ACI 3 «Прикладная медитация», занятие 6

Class Six: The Five Problems of Meditation, Part Two
Geshe Michael Roach
March 3, 1994
transcribed by: Matthew Remski



(stillwell: ...all of the five parts of meditation came from the Prayer of
Samantabhadra and we're doing Tsong Khapa's commentary on that...)

Ah, we're reading, most of what we're reading was from {b: Lam Rim Chenmo},
which is Je Tsong Khapa's masterpiece. And then, ah, we used that for the
preparation, we used it for the environment, we used it for, what was the third
thing?

(Student: body)

oh. Body posture. So for those three things. Now he's quoting other people. So
for the preparation, he's quoting mostly {b: Gom Rim}, but when he gets to the
seven limbs, he's quoting, he's using the Prayer of Samantabhadra, and then
when we got to the environment, he was quoting the {b: Sutralamkara}, and {b:
Gom Rim}. {b: Gom Rim} was quoting {b: Sutralamkara}. There are 400-500
years between them. And then when we got to the posture, we used, uh, Je
Tsong Khapa, and that again was from {b: Gom Rim}, and now we got to the
mental technique, uh, we're using a different book now, because Je Tsong Khapa
doesn't go into much detail, so we're using Pabongka's, Kyabje Pabongka's Lam
Rim, which is {b: Liberation in Our Hands}. So, and you're still not gonna get a
reading, okay, sorry, I'm just too busy. I have it in Tibetan, I didn't have time to
translate it, but I will, because it's really useful, and I'd rather that you have the
whole thing, of what I'm saying is in there, and I remember, you know when
they taught me this in Dharamsala twenty years ago, you know I followed a lot
of it for a long time, and misunderstanding a few points, and it was, you know,
bad. So I think it's better if you have the original text, you know, and then
anything you misheard from me or that I mispoke, you can check from the
original text. So I will translate it, I didn't have enough time this week. My lama
needed something, and whenever he needs something I'm not gonna do what
you guys need (laughs). You know I had some struggles with it but this is the
right thing to do. Yeah?
(Stillwell: the other question I had was when you're talking about doing all the
preparations and having to do the preparatory practices first, you know, you'd
said before, 'well, you can't just go into a room all of the sudden and start
meditating.' So, in practical reality, you know, and you also said 'six months for
shamata' or whatever...)

If you're doing a shamata retreat, yeah.

(Stillwell: so in reality, in practical reality, how long are we talking about, I mean,
ya gotta do all your preliminaries, and do a strong daily meditation before you
do a significant retreat, of like, all day for months, how long should you -)

I think an hour is enough, but I didn't want to -

(stillwell: no, no, but I mean like, years of that?)

Oh, if you do it an hour? A lot depends on your {tso-tsok drip-jang}, you know,
your karmic situation at that time. If you're very good at your morality,
confessing, cleaning yourself all the time... we're doing bad deeds every day. If
you're really seriously trying to improve those every day, then I'd say in a year
you can have some nice, you know, in six months I think you would develop
some deep concentration, and I think even sooner, like three months, you'd start
to notice a change in your ability to concentrate.

(Stillwell: if you're doing the confessions every day...)

Yeah, and I can't emphasize enough. If you don't do those, and you don't find
yourself advancing, well that's the reason, you know. And you will advance if
you do do those. And I, it's just a fact of life, you know. Just try it. Do it like
that.

(Student: what if you confess like during the day, I mean you realize you did
something, and you -)

Atisha carried a stupa around with him, and it wasn't easy, it was like that big,
you know, and when, a stupa's like a little reliquary, that holds some lama's....
And he would ride from Lhasa to Shi-ga-tse on a horse, and when he had a bad
thought, he would get off the horse and do a confession on the spot. And his
disciples would be standing there (laughs), and so that's fine.
(Student: and would you really... I mean when you say confession, do you mean
the catholic... I mean you think about what you did or what you thought...)

Those four things we talked about. The main thing is to get some kind of {dom-
sem}. {Dom-sem} means "the wish to restrain yourself in the future". That's
really the main function of... so it doesn't just mean you can do whatever you
want, purify it then go do it again, you know, you have to have some kind of
desire to restrain yourself, and have some logical, workable program for
improving yourself. Don't just wish you could be a better person. You're logical
about how you feed yourself three times a day, you're logical about how you
find an apartment, you're logical at work, you know, be logical about, you
know, just make a program that's gonna work for you. And go at it like any
other activity you go at. Say, "I'd like to not... I'd like to do less of what I do
wrong six months from now. How can I do that?" And make yourself a plan
and follow through on it and do it.

(Stillwell: in addition to that hour a day of concentration for six months or
whatever, in addition to that are the preliminaries also.)

I'm counting the preliminaries in the hour, because as you get used to doing
them, they take less time, actually. I think you can, I'm talking about the
preliminaries just before meditation.

(Stilwell: I'm talking about the {ngon-dro})

We're only talking about the {ngon-dro} for a tantric retreat. And when you're -

(stilwell: so when you're talking about shamata, so to be successful in shamata,
you, it's not necessary to do those?)

No, you don't have to. We don't have a custom of doing those specifically, but
we do have, it's optional, you can do them, or you can do some other virtuous
deeds.

(Student: what's {ngon-dro}?

Like, there's a practice in some traditions and lineages to do a hundred thousand
of this, a hundred thousand of this, you know, ten thousand prostrations, and
then you're ready to do some other practice. There is that custom, that does
exist, but there are other ways to fulfill that. In our tradition, in our lineage.
(Student: could you say something about doing practice, doing mantras when
you're not at home? You know, the portable altar...)

I can't say much about mantras, you know, those are tantric.     If you're
committed to do some, then you have to do them, and they're very powerful.
Why they work, what they mean, they, you know, when the time comes we can
start in on that.

(Student: so doing it on...[unclear])

I dunno. (Laughs)

(student: well let's just say confession for instance, that's something we talked
about, that's not a tantric -)

Well, I think it's a bad habit to even consider. That's like when you go to your
boss and you say "Should I take an extra week on my vacation now, or should I
take it six weeks from now?" And if he's smart, he'll say, "I don't think you
should take an extra week at all." (laughs)

(student: [unclear])

What I mean is, don't get in the habit of thinking you have any option. Just don't
do it. You feed yourself very well three times a day. It's a miracle. It's a lot of
work. You know, if you think about it, all the effort that goes into getting three
times a day food, how many times do you miss it? Very rarely, if you're like me.
Put the same effort into your meditation practice.         Just, that time is for
meditation practice, period. I mean it should be extremely rare cases, like we
were driving the kids up to the retreat, and we had to get up like at six to get
there, so we'd have to do it before that... You know, don't even consider it, you
know, human nature - if you give yourself an option, you'll take it.

(Student: Michael, are we mixing something up here, I don't think anyone's
talking about meditating on the subway or meditating while they're walking to
work.)

Well you mentioned confession right? As a preliminary to meditation, no, you
can, if you've committed yourself to doing confession every day, do it well in
your home. Take the time, find the time. Give up something else. If you have
to, give up on your job, take a lower job. Or control your job. Don't let your job
run you. And if it does you know you have to find another one. It's hard. It's
not easy. Easy to say, but, you know, hard to leave it, and go get another one.
Alright. We're on the third problem, the fourth problem. We finished the
preparation for meditation. We finished the environment for meditation. We
finished the physical posture for meditation. And then we're on the mental
technique, and we had, how many problems would come up?

(Students: three, three)

Wait a minute. Oh. So far we had three. There'll be five in total. And there'll be
eight antidotes to them. So we're now onto number 4, okay, which is {du mi-
jepa}. By the way, I didn't have it, but there's a chart, I don't know if some of you
have seen it - an elephant and a monkey?

(Students: [mumbling] I haven't)

it's a path up to these, through these mental stages, and it's a picture, it's a wood-
block carving, an old one, it's very good, if we can try to find it sometime.

(Student: I have it if you want...)

You have one of those?

(Student: I have it from Namgyal Monastery)

Oh, fine. Maybe we can get it reproduced. If you can loan it to me, I'll get Marie
to look at it. It's very nice. You have the whole chart, and the monkey is {gš-pa},
agitation, and the elephant is [unclear], and he changes colors from black to
white as he goes up the path. Okay. {Du mi-je-pa}. {Du mi-je-pa} means "not
taking action". Not taking action.

(Student: is this the first...)

This is the fourth problem, that can come up in your mind. What were the first
three, since you asked?

(Students: [mumbles] laziness...)

Yeah, I don't know if I like the word laziness. It's not wanting to do it, really.
And that's our most insurmountable obstacle. You know, if you don't have
shamata now, and you've been studying dharma for a couple of years, the fact is,
you don't really want to do it. You know. To be honest. Because if you really
wanted it, you would have had it by now. That's just a fact. We're not trying
very hard. So I don't know if "laziness" is so good. I think it's like, "not really
wanting it". Not really wanting to do it. That was the first one. What is the
second one?

(Student: losing the object)

Yeah. Losing the object, which is called forgetting the instruction, so that's kind
of a misnomer, and the third one is what?

(Students: dullness and agitation)

Yeah, those two extremes. Dullness and agitation. Whatever translation you
want to use, I don't mind, I don't feel strongly about any of them. If you know
what it is, that's the...

(student: Michael, I've seen it usually referred to as the non-identification of
either of those...)

Ah, no, I haven't seen that.

(Student: ...and the antidote is their identification.)

you could say that, and we'll get into it tonight. But that's not what the Tibetan
says. It just says {jing- gš nyi}, the two.

(Student: that's what, some of the other [unclear] I'm familiar with make that
point.)

It's a good point, and we'll talk about it tonight, but the Tibetan doesn't say that.
It's implied, but we'll talk about it. So {du mi-je-pa} means "not taking action",
and this applies to her note. It means, what was the last problem we had, it was
agitation and dullness. And what was the antidote?

(Students: Watchfulness.)

Watchfulness. So that doesn't imply anything about doing anything about it yet.
So watchfulness catches it. {Jing-gš nyi} occurs, and watchfulness catches it, but
then it's a fault if you don't do anything. So in number 3, your mind either got
distracted to an object of what?

(Students: desire)

normally a pleasant object. Which doesn't mean you're thinking about some
sexy girl or something like that. It means any, most of the thoughts you have
during the day are "what am I gonna do next? What should I do right now?
Where am I gonna go tonight?" Those are all desire objects, thoughts, really,
when you boil it down, the thought of what you're gonna do next is pretty much
a desire thought, because it's motivated by "what will make me feel good next?"
almost all your thoughts are. So that's {gš-pa}, agitation, if you wanna call it that,
and what's {jing-wa}, the other one?

(Students: dullness...)

Dullness, which was what? It's where the object gets very dark, and you're not,
you have some, you're still fixed on it but it's very dark, or else you've lost clarity
completely, okay? So, awareness or mindfulness, or what did we call it?

(Students: watchfulness)

Watchfulness, catches it. That's the antidote for number three. Now, at number
4, it's the decision to do something about it. What that implies is that you can
have those two mental states occur, and you notice them, and what? You don't
do anything. And it takes some effort to do something. And that's a problem in
meditation. If you try for a while you'll notice yourself doing that. You catch
yourself starting to get buzzed out, and you notice it, and then you don't do
anything. You don't think to do anything. And that's the fourth problem of
meditation. It's not taking any action. It's antidote is guess what?

(Student: taking action.)

Yeah. What's {mi} mean?

(Students: "not")

"Not", right. So what do you guess? {Du je-pa}.
(Students: [unclear])

We're onto "h" I think, right?

(Students: f,f,g...)

"G", yeah.

(Student: no, "f". [Laughter])

Let's see. The first one had four, right?

[Unclear]

{Du je-pa} means "doing something". What you do about agitation, and what
you do about dullness - are they the same thing? Would you do the same thing
for both?

(Students: no, no.)

Obviously not. So first we're gonna talk about the nastiest one, which is, which is
the worse of those two?

(Students: dullness)

Dullness. Why?

(Students: [unclear])

No, there was a better reason.

(Stilwell: because you think it's your friend and it's...)

Yeah, yeah, 'cause it looks like a family member, but it's a traitor. In other
words, it can be mistaken for meditation. You can easily mistake it for successful
meditation. Just, because you can sit there for a long time doing it, and many
many people do, for many years, and they don't realize that they're not
meditating.

(Student: Isn't that a fault of more, like, advanced practitioners, like, people who
are really good meditators?)

I think it's the fault of someone who can sit for more that a half-an-hour or an
hour. But what they don't realize is that they're just in sort of a stupid state, a
dull state. I do it a lot, I've done it a lot, and it takes, it's very subtle and very
dangerous, so that's why they work on that more, they teach you more about
that one, because it's so dangerous, it's so attractive. It looks so much like real
meditation. And you can sit there for a long time. You know, and your breath is
real nice and it's quiet, and you might be getting some good sensations in your
body, but your mind is just blank or dull. Not blank but, it's dark.

(Stilwell: if I could say something... that's even a more pleasant state than our
normal, discursive thought state... random thoughts.)

Possibly. Possibly. But also...

(stilwell: ... relative to how we normally are thinking and frantic...)

Oh, it is. I think it's sort of like if you've ever been stoned on marijuana or a little
bit drunk, or... it's kinda like that, I think. It's kind of a dull, a stupid, kind of a
stupid state. So that's the most dangerous one. And the antidotes are um, so,
don't forget, we're talking about half of it now, half of the problem, which is
{jing-wa}, and that's uh, the antidote of that is... {Drin-pa}, I can't think of one
good English word, but it means tightening up your concentration. Tightening
up your concentration.

(Student: Michael, is that the same as {jing-wa trang-mo}?)

We're talking about two different things now. And I'll answer that. I'll quote
okay. He says, and I like this, I think this might help you. [Tibetan quotation].
Which means, {jing-wa trang-mo}, this is plain dullness, right, {jing-wa trang-
mo}, is that subtle dullness. In plain dullness, you've lost something but you
haven't lost something else. What is that?

(Student: fixation but no, no clar-)

No clarity. In plain dullness. You're fixed on the object but it's totally, it's not
clear in your mind at all. And in the subtle form is more dangerous, because you
have what?
(Students: [unclear])

You still have fixation, you do have clarity, but there's no strength to it, there's
no intensity to it. There's no power to it.

(Student: that's called {jing-wa}?)

Plain {jing-wa} is where you lose the clarity completely. {Jing-wa trang-mo},
which is its brother, okay, actually it's {trang-mo}, okay, {jing-wa trang-mo} is
the subtle form of dullness, okay? And that's the dangerous one. That's where
you are fixed on the object, it is still apparent to your mind, you have some
clarity, but the clarity is very feeble and the clarity has no power or strength to it,
and you're satisfied with that, and you stay there for a long time. And it just
leads you into a state of gross dullness. Eventually, it flips you back into losing
the clarity.

(Stilwell: same antidote for the subtle dullness?)

We're gonna talk about it.

(Student: is {she-shin}, then, the antidote for both of those?)

Uh, yeah, it's not really the antidote, and that's the point that Ariel made, it's
more the thing that yells "Hey".

(Student: it's the alarm.)

yeah, it's the watch, it's the, they call it {so-pa} in Tibet. {So-pa} means a guard or
watchman, or a - who is that?

(Student: a gatekeeper?)

In India they have this guy, they still have this guy, who walks around all night
long, and he has a staff, and he bangs it on the ground, you know, all the people
in the neighbourhood hire this guy, and he walks around all night, and he bangs
this stick on the ground, and you hear him. And it's so you know he's doing his
job. And uh, thieves run away. They hear him coming and they run away.
They keep the thieves out of the rich neighbourhoods in New Delhi. So that's
just, his job is only to yell. And Ariel's right in that sense. He's not stopping, it's
not an antidote for those states of mind. It's being aware that they've come up.
And then you do the next, then you have to watch out for the next problem,
which is not doing anything about it.

(Student: [unclear])

So, she asked me to write the Tibetan for the subtle form, just this part. So, to
answer Tim's question, the antidote for both of them coming up is the same,
which is to yell. But the antidote that stops them when they come up is different.
And that's what we're talking about now. We're talking about what do you do
when you get dullness - you {drin-pa}, you tighten up on the object.

(Student: so that's a specific definition of {du je-pa}.)

It's half of {du je-pa}. It's the action you take when you get dull. But we didn't
get yet to the action you take when you get agitated. So this is a general word
for taking action. When you get dull you're gonna take one series of actions, and
when you get, and I haven't written it yet, and when you get agitation which
means your mind goes to a desirable object, you're gonna take a different action.
So we're only talking about the action you take when you start to get dull.

(Student: which is which of these?)

{Drin-pa}.

(Student: have we discussed the action for the subtle...)

Maybe it'd be better if I did this. No, that wouldn't be better. This is 4(a), really,
okay? This is one-half of taking action. I'm sorry, this is [unclear]... What action
do you take? Well it depends on which of the two problems you noticed in the
last step. If you noticed yourself... in the text he says, he doesn't say "being dull"
he says, "catch yourself as you're sliding into dullness".            {She-shin}, the
watchfulness, is supposed to trigger, at the verge of sliding into dullness. But as
you get dullness, or after you've had it for a half-hour, you {drin-pa}, you {drin-
pa}, you tighten up on the object. Now how you do that, he's got a whole series
of advice here, and it's good.

(Student: is that, {drin-pa}, is that the correction - )

For this problem. And it's half of this, which is "taking action". The problem is
not doing anything when you notice those things coming up. The correction is
to start concentrating better. Yeah.

(Student: why isn't that g, b, something, instead of 4a?)

(student: well it has to be g-something)

I'm sorry, it should be g-1.

(Student: so the lineage is {jing-wa, du mi je-pa, du je-pa, drin-pa} that's the...)

Say again?

(Student: that's the order, right? First you get {jing-wa}...)

Yeah, let's suppose you got {jing-wa}, then you do {she-shin}, which is Hey! I got
dullness. You notice it. Then you do...

(student: {du je-pa}

{Du je-pa}, in the form of {drin-pa}. You notice yourself getting dull, the notice is
the {she-shin}, he yells "Hey, you're sliding into dullness". That was already last
week. Now, what do you do? You concentrate. You tighten up your
concentration.

(Student: so g, then also comes after 3, because when the guard sounds the
alarm...)

Then the guys run out of their houses and beat up the thief. That's {du je-pa}.
{Du je-pa} is the guys coming out to take action. The soldiers waking up after
the watch - what do you call that, in the army?

(Stilwell: the sentry?)

The sentry yells.

(Student: so how do you tighten up your concentration?)

We're just about to talk about it. I wanna make sure everybody's got, still with
me, okay, anyone confused? No?
(Student: but we're not talking about subtle yet, right?)

Uh... we're gonna talk about subtle. We'll talk about both, actually. Yeah?

(Student: in the monasteries, do the monks get to check with like, a mentor or
an older monk, or are they just presented with this text, and they have to follow
this process?)

No, when you enter the monastery, an older - you have two kinds of teachers,
you have three kinds of teachers. One is your house teacher, and he's like your
parent. And he can be a great scholar, or he can be like a cook at the monastery.
But he becomes your father, and he teaches you reading and writing and
manners, monkly manners; he tells you what to memorize, and he feeds you, at
his expense. The monastery doesn't help. And then later on you meet your
scripture teacher, and he becomes like your main scripture teacher, and then he
may or may not be your house teacher, but usually not. And then he takes you
through the scriptures. And then you've got like adjunct professors, like there'll
be a specialist in Abhidharma, let's say your scripture teacher is not a specialist in
Abhidharma, so he'll say, okay, for Abhidharma I want you to go to this other
teacher and study with him. So, if you had a question about this, you'd normally
go to your scripture teacher, and ask him. And it's a very close relationship. It's
very very nice. It's a lifetime relationship, you never, it's permanent.

(Stilwell: you hope you get along...)

Yeah, yeah.

(Student: so Michael, do either or neither of those teachers become your root
teacher?)

Well, I'd say, oftentimes it's your house teacher, in a way, um, but oftentimes it's
your scripture teacher, but it may not be either one really.

(Student: so most of the time...)

I'd say most often it's your, if you asked them, it'd be a 50-50 split between your
house teacher and your... Your house teacher is, might be in charge of 30 young
men, so you might feel closer to your scripture teacher in that case. If you were
in a small house, a college, when I say house it's a college, there's 12 colleges in
our monastery, some of the colleges are very small, and your house teacher
might be only have two students, and then you sort of then you get to feel more
close to him. I think it just depends on who it is, when they speak, it's a {jin-lap}
for you. It's that sixth preliminary we talked about. When he teaches you
something, it strikes you and changes you. And the person who has that ability
to strike that chord in you I think becomes your root lama. So, {drin-pa}. {Drin-
pa} means to tighten up your concentration. Now, the first question that Je
Tsong Khapa, no, I'm sorry, now we're in Kyabje Pabongka. Pabongka says, "do
you have to stop meditating? Do you have to give up the object to fix your
{jing-wa}?" He says no. And that's the first level of {drin-pa}. So the first
meaning of {drin-pa}, which could be on your homework, is to just not to give
up the object, and to just try to tighten your concentration.

(Student: is this what you were talking about, the methods?)

Yeah. Now I'm gonna tell you all the kinds of {drin-pa}. The best one to do, if
you can do it is don't give up on meditating on the object, keep it in mind, and
just try to increase the clarity of it. Try to bring back the clarity of it. There, I'm
sorry, the intensity of the clarity.

(Stilwell: but wait a minute. The intensity is the subtleness, and the clarity is the
gross...)

Yeah, it's really the gross {jing-wa}, you've lost all the clarity.

(Stilwell: so when you tighten up on gross {jing-wa} you're trying to get back
clarity.)

Yeah you're just bringing back plain clarity. So the first kind of {drin-pa}, the first
kind of tightening your concentration, is just to try to bring back your
concentration on the object until you have some good clarity. What's the
distinction between this and the next level of {drin-pa}, you haven't given up on
keeping the object in front of you, which implies what about the next kind of
{drin-pa}? Yeah, okay. The second kind of {drin-pa} is where, okay, it's gone too
far, you can't keep the object in mind, and when you try to increase the clarity,
you're not successful.

(Student: is that subtle?)

It gets to be subtle, and he says that. If you try to increase, and it's not
happening, he actually says, it's flipping towards gross {jing-wa}, which means
the {jing-wa} has got so serious that you're gonna have to give up the object for
a few minutes.

(Student: the first one is don't give up the object and -)

Yeah, and just try to make it more -

(student: concentrate on the clarity of it.)

Try to get it more clear to your mind.

(Student: the second one is just start over again.)

Well, there's a lot of, no, it's to shift to another object, okay.   And he says
something nice, which I'll translate for you.

(Student: so the second one is shift to another object. Student: well sometimes
they just go away from it for a while and then come back to it, but not specifying
changing the object.)

That sounds like changing to me.

(Student: no, using the same object in meditation, but taking a break.)

And putting your mind where?

(Student: just, not meditating.)

Well, we'll talk about it. This is what it says here.

(Student: like, break the session.)

We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it. He says {Tibetan quote from Pabongka},
he says, the cause of subtle dullness is some kind of {shum-ba}. {Shum-ba} is a
very interesting word. It means almost like a kind of depression.

(Student: could you write that down?)

Yeah, I don't wanna write to many things down on the board, but since you
asked, you know, you don't have to write this, okay? People ask me, what do
you do for depression in Tibet. And this is one kind. {Shum-ba} means where
you just kind of lost your confidence. Or you're not, or you have some kind of
depression in your mind. And he says this and dullness are related. Therefore
he says...

(student: I'm sorry, that sentence, the cause of what is depression?)

He says {shum-ba} contributes to {jing-wa}. {Shum-ba} meaning some kind of,
what did I say, depression, loss of confidence really, and he says that really
contributes to dullness. You don't have to know that, I didn't wanna write it
down. And he says: what do you do then? You have to do something to restore
your, your, I don't know what you'd call it. It's a real hard word in Tibetan. It's
called {seng to-pa} And {seng to-pa} means to uplift yourself. We call it uplift. It
means think about something that's gonna bring your mind back up. He says so
the second kind of {drin-pa} is, move your mind to something else which is
going to uplift your mind. Yeah?

(Student: so does that mean something that you have an easier time with?)

No, he's got several specific thoughts which will {seng to-pa} you. Which will
uplift you.

(Student: so in Tibetan, it's...)

Oh that comes later.

(Student: discouraged and encouraged?)

Yeah, like that. {seng to-pa} is a... well you'll see some examples, okay. I'll give
you his examples.

(Student: for number two, you just want us to concentrate on the clarity,
without the intensity?)

Well, this problem, {jing-wa} which is dullness, is some kind of disease of your
clarity, yeah.

(Student: so number two, we're only concentrating on the clarity, we're not
concentrating on the intensity.)
Which number two do you mean? Oh. It's where it's where, you've really given
up on meditating on that object now. He's saying that your mind is so far down
-

(student: no, the one before shift to another object)

(stilwell: tighten concentration.)

(student: no, number two was keep object in mind, and concentrate on clarity...)

No, that was just number one. That wasn't the number two. So what do you do
to uplift your mind? Okay, you've got {jing-wa}, the alarm sounded, {she-shin},
okay. Then you try to take action. {Du je-pa}. The action you took, because you
were dull and not because you were agitated is {drin-pa}. You tried to tighten
your concentration. But it didn't work. Maybe it got worse. So what you do
now is, you take your mind off that object of meditation and move it to another
object of meditation, which is one of the following objects of meditation. He
says the best one is, and that could be on your homework, is just thinking how
fortunate you are to have reached this kind of a birth, with your present dharma
circumstances. And that's the most powerful one.

(Stilwell: so then you no longer doing single-pointed concentration?)

You are, but you changed the point.

(Stilwell: so you're not really doing any analytical thinking...)

You've lost your original point of concentration.

(Student: this is once you've tried to go to another object of concentration...
[unclear])

This is where you've tried to tighten up on the object, you tried to make it
clearer, and it failed. Now you get rid of that object, and you go to this object, in
order to bring your mind back.

(Students: so this is d 2, right, so...[unclear])

It's a part of {drin-pa}, really, it's a kind of tightened on the mind, by trying to
uplift the mind. There's all kinds of tightening.
(Student: it is the same topic.)

Yeah, same topic. This is a kind of {drin-pa}. It's under the category of {drin-pa}.
Which means, tightening it up.

[Unclear]

No it's not. I told you I'd give you three or four different kinds of {drin-pa}.
Three or four ways of tightening up.

(Student: but this isn't like an analytical meditation, this is more reminding
yourself, bringing it to mind, you're still sort of stable, you're concentrating...)

Ah, no, I think it's gotta become an analytical meditation now, 'cause you're
gonna have to count your {nyel-jor}'s, all eighteen of them. And we're not going
to get into it, but what it means is, and by the way I'll say something about, this
is a topic we're going to cover when? What's the last subject of...

(student: object of meditation?)

yeah, what to meditate about. Actually, by the time you finish this course,
you're gonna be meditating on the subject, on the categories of the Lam Rim.
You're gonna learn to meditate on the entire structure of your career in the
dharma, up to the time when you become a tantric deity. You're gonna get all of
the major categories that you have to work on up to that point. And then you're
gonna meditate on those, and that's gonna be your object of meditation. I think
what's his name, Alexander Berzin, who helped me come to meet my lama, he
would do, he, he translated the whole Lam Rim, it wasn't Pabongka's but it was
based on Pabongka's, Lam Rim, you know, it was like four volumes, and he
gave it to Harvard for his dissertation. He would meditate on the whole thing
the whole morning. Like up till noon he would go through all, every subject
category. It was like four volumes, in his mind. And he had it down to where he
could go through it. So he knew his road map. And that will be our object of
meditation. So, when your {drin-pa} gets to that point, you gotta change your
subject, you should change to the subject of how lucky you are in your dharma
practice. You're lucky to be alive. Not lucky, but proud and happy. And what
he's talking about is a kind of joy. What he's saying is, when it gets so bad that
you can't keep your mind on the object any more. And you've tried to tighten it
but it didn't work, and get some joy about being alive, having teachings, being
healthy enough to study, having the opportunity to study, being in a place
where the books are, not being handicapped, etc. And he says a beautiful thing
here, he says: you and I {tibetan quotation} haven't meditated on this much, and
we're not used to this thinking, we're not used to thinking this way much, but,
and in the first few times you try it, in the first few weeks you try it, you won't
get any big light coming on. Okay so big deal I'm alive. You won't think,
nothing will uplift you, you'll say, okay, it's supposed to thrill me that I'm alive.
Nothing happens. He says {tibetan quotation} but he says once you have
meditated on this subject long enough, and you understand the importance that
you're alive and that you have dharma, it'll be just like throwing cold water on
your face. He says it'll have the same effect as taking ice water and throwing it
on your face. And you'll get some kind of, some kind of bliss will come in your
heart, and then that {jing-wa} will be defeated. Then what should you do? Go
back to your original object, which for a beginner is normally a Buddha, your
lama, or some picture, go back to your original object.

(Student: how much time do you spend on this, thinking about how fortunate...)

We'll talk about it. Well, until the {jing-wa} goes away, right? Until, I mean like,
until you feel bright again, and then you put the object back in your mind. Yeah.

(Student: [unclear]...)

yeah it is. It is for us.

(Student: it's difficult for me, it seems to be easier to understand the various
problems and corrections when you're talking about visualizing an object, rather
than analytical meditation.)

Yeah I understand. But it's not true if you think about it.

(Student: no, just in terms of what's... whether an image is clear versus an idea...)

Yeah, well maybe you're not, don't forget, he said, clarity doesn't refer to how
clear the picture is, he said that very strongly, he said it refers to how clear your
state of mind is, how bright your mind is...

(student: but usually the two things are related...)

how sharp your mind is. Oh yeah, if your mind is dull the object is dull, but not
vice-versa. See what I mean?

(Student: with dullness in an image, they talk about visualizing something, like
turn on the lights, make it brighter, if you find yourself...)

No, it's not that you're, that's gonna come, but when I say your mind get clearer,
I don't mean, and a lot of people mistake it for some kind of lightness, like that.
It's not that. It's invisible. It's like water, and it's just like you're scuba diving in
dirty water or you're scuba-diving in clean water, you know, if you've ever
scuba-dived.

(Stilwell: [unclear])

Yeah, I'm talking about the state of your mind and not the state of, I think a lot
of people when you say clarity they think brightness in sense of that light, it's not
that, it's more like clarity in the sense of...

(students: details, of sharpness)

No. No, it's the ... of the mind, not the details, it's the mental state of bright and
bushy-tailed. It's that. Not referring to the object. Because of your lack of bright
and bushy-tailed, what happens to the object? It gets unclear.

(Stilwell: so you mean up, when you say bright and bushy-tailed, you mean sort
of up.)

I mean alert, and powerfully concentrative.

(Stilwell: like an excited energy level almost.)

I don't mean to that because that can be close to losing your concentration, but I
mean as I said before, when you're into a movie and you're like... you know,
when you're at your best, mentally, when you're fresh, you're into a problem at
work, or when you're in a computer, I mean computers can really do it to you.
You see these programmer guys, you know, and you say come on, it's two
o'clock, you wanna go home yet, and they go nononononono... That's like
concentration.

(Student: I'm a little confused about, I thought shamata, especially later, when
you're really into it, that discursive thought was not helpful.)
No, it's a error.  The teaching of Kamalashila and Je Rinpoche is that to
concentrate on a series of thoughts, on an analysis, is shamata. In the, when
shamata is linked with {hlak-tong}, in the sense of the direct perception of
emptiness, you will not have discursive thought. You cannot have discursive
thought. Because discursive thought is what? Which one of the two truths?

(Student: it's relative)

It's relative truth. You cannot focus on a relative truth while you're percieving
emptiness directly. Only a Buddha can. A normal, any human being can't. So
you can't have discursive thought, and as you get into yogic shamata, yogic
direct perception, there's a kind of perception called yogic perception, which is
neither, it's not discursive. And that you won't have discursive thought going
on. But definitely up to that state you have to have, cause you have to be
thinking of the reasons why something is empty, which we covered in the last
class, for those of you who still didn't think about it. Yah, you will. And Je
Rinpoche Je Tsong Khapa felt that, he emphasized it, because he felt that, too
many people in Tibet thought that it wasn't a kind of meditation, and he states
that several times, he states that a lot. Okay. So he says. That's one way to pep
up your mind. [Unclear] The next one is to think about the benefits of...

(student: that's another object, right?)

Yeah, if you don't, let's say you want a different object than thinking about how
lucky you are, he says you can meditate about the benefits of behaving correctly
towards a lama. And that's something we haven't studied yet, and we'll study it
later.

(Stilwell: Why that? Why's that good particularly versus something else?)

A lot of these, and you have to keep in mind, a lot of these are like, what's that
kind of coffee, with the crystals? They're like freeze-dried {tsok-sok drip-jang}.
[Laughter] They're like freeze-dried, concentrate virtue collectors. And there is
no higher collector of virtue than to serve your lama correctly. There is no
higher way to collect goodness than to serve your lama. So, so just meditating
on it is already, it's almost like you're creating the karma on the spot to be able to
go back to your object and be able to have clarity towards it.

(Student: so you're creating merit by meditating on a virtuous object and when
you take a break, you're still on a virtuous object.)

Well, in the first place you're trying to concentrate on his physical image, and
now, you're concentrating on, it's a discursive thought, and you're thinking
about all the reasons it's nice to, all the good things that can come out of being of
having a proper relationship with him, because if you don't, you'll never get
anywhere, period. And that's the first step in the Lam Rim. Of all the stages that
you go through, that's number one. Because if you don't have a relationship
with some lama like that, nothing will ever happen. It can't. And if you mess it
up, your practice won't go well.

(Student: what if your lama is not a Buddha?)

Your lama is always a Buddha. We'll prove it, later. Right now you can't believe
that. Right now you can't, ah, and it doesn't matter whether he is or not, I'm
talking about what your perception is, which is actually what he is. That's
another story.

(Student: what if you don't have a lama, or you consider the Dalai Lama your
lama - how can you behave well to him when you never see him?)

They say, it's funny you know, what is the structure of the Lam Rim. The Lam
Rim, the first division of the Lam Rim, which has thousands of divisions, is
{unclear Tibetan}, which means, when you're in meditation, and when you're out
of meditation. And actually, the principal way of this guru yoga, this behavior
towards your lama, is during meditation. So if you're serving him mentally, if
you're just meditating on the practice of serving him, this is one important way
of, you're doing it. So it's not, you don't have to worry about that. Somebody
asked him in Arizona if you meet your teacher once a year, is it still a
relationship, and he said yeah.

(Student: he said but you shouldn't ask stupid questions.)

Yeah, he said don't bother him, but, I have a feeling that any question you asked
him would be [unclear]

(student: does it have to be your root lama, or just your lama? When you say
lama...)

The definition of a lama is anybody who has taught you a, b, and c. On up.
(Student: a,b,c meaning the letter a, b, and c)

Yeah, your first grade teacher should be treated as your lama, period. In Tibetan
it's called {ka, kha, ga} anyone who's taught you so much as a, b, and, c. Any
person who's giving you the kindness of teaching you the first three letters of
the alphabet when you were a little kid, that you should treat with that code of
behavior.

(Student: so it has nothing to do with a root lama.)

no. And I, this is a long subject. I didn't wanna get into it, it's not the subject
tonight. But you have to study that, you have to study about that. It's very, ah...

(student: it's in the red book up there, very nicely...)

Yeah, it's in the red book. But I think you have to, it's one of those things that
Buddhism says that's not natural for our culture, and you have to study it, and
and you heard it once now, and you actually have to have it proven to you that
it's useful, and then you'll want to do it, so right now just leave it like -

[end of side A]

- and, it's very hard to think of what that means. But I think that's where you
actually try to imagine some kind of brightness.

(Stilwell: like white light?)

Yeah, but I hesitate to say it definitively. I'll ask Rinpoche. I, I don't feel
comfortable about that. I remember me and Art struggling with this translation
fifteen years ago and it's a difficult, it's a difficult... It means think brightness.
Now, what that is - I think it is, you know there are many meditations where
you imagine white light in your body and things like that, I believe that's what it
refers to, but I'd like to check it. He says if you still have the problem, if none of
the above works, now we're talking almost of a third level of {drin-pa}, alright.
What was the first level of {drin-pa}, broadly speaking?

(Student: to bring back the clarity.)

yeah. You keep your mind on that object that you started with and you just try
to regenerate your clarity, you know, make it more clear to yourself, which
means, try to bring your mind back up to a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed state.
Doesn't mean try to see the Buddha's fingers a little bit better. You're working
on your mind, not on the object. You're trying to uplift your state of mind. As
you look at the object. So you don't give up the object but you try to tune up
your mind. By the way, he says learning the art of tuning up your mind is much
more important than learning the art of...what's gonna come next? Bringing
down your mind. The next problem, we didn't even get to it yet, is gonna be
how to tune your mind down [unclear], but he says the most common problem
of meditation is dullness, is where your mind has gone, sunk, it's sunk too low.
And now you're trying to bring it back up, you're trying to tune up your mind,
and bring it back to an alert state. So the first level of concentration is to, is
where you haven't gone too low and you can just tune it up a little bit and you're
back to bright, you're back to alert. You wanna turn that on?

(Student: it's kinda like the flame went on the stove, the burner...)

Yeah, just turn it up a little bit, by the way, he quotes the Buddha for this process.
He says think of yourself as a guitar string. You know, if you get too loose, you
get flat. Tune it up a little bit. If you get too sharp, if you get too tight you get
sharp. You just don't sound good. The Buddha said this, and he's talking about
meditation. He says the process of meditation is like tuning an instrument. And
it's constant tuning. You know when you drive a car and you notice, when you
first drive, you keep your hands still, and slowly the car goes this way, or
slowly... and then you learn to keep going like this, and meditation is just like
that. It's like tuning the thing, then it gets a little flat, then you tune it up a little,
you go too far, it gets a little sharp, I mean, it's this constant practice of tuning it.
It's like those small adjustments - when you watch somebody drive, they don't
hold their arms still, they're always going like this. Yeah.

(Student: do you mean to say that the development of shamata is like that, or
that after you've developed shamata it's still a balancing act.?)

We'll talk about it, it's coming. I'm gonna talk about it. I'll talk about that
question. If I don't answer it by the end of the night, ask me again. Okay, yeah.

(Stilwell: so how do you do that, I mean, I thought it meant trying to see things
more...)

{drin-pa} means tightening it up.
(Stilwell: yeah, but, how do you do that?)

It's like, it's hard. It's like telling someone "oh, try to be fresh while you're
tired." [Laughs]. It's exactly that. You know. It's when your mind has gone
down, your alertness level has gone down, and sometimes you can return to
your original alertness level just by trying to. Just by thinking to. And he says if
that doesn't work, then think of something that's interesting to you. It's
interesting you know when I try to read Madhyamika, I don't know why, it
always puts me to sleep. [Laughter] For twenty years it's put me to sleep. But if
I stay up late and watch a good movie, you know, I can watch three or four in a
row, you know, and the alertness level is there. I think it's just, it's a will power
or something. So he says if you haven't gone too far down, just tune it back up.
If you drop too far down, think of something that makes you alert. You know
bad objects, I can think of some bad objects that make my mind very alert. You
know, desire objects, and my mind will go like that. I mean, but he's saying,
think of some object that will return you to alertness, and he's suggesting...
what's the most powerful?

(Student: how fortunate you are...)

To be alive. I also like that one because it applies to everybody who can read this
book. If you got the book and you're alive, well, you can be happy about that.
It's not like being happy about being smart because some of us aren't, you know,
or, you know, like that. Just be happy that you're alive and that you can study
dharma. And he says if you don't think that's such a big deal, you have a
problem. So now, that was the second level of {drin-pa}. Now I'm gonna talk
about the third level of {drin-pa}. The third level he says, stop the meditation.
Get up and take some steps to stop being - excuse me? [Unclear] No I don't
think, the second one had a lot of different ones inside of it.

[Students: unclear debate about numbering/lettering systems]

That's still one of the second types.

[Student: there was like three parts to the second one...]

yeah, there were many ways to get off the object and use some other kind of
thoughts to raise your mind back up, to uplift your thoughts again. And they
included thinking of how good it is to serve a lama, thinking about how lucky it
is to be alive, and some kind of brightness.

(Student: so those all were collectively g-2, and now we're on g-3.)

Yeah. By the way, another one that he mentions is thinking about the good
qualities of a Buddha. And we have to study that someday...

(student: well all that was part of g-1, right?)

Yeah, it's g-1-b. [Laughter] you asked for it.

(Students:[unclear] so g-1 has three parts, now.... we're on g-1-c...)

When you think about it, you don't have to ask these questions if you think
logically: okay the first attempt you make to tighten your mind back up is, don't
give up on the object, keep the object and tune it up a little - your mind. Your
alertness level. And the whole things I just talked about were all, okay, when it
gets so bad that it's not enough to tune up your alertness level, and you have to
think of something else to uplift your mind, and get you alert again. Now let's
say it's gotten really bad, and none of those things work, he says: break the
meditation. Get up. And he says, maybe these are good for Tibet. Go stand in a
cold place. [Laughter]. I mean go get some fresh air.

(Student: what if you live in New York?)

(student: go stand outside, and the fear of getting mugged will brace you.)

[laughter]

He says, go to some place where you can see - this word is beautiful in Tibetan,
and I can't think of an American, English - go see some wide-open places. Go
look at some wide-open places. And in Tibet it would mean go to the Ga-mo
valley, to the little mountain there and look twenty miles off into the... you know
I guess you could go up to the Empire State building. Some people, some lamas
say just go out and look at the sky. That's just a big - something big that gets
you out of yourself. Something expansive. That was his second suggestion.
There's the third one I really like, and I'm really upset that nobody taught me in
the monastery, cause later I saw people doing it and I realized how good it was,
and it's just pacing. Walking back and forth.
(Student: the third one?)

Yeah.

(Student: the fourth one... was this part of the stop meditation?)

Yeah, after you've given up on the meditation. After you've stood up. And in
the monastery I started to notice that a lot of the good geshes, you know, we
have to memorize for like three or four hours. I used to sit there with a book in
front of me, and try to memorize, and I'd always doze off, and then I'd notice
that they go, they walk like pretty far, you know, and then they're down like
this, like Napoleon, and they're... [laughter], and they do that for hours. And it's
a way to keep fresh, and to keep your attention on something, and it's good for
studying. And now, I'm, I've always done that, when I'm memorizing, I go and I
just find a long place to go back and forth, and it works.

(Student: it's better than sitting...)

To sit, and try to look, and get bored and doze off, this is great. It really works
nice. I'm really upset that someone didn't teach me, 'cause I spent six seven eight
years trying to do it the other way, and I did, but I always used to fall asleep.
Now it's great. You're getting some fresh air, you're moving your body's
moving and you can keep your alertness up.

(Student: so Michael, you're not supposed to do all these, but just one of them.)

Ah, pick the one that fits your situation. I mean that's true of all these things.
Use common sense. Use common sense. If you live in an apartment like this,
you can't pace very well. I tried it, it just doesn't work.

(Student: but pacing without an object doesn't seem, I can see...)

He's just saying

(student: if you're memorizing... but pacing as a way of refreshing yourself
doesn't, is it really pacing?)

Yeah, it says here, or he says go wash off your face with some water, go, what
do you call it, throw some?
(Stilwell: splash your face?)

Splash your face with some water.

(Students: [unclear])

It's Pabongka Rinpoche, but he's quoting a lot of people and mainly, he's still on
Kamalashila, I believe. He's mentioned Kamalashila. It's not himself.

(Student: is splash water on face part of pacing?)

(student: not unless you pace to the sink.)

So you pick the one that fits you best. Is this hot yet, Lee?

(Student: yeah, I think it burned. [Laughter])

okay take a break. What're we gonna do next?

(Student: do the agitate.)

Yeah, what to do if you have the opposite problem, which is you catch your
mind wandering off to what're you gonna do this afternoon, you know,
whaddyou gotta do after you get up, alright.

[Unclear]

Yeah, g2.

(Student: what does that {gš-pa} mean?)

{gš-pa} is that what did we call it? Agitation. I dunno if that's such a good word,
but I guess because the literal meaning of it is, o.k., 'cause it means like wild man.
You know {gš} means [pant pant pant] [laughter] really, seriously. {Jing-wa}
was dullness, right? Two "l"'s? That's the kind of thing I take a point off in your
homework, didja notice?

(Student: Yeah, I've been noticing that, Michael...)

By the way, if you're about to get a hundred and I find any mis-spelling, I can't
call it perfect. I'm sorry. [Laughter]

(Student: when did you make that rule?) [laughter]

I mentioned it...[laughter, unclear] these things seem to be passed on through
generations, you know, Laura Segal, homework number four, class two, you
know, and it's not spelled right. Am I gonna say this is perfect? Nah. That's ...
[unclear]...

(student: you mean the transliteration?)

Any spelling. [Unclear]

(student: I didn't even know what rules we were playing by.)

English spelling. Okay. {Hlu-pa} means, if we're still on the guitar string,
example, what would {hlu-pa} be?

(Students: it sounds like loosen...)

Loosen it up. Yeah, and that's exactly what it means, {hlu-pa} means loosen it up.
What's the problem? The problem occurred back in number three. You got
agitated, which means that your mind went to a desire object.

(Stilwell: or virtuous one)

And {she-shin} did, {she-shin} did what? Alertness said heyheyhey. And then
the troops come out and {hlu-pa}. The action that you take is {hlu-pa}. Loosen
up.

[Unclear]

Yeah, agitation means you're too tight. So you, the antidote, the correction, is
{hlu-pa}. By the way if I ask you what's the correction for problem number four,
you're gonna say, taking action. If I say what actions do you take you say well it
depends on what the problem is. If the problem is dullness, you tighten up. If
the problem is agitation, you loosen up. And the Buddha himself taught it. He
called it a {pi-wang}. A {pi-wang} is an Indian lute. By the, what was one of the
antidotes, what was one of the ways to tighten up your mind, like if you wanted
to uplift your mind. He said that being down was almost like some kind of
depression or discouragement. And the way to uplift it was to take some joy out
of being alive and things like that, and so now he says, now, {gš-pa} is sorta like
being too joyful, it's like being too happy, and your mind's goin' on like hey,
what's for dinner? [Laughs] he says, by the way, this happened to King Tse-
tsang, and that's the reason he never percieved emptiness directly. Who was
Tse-tsang, do you know? Tse-tsang was the Buddha's father. He had the honor
of being taught by his son, and according to this scripture, he never reached, in
that life he never saw, 'cause he had that problem, as he meditated, he would
think, he was little too up, okay?

(Student: what do you loosen up, your concentration?)

I'll say, he has it here very nice, let me...

[unclear]

He says it's where you're too tight on the object. And you're so tight on the
object that you start to get, being too tight on the object, trying to concentrate
too hard, he says that comes first, and then in the next few seconds, your mind is
off to another object.      By trying to concentrate too hard, you create a
circumstance where your mind in the next few seconds has gone off to another
object.

(Stilwell: so it's not really discursive thought...)

Then it's called {ku-su do-pa}. {Ku-su do-pa} means like when you get too busy
at work, and someone says something to you and you're like no, no, you're
narrowed-minded, and it means like, the mind got too squished. It's where
you're concentrating so hard that it becomes a fault.       And it's not good
concentration. It's not good alertness. It's almost where you're obsessed with
something.

(Stilwell: so this is we're not talking about in this case where you just have
various discursive thoughts because of not paying attention or having thoughts
drift in...)

No. But what he's saying is, that happens right after, normally if you're
concentrating so hard that it that you that a few seconds later you're mind is off
to another object. It gets tired, it's a fault. Yeah.
(Student: I'm not familiar with discursive thought and...)

Discursive means where you're talking to yourself in your mind.

(Student: and what about the analytical meditation? What is that opposed to?)

We're gonna talk, well I think it's maybe a good thing to talk about. There's
different kinds of meditation, and I was gonna bring it up during the object. So
don't write it down, just be aware. {Jok-gom} means one Buddha image, and
you're fixed on it. {Che-gom} means you take a problem, a philosophical
question, and you put it center stage in your mind and you investigate it. In
meditation. That is a kind of meditation.

(Student: analytical.)

Yeah, and that's Je Tsong Khapa's big thing. He says don't think it's not a kind of
meditation. It has all the qualities of a good meditation. {Che-gom}. And then
there's {shar-gom}. {Shar-gom} means it's kind of like a review meditation,
which is actually the meditation you're gonna end up with at the end of this
course, which is where you, you're trying to take your mind along a certain train
of thoughts, over and over and over, until it becomes natural for you. You
know, what comes after that, this comes, what comes after that, that comes...
you take your mind, they're doing this thing in linguistics and child development
theory now, a child should learn another language, because it opens certain
synapses that otherwise wouldn't get opened, and they learn that they have a
certain series of thoughts that they never would have gone through. It's a series
of thoughts that you go, like a racetrack which you know very well. Until it
becomes natural. You see in the Olympics these skiers that, they mentioned that
they memorize the gates, the position of the gates, they'd sit up there and they
do a {shar-gom}, that's a {shar-gom}. They think I'll take three breaths, I'll turn
left, I'll go another twenty feet I'll turn right, and they go through the course
many times and memorize it.

(Student: mental obstacle course)

That's a {shar-gom}. That's called {shar-gom}. So really there's three kinds of.
Later. I don't wanna get into it today. So {hlu-pa} means loosen up. So now I'm
gonna tell you some ways to loosen it up. The way he got into joy was how?
When he was talking about -
(student: by reflecting on his -)

Why did he come to joy? Why did he mention joy?

(Student: uplifting, right?)

Yeah, because he tied discouragement to the state of dullness. Interesting. He
tied discouragement, and what was the other one? Depression, to a state of
dullness. So now he's doing the opposite. He's tying over-joy to the state of
agitation. I don't know, what would you call that? {Go-wa} means joy, but it
means excessive.

(Stilwell: unrealistic joy?)

No, it's, you know when you're giggly, silly happy.

(Students: hilarity, hysterical...)

Not hysterical, but you know you're at work, you get a little bit hyper, and you
start makin these crazy jokes, and it's really not appropriate, but you're like
hyper, it's almost like hyper. Hyper, maybe. A little bit too happy. Kids do it
just before they start crying, ten minutes before they start screaming. So, he
says, what would be the antidote for that? You see, the antidote for depression
as tied to dullness, was joy. The antidote for excessive joy, excessive giddiness,
would be what?

(Students: think of something sad.)

Think of something sad. And he gives some examples. His first one is death.
Death. Your coming death, your own coming death. That's the meditation
called {chi-wa mi-tak-pa}, it's what we're doing on Friday night. It's what we'll be
doing as of tomorrow night. We'll be doing it from {b. Lam Rim Chenmo}, Je
Tsong Khapa. The meditation on your approaching death. And he says, that's
the first way, like at work, that's when your boss walks in. Why's that report
late? Suddenly all you're getting is like, just goes boom, you know. That's the
first one he mentions. The second one he mentions is the suffering of life. The
sufferings of this life. Which are three, you guys know. What are they?

(Student: aging...)
Not that easy. Well {ke na ga chi} is four, that's another set.

(Student: suffering of suffering?)

Yeah, the suffering of suffering. Which is raw suffering. The example in the
scriptures is, do you remember? A back ache. Which you can meditate on.

(Student: and then the suffering of change.)

Suffering of change, and what was the example in scripture, do you remember?
The taste of a good meal. Because it is necessarily connected to hunger. The
second part of it is always suffering. And what's the third example? By the way,
all the pleasures of life are that way, so they're not pleasures, according to
Buddhism. Third one?

(Student: pervasive suffering?)

Yeah, pervasive suffering, which means, just to be alive in this kind of life, which
was propelled by karma and your bad thoughts. The nature of your life, the
nature of you. We're debating out in New Jersey the advanced texts on
meditation, with all the monks there, and the nun there, and they're talking
about how there are certain kinds of wrong meditation where you just get more
and more blissed out, there's like seventeen stages, and this one, you actually can
get to a point where you no longer even have any desire to be happy, mentally,
and then you get to a higher state where you don't even want to be neutral
anymore, to be neutral is to be neutral in this body is not desirable, even if you
could reach a very high state of meditation where you didn't even want to be
happy anymore, but you just wanna be stable, totally stable, if you didn't have
the extra energy to not want to be in this kind of body and life, well then what
would happen? You'd just meditate meditate meditate and then you'd get old
and die, and there have been Buddhist people who've done that. The point is to
get rid the last one also. We'll talk about it. He says if it still doesn't work, now
we're getting to a more drastic antidote, right. It still doesn't work, you have to
use drastic means, um, he says, count your breath, go to your breath, meditate
on your breath. [Unclear].

(Student: why is this a drastic...)

Well you got the parallel to {drin-pa}, and I didn't mention, I didn't do a parallel,
but now I'm gonna fix it, okay? What would be the parallel first step? What
would be the first step you would take? {Hlu-pa}. To loosen up? No, I made a
mistake. That was the second one. What would be the first one? What would
be the parallel to the first, what was the first kind of {drin-pa}?

(Student: tighten up...)

Yeah, so just don't let go of the object, but just back off a little bit. That would be
the least drastic method to just back off of it a little bit. The word in Tibetan is
very difficult, it's {tro-wa}, which means, it's what light does when you turn on a
candle.

(Student: disperse...)

it means, loosen up a little.

(Stilwell: light loosens up?)

Well, it's the way it goes like, see you're like that and it's...

(Stilwell: like the gradations, you know the gradations become?)

It says, loosen up. Mentally loosen up on the object. If that doesn't work, then
what? Change the object to what? Your death. If you can't bring your mind
down by loosening up, think about your death, if that doesn't work, change to
an external object, which is what? Your breath. Take your mind to your breath.

(Student: didn't we have the sufferings in between those two?)

Suffering was another kind of object you could use as, you could use death, or
you could use the suffering of your life. As the medium drastic action.

(Student: oh. So both of those are g-2a.)

G2b, please.

(Student: no, G2a)

G2a was lighten up on the object, loosen up on the object, but don't lose it. G2
was loosen up, in general. All of these three are gonna be kinds of loosening up,
as we had three kinds of G1's. Are you all right? There were three kinds of
tightening up, the first was what? Don't let go of the object, tighten up on it. The
second one was what?

(Student: shift to another object)

Shift to another object, which, for example...

(Stilwell: the benefit of serving your Lama...)

The benefit of serving your Lama, etcetera. The third way of tightening up was
what? Get up, splash water on your face, do whatever you want... Then, by the
way, I forgot to say, after you splash water on your face, go back to sitting.
[Laughter] By the way, I'll mention here a very very important instruction that I
was always given and which is in this text and which I've seen in other texts. It's
not related now, it's just a general instruction. Don't get up off your meditation
seat in failure. Wait till it's going smooth, and then stop. They say, so you'll be
happy to see it again. So otherwise you'll look at it and say, this thing beat me
last night, and it's like I used to surf, you know, and if you got thrown down on a
reef or something, you were supposed to go back out and stand up one more
time, you know, just so you left it all right. Try to go back and leave it happily.
Which also means, when your meditation time is just about over, and it's going
pretty well, leave it. There's two characteristics then that happen. One is that
you're happy about meditating. Secondly, the next meditation you have is
almost like a flow from the last one. And it's true. If you meditate a lot, you'll
start to notice that. If you meditate everday, then the day you go to the office
will seem to be almost like just a short break between your meditations, and not
vice versa. It will seem to flow then, and when you sit down tomorrow, you're
just picking up from today. Where you left off. It works. It works that way. If
you do it, same time every day. And don't quit after this course is finished.

(Student: well then, how do you justify stopping the meditation and getting up,
when you're having problems?)

Oh. But what I'm saying is, then, sit back down. Don't, I forgot to mention that.
Sit back down.

(Student: so what is the parallel between {hlu-pa} and loosening up under the
parallel to shift to another object?)

Shift to another object, either death, or your death, or the sufferings of life. Your
approaching death, or the general lousiness of your existence, okay. You can't
win, right? Nothing can go well here. Those things which go well will end.
These classes will end. Our relationship will end. There'll be a day when there's
no longer any of these things. Pabongka Rinpoche, in his text, he had 10,000
people listening to him, and he got up and he said, you know, who'll be the last
person to die in this room? And in fact, now that we're reading this book, they
all are dead, I mean most of them are dead, you know, most of the people at the
lecture are dead. So, you know. So that's the nature of our life. That's what
we're trying to avoid.

(Student: but that's just the body.)

Yeah. Okay. That's all he says about that one. Okay, we'll finish now. Is
everybody clear with that? So he asks, what are the parallelisms, I'll draw it, just
to make sure we got it, okay? For dullness, what were you supposed to do, as
the most basic kind of {drin-pa}? You were supposed to keep the object and do
what? Tune up, right? Tune up alertness or something?

(Student: tighten up..)

These are all types of tightening up, I guess that's where Tom is getting confused,
okay? These are all kinds of tightening. These three are all gonna be kinds of
tightening, different levels of tightening, right? Hopefully, all you'll have to do is
just be aware and tune up your alertness a little. If that doesn't work, what are
you gonna do? Shift the object to... Uplift yourself with, best one is, you know,
"I'm alive". In dharma. By the way, when you study the Lam Rim more
carefully, you'll realize that you're about one in a billion. You know, sentient
being-wise. You've achieved, you're at the peak. You know, you may not think
you're the CEO of General Electric. You're actually in a better condition. You're
actually more rare. You know you've reached a point which is infinitely more
rare to reach than to be the President of the United States, or Miss America, or
whatever. You're studying Dharma, on this planet, and you understand it, and
you're able to use it. So your situation, you know, karmically, is infinitely more
difficult to reach this point than any of those other ones. And what was to go
outside.

(Student: go outside?)

[unclear] I prefer, pacing, you know? Pacing, go look at, you know, go out and
look at the Hudson River or something...
(student: stop the meditation and get up.)

Yeah. So that's what I mean, to go outside. In this case, in the case of tightening,
it means wash your face, whatever you have to do to get yourself out of that
low alert state. Then, what?

(Stilwell: start over.)

Yeah. Go back.

(Stilwell: that's the important point.)

What are, this is what I meant, parallel. What are the parallels over here?

(Student: Loosen.)

Yeah. What are we gonna call it?          It's not really alertness at that point, it's
almost...

(student: fixation...)

...obsession or something, what's a good word for that? [Unclear] I dunno, I
don't like any of these words. Too tight. What's the name for the problem of...

(students: you know, restricted... wound up... wound up.)

But it's some kind of word that means too concentrated on a point. [Unclear]
Yeah, I guess you could say that, that's pretty good. Loosen up. By the way, all
these kinds are kinds of loosening. I'll call it constriction. I like constriction, it
sounds like a problem, right? Sounds like constipation. [Laughter] You have to
loosen. These are all kinds of loosening, just as these were all kinds of...

(student: tightening.)

...tightening. Shift the object to what, what's a good one?

(Student: death or suffering.)

Yeah. Death, my death.
(Student: you're not gonna die, 'cause we asked you not to die.)

[laughs] if my karma will cooperate. Okay. Go to the outside, this is why I said
go to the outside and not get up, because what does the outside mean here?

(Student: breaths)

Start counting your breaths, right. Go back to counting your breath.

(Stilwell: so when you're agitated you don't ever stop your meditation, is that the
idea?)

Yeah, it sounds like that. He doesn't say anything... he doesn't say anything like
get up or anything.

(Stilwell: because according to what you say...)

I'm sorry, he does say, uh, he says: even if you do that, and you're not able to get
rid of your agitation, then, for the time being stop the meditation.

(Stilwell: so then you do stop on a down note.)

And he doesn't say anything else, but he, then he goes on to another subject.
How do you count the breath, which is one?

[Unclear]

Yeah, that's not what we normally think in the west, you know. Out is one and
in is two, I mean, out is half, out is first half, and in is second half.

(Stilwell: why does it matter?)

It's very important later. And I'll talk about it some day. It's the idea of bringing
things into you. You never leave something by going out, okay?

(Student: ...this concept of constriction, is, it seems to me that what's happening
is that you're tightness is not on the object. The tightness is kind of a general all-
over tightness.)
Of your body?

(Student: ... of everything, that can lead to the, of the attention and everything
else, that can lead to this sort of ping-ponging around, and being hyper.)

It's true in the sense that the result of being too constricted is that your mind
wanders, and that's what, that's what gross {gš-pa} is, that's what gross agitation
is. Yeah. It's the breeding ground for distraction. Or starting to think of what
are you gonna have for lunch, or what are you gonna do when you get up?
That's like the most common one for me, 'cause I'm always doing something.

(Student: [unclear] so you should go back to meditation?)

Yeah, he didn't state it, but when he says counting the breath he's implying you
should go back.

[Unclear]

[Stilwell: so the way that this mentally feels, this constriction, this agitation, how
does that mentally feel?]

By the way, he says again in the text, he says you know I can't really, you have
to have it happen to know what it's like. I think it's when you, you know the
feeling when you're concentrating too hard on a problem. And so that it
becomes obsessive, and then you lose your ability to act on it properly. You get
fixated rather than fixed.

(Student: I might offer a personal experience. When I was younger, I used to
build model airplanes, and sometimes it required a great deal of steady hand to
do this very fine detail, and there was no question that I wasn't concentrating on
it, it was in my face and I was so tight that I couldn't do the fine work, and I'd get
very frustrated like that, and I found if I backed off a little bit, it worked a lot
better, but there was nothing else in my mind but doing this job the right way, it
was in my face.)

Okay. Now, something real cute, alright, watch. [Laughter] [unclear] The fifth
problem is the last solution.

(Student: it turns into a problem.)
We'll talk about it. Just write it down. Problem number five is {du-jepa}.

(Stilwell: taking action.)

Solution number eight is, leave it alone. Don't take action.

(Student: so when it's humming right along...)

Kenny, Kenny what was his name in the factory? Kenny [unclear] used to say "if
it ain't broke don't fix it." What this means is, when you have taken action,
you've tuned it up or you've loosened it up, and it's going smooth. For god's
sake, leave it. Okay? This is called {tong nyom} sometimes. {Tong nyom}
means "let it go. Just let it cruise." Okay? {Tong nyom}. Now we're on the final
final problem. The final problem of meditation is...

(student: that's not a problem, letting it cruise, that's how to fix it...)

Yeah, no, what it says is, the final problem is doing something, taking action
when you shouldn't. It's going smoothly, and you taking action. You're trying
to tighten it up or loosen it up when it's already just where it should be.

(Student: or knowing when to stop applying the antidote when it's worked.)

Yeah, knowing when to just let it cruise. Let it fly. You took all the corrections
you needed to take, let it fly for a while. It's like when you're driving, there are
times when you just, a good driver is going like that all the time he drives, and
then sometimes he's on a straight road, he's got a good car, the alignment is nice,
and you just shouldn't be doing anything. Shouldn't be moving. Okay? This is
when your meditation is gliding nice, just let it go. Don't mess around with it. So
the problem is, taking action. The correction is, don't take action. Leave it alone.
Don't take action. So we just flipped around the last two, okay? Is that alright,
got it? The classical writers at this point always say the same thing, it's very
interesting. They say there were these early scholars, these early masters who
said, {hš-rab gom-ra}.      {Hš-rab gom-ra} means perfect cruising is perfect
meditation. Perfect loosening is perfect meditation. There was a saying in
ancient Tibet, {hš-rab gom-ra}, and Je Rinpoche gets indignant about it, which he
did all the time, you know, he's trying to correct people, he says, then what
happened was, that word spread around Tibet, and people were always saying
hey, just sit down and don't think about anything, just let your mind cruise.
Watch your thoughts, label your thoughts, whatever. Just watch them go, you
know, that's, this is true meditation.    Just leave it alone, let your mind do
whatever it wants...

(student: is that the famous Tibetan log meditation where you just sit on the
bank of a river and watch your thoughts go by?)

I haven't heard about that one. By the way, there is a meditation on your mind.
There is a meditation on the nature of your mind. And that's mahamudra. And
we won't go into that. There is such a meditation. But it's different from, that's a
meditation in which you seek to see the emptiness of your mind. But just
watching your mind, watching the thoughts go flying... don't try to control
them, just let them go by, just loosen up and be natural, he says: mistake. That's
not meditating. [Laughter] And it's interesting, and there are times when it
seems to be useful, I mean it's not un-useful, completely, you can track your,
your own tendencies. But what he's saying is in Tibet it happened that people
who had already reached this high stage, they had already reached through the
first four problems, that some master who had already reached this fifth stage
said: best meditation is cruising. And somebody who hadn't reached the first
stage heard it and said, hey, the best meditation is cruising. Everybody cruise.
Don't do anything. And that's exactly what it says in the Tibetan. It says,
unfortunately, people who hadn't reached even the first problem, thought: well
it's time for me to stop doing anything. You know, they jumped to the fifth, the
eighth solution, before they had the first problem. You see.

(Student: so you should experience the others before you...)

You will. [Laughter] And that's the purpose of studying meditation. You would
think that in a meditation course we should just flop down and meditate.

(Student: ... because I've heard in some meditations, like in insight meditation,
where you sit there and just see what comes up...)

There are countless meditations that people are teaching nowadays. I mean
someone gave me this magazine, you know you can go through the back of one
of these Dharma magazines and see all sorts of stuff. I can't vouch for the
usefulness or non-usefulness. It's not classical Buddhism. It hasn't been taught in
the original texts that I'm aware of, and I've read many.

(Stilwell: like vipassana meditation?)
I don't know what they do. But if it's sitting down and just watching your
breath. Watching your breath has a function of this function: bringing your
mind down after it's too excited, or, preparing your mind for a virtuous object.
But by itself it's not a virtuous object. It's very useful, it's taught in the {b.
Abhidharmakosha}. It's comes from the {b. Abhidharmakosha}. Vipassana
meditation came from Burma, Ga-wing-ka gi, and he studied Abhidhamma in
Burma, and it's good, but it's function is to, is a preliminary to deeper meditation.
And Ga-wing-ka teaches it that way.

(Stilwell: so really, all meditations we're learning, where we've just gone through
the five problems, before that, even, is meditation on the breath.)

Yeah, well yeah. Because then you're gonna turn to the real object. Breath is
neutral, breath is, if you drive a car, breath is to get the car into neutral, like if
you ever drove a car, like you back out of your garage and you jam it into
forward... You have to stop first, put it into neutral and then put it in forward.

(Stilwell: so is the idea then to replace the discursive thoughts with one-pointed
concentration on your breath to displace the discursive thoughts?)

No, your object of meditation could be discursive thoughts. Going through the
outline of the Lam Rim is discursive thinking.

(Stilwell: no I mean just random thoughts coming into your head.)

No then distiguish between random and discursive.

(Stilwell: okay random thoughts then...)

Discursive means this is this, this is that, that's okay. Random means, what am I
gonna do for breakfast, you know. Maybe pancakes, maybe not, that's random.
Then you should bring it back to the breath.

(Stilwell: so then is that the object of the breath meditation, to replace those
random thoughts...)

Yeah, bring it back down to neutral, and then shift it back, you're just shifting the
object off, and then back to that. You can have one-pointed mind {ting-nge-dzin}
on a train of thoughts. On a path that you're trying to burn into your mind.
That's {gom}.
(Stilwell: and is the idea that it's more effective to start trying to have the breath
as an object or trying to pick an object first?)

These are two different breath meditations. This one's when you're already in
meditation and you run into you get into a serious problem.

(Stilwell: this is what I'm asking, which is more effective to start with? Which
way should you begin? Begin with breath and then graduate to picking an
object and working on it, pick an object, and when that doesn't work, go to the
breath?)

There's two kinds of breath meditations.             The one taught in the {b.
Abhidharmakosha}, by Vasubhandu, which I can show you, which I translated, is
to prepare yourself for meditation. It's before you start all this stuff. It's to get
your mind out of your daily office mind, or out of your sleep mind, and get it
prepared to put it onto a virtuous object. And this kind of breathing meditation,
which is also counting your breath, is a drastic action to take when your mind is
wandering too much, and it's not desirable. If you don't have to do it, that's
better, because what it means is pretty much, it's the equivalent of getting up and
throwing water on your face.

(Stilwell: so my understanding is you have to do both at different times.)

They are two different things.

(Stilwell: but they're the same mechanics.)

They're the same mechanics. Counting your breath for two different purposes.
But I've never seen and I wouldn't logically think that it would be virtuous over a
long period of time to focus your mind on your breath, for the purpose of
focussing your mind on your breath, because your breath is impermanence, it's
gonna stop some day. It's not a viruous object per se. Better to focus it on
emptiness. Better to focus it on your death, the virtues of the Buddha, the
Buddha's body, your own breath is not a virtuous object. It won't have any
lasting effect on your consciousness. It's good, it's very very wonderful, you
should, you should get to where you can count to ten, or even Pabongka says to
21, perfectly, and then shift it to something meaningful. And it's a good
thermometer of your mental state. Whether you can get to ten or not. If you
can't get to ten, maybe you should, it's not gonna work too well to shift to
another object. Okay, uh, homework, six, right? Next week what?

(Student: don't we have nine states of )

Yeah, what are the states you go through if you're successful in like the first
antidote, what point do you reach... there's no class on Monday, {tse-chu} is
Monday...[unclear] yeah, Monday no class, okay, next class uh, a week from
today. That might give me enough time to translate this...

(Stilwell: so you're in trouble once Friday classes start, you know.)

Yeah, so no class on Monday, okay?

(Student: [unclear]... the fifteen minutes of meditation...

You are doing uh,

(student: I mean you had the preliminaries, and counting to ten, and is that also
going to be within the fifteen minutes?)

Well, frankly, it's gonna take you more than the fifteen minutes. By the way, I
really urge you to do it at the same time every morning, I see, and I don't know
personally I don't think 1 am would be good for me, maybe your life is different,
generally morning is preferred. But some people just aren't morning people and
they can't get quiet till evening and that's okay. I don't say it's wrong, but...
[unclear]

[mandala offering; end of tape]
940310-1.aaa
7a.txt
Course III: Applied Meditation