Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The body feeling light as cotton wool, even capable of flight — Khensur Rinpoche opens this 35-minute session with a vivid account of the bliss that marks attainment of calm abiding, explaining how a mind sustained by meditative concentration leaves behind the heaviness of a body dependent on gross food. He then connects this state to the mental realm of the upper realms and the arising of clairvoyance. A Q&A addresses three questions in turn: whether calm abiding’s bliss can generate compassion (no — each quality requires its own cause), whether calm abiding plus emptiness realization suffices for Buddhahood (no — bodhicitta is also required), and whether calm abiding can be lost (yes — illustrated with a wristwatch winding down). The talk closes with dedication prayers, marking it as one of the retreat’s final sessions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 CA 1994 06.mp3
UUID: 110fdd77-abf2-4394-b112-ebe8de531db2
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Calm Abiding Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1994 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 35.0 minutes
Words: ~1,955
Discomfort at all. No matter how long on one sitting one may do meditation and practices, there will be no discomfort at all on the body. Mentally, on whatever object one focuses on, it would still be all blissful experience. There will be no weariness, tiredness on the mental level as well. So we can say about about on physical and mental level, there is all the time experience of bliss with no tiredness, discomfort at all.
Presently, our mind is only on the state of desiring, but having attained calm abiding, our mind would assume the state of — would attain the state of upper realms, the form and formless realm state. Once one attains the mind of those states, then the mind and the body both are on always blissful experience state. Blissful experience state, how long one may remain doing equipoise, meaning profound meditation, for on whatever one would have no difficulty, no discomfort at all. Physically speaking, even just to give a taste and a description, can say one’s body would feel so light as a cotton wool, and one also has the ability physically to fly up in the sky. At that point, we have as well achieved the mind produced through meditation.
Generally speaking, there are mind produced through hearing, mind produced through reflection, mind produced through meditation. And the mind produced through meditation only is produced after achieving calm abiding. Now presently, when we are not attaining or we haven’t attained calm abiding state, our physical level, we have weight, fullness, and it feels heavy. But once one has attained calm abiding, one’s body does not feel that heavy. The reason for that is one does not anymore survive on gross food, the food of substance, because at that stage the food is meditative concentration, one is sustained by meditative concentration.
For example, the reason on the other side, for example, the reason why our body feels heavy is because we consume so much of substance and that makes our body heavy. And out of that comes all discomforts, tightness and so forth associated with it. So that’s how it happens. On the other hand we can say how the lightness of the body happens is because when one’s mind has attained calm abiding that means one has attained the mental state of upper realms. If one has attained the mental state of upper realm, one as well as attained the wind of the upper realms, the air, the energy of the upper realms, the wind of the upper realms, and the wind of the upper realms compared to those of desire realms are so much lighter, and that also is the reason why one would have no heaviness at all on physical level.
Regarding the way how one attains upper realm state of mind, well, to look into process that happens firstly by attaining the preparatory stage of upper realms. This then is followed by actual attaining of the actual state of the upper realms. And out of that, when one attains — when one attains the actual state of upper realms, that would make one’s mind with the power to know super conventional things. The word actually is one would be able to know many ways to knowledge. In Western terms, the clairvoyance, one would attain clairvoyance.
Regarding clairvoyance, one would know clairvoyance of remembering past and future lives, that one would be able to look back into one’s past lives and see in the past in what realms, form of rebirth one has taken, and in the future one can look into and see what possible rebirth one would be attaining. Also, that stage stage attain the clairvoyance to look into other people’s minds, so we’d be able to see what she is thinking, what he is thinking, whether he is telling a lie, or whether he is telling devious lies, what he is trying to devise and play a trick and so forth. So one would have the clairvoyance knowing others’ minds. Like this, there are other qualities achieved which are qualities common to both the classical non-Buddhist and the Buddhist system.
On top of them there are exclusive qualities one would attain such as qualities of realization of definite exit, realization of bodhicitta, realization of correct view, and all the realizations of the part and grounds of the lower vehicle, of the great vehicle, everything. Amongst you who do actually seriously do want to practice calm abiding and to attain it, it would mean that you have to have all the necessary requirements explained so far. It is only when the necessary factors, the requirements are complete, then it is possible to attain the fruits. And amongst all the necessary requirements, we may say with emphasis the solitary nature of the place of the practice and the consistent single pointed effort from one side that is required. As opposed to that, if one meditates and focuses on a given object for one day or two days and then leaves it with the mind thinking and wandering about something else and then pick it up after a couple of days.
In that way it is not possible at all to achieve calm abiding at all. So it has to be where every day is taken as same day and expression very what’s called emphasized as meaning of consistency. And in that way we can say it is possible to attain and produce calm abiding. Going back to this, one’s consistency has to be like the wood — flint wood — which you strike at one place and produce friction and fire, something like that. So the explanation so far has been very briefly on how to do this practice by overcoming the five faults and the eight antidotes being applied as the instruction coming from the teaching for differentiating the middle and the extreme.
And that perhaps will be sufficient for the time being. And if we have any questions, she’ll have questions. Otherwise, we’ll start there.
[Question from audience]
Yeah.
The first part is clear, so that would be okay. Fine. Yeah. With that state of blissful mind it is not possible to generate compassion or in your case great compassion, that is right, but with compassion it has to have its exclusive cause which is to feel compassionate about the sufferings of all sentient beings by reasoning how I also have suffering which is similarly experienced by all mother sentient beings. So we might say it is a case of separate causes producing its respective results. So, calm abiding produces that blissful state and compassion is produced by thinking about the sorrowful nature of sentient beings.
No, it is not possible to attain Buddhahood just with the calm abiding and emptiness realization without compassion being generated because to attain Buddhahood you need both method and wisdom and method is bodhicitta and the wisdom is realization emptiness. It is like a person to walk properly meet both feet, otherwise not possible. No, because to produce bodhicitta you need to apply its exclusive methods and causes equalizing and exchanging oneself with others or seven point cause and effect training only through that way it is possible. For producing bodhicitta you have to apply its respective method — to produce bodhicitta, you have to apply its respective methods. It’s like to produce rice you need rice seed, to produce barley you need barley seed, and they are individual correct seeds.
Yeah. Both method and wisdom would be complete in that approach. Attaining of Buddhahood would be possible because method and wisdom are complete. And in the method part you can also have the other six perfections generosity, morality, patience, diligence, and meditative concentration. It is still possible for a practitioner to have willingness to generate bodhicitta.
We may even say so that that way would be very effective way to generate bodhicitta because when one does meditation meditation only the seven point cause and effect training and equalizing and exchanging oneself with others the whole practice would be so concentrated and effective and the bodhicitta could be produced quicker. My Once come to body is attained, any virtuous action one may do would be powerful and speedy. If one attempts to generate definite exit, it would very quickly and strongly be generated because the mind is very firm and stable and strong. If one is attempting to generate bodhicitta equally there will be speedy and strong generation of it, same realization of emptiness in that way similar. It is advised if one has attained calm abiding then even a simple virtuous practice like saying a prayer — one round of beads — would be far more meritorious compared to someone without calm abiding doing hundreds of thousands of rounds of similar prayer beads.
It is relapsible. So it implies one needs to keep it up. Yeah. Yeah. It is relapsible.
It can decline. Yeah. Says there perhaps may not be anyone who has not attained calm abiding in the past. It is true. Because amongst sentient beings there is not anyone who has not sometime in the past been born in the two higher realms, form and formless realms.
If that is the case it implies one must have attained calm abiding because without calm abiding being attained one would not be born there. The reason why one declines down from calm abiding is because being in the upper realms, one later on has the subtle impure thoughts of the desire realm manifest, which precedes the rebirth done in the desire realm, and of course earlier when one attains calm abiding at that time the gross impure thoughts of desire and has been suppressed and they have not been at that time made to rise up or manifest but the impure thoughts to be reborn in the desire realm have not been overcome at all. So at some stage in the future they do manifest, arise, and lead to a rebirth down there. To the extent how much once calm abiding was done there would be equal measure of expiry time it would extend to. Once the power of calm abiding expires, during that expiry time, calm abiding also declines.
Like a case of wristwatch when they are wound, how much it is wound to that degree the watch will go, and once it’s finished then it would not go around. So like that it is similar here and along with calm abiding there would be different levels of how much strength has gone into producing varying duration duration of its stay. And once that duration of its stay is finished, the calm abiding has declined. For example, in our case, we have in the past accumulated karmic potency to be born as a human and remain. Once that karmic potency expires, we cease to be human and depart.
Yeah. So we’ll stop here. Nothing is done. Here during the sessions, the śamatha practice and the instructions based on Buddha’s instruction and later on the illustrating instruction by Ārya Maitreya has been quite helpful and meaningful both from your side as a participant and from third person in translation from Rinpoche’s that he also has put effort to make sure it becomes a meaningful activity. And from your side, you have also put effort, effort and it has been good and now we need to dedicate and say prayers, direct the merits we have gained so towards meaningful purposes.
Being able to gather for the retreat, is happy from your part that you have done so. And now if you still furthermore put the instruction into practice, Rinpoche would be far more happy for that. Okay.