Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute foundational talk, Alex Berzin introduces the theory and context of Tantric Buddhist practice through a pedagogical frame. He begins with breathing exercises to settle the mind, then outlines how Tantra operates within the graded path framework, explaining why it is considered a faster vehicle than Sūtra. Rather than offering abstract definitions, Berzin reframes traditional Buddhist concepts in contemporary English: replacing devotion with wholehearted commitment, suffering with problems, virtue and non-virtue with constructive and destructive actions. He explores how meditation builds beneficial habits through a three-step process of reviewing, analytically seeing the truth of what one seeks to cultivate, and stabilizing that insight through feeling. Throughout, he emphasizes the practical purpose of understanding—how recognizing one’s limitations and potential, and choosing a safe direction in life, directly counters depression and meaninglessness. The talk addresses both intellectual and intuitive learners, stressing that real transformation requires understanding, not blind faith. Suitable for newcomers and serious practitioners alike seeking clarity on how Tantric visualization and deity practice actually function within Buddhist psychology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 SP.mp3
UUID: b0a50c81-483f-4eea-b89e-20c98311dd60
Teacher: Alex Berzin
Collection: Theory of Sadhana practice (Alex Berzin)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~6,992
The way that I like to begin is by doing a breathing type of practice, which is to calm down and put a little bit of space in between what we’ve been doing and what we’re about to do. It’s the usual way that you start a meditation session, which is to focus on the breath going out and in through the nostrils and counting the breath at the same time. So it goes out and in one, out and in two, out and in three like that. Usually you count up to eleven. It’s just chosen as an auspicious number.
There’s no particular reason other than that. And this practice is usually repeated maybe two times, at the most three times. The way that it works is that it’s difficult for us to hold several things in our mind at the same time. And so if we have to focus sensation of the breath in our nostrils and counting, then it’s difficult for us to have other disturbing or weird type of thoughts or worries and these sort of things going on in our mind at the same time. However, if you repeat it too much, then what happens is you get bored and, then, your mind goes back to, whatever thoughts were going on and so it defeats the purpose.
So this is a basic technique in Buddhism used sort of to relax. I mean, it’s to calm you down. Now, there’s an awful lot more that can be done than just relaxation. Relaxation is not necessarily meditation. It’s just a very basic preliminary that you want to calm down, put a space between what you’ve been doing and what you’re about to do so that you can then get into doing something more constructive with our mind, with our feelings, and so on.
So, we’ll start doing this. So, you breathe out and in one, out and in two. You breathe normally, very relaxed type of, you know, normal type of way, not holding your breath or anything. It’s also a useful technique for when we’re feeling very upset and about to act, like yell at somebody or lose our temper, this sort of thing. If we can focus on the breathing, it tends to put us more in touch with our body, which calms us down a little bit and puts us space so that even if we do act out this urge of anger, the energy is going to be much lessened, so it’s going to help us handle the situation a little better.
Let’s do this. Do counting up to eleven twice. We’ll set the intention, which is, basically that we want to, listen to these teachings, in order to, learn various techniques, learn more of explanations of how we can overcome our limitations, and realize our potentials in order to be able to benefit everyone. It’s not necessary to recite something in foreign language or in any words. The point is to set a feeling, to get your energy going in that way.
Try to feel that. I want to listen to this in order to learn more techniques to be able to grow, realize my potentials, overcome my limitations. Alright. Now, what we’re going to, talk about today is, well, it’s billed as theory of sadhana, but, basically, what we’ll talk about is, tantra and, what actually is going on in tantra, what the background of it is, what the whole context and envelope within which it’s practiced is, and specifically focus on things like why Tantra is a speedier path than Sūtra and what are the factors, what are the advantages, the benefits of it. We’ll also talk about what’s actually going on with all these various Buddha forms.
You know, why all the faces, arms, what’s going on with mantras, these sort of things. We can do this quite informally. So if we have questions as we go along, please feel free to ask. Also, can you hear me if I speak at this level? Is this amplified?
No. Because I’m making no effort to project my voice. Alright. Now, another thing that, just as a bit of an explanation of, how I’ll explain. As I mentioned, Friday night, the, as I’ve traveled around the world, either translating or teaching, what I’ve seen is that the vast majority of the misunderstanding about Buddhism, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding about it, is due to the incorrect connotations that the English words give that have been chosen last century concerning the Buddhist ideas and concepts.
They tend to either come from a very heavy Victorian missionary type of background. People get rather strange ideas. What I’ll try to do is explain things in a simpler type of English, alternative type of terms. I’ll relate it back to, of course, the terms that we’re more familiar with so that we try to come up with terminology that’s a little bit closer to the actual definitions of all the Tibetan terms because everything is defined very clearly. It’s not a matter of things being imprecise or fuzzy.
Okay. Now, of course, Tantra is something which is practiced within the context of Sūtra, within the context of the Lamrim. Lamrim are the graded stages of the path, graduated stages through which we build up to more and more wide types of motivations and scopes of practice. Now there are many ways in which this can be presented. You have all the various traditions within Tibetan Buddhism, and they’ll arrange it slightly differently.
In the Gelugpa tradition, coming from Tsongkhapa, he arranges it according to what’s usually as guru devotion being the, main point. That’s a terrible term in English. The word guru, first of all, has come into our language to mean all sorts of, fakirs, people who are out to hustle and, make a lot of money off of people wearing exotic robes. And so, it’s, not the greatest term. Talking about a spiritual teacher, you don’t want to use master either because that again sounds like a cult.
By all means, in any way possible, you want to not give the idea to people that Buddhism is a cult. So, spiritual teacher. And, then instead of devotion, devotion is, also a type of term that gives the connotation that you just become a mindless slave or robot. You know, salami salami baloney. Let me kiss your feet and, you know, just tell me what to do, and I’ll never think again or make any decisions for myself.
And, you know, it’s like joining the army. And, that is, completely, inappropriate to what’s going on in Buddhism. Rather, what we’re talking about is a wholehearted commitment to a spiritual teacher. Commitment doesn’t mean obligation or a duty, but you give your whole heart to the relationship, to one of trust in this person being able to guide us and help us grow. The whole point of the relationship is to be able to stand on our own feet.
Know, a teacher is not there to make us into their slave. Buddha himself in a story, in an account of previous life, he was practicing, he had a teacher, and the teacher told all the students to go out and steal for him. Buddha just sat his room. Everybody else went out and Buddha just sat and didn’t, go out. The teacher came and said, don’t you want to please me?
You know, why don’t you go out and steal? And, the Buddha said, how can stealing please anybody? And the teacher said, You’re the only one who understood the point of the lesson. Like that, there’s other examples like from my own root teacher, Serkong Rinpoche, the late assistant tutor of His Holiness. When we were traveling once in Europe, Rinpoche was at a Dharma center and everybody there was this ridiculous type of devotional, that type of attitude.
Rinpoche got up and in one session he started explaining something and he explained it absolutely incorrectly, just outrageously wrong. Everybody just sat there and very dutifully wrote it down in their notebooks. Yes, yes, yes, Lama, Lama, Lama. Then they left and then the next session Rinpoche said, Last session I explained something completely outrageous and incorrect. Don’t any of you think?
Don’t any of you check up anything? Teachers often make slips of the tongue. Translators always make mistakes. You yourself are going to make mistakes copying things down. The Buddha himself said, Never believe what I said out of just faith in me or respect for me, but check everything out for yourself.
Examine and so on. It’s very important, especially when you’re speaking with I mean, most of you here are older students, but when you’re speaking with others, really try to avoid this whole image, that occult image, that you’re in the army and you just accept orders and you never question like that. Very often, I mean, one can refer to is the fifty verses on the guru, the spiritual master, which says that if your teacher tells you to do something, asks you to do something and you find that difficult to follow or whatever, it’s not that you have to just go, Aye aye, sir, and take orders, but that you don’t angry with the teacher, but very politely you can go and ask, Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. It would help me to be able to do that if I could understand what your reasoning was, what your thinking was behind this. This is something which is outlined from India by the Indian masters, what the procedures are.
It’s very important. It’s not a cult. Tsongkhapa organizes the Lamrim according to that. In the Karma Kagyu tradition, Gampopa organizes the jewel ornament of liberation around the discussion of Buddha-nature, which is talking about the factors within each of us, allows us to be able to develop ourselves, grow, evolve, and so on. In the Sakya tradition, it’s organized around the whole discussion of what’s usually called suffering, but that again is not the best term.
Problems is a much better term. Suffering, if you come across saying that, Well, the Buddha taught that everybody’s life is full of suffering and you speak to a wealthy, comfortable person in that way, then they get very defensive. They say, What do mean? My life is full of suffering. I have my video recorder.
I have this. I have that. It puts people off and it gives the whole impression that Buddhism is a very negative, pessimistic type of philosophy, which it is not. You say instead that Buddha said that everybody’s life is full of problem, you know, everybody has problems no matter who you are, what situation you are, then that’s something that everybody can accept. Know, they become much more open minded to.
So, In the Sakya tradition, it’s organized around the discussion of problems. His Holiness Dalai Lama has said that it may be a good way for presenting this graded material to people in the West who organize it similar to taking the idea from the Sakyas to organize it around the four noble truths. They don’t organize it that way but it’s starting out with a discussion of problems. We have four facts which are seen as true by highly realized beings. That’s what four noble truths mean.
I’ll go through this type of graded material fairly quickly just to give us a background and also to introduce you a little bit to some of the different ways of explaining this material, which might shed a different type of light on some of these issues which a lot of people, when they’ve listened to it for many years, you tend to become a little bit jaded about. One of the big problems that face is, a lot of people face, is one of depression. We just feel very poor, weak energy, and so on a lot of the time. We can ask what is the cause of the four truths. There’s various problems.
These problems have causes, true causes, and we can achieve a true stopping of them. Stopping is a much easier word than cessation. It’s a little bit more meaningful. We can stop these by following a pathway, a pathway of practice, sinking, speaking, meditating, acting, and so on, which would be a pathway of stopping the cause and you’ve stopped the problem. Now, get rid of the cause.
Get rid of is a better word than abandon. Abandon is a weird word. You know, abandon something. A cause, you get rid of the cause. So, you know, Buddhist, you know, teaching the whole process of how do you get rid of the causes of our problems, how do stop the problems.
Now, problem of depression, what’s the cause of depression? A cause of depression is that we don’t have any direction in life. Our life seems very meaningless. Not fulfilling. These sort of things.
Our lives tend to be very repetitive. Get up in the morning, go to work or stay and take care of the house, take care of the kids, prepare a meal at night, eat, watch TV, go to sleep. Next day, same repeat over and over again. We think, Well, there must be something more to life than that. It’s very easy to mean, we all want to be happy.
We don’t want to be unhappy, so we try to put some sort of direction in it. You know, sometimes we don’t have very much control over it. The direction that we go in could just be one of depression, self pity. It could lead to suicide. Or we could, in seeking to be happy, put a direction of getting drunk every night, getting stoned, drugs or whatever.
And that also doesn’t bring us the ultimate happiness that we want because it brings, creates a lot more problems. Problems with family, problems with health, economic problems, and so on. Or we can feel very angry at all of this and the direction that we go in is that, well, my life is absurd. Everything is absurd. Nothing has meaning.
Let’s go out and just throw bombs and be a terrorist. And that also doesn’t solve any problems, makes things worse. Or we can turn to various philosophies, religions, different systems, and so on for answers, for some direction. If these just say, Well, you know, have blind faith and shut up and just believe, then that also for a lot us is not going to be very satisfying. Point is what type of direction can we put in our life?
That direction is indicated by the general process that we’ve been going in already which is one of growth. Working, developing, overcoming our limiteachings and so on as we’ve done during the process of growing up. Basically, we had a lot of limitations, when we were a baby. You know, our bodies were limited in what we could do. We couldn’t communicate very well.
All we could do was cry. Our hearts were limited in their scope, just thinking about our basic needs, you know, getting fed. Our minds were very limited in what we could understand. Now also, you’ll notice I’m differentiating here heart and mind. In Buddhism, you hear always the discussion of body, speech, mind.
Mind is a little bit misleading because in English we always differentiate heart and mind. When you just talk about mind, then it gives the impression that Buddhism is only intellectual, only talking about rational things, not talking about feelings. That’s incorrect. It’s just that the word in Tibetan or Sanskrit covers both heart and mind. You don’t differentiate them.
In a discussion, often it’s helpful to speak about both aspects, the heart and the mind. Anyway, we nevertheless had a lot of potentials in all these areas. We had energy in our body, the potential to be coordinated, to be able to walk, the potential to be able to talk, to be able to develop some warm feelings towards others, the potential to be able to understand. The general course of our growing up was one of overcoming these limiteachings to a certain extent and realizing more and more of our potentials. The point is, is this something which is limited just to our childhood?
No, this process of growth is something that we can continue throughout our lives. In fact, it would be a great preventive measure that we could take if we want to eliminate our problems, get rid of our problems, avoid problems, then we have to take some sort of preventive measure. This is the general approach in Buddhism. That’s the word Dharma. Dharma means a preventive measure, not doctrine or something like that, which again sounds like a dogma, but rather it’s a preventive measure.
It’s something that you do beforehand in order to avoid your problems. Ultimate preventive measure that we could take would be to get rid of all our limitations and realize all our potentials. If we could do that, then we’d be in a much better position to not get into trouble ourselves and in a better position to be able to help others. That is the general direction that we would want to go in. That state of all the limitations removed, all the potentials realized, is something which is not going to be of any help if that just exists in the abstract.
It can’t just be in the abstract. You have to have actual examples of a mind stream in which that has occurred. That’s how you get the Buddhas. The Buddhas are those in whom all limiteachings have been removed and all potentials realized. That also indicates a direction.
There’s also the community of those who are intent on this goal, that’s the Sangha, and who are very far advanced on that path, not just the beginners. What we’ve been talking about basically is what’s usually translated as refuge. Refuge again is not the greatest term because either communicates absolutely zero. If you say to your mother, Hey Ma, why don’t you take refuge? Forget it.
It doesn’t mean anything to her. Or it implies something which is very passive. A wildlife refuge or something like that or refuge under somebody’s wing. It implies that it’s a very passive type of act. You go to somebody for protection, Oh, Buddha, Buddha, save me.
Help me. Buddha puts his hand on our head and we’re saved. That also is very incorrect. What we’re talking about is a very active type of process. It’s the active process of putting a direction in our life.
It’s not just any old direction, it’s a safe direction. That’s how you get the idea of protection from it. It’s a safe direction in the sense that the more we work to overcome our limitations and realize our potentials, the better able we are to handle difficult situations. So we save ourselves, we protect ourselves. That type of thing.
We shouldn’t think of external powers in Buddhism. That’s really quite misleading. It’s a safe direction. It’s also a sound direction because it’s valid. You have people have actually done this.
It is possible to do. This is what refuge is talking about, putting a safe direction in our life. If we can do that, then that will stop. We’ll achieve stopping of this problem of depression because life has meaning to it. It’s going somewhere.
We’re constantly working to expand ourselves to take everything with this approach. We take everything as a challenge, as a great adventure. You’re in a difficult situation. Well, how can I actually handle this better? Rather than feeling depressed about it, how can I use this situation as a circumstance for growth?
This type of thing. Anyway, this is a safe direction, refuge. Now, a further problem that we might have is, what about problems in the future? Things are bad enough now. It would be terrible if things got worse in the future, so we want to avoid that.
We want to avoid that not only having a worse future in this lifetime, but also in future lifetimes. I discussed Friday quite extensively future lives. There’s no need to repeat that discussion. In any case, the general approach is one of, well, if the problem is things getting worse in the future, what’s the cause of that? The cause of that would be to act destructively.
Now, again, we have the usual translation terms, non virtuous and virtuous actions. Now, that’s a very heavy heavy moralistic type of way of talking about things. It implies a heavy moral judgment that certain things are virtuous, other things are non virtuous. Or even if you use wholesome and unwholesome, it’s a bit of a judgment value there, whereas that’s completely inappropriate in Buddhism. It’s simply matter of fact.
There are certain things which are destructive. You go around polluting the environment, it builds up a lot of negative potential. It’s not sin. It’s negative potential for there to be a lot of ecological problems. Not suffering, but problems.
It’s a very matter of fact type of thing. You go up in the shopping mall with a machine gun and shoot everybody, well, that’s going to produce a lot of problems. We’re talking about destructive actions like smoking. It’s destructive. It builds up a negative potential within us to get cancer.
These sort of things produce a big problem. It’s not that it’s non virtuous evil, this sort of thing. On the other hand, there are certain things which are constructive, which go out and help people or you restrain from polluting the environment. You clean up the environment. It builds up a more positive potential rather than merit.
We’re not collecting merit badges and points up on a scoreboard in the sky, but rather we’re building up more and more positive potential for then things to go better. This is the general cause for things getting worse in the future is acting destructively. If we want to achieve a stopping of this, which would be a better future, then we would Well, there’s many stages of what you do. First of all, have to realize that we have a precious human life free of all sorts of situations in which we would be unable to improve ourselves, to improve our situation spiritually or whatever way. If we were in a situation of being in a concentration camp or starving to death in Ethiopia or under a very heavy authoritarian dictatorship in which we had no freedom to be able to think for ourselves spiritually or do anything or if we were living among cavemen or among people during a dark age or if we were severely mentally retarded or any of these types of heavy handicaps, we would be unable to actually develop ourselves.
So, it’s important to be able to try to appreciate what we have going for us. Now, all of this is done in terms of a process of what’s called meditation. Since Tantra is very involved with meditation, it might be a good thing to just mention a little bit about what’s going on with meditation. Meditation, again, is not the greatest word in the world because it’s come into our language to mean, you know, for most people, a cop out. You know, you just sit in the corner and you let your mind go and you space out.
Whatever nice thoughts come to your head, very lovely and sort of cop out. Now, that is not at all what is discussed in Buddhism. Even in terms of techniques for relaxation, there is never any encouragement or any benefit gained by sitting and spacing out. We have to be a little bit cautious not to give people the wrong idea or to use the the terms in a sloppy fashion. Meditation is talking about building up a beneficial habit.
That’s what the word means. It comes from the Tibetan word to habituate ourselves. The Sanskrit word has the connotation of actualizing something, making something actually happen. So again, doing that by building something up is a beneficial habit. Now the process is one of you see what we’re dealing with here is karma.
karma, as I explained a little bit on Friday night, is again not talking about fate. That’s the well you get that in Islam. You know, when the word karma comes into English, again it just tends to mean fate or destiny. Somebody was hit by a car, tough luck, that was their karma. That has the connotation of kismet, God’s will, destiny, this sort of thing from Islam.
It doesn’t have the, Hindu connotation either in Buddhism. The Hindu connotation is one of duty. You’re born into a certain caste, a certain position in life, let’s say as a, a man, husband type duties or as a woman or as a servant or as a soldier, ruler, this sort of thing and then that is your karma, it is your duty to live out the stereotyped stereotyped or archetypal model for what that role is as is indicated in the great Indian epics. If you as a woman lead the perfect life according to that model or as a soldier lead the perfect life according to that model or as a servant, then, you know, things will go well and in future life you may get even a better station in life. So that’s the Hindu idea.
Has nothing to do with Buddhism. In Buddhism, we’re talking about impulses, impulsive behavior, the impulses that come to your head. That’s karma. We’ll discuss that Tuesday night. But it’s basically why that impulse comes to your head to cross the street at just that time when you would be hit by the car not five minutes earlier and not five minutes later.
When we’re dealing with habits, then we act out negative type of habits due to impulses coming to our head. The impulse to get depressed, for instance. The impulse to feel sorry for ourselves. And then you act it out. And so, meditation is involved with how do we build up more beneficial habits so that different impulses are going to come to our head, not the negative ones, but more positive, more constructive ones.
The way to do that is first we have to listen to some sort of explanation. You listen to putting a safe direction in your life. For listening, it’s like the process of eating. You have to, in order to digest something, have to put it in your mouth. That’s listening.
For that, your mouth has to be open. Otherwise, the food won’t go in. Likewise, our mind has to be open. If we just spit the food back out, it’s not going to go down. So, likewise, if it goes in one ear and out the other, it’s not going to make any impression on us.
If our mouth is full of chewing gum or bubble gum while we’re trying to eat, it’s going to make a big mess. Likewise, if our mind is full of all sorts of preconceptions, strange ideas, we’re constantly comparing back and forth what we’re listening to to different types of systems without really giving a chance to listen to what Buddhism is about. It’s just going to make a lot of confusion. As Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, one of my main teachers said, one of the big shortcomings of Western people is that Westerners tend to compare two things, neither of which they understand. It just becomes very superficial and confusing.
If any comparison is going to be worthwhile, it’s only going to be on the basis of understanding the two things that you’re comparing very well. We have to, if we’re going to listen to things in Buddhism, instead of saying, that’s just like in Jungian psychology this, or that’s just like in Christianity that, when we have no real deep idea of what Jungian psychology or Christianity, yet alone Buddhism. It’s important to just listen to things within its own context. Then, the next process is usually translated as thinking, or pondering, or considering it, which is basically to chew it. You have to chew the food.
You can’t just swallow it without chewing. This is basically to think, does it make sense? Does it make sense in terms of my own experience? Does it make sense in terms of how my life has been, you know, in terms of having a direction in my life? You know, does my life become more meaningful when I’ve had a direction of trying to grow, overcome my limiteachings?
Let’s say when I was learning sports, I was working to overcome my physical limiteachings to realize more potentials. That made life very exciting when I was involved with that, or when I was learning something that I was interested in in school. These sort of things does make sense. It’s important to understand what habit is that we’re building up. Why we want to do it.
What’s the importance of it? If it doesn’t make sense, then it just becomes an exercise in blind faith or in macho type of thing. I will sit here and I will do this meditation because everybody else is doing it and I don’t want to show that I’m weak. You know, perfect macho type of mentality. It can be a woman as well as a man to be macho.
Or it could be, again, some sort of neurotic type of thing. The guru is like my daddy or my mommy and I want to please them and therefore I will sit here and do it. That’s very immature, very childish. It has to be based on really understanding what we’re doing and it making sense. Everything has to make sense.
Budd always said, Think about it. Think over it. This is the second step, is thinking or considering. Usually when people talk about Lamrim meditation, again they’re using the word meditation in a very sloppy manner, it’s referring to the step, step number two, thinking about it. It’s a lot of verbal type of thinking or considering it.
Then, the next step is actually building up as a beneficial habit. To build it up as a beneficial habit, there are three steps involved. First, you want to review it. Now, this review can either be in a verbal way or in a nonverbal way. You know, we have basically several different ways of thinking.
This is pointed out in Western learning theory. And so, you know, there are right brain and left brain type of people. Brain Left brain type of person is someone who’s a very verbal, logical thinker, know, things in order type of way of thinking. Whereas a right brain thinker is somebody who thinks in a more intuitive type of way, a pictorial type of way, an imagination oriented person. Now, we shouldn’t think that Buddhism is only designed for verbal logical linear thinkers.
That’s incorrect. Buddhism is trying to help us to develop all our potentials as a human being. You have in all the Tibetan traditions emphasis on memorizing text, logic, debating, this sort of thing, which develops the left brain’s way of thinking. But you also have Tantra. You have all the visualizations, use of imagination, butter sculptures, the art, the dancing, all this sort of business, which develops the other side, the right brain type of thinking.
You try to develop oneself as a total human being. In any case, whichever way is the dominant way that we think, then we can use that initially here in the reviewing process. Let’s say you want to go and you need to go someplace and you have the directions. The directions are to go down a certain street, pass three traffic lights, and turn to the right. Obviously, have to read this first and understand it.
That was step number two. You have to understand it. Once you’ve understood it, then you’re driving and you want to review it. You can review that by either reading some written instruction of how to go, or you could have a picture, a map. Both of them will suffice.
It doesn’t matter which one we want to use. If you want to meet somebody at a station, then you can either have a verbal description of that person or you can have a picture. Both of them will serve as a review. Likewise, when you want to put a safe direction in our life, then we can review in terms of think in terms of my own limiteachings and the qualities of a Buddha. In this way, review how wonderful it would be to become like that and to go in that direction.
It would be done verbally or you can just do it pictorially. Visualize a Buddha and you have some sort of intuitive feeling and understanding of the way they are. Intuitive, of course, doesn’t mean spaced out. Intuitive can be a very precise way of knowing things. You shouldn’t confuse it.
Intuitive people are space cases. That’s not necessarily the case. We review. Once we’ve reviewed, then we get down to what really was going to build it up as a beneficial habit. That’s usually translated as analytical meditation and stabilizing meditation.
Again, very misleading terms. What will often happen is that for even the more older students, if you ask them, What’s the difference between sinking and analytical meditation? Very often, they’re not going to be able to come up with an answer with the difference between the two. They definitely are two different processes. Otherwise, why would one be step number two and one be step number three?
It’s very different. Now, what we’re talking about with analytical meditation is actually seeing something as being true, discerning it. You build up something as a beneficial habit by seeing it as being true. In the thinking process, we were thinking over the thing in order to try to understand it, to have it make sense. Now it’s already made sense.
We understand it, and we want to see things in that way. That’s what analytical is talking about. It’s a discerning. I said, I would throw out the word analytical because it’s just misleading. It’s a discerning type of thing, a seeing process.
You want to see it as true. Then the stabilizing is to feel it. Talking about feeling it, letting it sink in. For instance, when we’re talking about this person driving down the, you know, going three traffic lights and turning to the right, they’ve reviewed the directions. Now you’re driving along and you don’t quite know where you are, but anyway you see the sign, the street sign, you see, Ah, I’m on the street that I’m supposed to be on.
You look down the street and you see, Ah, yeah, there are those three traffic lights, and that’s where I’m supposed to turn right. That’s seeing it, right? You’ve understood it and you actually see this is the direction that I want to go in. You’re at the station and you actually see that person that you’re going to meet and you see this is the one that I’m supposed to meet. This is where I’m supposed to go in the station.
It’s this active process of seeing. Likewise, in taking safe direction, you visualize the Buddha in front of you and you see that this is the direction that I want to go in. You’ve reviewed the qualities. You’ve reviewed you don’t want to have things going worse, being depressed, and so on in your life. Put this direction in my life.
It’s going to make a huge difference because it’s important that we always speak about how what makes a big difference between a Buddhist and a non-Buddhist is taking refuge. This is supposed to be the most important thing in your life. If it’s only just repeating some formula in a foreign language and maybe having taken a ceremony and so on, it’s trivial. If it’s trivial, then we’ve missed the point. It shouldn’t be something trivial.
It has to be something which is the whole thing that makes a big difference in our life. It will be that if we conceive of it in terms of having this direction in our life. Once you have a positive direction in your life, it does make a huge difference. We want to see then that this is the direction that I want to go in. So it’s a nonverbal process.
Alright? This, building it up is a beneficial habit. The verbal process was, you know, with the, sinking and with the reviewing. Alright? Now it’s nonverbal.
You have to jump in the pool. And yeah? No. This is analytical meditation. Analytical meditation is nonverbal.
That’s why I was saying that people, by saying, Let’s do Lamrim meditation, really what you’re doing is saying, Let’s think about Lamrim. We need to do is go on to Once you’ve done that, that’s a very important step and it’s a brilliant idea to take time out to do that. That’s very important to do. However, don’t just leave it at that. That’s what happens with most Westerners.
They just leave it at sinking. They just sit down there and go blah, blah, blah in their head. And that’s it. Now, there are steps after that. So these are the steps after that, what is actually technically meditation, how you build it up as a habit.
You build it up not by just going blah, blah, blah verbally in your head, but by actually seeing it. So you see this is the direction that I want to go in. Like we saw that this is where I want to go down the street. This is the person that I want to meet. And then, you alternate that with feeling it.
This is the stabilizing meditation, which is to feel I’m going in the right direction now. I have a direction in my life. It’s like you’re driving down the street past those three traffic lights and turning right, and you feel that you’re going in the right direction. You feel secure. You know where you’re going.
Or you’re walking in that station. You’ve seen this is the person that I want to meet. Now you’re walking towards that person and you feel you’re going towards the proper direction. It’s the same thing to feel that we have this direction in our life, this type of orientation. You can see then how that actually is going to build something up as a beneficial habit.
Seeing this is the direction I want to go in and feeling that I have this direction in my life. Alternating, when one gets weak, when that feeling gets weak, we’re driving in our car that we’re going in the right direction, then you look up again and say, Ah, yes, I’ve passed by one traffic light already. There’s the second and third one. You look again. Then again, you drive along feeling that you’re going in the right direction.
Same thing here. When that feeling becomes a little bit weak, you want to actively see it again, which again doesn’t mean necessarily going blah, blah, blah. If it becomes really weak, you can go back to blah, blah, blah. That’s the reviewing step. Really, what’s going to build it up are the second and third parts here, the seeing and the feeling.
That’s what meditation is all about. Any questions on that? That’s really essential, really important. Yeah? It depends on, you know, the question is, how much time should we spend on, each of these, processes, the reviewing, the seeing, and the feeling.
And, that’s something that, is going to shift as we, become more and more familiar with things. You know, the review is going to take, more and more time when we’re not familiar with these things, you know, so you have to review the whole thinking process. The but as we become more and more familiar, then you should be able to review it, you know, just like that instantly. It’s quite interesting. Serkong Rinpoche taught a course on Lamrim in one center in Europe.
And, at the end of that, then the people asked if he would lead a meditation on Lamrim. He had also taught Chenrezig practice as well. Rinpoche said, Okay, I’ll lead the meditation. We’ll do the entire Lamrim and then the entire Chenrezig practice. Okay, we’ll do do it for two minutes.
Everybody sort of freaked out. Rinpoche said, Two minutes? Rinpoche said, Okay, three minutes. Then he explained how at the time of death, death doesn’t wait for us to sit there nicely and get our position right and work on our motivation and go through at this really, really slow sort of peace that a lot of people do their practices in. Death doesn’t wait for you like that.
You have to be able to get it together instantly. The point is you build up more and more familiarity so that all these states of mind, these attitudes, and so on, can just instantly do. Which obviously we have to be able to do. You’re with your kids and your kids are screaming and yelling or falling down or something like that. You don’t have time to sit there and compose yourself and develop your patience and then do all this sort of thing.
Just instantly you have to get it together. This is what we’re aiming for to be able to do this.