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Bodhisattvacharyavatara

Chapter 8: Meditation

Part I

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Talk 1: 2-24-04

Welcome everybody. This is the beginning of our course on meditation. When we complete this it is going to be one of the most detailed, comprehensive and complete meditation course that has ever been given in the United States. We have been doing a lot of meditation activities but we don’t usually call them meditation.

We are going to have two parallel programs running on meditation. One is this course on Tuesdays, based on Chapter 8: Meditation, out of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. It happens to be the longest chapter in the text. Along with that, every Thursday in New York I will be doing the meditation chapter of the Odyssey to Freedom. It is the same subject, but based on different texts. This is going to be a comprehensive course. It is not going to be finished in 8 weeks. Hopefully we can finish by the end of the year.

Before I begin reading from the chapter itself I would like to briefly talk about what meditation is. This afternoon I was flying in from Miami and I was thinking about the different use of the term in Tibetan and in English. It doesn’t tally. It does not mean the same. In Tibetan, the type of meditation we are going to talk about here is called zhi ne. It is almost the ultimate kind of meditation. Zhi by itself means peace, harmony. Ne means to remain. So together it means ‘remaining in peace or harmony’. I don’t know if the English word ‘meditation’ conveys this meaning. I am not a native speaker of the language so can’t say for sure, but I don’t think it does.

Now the question is: what is meant by peace and harmony? There is a term in Tibetan called nyam par sha pa or nyam sha for short. Nyam means equal and sha means remain. Here equal means balanced. So you don’t lose your balance. Bring your mind into harmony and don’t let obsession and hatred take place so much. Try to remain balanced. Don’t have too much of an extreme of anything. Meditation here, zhi ne, is that. We are definitely working with our mind to bring peace, joy and harmony to our mind.

We have so many struggles within ourselves, extreme struggles. These struggles are somehow sparked by certain conditions in our lives. It could be financial problems, health or family problems, political or social issues and so on. These spark up and our mind is dragging through this. We never let the mind be at peace. Conditions are external causes. They are always there. But we run with these and make our mind as miserable as possible. On the other hand, sometimes we are happy, but too happy, too extreme. We are either going high up here or way down there. The job of the meditation is to make sure you don’t go too much up there – not too much haha-yana and also not too much zoom zoom yana at the other extreme. That is not even a long term goal, but a short term goal of meditation. That brings your mind close to a peaceful state, closer to what the term zhi ne means. The Sanskrit word for it is shamatta, but I don’t know whether that gives you the same meaning as the Tibetan. It is sometimes important to keep these technical terms in mind. That doesn’t mean that you have to learn Tibetan, but these terms give you a tremendous message.

Do you know when I learnt the word zhi ne? When I was a kid, probably about 4 or 5 years old. It didn’t mean anything to me for a long time. When you think about the English word ‘meditation’ and wonder how to explain this it is difficult. In Tibetan, when you think about it, the meaning of zhi ne comes up. It gives you a message. Therefore it is important, even before we go into this chapter, to know that the word zhi ne really means: bringing our mind into peace and tranquility.

How did Buddha bring peace and tranquility to his disciples? He came from two angles. One angle is focusing and concentrating and being mindful. The other angle is analyzing, understanding and getting deeply into the subject you are working with, cutting through the misinformation and misunderstanding, cutting through the mystery of our whole life, our total existence.

Now the question remains: Are both these ways necessary? Are they relevant to me, an individual who is looking for a better spiritual life in downtown Ann Arbor, minding my own business, drinking a cup of coffee at zingermans or at the co op? Is this something for me or not? That is the question.

To me the answer is: If you are looking for a spiritual path, for development, even just for the betterment of the situation in this life, both these angles are necessary.

Our biggest problems are actually not external. Granted, our president irritates us every day. The more he does anything, the more we get irritated. Just today the made a public statement that he wants to introduce a constitutional amendment regarding same sex marriages. In the 200 years of our constitution there have been just 17 amendments. Why do we need an amendment for this? This is irritating to us. But to be sure, the irritation happens in our mind. Take this as an example. George Bush is trying to ban the gay people from getting together through constitutional amendment. It irritates us, because we have a picture in our mind already. We want things to be fair. We are not necessarily gay people, or we may not actually want to get married to someone of the same sex, but we want things to be fair and open for everybody. When that is completely ignored and bulldozed by right wing extremist ideas, then we get irritated. So this is because we provide a condition within our own mind. George Bush is providing the external condition and we are providing the internal condition. That is how we get into trouble.

Where are these internal conditions of ours coming from? You can say they are coming from hatred, and from all kinds of emotions. But if you look deeply inside, you will find that most of them are caused by obsession. Hatred, although it appears very vividly and although it is horrible and makes you mad and mean, it is not the root cause. Behind it is obsession. I don’t want you to just believe me. Think and analyze this and find out if that is true. I am saying that even hatred itself is coming from obsession. This amazes me, really. Hatred is so hot, burning and terrible, but deep down inside there, obsession is the cause. When that gets threatened, when fear develops, you get hatred.

We are now accusing George Bush of lashing out with pre-emptive strikes. It is true, but we do the same thing. When our obsession gets threatened, the first weapon we pick up is anger or hatred. Obsession is just a desire. It is not offensive by itself. But then anger is produced and that is offensive. If you don’t take care of the anger it becomes hatred and that can carry on throughout our life. Sometimes it goes on for generations. But deep down, at the root there is obsession.

The moment I talk about obsession you probably think that this is about somebody or something else. I am not talking about that. I am talking about the obsession to our own ego. It is there, believe me. Whoever you may be, it is there. All the different characters we show are just a kind of ego protection. That problem is causing us unhappiness. It goes to the extremes. We are either too happy or too sad. We are not balanced. We don’t have nyam par sha. As long as we have lost the balance we will constantly have problems. Even if we are on the spiritual path, if we are totally dedicated, good church-going people, or as in our case, good Tuesday night attending people, we have that same problem. Sometimes we get it even worse than those ‘yuppies’ or other kinds of people. Buddhists are not necessarily better people than others. Certainly not. There is no reason why Buddhists would be better than Christian, Jews or Hindus. No. It totally depends on the individual. Being a Christian is not necessarily better either. Being a good person is what counts, that’s for sure. Buddhism is a method, a technique. So are Christianity and Judaism and so forth. There is nothing wrong with the traditions, but there is everything wrong with the corruption of those traditions. So it depends on the people. From person to person you will definitely see a difference. Every person has to help themselves. True, you can find help from others, but it is also true that you are the only one who can really help you.

There is this great Indian philosopher, teacher and Buddhist scholar. He has even be called the forerunner, holding up Buddha’s banner. He is Nagarjuna, an extremely important Indian master. He said,

You are your own leader. How can anyone else be your leader? If you make it, that is because of your leadership. If you fail it is because of your leadership.

You can get help, you can get suggestions. But no one can really do the job for you. You have to do it yourself. Therefore, just being a ‘religious’ person, whether it be Buddhist or Catholic or anything else doesn’t guarantee that you are a good person. Every one of these traditions has their own qualities. I am sure that many of you have been to Catholic schools. The influence from that is that you try to do everything right. If the slightest thing is going wrong you have to feel a little guilty. That is the influence of the tradition and that is really great. Every tradition can give you that kind of influence. However, the traditions are just traditions and individuals are individuals. All the problems we are facing today are not the fault of the traditions but the fault of the individuals. Yes, corrupted traditions contribute a lot to our problems. We can’t deny that. But then, in any case we have to help ourselves.

The way to help ourselves is to bring our mind up, raise it above obsession and hatred. We have to bring balance to our minds.

And not only obsession and hatred. Coming even closer to the subject of this chapter, we also have to have a balance between wandering mind and sinking mind. At the moment we are unable to focus on anything. Try to think about just one little thing. Try it. You will find you can’t stay with one thing for longer than 2 or 3 seconds. You realize you are already thinking about something else.

I have to tell you a funny story. A lot of experiences in my life are so strange. In the 1960s I was in Texas. There was a healer who invited me there. He was a really good healer, but he was also an absolutely crazy guy. He could heal almost everybody who came to him. He did have the gift of healing power. He brought me from India to the US to give him an initiation. I was happy to do it and I came. At that time I didn’t know much English at all. Whatever people asked me, I would say ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ So this guy was talking to me about meditation. I didn’t know what he meant by that. I told him, ‘I don’t know anything about meditation.’ He kept on saying, ‘You know it, for sure.’ But I really didn’t. If he had talked to me about zhi ne or nyam sha or even gom, I would have known. But ‘meditation’ did not mean anything to me. So he proceeded to show me. He lit some incense and told me to watch the smoke and check how long I could sit with it. So I started watching the smoke and soon began to realize that I was thinking about all kinds of other things. Mainly I was thinking, ‘What is he trying to tell me here? What is this all about?’ My mind was absolutely busy, trying to figure this out. He had told me to watch the incense until it had burnt down. That to him was a good meditation.

The idea really is how long you can hold your mind on one single point. What does that do? This gives you not only sharpness of mind, but help you to penetrate much deeper into any subject you decide to think about. You understand far better. Your understanding won’t be superficial. As I said in my example: When I was thinking about zhi ne and about ‘meditation’, the difference was that with zhi ne I knew the meaning and with meditation I didn’t. So my mind was getting deeper into that. Just like that your mind will be getting deeper and you will gain much better understanding and knowledge.

Not only do you get better knowledge, but because your mind can focus for a long time on one point, it is becoming peaceful and balanced. If your mind is peaceful and balanced, your energy will be balanced and your thoughts will be balanced. Let me use a traditional term: In the Tibetan tradition we say that there are energies or airs (Tib: lung) that travel through our channels and chakras and these will be balanced by zhi ne. Because of that balance you will develop physical joy and through that mental joy. The combination of that physical and mental joy will enhance every experience of whatever you are focusing on. You may be looking for the absolute meaning, for spiritual development or anything else. Whatever your focal point may be, it will be enhanced.

We all know that there is mental and physical joy. There are many ways to bring about mental and physical joy. The tantric Vajrayana way is something fantastic as well as drastic. Concentrated meditation can also bring joy. The kind of joy developed in Vajrayana and that developed in zhi ne are two different things, both the mental and the physical joy. It is not the same. However, through meditation you can bring a joy which is extremely helpful. Actually, without it you can’t really move forward. The principle of the formula of the Vajrayana and that of the zhi ne is basically the same, but the techniques are different.

The formula is this: By holding the mind you can hold the energies. By balancing the mind you can balance the energies. By balancing the energies you can bring harmony. By bringing harmony in the body you get joy. By experiencing joy in the body you can bring joy to the mind.

Sexuality is an example: Physical sexual joy brings happiness to the mind, at least for a couple of seconds! The principle is the same as here. One condition affects the other. Here we are really talking about the body-mind relationship. First you have to work at holding the mind. That will bring balance and harmony to the mind. That will bring joy to the body and that will bring harmony to the mind and that will bring joy to the mind.

We are trying to get this level. I will tell you the best of whatever I know, as well as using the treasure of knowledge of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara..

I am going to continue in the same way that I have presented the previous chapters of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara. I am going to read as well as explain these verses. Tonight I wanted to first introduce the purpose of this course.

Earlier I said that I hope to be able to teach the best meditation course ever done in the United States and I believe this is possible, because we have tremendous resources at our disposal. My job will be to read the text with you and give you the information. Your job will be to experiment by yourself. Try to sit and put a little time in. Don’t sit too long. Five minutes a day will be good.

This chapter has 187 verses and if I go at the same pace as did with the other chapters it is going to take a hell of a time. So far we have spent 6 or 7 years. Judging from that level it would take a long time to finish this chapter. But I am not going to take too long. Hopefully we will be able to finish this at the end of the year. I have two choices. Yes, I could finish easily and soon, no problem. But would I do a disservice to the future generations who will be reading the transcripts? On the other hand we don’t want to go on endlessly and never finish. So I am running back and forth between these two poles. Then on top of that, I am too talkative. That’s why it has been taking so long.

There are a few different versions of this translation available. There is Stephen Batchelors’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Then there is another translation by Vesna and Allen Wallace called A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, as well as the Bodhicaryavatara by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton in the Oxford Classics Edition. Then there is a translation by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso called The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life and there is also another one called The Way of the Bodhisattva by the Padmakara Translation Group.

Further there are two commentaries in English. One is by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso called Meaningful to Behold and the other is A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

We handed out a paper that correlates the verses with the relevant page numbers of these two commentaries.

Of the various translations I think the one by Allen Wallace should be really good. I haven’t read it but apparently it is based on the Sanskrit original and the Tibetan. Plus Allen knows Tibetan very well. As far as I know his Tibetan is even better than Stephen Batchelor’s.

If you are serious enough about studying this material you will not only attend the teachings, but compare at least two of the translations and look into the commentaries. Then you try to develop your understanding of how to do it, and then next time, when you look at the short verses of the root text you should have all the important points popping up in your mind. That is how you can help yourself.

So lets start reading the first verses now.

Verse 1

Having developed enthusiasm in this way,

I should place my mind in concentration;

For the man whose mind is distracted

Dwells between the fangs of disturbing conceptions.

Verse 2

But through solitude of body and mind

No distractions will occur;

Therefore I should forsake the worldly life

And completely discard distorted conceptions.

Let me explain this verse on the basis of the Tibetan commentary I normally use. According to that Shantideva, the author says, ‘Up to now I have explained generosity, morality, patience and enthusiasm.’ Before that there was also the chapter on conscientiousness and the first two before that. All in all 7 chapters have already been explained. Shantideva says that now we need a strong focusing point. If you don’t have a good Samadhi, the meditative level, you will never be able to be free yourself from the extremes of obsession and hatred. Focusing will take your mind away from points that you don’t want to focus on, from things that you don’t want to think about. Even if you have very good enthusiasm, even if you are kind and compassionate, generous, with perfect morality, but if you cannot focus you won’t be able to gain power over your negative emotions. You can’t get away from the fangs of the fearful samsaric animals. That is why meditation is needed. I have already talked in some detail about this in my introduction.

You need to balance your mind. Buddha himself has said,

Yes, you have to have patience and you have to learn. But then you have to sit in the forest and meditate. You have to use your knowledge of generosity, morality, patience and enthusiasm in order to develop. You have to meditate on impermanence, the importance of this life and the other spiritual points.

These words tell us two things: What we need to develop and what we need to discard. What we need to do is develop patience, collect information and have enthusiasm. We need to focus and develop wisdom. What we have to discard is our mental wandering, our wasting of time and we have to challenge our ignorance.

Being careful about wasting time is extremely important, particularly for people in the United States. It is very easy to waste our time. The biggest opportunity to waste our time is right in our living room. It is the TV box. For me, at one time it was the greatest help. I learned all my English listening to the radio and watching TV. At the same time it is the biggest time waster. You can keep watching the different programs and especially if you on holidays you can spend hours and hours watching the box and you don’t know where the time has gone. Then suddenly the holidays are over. The United States has the best time wasting services available of all countries. Everything is focused commercially on how to keep people from being bored, how to capture their minds, how to capture their interest. From the business point of view they are doing a very good job. But from our point of view they are depriving us of the best opportunity to develop spiritually. When our mind is captured by unimportant things, that is the definition of wasting time. We watch commercials, politics and so many other things. For us who want to have beautiful harmony of body and mind, all these things are distractions. For society in general it may not be considered a distraction. A lot of it is information. You need many of them as a job requirement. But for this purpose here it is wasting our time, it is depleting our energy, it is grabbing our mind. It is bad for us. But can we really avoid it? No, we would end up being naïve, stupid people who don’t know anything that is going on in the world. That is not possible. It is the baggage of the 21st century. The question comes: How do we manage? From what I have seen you are doing very well in this country. People are very good at dividing their time, willingly or because you are forced to do it. You may have to, because you have to manage job and family, pay your bills and so on. But the important thing is that you choose your priorities right and keep the divisions of the time that you are putting in place properly.

Otherwise the danger is that the first thing we sacrifice in our life is the spiritual activities. A few people may be all right with that but for most people that is the first thing to go. That is because there is no bill collector following us. There is only one bill collector and that is death. Death only comes once and when it comes it is too late. Nobody will call you, remind you, send you notices in the mail or e mail or leave you phone messages. When it comes it is too late. So you have to be your own leader. There is nobody else.

Yes, friends can help. But you can’t rely on that. If you don’t help yourself, who else is going to do it? Friends may tell you a couple of times or three times, but then that is the end of it. So we have to help ourselves. Remember this is what Nagarjuna has said, ‘Be your own protector and leader. No one else can help you.’ He was a great Mahapandit and Mahasiddha. He was one of the 84 Mahasiddhas. When you shrink them down to the most important 35, he is in that group. When you shrink that to 17, he is there, when you shrink it down to 8 he is still there, when you shrink it down to 6, he is there, and even when you shrink it to two he is there.

Questions and answers:

Audience: You mentioned that there were 2 outstanding masters. One is Nagarjuna and who is the other?

Rimpoche: Asanga is the other one. Nagarjuna is the source of all the wisdom teachings of the Buddha and Asanga is the source of the compassion teachings. So that’s why when you boil it down to the two most important, that’s them.

Since this is the first night of the course I presume there are not so many questions. During the next few weeks, I am sure a lot of more questions will come up and I am happy to entertain up to 7 questions every Tuesday evening.

To conclude lets say a dedication. In the beginning it is important to have the best possible motivation and at the end we should dedicate. Dedication is important in order to safeguard our positive karma, preventing it from going to waste. So we dedicate our positive karma for the benefit of all beings, so that they will be able to experience all the joy and harmony that the great teachers have experienced. Each and every one may experience this within our life time. Through dedication our good karma will somehow be guaranteed to come to that point.

I would like to thank you for coming here tonight and see you again next week.