they inspire me? In most cases, one is not going to get personal instruction from this lama. But they need to, in a sense, represent what one is aiming for. So, you check out the teacher very, very well. And don’t go to somebody simply because they are there or simply because they come to your city or simply because other people are going and you feel group pressure. Check out the teacher.

Secondly, if you want to take the initiation, you check out the practice – “This is a particular practice that I really want to do.” So, you need some information about it. There are some deities, these tantric figures, you feel attracted to; others you feel nothing with. If you feel nothing, don’t do it – unless you just want to collect initiations. Or you go to renew your vows. That’s also possible. There are many different levels of going to an initiation. 

Participant: Going there as an observer doesn’t need preparation?

Dr. Berzin: No, not really. Although, let’s say, for the Kalachakra initiation, you can read in my book, Taking the Kalachakra Initiation (which you can find on my website), that there are ways to gain the most benefit from going as an observer. You can go as observer and not understand a word that’s going on – let’s say, if it’s all in Tibetan. Then it is just, in a sense, an anthropology experience of observing the natives doing some native ritual. You might as well be in New Guinea. Then it’s just entertainment. But if you’re going as an observer and want to understand what’s going on and it’s in a language that you can understand, then in my book, I outline how you can get the most from it without actually taking the initiation. 

Participant: No preparation needed, even not the Kalachakra one?

Dr. Berzin: Even not the Kalachakra one because it is speaking about the most general aspects of the Kalachakra initiation, which are found in any initiation. There is a large part of the Kalachakra initiation that is common with every higher tantra initiation, with almost any initiation of any class, actually. 

Participant: How does it go when one is not so much interested in the practice, like Kalachakra, but is interested in the person who gives it? For instance, one really wants to establish some connection with His Holiness, but he’s giving Kalachakra…

Dr. Berzin: OK, so that is a good question. Then the main thing you focus on in the initiation is taking the vows. It’s the vows that establish the relationship with the teacher. What’s the definition of a tantric master? It’s someone who confers tantric vows on you. So, that’s important. Then, in terms of the practice, you think, “Well, I’m just receiving the seeds for some future time.” So, like that. 

When His Holiness gives the Kalachakra initiation, usually, there is never a commitment to do a practice. In general, in the Gelug tradition, there is the six-session yoga, which is a way of keeping certain commitments. It’s not a tantric vow, but it’s something that is attached to the tantric vows – these nineteen close-bonding practices – that you find in all initiations. Even in the Kagyu, Sakya, and Nyingma, although they don’t have a specific recitation practice for keeping those nineteen, you have to keep the nineteen anyway. The Gelugpa just makes a convenient, little practice – this six-session yoga – for helping you to keep them, to remember them. So, that would be there. But aside from that, there is no necessity to do Kalachakra practice. His Holiness never expects that, never says that. That’s because nobody would do it. 

The Tibetans are amazed that there is such a big network of Westerners who are actually into Kalachakra practice, this international Kalachakra network. There are hundreds of people all around the world that are really into the practice. Not that many Tibetans are, unless they are from the specific monasteries where it is part of their monastic ritual schedule to do Kalachakra rituals, like Namgyal Monastery and Dharamsala, His Holiness’s monastery, and one division of Gaden Sharste. And in Amdo, there were various monasteries that had a Kalachakra division that involved both Kalachakra and astrology, actually.

So, we had one way of practicing these four close placements of mindfulness dealing with what the aspects of true sufferings actually are – the body as unclean, the feelings as suffering, the mind (the primary consciousnesses) as nonstatic, and all phenomena (meaning the aggregates in general and the emotions) as lacking an impossible “me.” You can also focus on these four…

Participant: Where is the vipashyana aspect to this?

Dr. Berzin: Where is the vipashyana aspect when you are doing this? We are not talking about definitional vipashyana. What you are working with is what’s usually translated as “analytical meditation” and “formal meditation.” The analytical is to discern that it is like this and not like that. That contributes to the vipashyana side. Then, when you just focus on that understanding – that’s the shamatha side. Then, you alternate the two. But when you actually achieve something, you would achieve shamatha first and then vipashyana on top of that. 

The Four Close Placements of Mindfulness Focused on the Four Noble Truths

If you want to look at these four in terms of all four noble truths, then you would see: 

• Our bodies as true suffering – all the aspects of true suffering. 

• Our feelings of happiness and unhappiness as true causes of suffering. Remember, what activates karma, karmic aftermath, to produce the all-pervasive suffering of continuing rebirth is craving, craving not to be parted from feelings of happiness and to be parted from feelings of unhappiness. That’s what starts the whole process. So, you think of feelings as the true causes of suffering. 

• Our minds, referring to primary consciousness as true stoppings of suffering. That’s because the mind by nature is pure. It’s unobscured and so on; therefore, it can have a true stopping of suffering and its causes. Suffering is not the nature of the mind. 

• All phenomena, referring to all the aggregates, as the true pathway mind. Within the aggregates of all the mental factors and so on, you could develop the pathway mind, you could develop the understanding of voidness that would get rid of true suffering and causes. 

In that way, you could correlate these four close placements of mindfulness with all sixteen aspects of the four noble truths. 

OK? So, there are two levels of doing this close placement of mindfulness. Let’s digest that for a moment. 

We start off with developing a motivation so it becomes unlabored, then hearing about the sixteen aspects, then thinking about them and understanding them. Once we have an unlabored and really proper motivation and the correct understanding of these sixteen aspects, then we have a level of mind that will build up. What does it build up? It builds up shamatha and then combined shamatha with vipashyana  (vipashyana, by the way, means an exceptionally perceptive state of mind) focused on the sixteen conceptually. So, we are building that up. We have the type of mind that builds it up. 

When we’ve built it up, when we actually get that combined shamatha and vipashyana focused on the sixteen, that is the boundary, the point when we develop an applying pathway mind (sbyor-lam), sometimes translated as “the path of preparation.” That is, I think, a very misleading translation: it’s “application.” You now apply that conceptual combined shamatha and vipashyana. You apply it further and further and further until you get combined non-conceptual shamatha and vipashyana focused on the sixteen. 

When you get non-conceptual shamatha and vipashyana is when you develop the seeing pathway mind (mthong-lam), the third pathway mind. You are “seeing” non-conceptually the sixteen aspects. That’s what you are doing. You are applying that vipashyana over and over and over again to those sixteen aspects. 

Of the three types of discriminating awareness – the first being the one that comes from hearing or listening to the teachings and the second being the one that comes from thinking about them – it is only the discriminating awareness that comes from meditation (referring to the combined state of shamatha and vipashyana) that we have achieved the third type of discriminating awareness. That’s what these levels of discriminating awareness are talking about it. 

What is interesting here is that, at this point, we are so certain about these sixteen aspects that we don’t need to rely directly on a step-by-step line of reasoning in order to generate our certainty about the sixteen. So, it’s similar to what we were discussing about unlabored renunciation and unlabored bodhichitta. We don’t have to think about it, in other words: we’re convinced.

Participant: On the feeling of it?

Dr. Berzin: On the sixteen… on the applying pathway.

Participant: Applying – that’s the…

Dr. Berzin: That’s the second. First you build up. Then you apply what you’ve built up. And then you see. Then you accustom yourself (that’s the meditation path); you accustom yourself to what you are seeing with non-conceptual cognition. And then you get the pathway mind that needs no more training. Those are the five: 

• Building up shamatha and vipashyana on the sixteen
• Applying what you’ve built up to get non-conceptual cognition of them 
• Then, when you’ve achieved non-conceptual cognition, you have a seeing pathway mind 
• Accustoming yourself to that over and over in order to get rid of all the obscurations 
• Then, you achieve a pathway mind needing no more training. 

That’s the sequence.

Working with the Five Powers and Five Forces

So, what are we working with here? We are working with the five powers and forces that are mentioned in the verse:

• Belief in fact – that’s our total conviction in these sixteen: there’s really suffering; there really is cause of suffering; it really is possible to gain a true stopping of it; and the understanding of these sixteen, particularly the understanding of the voidness of the sixteen, is what will really get rid of suffering and its causes. You are totally certain; you don’t have to go through any line of reasoning for that. So, you are using that force of certainty in order to help you gain non-conceptual cognition. 

• Joyful perseverance – you have to persevere and not give up, no matter what happens in the meditation. It’ll go up and down. Remember, we are still in samsara. It goes up and down, so you have to persevere.

• Mindfulness – mindfulness is the mental glue with which you hold onto that certainty, to that understanding.

• Absorbed concentration – staying focused on it.

• Discriminating awareness – discriminating that it is like “this” and not “that.” 

This is what you use when you are applying combined shamatha and vipashyana on the sixteen aspects. It can also be done in the context of the four placements of close mindfulness. The whole practice all the way up to liberation or enlightenment can be done in that structure, as we described it, defined in terms of the four noble truths.

The Four Stages of the Applying Pathway Mind

The applying pathway mind has four stages. 

[1] The first stage is called “heat” (drod). This is when we have joined shamatha and vipashyana on the sixteen while we are awake. This stage is called “heat” since the fire of the non-conceptual discriminating awareness that you have with the seeing pathway mind, the path of seeing, will soon be generated. So, it’s a heat that leads up to that fire; that’s why it’s called “heat.” I am sure there are many other etymologies explaning why it has all these names, but anyway, this is the first stage. You have that joined shamatha and vipashyana on the sixteen while you are awake. 

[2] The next one is “peak” (rtse-mo). With that, you have joined shamatha and vipashyana even when you are dreaming. Remember, it’s unlabored. You don’t have to work up to it. It’s automatically there all the time. So, the first stage, you have it all the time when you are awake; the second stage you have it even when you are dreaming. It’s still conceptual. It’s called “peak” because you have reached the end point of the stage at which your constructive force (“roots of virtue”) is susceptible to being devastated (we’ll get into that a little bit later). For example, the positive force you’ve built up from whatever could be severely weakened if you get angry at a bodhisattva, but at this stage, that can no longer happen. You can no longer get that type of anger or any type of devastating, disturbing emotion that would ruin or damage your positive force. It’s not going to happen anymore. 

Participant: We’re talking about the second stage, right?

Dr. Berzin: Right, the applying pathway mind. So, that’s four stages. First is heat, second is peak. When these five things in the verse are applied on these first two stages, they are known as the “five powers.” 

[3] The third stage is called “patience” (bzod-pa). Patience is when you have no more fears that your discriminating awareness might nullify completely any validly knowable “me.” In other words, at this stage, you are no longer afraid that your understanding of voidness is going to completely get rid of any concept of “me.” So, you have understood voidness pretty well. And because you no longer have this kind of fear, this stage is called “patience.” When you get to this stage, you can no longer be reborn in any of the three worst rebirth states. You can no longer be reborn in one of the hell realms or as a hungry ghost or as an animal. 

Participant: I just was thinking of the Theravada concept of the no more… no more returner?

Dr. Berzin: Oh, Theravada thing of stream-enterer. That starts with the path of seeing, the seeing pathway mind. Those four in Theravada – the stream-enterer, once-returner, non-returner, and arhat – are all divisions of aryas, those who have had non-conceptual cognition of voidness. When people use those terms lightly, they don’t know what they’re talking about, usually. They are very advanced stages. 

[4] The fourth stage of the applying pathway mind is called “supreme Dharma” (chos-mchog). With it, you are able to apply the joined shamatha and vipashyana on these sixteen aspects to the nature of the mind itself. You apply all of that to the nature of the mind itself in terms of the mind that experiences suffering and its causes, that can achieve the stopping, and that can develop the pathway mind. This stage is called “supreme Dharma” because it is the highest level of ordinary beings. Anybody who is not an arya is called an “ordinary being.” 

It is with these last two stages, patience and supreme Dharma, that the “five forces” are applied. So, when it states here in the text, “These are known as the forces and the powers,” it’s actually the powers that come first. But for reasons of the meter in the text, “forces” is said first. These are known as the forces and the powers, what brings you to the peak. The peak is the second of the four stages. Why it has that order and why it mentions the second of the four, I have no idea. It’s certainly not in any of the commentaries that I’ve looked at. Anyway, that’s what it is referring to. 

So, first, you have a conceptual understanding of the sixteen. You have it with combined shamatha and vipashyana, and you have the understanding in an unlabored way. You don’t have to go through any line of reasoning. And you use your certainty, your conviction in it (belief in fact) with perseverance, mindfulness, concentration, and discriminating awareness. You apply that understanding over and over again in meditation so that, somehow, you can get a non-conceptual focus on these sixteen. 

Going from Conceptual to Non-Conceptual

That’s one of the most difficult things. And there are differences of presentation in the four Tibetan schools of how you go from conceptual to non-conceptual. That’s the real crux of the matter. Obviously, the different explanations are based on different people’s meditational experiences. It’s hard to even know what non-conceptual means. How can you conceive (which means “have a concept of”) of what non-conceptual is? Any concept you have of non-conceptual is a concept; it’s not non-conceptual. So, it’s pretty weird. But it means to focus on something without the medium of a category, without thinking in terms of a category. And the category doesn’t have to be the word for suffering. It could be the understanding, a meaning category. 

Participant: Is it going in this direction – that if I look at my hand, I don’t need a category whatsoever; I just know it’s my hand.

Dr. Berzin: Well, is it like looking at your hand and not needing a category to know that it’s your hand? This is a very, very difficult question because, according to Buddhism, you only have a non-conceptual seeing of your hand for one sixty-fifth of a finger snap, after which, it’s automatically conceptual. In other words, you’re seeing it as a “thing,” and that thing is a hand. Even if you don’t know what a hand is, you still see it as a “thing.” So, it’s in a category. 

Remember, “conceptual” doesn’t mean that you are consciously thinking of a word. That’s why it is very, very difficult to really understand what in the world non-conceptual means. People trivialize non-conceptuality when they just think it’s not having a voice saying words in your head. That’s just the most superficial level of what you first have to get rid of – even though that’s incredibly difficult to get rid of that, to quiet that voice. But that’s only the very, very beginning. That’s certainly not being non-conceptual; that’s just not talking in your head. 

When I see you and see you as a human being – let alone see you as a man, let alone see you as Carston – that’s conceptual. It’s a category based on some sort of understanding of what a human being is. We need concepts; we need conceptual thinking. We can’t function without it. However, it has its limitation because it tends to make our view of the world one that’s defined by a dictionary, putting everything into boxes of categories, which is not the way things are from their own sides. It’s just that the mind projects that onto things – the dictionary. 

Participant: How about newborn babies? Do they have conceptual thinking?

Dr. Berzin: Yes. So do animals. A baby has a concept of pleasure/pain, hot/cold, hungry/not-hungry, mother – source-of-milk. It has concepts. So does an animal: “my master,” “my territory.” A dog has a concept of food. How does one know that this is food and not a rock? It’s a concept. 

So, on these four stages, you have that unlabored focus on and understanding via shamatha and vipashyana of the sixteen aspects. First, you have that while you are awake. Next level, you have it even while you are dreaming. It becomes so strong that you are never going to get angry and damage your positive force. The third stage is you have it so strong that you no longer have any fears that your understanding of this is going to completely wipe out any “me,” the conventional “me.” At that point, you can’t be born in a lower realm. And then the fourth stage, you have it focused in a very subtle way on the nature of the mind. It’s from that that it becomes non-conceptual. 

Shantideva (if you remember our Shantideva classes) said that it was when you are able to focus on the voidness of voidness that you get non-conceptual. He says that when no concept of things existing truly stands in front of the mind and when no concept of things not existing (no concept of things lacking true existence) stands in front of the mind – when you have neither of these two – then nothing can stand in front of the mind in terms of a concept. That brings you to non-conceptuality – what the Kagyu and the other systems call going “beyond words and concepts.” It’s the same thing, just called by different names. So, that, from this explanation, is done in terms of focusing on the nature of the mind, which, of course, suggests Mahamudra and Dzogchen methods, which are focused on the nature of the mind. 

Then you get a seeing pathway mind, the non-conceptual cognition of voidness. After that, you get rid of the various obscurations, the emotional and the cognitive ones, step-by-step. There is no need to go into it because it is unbelievably complicated

Each of the four tenet systems will explain it differently. Even within the four tenet systems, the different schools of Tibetan Buddhism will explain it differently for each of the tenet systems. And even within one school, different masters will explain it differently according to different textbooks. So, it becomes hideously, hideously complicated. The only thing that one could say, as His Holiness has explained, is that different people experienced it differently. You can’t say that one is more correct than the other. They are just different valid meditational experiences of how you get rid of these obscurations, how it happens. That’s important to remember; otherwise, you just have endless, pointless debates about “my text book explanation is better than yours.” 

Participant: So, in reality, there are no words to explain the…

Dr. Berzin: Non-conceptual? In reality, there are no words to explain it because any word implies a category – putting it in a box. That’s why the terminology that is used in the non-Gelugpa schools is very good – “beyond words and beyond concepts”… except that you could make a concept out of “beyond words and beyond concepts.” Of course, you can make a concept out of that; it’s an expression. That’s why explaining it from the point of view of the voidness of voidness can be helpful.

Let’s end here with the dedication. We think, “Whatever understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for actually accomplishing all of this, doing this, and realizing this so that we can reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.”