Shambhala
The teachings that we receive very early in our Shambhala path on basic goodness and sacred outlook are essentially Dzogchen,the highest teachings, within the Vajrayana.
Shambhala is the vision of a contemplative society in which the possibility of cessation is realized collectively because people meditate and thereby cease to generate samsara, or confused existence. Shambhala is an ideal that has been glimpsed, however briefly, in different places and cultures, and seems to exist in the collective unconscious as an archetype. As an archetype, it is a universal dream and longing for compassion and wisdom to manifest on the collective level, in ways of life that enable the highest human values to be shared and lived in common. This dream or ideal shows up all over the world as the aspiration to organize our world so that all people may prosper by living wholesome, dignified lives in peace and harmony - without the pettiness of greed and selfishness, and without the delusions and deceptiveness that follow greed and selfishness, which give rise to samsara, domination, war and oppression. The vision of Shambhala is that this is possible, that it has happened before and it can happen again.
Shambhala is said to have been a kingdom in Central Asia that flourished somewhere along the old Silk Road. It was said to be a place of high culture and learning where the ideas, material commerce, and spiritual practices of many traditions and cultures intermixed in an inquisitive and appreciative atmosphere of peace and prosperity. Their way of life joined Heaven (vision) and Earth (practicality) in harmony. There was wealth as well as a high level of spiritual realization among the inhabitants. It was a sanctuary for the highest human values and traditions, free from strife and jealousy because the people had what they needed, including their own dignity. Their rulers were enlightened kings who were just, powerful, and merciful. The sacred arts and scriptures of many religions were placed in the libraries for safekeeping for the future. Shambhala regarded itself and is still regarded as the repository for the spiritual wisdom and power that would be needed to save the world from the darkness and depravity that would threaten to destroy all civilization in the future.
Supplication to the Shambhala Lineage
In this chant, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche acknowledges the various sources of the Shambhala Lineage. Of the four principal lineages of Tibetan Buddhism—Geluk, Sakya, Kagyü, and Nyingma—the Shambhala Lineage is indebted especially to the practice lineages of Kagyü and Nyingma.
The first three lines address the dharmakaya origins of the Shambhala Lineage. The primordial Rigden (Tib. rigs ldan; holder of the family
) is the symbolic source of the Shambhala Lineage. Samantabhadra is the dharmakaya buddha of the Nyingma lineage, just as Vajradhara is that of the Kagyü lineage. Samantabhadra symbolizes complete primordial purity and utter wakefulness.
The next four lines address founders of the Nyingma lineage. Prahevajra (also known as Garap Dorje) was the first human in the ati tradition. Shri Simha followed shortly after that. Yeshe Tsogyal was Padmasambhava's Nepalese consort, who became a powerful teacher in her own right.
This is a supplication to the first human holders of the Kagyü lineage, whose special practice is mahamudra.
King Dawa Sangpo is the first lineage holder of Shambhala. It is said that he requested the Buddha to give him teachings that he could practice without becoming a monk. The Buddha gave him teachings that could be practiced by lay people in the context of their usual societal obligations. It is said that, in the kingdom of Shambhala, it was easy to practice dharma and the society was vastly uplifted. The twenty-five Rigdens
are the kings who followed Dawa Sangpo.
Gesar is the quintessential warrior of Shambhala, fearless in the face of all psychological and physical obstacles. Sakyong (Tib. earth protector
) is an enlightened ruler who joins the vast vision of heaven with the practicality of earth, thus creating a sacred human society. Great Eastern Sun represents the inherently awake quality of mind, ever dawning anew.
The Ashe stroke is part of the calligraphy of A, the first syllable of the Tibetan alphabet. It is a symbol of wakefulness, bravery, and gentle openness in the human heart. Drala lineage of Mukpo
refers to the Mukpo clan, Trungpa Rinpoche's ancestral family lineage. It is called the drala lineage
because it has the power to overcome confusion and setting-sun outlook.
In the concluding lines, we aspire to accomplish the completely awake, spacious state of the Rigden.
Great Eastern Sun*
Drala*
The Rigden Kings
The Rigden was the king of the mythical kingdom of Shambhala. He was the man who spread the Kalachakra teachings across the world. By the end of this series, you're going to know what the Kalachakra teachings are and who the Rigden is, and what the idea is in being a Rigden. But for right now, let's just say that the Rigden king represents the wisdom of the Court principle. And when these people are devoted, because of their intelligence, to the Rigden king, they work together well and they form a society. So it says,
Thus a good human society was created on this Earth.
And that's the end of the section. I've been studying this section for years, and if I had more time I'd work through every word in Tibetan. Actually, I'd like to give a word-by-word commentary on it, but we don't have time tonight. Still, I think you have the basic idea: Society is a natural thing. It comes into being when your mind perceives the basis of things. Society is created, not by two or three people getting together, which is what Aristotle said about politics. It's created by glimpsing the origins of human intelligence, and how you accept your glimpse of origins of human intelligence, that tells you what kind of society you are going to create.
We build an enlightened society in the Shambhalian way by giving people a practice that enables them to face their primordial nature, to face their own nature, and that is the sitting practice of meditation. The first thing we do in Shambhala Training or in Buddhism is teach you how to sit, and we tell you to follow your breath. But the idea isn't for you to become an expert at focusing on your breath. The idea is that you are using the breath as a crutch to do something else: to look at your own mind. My mind is following the breath; my mind is looking at the breath. My mind is the I
. The breath is the it
. I
look at it
. What I want to do is look at I
. I want to turn and look at myself, and the sitting practice we do aims to do that. That's what it fundamentally is. You follow the breath, and after a while you begin to discover that you can't follow the breath too much. Thoughts come up and distract you, and you begin to complain that your mind is full of uncontrolled thoughts. You have a monkey mind, full of thoughts. It swings from thought to thought, like a monkey swings from branch to branch.
You complain about your lack of discipline, but you're seeing your thoughts. You're beginning to turn towards your mind. That first glimpse of the business of your thoughts is the beginning of your turning towards your mind. That first glimpse of the business of your thoughts is the beginning of your turning towards mind itself. As you begin to slow down in meditation, you begin to see the arising, dwelling, and cessation of the thoughts. You begin to see the beginning of the thought, the middle of the thought, and the end of the thought. When you see the beginning, middle, and end of a thought, now you are turned away from the phenomenal world and you're looking back towards the cosmic mirror, and you're watching the thoughts arise from the mirror.
The thought arises from something. When you turn towards that something, rather than the thought, you've made that great turning, the 180 degree turn. The Yogacharans call it the great turning
. The longer it takes you to do it, the better. The more agonizing it is, the better. If it takes you 20 years to turn, you've made a great turning, and you're going to have a great realization. That's what the meditation practice is, and that's where we begin. We're going to learn to construct an enlightened society and the first step is learning how to look at the abyss, at the vast mind. Next I'm going to go into the technique of looking and I'm going to talk about how you develop a capacity, from that meditation practice, which enables you to construct palaces and plant beautiful fields, join with others in complex projects, and design a society.
Actually, if you wanted to prepare for this talk, in the manual there's a paper you could read called
Afterwards, I'm going to take the different pieces of an enlightened society and talk about them separately. I'm going to hearken back to oral teachings that Trungpa Rinpoche gave me, gave us in the early days. He taught us, I don't know, it seems like hundreds of techniques of meditation in action. Each one of them was an aspect of building an enlightened society. I've made a rough list of those teachings he gave that didn't get written down anywhere. Now, some of them did get written down, but if you want to know his techniques for meditation in action, or his techniques for building an enlightened society, it's hard to find them by reading his writings. Thanks to the work of people like Carolyn Gimian we have the collected writings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche [
I was at Karme Choling, a Buddhist meditation Centre in Vermont, and I would come back from spending an evening at Rinpoche's house and people would say, Well, what did you talk about?
And I would say, We talked about this, and this, and this...
go through the whole list, and then everybody would talk to each other about it. Somebody else would spend the evening there and come back and say, Well, we talked about such and such. We talked about sex. Would you like to know what he says about sex?
We talked about cooking, we talked about clothes, we talked about politics. Whatever was discussed got passed on, and passed through the community, and became part of what the senior teachers taught in their more casual moments in the lectures they gave. Now, we stand in danger of losing those teachings because they weren't written down in books. They weren't recorded.
So a bunch of us have been rushing around, finding people who were privately taught something by Trungpa Rinpoche, and getting those people to talk it into a camera. We post it on The Chronicles web site; we make them available in general. For example, Jack Niland spent hours and days with Rinpoche learning an approach to painting based upon Dzogchen. It's an approach to painting that even includes a Dzogchen way of preparing the canvas. You actually polish the canvas and cover it with a kind of clay which you polish until the canvas becomes a mirror. The canvas becomes the cosmic mirror, and then you paint what arises out of the mirror on the canvas. It's a whole system of painting and he just taught it to Jack Niland. Jack kept notes and Rinpoche did drawings for him, and he kept the drawings and a couple of us learned about it two years ago and we began having Jack give programs in New York, and filming the programs. So now we've documented those private sessions. So I'm going to make a list of whatever I can remember of private teachings that need to be discussed, and talk about them. As the months go on I'm going to just give them into the camera and we'll make podcasts and put them on the web. And I'll find other people who have had private instructions like that and add them to the list.
Afterwards, I'm going to start a list of oral instructions on details of an enlightened society. Any that you can remember, add to that and we'll collect as much as we can. There are a couple of old timers here.
After that I'm going to take the material on enlightened society that you've heard in these three talks, and follow it out in some of the Tibetan scriptures from which these teachings come. All of the teachings that I've been talking about – we find them in the Shambhala texts. We received them from Trungpa Rinpoche in his lectures and we got instructed on them in private lectures with him or with the Sakyong, whoever your guru is in the Shambhala lineage. But they all come from Tibetan scriptures. On Sunday, I'm going to go through two or three of the Tibetan scriptures in detail that are origins for these teachings on enlightened society. Actually, there are lots more than I'm going to have time to do then but it will be a beginning, and then we can have podcasts of the rest. So that's the whole series. We're going to have music and art and a book fair. I'm going to mention lots of little details and I want you to enjoy yourself and enjoy contributing to this environment as we try to remember the dreams we had in the early days of the Court, and recreate the sense of Court. It seems pretty complete.
I wanted to just say one thing and I'll talk more about it later. I just realized that that table in the corner might seem very mysterious to you. It's meant to be a table full of aphorisms. We're going to talk about the role of proverbs and aphorisms in enlightened society, so I grabbed a bunch off my shelf and put them there. These are texts which are designed to be read by 14-year-olds. I'll talk about the training of teenagers in an enlightened society, and the use of those texts. Also, you'll see
OK. So let's bow to each other and fold our tents and steal silently into the night.
The Outer Tradition
The vision of Shambhala has a universal mythic dimension that resonates deeply in the human heart. The material being presented here is intended to demonstrate the historical depth and vastness of the Shambhala tradition. It is a weighty tradition, rich in meaning and in the gifts that it offers humanity. It is not an eclectic new-age fantasy, but an ancient tradition that is still alive in Asia, North America and Europe today.
What Shambhala was
As is common in Central Asia, and elsewhere in the world, the distinctions between myth, history and material reality have been blurred by time as the legends have come down through oral tradition. Historical Shambhala seems to have existed physically in historical time but its legend has taken on a mythic and symbolic dimension as it has been embellished and deepened through spiritual contemplation and storytelling.
The first king of Shambhala, Suchandra (Tib. Dawa Sangpo), is said to have journeyed to India to receive the highest teachings of the Buddha just before he died (5th century BCE). This was the Kalachakra Tantra, the teachings on the Wheel of Time. Suchandra wrote it down and taught it to the people of Shambhala. He was followed by a line of six more kings who all taught and practiced the Kalachakra, and then by a second line of kings called the Rigdens, of whom there will be 25 by the time the final King appears. Here we get into myth and prophesy. At a certain point, when all the inhabitants of Shambhala became enlightened, the kingdom disappeared from ordinary material existence into another realm. The Rigden Kings are said to still be watching over human affairs and instructing certain humans through dreams and visions.
The prophesy is that the world will degenerate into a dark age of chaos as materialism becomes dominant and spiritual values and practices disintegrate. Here's one description of the dark age from Edwin Bernbaum's
Wealth and piety will decrease day by day, until the world will be wholly depraved. Then property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification. Earth will be venerated but for its mineral treasures...
When the Lords of Materialism have all but consolidated their stranglehold on life, the 25th Rigden King will emerge and lead the warriors of Shambhala in the final great battle. After they have vanquished the forces of darkness, the 25th Rigden will usher in a new golden age of peace. The warriors of Shambhala will have been waiting in the wings, so to speak, for many lifetimes, waiting to be reborn at the time when they can fight in the Great Battle for Shambhala. This is a prominent part of the myth that is still fervently believed by people in Central Asia. Shambhala warriors maintain their practices lifetime after lifetime, aspiring to become purified enough to be reborn in Shambhala so that they may engage in the final Great Battle that will make life on Earth worthwhile again.
The Shambhala myth in its simplest form is that the fortunate seeker makes a perilous journey to a hidden sanctuary that holds a source of liberation and renewal that will eventually transform not only the seeker, but the outside world as well. This myth has been interpreted on the material level as well as on the purely symbolic and spiritual level. On the symbolic level, the vision or archetype of Shambhala exists in all of our hearts, and the aspiration to go to Shambhala is universal. In Tibet, the secret meaning of Shambhala is the source of happiness,
which Trungpa Rinpoche called sacred outlook.
The Shambhala tradition is very old, and also completely up-to-date and relevant to our situation in the world today. The stories vary from each other in many details, such as when it all began, where Shambhala was or is, and how to get there. But the legend of Shambhala is alive in Central Asia even to this day. It can be found in Kashmir and eastern Russia, Siberia, Ladakh, Mongolia, China, and of course Tibet.
Important evidence of the historical existence of Shambhala is provided by the many wall frescos and thangkas in and from Central Asia that depict the Kingdom of Shambhala, as well as ancient texts that describe Shambhala in different languages, and guidebooks on how to get there. Many of these have been discovered by Westerners within the last century in arid places along the Northern and Southern Silk Roads that connected the Middle and Far East. In the caves of Dunhuang in China, thousands of beautiful frescos, sculptures, and ancient manuscripts were found, showing an advanced civilization influenced by a rich mixture of traditions and cultures. The Kalachakra Tantra itself shows the influences of Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam. Manichaeism has influences of Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism from Persia and the ancient Middle East. The art also shows these influences.
The International Dunhuang Project, The Silk Road Online,
is an exciting international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artifacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the internet and to encourage their use through educational and research programs.
Interestingly for students of the Karma Kagyu and Rimé traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, the Kalachakra Tantra, and presumably the legend of Shambhala, came to Tibet from India through Naropa, the abbot of Nalanda University and one of the forefathers of the Kagyu lineage. The Kalachakra teachings had been sequestered in the Kingdom of Shambhala for hundreds of years, until an Indian yogi-scholar set out for Shambhala in order to receive those teachings. On this journey he encountered a Shambhala king who manifested as Manjushri and granted him the Kalachakra initiation. This scholar returned to India in 966CE, where he defeated Naropa in a debate, and then initiated him into the Kalachakra. In the next century two Kashmiri students of Naropa brought the Kalachakra to Tibet and established two lineages of those teachings. Subsequently, the Kalachakra tradition vanished from India after the Muslim invasions, which is the reason that Tibet became the source of the Kalachakra and Shambhala traditions. At least that is the story in the Wikipedia account of the History and Origins of the Kalachakra Tantra and its spread to Tibet.
Shambhala in the Kalachakra Tantra
We often hear about the connection between Shambhala and the Kalachakra tradition. While the Kalachakra initiation has been given publically by teachers like His Holiness the Dalai Lama and His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, it is less common to have exposure to the Kalachakra Tantra source-material in translation.
Interpretations of Shambhala's Significance
The Kalachakra texts themselves do not specify what happened to the Shambhala kingdom. Tibetan commentators take up several interpretations. Some suggest that the entire kingdom of Shambhala became enlightened through the practice of the Kalachakra tantra and has become a pure realm in which beings can take rebirth. Another view specifies that Shambhala is a pure realm on this earth, visible only to those with perception purified in meditation. The text does specify that Shambhala is behind Mount Kailash.
This has been taken by some Tibetan commentators to mean north of Kailash,
while some Tibetans believe Shambhala is actually
Tibetan traditions also comment on the identity of the Rigdens. Many Tibetans believe the Dalai Lama to be an emanation of the Rigden king. The Shambhala terma tradition sees the Sakyongs as directly connected to the Rigden, and that the Rigden signifies the inherent strength and brilliance of the mind, the principle at the basis of enlightened society. Ju Mipham, the previous incarnation of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, was said to comment at the time of his death that he would seek rebirth in Shambhala. As the Kalachakra texts are of Indian origin, they do not mention the lha or drala deities; the connection of these to Shambhala and the Rigden principle came out of the visionary experiences and texts produced by the Dorje Dradul.
Outer and Inner Interpretations of Kalachakra
At first glance, the Kalachakra's account of the history of Shambhala is striking in several ways. In the Kalachakra, cultural and religious diversity is portrayed as a threat to the integrity of the Kingdom: Rigden Yasas predicts that the different clans, cultures and ritual practices throughout the kingdom would weaken Shambhala, leaving it susceptible to barbarianism. He demands that this diversity be abandoned for unification under one clan and one practice system.
Also striking is the great war against the barbarians predicted for the 25th century. The twenty-fifth Rigden, an emanation of the wrathful bodhisattva, Yamantanka, is prophesied to lead soldiers into battle to annihilate barbarian culture. This might strike us as difficult imagery to understand from a Buddhist perspective. As contemporary Shambhalians, we are taught to value diversity and to abide by an ethics of peace. One response to this interpretive discrepancy is to recall that these texts were written at an anxious moment in the history of Buddhism. Northwestern India in the eleventh century was beginning to face pressure from Islamic military forces; the texts also clearly reflect anxiety about Buddhism's relationship with Hindu social and ritual life.
But the Kalachakra literature supplies an inner interpretation of these events and specifies the inner interpretation as the definitive one. Chapter Two of the
Similarly, the inner interpretation of Rigden sheds light on the subtleties of meditation practice. The text correlates the diverse castes of Shambhala to the many kinds of conceptual thoughts. The one who brings those many families of thoughts together as one, gathering the mind in meditation, is known as Rigden, holder of the family.
For tantric practitioners, this process is explained as a practice unfolding within the inner yogic body. In this way, we are instructed by the text in how to become the Rigden ourselves, gathering the mind, revealing the inherent strength that brings victory over the barbarianism of habitual patterns.
While our Shambhala tradition is totally sufficient on its own for the practice of meditation and the cultivation of enlightened society, it is interesting to explore the context from which these ideas emerged. Encountering the Kalachakra informs our understanding not just of Shambhala's history, but the inner meanings that are represented in it and that are relevant to us as meditators in this age.
The Slogans of the Four Dignities (Shambhala)
The followind slogans are rewordings of material held in
MEEK
PERKY
OUTRAGEOUS
INSCRUTABLE
Well-Wishing Grace (Shambhala)
Enlightened World: The Three Yanas of Buddhism and the Great Eastern Sun
TALK ONE: Entering the Path of Meditation
A Path of Enlightenment
The subject of enlightenment or waking up is a theme that is very current. We are moving to a time when we have to address what is a spiritual journey of the mind and the heart. The question is how to bring enlightenment as an aspect of what we are doing. How we can make enlightenment an aspect of what we are doing altogether. It has to be something that we engage in and do. A lot of time in our life, we address the external conditions but not what is actually the most important in terms of mind and heart.
The Tibetan term for enlightenment is changchup where chang means to overcome or reduce or purify, and chup means accomplish. We accomplish what is already innate, the enlightened qualities. There is a tendency to feel that we need to get enlightened. According to Buddhism, we are already enlightened. We need to discover that, which is a process of overcoming hesitation, fear, lack of confidence.
The view is very important. In this process how we actually regard ourselves. What is the approach we are taking. From the Buddhist point of view you have to have your approach. In dharmic language we say: tawa, gompa and, chupa.
Tawa means view. The main thing at the beginning is view and understanding. One word for meditation in Tibetan is gom which means getting familiar or accustomed to. If we don't know what we are getting accustomed to, we can sit for a long time and it will not make much difference. However, if we know the purpose of our meditation, very precise and deep meditation can reveal a tremendous amount. Chupa means activity, conduct, how you engage. So the enlightened process of when you meditate or how you engage is your view, how you regard yourself. How you engage.
Looking at Motivation
Motivation is the key thing. Technically in Buddhism, we talk about nine yanas or stages, which are subdivisions of hinayana or the narrow vehicle, mahayana or the great vehicle, and vajrayana or tantra. These are stages of bringing out the Buddha's enlightenment or quality of wakefulness. In Shambhala, they are the revealing or bringing out of basic goodness, the basic essence of goodness. The difference between each of the nine yanas is that the motivation is getting bigger and bigger. In Tibetan, motivation is künlong which means to come out of
or what inspires us
. If we fall in love or find something interesting, mind becomes very engaged. That is motivation. If we sit and want to develop compassion or wakefulness, mind is engaged.
Meditation is dualistic: there is subject and object. When mind goes toward the object, it draws from it, is affected by it, like a sponge. From a negative point of view, when we are mad, it brings out qualities of anger which lead to action. Unless we take the mind where we want to, the environment will do it. The quality of enlightenment is that the individual is taking over his own personal destiny. So meditation practice is very proactive. We are surrounding our mind and attention with things we want to be looking for.
In the context of the hinayana path, the first level of Buddhahood is called >arhat in Sanskrit, which means foe destroyer
. It is the destroying of kleshas or negative emotions, and of confusion about self existence. At this level, we talk about motivation in terms of small, medium and large.
Small means that the individual pursues happiness with worldly means. You just take care of yourself. This basis has to be covered. But there is no spiritual concern. Medium involves mixing everyday means of looking for happiness with spiritual means. But there is no spiritual journey. At the level of large, we look at the root of the problem and realize that it is a spiritual issue.
The individual starts thinking in terms of lifetimes and karma, seeing life not just as a single unit. In the mahayana or great vehicle, the mind has matured. The individuals are not so much fixated on their own selves. They realize that all beings have the same difficulty. The next level of motivation is compassion, hoping that others do not suffer.
Two Kinds of Meditation Practice
Shamatha or Stabilizing Practice
First is stabilization practice, also called shi-ne or >shamatha, meaning calm abiding
. These words indicate that through this practice, our mind becomes more open, stable, useful. It has to do with owning or possessing our mind. It is a dualistic practice. The best way to stabilize and strengthen the mind, to give it space, is to focus on something that brings out that result, which is breathing. This is the view, knowing why we follow the breath.
Then you need not be distracted, not have thoughts having power over you. It is not about not thinking. It is about the ability to think or not to think if you want to, about not having thoughts control us. It has tremendous implications. It puts the mind on the driver seat. One can see what is going on and decide where to go.
In the Shambhala teachings we refer to the path in terms of four animals: tiger, lion, garuda, dragon. The first one, tiger, has contentment, meekness, carefulness. Like a tiger being fully present, when your mind is present, your muscles become fuller. You actually have more power. We call it lungta or windhorse. The mind is essentially the root of all actions. When we are present, we can determine what is going on. As we are there, that openness begins to relax the breathing system and affect the whole body. So we have two kinds of shamatha: mind calmly abiding and body calmly abiding.
Shamatha creates a very wide space and from that, mind is less speedy. Speed and time are a product of mind. As we think more about time, it gets more real. Yesterday is a dream-like experience. When mind slows down, there is space, it pervades time and space. First thoughts are where our mind goes. We think we are the thoughts, we can't exist without thinking. Then we realize that it is not true. I am awake. I am clear. My mind is perceptive. I'm not thinking that much.
Vipashyana or Contemplative Practice
The next kind of meditation is called vipashyana meditation or jegom analytical meditation
or contemplative meditation. Having found space, then you take thoughts that you want to cultivate. An obvious one is compassion. Because we can focus on something, contemplating compassionate thoughts can be very powerful. Compassion is stronger than anger. Our parents, people who cared for us, put up with a lot of stuff. Anger mustn't handle anything.
We have to strip these words of their meaning in the vocabulary. Compassion is nyingje, nying means mind
or heart
, je means superior
, lord
, noble
, powerful
. We say noble heart
. It is the crown jewel of the mind. Truly, what is compassion? It is the mind that fully perceives what is going on. It sees what happens with other people, not only what we want from them, but the totality of the individual. They are suffering and out of that they say something spiteful or do something. Then we understand that maybe somebody passed away recently or they had a difficult time at work, whatever the circumstances might be. There is a consciousness that understands it. Then we are in a more fluid situation and see that actually that person needs to be hugged. The problem is that, unless you are a very talented person, it is very difficult to do it on the spot. You have to spend some time developing it, just as everything else in life.
I believe that quality of meditation is better than length of meditation. Our journey depends on the vehicle that we have. If our car can't make it, it is just a fantasy trip. Sometime people get disheartened. They say it sounds so fantastic, but when I look at my mind, I get more depressed, it is worse than before
. But with the proper understanding, we can deal with any situation. You can say I am tired. I have all these worries. But in that, can I progress on the journey? Yes I can, because there is a 15% of my mind that really wants to do this.
So we have to look at that and not let the other percentages sway us into drifting mind and discursiveness.
So when we do the contemplative meditation, it is that period where we gain a level of stability, then we bring in the contemplation. At the beginning, if we have done the first kind of meditation for a long time, when we bring in a thought intentionally, it can immediately destabilize the practice. As we get better, we then have the stability, then bring the thought, and our mind becomes infused with that.
There is a lot of teaching about how you can develop various qualities of compassion, generosity, understanding, exertion, patience. Then you have the basis for actually doing something. We are talking about view, meditation and conduct. And it is all very brief. We should not be discouraged by the brevity of those things.
In the meditative tradition, we call it samadhi, meditative absorption. You are going to deep meditation. Even in the beginning stages, it very much can occur as we deepen. As we are beginning to do that, we are literally stepping on the path. We are making progress.
TALK TWO: Discovering the Nature of Reality
Guided Contemplative Meditation
Relating with Conceptuality
Buddhism has a bad rap about thinking. Here we are trying to change that attitude a bit. It is not a matter of thinking as such, but of the kind of thinking. Ultimately, enlightenment is a mind free from concept. In Tibetan, this is referred to as sem-le depa, beyond mind
. It is beyond conceptuality, beyond dualism. Concept is the mind putting effort into understanding. It is created. Our self and our environment are fabricated. This fabrication is called interdependentness. The mind is always assuming certain things, making all kinds of associations. In Tibetan, this is tönchi, generality meaning
. We perceive things, we take a quick glance, and we come up with a conclusion.
In the mahayana tradition of mind training, we begin slowly to unravel and overcome this creative process. Here we say that the whole world is interdependent. That is the Buddhist notion of emptiness. We say something is empty because there is no single thing that is sustained in space, that is created. If the tree was really there, it would not take seeds, weather, bark, and everything else to make it a tree. It would not be interdependent.
Sometimes people think that emptiness is blankness or voidness. But we are not into nihilism any more than we are into permanence. When we say that the point of enlightenment is to go to a level where mind is transcended, we are talking about conceptual mind. Wisdom itself is nonconceptual. We can all attain enlightenment because we all have nonconceptual wisdom in our being. We also have limitless compassion. That is why great practitioners have tremendous exertion. They are not being dissuaded by their own or others' shortcomings. Their mind is sustained because they know that this is in their being. It is inherent. So the process we have to go through is for ourselves discovering and tasting this immeasurable quality and this wisdom quality. Even just a glimpse of this incredible wisdom will cut through our doubts.
What we are generally sitting with is concept, one conceptual creation after another. The practice of meditation at the beginning is to get some sort of orientation so we don't believe so heartedly in the perpetual motion of thoughts and emotions. We find out that there is something deeper. Instead of following the conceptual framework again and again, we try to get a little distance. Through contemplative meditation, we reverse this process and reorient our focus of what we want to do.
Questioning the Belief in a Self
The biggest assumption that we make is that the self exists. In tantric Buddhism, we talk about the period between death and the next life as the pardo, the in-between period
. They say that when we pass away, our self, our concept of who we thought we were, dissolves and only consciousness is left. We feel lost, we actually experience interdependence. Everything is dependent upon something else. You cannot point to one thing and say this is it. This is a hard nut to crack. It has been going on for a long time, it is endless and painful.
There is a mechanism for undoing that. In mahayana and vajrayana, the emphasis is on the mind. Through yoga or jogging, you can put your body in shape, but the mind is still confused. Mind is the most powerful thing. Of course the body has to be taken care of. But most of us are physically oriented. Contemplation practices can transform the mind. If we know how to balance our mind and orient ourselves, we can make progress. We are coming to the point of ngejung definite arising
, renunciation. A person who has contemplated and observed I don't need to do this again
, comes to some epiphany, I see the pattern
, then can go forward. Buddhism is not into suffering, but into bliss! How to get happiness, permanent happiness. But it is not conventional. Happiness is dechik bliss having arrived
, it is Buddhanature, or basic goodness in the Shambhala warriorship tradition.
The wisest people have realized that how things appear and how things abide, that is their nature, can be very different. According to the tradition, Buddha taught in three stages or turnings
. The first one describes how things appear in terms of suffering, impermanence, samsara. The second one is the teaching on emptiness, on how things abide. If suffering did not abide in emptiness, then it would be a real thing, that could not be overcome. Suffering is not solid. Its nature is interdependence. It appears in a certain way. But appearance does not mean real. The way we actually abide is called Buddha. In the Shambhala tradition, we use the word Rigden. Rig means family
, den means possessing
. The image of the Rigden as the king of Shambhala is that it is the individual who possesses the family of the enlightened ones. This is all symbolism. Meditation is symbolism, symbolically trying to transmit to us that we are enlightened.
So we have to overcome our initial concept of what enlightenment is. The way we are intrinsically, naturally, is dechik, arriving and being in a state of bliss, which is free from suffering. The word nirvana means free from suffering. The word samsara means cyclical. The word liberation means to come out of a cycle that is futile. And in the Shambhala tradition, we realize that in order to be liberated, we need great courage. That is why we use the word warrior. In Tibet, meditators are called brave
. So we say that there are two traditions that have come together: the panditas, the brilliant ones, and the meditators, the brave ones. The brilliant ones have understood, the brave ones have enacted and realized. Obviously, we need both.
Penetrating This Matrix of Concept
So what is this matrix of concept, and how or where do we begin to penetrate it? The 'brilliant ones' have figured that it all appears in different ways, but the basic na- ture is the same, the basic weakness is the same. It is all fabricated and conceptual. We are talking about the five skandhas here. Skandha is a word that means heap
or gathering
. We put certain things together and we call it a If there is selflessness, then who is this person?
. The Buddha answered that it is like putting grains of rice together and it forms a shape. It is meaning generality
. We have not looked at it, we have just assumed. Deep meditators see interdependence not only of trees and seasons, but of themselves.
Body is form that comes from four elements, which refers to traditional physics and chemistry. Earth is that which sustains. Water moves and congeals. Fire maturates, creates heat, binds things. The body is many things, flesh and skin (earth), blood (water), warmth (fire), movement within (wind).
Then consciousness has many layers. There is experience of feeling, good, bad, neutral. Then there is discrimination, the ability to know what happened, where and when. There is formation, fully formulated thoughts and ideas. There are 51 of them, root afflictions, virtuous activities... There are endless dissections. We say, I thought I had a body and a mind
. If we look carefully, that is not exactly what I thought
. That moment is emptiness, emptiness of concept, the beginning of wisdom. We are doing this big program in this tent. Then in a few weeks, it will just be a meadow. It is just causes and conditions, and then it is gone. It is a matter of the way we look at it, we could miss it easily. It is the mind going there and realizing, I am reminded of reality in that
as opposed to I wish it was back together
. People think nonattachment must be painful. But for a practitioner, ultimate nonattachment to a self is called completely joyful
. We feel free. What is the result of more attachment? More pain, or more stress, which is the new way to talk about suffering.
We have to look, observe and see. There are many levels of mind. One is always saying Feel good
or not good
. Then we try to protect what feels good, which creates more formation. Then as soon as you have attachment, you have a reaction. This is not as we learn in school, reaction equal to action
. Karma is not one to one. You can have a big reaction to a small action. Karma will definitively come about. That action takes place in the fifth skandha, consciousness, which is divided into eight categories.
There are five consciousnesses related to sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. Then we hear something, a car or a dog. This conceptual fabrication is within the sixth consciousness, the mental one. This is hard to experience, it happens 360 times within a snap of a finger. Some meditators are so precise, they can count moments of consciousness, get down to atomic particles.
The sixth one is where we are meditating. With shi-ne, we are drawing the consciousnesses into the sixth one and rest there. Why are we doing that? When you have that mind stabilized, you do not have to react immediately, following karma. There is a feeling of somewhat being withdrawn, but it is for a purpose. It works stage by stage so that we can figure it out.
The seventh consciousness is called afflicted consciousness. It is pride, ngagyal, self glorious
. It says I am real and I am glorious
. These consciousnesses are not separated. It is like dividing space. It is a way of looking. So even the mind is divided up. It too is interdependent.
Bringing Truth into Experience
We don't get the whole thing all at once. King Dawa Sangpo, the first king of Shambhala, went to visit the Buddha and asked how he could practice while having the responsibilities of a kingdom and a family and so on. The Buddha told him You don't have to abandon these things, if you can realize the sacredness of the world
. That is tantra, vajrayana, the direct approach. The king got it and received the highest tantric empowerment, the Kalachakra. Those of us who do not recognize this truth right away, we do dathüns and prostrations! We have to go through a process of discovering for ourselves the truth, which is what the Buddha did.
The Buddha was very practical, he spoke the common language. He asked What is the nature of this life?
It is painful, scary, being a teenager is painful, then we have to find a job, we work hard and get worried, getting sick and old, having opinions, attachment, and the great ending is to die, and then having to do it again 49 days later, and forget how bad it was and think we are going to get it this time. When we actually see that, we begin to develop trust in the Buddha. There are these exercises Are you your mind?
If you think your mind is a thing, what is its shape or color?
So we look and as each truth becomes experienced, that is the point of practice. The point is not to sit on a cushion forever. Practice is nyamsu len, bringing into experience
. First impermanence is out there. Then we experience sickness or death and suddenly it is su, here
. Now I know what the Buddha is talking about.
That is practice.
You cannot understand nonconceptual wisdom if you cannot believe these basic truths of karma and samsara. Buddha did not invent them. They are part of ancient traditions. The point is What to do about it?
. We have to gain personal experience and then do the next practice. That is the path. Things are laid out so that we can step by step experience it. Sometime people do a practice and want another one. This is fine, it keeps people busy! But it does not work if we do not let our practice penetrate us. That seems to be our cultural predicament at this point. How to let practice affect us rather than wanting more and more practices. If not, this is just entertainment. So contemplative practice is bringing into experience
.
One of the basic ways of beginning the path is to be like a snow lion and go on the path of gewa or virtue
, understanding what qualities we want to enhance in our life. We are talking about compassion, mindfulness, actions that lead to pleasure and liberation, as opposed to non-gewa activities such as anger, self-centeredness that constrict the mind. It is not about goody
and baddy
. Contemplative texts talk about taking something out there and bringing it inside, whatever the topic is. We have the idea through the right kind of concept, and then we go to nonconceptuality or wisdom. The path is created by us understanding it, then fabricating it, then transcending it.
Real compassion first is inferential, an idea, then it becomes direct perception. At the beginning, it is all based on the idea that we think it is worthwhile, which is knowledge. We sit and conjure up an image, Wishing beings to be free from suffering
. At the very least we say the words, like a mantra. We may not have any feeling. Then slowly from the words, meaning begins to take place. Then the words drop away. Compassion, nyingje or noble heart
, is a word. It refers to an attitude of the mind, wishing for the suffering to be eliminated. We understand the logic. If we only wish for our own suffering to be released, it only perpetuates it. The attitude of opening to others opens up the mind. Then we develop a story line. It is like making a fire by adding a log on the embers. We raise the thought of our mother or somebody close, which brings up a sense of warmth, compassion. This is created, conceptual, but we are getting more of a sense of what compassion is. And we stay there. Then there is a small feeling of what compassion is. This is a gradual process, rather than going directly to the profound meaning. It is a skillful means, a way to orient our world. It is the most profound kind of practice of gewa.
The benefit of this practice is that when we engage in this thought, our mind actually becomes happier, and it benefits others. The great teacher of this technique, Shantideva, says that Isn't compassion meditation difficult?
is an absurd question because a small amount of practice has astronomical benefits. When your mind is involved in this kind of attitude, what comes about? In order for us to get to the point where we are even thinking of someone else, we have to have awareness of ourselves, of our own pain and suffering, as well as the pain and suffering of another individual.
Then we understand more what the situation is, which is what we call prajna or sherab, best knowledge
. The best thing to know about another person is that they want to be happy and not to suffer. Ultimately the best way to be happy is to be in a state of wisdom, free. So when we have that, and we have a person in mind, and we are saying May they be happy
, of course emotions will come up, because we generally divide the world into friends and enemies. As our practice goes in concentric circles from those we care about, to those we are indifferent to, to those we have animosity towards, more and more emotion comes up. Prajna helps us understand that. The stronger it is, the more compassion we have. So the point of this practice is not just simply feeling emotional towards another being, but it is important to have it inseparable with prajna or knowledge.
What kind of other qualities are we developing simultaneously as we are doing this? As we hold our mind to this image, we are developing stability of mind, mental focus, we are developing sheshin environmental awareness
, we are developing that aspect of mind that can have sympathy or empathy, be aware of how another person feels. It sharpens our mind. And as we are doing that, we go through all the six paramitas, generosity – because we are practicing dharma, discipline – practicing gewa, patience – not being angry, exertion – not let the faults of others be an obstacle, meditation – stabilization, prajna – wisdom, intelligence. Going through this is a transformative experience.
In Shambhala language, this kind of practice is about having lungta or courage. The result is that our life force energy increases. If you ask high lamas about a certain illness, they will tell you to practice compassion for other people, because this is the best way to overcome your health issue. It brings us away from self-centeredness. It creates lungta. That kind of beautiful, high energy is the snow lion because once you are on this kind of meditation, you feel like prancing! And the meditation quality of seeing beyond friends and enemies is the path of the garuda, spanning its wings.
TALK THREE: Contacting the Vajra Mind
Qualities of the Path
When we look at the path, the journey, in the beginning, we might think that the point is to get to the end, but what we are discovering along the way, is that every day becomes the path. We should try to bring the dharma into our lives, thinking about what is most important. We have an incredibly precious opportunity. In Shambhala, we talk about Joining Heaven and Earth
. We need vision, we need something that is grounding, and we need the human level in there.
How do you incorporate such a wealth of knowledge? It is very simple, moment by moment, thought by thought, action by action, person by person. In the visualization practices of the vajrayana tradition, they say that if you can visualize one particle, that is as good as visualizing the whole thing, if your mind is focused. In other words, if we can do compassion thoroughly, that is as good as doing prajna, that is as good as doing generosity. This is really bringing dharma into our being. The words are very important at the beginning, because we need to get oriented. But at a certain point, there is a level of conviction that takes place. We call it certainty in the Mahayana. We call it confidence in Shambhala. We call it one-pointed[ness] in the Hinayana. It is when the mind totally focuses. When we do that, we have tremendous power.
One of the great tantric teachings is that we are not Buddha tomorrow, but we are Buddha now. That is a profound contemplation, because then we see all the faults. But the teachings say that these faults are küntak, acquired
. They are blocking that innate Buddha quality. The path is where this quality is revealed. It is called munto jor, actualizing
. It is a journey of the mind developing more and more trust in our innateness. That revealing process happens all the time. When we feel a quality of love, within that quality, there is not just regular love but there is wisdom in it. The mind itself, that we have right now, has all the buddha qualities. But we may not feel like that. There are two levels of obscuration, küntak, acquired
and lhenchik, innate
. This is very subtle. When a child is born, no one teaches it to be angry or jealous. The seed is there naturally. But one is taught prejudices, there is an acquired kind of anger.
The other aspect of the path is that we are in a sense contriving and fabricating our buddha nature. So the mind begins to think I should be more compassionate
. We are developing relative prajna, relative understanding. In a way, this is already happening. It is not a choice situation. If the mind is not oriented that way, it will go the other way. There is either dharmic küntak or samsaric küntak. That is why we say that we have to participate in our journey. Meditation is developing confidence and conviction in the way we want to orient our life.
Orienting the Ground Basis of All
In the last talk, we talked about the seven consciousnesses and touched upon the eighth one. The mind is in a neutral situation. Like a cotton sheet, it can be dyed in many ways. From the Buddhist metaphysical point of view, this pure kind of base is called the eighth consciousness or künchi the ground basis of all
. As we act, there is a tendency to think that it just vanishes into space, when it actually goes into the eighth consciousness. So the practice of the path is slowly orienting that white cloth and perfuming it the way you want.
When they talk about previous karma, there is this notion of a latent situation that will eventually come out. But the force by which it arises can be nullified. Part of what will happen in the future is still undetermined. Determining the future is what practice does. Many people sit and say I want some enlightenment now
. The smart meditator says What did I do to cause enlightenment to arise now?
. In the first case, it is like saying Give me something that does not have a cause
. Enlightenment is there innately, but in order to bring it out, it takes causes and conditions. These can only come from body, speech and mind, and the most important one is mind. We are talking about attitude, motivation, orientation, inspiration.
People talk about living a sustainable life. But internal sustainability is developing the mind towards gewa, towards the Snow Lion. Shambhala Mountain Center is a great place. But it is not really about the place, it is about what we do in that place. As we do it, we feel better. We are actually mentally transforming our environment. So much so that the deer are coming! In Shambhala language, when you develop gewa, this mind of positiveness and orientation, you get lungta, you get wangtang authentic presence, radiance
. When the mind gets stronger, every action becomes fuller. Thoughts become more potent and the weight of that potent mind has a tremendous effect on our action and the way we live our life. If our mind is fickle and weak, it is hard to conduct ourselves. Karmic tendencies or pakchak habitual tendencies
take over.
In Mahayana, there is tremendous emphasis on deepening and understanding. They talk about meditation in terms of nyamshak, meditative equipoise
. It is the point where the mind is becoming powerful. Another word for it is samten strong mind
. As we meditate, our mind becomes stronger, our conviction becomes stronger, and then afterwards we have what is called jethop, subsequent attainment
. After you meditate, you get up and go into the world, and you have more and more understanding, deepening, realization.
I always emphasize contemplative meditation because meditation is not just about reducing stress. Once the mind is calm, you need to orient it. We need to develop qualities and the question is whether they are coming from the inside or the outside. We say that intrinsically, it is there, but at the same time, it feels somehow like they are coming from the outside. Because we have this innate level of obscuration or affliction, that comes out as emotion and discursiveness, we have to constantly remind ourselves. They say the first obstacle to meditation is laziness, but the second is forgetting the instructions. In the Buddhist tradition, memorization is very important. It is considered to be one of the best gewa because it impacts the mind. It makes things innate. It is like kneading dough. Through memorization, practicing, recalling, we are kneading in those qualities. Initially, it might feel external, but after a while it feels innate. Being reminded happens through understanding, contemplating and meditating. It happens also environmentally. In the vajrayana tradition, we have many wang or abhisheka, which mean empowerment
. Those are rituals where the intrinsic qualities are kneaded into the student.
Traditionally they say that there are two kinds of best students, really smart or really stupid. If you are smart, you understand everything right away, karma, what is mind, what needs to be done. The really stupid goes If you say so!
, and practices right away. Most of us are not quite smart enough, and not quite dumb enough! We say Wait a minute. Where do I fit in?
. We need logic, understanding. Also, here we have so much education that we have all our concepts to deal with, I am not sure, Buddha or Newton?
. That is why it is hard to actually do something. We are so intellectually paralyzed. We are not sure what to do. We need to clarify and learn how to trust. That is why I said in the beginning that we don't have to think of everything and do everything. We could just pick something and work with it. Also that is why we have the sangha, and teachers and teachings, to remind us and create that environment.
The Four Maras and Vajra Mind
In the Shambhala warrior tradition, what tends to block our activity is referred to as döns or sometimes drip. Drip is a heaviness on the system, a quality of being paralyzed, incapable of doing something. Dön is when your psychology begins to exude into the environment. Articles can be blessed and they become sacred. In the negative sense, articles can get stained by negativity. At the ultimate level of tongpanyi and salwa, emptiness
and luminosity
, if your mind can go to the innate nature, there is no good and bad. However, if your mind is caught in relativity, then there is good and bad, because it affects us, because we think there is good and bad.
Samsara is a sense of environment to a certain degree. Although it is essenceless, it fools us and tricks us. And the way it affects us is called >mara, a Sanskrit word. In the traditional story of the Buddha, just before he attains enlightenment, he goes through the attacks of Mara and his daughters. Maras can manifest in many ways. Generally we talk about the four maras. The first one is the skandha mara or mara of becoming. Skandha is when things are coming together and forming into something that we think is real. As soon as the mind sees something, it pulls everything together and tries to make it solid. And as the mind does that, it becomes the object, it goes out and solidifies more. We start seeing solid things and call them mine'
.
Then we have klesha mara. In Tibetan klesha is nyönmong, which is translated as affliction
. It is like a disease. What happens when the mind tries to hold something together, the shock waves or reverberations, are called klesha. It is desire, anger, jealousy. The mara quality is that all of a sudden it hijacks our whole process. It consumes the mind and then we assume that. It is like being possessed. We begin to behave that way, and buy into that logic. And then, that action is kneaded into our consciousness. So next time, we have a similar reaction. Since we have more basis, the anger, for instance, will come back quicker. It is like an infection. It starts slowly, but at a certain point, it is almost too late. You are consumed.
So again, one must be vigilant. That is the quality of the tiger. My father translated it as meek
. The Tibetan word is chokshe, which means knowing you have enough
. We say contentment
. Non-contentment is the mind that does not know when it is enough. The tiger knows because he is mindful and pays attention. Just as mindfulness is an attitude of mind, un-mindfulness is also an attitude of mind. In that case, those environmental things come in. The most important thing to be mindful of is our conduct, our attitude, watching the mind when it goes from enough to excess. This is all relative teaching. We are talking about very practical things. You can go to the transcendent and see it as emptiness. Then that does not matter because you can see the nature. But when our mind does not abide in the nature of things, when we are going out into the world, we are in an environment where we have to be careful. This is sometimes referred to as payu or self awareness
. We need to be aware of what is gewa and migewa, virtue and non-virtue.
The third mara is called >devaputra mara. It is the mara of pleasure. The mind is immediately attracted to what feels pleasurable. Because it is not happy here, it seeks pleasure somewhere else. But most of the pleasures that are out there turn into some kind of painful situation. We are not really noticing as it turns into pain and we keep thinking it is pleasure. The traditional analogy is licking honey from a razor blade
. It is seemingly pleasurable and all of a sudden it cuts you. Here the notion of mara is just to be aware of that kind of situation. If you have actual trust and experience in your innate joy, in your Buddha kind of enlightened qualities, your basic goodness qualities, the mind will have much less tendency to do that. It is not really about abstaining. It is about recognizing. There is nothing to abstain from. The situation is as it is, but we are imputing what we would like to see on it.
The last one is >yama mara or the mara of death. What happens is that the notion of death creates a solidity to life. Having a final thing means that everything else in there is a real experience. It creates a framework where life becomes real. According to the Buddhist teachings, life is actually an illusion. You realize that just before death. Everything seems so fluid. All your life becomes a short moment. Time is constantly changing. Even the present moment is a relative truth, it is not absolute. It can be broken down on and on. When through meditation we look at consciousness and mind, we realize that we are living in a fluid, momentarily, always fluctuating situation. When death comes, it seems as though it is gone, but it was coming and going the whole time. What we have done is taking a lot of what was coming and going and called it a self, and that self dies. These teachings are related to the garuda. The garuda's wings are spread out, meaning equanimity going through life. It represents the quality of bhumis, attainment, going higher and higher. Understanding selflessness and momentary time is the wisdom of the garuda. The Shambhala text says that the garuda punctures space like an arrow, in the sense that it understands the fathomless quality.
The way to counteract the maras is to have vajra-like mind. Vajra is a Sanskrit word. In Tibetan, we say dorje, which means noble stone
. In the Indian iconography, it is Indra's scepter, a weapon that is like a thunderbolt. It has five points representing the five wisdoms of the Buddha. It is considered to be indestructible. This thunderbolt-like mind overcomes the maras of fixating because it penetrates concepts and appearances. It has three qualities: It always hits whatever it is intending to. It destroys whatever it is hitting. Once it is destroyed, it liberates it. You are free from it. It is the opposite of discursiveness. When you have a mind that is unfocused, it never hits what you want to. It is consumed by what it is going towards. And it is entrapped. In the Mahayana school, this is called the middle way analysis. This is a profound meditation. And we say that the greatest confidence comes from egolessness. That is the confidence of the dragon, complete egoless confidence.
This particular type of meditation, which is called uma in Tibetan, or middle way
uses this diamond-like or vajra-like mind. This has to do with the power of understanding. When you thought something was one way and you found out it was another, it is a profound experience. That knowledge totally destroys what was there before. Now you are free from that. We are talking about looking at this notion of solidity and non-fluidness of the universe, what we are always trying to think things are. What is interesting here is not so much what you are meditating upon, but to watch your mind going through the process. We are trying to become more and more familiar with the empty nature of things obviously. So the mind continually contrives and at the same time you apply the antidote, the vajra principle. You send that dorje to this idea of a self, or time or klesha, and as you get better, the dorje becomes bigger and stronger.
Luminosity and Wisdom
Nobody likes the word emptiness. When you hear it and your mind goes there, most of the time you are not getting the right point because you think something was removed, like an empty cup. But this is different, since there was not anything there in the first place. Sometimes this is called tathata or suchness
. The form is emptiness, emptiness is also form
. The second part is as much a teaching. Because it is empty, it can be form, it manifests. Obviously there are chairs and tables. These things abide, but they abide without any inherentness. That is why it is a subjective journey. Subjective also means contrived, inferential. We need to have certainty and trust in the teachings so that our mind goes I know this table is appearing, but in meditation, I understood quite convincingly how it is empty of its inherentness
. We are perceiving both the relative and the ultimate aspect of it.
The third turning or stage in the Buddha's teachings is focusing on ösal, luminosity
or clear light
. In Tibetan, sal can mean clear
and ö means light
. When you mix the second turning teachings on the notion of suchness or emptiness, with the third turning teachings on clear light, you get the ultimate nature of all things. The first turning teachings, the Four Noble Truths, deal with relative truth, the nature of things as they appear. The second turning reveal their ultimate nature, which is tongpanyi, suchness
or shunyata in Sanskrit. Mind cannot perceive the nature of things, only wisdom can. But the only way we can get to wisdom is to train the mind like wisdom, and then eventually it becomes wisdom. In Tibetan, mind is sem, which means to create
. Wisdom is yeshe which comes from yene, from the beginning
and shepa, knowledge, understanding
. From the beginning it knows. In other words, wisdom was never confused. The teachings on wisdom are emphasized in the third turning because when we talk about luminosity, it is the manifest quality. Emptiness is the way things abide. Clear light is how they manifest. But what is clear light? It is knowledge, it is wisdom. Again we must reiterate that what we are talking about is beyond words, you have to experience it. We do approach it by using words and concepts, but one has to have ngönsum, direct experience
. And in a little way, we can experience it in ourselves. As we meditate, there is a quality of emptiness, things dissolving, yet we are cognizant.
In the Shambhala language, we call this third turning sarchen nyima, the Great Eastern Sun
. Why is it that you go first suchness and then luminosity? If you had luminosity first, then you would think it is a thing, that wisdom is a thing. What makes it wisdom is that it knows the nature of all things, which is empty. And how does emptiness manifest? It manifests as wisdom or clear light. These third turning teachings emphasize buddha nature or basic goodness, in Shambhala terms. And in order to go into Mahayana practice properly, one must take the bodhisattva vow. You have to have that motivation or else you will not discover emptiness. You will discover the selflessness of one individual, not of all phenomena.
How to enter into understanding wisdom, clear light and luminosity is taught extensively in tantra or vajrayana. In order to enter into tantra, one must have a qualified teacher, a qualified empowerment, and qualified instruction, or, they say, the path is dangerous. It is all a matter of knowing where one is at. The nine yanas are sequential and each one is valid. We may have the aspiration of vajrayana, but attain arhatship, the first yana, which would be a beautiful thing. If we are able to expand further, we can be pratyekabuddha, and further, bodhisattva. Then we have the outer and inner tantras. So we go stage by stage.
These teachings offer a tremendous depth of understanding reality and nature, and at the same time, we have the ability to do very fine and simple actions in our life, whether sweeping or washing or talking, that are opportunities to develop gewa, opportunities to understand.