ACI 3 «Прикладная медитация», занятие 5

Class Five: The Five Problems of Meditation, Part One
Geshe Michael Roach
February 28, 1994
transcribed by: Matthew Remski



[cut]

...most people fail on that, most people fail because they don't prepare for
meditation. Everybody knows how to sit down and close ther eyes, but it's the
preparation that either makes it go well or go bad. So the first one was
preparation. Second one was what?

[Student: offering...(unclear)]

no I mean the whole syllabus, the whole structure.

[(Unclear)...student: the seven ingredients...]

No. It's the environment of the whole thing, right? Meaning the whole place
where you should meditate - how your friends should be, how the food should
be, how your mindset should be, everything. The environment - mostly the
physical environment. And the third thing was what? We finished it last week.

[Unclear]

Posture. How to put your body, how to position your body. And now we're
gonna do the mental part, and I'd like, Ann, I think, you know, we were
searching for a word, and I think "technique" she wrote. I like that. Like the
"mental technique". Like we have the bodily posture, and we have what the
place should be like, and we have how to prepare, and now you have to track
what's happening in your mind, during the meditation. And that's the main part
of the meditation - the subject: mind, and later we're going to get into what?

[Students: the object]

yeah, the object - what the mind meditates on. So now we're on our fourth big
category, which is: what's the mental technique. What does your mind do
during meditation. And that's gonna have three parts. The first two are these
two.

Say {nye-pa} [repeat] {nga} [repeat]; {nyen-po} [repeat] {gye} [repeat]. Okay you
can write those down.
{Nyepa} means "problem".
{Nga} means "five". Number five.

And there are five problems that come up during meditation. And these were...
the Buddha taught them like two and a half thousand years ago, and they're
very interesting. I mean apparently they come up in everyone's mind sooner or
later if you try to meditate. And it's good to know them. The book says "It's
good to know your enemy before you meet him." He will come. These five will
come, in your mind. {Nyepa nga} And then to fight them you have {nyenpa
gye}.

{Nyenpo} means, we call it "correction" {Nyenpo} also means like if you eat
poison, if the snake bites you you have to take the {nyenpo}. So it can mean
antidote, counteraction... and I like, in this case since it's a problem, this is the
correction. It's what step you should take to stop that problem where?

[Stillwell: In your mind.]

Yeah. In your mind. [Laughs]

[student: Are there five?]

{Gye} means "eight"

[laughter. Student: eight? Number?]

Yeah, number eight. So you've got five problems, and eight corrections. After
that, which we're not going to do tonight, you have the nine mental states that
you go through. So how you know where you are. So there's the nine mental
states. We're not going to talk about that tonight.

[Student: so are these mental problems during meditation?]

these come up...well when you hear them, you tell me. They're related to
meditation. They come up in your mind as you're trying to meditate. First one
is very easy.

Say {le} [repeat] {lo} [repeat]. {Le lo} means "laziness".

[Student: ooooh}

And that's like the word lazy, because it sounds like {le-lo}, so you can remember
the word for lazy easily, it's like one of the first words a Tibetan learns when he's
learning English, 'cause it starts the same. "Laziness" is a little bit of a bad ... it's a
good word, but it means not wanting to do it really. Not wanting to do what?

[Student: meditate.]

not really wanting to meditate, and there's four antidotes to it. So you use up
four corrections on the first problem. [Laughter] All right, so {le-lo} has four
corrections. I'll put the corrections in A, B, C, D, so you don't get them mixed up,
okay?

[silence]

You only have to memorize that if you're in the Tibetan class. Say {Ting-ngen-
dzin} [repeat] {la} [repeat] {depa} [repeat]. {Ting-ngen-dzin la} [repeat] {depa}
[repeat]. {Ting-ngen-dzin} you know, maybe?

[Stillwell: yeah - one-pointed...]

Yeah, it was one of the six kind of meditation. We talked about there was six
Tibetan words for meditation. There are six Sanskrit words for meditation. And
this was the most general one you could say almost. It's "one-pointed state of
mind".

[Student: that's the translation of it - one-pointed state of mind?]

The definition of it is {sem-tse chik-pa}, which means one-pointed state of mind.
And I used to... as I said I used to wonder, what was one-pointed? What did one-
pointed mean? What does it mean?

[Student: focused on one thing?]

one object, yeah, focused on one thing. So one-pointed, you know, you kind of
wonder - how can I make my mind into a point, you know? It's not like that. It's
like - what's the "one object"? It's the ability to keep your mind on one object.
Every sentient being has {ting-ngen-dzin}.            It's a [unclear}; in the {b.
Abhidharmakosha}, it's one of the ten mental functions that every mind has. A
bug has {ting-ngen-dzin}. An amoeba has {ting-ngen-dzin}. Because it can keep
its mind on some food for a few seconds. That's a baby {ting-ngen-dzin}. That is
{ting-nge-dzin}. {Ting-ngen-dzin la} means "towards {ting-ngen-dzin};
and {depa, depa} literally means "faith". Faith. Okay? That's what Kiley calls it,
where is Kiley? Now, it doesn't quite mean faith here. Because faith in the
Western world means, you know, oh, I have faith in God or something. It's not
like that. Here, {depa} means {tung-wa}, and {tung-wa} means to to be attracted
towards something, because you see its good qualities. It's like admiration. It's
like attraction. Okay? And that comes when you see the good qualities of
something. It means you're attracted to it. You see something nice in it. What
are the qualities of {ting-ngen-dzin} you could be attracted to? The main one I
told you at the beginning. Why are we doing this course? There's five Buddhist
paths. The last one is Buddhahood. The first one is getting sick of like, and the
three between are what you have to go through to get to Buddhahood. Which
are {jor-lam}: intellectual understanding of emptiness; {tong-lam}: direct
perception of emptiness; and then {gom-lam}: getting used to your perception of
emptiness, and it helps you destroy your what?

[Student: obscurations...}

Your bad thoughts. Hatred, anger. And not-knowing. So those are the five
stages you go through. You must, you don't even reach the first Buddhist path
until you are truly sick of this life. You haven't reached the first Buddhist path if
you're not completely disgusted with this life. And you want a change. You
want something different than... up and down, up and down, up and down.
Getting older, older, older. Boring boring, boring. And ending up in a hospital
somewhere, or if you're lucky in a nursing home. That's the only two choices.
There's only two choices. And the last place is the mortuary, if they find your
body. Usually they do. But it's only the only choice. It’s the way it can go. So
you must go through those five paths. You must find a way to get through
those five paths.

[student]

The third path is the direct perception of emptiness. The second path is the
intellectual understanding of emptiness. Before you see emptiness directly, you
have to understand it intellectually. The fourth path, is called habituation. You're
getting used to what you saw in the third path. Until it slowly helps you destroy
all your bad emotions. If you went to the first two courses, you'd know all that.
And you would have forgotten all that. [Laughter]

[student: what are the names here - accumulation...]

They are call preparation, no, I'm sorry, you’re right, accumulation, preparation,
seeing, habituation, and no more learning. The fifth path is Buddhahood, if you
have bodhicitta. If you don't, then it's just nirvana, but don't worry about it. You
don't have to know those five, but what I'm trying to tell you is this: to move up
through those five, when you go from path one to two and when you go from
two to three and when you go from three to four, you must be in deep
meditation. You must be in deep meditation. You only move between the paths
in deep meditation. You can only get deep meditation if you practise it every
single day. Otherwise you'll never be able to get into that meditation.

[Student: in that case, the last path, habituation, right...]

Inside each path has periods where you're not in deep meditation, but to move
from the fourth to the fifth, to go between, is what I'm saying, you have to be in
deep meditation. It doesn't mean you're in deep meditation all the time. It could
take thousands of millions of years. You're not in deep meditation all the time.
But to go from path number four to path number five, to become a Buddha,
when you, the process of losing your last {kleshas}, happens in deep meditation.
It's called [unclear].

[Student: well then, uh, the path of seeing is arrived upon the first time one's
perceived emptiness...]

Directly.

[Student: Directly. And then, one stays at that level, without becoming
habituated to it, for some periods of time...]

Right, yeah, different schools have different presentations of it. The Abhidharma
school says that the path of seeing lasts fifteen seconds.

[Student: So then you would be doing two at the same time...]
No. Not at the same time. You can't be on two at once. You can achieve two
paths in one meditation period, yeah.

[Student: well it sounds like you'd have to, in that case.]

In that presentation, yeah, in the Abhidharma. So. To get that kind of
meditation, to be able to get that kind of meditation, you have to be doing it
every day. You can miss maybe one day a week. You see what I mean? You
have to be doing it every day. You have to be practicing it every day. And you
have to be doing it right. And if you don't, it's impossible to reach that kind of
meditation. You never will. And then what? You'll never get up through those
paths. It's impossible. It'll never happen.

[Student: You said something, I'm not sure [unclear] you said that once you are
seeing emptiness, then you have habituation, which means you're starting to get
rid of anger and all that. But can you do this before seeing emptiness? Because
you can still see intellectually that anger causes...]

You cannot. That's the whole reason you want to see emptiness directly, 'cause
there's no other method to remove anger permanently.         You must see
emptiness. Directly.

[Student: yeah but you start...]

oh before that you must start...

[Student: yeah, because you see that anger causes...]

oh yeah. To have enough goodness to reach the lower paths you have to get rid
of a lot of anger . But you can't destroy it. There's no method to remove anger
permanently from your mind except seeing emptiness directly. And that's what
people struggle with other paths. That's why they have so much problems,
that's why they're so frustrated. Because you can't. It takes that to remove
anger from yourself permanently. And that's why it's frustrating. Anyway, you
have to be in deep meditation to move up through these paths. It's the only
way. That's the biggest sales point of deep meditation. There's other sales
points. The [b. Lam Rim Chenmo], which the book we're studying, says you
can't achieve almost any Buddhist quality without learning meditation well,
because you have to learn, meditation allows you to learn to keep your mind on
an object long enough to achieve it quickly. It gives you one-pointedness of
direction in your life, makes your mind, it gives your mind a quality of
concentration that you're going to need for all the qualities of Buddhism. That's
another selling point.

[Stillwell: you can't attain those qualities, you said?]

Very difficult, without one-pointed state of mind. Not meaning meditation
necessarily. To be able to concentrate at work on myself, on keeping my mouth
from saying silly things that hurt people's feelings, which I do all the time, you
have to have some kind of one-pointedness. So really, to have good morality
you're also going to have to have some kind of one-pointedness. So to get all of
the Buddhist qualities, you need some kind of ability to concentrate. You'll never
develop it without shamata. The other quality is, if you care, and it's not
considered very important, is that if you get good at meditation, you can read
other people's minds, you can do miracles. It's not a goal. It's no good if you can
fly in the sky if you're still getting old and dying. It's not the main point. You
can sit out in the snow, you can get heat - there's Buddhist masters who I've met
who, the big deal was that he'd sat out in the snow for five hours or something.
That's okay but he still got old and died. He's already dead actually. So, it's not
the goal, it's nice, it's a side effect. So these are all the qualities that...Yuh?

[student: I really I like the one-word thing... what were the five words - seeing,
habituation...in order please? Student: accumulation...]

Yeah, accumulation.       You can call it "gathering" if you don't like that.
Accumulation is okay. Number two is preparation. Sometimes the word doesn't
describe what's going on though. Preparation is where you intellectually come
to understand emptiness. Number three is called seeing, with your mind.
Number four is habituation, and then number five is called no-more-learning,
finished-learning. And that's equivalent to nirvana, and if you want to know
why you'll have to go to the [unclear]

[student: there's so many questions to ask, and some of my, for me personally,
some of mine I fear might be silly, but according to the posture, if you do a half-
lotus, does that interfere with the speed of your progress in these five things?
Like if you can't do a full-lotus?

I think what we said last time the text said you can do either. And no problem.

[Student: no interference?]
No, no. Generally speaking, you have to use common sense in meditation. If
you're struggling, and many people do, for many months, to attain a certain
posture, and your not meditating, that's a distraction. And we'll learn, we'll talk
about it tonight. So {le-lo} -

[student: you can read other people's minds?]

yeah, you can learn to read other people's minds. You can see the future. You
can see what's happening in a little town in Mexico right now. So the first
opponent, the first weapon you use against not wanting to meditate - did that
ever happen to you?

[Laughter]

It happened to me one day - I didn't get up. You just don't want to do it. You
really don't want to do it. Why? Because you didn't understand what you were
gonna get out of it. The reason you get up to go to work is that you get the
paycheck every Friday or whatever. You know what you're gonna get. But {le-
lo} is very subtle. {Le-lo} means: you don't really feel like doing it, and that
happens a lot. And I tell you this: on the days when you don't feel like doing it,
that's when you especially have to force yourself because that's when you make
progress. The most progress is made on days when you don't really feel like
doing it. If you force yourself to sit down and do it on those days, you'll be able
to achieve shamata. And if you don't you never will. And Tsong Khapa says
that in his text. You know, on the days that you don't feel like it, those are the
crucial days. Those are the days when you make the most progress. Sitting
down on those days is the best progress. So that's the first antidote. You just
understand why you need it. You have some admiration, some attraction to this
idea of getting to shamata. You should be attracted to it. You should think "oh
that's really something wonderful". You should see its good qualities.
        The second thing is easy. Say {dunpa} [repeat]. {Dunpa} means "you
want it". Want what?

[Student: emptiness.]

Uh, no. Shamata. The ability of pure meditation. To meditate very deeply. You
want it. By the way, these antidotes are all cause-and-effect, so where does the
wanting it come from?
[Stillwell: understanding what it is.]

Seeing its nice qualities. Having attraction for it. {Depa} is when you check out
the girl's face and everything, and {dunpa} is when you say okay, I like that...
[laughs, laughter] - in the world.

[Student: unclear]

{Dunpa} is just one word that means "you want it". You want it. You don't want
anything until you see the nice things about it. So (a) is seeing the nice things
about developing shamata, and (b) is, because of seeing how nice it is, you want
it.

[Student: would you characterize that as a sentence, a verb, a noun...]

It's a verb. It's a gerund if you want. Verbal noun. By seeing its good qualities,
then you want it. Those are different mental functions.

[Student: can you explain how you see the good qualities?]

I just talked about it. And you have to meditate on it. They say in Buddhism,
they often say: meditate on the good qualities of whatever you're supposed to
be meditating on. I mean, sit down a couple times and think about it. If you
never develop {ting-ngen-dzin}, if you never develop shamata, you will suffer,
period. You'll go on like you are now. If you are who you seem to be, which I
don't know. If you are who you seem to be, you're stuck. There is no future.
Anything you're gonna get, you're gonna lose. Anything that makes you happy
now - your face, your health, your job, your friends, your wife, your kids -
anything, you will lose. You will lose it, period. That's a bad thing. Wouldn't it
be nice to be in some position where you didn't have to do those things? That's
the only selling point you need, I think. If you get tired of getting up at
whatever time you're getting up, just think of the alternative. [Laughs] You
know, a thousand more lifetimes with the same boss, probably. [Laughter]

[student: what is it concretely that you're examining the good qualities of?]

Meditation itself.

[Student: but if you haven't experienced it, is it based on what you've read?]
Right, right.     Based on the Buddha's saying: "these are the qualities of
meditation". Based on that presentation that you have to be in meditation to see
emptiness, directly, and you already understand what you need to see emptiness
directly. You've learned that already. You cannot see it unless you have this
microscope, this ability to concentrate. You won't see it. You'll never be able to
see it. If you never meditate for more than fifteen minutes or fourteen minutes
or sixteen, or whatever you happen to be doing - you'll never see it, period.
You'll never see it and you go on like this. And time is running out. You are
getting older. There will come a day when you can't sit down and meditate
nicely. We have one student who's dying right now. It's over, he doesn't have
time to do that. And other people have died. And we're all getting old. And it's
harder to sit when you're old, and it's harder to think, for a long time. So you
have to do it now. That's like, qualities you should see about meditation. But it's
true. Logically, you haven't experienced those good qualities yet. You've just
heard someone describe them. But you know the alternative. That's what i'm
saying. Like when they say in our logic debates in the winter, they say: "Does
the Buddha tell the truth about emptiness?" I don't know, I didn't see emptiness
directly (if you didn't), but he sure did describe suffering very well. [Laughs.]
The four noble truths, you know, the one about suffering and its cause - those
are nice; I can confirm those. I have experienced those, and no other person
really took the time or cared or said anything about them. No one has described
the problem so well. For example: that the beginning of a relationship is the
cause of its destruction. That's interesting. That's the way it is. It does not need
an external cause for it to turn lousy, or for it to end. The beginning of it is its
destruction. The beginning of it is the cause of its destruction. That's a Buddhist
theory. And if you live long enough you start to say "Oh yeah, that makes
sense." Things like that. Okay. Number (c). Say: {Tsundru} [repeat] {tsundru}
[repeat]. {Tsundru} means "effort". It's also the name of the fourth perfection.
Effort. Trying hard. Trying hard for what?

[Students: to do it. To meditate.]

To meditate. Right. Like when I was a teenager, you see the lady, you like her,
you see the good qualities, then you want, and then you go. You try to get it.
That's {tsundru}. {Tsundru} means you're working to get something. Effort. So
this is again a result of (b), of wanting it. First you see its good qualities, then
you start to want, and then you go after it. That's {tsundru}. {Tsundru} means to
make effort.

[Student: Does the effort need to be joyous?]
Well, in the Perfection of effort, it's defined as joy about doing something good.
It will be joyous, but that's not the emphasis in this, this is just, what's effort here
is to get up on the morning you don't feel like it. And you'd like to skip the
sweeping part and just sit down. [Laughs, laughter] Didn't we? It's really pretty
clean - the students cleaned it last night. [Laughter] That's not {tsundru}. You
don't want it bad enough. And you won't get this unless you have "want it", and
you won't have "want it" unless you understand why it's a good thing, why it's
gonna help you. That's the whole point - you must have (a) to get to (b); you
must have (b) to get to (c). And (c) leads to (d).

[Chatter, laughter]

Say: {shin-jang} [repeat]. {Shin-jang} [repeat]. {Shin-jang} I have translated as,
I'm not sure I like the translation, but... I have to explain it, okay? Some people
call it "agility". But what it means is that if you do something over and over and
over again, like if you've ever played sports, you know, I used to play tennis in
high school, and you know you hit the ball over and over and over again, and
then finally at some point you reach this place where it's very very, if you're
working hard at it every day then you reach this point where it's just a piece of
cake. It feels so natural, and you get some really wonderful ability to do it like
some kind of - the Tibetans are always saying that the example for {shin-jang} is
people who can practice gymnastics until they can just do anything. They can
make their body do anything. So {shin-jang} can be either mental or physical.
{Shin-jang} is where you're body is so used to meditating - you've been in that
position for so many hours, for so many days, and again I say - the goal is not to
sit down one day for five hours and then take a month off. You know, like in
dieting, or in jogging, or in weightlifting, or anything else you want to learn, it's
much better to do a half an hour every day and never break it. Never never
break. If you could just get up and do it each day, you'll get it, and you should
really do it the same time each day, and then your clock will go off in your mind.
At that moment you'll want to sit down and meditate. It's very powerful. It's
very good. Same time every day, and it becomes like a habit. It becomes part of
your life, and then you don't break it. And you must not break it. They say it
specifically in the text. If you work hard for a couple of weeks and then lay off
for a couple of days, it's very difficult. You must do it continually. So {shin-jang},
the first part is where you can make your body sit quietly for many hours,
maybe 4/5/6 hours if you want to. Your body will do it, because it's so used to
it. You don't do it the first year. You work up to it. And the second part is
mental. You get {shin-jang} mentally. So mental {shin-jang} means you can
make your mind do whatever you want. You're like a gymnast of the mind.
You can make your mind go through any loop you want it to go through. You
can force it to stay on one object for as long as you want, you can force it to
tackle a problem logically and work through it clearly, you can force it to
concentrate on any object you want. That's {shin-jang}. That's where you get
some very very, I don't know, it's like pleasant feeling from being very good at
something. That's what {shin-jang} means. There's no good English word.

[Unclear. Laughter]

That's not bad. Serviceability. I try to keep them under six syllables. Some
people say agility, it's not bad. That's like the acrobat. It's like, I don't know - it's
a result of practicing all the time, and it's some really fine feeling, like you feel
like...you'll get it, you will get it... [unclear]... it's like you just sit down and...

[Student: Dexterity?]

Yeah, dexterity is very good too. Some people translate it that way. {Shin-jang}
is the actual correction for not wanting to meditate. For laziness. This is actual
correction. They say, this is the actual correction. The other three are ways to
reach this point. So it's when you're really good at meditating that you like to
meditate, enough to do it every day. It's kind of a Catch-22. When you get good
at it you'll have an investment in it. You'll wanna do it everyday. I notice this at
work all the time. People do what they like to do and not what you need at that
time. We have a guy in Bangkok and he buys the stones, the assistant to his
brother. He's supposed to be buying stones but he likes computers, so he makes
all these systems to buy the stones, but he doesn't buy the stones, he just works
on the systems. When you like doing something you won't have a problem
doing it. When you're good at something you won't have any problem to get
yourself to do it. And that's what {shin-jang} means. {Shin-jang} is the actual
correction for the problem of laziness, but you don't have that at the beginning,
is what the book says, the {Lam Rim Chen-mo} says, you don't have that at the
beginning, so first of all you have to think about why you should have it. Then
you'll start to go after it. You'll want it, go after it, and then when you get really
good at it, you'll enjoy doing it every day. You won't be lazy any more. So this
correction is a little tricky. You actually don't have the correction when you start
correcting. You build up to the correction. And when you get good at it you'll
want to do it every day, and you won't think "Ah, I don't feel like doing it today."
You'll be making excuses to get home and do it.
[Student: Michael, the other one is "pliancy"]

Pliancy's pretty good. That's pretty good. So first problem is what?

[Students: laziness.]

Laziness. I almost don't like the word "laziness". It's kind of like not wanting to
do it. Not wanting to meditate. If I say laziness I don't think anyone in this
room says Yeah I'm lazy. But if I said did it happen this week that you didn't
really want to get up and do it? Yeah, just about every day.

[Student: procrastination]

It's kinda like procrastination. It's kinda like that. There's another word for that.
It's like not really wanting to do it. Not feeling like it. And you get that. Why?
Cause you didn't see - if you really truly believed in what it could do for you,
you would do it every morning. But you don't. So then you don't get to want it
much, and because you don't want it much, you don't work hard to get it, and
because you don't work hard you don't get to that point where it's so pleasant
that you want to do it.

[Student: but what about something else that is stronger at that moment than
the desire to do it?]

Then contemplate that thing's impermanence.              Whatever it is that you're
thinking of, and I don't know what it is, but I'll bet you you're gonna lose within
five years. [Laughter] You know, it's something you're gonna work for, and it's
gonna cause you suffering to get it... the Tibetans have a nice phrase: [unclear] -
means the suffering you get from not having something, like money; and
[unclear] means the suffering you get after you get it, and you have to try to
maintain it, hold onto it. [Laughter] It's like, the suffering of trying to hold on to
your money after you get it. So whether you have it or don't have it there's
suffering either way. You must ask this question. She's not afraid of asking it
out loud. You all, all of us have this question in our minds now - you really don't
want to get up in the morning. You really would rather do something else. Just
think about that thing. Is it worth it? What are you gonna get from it?
       Okay. Problem number two. Say {Dam-ngak} [repeat] {je-pa} [repeat].
{Dam-ngak} [repeat] {je-pa} [repeat]. {Dam-ngak} is an idiom in Tibetan, and it
means like, private advice, instruction is better.
[Student: private?]

Normally private, normally it's a Lama teaching you something privately like
instruction... it doesn't have to be. So let's say instruction: {dam-ngak}. {Je-pa} is
to forget. [Laughter] There could be a homework question. Does this actually
describe what this thing is? No. It's not forgetting the instructions, it means
something different. This just happens to be the words that were used for
hundreds of years. It's a code-word for losing the object.

[Student: losing focus on the object?]

Losing the object, period. [Laughs.] Like, you're supposed to be meditating on
the Buddha image, mentally, right - never visually, right? - and you just find you
forgot to do it and suddenly you're like wooooo, what was I doing? It's just
when the object slips away. You lose... mentally, of course.

[Student: what do you mean, not visually? I mean, you are visualizing it.]

Yeah, but I wanna stress, you never meditate on a thing by staring at it with
your eyeballs. Of course, if it's a picture you're visualizing, of course. It's visual.

[Student: so it's like you lose it completely. Cause there's a lot of (unclear)]

This happens a lot, and you know it if you try, and oh, by the way, Tsong Khapa
says in the text: "A lot of these things I can't describe to you, really well, until it
happens to you." Until you meditate a lot, these don't mean a lot. It's like
reading a Volkswagon car manual on how to fix it without ever looking at the
car. You won't run into the problem until you try, and I can only describe it to
you roughly. But on the other hand if you try a lot, you will encounter these
problems, so at least you'll know you've got some ammunition. But if you never
went to this class and you've tried to meditate a lot, you're aware of these things
already. I mean you just find you forgot what you were doing. You just lost the
object completely. It's like your mind was just - it slips away from you. This is
where the object slips away from you. [Laughter, unclear.] It's not that you
forget to sit down and meditate. It's that you are meditating and that you've
stopped meditating and you didn't realize it.

[Student: and then your mind wanders.]

It's like a wandering mind. But the stress here is not on the wandering, which
comes later. It's that you're just not meditating anymore. The object has slipped
away already.

[Student: so you're already in meditating position.]

Yeah, all of these take place during meditating position...

[student: you mean you're not meditating any more, or you're meditating on a
different object?]

It's not the stress in problem number two. The stress in problem number two is
that you've lost the object.

[Stillwell: so this is not coarse...]

No. I'm not talking about that. Just that the object has slipped away.

[Stillwell: you're not meditating.]

[Student: does that stop occurring with lots of practice?]

Sure. That's the point. Yeah. And a lot of people never realize that. They go on,
sitting there, and they get up and say "Boy I had a good meditation, I felt good,
you know, and everything was smooth you know..." and you say "so what did
you meditate on, and they say "oh..." [laughter] The antidote for that, we ran
out of, now it's gonna be one to one, okay?

[Students: no. "E". It's "e".]

No what I mean is, the rest of the antidotes are gonna be like one antidote per
problem.   I forgot what it was, memory, I gotta be careful...          I'll say
remembering. It means that.

[Student: recall?]

You work with it. I remember that I didn't like a lot of the translations, but I
don't remember why. Recall means to forget something and then remember it
again. That's what recall means. That's not what it is. It's keeping your mind on
it. It's not letting it slip away. I would say awareness but awareness is coming
later.
[Student: Attentiveness?]

Attentiveness is pretty good.

[Student: Vigilance?]

There's another one that...

[Student: bringing your mind back to the object?]

It does not bring your mind back to the object. It keeps it from slipping away in
the first place. So what are you gonna call that?

[Student: vigilant attentiveness. (Laughter)]

[stillwell: how's this an antidote if you're preventing this thing from occurring in
the first place?]

Well, let me tell you.

[Stillwell: the antidote has to come after the event.]

Well let me see. I'll tell you what Tsong Khapa says. "When you lose the object
from your attentive state of mind, the second problem has occurred, and that is
given the name "forgetting the instructions". And he says, by the way, I couldn't
translate this whole thing this weekend, because I took the kids, the Mongolian
kids on a retreat, so I'll try to do it tomorrow, wednesday, and give it to you on
Thursday. It's a lot to translate, but I like it a lot, and I think you should have the
whole thing. It's really nice. So he says, "For example, if you are holding a
rosary", 'cause that's all that monks are holding all day long "in your hand, it's
like holding a rosary in your hand. If you have strong {dren-pa}, you must keep
your mind on the object." He says "different people have different capacities of
{dren-pa}, therefore for different people it may be harder or easier to develop
shamata. The {b. Kun-tu}, which is the [b. Abhisamasummacaya] says 'what is
{dren-pa}? It is that mental function which allows you not to forget and object of
the mind, because you are used to it." You've become accustomed to it. And
again, that's similar to the word, what?

[Stillwell: habituation?]
Gom. Meditation. Gom. So you have Asanga, or was it Vasubandhu here,
defining memory, in this case remembering, as, that mental function which acts
to keep you from forgetting an object of the mind, because you are familiar with
it. You've become familiar with it. So it's almost more like what? Habituation in
a way. Mental habituation.

[Stillwell: which is what you do before the meditation, not after you have the
problem.]

The whole meditation is that. Burning it into the mind. But what he's saying is,
the habit of keeping your mind on it is the antidote to losing it.

[Stillwell: is he essentially saying "start over and remember it again?"]

It doesn't say - oh, I know what you mean. Okay, yeah.

[Stillwell: okay you lost it's gone, okay so you'll remember it, start over, refocus]

Yeah, that's right.

[Student: it seems like what these antidotes in a way are saying is like get
yourself ready, these things are coming.]

Well it's a good question, and if we were in a debate ground,

[...it's not like after it happens but before, like you know your mind is gonna go
away, so you put extra attention on...
Stillwell: but that's contrary to the definition of antidote.'

But this would be a good debate, you see this is what we debate in the
monastery. Two students take a different position. One person says, "The
antidote should be applied before the problem, the antidote is what prevents the
problem from occurring; and the other student says, well it wouldn't be a
problem... you have to have the problem first, and then you apply the antidote.
And it's a good question. The word for correction we're using here is {du je-pa}
which means to take action. So it probably, I would say, if I were in a debate
ground and I were debating it I would say probably it has to occur after the
problem arises, but I don't think it's contradictory in a way. It's a good question.
[Student: well you can take action to prevent it from arising or you can take
action to get yourself back to where you were.]

So I don't think it's contradictory.

[Stillwell: so remembering just means recalling.]

Recalling if you've lost it. Remembering not to lose it if you have. [Laughter]
How's that?

[Unclear]

...It's another word for {nyen-po}, but you don't need to worry about that. I'm
just telling you that's another way of translating it.

[Student: michael, if this includes being distracted from the object by other
thoughts, for example, I don't know how the antidote would work...]

By the way, he...

[...because no matter how familiar you are with the object of meditation...]

No. If you're used to it, it comes up more easily in your mind, more easily. You
don't lose it as easily. Let me give you three characteristics, since we're on it. He
says, and I didn't wanna get into this much detail, but I will, since you're
interested.

[Stillwell: three characteristics of what?]

He's gonna give you three qualities of {dren-pa}. You don't need to know these,
I wasn't gonna talk about them, but since you asked... The first one is the quality
of the object. He says it's fixing your mind on an object which you have
experienced before and you're very accustomed to. He says secondly there's a
quality of how it holds its object. A quality of how it holds its object. We're
talkin about memory now, right? It says: "It's a natural not-forgetting of the
object that comes up in your mind very strongly. A natural not-forgetting of the
object that comes up in your mind very strongly. And he says "for example, the
way in which food comes to your mind when you get real hungry." [Laughter]
How it just pops into your mind very naturally when your hungry. You know I
had it at noon today; and you know a cheese sandwich you know came into my
mind very clearly. It was around 11:30. It was an hour and a half too early and I
was going around looking for menus. But that's I was hungry, and it just comes
into your mind very naturally and very clearly. The third quality is its function.
It functions not to allow your mind to wander to another object. It functions not
to allow your mind to wander to another object. Which again is really gonna
come in the next one, more clearly.

[Student: what do you do when you're entertaining two objects at once?]

Nobody can.

[...but you can have an image, and thoughts are still...]

They're alternating. They're alternating. The {b. ___?___}, the main text by
Chandrakirti on emptiness, describes that process. It says, and it's a beautiful
image - you take rose petals, and you glue them onto a target, like an inch
coming out of the target, and he says when you shoot an arrow into that pile of
rose petals, it's like a bullet going through a book, have you ever seen that
movie? He says it looks like THWAAK, and it went through all the rose petals at
once, but what's really happening is, you know, you can't see it with your eye,
but mentally you understand that it must be penetrating the first rose petal first.
And then the next rose petal. And then the next rose petal.
And then the next rose petal. So he says that when you get this illusion that
you're keeping your mind on french fries and the Buddha's

[cut. End of side A]



[student: forward, no but...]

In the debate ground you'd say "Come on, now Kylie, you know we can't talk
about that." I mean in the debate ground he can do things that nobody else can
do, so in the debate ground, oftentimes when you start a debate, you say [slap!
Followed by long Tibetan retort], which means: "I ain't talkin about Buddhas,
right? Ya got it? Ya got it? I ain't talkin about Buddhas. Buddhas are different...

[student: it seems to me that all of these definitions are of what we in English call
"concentration"]

Ah, yeah you say that, I think. It must have something to do with memory and
it must not be memory itself. Because the word is the word for memory. But I
don't think, it obviously doesn't mean simple memory in this case. It means,
somehow keeping your mind on the object. Keeping the object from slipping
away. And maybe you have to meditate to experience it and then you can come
back and tell us, I don't know. What is it that keeps the object from fading away?

[Student: but you can look at the red and the white on that board, and you can
perceive it at the same time, and it's not alternating thoughts; you perceive both
at the same time.]

There's a big debate about it. I understand. You believe you're seeing red and
white at the same time, simultaneously.

[Student: I know I am.]

It seems like that. I believe that with one sense-power, it might be possible, and
different schools say different - it's a big debate. You know, visually, maybe.
Two objects at once; red and white at once. French fries and the Buddha? I don't
know. It's like, I'm thinking the smell of french fries, right?

[Unclear]

So we'll have some snack now and then we've got one more to go, one big one.



[Cut]



...keeping your mind on one object. He talks about not switching objects, and
Tsong Khapa takes a whole couple of pages to talk about that. He says one of
the greatest enemies that causes {dren-pa} to fail, is that, one of the biggest
enemies that causes you to lose the object is that you keep switching objects. He
says "Don't do that". And the example he gives is, I don't know if you ever
boyscouted - didja ever try to start a fire with one of those things, those two
sticks of wood? It's very hard. It's really hard. We used to try. And in Tibet I
guess it was a pretty common way to start a fire, but you would sit there and
you'd rub two sticks together, and it gets pretty hot, but it doesn't start a fire,
and then you say, oh, let me try another stick. And it's gets pretty hot pretty hot
pretty hot and then you say oh, it's not burning, lemme try another stick. And
he says the greatest enemy is to keep changing the object. He says pick one
object, pick a virtuous object, he says, like the image of a Buddha in your mind,
and stick to it, until you achieve shamata. My personal experience is that you
know, keep the object for a long time. I think that at some point you get, it's
good to have a change of pace sometime in your daily practice. I mean, I would
say, personally, I can keep one thing for about six months. And then it gets, and
then it's good to get something fresh. You know like I try to meditate on
neutrality for six months or something, and then after six months, you know in
my personal experience you start to get tired of it [laughs].



[Stillwell: is that a function of the mind, that the mind becomes bored, and that's
not desirable?]

I don't know, it could be...

[student: wouldn't that just be analytical meditation, you know, thinking about a
concept?]

They're all meditation.

[...But that's different from the single-pointed kind of thing...'

We'll talk about it, we'll talk about it next time. There's three kinds of meditation.
Tsong Khapa says, "Don't switch around your objects. Pick an object, don't try to
get..." I'll tell you one thing that really doesn't work: is to try to have two or three
going on at one time you know, like today i'll try that one, tomorrow I'll try that
one. The Tibetans say that you can't sew with a needle that has two points. It
doesn't work. So pick an object, and stick to it. And therefore, since you're
gonna be stuck with this object for months and months, pick a virtuous one.

[Student: did you also say you could choose you own Lama?]

Oh yeah, sure. That would be great.

[...But it doesn't have to be a Buddha?]

We'll study that, actually, this course. We'll give you the answer. Okay, so that's
problem number two. By the way, we're not doing all eight tonight, so don't get
scared. I'm not keeping you till midnight. Did somebody ask a question?
[Student: in the homework it says, do the preliminaries and then the six,
whatevers...]

It means review them, over and over.

[...But then we should also pick a virtuous object and practice on that,
independently of the homework?]

I would say, right now, work on the homework, and don't pick a separate object.
Work on those... otherwise you got how many objects? Two. If you know
Rinpoche pretty well, you know he's always, through the years he's twenty
years he's taught, in fact I was talking with Bernadette about it tonight, I mean,
she used to work for the man who brought him here, who paid for him to come
here. And for twenty years he sat in that house, he didn't go out much, and he
didn't change the, his policy about this stuff was like "Hey, you go home and do
it, okay?" We didn't have group meditations, you know, and it was all - "that's
your problem. I'll teach you how to do it, you know, and then, but that's the end
of my... that's all I can do, I mean really, you have to go do it, yourself."
        So this is number three. These things again, they don't have good words
in English. {Jing-wa} [repeat], and {gš-pa} [repeat] so it's {jing-gš} [repeat]. {Jing-
wa} is very hard to translate. You could say dullness. I'm saying mental
dullness, in your translation that's what you'll see. There are many many words
people use, I don't know what's the best one - to me it feels like mental dullness
when I get it. {Gš-pa} is the opposite, {gš-pa} is like when your mind is, the word
for, {gš} means, actually the literal meaning for {gš} is "wild", like a {mir- gš} is a
"gorilla". It literally means "wild man". But {gš-pa} means, I don't know what to
say - excited or, stirred up. Agitated is great. Agitated is pretty good.

[Student: we're talking about {jing-gš}?]

Yeah. The {gš} part means agitated.         The {jing} part means dull.      They are
opposites.

[Unclear]

Now I'm gonna read from Tsong Khapa. {Gš-pa} is pretty easy. {Jing-wa} you
have to study. {Jing-wa} is the most dangerous enemy in meditation, period. Of
all. I'll just read it to you: {quotation}: which means - {jing-wa} has two forms.
One is the obvious form. And one is the subtle form. So you can get {jing }, and
the full word is {jing-wa}, you can get this dullness, either in a very obvious way,
or in a very subtle way. And for me to explain this to you I have to teach you
two more words, and you have to learn these words. I mean, in English. By the
way, I'll tell you something - this presentation is coming from Pabongka's Lam
Rim, which is modelled after Tsong Khapa's Lam Rim, and don't worry about
that, I'm not gonna ask you about that, but he wrote the second great famous
Lam Rim.

[Student: when?]

He died in 1941. He wrote the book in 1921. Born in 1878. He taught my Lama.
He was very famous. He taught the Dalai Lama's teacher. {Ne-cha} and {sel-
cha}. {Ne} means to stay. {Cha} here means aspect. The aspect of being fixed,
and I translate it as "fixation". {Sel} means "clear". {Cha} means aspect. So I
translate it as "clarity". [Unclear ... talking about Lama Yeshe's reincarnation]. So
he says here, "If you wanna know the difference between subtle dullness and
obvious dullness. Obvious dullness is where you've still got fixation on the
object, but you lost its clarity. So what it means is, you've still got the object in
your mind, your mind is still fixed on the object. But it's getting very dull,
uuuungh. And you know that one. It's were you didn't forget the object. That
was the last one. You didn't forget the object, which is called "forgetting the
instruction", but doesn't have anything to do with that. You didn't lose the
object, you still have the object in mind, but the clarity is gone. You have no
clarity about it at all.

[Student: it's almost as if your mind becomes negative, rather than positive.]

Cloudy, dark, something like that, yeah. He says its like a veil drawn between
you and the object.

[Stillwell: so there's no detail...]

No detail, no clarity. By the he says, "don't forget that these are qualities of the
mind. It's not that you can't see the object very well. It's that your mind is fuzzy.

[Student: unclear...is this {ne-cha} you're defining?]

We're defining {jing}. The third problem of meditation has two parts. Either the
mind is too slowed down, or the mind is too speeded up. And we're talking
about the first part, the {jing} part. Where the mind is dull. And it's a very very
nasty - this is the worst enemy of meditation that there is. Because the mind is
fixed on the object, and then you buzz out, and it's very unclear. So you - what
happens? You think you're doing great.

[Student: but it feels awful...]

Yeah, you don't feel refreshed when you get up, you just feel kind of stupid. But
anyway, you didn't lose the object. You have {ne-cha}, you have fixation on the
object, but it's not clear, you're mind is not clear.

[Student: do you mean to distinguish, do you mean that number three is the
worst enemy, or the first part of number three?]

First part of number three. If you want to say 3.1, and 3.2. I'm talking about
{jing}, which we call {jing-wa}, the full form is {jing-wa}. {Jing-wa} has two kinds.
There' obvious {jing-wa} and there's tricky, subtle {jing-wa}. Obvious {jing-wa}
is where you still have fixation but you lost clarity.

[Student: is this what [unclear] is sometimes translated as "sinking and
scattering"]

Yeah. Some people translate it as "Sinking and scattering" and that's not bad. But
you'll see many many translations, but that's not bad.

[Student: laxity, is that one?]

Yeah. Some people translate it that way.

[Stillwell: so this would be the sinking part.]

Yeah. So. This is the obvious sinking. You can catch this pretty easily. You
didn't lose the object. The object is still in your mental grasp. But there's no
clarity to it at all. None. That's what which one? {Jing} or {gš}? That's {jing-wa}
in its obvious form. Now what about the subtle form? He says: Say {Ngar-me}
[repeat]. We also call it "strength". {Ngar} is a very very unusual word in
Tibetan and it means, "the quality that a steel knife gets when you -" What's
what's that process?

[Student: temper it]

Temper it, yeah. After you temper a steel knife, it gets {ngar}. And I'd don't
know how you're gonna translate that. It's not sharp. It's...

[students: unclear.... it's tempered, trued, hardened]

It's hardened. Like they do it to sledgehammers and they do it to hammers and
there's some process, and I don't know what it is, you heat it to a certain
temperature, and it changes its quality. I mean steel is hard. But when you
temper it, it gets I don't know how many times harder. It gets some kind of bite
into it that it'll keep sharp for a long time. And they temper the blade part of the
knife, and it won't lose its sharpness. That's called {ngar}. And there's no - I
dunno what you're gonna call it in English. But it means there's no {ngar}. Now
you gotta listen up, okay, 'cause this is important. In the subtle form of {jing}, in
{jing-wa} (the full form of the word is {jing-wa}), in the subtle form of {jing-wa},
you do have fixation, and you do have clarity, but you don't have any intensity.
You have not lost the object, and you have some clarity towards the object, but
you don't have this extra - I don't know what you'd call it. He says you can
compare it to holding a cup in your hand firmly, or holding it, you know when
you kind of let go of it a bit on the round part? And it spills. Like the cup didn't
fall out of your hand, like you still have the cup. You have clarity; you have
fixation. But there's no strength, there's no firmness to it. And he compares it to
that. There's no...

[student: like losing your grip?]

Yeah, like losing your grip. He says that. He uses the same word, he says you're
about to lose it, you're about to drop it. {Hš} means "loose", shaky. And he says
that the big danger is that you can continue this kind of dullness for many hours.
And you can think that you're doing a good meditation. And again, he says I
can't describe it to you very easily until you try it. But I'm afraid if you examine
yourself well, I can tell you that I have this most of the time when I meditate.
I've been doing it twenty years, I can stay on my butt for a long time. For hours.
And I can not move and I can keep my mind on the object for a long time, but
there's some kind of - he calls it "water running under the ice." Something going
on under, where all these other shaky thoughts are always there, just about to
happen, I'm just about to lose it, and I got no clar - I can keep my mind on it, but
it's just buzzing out. It's basically - feeling good, feeling like I'm meditating, I do
not lose the object; I wander, but I still generally the object is there most of the
time, and I can even have some clarity towards it, but it's dull, it's low-level.

[Student: this seems more dangerous than {jing}]
This is {jing-wa}...

[...oh, I mean the obvious part...]

This is {jing-wa trang-mo}, and it's very very nasty.

[Student: but you don't know when it's happening -]

We have this debate going on between these two guys.

[Stilwell: why is it nasty?]

Because it can be easily mistaken for -

[stilwell: for the real thing?]

He says it's like a member of the family who's turned - how do you say that? It's
an enemy getting into the inner circle. You know, a true traitor in the midst of
family, you know, something like that. Somebody who really wants to murder
their brother, you know. One person who's - he's inside. He's taken as part of
the family. But he's a traitor - like Benedict Arnold. Like that CIA guy. He's in at
the top, and he's working against it. And so the big problem is that you mistake
him for your friend. It looks like what you're trying to get, and all that time he's
working against you.

[Stilwell: is there any kind of benefit to doing this kind of meditation?]

He says - real good for getting an animal rebirth. [Laughter]

[stilwell: I mean in a practical sense, I mean you said you've been meditating that
way for twenty years....(laughter)... I mean I don't mean in the case of you, but
given that we're all gonna be practicing and experience this, are we pretty much
all gonna be just spinning our wheels when we're just doing this kind of
meditation, not really...]

No I'll give you something. He says: {jing-wa trang-mo...}: "if you mistake
{jing-wa trang-mo} for true meditation, {dre-bu}: the result is {suk-su me...}: it
won't even get you to a birth in the form or formless realm." You remember we
said that some meditations can? Not only that but {tibetan, tibetan, tibetan}:
"you will become forgetful in this life, and {she-rab mi-tsel du tro-wa}: the
powers of your intellect will start to diminish." It makes you stupid. It does
make you kinda, you know like people who've been on marijuana for a long
time. If you ever know somebody who's been smoking marijuana for twenty
years or something, it kinda like that. I mean steadily. {Quoting in tibetan} He
says it's nothing better than a meditation which is aimed at achieving an animal's
birth in your next life." I wasn't making this up.

[Stilwell: so given that we're only gonna get this far, we're better off not to
meditate.] [Student: nooooo]

Obviously not, you know, we gotta apply the antidote. [Unclear: laughter.]

The antidote - oh, first of all I have to tell you about {gš}, because the antidote is
the same. {Gš-pa} means that agitated state of mind. And Tsong Khapa goes into
this long section where he's trying to distinguish {gš-pa}, which is the long form
of this word, from {tro-wa}. {Tro-wa} means: where your mind wander off to
another object. {Tro-wa} means: where your mind runs to any other object than
what you're meditating on.

[Student: can you write that down?]

The Tibetan? Yeah, but you don't have to know it on the other...[unclear,
chatter] You don't have to write that down. {Tro-wa} is any wandering of your
mind off to another object while you're trying to meditate. I'm gonna explain to
the difference between {gš-pa} and {tro-wa}, but you have to understand {gš-pa}
in terms of {tro-wa}. {Tro-wa} means any wandering of your mind off to
another object during meditation. And it can be to a virtuous object. Like if you
are supposed to be meditating on the Buddha's body, but your mind wanders to
doing some charity for someone, that's {tro-wa}. It's a disturbance to your
meditation. It's bad. It's a mistake. Another kind of {tro-wa} is where your
mind wanders to someone you don't like. Like you start to think of somebody
at work that said something to you yesterday. That's another kind of {tro-wa}.
A third kind of {tro-wa} would be if your mind wandered to some object that
was desirable to you, some desire object. Some object that you desire. The
example he gives is if you saw one of those Tibetan operas at noon - that's a TV
for a Tibetan in the 15th century, okay? There would be these religious operas
called {nam-par}, and if you ever saw one, did anybody ever see one? They go
on for like five hours, the Dalai Lama comes and sits in a tent, and you wander
around and the lady gets up and goes RUUUALLLRSH...just like a real opera,
you know. And no one knows what's going on, you know, and you can't hear
the words, and you know, people wander around and have a good time, and he
says like "At night, when you sit down to meditate, if that lady who was in the
opera comes into your mind, that's {tro-wa} towards a desirable object, towards
a pretty object. Some kind of object of the senses, a desire object. That last one
is the only one that is {gš}. So that's the difference between the general
wandering of the mind, and {gš}. The big enemy is - what does your mind
wander to ninety percent of the time when you're meditating? Something you
like.

[Student: no, something bothering you...]

Well, you're a special case. [Laughter]

[...no I mean if you're preoccupied by something...]

Well yeah, if you had a fight at work in the last three days, that's what you're
gonna think about. I know that, because it happened to me many times.

[...Why does it have to be just fights? I mean what if you're just worried about
something?]

Yeah, it's something like that. But what I'm saying is that because the wandering
of your mind is so often in the vast majority of cases it's towards something you
want, something you like. It doesn't mean you know you're gonna go rob a
bank. It means you start thinking about what's for breakfast, or you start
thinking about what you're gonna do when you get up. That's all {gš-pa},
because its object is a desirable thing.

[Student: so it's {tro-wa} towards a desirable object rather than {tro-wa} towards
the jerk at work.]

Or towards a virtuous object.

[Student: it doesn't matter...(unclear)]

Yeah, he says, in fact you don't want any of them, and actually you're enemy is
{tro-wa}, but because ninety percent of the time it's towards something you like,
something you want. This is the most common human tendency, is that when
you try to meditate, you start thinking about something you like. And it's not
like [pant, pant, pant] I really want pancakes this morning, you know, which is
what usually comes into my mind, but it's like you just start thinking about the
next thing, you know, right? You just start thinking about the next thing you're
gonna do after that, or, what the next big thing, or, which account I have to
work on today...

[student: so if I'm sitting in meditation, and I'm getting {tro-wa} towards a holy
object, or towards an object that I hate, I'm not suffering from number three.]

You are. The name of number three is that which is restricted to being distracted
towards a desirable object. But, obviously, if you get distracted towards a
virtuous object, or if you get distracted towards an object that you hate, that's
obviously fault number three, problem number three.

[Stilwell: so any kind of distraction.]

Yeah, but the word for the problem is dullness and agitation. The full form, I'm
trying to making them short so you can remember them easily, and that's what
they do in Buddhism. It's actually {jing-wa}, and {gš-pa}, so I'm gonna give you
an example. He says if you wanna know the difference between fixation, clarity,
we're talking about this one now, all right? If you wanna know the difference
between whether there's {nga,r} or not, whether there's intensity or not, it's
where you're holding a cup or your rosary in your hand, and whether or not
you're holding it with firmness or loosely, and he gives another example, which I
like. He says, suppose you know a certain Lama, a certain teacher, and generally
you have some faith towards him, but it's not a very intense faith, it's not like
you, when you see him you start crying or something, you know, you like him,
you respect him, but it's not like some kind of real intense faith. But he says,
then you can sometimes get the experience that just suddenly when you're with
him, just suddenly you get this like intense flash of faith towards him, this very
intense feeling of 'oh, well this person is really something special' you know, 'this
is really somone incredible. That's the difference between having fixation and
clarity, and fixation and clarity with intensity. So he gives two examples. You've
got fixation and clarity when you're holding the cup. Just by not dropping the
cup you've got it. But whether or not it's tight or not. And then that second
example is that Lama. Okay, generally you think he's a nice lama. But then you
get to know him and he says something [tape cut] ... and you're trying to
increase the intensity, turn up the intensity, hold the object tighter. Try to focus
your mind more tightly, and I'll tell you, I mean I found a big enemy that's not
listed in these, which is just plain being tired. You know I was meditating and it
was deedeedeedeedee, and I couldn't do anything right and I was like wondering
'what's going on?' and I searched my mind, and I said: "you're tired. You had a
long day." And I'll tell you, personal experience - you can't meditate very well
when you're tired. Forget it. It's better to get up and do something virtuous.
You can't concentrate if you're tired. To really get good shamata you have to
really have to be sleeping well, you have to be eating well, it's very difficult.
That's why some of you're putting 2 a.m. on your thing or 12 midnight. No.
Some people prefer it, some people are better at it, and some people have a
work that doesn't allow them to do anything else, but I really think that morning
is better, if you can. And if you're gonna be responsible and you're gonna be
serious about your meditation, part of it is getting enough rest, 'cause you never
will. And again, for an American in New York, that's difficult. It's difficult for
me. But if you wanna get shamata, you'd better count on getting enough rest,
'cause otherwise you won't get it. Who gets enough rest? I dunno. But it's part
of the game, you're gonna have to decide what you want. You might have to
give up something else to get enough rest to have a good meditation. It's a big
part, actually. And if you don't do it you never will. And if you don't do it in this
class probably you'll never have another reason to, really. There'll probably be
nothing to inspire you to do it suddenly, you know, if you don't get in the habit
in this six weeks. I'd say you probably will fail, so it's important. So that's that.
I'll give you homework.

[Unclear... chatter about handouts...]




[end of tape]
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Course III: Applied Meditation