Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Khensur Rinpoche opens this 45-minute session by anchoring the four close placements of mindfulness — body, feelings, mind, and phenomena — to the Four Noble Truths through a verse from Ārya Maitreya. He defines the practice as a union of wisdom and mindfulness, citing Asaṇga and Vasubandhu, then maps where it appears across the five Buddhist paths. A vivid analogy — the grief that returns spontaneously each morning after losing someone dear — illustrates what “uncontrived” longing for liberation actually means in practice. Rinpoche draws a careful distinction: walking meditation and breath awareness cultivate mindfulness but do not technically constitute close placement of mindfulness. The session closes with an open Q&A covering rebirth, the bardo intermediate state, fetal development in Buddhist cosmology, and why attaining Buddhahood is necessary to recall past lives.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 CP of M 1997 06 09.mp3
UUID: e718d686-216c-4bd2-a55e-d2f941b5c09f
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Close Placements of Mindfulness (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1997-06-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~2,204
So then follows a quotation by Ārya Maitreya from Discrimination of the Middle Way and the Extremes, where he goes on to say and this is in the text, because of being the pernicious state, that is to say, this comes about through close placement. This understanding comes about through understanding, taking as the object of observation, close placement of mindfulness, the body. And this is the, this is, helps in, by means of this we gain an understanding of true suffering because of being the cause of craving, taking feelings as the object, bringing an understanding of true origin, because of being the basis, taking mind, bringing about an understanding of true cessation, and because of being non obscuration, taking phenomena as the object, bringing an understanding of true paths, that by means of taking these four objects we enter into the Four Noble Truths. And therefore, we are to meditate on close placement of mindfulness. The difficult part is finished.
Now comes the easy part. So, we said that each of these objects of close placement of mindfulness is to be meditated on in terms of their general and their specific characteristics. And then, but what is the actual, the nature of close placement of mindfulness itself? And then it goes on to explain it that its nature is that of wisdom. So there’s a quotation from Compendium of Knowledge by Asaṇga, where he says, What is the entity, and what he means by that, what is the entity of close placement of mindfulness or what is its nature?
And it has two parts. It has a wisdom part and a mindfulness part. And then another quotation from Treasury of Knowledge, what is the close placing of mindfulness is wisdom. And then the next division of the text is out of divisions. The divisions are close placements of mindfulness.
There are four close placement of mindfulness on bodies, feelings, minds and phenomena. So, then the next division is that into boundaries. The close placements of mindfulness is the mind, and in terms of the levels of the path, where is it to be found? And if we were to explain it in terms of the paths of the universal vehicle, is found on all five of the paths, beginning with the path of accumulation up through and including Buddhahood. And then if it’s explained in terms of the individual vehicle, firstly the hearer vehicle, it’s at the hearer’s level of path of accumulation up through to the hearer Foe Destroyer.
In terms of solitary realizer, the solitary realizer’s path of accumulation up through and including the level of the path of the solitary realizers, so these path, this close placement of mindfulness is found throughout the path. It is not in the continuum of someone who has not attained a path, only in an individual’s continuum who has attained a path. So what well then what do we mean by actually generating a path? How do we actually begin to generate the very first path? This is developed when having seen the faults of cyclic existence, the drawbacks of cyclic existence, the difficulties that we incur in our suffering state, and we develop, when we develop a very powerful aspiration to be free of those sufferings, when we see the excellent qualities of liberation, its benefits, its blissful state, and we develop a longing for liberation.
When this longing to be free of suffering and the longing for liberation arises in a very powerful manner in an uncontrived, that is in a spontaneous way, then we have achieved the first path. What do we mean by when we use this description that this longing is to be uncontrived? Analogy is that if someone that you, for example, a partner or close, extremely close friend, someone that you like a great deal, if they were to die, and you would feel a great sadness. And this sadness would pervade everything that you did. The moment you woke up in the morning, this sadness would return.
It would return spontaneously. We wouldn’t have to think about it. It would just be there as it were. It’s uncontrived. We don’t have to, it’s not created in that way.
And this is what is meant by uncontrived. When the longing for liberation is simply always there, it pervades everything that we do. So then the etymology of the term close placements of mindfulness and as the text says, through mindfulness an object of observation that wisdom is placed near, is, it is not forgotten. Therefore, the practice is called the close placement of mindfulness. So, it can be seen from this etymology that the close placement of mindfulness has both wisdom and mindfulness part to it.
In applying it to an example, we said that we take the body as the object of observation of the close placement of mindfulness. And in relationship to the body, we examine both its general and specific characteristics. For example, the specific characteristics would be the elements of the body and evidence. Its general characteristics would be impermanent suffering, emptiness and selflessness. This is very much what we mean by meditation. Applying it to this present context, wisdom examines the body in terms of its general and specific characteristics, and then some understanding arises with regard to those characteristics and the body.
And we then proceed to single pointedly place ourselves upon focusing upon that understanding and familiarize ourselves again and again and again trying to cause this understanding to arrive and focusing upon it. So this quality of familiarization or familiarising the mind is the process of meditation. So in this close placement of mindfulness, we generate wisdom and through mindfulness hold, we abide, we hold to that abide in that state. So, while you are doing the walking meditation, are you meditating close placement of mindfulness? Are you abiding single pointed placement upon your understanding while you are walking?
So, the walking meditation would not fulfill the etymology what it meant by close placement of mindfulness, but we are practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness. We are mindful of the foot rising and the foot falling, the foot rising, foot falling, so we are practicing mindfulness but not close placement of mindfulness as is described here. But it is beneficial to do the walking meditation because we are cultivating mindfulness and mindfulness is we don’t allow a great deal of distracting thoughts to arise in our mind and this is beneficial, but also can lead to being able to place our mind single pointedly upon an object. So, it is helpful in the sense that it is cultivating mindfulness and doesn’t allow a great deal of thoughts to be arrived.
And the same would go too with regard to mindfulness of breath. Watching, being aware of the out breath and the in breath and holding the mind to that is the development of mindfulness and can lead to a single-pointed placement of the mind. But moreover it helps to pacify the arising of a great deal of thoughts. So in this way, it is beneficial. So this is beneficial.
It is useful. Know, the proliferation of thoughts, all these thoughts coming really troubles our mind. Our minds are usually very busy, and this causes a great deal of trouble, a great many problems. So it’s very beneficial just to practice and think about a peaceful mind, isn’t it? So now the eighth division demonstrating that the close placements of mindfulness of the universal vehicle is superior.
So it presents a series of reasons why this practice in the context of the universal vehicle is superior to that of the individual vehicle. It’s a it’s a beautiful day out today. The sun is shining, we’re all very peaceful here. I think if I went any further, it’d just give you a headache. After all, today is a holiday.
So we should take a holiday. We very much covered the essential intent of the text, what needs to be known. The remaining portion of universal vehicle presentation or the method of cultivating close placement of mindfulness, maybe we can talk about that sometime in the future. So I think, as I mentioned yesterday, that there were questions yesterday and I said I would take them today. I today.
If you have some new questions, some doubts in your mind that need to be cleared up, I think that would be useful. Yes? Okay. So there are many individuals who have the wisdom to understand this, who have seen it for themselves, have experienced it for themselves, just entering into realized open mind and taking liberties. We were to explain it as the Buddha taught it, that at the time of our death we do not become non existent, that something does continue on.
And that the mind, if previous to the actual taking of rebirth in the next life, there is an intermediate state, the Bardo. But we are not able to stay in that state for a long period of time. It can last up to forty nine days at most. Subsequent to that maximum period we will necessarily have to take rebirth, but it’s not definite how long we will stay in the intermediate state. It could be, for example, seven days or it could be multiples of seven up to forty nine.
Then, while in the Bardo, the intermediate state beam is searching for a place of rebirth, and it will eventually find that place and that place will be a fertilized ovum that it has a karmic relationship with the parents who produce that. Be this coming together of sperm and ovum, and they don’t actually use these terms in the seventies, they just use the term blood and substance. So, this is what it meant if we were the equivalent. Then, but it be no fault. There cannot be something wrong with either of these sperm or ovum.
It must literally be had no defects. And initially, then the consciousness enters into this combination and then initially it’s like said to be like described like a dab of yogurt. And then it slowly begins after a few weeks it begins to elongate. And then after more weeks it begins to develop arms and legs. It’s very much like a worm that begins to develop arms and legs.
And then after that you can, there are, you know, is explained in great detail in western science, the developing, how the fetus develops, so you can understand from that. So the arms and legs develop elongate, the head enlarges, we develop the organs of it, for example the eyes, the eye faculties, we develop feelings, we develop into a mature fetus and then at approximately nine months and fifteen days the baby is born. So, yeah, there are people who remember entering into the fertilizer. For example, the Buddhist said that and that there are foe destroyers both here is a solitary realizer. Remember.
It would be difficult for an ordinary person to remember. Unchanging information. The question is that this taking from what Nabishna has said, then there can be some kind of information that is, in this case that having entered into a fertilized that having this memory, having this information from life to life to life, it seems that it’s a constant unchanging piece of information. What would you say was the information? I see.
So it’s an occluded memory. An occluded memory. But it’s always there, even though we’re not a consort. So we have obscurations. The obstacle to remembering our past due birth is due to the latencies of ignorance.
If we abandon those latencies of ignorance, then we will know all phenomena, including our rebirth. On the other hand, simply a matter of us having forgotten. So once again, we have obstructions to knowing our past rebirth and on the other hand, we have forgotten past rebirth and then there are those who have certain clairvoyances who can remember them. So those who have clairvoyances, they don’t merely remember their previous rebirths. They see their previous rebirths.
Due to due to the latencies of afflictive emotions within our mind, they act as obstruction and they obstruct us from knowing the nature of our phenomenon both in terms of its modes and its variety. By variety it means just all conventional phenomena whatsoever. Therefore, this is the reason that we have to attain Buddhahood in order to remove this latency, remove this obstruction. Why? Because if we remove this obstruction, then we will know all of the rebirths of a particular student, for example.
We will know all of the rebirths, where they took rebirths, we will know their entire past history, we will know their disposition, their abilities, and therefore we will be able to give them a teaching exactly suited to their present disposition. Therefore, that’s the reason that we have to attain Buddhahood, to be able to know this. When we attain Buddhahood and have removed this obstacle, this obstacle in the mind, then we know all phenomena in the universe just as if they were in the BAM of our hand.