Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 31-minute teaching, Choedak explores how steady meditation practice generates clarity of mind, which becomes the catalyst for genuine transformation both on and off the cushion. He opens with a systematic breakdown of the five obstacles to calm abiding—laziness, forgetfulness, dullness and excitement, non-application, and over-application—and their eight classical remedies, ranging from cultivating faith and joyous effort to developing mindfulness and alertness. The heart of the talk shifts to three qualities that define mature practice: stability of body and mind, clarity that recognizes distractions as self-produced rather than external, and intensity that arises only when meditation integrates seamlessly into everyday life. Choedak emphasizes that real calm abiding is tested and deepened through adversity, not sheltered from it, and that the measure of progress is character transformation and a growing sense of responsibility and joy in ordinary work. Practical throughout, he speaks directly to how a calm mind transforms perception, relationships, productivity, and ultimately the entire environment around a practitioner, urging students to maintain the practice with diligence across all moments, not just formal sessions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 TtT.mp3
UUID: 0864595f-aa40-4b88-9f16-782479ecde30
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Calm Abiding (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~3,838
So with the limited time we have of the day, I would like to conclude this by in summarizing the Kamalaśīla meditation instructions mainly five obstacles. We need to look at laziness, forgetfulness. And then two main obstacles count traditionally as one, the dullness, which is sinking also, or distraction or excitement. And then the fourth obstacle is what is called non application. Non application is not applying the remedies for appropriate obstacles.
And the fifth one is over application, where you do not excessively apply remedies where they are not needed or too early, too much. So the remedies for them are eight. The first one is laziness, has four remedies, which is faith, which is divided into three types: lucid faith, aspirational faith, and trustworthy faith. And then the second is the determination. Third is the joyous effort, which are divided into four kinds: Two related to the positive, to the negative habits.
With the negative things is to uproot existing negative habits or patterns, effort directed to that, and picking up no new negative habitual patterns. Is the true choice of the negative. Positive is try to implant new habitual patterns, developing virtuous imprints, impulses, and try and make sure that those previously cultivated do not decline. Those are the four types of effort. And then fourth remedy to laziness is pliancy or rapturous feeling of both body and the mind, being able to reach to a point of pliancy.
Mindfulness is the remedy to forgetfulness. Forgetfulness varies both as prerequisites of the meditation in terms of correct timing, place, diet, or maybe your own arrangement of time, place, food, clothing. Sometimes we might be wearing their own clothes, maybe too tight clothes, too heavy or worn clothing can make it difficult to meditate. Loose, relaxed clothing is very important. So not forgetting all those prerequisites of the meditation, and not forgetting the correct techniques of doing meditation.
Always doing the prayers at the beginning preferably, and do the practice and conclude with the dedication of meditation and so following the instruction. And then learning to spend considerable time on the posture of meditation before moving on to the actual object of meditation if you also desire. Most people may spend time just relaxing the body or watching their breath. But just learning to relax and work with the body and not forgetting those things. We forget many of those things and therefore meditation can become not very successful.
So remembering all of those is the remedy, mindfulness to all those factors. And then the two obstacles that arise during the meditation, which is dullness and excitement, is remedied by alertness. Alertness, conscientiousness is mind. Alertness is awareness. What it does, it’s actually a much sharper element.
Mind which spies upon the quality of mindfulness. Mind which self investigates or improves the quality of meditation. And therefore, watching the watcher, the mind which, the mind which itself to examine the quality of performance of the mindfulness and try to improve that, is awareness. So examining whether you’re being dull or whether you’re being excited. If you’re dull, then you do not prolong your session.
If you’re very excited, you try to humble yourself at however justifiably achieved result there, one needs to feel humbled rather than feel extremely excited. And those techniques are really practices of awareness in everyday life situations. And then the non application, the obstacle non application is knowing the exact appropriate, knowing how to appropriate the remedies to the relevant obstacles. Therefore, how to moderate moderation. Like meditation is like either adjusting your guitar strings, either not too light, not too tight, not too loose.
Or the example I gave about spinning a bowl on the wall, being able to balance it so that you do not put too much effort unless they’re necessary. But at the same time, you know, do not push too hard. But when things are going well going well, one doesn’t become attached to meditating, and one actually shortens the session. And try to see whether that that consequences of that experience is is corresponding with your outer non meditation periods, whether those calmness that you felt in meditation is actually translated in everyday activities, activities, before pushing and sinking, I’m getting so high in meditation. Learning how to adjust and steady cultivate steadiness is what is called applying the right remedies to non applications.
Over application, which is fifth obstacle, which is when you apply the remedy, sometimes you do too much too soon because of that, the techniques you employed wasn’t even called for. For instance, you were feeling excited, maybe there’s something happiness to you today, but you think this is something to do with your meditation. There may be some other reasons that you are happy anyway, but it’s nothing to do with the achievement of it. And so And then try to humble oneself, try to use techniques that are not called for. So there’s just a fine a meditator learns to match the remedies with the obstacles, they actually learn to learn to fine tune those qualities.
All in all, all these things could be encapsulated in three. Stability, clarity, and intensity. Stability is the stability of your mind and the body. Your body will sit still with you. Your mind focuses on the object.
Clarity is where you distinguish distraction as not being external to That’s a you would not only recognize distraction, you would not only see them rising, you not only see them affecting your meditation, but at the same time, you’re not ascribing it to anything external. That’s clarity because you’re really you’re much refreshed by that realization. You could not be intimidated by distractions because you know they are self produced. It’s good to know that we produce them. While produced by ourselves and everything, somebody produces, it’s a really long it takes a long while to remedy anything at all.
So it’s good to know that, really. Once we know the distractions are self produced, we become responsible. That’s the whole thing. Clarity means we become responsible. That increases clarity and therefore it engenders responsibility.
Responsibility meaning possessing what you you know, you you will reorganize it. You will do something about it. You wouldn’t scapegoat anything external to you. So clarity is the one which is really the booster of the calm abiding meditation. Clarity is the one which makes you to shift from one stage to another.
And it is not until seventh level of those stages that intensity of your kanabhari meditation will be there because it’s relapsible. You may reach a certain level, but you may not be able to reach that consistently. So that’s why the intensity is To improve intensity, one must use the practical application of the formal meditative benefits in everyday life. So one focuses its practical benefit to everyday life, whether everyday doing events, whether they’re clarity flows in your activities. As you see things manifest, as things unfold before your eyes, what’s your perception?
Do you take responsibility? Do you accept your input? Or you see something inherently external there that you have nothing to do with, it seems to have so much effect on you. So unless when there’s that clarity, we we become responsible for whatever we have contributed to make things manifest the way they do. And therefore, the the subtle contribution we have made makes the situation much, you know, less intense as a as a Because of that, the clarity, the mind is a lot sharper.
It is much more happy to acknowledge one’s own failures and mistakes. It is much, much more forthcoming to acknowledge those than to find anything done by, I guess, somebody outside us. One doesn’t waste time and energy in wronging somebody else. To wrong somebody, usually people do wrong, which they themselves disapprove. Clarity, when the mind enjoys clarity of the calm abiding meditation, that clarity actually stays with the mind and therefore a person can feel the sense of upliftment in their performance in with people and society.
And because of that, they have they have lesser grievance every day. Almost every day has ended beautifully. One day ended beautifully, two day ended beautifully. So so there’s nothing sort of backlog of days that didn’t end it properly, affecting today or next day or any day. Now this is very important, because while we may very orthodoxly talk about these different stages, it’s superfluous for us to talk about those stages unless we can experience and reap the benefits in everyday to day practices.
So that’s the clarity and we’re awakening the mind that is really refreshed. Just as in meditation, post meditation is the meditator is beneficiary of that clarity. Almost he can see how confusion unfolds and weaves the pattern of negativities. He can see them have been, you know, weaving, and yet he can undo them. Because patterns that that does the knots of activities, he can release them.
He can lose loosen them because of his ability to see things clearly. He’s not darkened by superficial appearance, apparent reality. He sees them as a as more of a reflection of the mind that is perceiving rather than inherently something that is there. Because in meditation he experienced that all the time, therefore he’s quite free. He becomes the governor of his experiences.
He doesn’t become governed by the experiences. Therefore, the clarity is a sense of upper hand, a sense of freedom, sense of joy, sense of extraordinary strength that wasn’t there before, both in meditation and also there’s no human misdoings that can taunt us, that can upset us. We feel sorry, we feel pitiful, but there’s no justification for us to do anything similar to right them. So therefore, one becomes much more responsible because that’s why said clarity engenders responsibility. Responsibility engenders restraints.
If one can’t engender restraints, then one can’t stop the whirlpool of activities. Activities activities, therefore, doesn’t become habituated. They becomes, you know, they become cancellable. You can cancel it. You can say no when you have to say no, even to yourself.
So, when one is able to say no to oneself, almost you have installed a superior, wiser being in you with your meditation, almost you have a private guru with you always, saying, telling you what to do, and you feel totally entrusting with you. You trust totally. What in vajrayana or esoteric Buddhist meditation would be called as inner guru, where you don’t have to talk to somebody always to clarify things. Your clarity of mind manifests. The teacher, the deceased, living, or far or near is your realization.
Your realization functions as the best effective teacher. That really shows us that we ourselves can consult within through meditation. Oh, so Kamalaśīla meditation is quality of clarity. Clarity of the mind is is the quality of the is the characteristic of the mind. Much of the time, our mind is adventitiously obscured.
We cannot see the clarity of mind. We only see the wires. We cannot lift the wire and see the clarity within. So only in meditation we allow, you know, that sense of clarity. Mind’s clarity means presence, presence meaning being, bare beingness.
There’s no word to explain otherwise. Anywhere to individualize oneself other than mere presence is already a mistake. Upliftment that is obtained from the sense of beingness that is not localized in any particular place is not deprived of any knowledge or time or space, because one doesn’t place the self in any one location or time or place. Because self is not separate from that vast beingness. And the mind, mind’s freedom or space people talk about, usually comes from the mind’s dawning of its clarity.
Now, that is with meditation or without meditation. Whatever you do, whether that clarity is clear with or not. Well, are we with us? Are we with us? Just as we said with us.
Are we with us when we’re doing everything? Are we with us when we are serving somebody as a customer? Are we with us when somebody is not so kind to us? Are we with us when all kinds of circumstances happens? That sense of clarity is, I recall, deepened.
Clarity can be deepened. The profoundness of clarity is experienced when one reaches the level of intensity. So that with the formal meditation or outside meditation, this pristine awareness of the mind is constant. The constancy of your pristine awareness inside that dawns with the sense of clarity even shines brighter amidst the mist of ignorance. Whatever conditional mist of ignorance states, rays of the pristine nature inside of the mind even shines much brighter.
So that’s why the voice of the Buddha usually described as like the lion’s roaring. And the lion’s roar is easily distinguishable from any noise of animals, so is the realization that the person emits whatever mist of ignorance. So, the mind which is able to invoke these feelings, formally in meditation, is able to invoke where the person is. Because there is no time the clarity of the mind is not required. And it is this point of time when the presence, we talk a presence of clarity can be felt and lived and expressed, then it becomes calm abiding.
You abide in it. Any adversarial factors becomes the tester of their abiding. Calmness, unquestionably there, whether it can abide, is tested by adversarial factors. One who is calmly abiding, adversarial factors becomes very real barometer which measures one’s calm abiding. So calm abiding is not antithesis to to its to any adversarial factors, but rather it enhances the calm abiding.
Because calm abiding is not calm abiding unless it counteracts its antithesis, which is its adversarial factors. So, we need to test, when we talk about nature, after effects of the Kamalaśīla meditation, however low our mind realization it is that this is almost an expectation by us, from us, of some sense of character change, character transformation, a transformation of vision and perception of the world and how we used to interpret it. If there is this transformation, there’s definitely a settling of this understanding, a philosophy. It becomes a sense of then there’s a trustworthy faith. That third faith has been definitely injected because your whole sense of presence is totally aware, anchored to the reality.
You could not be distanced from anywhere else. You are where you are. You are not what do call the sense of clarity actually makes everything manifest clear. The mind which is perceptive of its own clarity doesn’t see anything as a shadow. Mind, which itself is in a shadow of confusion and doubt, it does place a big question of all perceptions.
So, therefore, when one becomes totally aware or acknowledging of all perceptions, donning from the mind, whole sleeping forward of the mind no longer living into the dungeon of its own habitual ignorance, but going, living from that and seeing the transformation of that through deliberate practices. And even off meditation period, one never misses an opportunity to involve calm abiding. One doesn’t feel that I have finished calm abiding session, now I can act, you know, relax a little. If there’s this kind of discrepancy, calm abiding has not yet come. So it’s good to test for however what level we are at in calm abiding, try to see whether that is character transformation or perception transforming in a realization.
Session after session you do, they are accumulating positive account. You sit today, you sit tomorrow, day after day, however difficult the sessions themselves temporarily work, you’re accumulating virtuous impulses by sitting in the attitude of manner of the Buddha in silence, a miracle that you can keep yourself quiet. Try to follow the these instructions as probably as you can. It is already interplay of body, speech, mind’s good conduct of body, speech, mind. So it builds up accumulated, sound positive, you know, you know, if you play snooker, if you play snooker, you hit on one ball, but you see, one ball you hit, that hits quite a few other balls to go in.
The ball you hit doesn’t need to go in. Similarly, the practice you do today becomes the ball that you hit, and then it’s another day, it’s another day, it’s another day, And slowly it builds up habitual pattern of becoming so familiar with it, you feel so comfortable with it. So, sitting posture is no longer difficult, it’s natural because we sat in this when we were first born, That’s the only position we knew how to sit. Not quite, but at least we could sit just there on the floor. So therefore, the naturalization, that everything is so natural, it doesn’t seem foreign, it doesn’t seem some alien to you.
Seems so natural. Even you’re late, even you’re late, you still arrive calmly, you know, late. So you don’t try to find an excuse to say why you got that. Firstly, you’re late, and secondly, you just waste a lot of time explaining why were you late. So a lot of double wastage of time.
You arrive calmly and do the things that you would have missed by, and then you could achieve more, because you’re more calm and composed. Therefore, you’re as productive as you were, you could have been allowed really. And there’s no time is too short for a person who’s doing calm abiding meditation. No time is short to do calm abiding meditation. Whenever, whatever time, few minutes you can capture a break, you try to do that at that point in time.
You try to watch your breath or something. And there’s a You’re trying to replenish your calm abiding every opportunity that arise in between works, in between intervals of things, doing things, while driving, whatever you’re doing, you know, while why why can’t we become continuously? And that is what is abiding. He nay to be able to calmness. Calmness we all want, calmness we all have every now and then, but most of us it doesn’t retain.
So the retention of calmness is more important, particularly when it exposes to its contrary. Then it really increases the quality of calmness. This is why our everyday life, however busy a time we do, we shouldn’t think life is too busy. One should think life is not busy. Life is not busy.
You’re never made to go faster than you have always chosen to. It’s good to think that you’re not overpowered by others. It’s good to think that you have independence, input, your own voluntary acceptance shouldn’t feel that we are made by society to raise faster than we would have liked ourselves. Sometimes it’s much difficult when you have to do a number of things, but still, the happiness of the work we do. It’s so important.
Maybe I could conclude here by saying, if there is a calm abiding of meditation, there’s much happiness in the work we do. That’s the big transformation. You take pride and joy in little you do. Even if you’re a baker, you’re still making bread for many people. You can take pride in that.
I’m making everybody’s breakfast as a part of the breakfast. You know, it’s good to think like that. If we people don’t have bread, you know, to whatever we do, we feel happy. We don’t feel we’re doing something for nothing. Happiness comes from what meaning we give to what we do rather than what we do.
That’s why it’s important to calmness usually comes with work. We must show our love and calmness in the work we do. And when that work shines, people will receive, become part of that benefits. And one person’s calmness will be enjoyed by the rest of the family. Two people’s calmness and two families will enjoy the rest of family.
And they definitely would have caused me to be hate being around wrathful people. We would love being with you next to peaceful people. And you have one in the family or one in your workplace, or whatever. It definitely could help a lot of people. So we should not be so concerned about being selfish in meditating.
We should feel the hope this will go, that this will pass a positive benefit whoever I need. May no meeting be fruitless. May all meetings take whatever beneficial qualities I may have. So if you wish that, it usually is passed on because your will is there, your prayer is there. However small it is, it doesn’t matter.
It’s the will, it’s the thought that counts, it’s the intention, and that counts. How do we develop clarity, calmness in mind, unless we think all the the tender feelings? Tender feelings is very important. Unless we feel tender things, we cannot receive tender feelings. When we think tender feelings, even the even the wind wind blows the wind doesn’t look so so convenient, just as you like it.
When we are happy, the weather seems to be nicer, the trees seem more, but better. Everything smiles at us. When we are happier, the nature looks at us. You can transform the whole environment if our mind is calm and peaceful. So, therefore, calm body meditation is very, very important.
And in one day’s effort, we could do more, no more than you have tried, but I hope the practice can be maintained by all of you with a little effort that I can put in this, and more, of course, is more benefit by follow our practices by us, ourselves. Because we are the one who need it most, and we will be the first ones to see its usefulness. And through that, it was perseverance. The last word of the Buddha was strive hard. Means not hard, as hard, but strive, exert effort, relevantly.
So do with diligence. Diligence, practice with diligence. So I would like to conclude here and thank all of you for coming and lending us your time. And particularly, I would like to thank David, Moira, Theresa, and Ivan, and all who has helped to make this possible, to organize it, publicizing and everything else. So thank you very much, and hope you will have a well and happy and calm peaceful day, night, morning, evening, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Not just Friday. So I would like to conclude here by doing this dedication of merits prayer, that you can wish also anything to send goodwill that tender feelings to all happiness of each of us here, and those many families and friends, people who we have difficulty with, may think of them, may they benefit from this. May they see us, may they see us, they’re calmer than they may have been, so that our situations, difficulties will be will be overcome.