Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. When the meditating mind swings between excitement and dullness, what brings it back? Khensur Rinpoche answers this concretely in this 39-minute session from a 1990 calm abiding retreat. He addresses the final two of the five faults: non-application, failing to act when laxity or excitement arises, and over-application, persisting with antidotes once the faults have already ceased. The specific remedies are spelled out: excitement is countered by meditating on impermanence and renunciation to settle the mind; laxity is lifted by reflecting on the Buddha’s qualities or gazing at open sky. Rinpoche then introduces Asaṇga’s nine mental abidings integrated with the six powers, covers the first abiding — setting the mind through the power of hearing — and offers practical guidance on choosing any stable meditation object, from a Buddha image to a stone. Suited to practitioners already working through the formal stages of calm abiding.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 Calm A 1990 06 10.mp3
UUID: f76dd13a-9933-4ba3-b4c5-2bb3920e5941
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Calm Abiding Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-06-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.5 minutes
Words: ~2,082
Likewise, though we do not want to suffer yet again, we again and again experience suffering. And on the other hand that we ourselves are one, but others are numberless. They’re infinite. So even as in the world that we are give greater concern to the majority over the minority, majority over the minority. And moreover, that all of these other sentient beings have throughout our infinite rebirths taken turns in having been our mother.
And just as the mother of this life has showered great benefit upon us, they likewise have extended the same kindness to us throughout infinite rebirths. Not only when these beings have been our mothers but even at those times when they weren’t our mothers. They have in dependence upon them. We find all our necessities of life. All our food, clothing, and shelter, education come about in dependence upon sentient beings in general.
And all our excellent qualities that we will ever develop and our ultimate liberation depends upon sentient beings. And this is their great kindness, is their great benefit to us. Opportunity to practice the Dharma, that we have an absence of conflicting conditions and we have an abundance of conducive conditions to carry on our practice and through our practice of Dharma that we can return this great kindness of sentient beings that we can seek to benefit sentient beings and developing this kind hearted attitude toward them. And having understood the great kindness and the great benefit of other sentient beings, then with an altruistic intention we can ask the question, well what methods can I bring, can I enact, implement implement to return this great kindness? And the way we can best do this is by eliminating all our various faults and bringing to consummation all our excellent qualities.
That is to say, we must become like a Buddha and this is the way we can benefit sentient beings. And considering this foregoing that we should develop the kind hearted motivation which seeks to set into practice and study the essence of the great vehicle, the methods of developing calm abiding and special insight as a means to eliminate all various faults and bring to consummation our excellent qualities whereby to eliminate the suffering of all sentient beings and establish them in complete happiness. And we’re going to spend five minutes in cultivating such a motivation. So yesterday we were explaining the five faults which prevent the development of calm abiding and these five faults are to be abandoned. The first fault being the fault of laziness, abandoned through the first four antidotes.
The second fault was that of forgetting the precept, that is losing the object of observation. The third fault was the fault of laxity and excitement. And today we’re going to discuss the latter two faults. The fourth fault which is non application. And this means that when the faults of excitement and laxity arise that we do not seek to stop, to eliminate them.
We do not seek to eliminate them that we allow these faults to remain. As long as these faults remain, then we’re not going to achieve calm abiding. So we must seek to eliminate these faults and therefore use the antidote of application. That is we apply an antidote to eliminate the faults of excitement and laxity. Then the fifth fault is having once we have caused these faults of excitement and laxity to cease, we have eliminated them and though they do not presently exist, we still continue to apply a particular antidote as if they were there.
And this is the fifth fault, the fault of over application, applying an antidote when it’s not necessary. And therefore the antidote is desisting when the faults are not present, desisting applying an antidote, that is to say remaining equanimous or equanimity. So with respect to the eight antidotes, we explain the first six. The first, so when we talk about antidotes, we’re talking about that factor which acts to eliminate the fault. This is what we mean by an antidote.
So the first fault was that of laziness. So there are four factors which serve to stop or eliminate laziness and therefore there are four antidotes. The first being faith, then aspiration, exertion, and then finally plant. These are the four antidotes to the first fault of laziness. Then the second fault was forgetting the precept that is the losing the object of observation.
And the antidote to is mindfulness. This is what eliminates the losing of the object of mindfulness because it is mindfulness which holds the object. Then once the object is being held then the next fault, it is opportunity for the next fault to arise. That is laxity and excitement. The object is being held, but laxity, within the context of being held laxity and excitement can arise and that by which we eliminate laxity and excitement that which serves to eliminate this is the factor of awareness, attentive awareness or as it says here introspection.
This is like a spy which examines the state at which the object is being held to see whether excitement or laxity is present. So these are the first six antidotes to the So it is the function of this attentive awareness to act as a spy, examining whether these two faults of laxity or excitement have arisen or not. These faults prevent the development of meditative stabilization, so we must know whether they’re present or not. If excitement is present, then we will lose the object of observation. If laxity is present, then there will be an unclarity.
The object will be unclear. So this factor of attentive awareness knows if laxity or excitement has arisen. This is its function. It itself does not serve to eliminate these faults. That once it is known that these faults have arisen, then we must apply antidotes to whether it’s laxity has arisen or an antidote to specifically whether excitement has arisen.
So we have to reflect on what is the antidote to excitement to make use of it in our meditation. If the mind is in an excited state, it is under the influence of desire. Due to the influence of desire, it has gone to an external object and the mind is in too high of a state. The mind needs to be brought down. The state must be brought down, depressed.
So how are we to bring down the level, the state of the mind if excitement is present? It is by means of meditating on renunciation impermanence. Renunciation of cyclic existence and impermanence. This will have the influence bringing the state of the mind down. Having pacified excitement by means of meditation on renunciation of cyclic existence and impermanence, having brought the level of the state of the mind down, there can arise the fault of laxity.
And this is when the mind is brought down too far, that it’s in a depressed state. It’s as if we’re in a stupor or a drowsiness. So we have to we want to, at this time, to raise the level of the mind. It’s in too much of a depressed state. And how do we eliminate, what is the antidote to this laxity?
That we can take to mind the qualities of the Buddha for example, to seek to generate a sense of faith, sense of joy with respect to the Buddha. We can take the qualities of the mind of spiritual teacher and developing a sense of admiration and this will help, this will uplift the mind. Also looking about ourselves, looking at vast distances, looking at the empty sky, this will serve as a means to clear this darkness of the mind. So when laxity and or excitement have arisen, it is necessary that make use of the antidote of application. It would be a fault if we didn’t.
This would be the fault of non application. Recognizing that these faults have arisen by means of attentive awareness, we apply these antidotes. In the case of excitement, we bring the level of the mind down by meditating on renunciation and impermanence. And if it’s brought down too far, laxity is generated then we uplift it again slightly by means of bringing to mind the qualities of the Buddha to uplift the mind. Then once these, once we’ve eliminated these faults, excitement and laxity, if we were to persist in still applying any of these antidotes, then this would be the fault of over application.
These faults are not present, there’s no excitement, there’s no laxity in the mind, we persist in still trying to lower or uplift the mind. This would be over application. So it is at this time that if continue to apply an antidote, persisting in applying an antidote, this would be the fault of over application. So, persisting in applying an antidote unnecessarily is the fifth fault of over application and we must cease applying any sort of antidote and we simply remain equanimous. And this is the eighth antidote and then we proceed in cultivating calm abiding.
So this is the mode of practice as outlined by Maitreya. In the cultivation of calm abiding, during the process of developing calm abiding there will arise these five faults and we eliminate these five faults in our meditation by means of applying these eight antidotes. In addition to, this is the procedure as outlined by Maitreya. Additionally, in his presentation of the way to practice in the development of calm abiding, Asaṇga sets out nine mental abidings as the way at which one proceeds in order to achieve calm abiding. So this mode of presentation is really an excellent way of presenting the Dharma practice to develop calm abiding.
What Asaṇga has done is integrated, has sought to integrate these nine mental abidings with the six powers and the four mental engagements and shows how they fit, how all of these fit together. So we’re going to it’s it will be good to go through these nine mental abidings. So we begin with, as we have explained in terms of the basis for the object of observation, that which we’re taking, the basis upon which we’re going to develop calm abiding, we have talked about benefits of taking the image of a Buddha in that in dependence upon taking this image we create a great deal of positive potential. But it’s not necessary that we have to take this as a basis for cultivating calm abiding. It’s up to our individual choice.
We can take a letter ah, we can take light, we can take the mind itself as was explained in the Mahāmudrā retreat. We use the mind as a basis. We can take a piece of wood. We can take a stone. Whatever we have an affinity with, we can take that as the basis of development.
So in our practice of calm abiding, we should think over what type of object that we want to take, that we want to develop calm abiding on, what type of basis we want to make use. It’s according to your desire, whatever base that you wish. General we can say that if in accordance with the instructions of one’s teacher, having listened to the instructions, one chooses, takes an object and when one places the mind upon that object as a basis for cultivating meditation, this is what is known as the first mental abiding that we are setting the mind on the object. This is called setting the mind. Please, initially putting the mind on the object that we’re going to use to cultivate calm abiding.
Setting the mind. So this first mental abiding that is setting the mind is attained through the power of hearing. And this is explained in that in dependence upon the teacher advising as to a particular basis or object for you to meditate on and you hear this, in dependence upon hearing this instruction, that you take this object and you place your mind on it. By the power of having heard about this object, one places the mind upon that, sets the mind upon that. So setting the mind is achieved through the power of hearing.
So these these go together amongst the six powers. The first power the power of hearing accompanies the first mental abiding setting the mind. Amongst the nine mental abidings, the second is continuous setting.