SBI Study Group November 7th

7 Point Mind Training of Tibetan Buddhism

(notes based on teachings given by B. Alan Wallace)

10:00 Welcome

10:05 Meditation – Shamatha--Mindfulness of Breathing and

Discursive Meditation on the Preliminaries

10:30 Overview:

First Point “First, train in the preliminaries.”

• Preliminaries are the compass and key motivation that we will be practicing until our enlightenment. These initial teachings of the Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind are the basis of genuine dharma, they generate a spirit of emergence and “a way of engaging with life without confusion.”

· They are important discursive meditations in all schools of Buddhism to radically reorient our priorities from the 8 mundane concerns (p. 19), or relative well-being, to the pursuit of genuine happiness and ultimate freedom. They are powerfully transformative shifts in perspective that bring about an inner revolution of mind. If not understood, there is a great likelihood that dharma practice will be subverted into trying to perfect samsara, rather than result in irreversible liberation from mental afflictions.

• Buddhist hypothesis is that samsara, the world of suffering and ignorance, is caused & dominated by 2 core habitual and instinctive tendencies of mind. These give rise to the 3 primary mental afflictions of delusion, attachment or craving, and aversion or hatred.
• Central theme of Mind-Training or lojong is to eliminate these deluded core tendencies of:

a) self grasping—reification of ego self, grasping onto “I am” as something separate and substantial. The antidote is the wisdom practice of insight into the nature of reality,

ultimate bodhichitta

b) self centeredness—self cherishing which is self grasping in action. The antidote is practice of compassion, relative bodhichitta.

· Distinguish these mental afflictions, the key causes of suffering, from “pure self interest” or the yearning for genuine happiness and authentic aspiration to become a Buddha.

• Realization of dharmakaya or buddha nature is pure aspiration and the perfection of our own self interest, and realization of rupakaya or compassionate forms of manifestation is for the sake of all sentient beings.

10:45 Discussion of the suggested reading: (pp 38-63)

Last two of Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind:

1. Unsatisfactory Nature of the Cycle of Existence

• Recognize the reality of suffering, dukkha, the first noble truth Buddha taught after his enlightenment, offered as a diagnosis to the condition of sentient beings in samsara, the cycle of existence. The fundamental cornerstone of existence as a sentient being is seeking happiness and avoiding suffering
• From the perspective of a Buddha, we are in an ocean of samsara and everything we experience from a Buddha’s perspective is ultimately unsatisfactory.

· Source of suffering is rooted in mental afflictions, within ourselves, and genuine happiness is our birthright to discover, a continuity of consciousness transcending relative existence in samsara.

· We suffer because we identify with and grasp onto the constituents of a personal identity. The proposed antidote is to release grasping, to become aware of and mindfully observe our mind, to gain insight into our buddha nature and to ultimately become a Buddha.

· To realize Buddha nature and to become a Buddha is to finally cut the root of suffering, and being subject to rebirth in samsara, which is propelled by habitual grasping.

· Having severed the root of suffering, “Buddhas are non-dually aware of the suffering of others and at the same time are never disengaged from the purity and bliss of their own awareness.”

• Important to understand the depth and scope of suffering so that we can irreversibly go beyond it. “We meditate on suffering so that we can escape it and discover, gradually through our own

experience, the contentment that arises from a wholesome and balanced heart and mind,” the untainted joy, sanity and well being of buddha nature.

• Buddhism identifies three types of suffering, grosser to more subtle:

1. “suffering of suffering”—the blatant physical and mental suffering of sickness, old age, death and disappointment that is obvious and omnipresent, but which we tend to deny

2. “suffering of change”—all events are conditioned and subject to change, recognizing that stimulus driven happiness based on craving and attachment will change and is essentially a set-up for suffering

3. “suffering of vulnerability”—this points to our fundamental deluded habit of grasping, and is the overall pervasive suffering of conditioned existence for which there is no natural cure; it just won’t disappear without applying the strong medicine of a genuine dharma path which includes a view, effective meditative practices and a wholesome way of life, to break through the delusion.

2. Karma (Sanskrit for action)

• Karma refers to the nature of intended, voluntary, deliberate thoughts and actions and their consequences for sentient beings. Rather than the view of a mechanistic universe, Buddhist hypothesis is that reality has a moral dimension and all deliberate thoughts and actions are sowing seeds that will germinate over time, and from lifetime to lifetime.
• The nature of karma is what Buddha claims to have realized on the night of his enlightenment, and it is open for us to verify through our own investigation, practice and experience.
• From the Buddhist perspective of awakened awareness, there is a rational coherence to rebirth, and life is not random or fated. Rather there is a continuity of consciousness over lifetimes.
• The substrate, or the ground of the ordinary sentient mind, is the repository of this continuum of experience, and substrate consciousness is awareness of this ground by way of experiencing the substrate directly
• Karma is accruing and we are creating our future moment to moment by grasping, engaging and identifying with thoughts and actions. Thoughts or actions that are simply witnessed, arising from space and dissolving back into space, are not harmful or beneficial
• Creating karma has four points: 1) motivation, 2) preparation to act, 3) enactment and doing the action, and 4) fruition of the act, the deed is done.
• Karma has four themes and patterns (regularities):

1. invariability of wholesome actions leading to joy, and unwholesome actions leading to sorrow; this moral framework is based on list of ten virtues and ten non-virtues—three of body, four of speech, and three of mind (pp55-56)

2. natural increase in karma—act is sown and it tends to grow and increase in its potency, starts to proliferate and network, i.e. the butterfly or ripple effect

3. if a deed is not committed, then the karmic effects will not be experienced, i.e. example of surviving what should be a fatal accident

4.seeds sown never lose their potency unless antidoted and scorched before harvest time is ripe. “The seed won’t vanish, but it will not sprout.” The method to purify the individual mindstream is through the four remedial powers of remorse, reliance, resolve and purification. (pp.62)

• Karma has three effects: 1) effect is similar to its cause; 2) karma effects continuum of consciousness and path from lifetime to lifetime; 3) environmental effect, i.e. the environment to which we are born and the realm of samsara to which we are born.
• From the Buddhist Madhyamaka or Middle Way view, the natural laws of a given realm of relative existence are not arising due to individual karma, but rather, all appearances and realms of appearance are arising out of the ultimate ground of primordial awareness which is non-dually three aspects of 1) dharmadhatu, the megaspace or absolute space of phenomena, 2) rigpa or jnana, primordial consciousness, and 3) jnanavayu, the ultimate energy of rigpa. Out of the energy of primordial consciousness, the natural laws of nature, i.e. laws of gravity, photosynthesis, and whole realm of mathematics, emerge.

11:45 Tea break

12:05 Meditation – Shamatha practice of Settling Mind in its Natural State

12:30 Dharma Q&A

12:55 Dedicate Merit - Prayer of Dedication:

“Wherever the precious, supreme spirit of awakening has not arisen, may it arise,

And where it has arisen, may it never decline, but grow stronger and stronger.”

May what we have studied and practiced here today be of benefit,

May we each realize the fulfillment of our most meaningful aspirations for our own sake and the sake of all sentient beings, and

May all beings be well and happy.

On Meditation:

Shamatha or calm abiding meditation is practiced to make the body & mind relaxed, serviceable and attentive, cultivating a baseline of sanity from which to effectively engage dharma teachings. In general, shamatha develops the faculties of mindfulness and introspection as a means of enhancing the stability and vividness of attention to make the mind serviceable for the further insight practice of vipashyana or critical inquiry, wherein the element of investigation is the difference. The aim of shamatha practice is a direct experience of the substrate, whereas the aim of vipashyana is the realization of pristine awareness or buddha nature.

There are generally two types of shamatha practice: one is the “control model” which fixes mindfulness on the continuity of an object, such as the breath or a mental image, and the other is the “release model” where mindfulness settles into the space of the mind and the mental events arising within it, without distraction and without grasping, or more subtle still, into the luminous space of awareness itself.

First Meditation:

A. Mindfulness of Breathing

1. Be physically comfortable and assume a formal posture of either seated or supine position and settle the body in its natural state. Set a welcome mat of ease and letting go, maintaining three qualities of relaxation, stillness and vigilance

2. Mindfully relax the body, especially the shoulders, the neck and face, and particularly soften the eyes, the jaw, and allow the tongue to gently rest up against the upper palette behind the teeth, while keeping the spine straight

3. Taking the breath as our object, let us begin by taking three slow deep breaths, inhaling through the nostrils, breathing deeply into the abdomen, then the diaphragm, and finally expanding the chest, and then releasing the breath completely.

4. Settle the respiration in its natural rhythm. Releasing all control of the breath, continue to breathe effortlessly, egolessly. With every outbreath, simply release the mind and let go of involuntary thoughts and quietly attend to the object of the breath, observing the natural ebb & flow of the breath, like watching waves roll in and out at the shoreline.

5. Establishing a deep soothing relaxation, mindfully observe the tactile sensations of the breath throughout the field of the body. Then stabilize the attention and observe the sensations of the breath at the rise and fall of the abdomen. Finally, arousing the vividness and clarity of attention, observe the tactile sensations of the in and out breath at the apertures of the nostrils.

6. Notice the balance of attending very closely to the breath and releasing control of the breath at the same time. Knowing that you could control it and not controlling it, just attending closely, the practice of “breathing egolessly,” is very soothing and healing.

B. Discursive Meditation on the preliminaries

1. Continuing to breathe naturally, now let mindfulness of the breath recede to the background. With this more quiescent balanced attention, let us focus at the very core of our being, and contemplate and consider at our deepest source, the preliminary thoughts that turn the mind.

2. Let us first recognize our deep innate yearning for genuine happiness and the possibility for irreversible freedom from suffering and dissatisfaction, our eternal longing and pure aspiration for enlightenment itself.

3. Let us consider our present fortunate circumstances, the dharma to which we have already been exposed and embrace as authentic, the rare opportunities and freedoms to practice teachings already received, and to achieve, if we wish, enlightenment in this very lifetime.

4. Let us consider the impermanence of this life, and pray that our dedication to practice be so deep that should we die at any time, we would still be on a true path of dharma, once again encounter authentic teachers and teachings, and effective methods for enlightenment and the freedom to practice.

5. In the face of impermanence, such a precious human life of leisure and opportunity is more valuable than a wish-fulfilling gem. May we recognize its value and take full advantage of the opportunities before us. How many lifetimes have we already led fruitlessly pursuing mundane concerns, distracted or exhausted, and how much closer are we to the freedom we seek and to the complete transformation of our mind.

6. Reflecting on the value, rarity and brevity of this life, let us be motivated to “get real” and reorient ourselves from just hoping to be lucky with life’s lottery--good health, happy family, good economy, nice environment, things over which we have so little control--to the pursuit of true well being and to the gradual elimination of the inner causes of misery.

7. How do we envision our own flourishing in this lifetime, and if so, in lifetimes to come, where our minds, our lives, become saturated with dharma, moment to moment, that we bring the most authentic aspiration to light and let our whole life orient around this core vision of genuine happiness.

8. Now expanding the scope of our awareness to embrace the whole world, let us compassionately consider how many of us are wondering about as if in a non lucid dream, “stuck on survive”, unaware, driven or confused.

9. And now as we breathe in, let us arouse the aspiration, may each of us throughout the world, recognize what are the true causes of suffering and discontent, and may each find a genuine path to freedom, and may it be so lifetime after lifetime.

10. With each outbreath, from the core of our being, let us breathe out the breath and light of loving kindness with the wish, may each one like myself, find the dharma perfectly suited for themselves to satisfy their deepest eternal longing, may each find their true path.

11. Release all aspirations and appearances, and for a moment rest in the luminous nature of our own awareness, and bring the session to a close.

Second Meditation: Settling the Mind in its Natural State

1. Sit comfortably in a formal meditative position, either seated or supine, and settle the body in its natural state, assuming a posture of relaxation, stillness and vigilance, with spine straight, sternum slightly lifted, abdominal muscles relaxed and loose.

2. Settle the respiration in its natural rhythm, breathing as effortlessly as if you were deep asleep, not modifying the breath in any way, just allowing it to flow in & out of its own accord, breathing egolessly.

3. Settle the mind by taking 21 breaths, arousing the attention during inhalation and completely relaxing more and more deeply through the exhalation, paying close attention to the tactile sensations of the breath. You can count the breaths as a punctuation at the end of each outbreath just before breathing in.

4. Then let your eyes be at least partially open, resting your gaze vacantly in the space in front of you before it meets any objects. Eyes are relaxed, (you may blink any time needed.)

5. With a core sense of ease, of letting go, of deep relaxation, let your body be still like a mountain, and now focus the attention on the space of the mind, where mental events—thoughts, emotions, desires, fantasies, memories, all mental images—spontaneously arise and fall.

6. Be vividly attentive and with great interest simply observe what’s taking place in the space of the mind without controlling it, without grasping and without distraction.

7. Be totally present with whatever arises in the space of the mind, not engaging any event, releasing control and judgment, be egoless and mindfully witness the appearances of your mind arise and fade back into the space of the mind. Attend closely to the events occurring, metaphorically, be “like a kestrel kiting into the wind,” or “like a grandfather/mother watching other people’s children at play in the yard.”

8. If you fall into excitation and get carried away by any mental event, note it with introspection, lower the gaze a bit, release the grasping and relax more deeply. If you become lax and take a dive into dullness, again, note it with introspection, slightly raise the gaze and arouse the attention. Immediately without distraction, resume mindfully observing the space of the mind, ‘kiting’ into the wind of mental events, or just watching events arise, unravel and play themselves out, and dissolving back into space again.

9. Once more, note how soothing and healing it is to just watch the mind and release control, knowing that you could control it if you wanted to.

10. Now for a moment, release the practice and let awareness rest in its own place, simply illuminating its own nature, and bring the session to a close.