Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven. Margaret McAndrew traces the path from śamatha (calm abiding) through analytical wisdom practice. She covers the foundations of concentration: suitable retreat space, renounced mind, pure morality, the seven-limb posture, and focusing on a virtuous object. She walks the nine stages of śamatha development using the elephant chart—a traditional image of a monk taming a wild elephant—to show how mental agitation and dullness are progressively stilled. A key pitfall: practitioners often mistake subtle dullness for true attainment, stalling at the fifth stage. She then turns to wisdom—understanding emptiness and the illusory nature of the self in Madhyamaka philosophy. Through contemplative investigation, she shows how to progressively eliminate false concepts and perceive reality directly. For intermediate practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 50 6P 1998 08 27.mp3
UUID: a88cf304-2af0-4b53-aaee-3913594b1c5a
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-08-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~5,697
Mainly to do with Abhidharma. The topic is called Abhidharma. So it comes from the Abhidharma. But you also learn to debate on, on the tenets in Madhyamaka School. And, I had by the time we got to that point, I had so much wrong that I had to give up.
I missed the last [few weeks]. Yes, exactly. So I missed the last couple of weeks and the other nuns did all that. But it’s very interesting anyway and it’s good to learn how to do these things. And you might wonder what’s the point of subdividing everything up this way? But in actual fact you start to realize how we take things for granted and how really there’s this relationship between the things that we label as different kinds of phenomena and the thing that’s doing the labeling.
There’s the connection between the labeler and the labeled. And understanding this is very very important. And that’s wisdom, that’s not concentration. Anyway, I’m not going to go through all the points of concentration because it’s really very interesting. It’s very inspiring.
The first time I really came across an explanation of this topic was when I was reading Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey’s book, Tibetan Tradition of Mental Development, has a very good explanation of concentration of śamatha and Vipashyana. And I was absolutely spellbound when I read this, and I still think it’s a very good presentation. Of course, you’ll find it also in many other texts. And there’s a lot of details that we can learn about these things that I’m not going to explain. It starts off by explaining importance of finding the right place to do the practice.
This is assuming that you’re going to go into a retreat and do it intensively. Goes into lots of details about what sort of a place you need, finding a conducive situation and so on. And in fact, for people who are really serious about doing the meditation practice, often finding the right place in the right situation and finding support and so on so that they can afford to stay in retreat can be an enormous hurdle. Often seems that this kind of obstacle remains until person’s really ready to do the practice. If you have the idea of going into retreat to do this practice but you’re not quite at the point of doing it, it seems like you’re just going to encounter all sorts of obstacles.
And then when the person persists enough because they’ve been practicing their enthusiastic perseverance, then eventually the obstacles just seem to melt away and everything seems to come together and they find the right situation. And then they’re able to go in and do the practice. So then even when we have that situation, we have to have various internal sort of conditions as well, such as having a very renounced mind, giving up attachment to various things that we won’t be finding in our retreat space. Because you can imagine that if we’re in retreat and we’re craving all the things that could be going on in the outside world, then we’re not going to be able to get on very well with our concentration. And so we have to overcome these various attachments and also it’s important to have pure morality.
This is something that’s explained also in terms of the three higher trainings in the intermediate scope. The importance of having moral conduct as a preliminary to going on to practice concentration is explained because we need to have calm minds. We need to have a stable, balanced sort of mental state while we’re in retreat. Lack of moral conduct brings agitation. Moral conduct brings a calm mind, peaceful mind.
So it’s an absolutely necessary prerequisite to attaining concentration. Another thing that we need to do is to receive instructions from a learned teacher, preferably a teacher who has achieved the state of concentration themselves. And these instructions can be given either before you go into retreat or bit by bit as you go along. So another thing is that for this practice we need to be able to sit in full lotus position, sorry! So we can work on our concentration, though even if we can’t attain full lotus now, can start to work on our concentration because we can work on the mental aspect of it.
So when we’re practicing concentration, we start, as we always explain with new students, with the seven limb posture of Vairochana. I won’t go through all that again. You know all the different points. That includes an eighth point, which is the breathing awareness, focusing on the breath. The person who’s trying to develop single pointed concentration will, first of all try to having found their house having set up all their altar and everything got their cushions just right then they’ll sit in this posture and they focus on the breath and in that way they stop the scattering of the mind and bring it into more focus.
Then after having done that then they go on to concentrate on the object I’ll be talking about. Usual object that’s explained in these teachings, these teachings are usually explained in terms of focusing on a visualized object, particularly the visualization of Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha. But there can be other objects. In actual fact, of course, the Hindus and others who attain single pointed concentration wouldn’t be focusing on Buddha. They would be focusing on some other object.
For instance, sometimes Hindus are taught to concentrate on a flame, a candle flame. So anything can serve any still object can serve as an object of gaining single pointed concentration. But it’s advised not concentrate on a neutral object like a candle flame or a flower, but to concentrate on a virtuous object such as Buddha because in that way you gain tremendous benefits in addition to the actual concentration itself. From the Buddhist point of view, it does very much. Of course, from the TM point of view, it’s a technique for helping people through their daily life, and for that, it doesn’t matter so much.
But, of course, they’re missing out on the opportunities for gaining all the additional benefits that could be gained by focusing on holy objects. In this practice, are five obstacles to be overcome and there are eight remedies. And there are very detailed teachings on those five obstacles and which remedies overcome each obstacle and the different states of development of the Samatha that are gained by using each of these eight remedies and overcoming each obstacle in turn. And these are explained in rather an amusing way on the elephant chart. Have some of you seen the elephant chart?
Yes. I wasn’t quite sure where I’d find one. I know there’s a copy of it in The Wishfulfilling Golden Sun, but we don’t seem to have that in the library here, rather surprised me. So it’s a very old book. It’s not available now, but most of the Dharna Centre libraries have one, and I know Doc’s got a copy.
Sometimes you see this chart around. Actually, I was planning to have a look among all our stuff out there in the bookshop, but I didn’t get around to it. But it shows a picture of you often do come across it in various texts, you’ll probably if you read widely, you’ll probably see it somewhere. You don’t remember where you saw it, Hillary? I think I only remember where the little skinny book.
Okay. So I see a little skinny love book. So go and have a look at all the little skinny love ribbon books, and you’d like fun. So, anyway, it just explains the process of stilling the mind in terms of taming a wild elephant. And you have this picture of this little monk with a big elephant hook and a a lasso in his hand, and he’s going off after this huge elephant.
And the elephant also has a rabbit on its head and a monkey tagging along because these are also symbolic of some of the aspects of our mind. And so as he goes along, he gradually manages, first of all, to catch up with the elephant and to get the rope around it, and then he has to tie the elephant up to a pillar and tame it, and then he has to finally manage to get on top of it and ride it. And at the end, you see that the elephant disappeared and the monk’s just soaring through the sky with his gem sword held up like wings. And then he the last figure, he’s just sort of sitting there totally experiencing the state of full Samatha. I think yes.
And at one stage, the elephant becomes totally peaceful and just sort of sits down beside the monk and meditates with him. And also yes. He gets whiter as he goes along, and so does the monkey. And and the monkey also eventually the monkey eventually disappears, and so does the rabbit, because they represent mental agitation and mental dullness, which have to be removed along the way. So, anyway, it’s it gives a very vivid illustration of the different stages and the different antidotes that have to be brought in at each stage.
Yes. Is that anything to do with the rabbit in that story? No. That that rabbit was actually Buddha when he was Bodhisattva Mhmm. According to the Jātaka stories.
That’s right. Once you see it as a rabbit, you’ll never see it as a man again. You’ll never see it as anything else but a rabbit. It’s got these big ears. It’s looked at from the side, it’s like the rabbit’s body, sort of with its head bent forward and its hind legs filled up a little bit and the two ears are just so clear there.
But, anyway, modern science tells us that it’s volcanoes and not vol you know? Craters. Craters. But maybe it’s Buddha too. Who knows?
So so yes. So, anyway, yes, so the When we first start off trying to concentrate, we first of all have to overcome the initial obstacles of laziness and discouragement, And then go on with this process of roping the mind, which is controlling the mind like roping the wild elephant. And the mind has to be fixed on one object. As I said, that’s used to explain in terms of being an image of Buddha. In tantric practice, we actually use the visualization of the deity.
And there are also some specific techniques and specific visualizations concerned with practicing concentration, which are explained in the yogas associated with generation stage Tantra. But the basic technique is just the same. The basic stages we have to go through and the basic techniques for overcoming the obstacles are the same in the Tantra as in the Sūtra explanation. So by understanding the sūtra explanation, then you understand what you need to do in the tantric meditations to to gain concentration. So then, at first, the mind just goes all over the place and wanders right off the object.
And by training it, it eventually manages to stay on the object longer and longer. And after a while, it becomes able to stay fairly consistently on the object. And at this stage, it becomes subject to two particular obstacles, which are excitement and dullness, which I mentioned before in terms of the monkey and rabbit. And these have both coarse and subtle levels, and they need various techniques to overcome them, which are explained in the teachings. The interesting point here is that when you’ve reached the level of having just the obstacle of subtle dullness, this can be mistaken for having attained single pointed concentration.
In fact, the person has only reached the fifth out of the nine stages of Samatha. So Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey said once that it was possible to only attain the third stage without going into retreat. You have to go into retreat to get past the third stage. And so the third stage is patchy concentration in which the person is able to maintain concentration for longer periods, but it still wanders off. But the duration of wandering is less, and the person becomes aware of the wandering fairly quickly and brings again, brings the mind back again.
So, the person It’s very important for the person meditating to understand the different stages and also to have the guidance of somebody who understands this meditation. Because it is possible for them to get stuck at this stage, combating the subtle dullness, not realizing that they still have this obstacle of subtle dullness. It’s said that if you get stuck at that stage and don’t progress on, then you’re creating the karma to come back as a cow. Because cows are supposed Apparently, it seems very nice for the people who have it. It seems very wonderful.
And they can very easily imagine that they’ve really got it. And it can be quite crushing for them to be told by their I’ve heard and read of people who’ve had this experience, you know, that they did really think that they’d got further in their meditation than they had. And then they were told by their meditational advisor that they were just stuck in this subtle dullness, or that they were just at this stage of subtle dullness, that they had to keep on working for more clarity, more sharpness. Because at this stage, although the mind stays on the object, the whole mind is not on the object. There’s a subtle part of the mind is off, dulling out.
Well, yes, full. So if he still had attachment, then he hadn’t even achieved this stage because subtle attachment goes before subtle dullness. Subtle dullness is the hardest to get rid of. So, anyway, this is what happens when you get to that fifth level, and you have to keep on progressing. The Yes, so then getting through the ninth stages.
When you get to the eighth stage, you’ve attained a single pointed concentration, and then with the ninth stage it’s enhanced. Particularly what’s enhanced at the ninth stage is the ability to get into it quickly. The person at the ninth stage practices until they have to put very, very little effort into getting into it quickly. They just have to sit down and make a small initial effort. And by this stage, the mind is so habituated to concentration that once they’ve made that small initial effort to concentrate on the object, then the mind just remains very strongly concentrated with no further effort.
So that sounds wonderful. And it’s hearing about things like this that makes you think that it’s worthwhile putting in the effort because it gets easier eventually. And so the person who’s reached this ninth stage still hasn’t attained Samatha because they still have to go on and attain physical and mental ecstasy. And so so when they’ve kept on practicing and attained this physical and mental ecstasy first of all, they attain physical ecstasy and then mental ecstasy. And this corresponds to the first stage of the form realm, which is the stage that Buddhist meditators are interested in.
Buddhist meditators aren’t interested in attaining the more subtle states of concentration of the formless realm, because they’re too subtle. The mind isn’t capable of focusing analytically on those states. Or perhaps, I’m not sure whether it isn’t, but anyway, they don’t need to attain those states. Generally, the idea seems to be that the best state of concentration for a Buddhist meditator is this fourth state to do with the form realm. So then so they don’t they don’t go on to the formless realm concentrations, which the which the gods do.
And this person so the person at this level is, as I mentioned before, has gone temporarily beyond the kleshas or the deluded emotions, but they haven’t cut them off at the root. So that’s the next job. So when a person has attained this state of Samatha, they become called a yogi. If you’ve ever wondered what made a person a yogi, it’s the fact that they’ve attained this Samatha. Or or Samatha means calm abiding.
Does this sound a Samādhi? No. Samādhi is the combination of the Samatha and Vipashyana, which I’ll be talking about now. Well, I’ve got a little bit of time, so I’ll go on to wisdom if there’s no more questions about that, about the concentration. Yes.
Okay. So if you’ve taken any little pills that make you feel particularly good, you can think that rather than wanting to take more little pills, think that you get even better ecstasy out of your meditation. Of course, you know, when you when you get it. But it’s definitely worth waiting for because you don’t come down. At least not when you achieve an ārya being.
Well, we have to come down half each time. Yes. But I understand that with various different kinds of consciousness altering drugs, the problem is that you’re sort of drawing capacity for experiencing good feelings, and that it has to be paid back. The body makes you pay back by going down. Don’t know whether I I don’t think so.
Yeah. But you sort of have to experience a down equivalent to to the high. It’s sort of what seems to be sort of like a law of nature. So there’s no way you can force it. The only way to have a a real lasting high that’s not going to interfere with your daily activities is to meditate.
When we start meditating, we’re not looking for the highs. What we’re looking for is equanimity. Looking for a more balanced state of mind, balancing out the highs and lows first of all. Gradually, as you go on, you’ll find that your general level of happiness or joy or inner pleasure or whatever will gradually increase. But you’re not looking for that.
That’s a sort of by product. If you start getting attached to that and clinging to it, then it it actually becomes an obstacle to your meditation. So wisdom. There are actually three kinds of wisdom. There’s wisdom of understanding the conventional level of existence.
There’s wisdom of understanding the ultimate truth. And there’s wisdom understanding how to benefit sentient beings with the appropriate means. So those first two are very much related. We have to develop them both together. The convention understanding the conventional level of existence, understanding the ultimate truth, and understanding how to benefit sentient beings with appropriate means.
There isn’t much explanation of the third. It’s fairly self explanatory that these bodhisattvas and buddhas do have that understanding. The first two are what we’re going to be concerned about. These are what we have to study and bring into our practice. And they go together.
As we understand the conventional level of existence, this helps us to understand the ultimate truth. As we understand the ultimate truth, it helps to the conventional level of existence. So, in actual fact, while we’re ordinary beings, we don’t even understand the conventional truth. And there are two levels of truth if we have to come to understand the conventional and the absolute or ultimate levels. You can’t really understand the conventional truth fully until you do understand, until you do have that full understanding of the ultimate level, because they’re really two sides of the same thing.
And while we don’t have that understanding of the ultimate truth, we’re projecting falsity onto the conventional level of existence. So the Buddhist practitioner aims to combine the practice of concentration with wisdom. And, this is the practice of Vipashyana. And, we have to start off with intellectual study as well as meditating. And this is in order to establish the understanding of Śūnyatā, or emptiness or voidness.
And what we’re referring to the emptiness that we’re referring to is the emptiness of true existence of the self and all phenomena. And this emptiness of self and all phenomena is the explanation of the meaning of wisdom according to the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy. This is considered to be the highest school of Buddhist philosophy and the one which in our tradition we’re advised to study, but we’re advised to take as being the highest, the most profound explanation of the nature of things. But it’s also advised to study the tenets of the other schools. There are four schools that we should study.
And if you’re interested in reading about these things, then a good text for a simple introduction is a text by Geshe Lhundup Sopa and Jeffrey Hopkins, which is nowadays called Cutting Through Appearances. We’ve got it in the library and probably in the bookshop, And it used to be known as the practice and theory of Tibetan Buddhism in the old editions. So we’ve got both editions in the library. A good text for approaching Madhyamaka philosophy might be by Geshe Rabten, Echoes of Voidness. Perhaps a good way to start might be to, first of all, go through the practice and theory of Tibetan Buddhism, and then to go through Echoes of Voidness to get a more detailed explanation of the Madhyamaka practice.
But anyway, I’m not going to go into all those points of tenets tonight, but it’s good to to take an interest in these teachings. But anyway, relax. So the main point that we have to start off with is to understand that we have to identify the object that we have to refute, which is the object of our self grasping. And, our self grasping is our clinging to belief in an independent, self existence or in the existence of an independent, truly existing self. So you’ve probably all heard this explained before.
You all probably know more about this than I do anyway. But it’s not easy to get a grasp on. It’s not easy to get a hold on what’s meant by this. So we just have to keep on thinking about it, just have to keep on looking at it. And in particular, we have to keep on looking at the way we see things and the way we see ourselves and trying to relate that to the teachings that we’ve received so that we can start to get a fix on it.
And by receiving different teachings, looking at it from different angles, it can help you to get a fix on it. So it’s said that it’s easier to understand the non self existence of the person than it is to understand the non self existence of phenomena. And so, refers to our own selves, our own sense of self, about ourselves. And other people are phenomena for us. For each of us individually, we have our self, which is our internal experience of ourselves as a person, and then we have external phenomena.
And we start off by understanding how we see ourselves, understanding the selflessness of our individual our own individuality. So, when it comes to meditation on emptiness, one method of meditation is to engage in a space like contemplation on non true existence. So you’ve probably had some sort of experience of this kind of space like meditation. Sometimes it’s explained in Mahāmudrā. We also find this kind of space like meditation in practices like the Buddha Śākyamūni meditation and Chenrezig and so on, when we absorb the deity and then dissolve away our sense of self identity and our view of the concrete existing environment, and just meditate on space like the sky for a while.
So it’s not meant to say that really these things don’t exist, but for the person who’s in concentration on emptiness, these things cease to exist for the time being. While they’re in that meditative equipoise, they’re not meditating on the It’s not that they so much cease to exist, but they focus on emptiness of true existence of these things rather than on their relative existence. They’re focusing on that emptiness. So for the yogi who hasn’t achieved enlightenment, they have to alternate between this meditation on emptiness, this meditative equipoise When that meditation on emptiness is combined with single point of concentration, it’s called meditative equipoise. And in their meditative equipoise, they simply focus on the emptiness.
Then they come out of that meditation, and either in ordinary meditation or as they’re going about their activities, they focus then on the relative existence of things. And work for a deeper understanding of the relative existence. So the ultimate truth is the emptiness of true existence, and the relative nature of things is that they do exist. But they exist not in the way we see them as having this independent, concrete, true existence, existing from their own side, existing without depending on cause and condition, existing without depending on parts, existing without depending on anything. We tend to see things as existing in this way, and we tend to see our own self, our own personal identity as being something which is like this and which is independent, which is eternal, which doesn’t change, which is not which is existing from its own side, not dependently.
And this is a false view. The true view is that these things do exist, but they exist dependently. They exist by depending on parts, by depending on causes and conditions, and they exist like illusions. There’s examples of how these things exist. One very famous example is that we see things we confuse a striped rope for a snake.
The way we see things, the way we see the self of ourselves and phenomena, is that we mistake the striped rope for the snake. And if we happen to cross a striped rope in a dim light, then we’ll mistake it for a snake and we’ll be terrified. In actual fact, there is something there, but not what we project onto it. So the way to find out the truth about this is to come a bit closer and check it out and analyze it, and then find out its real nature. So if we make the mistake of saying that because things don’t have this true existence, that they don’t exist at all, that’s falling into the extreme of nihilism.
Whereas, if we never give any thought to these matters at all, we simply automatically fall into the other extreme, which is the extreme of eternalism, thinking that these things have true existence. And this is why Madhyamaka school got its name, which means middle way school, because the truth lies in between these two extremes, and we have to find the truth by eliminating the two extremes. So that sounds easy. It’s not easy. So anyway, the first thing that we have to start with is just identifying this object of negation.
I won’t go on much longer, but just to see that we’ve got this false conception of a truly existent self which doesn’t exist at all. And whereas the self which does exist is this self which is not truly existent. And our at the present, this this non truly existent self, which does exist, is completely mixed up in our view with our perception. So I’ll talk about the relative self, that might be a bit clearer. So our relative self, which does exist, is completely mixed up with this false concept of the truly existent self.
It’s very hard for us to separate the two, and this is the process that we have to engage in. So this relative self exists like an illusion. It’s something which is there, which functions. It’s a collection of parts. It’s something that we can talk about.
We can communicate with others about ourselves. We can say that I did such and such, I’m going to do such and such a thing, and people know what we’re talking about. And so in this sense, it’s not something that doesn’t exist, it’s definitely something that’s there. But on top of this, project something very concrete, something which isn’t in the way that it really exists. So and because we have this instinctive automatic feeling, which has been with us from beginningless time, and we’re strengthening it all the time by our deluded emotions and the karma that we create, we’re making it all the time stronger.
So we have a feeling that it’s something very, very solid, concrete, unchanging, existing by itself independently of anything else. And as a consequence of that, then we have this self grasping, we grasp at this. And then because we have this self grasping, we get self-cherishing. And then because we have self-cherishing, then we engage in pursuing self happiness. And because of this, then we engage in various different actions under the influence.
We have the arising of the various different deluded mental states, such as clinging attachment. And then because we have clinging attachment, we have anger arising because somebody disturbs our clinging attachment to our own self happiness. And as a result of that, we have the whole array of deluded mental states. And then because we have this whole array of deluded mental states, we’re creating karmas. And a lot of these karmas are going to be bad karmas, and as a result of that, we cycle in saṃsāra.
And not only that, but we experience the results of our bad karma, which is suffering again and again, and we get thrown into the lower suffering realms. And so this creates all our problems. So it’s obvious that if we’re going to get rid of all that, then we get if we want to cut it off at the root, then we have to cut off this false conception of the truly existent self, and that takes care of all the rest for us. It is easy. Unfortunately, before we can cut off the concepts of the truly existing self, we have to do a lot of work on all the other things as well.
But if we can cut off these concepts of the truly existing self, then we’ve cut it all off at the root. So this is what the practice of wisdom is all about. Well, I already explained the reason why, really, before when I said that in order to attain wisdom, in order to attain direct insight into emptiness, you have to combine concentration and analysis. And in order to attain concentration, you have to have a very stable, calm mind, which means that you have to do a lot of practice. In terms of moral conduct.
We also need to do a lot of other practice of getting rid of your various disturbing emotions. So there’s a lot of it doesn’t matter. So there’s a lot of work to be done before we can get to that point. We have to develop the ability to concentrate, and we have to accumulate that’s explained in terms of accumulating merit. You can’t get rid of that relative self.
In actual fact, a great bodhisattva can take that attitude, but we have to take it in easy stages. So we do have to look after ourselves. We have to be skillful with ourselves. The language say we should treat our mind like a small child. If we expect too much of it, then then it won’t then it’s not skillful.
So we we just have to, lead ourselves along as you would train a child bit by bit. So, anyway, we have to begin how we begin to understand this object of refutation, we have to begin by observing and analyzing how we view this truly existent self, and we have to try to pin it down and locate it. We have to try to catch a glimpse of it. And the more we try to do that, the more we find that we can’t pin it down. And I’m not going to talk too much about the techniques for pinning it down, because those are something that you have to study and that you have to spend some time on.
But these techniques are explained in the texts. And we keep on looking for it, we keep on trying to pin pin it down. And the more we try to pin it down, the more it slips away from us. Eventually, you’re going to get to the point where you really come firmly to the conclusion that there is no such thing. One example I’ve heard of this is that farmer has lost his cow, and he sees there are two roads that the cow could have gone down.
He comes along and finds the barns empty and the cow’s gone, so he goes looking down one road. He follows this road down as far as it goes on his property and he comes to a gate and he sees that the gate’s shut. So he sees the cow couldn’t have gone out this way. And so he goes down the other road and he goes down that way as far as it goes as he comes to the gate and the gate’s shut. So he sees the cow couldn’t have gone that way.
What conclusion does he come to? Okay. So he eliminates all those possibilities. So nobody could have come along and opened the gate, and the cow couldn’t have gone anywhere else. That’s right.
Yeah. So that there’s no cow. He comes to the conclusion that there isn’t a cow. So says he imagined it. Yes, okay, the fence cow couldn’t jump the fence either.
Oh, right. Yes. Yes, I’ve seen cows get stuck on a fence. But anyway, anyway, the point we’re getting to is that you eliminate all other possibilities, and you finally come to the conclusion that there just isn’t a cow. So this in this way, we eventually have to come to a conclusion that there just isn’t a