Calm Abiding — 2013-10-26

Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 109-minute teaching, His Holiness the Dalai Lama provides a detailed exposition of the methods for attaining calm abiding meditation, the stable, focused concentration foundational to all Buddhist advancement. He presents two complementary frameworks: Maitreya’s method of the five faults and eight antidotes, derived from the Madhyāntavibhāga, and the nine mental abidings illustrated by the image of a monk taming an elephant of the mind. Working through each obstacle systematically—laziness, forgetfulness, sinking, and agitation—he explains the specific antidotes and distinguishes between coarse and subtle forms, particularly subtle sinking, which can masquerade as good meditation and requires continuous vigilance to detect. He walks listeners through the nine progressive stages from initial placement to meditative equipoise, emphasizes the indispensable role of ethical discipline in training memory and introspection, and concludes with the critical distinction between calm abiding itself and insight meditation, noting that calm abiding alone does not uproot the self-grasping that binds beings to cyclic existence. Suited to both newcomers and practitioners with prior exposure to the Lamrim framework.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 2013-10-26 – KR (2).mp3

UUID: 0a96c785-30f4-428e-b5d8-76d9a7276aea

Teacher: HH Dalai Lama

Collection: Calm Abiding

Date: 2013-10-26

Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide

Words: ~12,909

So we’ve increased the volume, thanks to Chris. I hope you can hear better. Very good. What are the methods for attaining calm abiding, the crux of the matter as it were? There are two broad methods and they tend to be fused together.

The first we owe mainly to Maitreya. It is a so called method of the five faults in the eight antidotes. And the second are the nine mental abidings you all have seen on the handout showing the monk taming the elephant of the mind. One can choose one or the other method to attain calm abiding both leads to calm abiding. The best is to try to combine both in one’s practice.

I have given the sources, the scriptural sources for these methods of meditation for those who are interested in it. Now the main scriptural source for the five faults and the eight antidotes is Maitreya’s treatise known as the Madhyāntavibhāga, literally the middle between the extremes. Specifically the fourth chapter of the Madhyantha Vibhaga teaches how to attain calm abiding through eliminating the five faults by means of the eight antidotes. Functionality in that state, in other words calm abiding leads to all goals. It is indispensable for the attainment of all qualities.

Abandoning the five faults with the eight applications, it arises from the causes taught it here refers to calm abiding so the causes of calm abiding must be present for calm abiding to arise. And then Maitreya lists the five faults. Laziness and forgetting the instruction, sinking and agitation, non application and intemperate application as the five faults. And he then lists the eight antidotes metaphorically and we will enter in details into detail into what that means. Dwelling in what dwells cause an effect not having forgotten the object, recognizing sinking and agitation, the actual application to abandon these and when they are pacified entering into calmness.

These are the eight antidotes applied to these five faults leading to this state, the state of calm abiding. As you can see, if you did not have the oral instruction from a teacher, this text would be cryptic. And they were composed with this intent. They were composed to be memorized by practitioners who then received the oral commentary and who could recollect the root text in a flash as they were meditating and illuminated in the light of the oral commentary. So the five faults we were saying are laziness, forgetting the instructions, sinking and agitation, non application and application.

And their respective antidotes are as follows. There are four antidotes of the eight which are antidotes to laziness and this goes largely to show that laziness is the main obstacle in the beginning of training in calm abiding. The first antidote is faith. Faith here in the actual practice not general religious faith. The second is aspiration, the wish to actually attain calm abiding.

The third is enthusiasm and the fourth is pliancy which actually is a wish to gain pliancy since one doesn’t have pliancy at the beginning of one’s practice. These are referred to in the Madhyāntavibhāga by the terms I mentioned dwelling what dwells cause and effect. Dwelling what dwells cause and effect. Then forgetting the instructions which refers you to forgetting the object of meditation. Losing the object of meditation literally.

Its main antidote is recollection. Sinking and agitation have as antidotes vigilance. Non application refers to non application of the antidotes and its antidote is the actual application of the antidotes. And intemperate application, in other words application of the antidotes where it’s unnecessary has this antidote non application. This looks a little bit complicated but we shall enter into things quietly to make it clear and to explain what the five faults are and what the eight antidotes are.

Laziness here does not refer to what we normally understand as laziness. It does not refer to enjoying a late sleep Sunday morning. Laziness refers to laziness towards the practice. In other words, it refers to most of the worldly activities we engage in. If you let us say prefer to go swimming than to meditate that is laziness.

And it is subdivided into three broad categories. The laziness of neutral deeds which would be going swimming which is ethically a neutral deed but which actually harms your practice of calm abiding because you should be practicing as we said 18 sessions a day if you wanted to achieve this goal. The laziness attached to bad deeds which is non virtuous laziness such as going to the pub and getting drunk and discouragement. Then discouragement really refers to probably a form of depression. Discouragement with the practice, discouragement, and lack of faith in oneself.

It’s a form of lack of courage, really. Now you can see that if you can cultivate these four antidotes, faith in the qualities of calm abiding, a wish to attain them, enthusiasm for the practice and delighting in the thought of the ecstasy, the pliancy you will attain, these will act as powerful antidotes to such a laziness. And you would do this through reading accounts of great practitioners such as Geshe Rabjampa or others who have attained calm abiding and thinking after all there is no major difference between myself and them. I am even better educated than most of them were when they were young. I have better conditions.

My health is certainly better. There is no reason. There’s absolutely no reason for instance that any one of us in this room should not gain the attainments as Milarepa attained. Milarepa attained full enlightenment living in an ice cave with little or no food, as a destitute orphan. We live in air conditioned heated rooms with cellars full of food.

We are if anything over educated. What is lacking is the will. The conditions are there. So if one looks at it like that then I think it can be quite inspirational especially if one thinks well these exceptional conditions we have, there’s no guarantee they will last. I mean Australia as as you know is at the peak of a mining boom, it may be after the peak of a mining boom.

Now where the going is still good is the time to practice. Then when the going is no longer good, there may be very good excuses not to practice anymore. So if one thinks in those terms, then it is possible to motivate oneself to put effort. So the second fault is forgetting the instruction as we said Forgetting the instruction refers to forgetting the object of meditation. Little bit as in as in this picture as you progress in your meditation everything becomes more nebulous until at the end you are in a sea of fog.

And the main antidote to forgetting the object of meditation is what I have called recollection it is memory. Calm abiding is built on the basis of memory that greatly decried mental quality in Western education. You can do nothing better to prepare your minds for the attainment of calm abiding than to cultivate your memory because the skill in memory and a powerful capacity of retention will translate immediately in the capacity of retaining the object of meditation. If you have cultivated your memory all your life either through studies or your profession, you will find it much easier to advance in training and concentration. If one has not cultivated one’s memory it is more difficult.

Then Bhāvaviveka, the great Svatāntrika Madhyamaka scholar says that the wayward elephant of the mind must be bound with the rope of memory to the object of observation and then progressively overpowered with the hook of wisdom. Here wisdom is actually a metaphor for vigilance. So the two tools which are used to subdue the mind are actually those which are clear in your handout. You can see that the monk who is pursuing the untamed elephant of the mind holds a rope which symbolizes memory or recollection which ties the elephant to the pillar of the object of observation and a hook. Now this doesn’t mean a lot to a western audience but in India and in Thailand to this day, mahouts when they train elephants train them with a hook and they can lead a very large animal with a very small hook.

And this is vigilance. That capacity of the mind which engages in introspection and sees what the state of the mind is. We will enter into a presentation of vigilance in a couple of minutes. So the main antidote therefore to losing the object of, recollect of observation is recollection. And it is in this matter interesting that one of the major subsidiary pursuits of great western scholars and hermeticists up to the eighteenth century was known as ars memoriae, the art of memory.

Finding the means to generate total recall. So the great Christian monk Giordano Bruno who tragically was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600 developed the most extraordinary techniques for memorization. If you can conjoin your training in calm abiding with strengthening your memory you will find the process to be far easier. And therefore Vasubandhu explaining the twin activities of recollection and vigilance points out that recollection or memory prevents the mind from losing the object of observation. While vigilance understands whether or not this loss has occurred.

So these two factors must be continuously present in the generation of concentration. Memory which ties the object to the the mind to the object of observation and vigilance which is constantly checking with a small proportion of the mind whether or not the main mind focused on the object of observation has lost it or not. If vigilance is absent you will lose the object of observation, the object of meditation without even being aware of it. Suddenly you will wake up ten minutes later and think oops I think I was trying to train in calm abiding. Recollection is necessary at the beginning but recollection alone is not sufficient.

If you wish, recollection is like the captain of the ship and vigilance is like the sentinel on the main mast. Vigilance is checking where the ship is going. When vigilance is well trained before the ship hits the shoal, the shoals, the sentinel will have called down to the captain and the captain will have changed course. It was when vigilance is well trained before the mind has lost the object of observation, vigilance will notice there is a slackening in the strength of recollection and will increase the strength of recollection. Both are necessary but you can see why training and recollection in vigilance presupposes training in ethics.

If you have taken vows and you try to protect these vows you are on a daily basis training in recollection in vigilance whether yours are lay vows, novice vows or the vows of a fully ordained monk. You are remembering the vows you took in the case of a fully ordained monk it is more than 200 vows and you are constantly checking to see whether you have broken a vow or not, whether you might get be getting in a situation where you will break a vow or not. As a result of this training, someone who has some type of ethical commitment will have much more powerful recollection and vigilance than someone who does not. Who just as we say nowadays goes with the flow. And therefore Asaṇga in his Abhidhamma Samuchaya defines vigilance as the non forgetfulness of a familiar thing and what is critical in this definition for us regarding our training and calm abiding is that before training and recollection you must be familiar with the object.

Once you have selected an object for training and calm abiding before actually engaging in the visualization of the object. You must observe the object for a long period of time because you would have to visualize the object. If it is a statue of a Buddha, you must become highly familiar with the idiosyncrasies of that particular statue. And as Asaṇga says it has a function of thorough non distraction in other words not losing the object of concentration. Now as mentioned after applying recollection as the antidote to forgetting the object of meditation the following fault we face is sinking and agitation.

Now this is actually quite advanced already. You will basically not experience sinking and agitation in your practice of calm abiding. You probably will simply lose the object and not even be aware you have lost it. And then when the bell rings realize that you were thinking of central market instead of focusing on the image of a Buddha. So in that case sinking and agitation are not the issue.

Losing the object of meditation is the issue and one should train in recollection in memory in other words. But once one has sufficiently trained in recollection one then will be able to keep the object of meditation but there will be some disturbances to the clarity of the object of meditation. The continuum of concentration is not interrupted but either the object will seem almost a bit fretful or the object will seem dull. If the object seems a bit fretful and in extreme cases if you are visualizing the image of a Buddha you may see it actually vibrating. It’s a sign of agitation.

The mind is too tight. If on the other hand the object becomes more and more dull, its luster disappears, then you are starting to see the manifestation of sinking. And they are akin to the two states of the ocean, the wild seas of agitation and the dead still of sinking. Now the skiff of the mind is basically floating on the ocean and you want to avoid being in the situation where the mind is carried away by huge waves which will be agitation. You also want to be, avoid being in the situation where the boat of the mind sinks to the floor of the ocean which will be sinking.

Now when agitation is present it may be coarse or subtle. We shall talk mainly of coarse agitation and of subtle agitation somewhat later. As we said, agitation means that the mind is too tight and you yourself in a function of your personality will be more prone to agitation or more prone to sinking. People who we say are quite uptight will typically be quite prone to agitation. They will have good concentration but the mind is a bit too tight and when the object of observation appears the object of observation is unstable and you are on the point of losing the object of observation through the mind scattering away.

You haven’t lost it yet. On the other hand, people who are more prone to depression will typically be prone to sinking, to losing the object of observation. Now if agitation is present as the mind is too tight it must be brought down and this is best done through meditating on impermanence and death. You change objects of observation and you just visualize yourself as a skeleton. This is guaranteed to bring your mind down.

It’s if you forgive me for the term the party pooper. Then if on the other hand sinking manifests, the object of observation is still there but it’s becoming duller and duller. At that point you want to raise the energy level of the mind. Energy level is too low. Now sinking is not well described in the great treatises and Je Tsongkhapa points out it is actually one of the most difficult obstacles to counter.

With agitation you can sense something is wrong. The object is almost vibrating, You can sense you are going to lose it at a moment’s notice. But with sinking especially subtle sinking, the object is very stable and it’s quite clear. So subtle sinking looks like very good concentration. Object is stable, it’s clear clear enough, there’s no scattering, this is good enough.

Unfortunately subtle sinking if one stays in the state eventually leads to coarse sinking and ultimately to the loss of the object of observation. And it has been Je Tsongkhapa’s great contribution to identify subtle sinking as a major obstacle to the generation of concentration. In Je Tsongkhapa’s time, many great meditators of Tibet misconstrued subtle sinking for good meditation. And it was particularly widespread in the Mahāmudrā traditions where he described these states of meditation as complete concentration with complete relaxation. Now the danger of engaging in intensive practice with subtle sinking is that it causes the mind to become more and more dull over time.

It’s exactly the same thing as taking a very sharp knife and hitting it against a stone. At a certain point the knife can’t cut anything anymore. I have seen this with western practitioners who engaged or try to engage in calm abiding. It’s a sure sign that the practice has gone wrong and often they are not receiving the correct instructions. Then a clear sign that subtle sinking is present and that they actually are confusing meditation with subtle sinking with meditation with good concentration is that their memory declines.

If there is a decline of the cognitive faculties as a result of calm abiding, it is clearly clearly wrong practice. Specifically if there is a decline in memory or in the analytical capacities then the practitioner is actually focusing on an object with subtle sinking. The karmic result of this is rebirth as an animal. So before one engages in the practice of calm abiding, it behooves one to receive good instructions at least from a Geshe who has been well trained in the great monasteries but ideally from a Geshe who in addition has practiced himself in gain calm abiding. Because it is really absurd to put great effort in practice to just create the causes for an animal rebirth.

It is really absurd. If you hadn’t practiced you would have had an ordinary human rebirth but as a result of practice and of the ever increasing dullness of the mind when it’s up with an animal rebirth and I have seen many cases of this dullness of the mind induced by raw meditation. If meditation is practiced correctly, it is exactly the opposite which occurs. The memory should become like a steel trap and the analytical faculties should become ever sharper. That’s a sign of good meditation.

Returning to dullness generally speaking there are several types of dullness. What is known as sinking which we mentioned already, my apologies, which occurs when the object of meditation becomes less clear. Lethargy which is an extreme form of sinking where one simply succumbs to sleep or to a state of overwhelming dullness and disheartedness; Shenmung which seems to correspond to depression where one basically gives up. You can say that the common denominator in each case is a lack of mental energy. We would say in moral terms a lack of courage.

That person has to brace themselves. Then there are physical means to do this. If sinking becomes very strong, the Tibetan masters such as Geshe Rabjampa recommended just stopping the session, going for a walk or dousing yourself with cold water. It works just fine. And Kamalaśīla in his Bhāvanākrama defined sinking as being like a blind man in the gloom or one whose eyes are shot.

The metaphor is self evident. But I find Je Tsongkhapa’s analysis much sharper. When one meditates with thinking, mind has lost the mode of apprehension, the capacity to hold the object of meditation and it is excessively withdrawn inwards. And this is an alternate way of understanding agitation and sinking. You can understand agitation and sinking vertically.

Agitation becomes excessive mental energy and sinking insufficient mental energy and you are striving for the middle road between the two. Or you can understand them horizontally. Agitation becomes excessive exterior scattering. It’s a peripheral scattering. Sinking occurs through excessive inwards withdrawal.

It happens quite easily if you put real effort in your meditation, you’re one of the dedicated types that you would actually feel that you’re entering into a very profound state of meditation. There are no there’s almost no sense data available. The object of meditation is present. It is clear as clear as one could hope for. But then the question you have to ask yourself is, is subtle sinking present or not?

And the difference between sinking and subtle sinking is a particular limpidity of the object of meditation. There’s a particular clarity, particular sparkle which is present when subtle thinking is not there and which is absent when subtle thinking is there. It’s a small difference. It’s a difference between zirconium and diamond. They look alike.

One is worth a lot and the other is worth nothing. So how does one counter sinking if it is such an obstacle? Then if one is not very well trained, one just visualizes something bright. The brighter the better. It can be the sun, a ball of light and if one is well trained one meditates on the clear light nature of the mind.

It is the clarity which elevates the mind. So in a nutshell, stable and clear concentration occur around a medium line above which the concentration is no longer stable and clear and subtle agitation has started. Subtle agitation can degenerate into coarse agitation as a result of which one will eventually lose the object of meditation. This is due to the intensification of the energy level of the mind. Tibetans use exactly this term, to the elevation of the mind.

Stable and clear concentration can also degenerate due to sinking. In that case it is initially subtle sinking which is much harder to identify than subtle agitation. The subtle sinking turns into coarse sinking then dishearteness and eventually sleep or abandonment of the meditative session. Then I have tried to summarize this in a chart, it’s rather complex but it will give you a sense of what we are dealing with, what we are looking for. On the top you have the qualities.

Sorry. I have a Russian antivirus system which is convinced that I cannot live without it. And I am quite convinced they can’t live without the Russian government because they keep reminding me that I have to upgrade. So these are the factors we have to cultivate to gain calm abiding. We need stability, clarity, limpidity, intensity and pliancy.

Now the fifth factor of pliancy in other words ecstasy is only present with calm abiding. Even in the ninth mental abiding pliancy is absent. Stability as you can see is a characteristic of sinking. If sinking is present when you meditate, you have stability that’s a given. The the ship at the bottom of the ocean is stable that is guaranteed.

It’s not coming up from the bottom of the ocean, but what you lack in the case of core sinking is both limpidity and clarity. The object is there but it is not clear and it’s not limpid and in the case of subtle sinking which makes subtle sinking difficult to identify, you have partial clarity and partial limpidity. It’s clear enough, it’s limpid enough, but it is not sparkling which is what you want. Now with coarse agitation, you have both clarity and intensity. The object is clear and it is almost radiant.

Limpidity is not really there because the object is almost quivering with the intensity of your focus. But with subtle agitation even limpidity is there a certain component of the factor of stability is absent. Now this is based on my own analysis of the material. Frankly at a certain point I feel that this can only become meaningful through practice. So it is through your own practice that you will understand the difference between limpidity, clarity and intensity.

If you engage in visualization eventually you will see there is a difference in the ways which visualized object appears. So you can see that here really it is subtle sinking which is the biggest obstacle at a certain point in one’s practice. I cannot recommend too strongly studying calm abiding in the light of the great treatises. We as westerners are ranked beginners in the science of mental training. We are very developed as far as technology and the scientific understanding of phenomena is concerned But when it comes to training these inner states of mind, we are babes in the woods.

We have access to three millennia of one of the greatest yogic traditions the world has known in India. The great masters of ancient India, Buddhist and non-Buddhist rooted their philosophy in their practice. So to neglect this for some new age book written by nobody really knows who is nonsense. And you can see for instance in the following passage by a great Indian scholar Stiramati how profound some of the insights of these great practitioners are. Stiramati wrote around twelve hundred years ago.

Recollection is the cause of vigilance. In other words we talked previously of recollection and vigilance. They are not symmetrical. Recollection ties the mind to the object of observation. Vigilance checks whether the mind is tied down to the object of observation or not and whether it is getting ready to scatter.

But according to Stiramati, recollection must arise first and vigilance second. Without recollection there is no vigilance. Without memory there is no vigilance. Therefore in the hierarchy of the antidotes memory or recollection comes first and vigilance comes second. Now we will present a much simpler approach to generating calm abiding the nine mental abiding in keeping with Asaṇga’s and Maitreya’s.

Then here I have systematically quoted from these great texts to try to show you how these great texts are instructions for practice. It is the very essence of the Kadampa tradition. The Kadampa tradition was defined for Je Tsongkhapa as a tradition which did not even take a letter for granted. And the fourth stage is one of repeated application. In the fifth stage the mind for the first time is subdued.

In the sixth stage it is pacified. In the second seventh stage it is pacified evermore. In the eighth it is tamed and dwells within it is withdrawn within and in the ninth stage one has attained the final stage before calm abiding. The only difference between the ninth stage and calm abiding is the presence or the absence of pliancy. So if we analyze these nine stages and you might want to take the chart which was handed out.

Each of the nine stages is put on the chart here. The first they’re all underlined and you have numbers. The first is mental placement. The second continuous placement. The third patched placement.

The fourth close placement, the fifth subduing, the sixth pacification, the seventh thorough pacification, the eighth single point of concentration and the ninth meditative equipoise which is still not calm abiding. Calm abiding occurs when the monk actually has finished flying. The flying here is a metaphor for ecstasy. So these charts were composed by Tibetan artists synthesizing the data from the great ancient Indian treatises. The elephant here symbolizes the untamed mind.

The blackness is the untamed nature of the mind. The monkey symbolizes agitation and at a certain point you can see that both the elephant and the monkey have white patches. These white patches refer to the beginning of purification of the untameness of these two animals. Finally after the third patch placement for the first time, a rabbit appears on top of the elephant. This is the first time that sinking can be noticed.

Sinking cannot be noticed before the third mental abiding. Now the fact that the monk is pursuing the elephant during the first three placements and only captures him at the third placement means that until the third placement, the practitioner loses the object of meditation. In other words until the third placement the main antidote is actually the antidote against the four the four antidotes against laziness plus recollection. We don’t even remember the object. Now if you are in the situation where you start meditating and nothing actually appears to the mind, you are down here.

You are not even here. So for the monk to be here something must appear to the mind. If you try to visualize the statue of a Buddha and nothing whatsoever appears just black, then you haven’t started. But the main reason nothing appears is because the factor of memory is extremely weak which is a typical problem for westerners because our memories are heavily under trained as a result of particular policies in education. What you can do is to observe the object of observation over and again and in conjunction with this try to improve your memory.

Once the object of observation appears you have started on the path of concentration. Now if we look at the first mental abiding and for the first mental abiding we are basically here. You can see that in the first mental abiding the mind can be settled on its object. So as I said, if you don’t have an object which appears there is no settling of the mind on this this object but it is discontinuous. In other words, you lose the object most of the time.

And when you start to train in calm abiding, you will have the impression impression that you have a sharp increase in conceptual activity. Suddenly your mind looks much busier than before. This is not the case. It’s actually that you for the first time have become aware of the level of conceptual busyness of the mind. It’s quite striking.

The one starts what has the impression that one’s mind is just scattered all over the place. The main obstacles here are the two first thoughts Maitreya mentions laziness and forgetfulness. Laziness in other words doing something else. Once you start trying to practice seriously meditation you will find that everything without exception becomes preferable to meditation. It’s quite interesting and once you have decided for instance to train in calm abiding, a wish to study instead of meditating is a form of laziness.

It’s a pretext for not meditating. So once you decide to train in meditation, the pretext for not meditating skyrocket. So the antidotes here are faith, aspiration, exertion and recollection. Which of these three first ones is dominant depends on your personality. In the second mental abiding and we are here continuous placement, the mind settles a bit longer on its object.

It’s the main difference with the first mental abiding. It is still discontinuous. You still lose the object and by losing the object we mean the object simply disappears. Suddenly you realize the object isn’t there anymore. And discursiveness seems to decrease simply because you have become accustomed to noticing it.

The obstacles and the antidotes are the same. In the third mental abiding which is perhaps the most tedious of all, you reset your mind on the object over and again. You have become aware of the fact that the mind loses the object of observation and it’s called patched application because you have to reset the mind on the object. It is still discontinuous but the discontinuities are shorter. Now if exceptionally laziness and forgetfulness were absent you would start immediately at the fourth mental abiding.

In other words if you were able to meditate and you had no difficulty in engaging in the practice and there was an uninterrupted flow of concentration on the object, you would immediately start at close placement. And then your main obstacles would no longer be laziness and forgetfulness but sinking and agitation. So with close placement for the first time you can see the elephant is held. It happens at the end of the third, the beginning of the fourth by the rope of recollection. The mind no longer loses its object.

It’s a bit of a mistake here really because the elephant should not be held at the end of the third. But to be careful with these charts they’re the works of artists. So when I showed this one to Geshe Rabjampa he was very dubious. This comes from the institute of Tibetan studies in Sarnath I translated it but the question he asked me was a question that Tom Geshe would ask immediately. Who composed the chart?

Then I said I’m not sure. Think it’s a translator of the Bhavana Krama. Then he said the translator okay. How well does he understand the topic? Then he was hesitant to rely on it and I think it’s quite an instruction for all of us to try to rely on the great texts and less on the charts.

So if anyway in the force mental, abiding the object is no longer lost from this point onwards you have uninterrupted concentration which is a huge thing. Then obviously the main obstacles are agitation and sinking which we have explained already and recollection is no longer the main antidote. You’re no longer losing the object. The power of memory is almost complete. Vigilance is necessary.

The result of memory which checks is agitation increasing. Am I eventually gonna lose the object or on the other hand is sinking increasing. Khensur Rinpoche put it beautifully. Don’t know whether this will resonate with you or not as Australians because people don’t like these metaphors but vigilance is like the intelligence service, right? Checking for sabotage in the country.

So you are checking whether the terrorists are planning an attack. You’re no longer checking whether the attack is imminent. Vigilance is really like your your domestic intelligence service like ASIO in Australia checking are there plans. If there are plans we intervene or there are plans. A vigilance acts preemptively.

Then the fifth, mental abiding, I translated it here as subjugation but I think subduing is probably better in English. Vigilance has come into its full. Then here probably only subtle agitation and laxity, i.e. sinking are present. Coarse sinking and agitation are no longer present And it is very difficult to move beyond the state because you must be able to identify subtle sinking which is as we said difficulty. Subtle laxity becomes a big obstacle because the mind has been strongly withdrawn.

So it was Je Tsongkhapa’s feeling that many of the so called great meditators of Tibet got stuck at the level of the fifth mental abiding. There was no coarse agitation. There was no coarse sinking. Subtle agitation was almost absent and if they didn’t identify subtle sinking, they would have the impression of a very focused but relaxed state of mind. Then they would never attain calm abiding.

And actually through meditating and we’re speaking of hermits, meditated for years. This doesn’t really concern us for years. They would cause a Sakya Pandita said, animal rebirth. Sakya Pandita has a famous verse in which he says, do not speak to me of this wrong Mahāmudrā which only leads to rebirth as a dog. This does not refer to the authentic practice of Mahāmudrā but it refers to an incomplete practice of concentration.

So in the sixth mental abiding in reaction against this one increases the energy level of the mind and subtle agitation once again becomes a danger as a reaction against subtle sinking. In the seventh mental abiding, it is exceptional for either subtle sinking or subtle agitation to arise. The mind is uninterrupted. It is focused on its object of concentration. Obviously coarse agitation and coarse sinking have long since been abandoned.

The pitfalls of subtle sinking are understood. They had led to subtle agitation in the previous level that has been countered now only from time to time is there subtle sinking or subtle agitation. In the eight mental abiding one merely needs to apply memory, memory of the object of meditation at the beginning of the session for the entire session to occur on autopilot. So here there is neither subtle sinking nor subtle agitation. Now the eighth mental abiding is said to be one practice of simple point of concentration with effort because effort is required at the beginning to put the mind on the object.

From that point on effort is no longer required. In the ninth level of mental abiding effort is not required at the beginning to put the mind on the object. What sets the mind on the object at this point there is either course agitation and sinking nor subtle agitation and sinking. The mind is single pointedly focused on the object of concentration. This is faultless concentration but it is not calm abiding because the pliancies, physical and mental pliancies have not yet arisen.

So if you present the nine mental abidings from the standpoint of the four engagements which I find very helpful personally, as a way of understanding them. You have these nine stages we talked about placement, continuous placement, repeated placement, close placement, subduing, pacification, thorough pacification, single point of concentration, meditative equipoise and calm abiding which can be understood in terms of Asaṇga Shravakabhumi as four engagements. During the first two one engages the object through concentration. Basically during the first two, intervals of no concentration are greater than the intervals of concentration. Therefore one must focus on concentration.

Most of the time one is losing the object of meditation. From the third, mental abiding up to the seventh, one has uninterrupted engagement. First one loses the object of meditation and then agitation or sinking is present. The object of meditation is still there but one is obliged to intervene against agitation or sinking. For this reason even though from the fifth onwards one does not lose the object there is still interrupted engagement because we must apply the antidotes to sinking into agitation.

At the level of the eighth mental abiding we have uninterrupted engagement. Neither sinking nor agitation coarse or subtle are present. One just needs to put the mind on the object of meditation with effort at the beginning of the session and then the flow of concentration is uninterrupted. This is the main difference with the ninth meditative equipoise which is without exertion. It’s actually in the Samdhinirmochana Sūtra that we find the source for the statement that the ninth mental abiding is not calm abiding.

When Buddha Śākyamūni addresses Maitreya and says if one has not obtained physical and mental pliancy that is not calm abiding. It is a mind which is concordant with calm abiding. In other words it is the ninth meditative equipoise. It is the generation of the two pliancies which give rise to calm abiding. And to this marvelous image of Asaṇga flying in space with Maitreya.

It is said that when one generates calm abiding for the first time, one feels that one is flying. It is a direct result of the pliancies. Now what is pliancy? The definition is quite complex in a nutshell. Pliancies are elimination of anything which hinders our physical and mental capacity to engage in virtuous deeds.

If you notice, if you analyze your own behavior, I think all of us can see that before we engage in studying, before we engage in virtuous deeds, before we engage in meditation, there is an inner resistance. And that inner resistance can become quite overwhelming. We think of doing prostrations but as we approach the prostration board, it’s most of the hand is pulling us back from the prostration board, isn’t it? You know. Then for, serious meditators who have had some difficulties with their meditation session.

It can become so bad that they feel like vomiting when they see the meditation cushion. Pliancy is the elimination of all of this. With Pliancy one is in complete control of one’s body and the mind. They are completely serviceable. It’s a term which is traditionally used.

And, the steps leading from the ninth mental abiding to calm abiding occur in a fairly standard sequence. First there are some signs of the forthcoming pliancy, portents of pliancy. Typically described as one’s brain feeling heavy within one’s skull. It’s a particular sensation or as a sensation akin to that of a warm hand put on a freshly shaven skull. Then we will have to experience these to know what they are and this is followed by mental pliancy which is a sensation of tremendous mental ecstasy and physical pliancy a sensation of tremendous physical ecstasy with their associated blisses.

When the two blisses of physical and mental pliancy have occurred one has attained calm abiding and then as one continues meditating in calm abiding the bliss of the pliancies decrease. One has become if you wish accustomed to. Then I will skip much of this material which is I think a bit technical. We have broadly speaking covered the chart. Since I’d like to do a little bit of meditation before the questions, I will conclude with a very important point which is the distinction between calm abiding and insight.

And why Je Tsongkhapa says it is necessary to generate insight after generating calm abiding. This ties in with what we talked about at the beginning of this conference. There are two types of meditation, concentrative and analytical meditations. When they are led to their fruition and concentrated meditation is associated with a bliss arisen from concentration that is known as calm abiding. When analytical meditation is associated with a bliss arisen from analysis that is known as insight.

The difference between these two types of meditation, calm abiding and insight does not depend on the object of meditation. So for instance, once you have attained calm abiding you can definitely focus that mind of calm abiding on emptiness. That doesn’t turn it into insight. It’s still calm abiding. You can focus it on any analytical object you wish.

It is still calm abiding. You are not practicing insight when you do this. Practicing insight occurs when having attained calm abiding, some 80% of the mind which is focused on emptiness in calm abiding remains focused on emptiness, that’s calm abiding. And within that like a core of water flowing in a body of ice, 20% of the mind engages in analysis of the object. That 20% of the mind engages in analysis is engaged in insight.

When bliss arises as a result of that insight, you will have attained insight, full insight. And then you are engaged in a union of calm abiding insight and this is the goal with emptiness as an object. So Je Tsongkhapa says, although worldly persons and these are remarkable worldly persons, these are yogis cultivate concentration, they do not destroy the notion of the self. Keep in mind that in ancient India for most of the non-Buddhist schools, the concentrations were seen as a means of attaining union with God. For instance, it would seem that much of Shankara’s Vedanta describes means to attain union with Brahman, with God through concentrating on God.

This is just a śamatha or one of the higher concentrations, one of the Dhyanas. According to Je Tsongkhapa according to the Buddhist tradition it cannot lead to liberation from cyclic existence because the root of cyclic existence is not severed it is a notion of the self which has to be severed. And Je Tsongkhapa makes this fundamental distinction which I tried to explain previously between insight and calm abiding. In insight, the pliancy is generated to the power of analysis. So you may have calm abiding with the pliancy generated to the power of concentration but if you engage in analysis on that basis you don’t have insight.

It is only when it is through the power of analysis itself that a pliancy arisen from analysis arises that you have full insight. And there are lot of debates on whether you have to generate calm abiding first and insight after or the opposite. I personally feel that it’s perfectly possible to generate them in any sequence. It depends on the person. And I think those who are engaged in a lot of intellectual activity knows that there is a particular happiness involved with analysis which seems to be a bit of a precursor of the pliancy associated with insight.

So this is what I wanted to cover with you today. The material is a bit technical Keep in mind it is rooted largely in the experience of hundreds of generations of Buddhist monks and practitioners and the best way to handle this material is to work through it yourself and connect with your own experience of practice. So what I would like to propose if you’re not too tired is that we do a very short meditation session. Now these sessions are typically short. We’re talking five minutes or less.

Now when one trains in concentration one avoids the long sessions we engage in when we practice LAMREM. You’re not training for twenty minutes or half an hour. Your goal is a very very short very tight session and then if one can train in that way one is able to identify the floor. So the first element here is a position. You want a good cushion something like what I have here is excellent.

You want something of foam, the cushions we have at the center are not good for this. The harder the better as hard as possible without being uncomfortable because the goal is to elevate your basin so that your spine can be straight. Then you fold, you should not basically have the clothes I have ideally loose clothes. You fold your legs as best you can at least in half posture if you can. You loosen your belt, if you have a belt I won’t do it but you know at home you should.

Put your spine straight, fold your hands with your two thumbs meeting beneath the navel, lower your head slightly and at present try to visualize as best you can the Buddha on the altar. Clear mental image keeping that visualization there with the power of memory and with a small part of your mind checking whether you lose it or not. We will do this for a couple of minutes. We will now start leaving the meditation session. Loosen your concentration.

And you can let the object of meditation fade. Now I would like to ask you some questions. Who had nothing appear? How many of you? One.

Raise your hands, please. One, two, three. Anybody else? Did everyone have an image of the Buddha? Yes.

We didn’t have time to observe it carefully. But normally, you would observe you would take a picture of this but I took this one because I assume most of you would be quite familiar with it. You take a picture or you can use a statue you have at home. Now if nothing appeared, it can be because you’re not familiar with the object or it can be because memory needs more training. So as we said there’s two approaches to observe the object over and again or to increase your memory.

But those of you to whom nothing appeared, when you think of family members, do their faces appear to you? Well, do you dream? I don’t I don’t dream. Ah, okay. Then that’s maybe something you do.

Then when you dream something appears to your mind. Right? Then I I cannot say, you know, I mean, one’s person’s mind is a bit different, you know. If things appear to you in your dreams then you should be able to cause something to appear when you meditate. Probably.

Probably. Then then you should have no problem. If you dream in color, you have very clear dreams. You know? This we we call this eidetic imagery in psychology and psychiatry.

Eidetic imagery is not easy but at the beginning, you can rely I’m not encouraging you to meditate on the face of someone you love or you are acquainted with because this only increases attachment. But if you are able to remember the face of your parents, your children, your spouses, then that means you are able to have mental imagery. Then you should be able to imagine the face of the Buddha or in this case a statue of the Buddha. Then among those to whom something appeared, how many lost the object of concentration? Everybody.

Okay. After how long? That long? Okay. Did you lose it completely or was it becoming indistinct and more distinct?

Okay. If you lost it completely then you’re carrying one of the three levels. So those of you who to whom nothing appeared have to train in memory to enter into the first level. The others are levels one, two and three depending on how long you were able to keep a continuity of the object visualized. If you were able to keep it for several minutes then you’re probably at the end of level three.

Then the way one trains in concentration, I actually held a very long session, is that you would concentrate on this image until you lost it. At which point, you have to decide whether you bring it back or you stop the session. The two approaches, you have to consult with your own teacher. I would probably suggest if you lose it repeatedly to stop the session but your session should not be longer than five minutes. Two to three minutes is better.

Your goal is as close to perfect concentration as possible. And once you have an uninterrupted session of two to three minutes where you do not lose the object for two to three minutes, you increase the session to four minutes, five minutes, six minutes until you start losing the object and you stop. And then you start to try once you have the continuity of the object, you start to try to get clarity. So you’re not just looking for a blob, yellowish blob, you’re looking for the details. Now how many of you saw details in the statue of the Buddha?

Yes. What details did you see? That’s good. Vibrant means that you are prone to agitation. It doesn’t mean that was agitation but you have a tendency between agitation and sinking agitation is better.

It’s easier to generate calm abiding if your mind is tight than if it is slack generally speaking. Did you see any details? The begging bowl, the arm, the Ushnisha? Jill, did you see details? That’s very good.

Very good. Very good. In that case, if you want to train a concentration, you might want to get a small statue of the Buddha. But this is one for your altar and just observe it again and again. Keep in mind you are not trying to visualize the historical Buddha, you’re visualizing the statue on your altar.

So the statue on your altar let us say is guilt, then you should visualize a guilt Buddha. You should not visualize a Buddha with skin the color of Oz, you know. And ideally your statue has no defects. But if it were to have small defects, you would want those to appear. You’re visualizing the statue.

Right? You observe it ever more carefully. Then do you have any questions on this practice? Whatever is comfortable for you. Doesn’t matter.

The key is stability so I would assume that if you’re going do it in a chair, the knees wider part is better. Whatever is comfortable for you. It must be a posture you can settle into. Probably not. Because once you started really concentrating concentrating you could fall off the stool.

At the advantage, I am no longer able to do it really but when I could if you go in full Padmasana, you cross both your legs, you have a very very stable structure on the ground, very solid. Don’t don’t do this. It’s unnecessary. It’s unnecessary. Do you have other questions?

You can meditate on nothingness. It leads to rebirth in a specific realm cyclic existence in God realm called the realm of nothingness. But in the Buddhist tradition, meditate on something. Emptiness is a something as well. Don’t.

Don’t, please. I mean, we don’t want to have to help you with big problems. So I’ve lost count of the number of times in my life. I met westerners who had been meditating on their chakras who got into big trouble and they would come to Tibetan masters and sometimes they could be helped, sometimes they couldn’t. The chakras are not good as objects of meditation unless you have received specific instruction.

Sorry? Well, that is not a Buddhist practice. This is a Buddhist practice. One of the great Kundalini yogis Paramahansa Yogananda in the last century after raising Kundalini went through a long period of what was akin to insanity. So I think whatever that is you might want to leave it alone.

Yes, please. Yes. Yes. And ideally, should not be a picture, it should be a statue. You are visualizing something which is three-dimensional.

Now when I was young, had no instructions then I did this in a very painful way. I had an iron pyrite ring. You know what pyrite is? Iron ore. Then I cannot receive Buddhist instructions in those days.

Was 16 I think. I put it on a table and I observed it and then I visualized it in space and I caused it to rotate in space. Now obviously, this was very difficult because I had to visualize the features changing as I was causing it to rotate and I thought this was, you know, the way to train in concentration. It is but it’s a very very painful way to go about it. So you want a three-dimensional object and after observing it very carefully, you stop looking at it.

Right? You put it aside and then you visualize it in space and none of you could ask about the size of the object. Broadly speaking, it is said that it should be visualized the height of one thumb. But this depends on your mind. If you have a strong tendency towards sinking, you want to make it as small as possible because that will increase the energy level to tenor the heights of your mind.

If you have a strong tendency towards agitation, you want to make it a bit larger. It is one of the ways you can control the intensity of the mind. So it can be this not a lot smaller than this or it could be like this. And that you would find you find this through your own practice. If you visualize the image of the Buddha and let us say at this or with this size, you find that your mind is very tight and it is almost vibrating, try increasing the size a little bit.

It should bring the level of the mind down. If on the other hand, if you visualize that it is size, you find your mind is very stable but the image lacks a certain sheen, try reducing the size of the image a little bit. We’re talking of 2030% not more than that. How large? As long as you have clarity, why not?

It is much larger than what is normally enjoined but as long as you have clarity. Yes? What what sort of a medical problem? Well, the coarse memory depends on the brain but I mean there’s a lot of data showing that in the reincarnation process memories are preserved. So it’s clear that the subtle memory does not depend on the brain.

Therefore, though there may be some impairment of the brain function, it may not be impossible for you to nonetheless cultivate a certain type of memory. Did you dream? Not at all. Did you dream in the past? Then put these practices aside for the time being and recite mantra.

It’s much more helpful and then once the situation has settled down, you know, you can engage in these practices. Don’t force yourself into something which is difficult at present. Does that help? Yes, please. It won’t be an issue for I think most of us in this room since basically that happens from the fourth and the fifth levels onwards.

I think most of us are either not on the path or between the first and the third. What happens is from the fourth level onwards, if one allows subtle sinking to develop in the mind then eventually this leads to a general deterioration of mental capacities and can lead to animal rebirth but it really is a problem for advanced meditators since it becomes an issue once one has an uninterrupted stream of concentration on the object. So until you have an uninterrupted stream of concentration for hours on end however long you want the object, you are still not at the level of the fourth mental abiding. So it doesn’t really concern us. There’s no worries to have.

For us at present the goal has to be to strengthen our memory and our dedication so that we are able to reach this point where the mind is just set on the object and stays on the object then it will become more clear, less clear but at least the continuum is there. Does that answer your question? I don’t know. Mean if that were the case then animals would have very strong conceptual memories. They have strong memories but that’s strong, I don’t know.

Yes, please. Yes. Anything which fosters your own faith and your wish to engage in this practice because that’s really what we lack otherwise we would have done this a long time ago. Many of us in this room have received instructions on calm abiding for decades you know. So what lacks is the drive to do it and as really I think Rinpoche said to me once regarding some students he said their minds aren’t turned towards the dharma because they don’t see the benefit of the dharma.

You see there’s no point in saying to people this is useful, this is useful, this is useful until they themselves experience it, it’s not going to happen. You have to have some of life experience and this happens when the teachings are connected to the life of the person and when at that point the person sees and say that what they studied in the long run is of help in their life and not just of help but really of major help. They are unstoppable. Then you don’t have to motivate those people. So it is that connection with one’s own life experience which I think is difficult to establish largely because our lives are very comfortable.

I think for most of us calm abiding is a very theoretical thing. It would be nice, yes but are you basically going to walk away from your family, face perhaps a divorce, not communicate with anybody, not see your children, live in solitude for realistically one, two, three, four, five years until it happens? No. Why not? Because you don’t feel you have a lot to gain.

Now once one understands the advantages of calm abiding then that starts to shift. With calm abiding, anything you meditate upon transforms the mind. Calm abiding is a gateway to all paths. In other words, once one meditates to to for instance enter into the path of a hero or a Pratyekabuddha, one needs calm abiding focused on renunciation. Enter the path of the Bodhisattva when it’s calm abiding focused on bodhicitta.

To gain the paranormal powers when it’s calm abiding. Without the paranormal powers it’s not possible to help others. We go through the motions of helping others but we don’t understand their problems. Once one has telepathy, once one has the capacity to see the past and future lives of others then one can begin to help others. Most people lie.

So when people come to the teacher, the majority of people are not telling the truth. You know? Now the teacher, especially advanced teachers see directly in the mind of the student Then often they will answer with an answer which has nothing to do with the question which was asked. Because this is actually what benefits the student. But that capacity can only arise through calm abiding.

Ideally you would practice under the direct supervision of a teacher. This would teach us a form or under the direct supervision of someone who has attained calm abiding. Then that supervision is not going to be given if the person does not seem serious. So typically someone who wants to get calm abiding will first become ordained and this is standard. First you become a monk or a nun then you set everything you have, right?

You turn your backs on your families then you study because otherwise it’s not possible. You have to study calm abiding, And then once one has reached that point, one can go to one’s teacher and ask for a recommendation. But until one has basically done that, no teacher is gonna send you to a great meditator who has very little time. It is not worth directing people who are not gonna achieve the goal. Then if one is not gonna be ordained as a monk or a nun at least one should be a lay person with strong vows.

Strong lay vows. There are lot of preconditions. You know? Yes. Well you’re not going to get it.

But what is being explained to give you a sense of how to progress on the lower levels of concentration. A lay person with a job and a family life is not going to get calm abiding. It’s not going to happen. But the goal is twofold. First, I think here at the center, you know, and it’s very much a Tibetan tradition, one gives this broad plan of all the path leading from where we are now to full enlightenment.

It’s like this you see the the totality. Then it’s obvious that much of what is taught is too advanced for us. So with calm abiding, I think what is really useful is understanding this and try I think it’s realistic to try to progress up to the third and maybe the fourth level. And that is very good concentration. I mean that’s a big benefit I think medically because for instance I’m quite sure it would reduce the incidence of problems such as Alzheimer’s.

I don’t know of a single case of Alzheimer’s among the Geshes, you know that. Not one. It’s also a great benefit for one’s practice. But as I mentioned at the beginning there are six preliminaries to obtain calm abiding. If the preliminaries are not there, it won’t happen.

It’s like meditation on emptiness. Emptiness is taught but realistically what is helpful to us is meditation and impermanence which we can understand. Then for future lives it is of great benefit to have these karmic imprints implanted because if you have received teachings of calm abiding several times in this life, you have a good sense of the structure and you have put some effort that every day doing five minutes is not a lot, concentration meditation. Then in your next life you may be able to do a calm abiding retreat at a young age. Depends what you’re trying to achieve.

If you just want to improve your concentration then a couple short sessions of two three minutes each day would be very helpful. If you want to calm attain calm abiding, if we want to attain calm abiding we have to change the way we live. So it’s not gonna happen. Right? Then that is an unrealistic goal.

The realistic goal is to improve one’s concentration and that is a benefit both in one’s practice and professionally. At the beginning it’s easier but as a result of practicing with the eyes closed, you become accustomed to practicing with high levels of sinking or even lethargy. It increases that so it’s a reason for which in the position of the eyes when it’s instructed to keep one’s eyes open partly closed like half closed focused on a point five finger widths in front of one’s nose. This constant stimulus of light which prevents you from falling asleep. It’s more difficult.

If that is too difficult for you, another approach which is very helpful is to practice facing a white wall. Completely white wall and you just then you don’t cross your eyes you stare straight at the wall and you visualize whatever you are trying to meditate as meditate upon on the wall. It is for many people much easier than crossing their eyes. Do you have any other questions? Yes, please.

No, no. It’s just, it is a particular object of meditation which is used in one of the Tibetan traditions for historical reasons. The Sakya tradition, one trains in calm abiding on a blue flower because this is how the great Indian Mahasiddha Virūpa attained calm abiding. I took it as one example I could have taken gaining calm abiding on the basis of a horn. Any object is okay.

Let’s say we gain it on the basis of a horn or we train on the basis of a horn but if our main antidote, our main affliction is anger then as our mind is focused on the horn and starts to whisper inwards that main affliction becomes manifest. Anger it’s not caused by the object. It’s got no relation to the object. It’s actually our main temperamental disposition if you wish. Each one of us has a psychological disposition.

So if our main temperamental disposition is that we are a little bit choleric then when we start training and calm abiding we withdraw the mind inwards and when we do that that main disposition comes to the front. If our object of meditation is not chosen so as to reduce the dominant affliction then it may increase to the point where we are unable to practice. That’s what I was saying. Then I could have chosen the example of a goat’s horn which was used by some of the Bon practitioners instead of a blue flower for meditation. It can happen with any object of meditation.

It can happen with the statue of a Buddha as object of meditation because it’s not related to the object of meditation normally but it is related to the inner temperament of the person. Then if the person is not a very convinced Buddhist and is meditating on the statue of a Buddha, Eventually, a lot of anger may arise. Person feels they’re being forced to do something they don’t want to do. Then this inner resistance guarantees that there will be no result to the practice. I think we have to be very realistic about who we are, where we are and where we can progress.

Every one of us can progress as far as Jetsün Milarepa in this life. But every one of us married with children, a house, with a car, with a full time job cannot progress that far. Then as in everything in life, there are sacrifices, are choices to be made. You can’t have it all. Everyone in this room can be in calm abiding but not leading the lives we live.

If one is ordained or has strongly vows or has received instructions, one gives up on social life, it in many cases means giving up on your marriage. Then if one gives in one’s an open ended amount of time, many things are possible. But if it’s not possible in this life, what we can do in this life is set strong foundations. Then in the next life we can start early. Pretty much assuming you could do a three, two to three months retreat.

Then you can hope to progress to the third, fourth level maybe. Then if you’re going to be working full time especially very distracting job and you’re married or you have children then it seems difficult. I’m not saying it’s impossible you can try. I mean some people have very strong karmic imprints and they are activated by the practice but the reason for which these six preliminaries are taught are precisely because calm abiding is actually something which is both very easy and very difficult. It’s in a sense very easy because once you have these six preliminaries as long as you put effort it happens.

Nobody says it’s going to happen in six months but that’s sort of the official time span. It might take two three years or longer but eventually normally you should get calm abiding or get close but without these six preliminaries it will not happen. Then you can see of these six preliminaries one, two, three and four probably five and six are incompatible with life as a westerner with a full time job. Having few desires, contentment, giving up being busy, pure ethics and totally giving up desire is not going happen. So this basically would be compatible with with life as a western monk or none.

One becomes ordained then normally the food is taken care of. Then one has basically given up on family life. One has no job. One has opportunity to study. Then it’s up to oneself how much practice one does.

Then if one is not ordained, one can be a lay practitioner but then one must try to be removed from society. Well you see the way that Tibetan study is quite effective. It’s realized in memorization. So if you were going to train a calm abiding, you would study typically a Yogi not necessarily a surajay monk would study JatTsongkhapa’s section on calm abiding in Lamrim Chenmo. Je Tsongkhapa wrote Lamrim Chenmo basically because there is everything a yogi who is not a scholar needs in Lamrim Chenmo to complete the Pāramitāyāna.

It is complete self sufficient. And then once one has studied that in-depth and memorize certain sections sections one would go into retreat. Obviously if one is a monk of the great monasteries then one would study the great treatises of calm abiding and memorize large sections. And when one goes into retreat, there is no real need for study. The material is near.

So for us, I mean the real foundation for practice in my personal opinion is Lamrim Chenmo. As Khensur Rinpoche has taught the very essence of Lamrim Chenmo is the three principles of the path. It’s the inner core. Then those of you who received these three principles of the path from Khensur Rinpoche, I believe there is a commitment to recite it every day. Try to recite it every day and think of the meaning.

And then try to move from the three principles of the path to Lamrim Chenmo. But Lamrim Chenmo is His Holiness the Dalai Lama describes it as the constitution of the Gelug tradition. It is the foundation. We read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand to gain an easy access to Lamrim Chenmo. The goal is Lamrim Chenmo.

Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand was written by Kyabje Pabongka Rinpoche to cover those sections Je Tsongkhapa did not mention in Lamrim Chenmo. So Lamrim Chenmo is the beginning, the middle and the end. Really there are no instructions on calm abiding you need which are not in Lamrim Chenmo and there were no instructions on emptiness you need which are not in Lamrim Chenmo. Well there were some, the Tibetan government has a policy of sponsoring retreats for Geshees from the great monasteries. Then these are very nice retreats because obviously sponsored by the government.

You have by Indian standards very good conditions. You get all the teachings and transmissions required. There was a group of Geshe’s who could finish the Yamāntaka three year retreat. They came to His Holiness and he saw this as a very effective way of addressing these these issues. So they they were telling him about the retreat and His Holiness was hemming and hawing.

And then he finally asked them point blank. So you’ve done a retreat for three years. How many times have you read Lamrim Chenmo? Then there was this big silence. There’s always one guy in the group who blurts it out.

He said, never. The Geshe only said, so far I have read Lamrim Chenmo 73 times. Then this an instruction from Khensur Rinpoche. Khensur Rinpoche must be reading Lamrim Chenmo more than once a year cover to cover. We have a very good English translation.

It’s not that expensive. We to the library, we have in the bookstore. Take Lamrim Chenmo, make Lamrim Chenmo your companion. Lamrim Chenmo is in the gated tradition like the bible for the Christian. Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand is like the backdrop to the bible.

If the bible is too difficult, you have a commentary. There is a very great I mentioned human to be able to stop for today but you see we lack will. Everything else we have, intelligence conditions, we lack will encourage. There was a Tibetan who had quite a difficult life. He basically he had no job after the Chinese invaded Tibet, fled into India.

The only job he could find was as a commander in the border patrol which patrols the borders between Tibet and between India and Tibet. Then this is very hard. It’s basically the equivalent of the SAS in Australia and The UK. And he as a soldier participated in the first Bangladeshi war in the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies which was an absolute butchery. They butchered civilians etcetera.

He was extremely dismayed by all of this. He gave up his commission, retired, went to the Ramsar. He was a disciple of the Mahabodhi in Bodh Gaya. Became a monk. No education, primary school in India not an Australian primary school.

But he had seen the bitterness of life and on the instruction of Trijang Rinpoche who is Khensur Rinpoche’s teacher, one of my teachers, he went into a long retreat. Then the only book he had was Trijang Rinpoche. He had great difficulty because Lamrim Chenmo was written in fourteenth century Tibet. It’s like reading the saga of Beowulf in English, you know. Then His Holiness really liked him.

So he would meet up with His Holiness every six months and he would ask his to ask his doubts. Then he said his Holiness never asked him anything about renunciation. He must have sensed that his renunciation is very powerful. But he kept quizzing him on emptiness. And this monk had a very hard time.

It’s just simple monk. He could barely read Tibetan not someone who gone to the great seats. He did not understand emptiness so he went to the Lamrim Chenmo and over and again he read Lamrim Chenmo the section on insight and eventually he was able to satisfy His Holiness. Then a great transmission was being given. It’s a Kangyur Rinpoche’s transmission.

The totality of the Tripitaka in the early nineteen seventies. He asked Kangyur Rinpoche should he receive the transmission. Then Kangyur Rinpoche said no, it’ll interfere with your practice. Go and meditate. You don’t need transmissions.

Then he returned to his cave and he engaged in Anuttara Yoga Tantra practice. It is said he attained full enlightenment in one life and the Tibetan government built a stupa in front of his cave. The only difference between him and us is will. Everyone in this room has better education, lot more money, much better conditions. I think a much better understanding of Dharma, honestly.

I mean, you attend teachings regularly for you English is not a problem. He was just a simple commando, you know, and very heavy karma. Right? Very heavy karma. In addition, I forgot to mention after leaving the army, he became the village alcoholic.

A drinking background. Right? But he had some things westerners lack and that’s why we don’t see westerners getting results. He had faith, he relied on his teacher and he was strong. Real strength.

You could squeeze, he didn’t break. Now Westerners have all the other qualities. There’s intelligence, there’s wealth, generosity but some of these core qualities required for meditators are not often present. So if someone like that could go that far, every one of us can go at least as far and he was in his fifties when he did all this I should mention. You know, he was not young.

You can imagine meditating in a cave. The way he described it was he took his army top. They left you know what the top is. Right? They left him let him keep his army top.

He spread it on the floor, you know, and he just meditated on that. That’s just the last twenty years. Such beings do exist. Then thank you very much.

Key terms in this teaching

lamrim

The graduated path. A presentation of Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings in a form suitable for the step-by-step training of a disciple. LYWA

Mahamudra chag ya chen po (Tib)

The Great Seal; a profound system of meditation upon the mind and the ultimate nature of reality. LYWA

pandita khäpa (Tib)

Scholar; learned person. Often referred to as pandit, (without the final a), which is the Hindi pronunciation of the Sanskrit. LYWA

Paramitayana Pharchin thegpa (Tib)

The Perfection Vehicle, another name for Bodhisattvayana or Sutrayana; the non-tantric Mahayana path. LYWA

principal consciousness vijnana (Skt); nam shë (Tib)

The main cognition posited by means of apprehending the entity of its object. Synonymous with main mind, it is one of the two divisions of mind, the other being mental factors. LYWA

shamatha zhi nä (Tib)

Calm abiding; a state of concentration in which the mind is able to abide steadily, without effort and for as long as desired, on an object of meditation. There are nine stages in its development. LYWA

Svatantrika Madhyamaka u ma rang gyü pa (Tib)

The Middle Way Autonomy school, a sub-school of the Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy. The Autonomy school accepts autonomous reasons and does not assert true establishment even conventionally. LYWA

ushnisha urgyän (Tib)

The crown protrusion of a buddha. Not to be confused with the place known in Tibetan as Orgyen. LYWA

Definitions adapted from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive glossary, as taught in the Gelug tradition.