Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using the image of candy versus nutrition — meditating on pleasant objects alone gives temporary relief but no lasting benefit — Khensur Rinpoche opens this 41-minute session with a three-part framework drawn from a verse by Pänchen Choegyal. He covers physical posture in concrete detail: lotus legs, hands at the navel to kindle inner heat, straight spine to keep energy channels clear, eyes half-open directed downward along the nose. He then addresses the purpose of practice — the gradual elimination of suffering, likened to washing a stubborn stain from cloth — before distinguishing two kinds of meditative object: emptiness, selflessness, and impermanence approached analytically, and love, compassion, and the awakening heart cultivated as qualities to embody rather than merely observe. The session closes with a five-minute guided meditation on the empty nature of all phenomena.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 GM 1989 02 04 About Meditation.mp3
UUID: 9f5c18b4-a817-49f8-84fc-1e91387f847b
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Guided Meditations 1988-1992 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1989-02-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 41.1 minutes
Words: ~2,402
Because this is the beginning of our Rinpoche’s second year here at Buddha House, and this is the first meditation session that we’ve had together. Rinpoche is going to go over the three aspects of meditation as he recited a quotation from Pänchen Choegyal in which he talks about meditation from the points of view of the physical posture, the mental attitude, and the fruit of meditation. So Rinpoche is going to cover these three topics briefly. So even you know, we we may in fact enjoy meditation and and meditation is extremely important, but we must keep in mind the purpose of meditation, what why we’re doing it and what we’re seeking to achieve the result. So in beginning with the meditation begins with the actual posture itself.
And the why we take why the posture is important. Presently, we our embodiment involves five aggregates. And these aggregates are our present aggregates are impure. That is to say that they have been taken under the force of karma and afflictive emotions. And therefore, we’re seeking to purify these five are present in pure aggregates.
Each of the five aggregates, when it’s purified, is embodied in one of the five families the Buddha lineage, or the five, sometimes called Dhyāna Buddhas. For example, when the aggregate of form of the body, when that is purified, it is embodied in the form of Vairochana, the feeling in Ratnasambhava, the aggregate of discrimination in Amitābha, and the compositional factors, and the mind. And when the consciousness is purified, it is embodied in the form of Akṣobhya. So beginning with the aggregate form, that is to say most simply our body. When that is our impure aggregate form is purified then it is embodied in the form of a Vairochana Buddha.
And we take the actual Vairochana Buddha as the example of the perfect posture in which we sit. This begins with the legs. The legs are to be placed in what is sometimes called the Lotus posture or the vajra posture the legs are put into a lotus posture. Left foot on top of the left thigh and the right foot placed on top of the right thigh. Then the hands.
The hands are placed together. Thumbs are touching at the level of the navel. This is as a method to help induce the ignition or igniting the fire of psychic heat. Then the body should be held in a very upright straight position. So it’s it’s important to keep the body in a straight, upright position.
By keeping the body straight, then the channels in which the winds, the energy winds flow will be kept straight. When the energy winds are flowing freely, then we have a great clarity to our meditation. So then our head positions, it should not be looking up. It should not be bent upward. This will cause a great deal of the winds will move very forcefully.
They will move with a great deal of force and this will cause mental agitation. We should not looking out and up, but we should be looking bend our head slightly down and be looking downward. The eyes should be positioned, looking down along the sides of the nose. If the eyes are held open and looking outward, then the mind will go outside of the object of meditation. You will not be able to abide or rest the mind on the object of meditation.
It will be moving outward. And The eyes should be held partially open. They should not be closed. Initially, you may have a good meditation with your eyes closed, but eventually things will become very dark, Your mind will become very cloudy. You will not be able to have a clear object of meditation keeping your eyes closed.
And the the So the mouth should be closed. The teeth resting naturally one on top of the other. The tongue should be held against the edge of the hard palate where it meets the teeth. And this enables one to, if one is meditating for a long period of time that the saliva will not flow out of the mouth and the mouth will not become dry. Now if you have some problem breathing through your nose, then then of course you have to adjust these all these techniques of meditation to whatever suits your particular body the best.
Also in holding the hands, the arms should be held slightly away from the body. If meditating for a long period of time, then the air will be able to the wind there’ll be some cooling effect by the air moving and it will help you to stay awake. If you sit all scrunched up, you’ll fall asleep. So this is the the the way of the the bodily position. So now we come to the actual meditation.
It is the mind which does the meditating. The body doesn’t do the meditating. So this is the the the body is positioned in in this way, and then it’s left. And then it’s the actual, process of meditation is done through the mind reflecting upon a particular object of meditation. So the actual mind is is the the factor which is in brings about the process of meditation, which is actively involved meditation, and how do we actually meditate.
So, there are two factors we have to consider. One is the basis of our meditation, that is the object which we’re going to consider, reflect, meditate on, and then the mind itself, which is doing the reflecting, the considering. So the object of meditation, this could be whatever, you know, you may wish, whatever you want to meditate on. It can be the breath. It could be a light, a syllable, whatever.
So we can meditate upon any anything we may wish but we have to consider why we’re meditating. What why are we doing what we’re doing? We’re trying to achieve a particular result. And what is the result? Ultimately, the real goal of meditation is to bring about a state where we no longer have any physical suffering and our mind is abides in a state clarity and bliss, joy.
So this is our real goal of why we’re meditating. So it would be analogous to the reason that we eat food. We prepare food and we eat it in order to maintain our body to in order to keep a healthy living long life to enjoy. And likewise, the reason that we’re meditating is to bring about a state where we no longer have to experience any physical suffering and to bring about a clarity and joy of mind. But on the other hand, you know, we we eat sweets.
We eat candy. When we eat when we eat sweets, it’s because it’s very sweet. We enjoy it temporarily. But if we were to only eat sweets, then then we would only be we would eventually only hurt our body. We would not be bringing about any welfare to our body.
So we have to try to achieve a nutritional diet rather than just eating what we might temporarily enjoy. We we we eat grains. We eat all kinds of healthy nutritional food. And this helps our body to be healthy and to live a long life. So, trying to understand the object of meditation, why we’re involved in meditation.
We’re trying to eliminate all our physical suffering and to bring clarity and joy to the mind. This is the ultimate ultimate result of meditation. This is we’re this is the goal of meditation. Now, does if we were to meditate, for example, only on some kind of light or only on the breath or even though these might be very sweet meditations, but this would just be like eating candy all the time. It would be temporarily.
It might bring us some kind of happiness, but it would not bring about the eventual health and longevity of the body. And likewise, our meditation, we have to keep in mind on the object of our meditation what types of objects are going to bring about our ultimate benefit. And the ultimate benefit we cannot just meditate on any old object of meditation. We have to keep in mind what these objects are, what we’re seeking by our beings of our meditation to bring about. That is the elimination of all our physical suffering and clarity and joy of the mind.
Therefore, we should use this in determining what types of objects of meditation that we’re going to make use of. So, this is the ultimate future result of meditation. The elimination from the very root of physical suffering and the purification of mind. And this is not going to happen all at once. It’s going to come about in a very gradual manner.
It’s going to come about through stages. Just as in the case where washing stains from our clothing. At first the stain is very difficult to remove. It might take a number of washings but gradually the stain is removed from the clothes and the clothing eventually becomes clean. Likewise, we will be able gradually eliminate our physical and mental physical suffering and purify the mind through the process of meditation.
So what are we to meditate on? In general, we can talk about the objects of meditation from the point of view of subject and object. Objects such as impermanence, selflessness, emptiness. But also from the point of view of of the subject that would be the mind itself. Speaking of objects in meditation from the point of view of as of subject and object, such types of meditative objects objects of meditation such as love, compassion, meditating on the awakening heart are to be thought of as the actual subject, the consciousness, is being transformed.
Generate the mind in the entity, in the nature of love, compassion, awakening heart. We are not looking at love, compassion as simply as an object for analysis. We’re not looking at analyzing love. We’re trying to transform, to generate our mind, the subject, into the nature, the entity of love and compassion. Simply not observing love, but trying to become love.
On the other hand, we can make use of objects of meditation which are viewed as an object as compared to a subject. And this would be, for example, meditating on emptiness. We would take, for example, one’s own body as a basis of meditation. One’s own aggregates, not the body, the aggregates. And, we would question, are these aggregates truly existent or not truly existent?
And we would make an examination using various types of reasoning. And then we would come to some conclusion. We would form an assumption as to the mind the aggregates are not truly existent. And then we would place the mind single pointedly upon this conclusion or assumption that we that we developed that the that the aggregates are not truly existent. So talks about the process of gaining realization and meditation.
And it is taking the object again and again and again to mind. For example, where you could take an emptiness. We were trying to understand the mode of abidance, the nature, the reality of emptiness, reflecting upon it again and again, thinking about it, reflecting upon it again and again. We were gain some kind of realization and understanding. And having done this, we familiarize or habituate ourselves to this understanding that we’ve developed.
And by this process of habituating ourselves to this understanding, we would develop a direct realization. We would directly cognize, for example, emptiness. And by this means, we actually are able to abandon the afflictive emotions. And once having abandoned the afflictive emotions, we attain liberation, that is to say the cessation of all physical and mental suffering. Emptiness is the main object of our meditation and it is by this realization of emptiness that we are able to purify our presently impure mind.
Again and again, taking emptiness as a subject, gaining realization of it, and habituating oneself to this realization, we are able to completely eliminate all the impure factors within our mind and achieve a purity of mind which is results in a cessation of all suffering from the mind and consequently all physical suffering. So, we have these two types of objects in meditation. From the objective point of view, our main object which we are to take as our object of meditation is emptiness, selflessness, and impermanence. From the subjective point of view, our main object of meditation which we are to take is the such objects as love, compassion, awakening heart. If by means of uniting these coupling these two types of objects in meditation together, then we can achieve the complete results, the goal of meditation.
And that is to say, the complete purification of body and mind. So these are the this is the goal. We should keep in mind the goal of meditation and therefore keep in mind what are the important objects in meditation. If we simply meditate on those objects which bring us some kind of temporal happiness then it’s going to be just like eating sweets. But if we meditate on these types of subjects, objects, then we are going to be able to ultimately achieve the goal of meditation which is complete bring clarity and joy to the mind and elimination of all physical suffering.
So this is very important to keep in mind the object of meditation, which type of result are we seeking to achieve. And thereby, every day in our meditation gradually creating positive personal power, ridding our mind of all the various faults and developing all the excellent qualities and we will definitely ultimately achieve the final goal. So, today we’re going to meditate on emptiness for five minutes. And we should contemplate, reflect upon the fact that all phenomena whatsoever are empty of true existence. They do not truly exist.
That they all are dependently existing. They do not exist under their own power. They depend upon causes, conditions, upon names and terms. The emptiness of true existence the lack of true existence is what we mean by emptiness. The lack of this type of true existence is what we mean by emptiness.
And we’ll meditate upon that for the next five minutes.