Stages of Meditation Read online

  The Buddha first cultivated a mind concerned for the welfare of other sentient beings, then enhanced it, and finally perfected it. This is how he actualized all the wonderful qualities of a Buddha. Therefore, we should realize that here and now we have found this precious human life endowed with excellent qualities, and we are free to engage in spiritual practice. In our spiritual endeavor, the most profound practice is the practice of compassion and the altruistic wish to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. There is no better practice than this. Therefore, all of us, including the lama, should endeavor to cultivate a compassionate mind in our daily life.

  If each of us from the depth of our hearts were to cultivate a mind wishing to benefit other people and other sentient beings, then we would gain a strong sense of confidence, and that would put our minds at ease. When we have that kind of calmness within our minds, even if the whole external environment appears to turn against us and becomes hostile, it will not disturb our mental calm. On the other hand, if our minds are agitated and disturbed and we harbor ill-will toward other sentient beings, even though they have no harmful intentions toward us, our own attitude will make us see everyone as harsh and negative toward us. This reflects our own mental attitude, inner feelings, and experiences. For this reason we will live in constant fear, worry, anxiety, and instability. We may be wealthy and have abundant material facilities at our disposal, but as long as we are disturbed within our minds, we will have no peace. We may be surrounded by our relatives and best friends, but because of our own internal mental attitude, we will have no happiness. Therefore, our inner mental attitude plays a very dominant role. If we have calm and control within our minds, then even if everything around us turns hostile, nothing will disturb us. In fact, for such a person the whole environment is a friend and contributes to his or her mental calm.

  Of course, there are many reasons for taking care of ourselves, but we must know how to look after ourselves and pursue our interests in an intelligent way. What we want is happiness, but if in pursuit of our own personal happiness we ignore the welfare of other sentient beings and only bully and deceive them, the results will be negative. If we really want happiness, we must acknowledge that it comes about by taking care of other people. Therefore, we should not forsake the welfare of other sentient beings. Even if we do not engage in spiritual or religious practice, provided we understand that we have to live interdependently, we will have a peaceful and harmonious life. We are social animals, and we cannot think about living an isolated life with no dependence on other people or other sentient beings. Whatever you do, in all walks of life, whether you are a farmer or a businessman, you have to depend on others. Even within the family you have to depend on the members of your family. This is why people normally live together among families and friends. There are a very few exceptional cases to this, such as the meditating yogis who live in solitude high up in the mountains doing spiritual practices.

  Because it is a reality that we are by nature social animals, bound to depend on each other, we need to cultivate affection and concern for other people if we really desire peace and happiness. Look at wild animals and birds. Even they travel together, flock together, and help each other. Bees do not have a particular legal system, they do not follow any spiritual practice, but for their livelihood and survival they depend on each other—that is their natural way of existence. Even though we intelligent human beings must also depend on each other, we sometimes misuse our intelligence and try to exploit each other. That goes against human nature. For those of us who profess to believe in a particular religious practice, it is extremely important that we try to help each other and cultivate a feeling of affection for each other. That is the source of happiness in our life.

  The fundamental teaching of Buddha is that we should view others as being more important than we are. Of course, you cannot completely ignore yourself. But neither can you neglect the welfare of other people and other sentient beings, particularly when there is a clash of interest between your own welfare and the welfare of other people. At such a time you should consider other people’s welfare as more important than your own personal well-being. Compare yourself to the rest of sentient beings. All other sentient beings are countless, while you are just one person. Your suffering and happiness may be very important, but it is just the suffering and happiness of one individual, whereas the happiness and suffering of all other sentient beings is immeasurable and countless. So, it is the way of the wise to sacrifice one for the benefit of the majority, and it is the way of the foolish to sacrifice the majority on behalf of just one single individual. Even from the point of view of your personal well-being, you must cultivate a compassionate mind—that is the source of happiness in your life.

  Irrespective of whether we profess a particular religion or not, we must be warmhearted, we must cultivate compassion, and in that way we will be able to lead peaceful and meaningful lives. In the case of Buddhist practitioners, and particularly Mahayana Buddhist practitioners, how should we engage in the practice? Even when we talk about helping others, we are not talking only about giving them temporary benefit and help, like food, clothing, and shelter and so forth, because these things will not bring long-lasting happiness. Therefore, it is extremely important to investigate the possibility of achieving long-lasting and ultimate happiness. We must judge whether it is possible to eliminate sufferings from their root. Irrespective of whether we are able to practice or not, we should at least cultivate the mental courage that is willing to eliminate sufferings and achieve a state of total cessation of suffering. That will bring strong mental confidence and determination. Therefore, as Mahayana practitioners we should think: “I will help countless other sentient beings to overcome suffering.” That should be our pledge. But if you examine your own present capacity, let alone helping countless sentient beings, you do not have the ability to eliminate the suffering of even one sentient being.

  Sufferings arise from specific causes and conditions, which are collected by individual sentient beings. That being so, it is extremely important that individual sentient beings know what is to be practiced and what is to be given up—what brings suffering and what brings long-lasting happiness. We must show sentient beings the right path, which brings happiness, and the wrong path, which brings suffering. Therefore, when we talk about benefiting other sentient beings, it is through showing them the path and helping them understand what is to be given up and what is to be practiced. This is how we can help other sentient beings.

  In order to do so, it is extremely important, on the one hand, that what you are going to teach to other sentient beings does not remain hidden to you. You must understand the meaning of the path you are going to show other sentient beings. For example, the more advanced a student is in his or her studies, the more that student needs a teacher with better qualifications and greater knowledge. Likewise, in order to show the right path to other sentient beings, you must first have trodden that path yourself. On the other hand, it is not enough that the path you are going to show to other sentient beings is not hidden from you. You should also know that what you are going to teach other sentient beings is going to help them temporarily and ultimately. Without that knowledge, your teaching may not suit their disposition and interests. It is not enough simply to say that I am doing this with correct motivation. Of course, if you do, there will be no need for regret, but that does not guarantee that it will help other sentient beings. It is for this reason that the scriptures explain the need to actualize different categories of clairvoyance, being able to know the minds and needs of other sentient beings.

  Therefore, there are two factors involved here: first, the path and the teaching that you are going to show or give to other sentient beings should not be hidden from you, and second you must understand the suitability of such a teaching to the disposition of other sentient beings. You need to understand what dispositions sentient beings have inherited from their past lives
. Therefore, unless you become a Buddha yourself and achieve omniscience, your help and guidance may prove to be of only temporary benefit. Cultivating an aspiration to help other sentient beings becomes a cause for cultivating the second wish, wanting to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. These are the two levels of the awakening mind of bodhichitta.

  Such a mind cannot be cultivated in a mere few months or years, but this does not mean it cannot be cultivated at all. If you continue your practice to cultivate bodhichitta, a time will come when you will be successful. For example, in the initial stage you may not even understand the meaning of the word bodhichitta. You might wonder how you could ever cultivate such a mind. But through repeated practice and familiarity, you will gradually come closer to such a mind. It is the nature of conditioned things that they change depending on causes and conditions. So it is important to recall the advantages and benefits of such a mind and cultivate a strong determination to achieve it. Make ardent prayers. Whether you sleep, walk, or sit, you should think: “How good it would be if I could cultivate such a mind.” Try to cultivate bodhichitta even on an aspirational level. If you spend your days in such repeated and persistent practice, you can definitely develop it. Make the determination to cultivate it even if it will take many eons. As Shantideva prays in his Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:

  As long as space endures

  And as long as sentient beings remain,

  May I too abide

  To dispel the sufferings of all sentient beings.

  When you engage in a project or an activity that helps other sentient beings, there is no question of a time limit. You must do it continuously. This is how you should train your mind. If you think you will achieve enlightenment or bodhichitta within a few days or months, and if you think that you will get enlightened after entering into a retreat for three years and three months, you are mistaken. When I hear the suggestion that you will attain Buddhahood if you go into retreat for three years and three months, sometimes I jokingly say that this is just like communist propaganda. I tell my Western friends that wanting to practice the most profound and the quickest path is a clear sign that you will achieve no result. How can you achieve the most profound and the vast in the shortest way? The story of the Buddha says that he achieved Buddhahood after three countless eons. So harboring an expectation to achieve Buddhahood within a short time—like three years and three months—is a clear indication that you will make no real progress. We have to be practical. There is no use in fooling others with your incomplete knowledge.

  You should also realize that whether you achieve Buddhahood or not, your purpose is to help other sentient beings. Whether you find yourself in heaven or hell, your purpose is to help other sentient beings. It does not matter how long it takes. You should determine that the altruistic intention to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings will be your only practice, whether you live or die. You must train in cultivating such a mind and understand the aspect and the object of such a mind. Once you gain inferential experience of such a mind, you should receive the Bodhisattva vow, for the vow should be received after you have cultivated a strong wish to engage in the deeds of a Bodhisattva.

  What is the Bodhisattva’s way of life? It is the way of life that follows naturally from having cultivated the awakening mind of bodhichitta. Omniscience is achieved only through the process of purifying the disturbing emotions within your mind. It cannot be achieved merely through wishes and prayers. We have to train in eliminating all the specific disturbing emotions by relying on specific antidotes. All the activities of a Bodhisattva can be included in two major categories: the practice of skillful means and the practice of wisdom. If the practices of giving, ethics, and so forth are to be perfected, they should be supported and influenced by the practice of wisdom. Without the practice of wisdom, the first five of the six perfections cannot actually become practices of perfection. In order to cultivate such wisdom, you must first cultivate the genuine unmistaken philosophical view that is known as the view of the Middle Way, or Madhyamika.

  What is the view of the Madhyamika? There are four schools of philosophical tenets within the Buddhist tradition. Based on an explanation of the first three systems of Buddhist tenets, you can understand the meaning of selflessness on a grosser level, and this will lead finally to the subtle Middle Way view of the selflessness of person and of phenomena, which is contingent on an interpretation of interdependent origination. Having established such an unmistaken correct view and gained conviction in it you will be able to realize emptiness. However, even when you have understood the wisdom realizing emptiness, that alone will not become a powerful antidote to ignorance if it is not supported by other practices such as giving, ethics, patience, and so forth. Mere understanding of selflessness is not sufficient to defeat the disturbing emotions.

  Therefore, it is important to cultivate a practice that unites a calmly abiding mind with special insight. In order to develop special insight you must first develop a calmly abiding mind. Calm abiding is single-pointed meditation, whereas special insight refers to discriminative awareness. Through the union of these two, you will be able to engage in a fruitful practice of both method and wisdom.

  After generating the conventional awakening mind of bodhichitta, endeavor to cultivate the ultimate awakening mind of bodhichitta. The ultimate bodhichitta is transcendental and free from all elaborations. It is extremely clear, the object of the ultimate, stainless, unwavering, like a butter lamp undisturbed by the wind.

  As I explained earlier, conventional bodhichitta refers to the aspirational bodhichitta. What is ultimate bodhichitta? What is transcendental and what is mundane? There are various explanations. All the specific levels of an ordinary being are known as mundane and all the spiritual levels of a superior being, or Arya, are known as transcendental, or supramundane. You achieve the transcendental level when you achieve the path of seeing for the first time. This means that you have realized emptiness directly, although it is possible merely to understand emptiness before achieving the path of seeing.

  This text, Stages of Meditation, belongs to the Yogachara Svatantrika Madhyamika [Yogic Autonomy Middle Way] school, so when I explain the points made explicitly in the text, I will do so according to the Svatantrika Madhyamika system, but I will elaborate according to the Prasangika Madhyamika [Middle Way Consequentialist] tradition.

  There are Aryas, or superior beings, among those practitioners known as Hearers and Solitary Realizers who realize emptiness. But an Arya on the Bodhisattva path realizes emptiness directly because he or she is assisted by the profound practice of method. Such wisdom directly realizing emptiness acts as an opponent to specific disturbing emotions. When we talk about the Four Noble Truths, the true path actually refers to the wisdom realizing emptiness found within the mental continuum of a superior, or Arya, being. This ultimate bodhichitta is also said to be free of all elaborations particularly in the context of the various categories of emptiness, such as the sixteen emptinesses, the twenty emptinesses, the two emptinesses, and so forth.

  Although there are as many categories of emptiness as there are types of phenomena, when you realize the emptiness of one specific phenomenon, you also realize the emptiness of all phenomena. The ultimate nature, or emptiness, of all phenomena is of equal taste and of the same undifferentiable nature. Even though the nature of emptiness of all phenomena is the same, and all the different aspects of phenomena, such as whether they are good or bad, or the way they change, arise from the sphere of emptiness, you should understand that emptiness cannot be found apart from the subject or the object.

  Emptiness refers to an object’s being free of intrinsic existence. Things depend on causes and conditions. This very dependence on causes and conditions signifies that phenomena lack independent, or intrinsic, existence. It also demonstrates how all the diverse aspects of things that we experience arise because they are by nature e
mpty. When we talk about emptiness, we are not dealing with those different aspects, we are dealing with phenomena’s ultimate reality. It is from this perspective that the state of emptiness is referred to as free from elaborations. It is also explained that emptiness is uncontaminated, as the verse of homage in Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom makes clear:

  I pay homage to that being sublime

  Amongst the Buddhas, the propounder of the teaching,

  Who taught that things arise through dependence

  And that there is no cessation, no birth,

  No annihilation, no permanence,

  No coming and no going,

  No separate meaning and no sameness,

  Thoroughly free from elaborations, and completely at peace.

  Emptiness and dependent arising are two sides of the same coin. From the perspective of dependent arising, or the conventional perspective, things arise, things can be produced, and things cease. The verse I have quoted from Fundamental Wisdom means that things are not produced, do not cease, are not annihilated, nor are they permanent in any independent way. In terms of time there is also neither any independent annihilation nor permanence. From the point of view of the object there is no independent going and coming. Nagarjuna described eight categories of elaboration, for example production and cessation and how they do not occur independently. It is said that the Aryas, or superior beings, whose direct perception of wisdom is uncontaminated, have not seen the independent existence of the production or cessation of dependently arising phenomenon. Their minds see only the ultimate truth, emptiness, which is free of all elaborations.