Basic Points Common to All Buddhist Traditions of Tibet

The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind to the Dharma

The foundation and basis for enhancing your determination to be free (of samsara), the essence of the paths of these various teachings explained like that, is maintaining the ethical discipline of whichever of the seven sets of pratimoksha vows of first liberation is appropriate (for you) and meditating on the difficulty of obtaining (a precious human form) with respites and endowments.

These are the pratimoksha vows of laymen, laywomen, probationary nuns as well as novice and full monks and nuns.  

As valuable as a wish-fulfilling gem, it will be difficult in the future to obtain a similar form endowed with such leisure. This life is impermanent; it will not last forever. Death comes quickly and you cannot predict when you will die. t may happen suddenly when you are still young, middle-aged or very old. At any moment, there are far more chances of dying than of remaining alive. By contemplating over and again on such things as the passage of the years, months and seasons and how enemies sometimes become your friends, try always to stay mindful of impermanence. 

When you die, it is not as though you disappear into the sphere of space. Nor are human beings always reborn as humans and horses as horses. Limited beings are thrown into various rebirth states by the force of the karmic potential they have built up. Whether someone is reborn lofty or lowly, rich or poor, powerful or meek, handsome or ugly, is all determined by their constructive, destructive and mixed karmic potentials. That is why there are so many different states of compulsive existence . 

All constructive and destructive actions are condensed into ten general categories apiece. 

There are three destructive actions of the body: killing, stealing and inappropriate sexual behavior; four of speech: lying, using divisive or abusive language and gossiping; and three of mind: desiring to possess what belongs to others or to harm others and holding distorted views. The ten constructive actions are refusing to commit any of these destructive ones and actively engaging in their opposites. 

Their effects are of four kinds: (1) the fruits that ripen in the form of your rebirth state, (2) those that correspond to their cause in your experience and (3) in your instinctive behavior, and (4) those that are comprehensive. It is as a combination of these four kinds of effects that all constructive and destructive actions ripen into their respective fruits.  

From constructive actions you experience happiness, and from destructive ones only suffering. In the example of killing, for instance, (1) you might be reborn in one of the hells. When afterwards you once more attained a human birth, (2) your life will be short, (3) you will have sadistic instincts to continue killing, and (4) you will be born into a community frequently attacked by its enemies. 

But, if you have not committed a given karmic action, you can be sure that you will not meet with its consequences. Moreover, once you have committed one, you must remember that it was never futile. Its fruits will ripen in time on whoever committed the action (and on no one else). You can experience the effects of your karmic actions either during this life, the next or any one after that. You should refer to the sutras, Indian treatises and their commentaries for more detailed explanations of the various aspects of cause and effect, such as the karma about which there is certainty of experiencing its effect, that about which there is no such certainty and so forth.

The former is from actions committed with intent, and the latter is from unintentional ones.

The actual practice of cause and effect, of abandoning destructive actions and undertaking constructive ones, is the heart of the Buddha’s Dharma, while the four noble truths and the law of dependent origination condense its essential points. By means of their karmic actions, wandering beings roam all six possible states of rebirth, the three worse and the three better.

The former are as a hell creature, hungry ghost (preta) and animal, the latter as a human, antigod (asura) and the three classes of gods (deva). The first class and all lower life forms constitute the plane of desirable sensory objects, the second the plane of ethereal forms and the third the plane of formless beings. 

In short, not even a single speck on the three planes of desirable sensory objects, ethereal forms or formless beings is without faults. Beings there are tormented (in general) by the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change and all-pervasive suffering and are overwhelmed by the sufferings to each of the six classes of rebirth.

The first is the obvious suffering of such things as sickness, old age and death; the second is that of dissatisfaction, since all worldly pleasures are impermanent. The all-pervasive suffering comes from merely being born in samsara by the force of karma and delusions. Because you have a body, it becomes sick and grows old; because you have a mind, it becomes confused and depressed. 

From destructive karmic potential comes suffering as the result, from tainted constructive karmic potential rebirth in a higher state and by unwavering karmic potential of mundane absorbed concentration one is thrown into a state of one of the dhyana levels (on the plane of ethereal forms) or one on the plane of formless beings. But even they have not rid themselves of the root of samsara, and so they fall once more to a (lower) samsaric state, thrown by craving and an obtainer into further existence .

Thus, to remain in samsara is like living in a pit of fire or in one of poisonous snakes. Thus, to remain in samsara is like living in a pit of fire or together with a nest of poisonous snakes. So do not aspire in your mind for the happiness of samsara. Generate instead a sound mind with the determination to be free from compulsive rebirth. 

The basis for entering the path to liberation from the sufferings of samsara depends on entrusting yourself to a spiritual master.  

Qualifications of a Spiritual Master

A guru should have the following qualifications. 

He must have tamed his mind well by having listened to many teachings. Keeping pure morality, he must be established in the enlightening aim of bodhichitta. He must hold a correct view (of voidness), as well as possess great loving kindness and the ability to cut off all interpolations in others. Finally, he must keep (purely the vows and) close bonding practices from the tantric initiations. Entrusting yourself to such a guru, you should practice in accord with his words, just as he says. By generating belief and confidence (in his good qualities) and appreciation (of his kindness), you can achieve all goals. Therefore, cherish entrusting yourself to an excellent guru (having all the above qualifications).  

Safe Direction and Bodhichitta

The guideline instructions of a guru are like the nectar of immortality. The more you hear of them, the more you should think about, meditate on and put them into practice without ever tossing them aside. Just to hear them, however, is of no benefit. As is the case with water, if you do not drink, it cannot remove your thirst. Therefore, (for the optimal practice conditions,) retreat to an isolated mountain slope.   

Taking safe direction is the stable foundation of all paths (to liberation and enlightenment) and the stable foundation for all vows. It differentiates Buddhists from non-Buddhists and is accepted by both humans or the gods. By means of it, all masses of good things for this and future lives will be fulfilled. Therefore, it is fitting that you turn your mind to the Triple (Gem) – to the Buddhas, true teachers; to the Dharma, true protection; and to the Sangha, true guides – and generate non-fallacious confident belief (from your heart), not merely from your mouth. Then you must safeguard well the trainings from having taken safe direction.

The mainstay of the Mahayana path is the enlightening aim of bodhichitta.  

With this aim, you work to attain the full enlightenment of Buddhahood in order to be able to liberate all other limited beings from their sufferings.

It is the essence churned from the milk of the hallowed Dharma. Without it, no matter what sutra or tantra practice you may pursue, it will lack any inner essence, like the (hollow) trunk of a plantain tree. 

That is perhaps yielding immediate fruit, but never of any benefit after the initial crop. To develop bodhichitta, you should train your mind as follows.

Furthermore, sentient beings extend to the ends of space and, throughout the succession of one’s beginningless lives, this countless number of sentient beings have been your father and mother in an infinite number of lives and have benefited you beyond imagination. Therefore, meditate on love and compassion towards everyone – friends, enemies and those to whom you are indifferent and equanimity toward all of them, parted from being close to some and distant from others, attracted to some and repulsed by others. Direct the actions of your body, speech and mind toward what is constructive and always have excellent thoughts to benefit others and offer special, noble prayers (to this end).  

An example of such a prayer is found in the Lam-rim Puja (sByor-chos):  

With my heart going out in the ten main directions where the supreme jewel-like Dharma has declined or not spread, compelled by the powerful force of great mercy,

nay I expose this vast treasure that brings pleasure and aid.

Understanding of Voidness

The way to generate a correct view of voidness on your mental continuum is to cherish putting great effort into building up your network of positive potentials and cleansing yourself of all obscurations. For this purpose, you should perform the seven-limbed puja, make prostrations and circumambulations, read sutras, chant mantras and dharanis, and recite the Declaration before the Thirty-five Buddhas. 

There are two sets of obscurations to overcome: those preventing liberation and those preventing omniscience. The former consists of your disturbing mental factors (nyon-mongs, Skt. kleśa) and their tendencies, as well as the misknowing of grasping for truly established existence. The latter are the constant habits of this misknowing, which give rise to the appearance of self-established existence.  

To overcome these obstacles, you need a full understanding of voidness (stong-pa-nyid, Skt. śūnyatā). This you gain in part as the result of the positive force built up from constructive actions. For this, the preliminary practices of building up and purification are essential. The seven-limbed puja condenses the main points of this practice. Its seven limbs are: 

• Prostrating
• Offering
• Openly admitting your previous destructive actions
• Rejoicing in constructive actions
• Requesting the teachings
• Beseeching Buddhas and gurus not to pass away 
• Dedicating the positive force.

Further Preliminary Practices

Other preliminaries may include a hundred thousand repetitions of such practices as prostrating, offering mandalas, taking safe direction and reciting mantras and dharanis. Mantras are words of power derived from Sanskrit and used as invocations. Dharanis are longer sentence forms of these. For this practice, those of the Buddha, gurus and Vajrasattva purification are most commonly used. The exact form your preliminary practices will take is prescribed by your guru.

If you make a great effort while applying the four opponent forces sincerely, you can purify and cleanse yourself of all negative potentials, obstacles, faulty actions and broken vows. Finally, you should be sure to make repeated mandala offerings, the heart of building up this network (of positive potential).  

The four opponent forces are applied as follows. Openly admitting the wrongs you have done, you must 

• Feel regret for your destructive actions 
• Promise never to commit such actions again
• Rely on the basis of everything constructive – the safe direction of the Three Jewels and bodhichitta 
• Dedicate all positive force to counterbalance your destructive acts. 

By offering the mandala, you are symbolically presenting the entire universe to the enlightened beings.

If you build up (this network of positive potential) like that, connected with the voidness that your discriminating awareness apprehends as the lack of the three circles (the subject, the object and the action of these constructive deeds) being self-established, that is called the network of deep awareness. From a network of positive potential, you obtain the Form Bodies of a Buddha, and from a network of deep awareness, a Dharmakaya. 

Buddhas have two types of physical bodies (Rupakaya): the Form Body (Nirmanakaya) and the Body of Full Use (Sambhogakaya). The former can be of many forms, among them the Supreme Nirmanakaya of a universal teacher such as Shakyamuni Buddha. The latter reside in Buddha-fields, fully adorned with all major and minor marks, teaching the Mahayana path to a circle of bodhisattvas with straightforward cognition of voidness, and living until the end of samsara.

Buddhas also have two deep awareness bodies: Jnana Dharmakaya and Svabhavakaya. The former is the omniscient mind of a Buddha as well as his full knowledge of skillful and effective means. The latter is the void nature of his deep awareness.

Shamatha and Vipashyana

In order to generate on your mental continuum perseverance in both building up and cleansing like that and a correct view (of voidness), you must first rely on abandoning the five deterrents to concentration by relying on the eight composing mental faculties to train your mind through the nine stages of settling the mind and seek to attain a stilled and settled state of mind (of shamatha).  

The five deterrents preventing your attainment of single-minded concentration (ting-nge-’dzin, Skt. samādhi) are:

• Laziness
• Forgetfulness
• Interruptions due to either mental dullness or flightiness of mind
• The inability to prevent such interruptions 
• Imaginary interruptions together with the adoption of unnecessary opponents. 

These can be overcome by the eight composing mental faculties: 

• Respectful belief in the benefits of achieving single-minded concentration
• Intention to achieve this goal
• Enthusiastic perseverance
• A sense of fitness
• Mindfulness
• Alertness to interruptions
• Readiness to apply opponents
• Relaxation of opponents once they have achieved their purpose.

By applying these faculties, you can progress through the nine stages of settling the mind:

• Initial settling
• Settling with continuity
• Settling over and again
• Close settling
• Taming
• Stilling
• Complete stilling
• Single-pointedness 
• Settling with equal ease. 

Through repeated familiarity with the single-minded concentration gained at this ninth stage, you achieve a state of mental quiescence as your concentration is experienced with a sense of fitness and exhilarating mental joy.

In this way, you will be able to give rise to a state of absorbed concentration, with bliss, clarity and non-conceptuality that is focused either on a supporting object or without a support.  

You can develop such concentration by focusing either on a visualized object, such as the form of a Buddha, or on the bare clarity of the mind as in mahamudra meditation. When you achieve this state, you will be free from all mental wandering, dullness and flightiness.

Like this, however, will only help to suppress your disturbing mental factors. Therefore (to eliminate them completely), you must develop complete conviction in a correct view of voidness gained in vipashyana meditation.

The beginningless root of samsaric existence is grasping for atman-like truly identities. In order to eradicate this misknowing from its root source, you definitely must meditate on voidness. Therefore, to destroy your automatically arising self-grasping itself that thinks of a “me” supported on a cluster gathered together from the five aggregates, cherish analyzing it with a detailed examination.  

The five aggregate factors (phung-po, Skt. skandha) are: forms of physical phenomena, types of consciousness, feeling a level of happiness, distinguishing and other affecting variables, that is everything else composing your cognitions.

Analyze in accord with what derives from the Madhyamaka lines of reasoning – (for example) whether a person and the aggregates are either identical or totally different, and so on – and you will come to the definite conclusion that persons lack an atman-like identity. 

Analyze in accord with what derives from the Madhyamaka lines of reasoning – (for example) whether a person and the aggregates are either identical or totally different, and so on – and you will come to the definite conclusion that persons lack an atman-like identity. Thoroughly analyze, also, all the parts of the aggregates for an atman-like identity of phenomena, abbreviated as cognized objects and object cognizing minds. When you have gained decisive awareness of the meaning of the lack of atman-like identities, you will come to the definite conclusion that all phenomena, abbreviated as those of compulsive existence and those of tranquil nirvana, lack (self-established) arising. 

You will then comprehend the line of reasoning of dependent arising (that all phenomena are devoid of being self-established because) everything dawns equally and (because), from their state of being devoid of (self-established) arising, phenomena automatically dawn without obstruction. When (your comprehension) produces experiences of understanding the non-difference between voidness and dependent arising, then by cognitively holding on to them, totally absorb yourself, for as long as you can, in the sphere of Madhyamaka, free of conceptual fabrication, non-conceptual and without adulteration.   

In short, the unified pair of the discriminating awareness of an exceptionally perceptive state of vipashyana and a stilled and settled state of shamatha, unwavering and single-pointed, that possesses the discriminating awareness that apprehends in detail and that alternates the two: discerning and stabilizing (meditation) is the meaning of meditation on far-reaching discrimination, the Mother of the Triumphant Ones, called “the correct view (of voidness).”  

In discerning meditation, you analyze the voidness of either your conventional “me” or any phenomena to reaffirm your understanding of it. In stabilizing meditation, you focus the single-minded concentration of your stilled and settled state of mind (shamatha) on this understanding that you gained with your exceptionally perceptive state of mind (vipashyana). 

From meditation that is properly settled without wavering from this view, parted from the eight extremes and all mental fabrication, and pure conduct in accord with the excellent path of the bodhisattvas, 

The eight extremes are belief in the truly established existence of cessation or production, annihilation or permanence, coming or going, difference or sameness. Nagarjuna speaks of them in the introductory verse of his Root Verses on the Middle Way, Called Discrimination (dBu-ma rtsa-ba’i tshig-le’ur byas-pa shes-rab ces bya-ba, Skt. Prajñā-nāma-mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā).

The Five Pathway Minds

you will complete, as the result, (your progress through) the five pathway minds and ten bodhisattva stages. You will thus attain enlightenment, the greatest purified state, and be able to spontaneously fulfill the aims of both yourself and others.

When, in addition to pure determination to be free (renunciation) of samsara and its causes, you develop an enlightening aim of bodhichitta, you become a bodhisattva and enter the first of the five pathway minds leading to the full enlightenment of Buddhahood. On the first, the building-up pathway mind (path of accumulation), you develop among other things single-minded concentration. On the second, the applying pathway mind (path of preparation), you develop a conceptual understanding of voidness. When such an understanding becomes non-conceptual, you leave the ranks of ordinary beings and attain the pathway mind of seeing, becoming a noble one (arya). This also marks the beginning of the ten bodhisattva stages. You complete these stages on the fourth path, accustoming pathway mind (path of meditation), during which you overcome ever subtler degrees of the obscurations preventing liberation and omniscience. On the fifth, the pathway mind needing no further training, you attain Buddhahood. Prior to this, you had achieved single-minded concentration on a non-conceptual cognition of voidness only during meditation sessions devoted to it. As a Buddha, you are in such a state at all times. Thus, with fully perfected discrimination, compassion and skillful means, you are able to help others overcome their suffering.