Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen delivers an 81-minute classical Buddhist lecture on the close placement of mindfulness, the first of the 37 facets of enlightenment. He establishes the foundational role of recollection as non-forgetfulness, explaining its two sources—heredity and karmic habituation through repetition. Using vivid examples, including his witness of sky burials in his youth, he walks through meditation on the four objects: body (recognising its filthy, impermanent nature), sensation (how pleasant experiences breed craving, unpleasant ones breed anger), mind (its observing nature and capacity to degenerate or flourish), and phenomena (leading to understanding of selflessness). He systematically covers the mode of meditation, binding the mind to its object through recollection as a rope and vigilance as a hook, then investigative wisdom. He traces how each object leads to understanding one of the four noble truths, and distinguishes Mahāyāna close placements of mindfulness—applied to all beings, upheld by the six perfections—as vastly superior to their Hīnayāna counterparts. Pitched at serious practitioners with doctrinal grounding.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2012.08.15_04.45_01 4.mp3
UUID: 85049c8b-c509-4692-9ca2-b0247bc196bf
Teacher: Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen
Collection: Rinpoche's Story
Date: 2012 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,486
Day one, session two. So recollection is extremely important, specifically the recollection of the with the close placement of recollection. Now in Buddhist scriptures, recollection is defined as the mental factor of non-forgetfulness. There are two main causes for a powerful memory. The first is heredity.
If one’s parents have strong memories then there are good odds that oneself will have a powerful memory as well. The second is karmic imprints. The repeated habituation where the karmic imprints are powerful, then the memory of the person can be very powerful as well. Or four in the morning, we have a very clear memory of what we did the previous day. For yourselves, when you wake up early in the morning, do you have a clear recollection of what you did the previous day, what you recollected the previous day?
Probably you do. Then through the force of repetition of habituation, eventually we will generate non forgetfulness for any text, for instance, which we are trying to memorize. In my own case for instance, even though I do not recite my prayers, daily nonetheless if I were asked to recite it I could probably recite it at once from memory. And this is because when I was young, I recited it many times and put great effort at memorization. And how is this possible?
Well, this is possible because it is not a mere verbal act, but one thinks about it before and one thinks what one recites. Memory is a strange thing. It depends not only on the tongue which does the reciting but on the mind and on the relation between these two for stable memory. For instance within the practice of the lower tantras, tantras are subdivided into higher and lower tantras, there are very very strict dietary requirements and for instance even the consumption of salt is forbidden. Then I am convinced that these very strict dietary requirements have an impact on purification and on memory.
It is quite difficult because the meals have no relationship to what we call meals. Then through putting effort in this way before going to sleep, one gets a pure mind for the duration of the retreat for a week or a month. So memory is extremely important. Just commenting on the fact that when I try to visualize it this way, the tip of the tongue at my heart, this is what happens. So this occurs in dependence on recollection of memory.
So within the eightfold subdivision of the first of the 37 facets of enlightenment. In other words, the eightfold subdivision or the close placement of mindfulness. We have first the object, second the mode of meditation, then the purpose of meditation, nature, divisions, divisions, boundaries, etymologies and establishing the supremacy of close placement of mindfulness and Mahāyāna. The first object is presented. Then regarding the mode of meditation, here what is meant by meditation.
Meditation So to place the mind clearly on an object, this mind’s parts or its entourage, if you wish, must be present. Three parts must be present. Concentration must be present. Recollection must be present, and vigilance must be present. To place the mind clearly on an object of meditation these three mental factors concentration, recollection and vigilance are necessarily present.
To use an example, it is akin to staking an elephant to a pillar. To stake or tie an elephant to a pillar, the pillar of the object of meditation, we need the rope of recollection. So here, the elephant is the mind. The pillar is the object of meditation, and that which binds the mind firmly to the object of meditation is the rope of recollection. Now when the elephant of the mind is bound by the rope of recollection to the pillar of the object of meditation, one additional factor is necessary to prevent the elephant from wandering away, to keep it where it should be, and that is the hook of vigilance. Excuse me.. Check for yourselves whether we are really able at present to bind the wild elephant of the mind to the pillar of the object of meditation. So we know that when memory or reconnection is strong, the mind is focused firmly on the object of meditation. And as Kamalaśīla says in his Bhāvanākrama, stake the wild elephant of the mind to the pillar of the object of meditation with the rope of recollection. Once the wild elephant of the mind is bound to the object of meditation by the firm rope of recollection, there is no longer any fear and all virtue is accrued.
And the meaning of the stanza is that once the mind is bound to the object of meditation, then the fear, in other words the afflictions, no longer arise and the mind is serviceable for virtue. So this is the second topic of the first subdivision, the mode of meditation, binding the mind to the object of meditation with the rope of recollection. In other words, once the mind is bound to the object of meditation, in other other words exterior and interior phenomena, then one engages in analysis. Analysis here intimates the presence of wisdom. Here therefore in addition to the mind being focused clearly on the object of meditation a wisdom which analyzes its features must be present so we can understand clearly the importance of recollection within the close placement of recollection.
So therefore here when the mind is focused on body, sensation, mind, and phenomena, other words the four objects in a close placement of mindfulness, one must investigate the characteristics of the objects of meditation starting with those of the body. So how does one meditate on the own characteristics of the body? One meditates on the fact that this body of flesh and blood is constituted of the elements and what derives from the elements and one meditates on the sense organs which are the basis of sensory experience for this body. When we meditate on the own characteristics of sensation, the second object, what is the nature of sensation? Its nature is to experience.
What is experienced are either pleasant or unpleasant experiences. Pleasant experiences induce craving and unpleasant experiences induce anger. When we focus on the mind, what is the nature of mind? The nature of mind is to observe or to apprehend and we can see that if the mind observes a virtuous object, its qualities will increase and if the mind observes a non virtuous object, it will degenerate. So this this shows clearly the changing nature of the mind.
Now the fourth object of meditation is phenomena and here we said that phenomena are basically all mental factors to the exclusion of sensation as well as all composite and non composite phenomena and meditating on them then aims to produce an understanding of selflessness. Now it is clear that there is nothing within our continuum which is not included or subsumed within these four, in other words, the body, sensations, mind and other phenomenon. So this is the presentation of the own characteristics of the four objects of meditation of close placement and mindfulness. Now the general characteristics are the four seals. In other words that these objects of meditation are impermanent, suffering, selfless and empty.
Now this can only apply to the first three objects which are body, sensation and mind. The fourth object includes both composite and non composite phenomena and therefore one meditate on it as being selfless and empty. Now regarding the purpose of this meditation we can see when we meditate on our body that even though at present our body looks nice with its envelope of skin. Inside it is one big mess of blood, flesh and fluids and for that matter upon our death the decay of this body is terrifying. Its stench is different from all other stenches.
When we meditate on our body in this way and on the horrific process of putrefaction then we get a sense of the noble truth of suffering. When I was young in camp I assisted to many what are known as sky burials, open areas and this was extraordinarily beneficial for my mind. When someone died whether it was a man or a woman they would carry the body out and then they would chop it up starting by cutting the limbs off and peeling the skin off, removing the flesh, removing the ligaments, breaking the bones. Then there were quite a few people who were taking pictures and I hope it was for virtuous purposes. In my own case it had a very big impact enabling me to understand the filthy nature of the body.
And in this way, a close recollection of the body induces a sense of ugliness, of the filthiness of the body, and this ugliness of the body induces an understanding of the noble truth of suffering. The second recollection of sensation leads us to see how pleasant sensations give rise to craving and unpleasant sensations give rise to anger and hostility. This induces an understanding of the noble truth of the origin of suffering. Then at this point when we have understood that the body is filthy and this is understood as the noble truth of suffering we have discarded the body. And Understanding that as far as sensations are concerned happy sensations lead to craving and unpleasant sensations lead to anger in turn we discard sensations.
So if one thinks seriously about this, this thought will arise. If you think seriously, it will arise. I have abandoned my body, then I have abandoned sensations, then what So at this point having abandoned body and having abandoned contaminated aggregates and having abandoned the sensations, the doubt which arises is should I attain a remainder as nirvana then my mental continuum will be interrupted and I will completely cease to exist. At this point great fear arises. Now this fear is baseless, it’s groundless because there are numerous coarse and subtle levels of mind.
At present we can only use the coarse levels of mind but there are very subtle levels of mind and it is these levels of mind which continue life after life. It is these levels of mind which bear the karmic imprints, which are enhanced, whose qualities are enhanced. So at this point, understanding that the mind is selfless and impermanent, we meditate on a wisdom which is the antidote to the ignorance apprehending true existence. And this in turn leads us to the noble truth of the path. So meditating in this way on the four objects, the body, sensations, mind and phenomena, in turn through each of these close recollections.
Their respective truth is abused through recollection of the body, the truth of suffering, through that of sensations the truth of the origin of suffering, through that of the mind the truth of cessation, and through that of phenomena the truth of the path. So we have now presented the following outlines. The object of the close placement of mindfulness, of close placement of recollection, the mode of meditation, the purpose of meditation. Its nature is the definition of the close placement of mindfulness which is given on page one of definitions of the seven subdivisions of the 37 facets of enlightenment. It is a mind which has entered the path through having included either a recollection or a wisdom meditating through the investigation of the general characteristics by pairs of body sensation mind and phenomena.
So as you see in the definition, a close placement of recollection is either a recollection or a wisdom. Indeed, a close placement of recollection is a mind which focuses on its object which can be in this case the body sensation mind or phenomena and which relying on the mental factors of concentration, of recollection, of vigilance and of wisdom analyzes it. However, a close placement of recollection is not necessarily either a recollection or a wisdom. So the fifth outline is the subdivision of the close placement of recollection. This is fourfold.
Close placement of recollection of the body, of sensation of mind and of phenomena. So what are the boundaries of the close placements of mindfulness? They are present from the path of accumulation all the way up to full enlightenment. Here the path of accumulation refers to the paths of accumulation of the three categories of beings. In other words, hearers, Pratyekabuddha, solitary realizers, and bodhisattvas, but specifically the two first.
Then there are no close placements of recollection within our mindstreams. They will only appear once we have entered the path and one has generated uncontrived renunciation or bodhicitta. At present they are absent. The seventh outline is the etymology of close placement of recollection. It is called close placement of reconnection because it is a recollection which occurs within the context of an investigation by wisdom of the characteristics of body, sensation, mind, and phenomena.
The eighth outline, establishing the supremacy of the great vehicle close placement of mindfulness is to be understood as follows. A Hīnayāna being is a being who has generated an uncontrived renunciation striving for liberation and merely that. A being who has not just generated that but has generated that which is upheld by bodhicitta as well is a Mahāyāna being and this is the boundary between Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna. Now there are numerous reasons for which the close recollections of the Mahāyāna are superior to those of the Hīnayāna without entering into them in particular. What we can say is that a close recollection of the body, of sensations, of mind and phenomena which is not applied exclusively to oneself but which is applied to all beings without exception becomes such a close recollection which is upheld by the six perfections.
As such, it becomes a cause for full enlightenment. So from the standpoint of Lam Rim, we can say that a being who has turned away from the vanities of future lives is a being who has generated uncontrived renunciation. Such a being who has generated uncontrived renunciation has entered the Lam Rim path. So when asking questions here, And the way for questions to be beneficial is obviously after something like this, you are all very confused. Then allow your mind to decant the confusion, to settle. Body, which has its impermanence, its suffering nature, its selflessness, and so forth.
So one proceeds in this way by pairs. These two states of mind are not simultaneous but subsequent. In addition, once we have realized calm abiding, we have no particular usage of the pairs. Just going back to the previous question about the pairs and the own characteristics, for example, of the body or the general characteristics of impermanent suffering and selflessness, are they just defined as general characteristics because they are also characteristics of all composite phenomena? Okay. Let’s stop here for today, I think.