Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 32-minute teaching, Choedak addresses the five obstacles to calm abiding meditation, focusing on the remedies rather than the obstacles themselves. He opens by discussing laziness as the primary obstacle, then presents four direct antidotes: faith (understood as clarity, aspiration, and experiential trust in the practice); determination (showing commitment through dedicated time and space); joyous effort (rooted in the law of cause and effect, not mood); and physical and mental pliancy (the flexibility and ease that arise naturally when these three support the practice). He explains how attachment to comfort and procrastination underlie laziness, and offers concrete practical remedies including sitting on the floor as a way to cultivate gratitude. He then turns to forgetfulness—the second obstacle—and prescribes mindfulness and familiarity as its remedy. He walks through the proper preparation for meditation: bowing, taking blessings from the Buddha, reciting refuge prayers, sending dedicated good wishes to specific people, and then settling the body, winds, and mind. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of carrying reminders (text, cloth, offerings) and learning prayers by heart rather than reciting softly. Pitched at students beginning a regular practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 TtT.mp3
UUID: 2b9826fd-a3e9-4e0d-b560-df03b0156f63
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Calm Abiding (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~4,608
Now going back to the meditation practice or sessional meditation practice, I would like to talk about the obstacles of meditation. There are five obstacles in the śamatha meditation. First of all those obstacles, I wouldn’t talk about the obstacle, but I will talk about the remedy. So maybe you will gather what obstacle I’m talking about. First is motivating, the motivational factor.
The motivation, what motivates us to practice meditation, what is our understanding of the meditation, what are we doing it for? For what purpose we wanted to meditate? What is it that interests us? So, first is the faith. Faith in the benefit of meditation. You need to cultivate faith in the benefit of meditation.
Maybe you heard something. Maybe somebody says it’s really good, you should try. Whatever it is, maybe. And somebody sort of engendered some kind of reason that you should do it. Heard about a positive influence, somebody inspired you, whatever it is.
But generally, there are three types of faith. Faith, lucid faith, aspirational faith, trustworthy faith. Lucid faith is when you heard about it, you thought about doing it, and then you listened to it, you have teachings on it. It really clarified your mind. It increased your mind’s understanding.
A sense of lucency in your understanding, what the meditation can do, could help us. That kind of sense of clarity in terms of intellectual understanding of the theory of meditation, and therefore it enhances your desire to practice, is called faith of lucidity. And it seems to increase your understanding and faith and closeness to it. Second type of faith, not only you have that clarity of understanding, but your desire, your aspiration has increased. So you have taken steps to learn it.
You have incorporated your time, you allocated time, you have got a cushion, you’ve got a few things. You’ve gone into steps making certain paraphernalia which helps you to meditate. You have friends who meditate. Meditation is a topic with your friends to discuss. So these are faith of aspiration that you’re showing, that you’re aspiring by way of what you read, maybe what you talk about, what you acquire.
What do you need as aids for meditation? A room, perhaps? A corner of room, yeah, that’s good. Any step that you make that becomes contributory to creating an environment in your own home that you feel like dedicating that space for, the time in the morning that you want to put it for. And whatever you do, these are expression of the second faith, faith of aspiration.
Faith of aspiration. People, everybody walk into certain shops, why? They’re buying certain things in certain shops. Whatever they’re aspiring to buy, they’re trying to find. So getting the right kind of things that helps to keep our mind stream focused, to enjoy the benefit of doing the meditations, acquiring this particular attempt or endeavor of you coming here could be explained as faith of aspiration.
For total beginners, it might hopefully increase the first faith. Faith of lucidity, you understood, you understood it, it was informative, it increased inspiration to practice. But any attempt you make to enhance that is faith of aspiration. Then you might go home and do that practice. You might go and sit with friends to practice because you couldn’t do it on your own.
You feel a little bit awkward. You always need someone to sit with you. Are you going? Yes, I’ve come too. So you need someone to say, Yes, I’m coming.
Do you want to come? That is this kind of push. We need inspiration, path of aspiration. And third is faith of trustworthiness. This faith of trust is much harder to realize.
It only comes through practice. This is a faith that is only validated through practice. It is not through acquiring gadgets or information or going to some ideal place. It’s experiential faith. You’ve got to do it.
And this faith is the trustworthy faith. Faith that nobody can take away from. Oh yeah, I heard about it, but when I did it, it’s different. I heard it. I thought it was so good, but now my knee just wouldn’t let me meditate.
But you have gone beyond that, that yes, the knee was so painful at the beginning, but I worked with the pain, it really, really made me realize that I could work with it. I got stronger, as it said, and I realized that I can do it. And that kind of faith of trust is mainly through experience, being able to work with the distraction, dullness, pain, and your restlessness, and working with them, and yet coming out of the meditation feeling as though you’ve learned something valuable you wouldn’t learn otherwise. And then a benefit that you can take wherever you go. Almost a learning that has given you the gist of things that you can take it wherever you go. So meditation practice that you learn and do has taught you something to take where you need it most. It’s not that you have to come to meditation all the time, but you have got something to take from meditation wherever you need it most.
That is where almost faith of trustworthiness is. And the second one, which is determination. With this faith of trustworthiness, your determination and your willpower is very, very strong. So by that time you would have clearly got a place where you said it’s a place of meditation, because it is through your determination you made the space, you would have got a slot in the time in your day that’s the set time you meditate, and nobody can take that, you know. And you’ll find the time to choose, and that is the time.
The time, the consistency of your time, choosing a place, all this shows your determination. Determination is not half-hearted effort. It’s just whole-hearted effort that has made you to make a little corner in your house. That’s the place of meditation. Because you have been doing that consistently, you’re being habituated in yourself. So that shows determination. Determination whereby a person really actually takes the act, doing something about it. Third is effort. The determination, you could create all those situations that you’re so determined, but effort is, it’s no good that you have determination sometime and then lose interest later.
Determination, faith means you have to have faith and you have to have joyous effort in doing it, whatever difficulty arises. Whether you accrue any benefit or not, you know in the long term it is good. So the lack of benefit in the short term doesn’t discourage you from practicing. That you are joyous in doing this. You believe in the law of cause and effect, that it will never go astray with whatever humble effort you make. It will never go astray.
It’s a matter of time how it ripens. But as far as the result’s concerned, it’s already there. You just can’t see it yet. So with that joyous effort, you actually become joyous in your practicing and maintaining the meditation. It is not so much ruled by your mood.
Oh, today I want to meditate. All of a sudden you want to meditate so much. All of a sudden you just lose interest. Means your joyous effort just comes and goes, not consistent. Joyous effort really is related with two things related with negative, two things related with positive things.
Joyous effort related with negative things, if you have a habit of not sticking with the time you meditate, you try to make a time to meditate. So that’s implanting, getting rid of the old habit of not sticking with time, and then never slipping it back. Always sticking with that time that you have. Because first, as a beginner, you will need to squeeze your effort, exert more, you have to be a bit rigid to yourself. Otherwise, there’s no discipline.
You’ve got to have imposed some sense of discipline that you feel is necessary for yourself. That’s why you need to go to places where they meditate all the time, because it seems it helps you. Because you are not yourself strong enough to do it on your own. So the idea of joyous effort merely comes by working to uproot your negative habit patterns and not learn any new negative habit patterns which contravene your practice of meditation. Those are the two joyous efforts that are related to negative.
Two joyous efforts that are related to positive is that you recently picked up the habit pattern of learning meditation. You try not to let it decline. Keep that up. Keep that up so that that effort is never diminished or decreased. And try to learn additional complementary techniques that will enhance motivation, inspiration in meditation.
So you have an effort, joyous effort related with keeping the existing habitual pattern to practice, and try to complement the new techniques that you pick up so as to complement the existing practice of meditation or any positive habitual patterns. These are the joyous effort. Now, if we have this feeling of joyous effort in practicing, then the body becomes serviceable. There’s a sudden change of body’s serviceability. And the body doesn’t have a mind of its own.
The body becomes cooperative. When the body does go numb, a bit tired, whatever, almost there is this strong heavy head, heavy mind about the body saying, I can’t do it. There is no mind which discourages, postpones, anything like that. It’s just cooperation. Physical pliancy is the fourth factor, is the sense of pliancy. If you have put joyous effort, there’s a pliancy, there’s a flexibility, there’s some suppleness in your effort.
There’s no difficulty in the effort, it just comes naturally. So physical pliancy and mental pliancy. Physical pliancy is whenever you meditate, you physically feel comfortable. You really feel comfortable to meditate, to sit in that posture. You like it.
Mental pliancy, you feel happy. Just the fact that you can meditate makes you happy already. And so because of that, the whole mental mood is easily made happy. And so because of that, the time that you spend becomes a happy experience. If you can add a particular time zone in each day, time period in each day to be happy, such as meditation, it can have a subsequent benefit.
Anything that you do later, straight after that, may flow, the spillover of your happy meditation can flow with the rest of the day. And because of that, the pliancy, meaning that it adds some sense of flexibility and fluency and fluidity in the rest of the day. You don’t become rigid and stiff, or all of a sudden you become stiff in your way of feeling things. You still are very fluid and constantly changing and never static. So these are the four remedies.
These are the four remedies of the first obstacle. You can tell the obstacle now. What is the obstacle? It’s laziness. So if we had all those things we talked about, it would have remedied laziness.
Laziness is a very difficult topic because it comes in a very nice, disguised form, and you don’t really realize it’s laziness. It has such nice suggestions. It’s not a nice day to do meditation. I can do some other day or something. I don’t need it.
It’s too hard for me. I’m too old, too sick, I’m too fat. Find nice excuses, very nice excuses that seem so real when you really listen to it. And, I’m sleeping or something like that. Fullness of comfort in sleep, delaying, procrastination, complacency, and self-discouragement.
Anything that we do, we manage to do when we procrastinate, these are obstacles. What is usually put in laziness is just attachment to comfort. Properly, attachment to comfort. It’s much better to lie in a comfortable bed or seat rather than sit on the floor so hard.
So the whole idea of those remedies, those remedies which we discussed, faith, determination, joyous effort, and pliancy which we talked about. If a person really knows the benefit, the more he or she knows the benefit of the meditation, śamatha meditation, more they will be keen to know, yeah, we have to sit on the floor. Why? Because you feel the Mother Earth, you feel her endurance, you see her, how still she is, and so I must learn from her. Also, you actually feel that sitting on the floor has a lot for you to learn from her endurance, stillness, patience, generosity of the earth.
At least for this session I want to be like her. I’ve lived on this earth so much. Everything that I have lived on came from her. I must thank her in this way. And you do that, your understanding of sitting on the floor is so real and so meaningful.
So it’s not to make you suffer, but it’s your way of saying that. If somebody asks, why are you on earth, how would you think? Meditation could be a gratitude-enhancing practice, because we may be not good at being grateful, but sitting on the floor will enhance that. And because of that, the laziness factor as an obstacle is very important. So the first most effective, if you study about meditation, if you learn, hear teachings, read about it, convince your mind, then act on them.
Don’t just leave them as just another key here, another key there, another key there. All the keys hanging in the garage, never used. So being able to use them. At the beginning, as a laziness, as an obstacle. All philosophy centers around the importance of balance, not being too rigid or not being too lax.
But as a beginner, you’ve got to exert effort. So it’s not rigidity but exertion of effort. You’ve got to discipline a bit more than you have ever done before. And of course, if it’s becoming too harsh, then you have to know how to loosen that. But first one must employ some sense of discipline, a way of doing things, so that you yourself are able to command order in yourself to do.
And actually you feel the reasonable request, the reasonable command, I must do this. So you’ve got to be convinced enough to think, I must do this, even though I don’t like it, I want to get up a little more. So you make a habit of doing that yourself, whichever, even though it’s not so pleasant, that’s the very reason I have to do it, because that’s the only way I can increase my strength and understand it. So, at the beginning there might be that what we call the effort has to be a little bit more exerted. And it’s not at all to suggest rigidity anytime, but at the beginning, whenever we do something, we give the biggest shot.
And then, of course, slowly, how do you maintain that, maintain that without losing all the energy within it. With laziness definitely we need gentle persuasion. Gentle persuasion, how to maybe think of impermanence. Law of impermanence and death is a very good remedy for generally laziness and all things. But those things I spoke are probably specifically for people who want to learn meditation.
They have to have those four remedies. Basic, most effective remedy is law of impermanence. We have a tendency to procrastinate and delay, and we’re really not thinking of how and when we can best reap the benefit of practicing meditation. So, it is earlier one needs to think of how many years we have lived in this world already, and how many years we may have got to live. It’s uncertain. If anybody could tell us that you’ve got so many months to live, we would behave differently.
It’s funny, isn’t it? So therefore, it’s good to involve a sense of urgency to do something beneficial earlier than later. So that exertion of effort is very, very important. So going back to the technique of śamatha meditation and with pain. Pain, if one is able to develop the physical pliancy, will overcome the pain.
And the laziness and pain that we have talked about usually is the early stages, you know, obstacles of early stages of the meditator. These are obstacles in the sense that discourage you from sitting. So that’s that kind of obstacle. Obstacle that prevents you from doing. Now the real obstacles of śamatha is not that.
Real obstacles of śamatha meditation when you are sitting, it’s not the pain or anything, but the real obstacles of meditation is the second obstacle. First one is laziness, I think it really much covers the attachment to the body and comfort, makes the pain, and therefore in many ways laziness implies the obstacle of pain, yeah. So this is a good thing to look at because traditional teaching didn’t talk about pain at all when there is really pain as an obstacle from sitting and in sitting, and why it’s not mentioned and you can easily see laziness is an obstacle that they have mentioned. Laziness comes because of attachment to comfort. And so therefore it implies that any pain that we have is because of attachment to comfort and therefore it is included as a part of the first obstacle. Now the second obstacle is forgetfulness.
Now this forgetfulness is about following the relevant instructions, equipping yourself with all the necessary helpful tips that you found yourself through from the experiences, helpful and useful tips that you found according to instructions and then helpful tips you will learn on the way, you know. So using them and reminding yourself what should I do when I’m not able to focus very well or have pain, what are your techniques, you’ve got to remember them exactly. So not thinking when you feel pain, you don’t know what to do and all you want to do is not want to sit anymore. Forgetfulness in the sense that you don’t know what to do. You feel at a loss.
You think you’re doing something wrong. This meditation is obviously something that you don’t know, and that you feel very incompetent. You’re afraid that this is not suitable for you because you don’t know enough. And there may be some truth in that because everything, whatever subject you study or show interest in, it takes a while for us to gain some familiarity. We’re all novice in the sense. We’re all novice.
I have great happiness to sit with the total beginners because you learn exactly the same way as anybody else. But it is important that one shouldn’t think that I’m a beginner. We began quite a long time ago. Life is a long journey. We are just coming to this meditation.
Now it seems very new. But actually we have a lot more familiarity than we are consciously aware of. We just haven’t got the momentum going. So that’s a very important thing. We just have to get the momentum going.
Otherwise, we’ve been in this world many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. So we forget them. We’re just trying to refresh our memory and some of it clicks, and some doesn’t click. Some intellectually clicks, but nevertheless, we still feel a bit unfamiliar. That’s why yesterday I mentioned about the power of familiarity.
Power of familiarity overcomes the obstacles of forgetfulness. When you are familiar with the knowledge and concepts and ideas, the function of the prayers at the very beginning, and the behavior before you come in that you’re in a very, very peaceful and happy mood coming in, that’s probably remembering to do that. Remembering to do that is very important. Because even if you are coming way later than anybody, never mind, but you still come in a happy mood, peaceful mood. That’s really not to forget that.
And then do whatever is necessary for you to do, such as if you’re doing in your home, make sure that you light a candle or a flower or put something there just to remind you that you’re sitting there to light something within you. And then a flower, to see something blossom in you. Whatever those are. When you’re coming in, of course, as a group, you don’t have to do that. That’s already done.
There’s more candles than you normally would light, and it’s all there. Then you just say, oh, okay, it’s all there. I just need to do mine. Remembering these little tips, yeah, and come in with the right attitude and then bow down three times to the Buddha, to the Dharma, to the Sangha. It’s the best way to do it, physically, verbally, mentally.
When you bow down like this three times, and then before you sit, take the blessings of Buddha’s body from his forehead, from his speech to your throat, from his heart to your heart. White, red, and blue light come straight to you, and that goes straight into your body, dissolves into your body, speech, and mind, and then that almost gives you a blessing, and then puts you in a mood to sit still, you know. Then you take a seat. Then you take a seat. And then they usually say, then remember not to forget to do these things.
Settle down in a relaxed mood and then do the prayers. Just the motivation. First, and the prayer actually reminds you of the motivation. I take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha until enlightenment is reached. For the benefit of all, by giving and the like, may I reach Buddhahood to aid all beings.
That says all. I’m going to do this meditation and I shall first take the blessings of the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, not just for this session, but until enlightenment is reached, in order to benefit all beings. You said that very clearly. That’s a motivation very clearly. So that’s fairly general, but specifically use the four immeasurables. May all living beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.
You go through the four-line prayer three times, it really reminds you that you’re going to dedicate this act of loving kindness to your mom, to your dad, to your friend, to best friend, to someone you love so much but who is in trouble. Just send this, I’m going to dedicate this. This is my way of praying, this is my way of visiting them, this is my way of giving them a call, and you just do that. Prayer is really fast, you know, fast way to reach, communication. We’re all intuitively telepathic.
If you really send a prayer, it will be received. It will receive something. You’ve got to listen. All beings have happiness, particularly these such and such people. It’s really important to think like that.
Now when you remember all these things to do, forgetfulness means we forget those small bits and pieces to do. The actual śamatha meditation only happens when all these things are done very properly, then your mind has been building up to this climax of calmness, because you’ve been building all this goodwill of devotion and humility, and then you sit in there, then you send all these wonderful good wishes to all beings and sit there, and then you read through the instructions on śamatha meditation. Remember some of the poignant points there, what you should be doing during the meditation. And then just spending sufficient time on that, and then what do you call, settling the body, and then settling the winds is just focusing on the qualified round of breathing, counting the rounds of breath, and then settling the mind itself, learning to now focus on the object of meditation, whether it’s breath or the flower, whatever it is. Now, all the necessary things.
So if you do all these things properly right from the beginning, there’s no danger of forgetfulness. The purpose of having sessions where I try to teach instead of us sitting all session, session after session, is so as to give necessary rudimentary information on these practices and you’re also assiduously taking notes, recording, listening, comparing notes, discussing with friends. This is so that we don’t suffer from forgetfulness because we’ve got enough familiarity with the concepts and ideas and knowledge and that’s the benefit of it. Information is very important. Without information people have wishes to do but they don’t know exactly how to do.
And therefore, forgetfulness will be addressed by the remedy of mindfulness, remembering I got to do this, I got to do this, I got, where’s my prayer book? So you always take this, this is rather big for you maybe as if you particularly travel a lot. Just reduce this, will you? To an F5 size, photocopy it and take it in your little handbag just to make sure that the way you travel, it does travel. And this is very important.
And where is the little piece of cloth. I don’t know about three jelly beans. And flower. And just take them. And what else?
Just make sure that this always travels with you. You travel, what do you take? A toothbrush and a few things, you know. And this is mind brush. Mind brush, delusion brush.
Take these things. Take all these things, and it’s really good to remember them and to take them. And then you don’t suffer from forgetfulness. There are many things we forget, but these are not forgettable. These are not something you can afford to forget.
Unless you know all the prayers by heart, which is possible after a couple of months or years. You know the prayers by heart, you don’t need to carry a text. Like His Eminence always says, these people say, oh Rinpoche, can you do this prayer, this ceremony? And the monks usually say, oh we haven’t got a text. Rinpoche says, I’ve got it here.
Means he knows it by heart, you know, that’s their problem. Means they can’t dissuade Rinpoche from accepting the prayer. He says, of course I can do it. He’s really kind. It’s not that not having texts is never an excuse for not doing.
When you’re a good practitioner, prayers are going to be learned by heart in no time. The way to make sure you learn the prayer by heart is you don’t read softly too much. If you read softly, it takes longer to learn by heart. So you’ve got to read it fairly audibly to yourself, that you can hear yourself clearly. When you listen to the prayer, read the prayers very clearly every day, then you remember them clearly.
And sometimes even chant a bit like a tune that you can do best, and it doesn’t have to be necessarily what I try to do because that Tibetan tune sometimes doesn’t go well. Are there any singers in here by the way? So you can try to make a tune that suits you and then sing the prayers and make it very, very pleasant and personal so that you know it by heart. Then you don’t have to carry a text. So much the better.
So much the better.