Small changes over time make a big difference.
Small changes over time make a big difference.
It's one of the paradoxes of spiritual practice: we need a path to travel where we already are. SAKYONG MIPHAM RINPOCHE explains how to create the causes and conditions for realizing the enlightened nature we already possess.
Each time I leave a meditation retreat, I'm struck by the level of speed and stress in our environment. I'm not just talking about Westerners. Ther first time I went to Tibet, life there was very simple, but when I returned three years later, cell phones were ringing and the distraction was visible, even while I was conducting ceremonies. Something else I've noticed lately is that we're bombarded with bad news. But the people I admire have always focused on the good news: that we have in our mind wisdom, compassion, and all the other elements of enlightenment.
While living in stressful times does not ultimately affect our enlightened qualities, it does demand that we become more engaged in awakening them. To transform the environment, we must begin with our mind. We can't expect everyone else to change first. As my father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, was fond of saying, "It's easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather." The process of putting on a pair of shoes is the path of enlightenment.
On the ultimate level, enlightenment is already here, but on the relative level we need to engineer its causes and conditions. The mind is a neutral situation, like a cotton sheet that we can dye any color we want, but unless we take hold of it, karmic tendencies--whatever habits we've ingrained in the past--will just take over. The practice of the path is slowly orienting that white cloth and coloring it the way we want. The path consists of three elements: view, meditation, and activity.
View is our orientation, and how we orient our life is intimately connected with our motivation. Traditionally, the Buddhist teachings list three kinds of motivation: small, medium, and large. These levels of motivation describe how we evolve on the path of enlightenment. When we wake up in the morning, where is our mind taking us? Whatever it is, from motivation, everything else will arise.
If our motivation is small, we will use our day getting the "stuff" we think will make us happy--food, clothing, and friends. If it's a little bigger, we might add some yoga to make us feel better. We might even expand it further to think about the karmic consequences of our actions--but it's still all about "me". With a medium-level motivation, we're no longer so fixated on our own happiness; the basis of our actions is loving-kindness and compassion. We're maturing. With the largest motivation, we put the happiness of others before our own. This is the motivation of the Buddha. If we get up in the morning and the first thought that comes to mind is, "There are so many sentient beings; even if I amd the last person on earth, I will stay here to help them," that is a very big view. Motivation is just an attitude, and it's free. So why not have a big motivation?
Why is view so important? View is how our mind is oriented, and the way our mind is oriented determines what we get. Our realization is based on the size of our view. The view of enlightenment is that we are taking charge of our own destiny. Unless we take the mind where we want it to go, the environment will take the mind where it wants it to go.
By setting our view every morning, we become very good at supporting ourselves in the second element of the path, meditation. Meditation is essentially a dualistic process in which we place our mind on an object. When we place our mind on something, the mind absorbs its qualities, because we're becoming familiar with it. This isn't particularly a spiritual truth; it's our everyday reality. For example, if the object is the anger you feel toward your spouse, you become more familiar with anger, soaking up its qualities like a sponge. In the end, that meditation leads to action. You yell at your spouse or stomp out of the room.
Meditation is a proactive approach to this reality of mind. We practice choosing the object rather than being led by whatever thoughts and emotions randomly beckon. We steep our mind in qualities that lead it forward. We begin with the stabilization technique called sharmtha, "peaceful abiding, " in which we focus on the breath. Through this practice our mind becomes settled and workable. Why is this important? We may have good intentions, but if we can't control our mind, we can never enact them. For example, we want to be compassionate but we get discursive, distracted by our mental ups and downs. Before we can cultivate compassion, we need to possess our mind. That's what we do in stabilizing meditation, where we calm down and experience the space of mind just being there. From that, our mind is much less speedy.
The mind resting peacefully has incredible implications. If you're present for the moment, you're present for your life, and you can therefore observe what's going on. If you can observe what's going on, you can make judgements, deciding where you want to go. At this point--known as the present moment--you can change your karma. You can reorient your whole path, because in terms of the future, you're in the driver's seat. You are getting more enlightened. You are waking up.
We actively reorient ourselves in contemplation, the second kind of meditation, known as vipashyana, "clear seeing." Now we take a thought as the object of our meditation. For example, we can focus on our motivation, stated very simply: "I want to meditate," "I want to develop compassion," "I want to tread on the path of enlightenment," or "I want to become enlightened, no holds barred." At other times we might contemplate a quality--generosity, exertion, discipline, or patience--that could support our motivation.
This is a practice of fabricating our enlightened qualities so that our mind naturally turns in their direction. We know that we're innately compassionate, and we also know that we don't feel right now because there's a blockage. So we contrive our buddhanature in order to reveal it. We call this relative understanding. That understanding may be brief, but we should not be discouraged . By becoming familiar with the view, we are clarifying our future.
It's one thing to have the attitude of enlightenment and another thing to act in an enlightened way, which is conduct or activity, the third element of the path. If we have proper understanding of our motivation and are getting used to our enlightened qualities, chances are we can deal with speed and stress more effectively. First we can create space in our mind to see where we are. Then we can reorient ourselves by remembering what we're doing. That allows us to say, "Sure, I'm tired and in a hurry and my phone is ringing again. Yet I can stay on the path by sticking with the ten percent of my mind that really wants to do this." The more we develop the tools to move forward on the spot, the less influence the other ninety percent of our mind will have. Our karmic tendency to drift into agitation and discursiveness will incrementally decrease. View, meditation, and conduct give us a way to remember what we're doing and why we're doing it, and then enact our own enlightenment. As we do that, we are stepping on the path. We're making progress.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche is the spiritual leader of Shambhala, an internation network of Buddhist meditation and retreat centers. He is the author of Turning the Mind into an Ally and Ruling Your World.
An act of meditation is actually an act of faith---of faith in your spirit, in your own potential. Faith is the basis of meditation. Not of faith in something outside you---a metaphysical buddha, an unattainable ideal, or someone else's words. The faith is in yourself, in your own 'buddha nature.' You too can be a buddha, an awakened being that lives and responds in a wise, creative, and compassionate way.
The real beauty of realizing your true nature is in the freshness,
peace and deep bodily relaxation which touches to the core of
your being, flows into your everyday life and bursts forth naturally
into blossoming from within itself. Without you 'doing' a thing
about any of it.
This is a beautiful and simple change of lifestyle.
A lifestyle of letting go and living openhandedly, curled
up in the sunlit warmth on the lap of
the Divine (your heart)
The truth is, you already are, it is finished.
It is absolutely and totally possible, and freely available, to step out of this limitation of the Self and rest as your true nature right now.
Poetically speaking, the motion is drawing the Divine through the Self or mindbody package to the point where the Divine takes over and lives itself. The limitation of the Self is then transcended and the Self falls away.
This is NOT some stale old chore which you have got to 'do'.
The true beauty of realizing your true nature is in the freshness,
peace and deep bodily relaxation which touches to the core of your
being, flows into your everyday life and bursts forth naturally
into blossoming from within itself. Without you 'doing' a thing
about any of it.
It is very important to note that this is NOT a limited
meditation 'practice' or 'technique'.
The day to day chores and mechanical flow of life all continued as before, but with no energy going into them. Pushing through in some moments and melting into the abyss in others, no choice in any of it. During sittings it was felt that the body and all of existence was melting and would never return again. When the end of the session came and the responsibilities of life started up again the moves would occur and life would go on as usual.
Internally, however, was a whole new paradigm. The perspective had shifted to a whole new sense. The mind was still functioning, but restricted to a strictly practical level. Not a constant burble and with no energy to touch this place. Like a waterfall in slow motion, which defies gravity and seems to float quietly past making no ripple within itself and touching nothing. Only spontaneously emerging when needed and then fading away again.
Overcoming attachment does not mean becoming cold and indifferent.
On the contrary, it means learning to have relaxed control over our mind
through understanding the real causes of happiness and fulfillment,
and this enables us to enjoy life more and suffer less.
It seems we all agree that training the body through exercise, diet, and relaxation is a good idea, but why don't we think about training our mind?
'To look behind or to look upfront is not as important as to look inside'
Under the right circumstances, it is not difficult to have a powerful experience of meditation, to taste the indescribable peace, bliss, rapture, and stillness of the Ground of Being-like a still forest pool, in which you sink ever more deeply, where your mind is not moving at all. It is very important to taste the inherent liberation of your own infinite depth, but that kind of experience in and of itself will not necessarily teach you how to have a liberated relationship to the chaos of your own mind and emotions. Sinking to the depths of your own self is always profoundly inspiring, but it's not enough. It is equally important to know how to stay on the surface when a storm is raging and have no relationship to the chaos. And that is what the deliberate practice of meditation is all about. For most of us, learning to do that is ultimately a source of greater confidence and soul strength than the spontaneous experience of infinite depth. And in fact, from an absolute or nondual perspective, being at the surface is no different from being at the very bottom of the pool. Even if it doesn't necessarily feel that way, in time you will come to understand that it is the same. That is the secret of freedom.
We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
The search ends with the realization that there is no such thing as enlightenment. By searching, you want to be free from the self, but whatever you are doing to free yourself from the self is the self. How can I make you understand this simple thing? There is no 'how'. If I tell you that, it will only add more momentum to that (search), strengthen that momentum. That is the question of all questions: "How, how, how?"
Meditating at any moment of the day can make you happy,
It also largely increases the chance of getting hit by an automotive vehicle.
Today, perhaps owing to the dissolution of traditional standards, and the consequent weakening of persona support as well as the influx of often inadequately understood Eastern religious and cult influences, we encounter many more instances of inadequate egos being "lost" in the world of archetypes. An adequate personal ego structure has to be built before the transpersonal unconscious can be faced. To this end, introversion alone does not suffice. Working on one's relationships to partners, group and community is an equally important aspect of ego building and individuation.
"Our highest aspirations are our greatest possibilities"
Meditation is not a personal search for personal experience.
Meditation is not the search for transcendental energy that will give you more energy to become more mischievous. Meditation is not personal achievement sitting next to God.
Meditation, then, is a state of mind in which the 'me' is absent. And therefore that very absence brings order.
And that order must exist. Without that order, things become silly.....As long as you are held within a pattern you MUST create disorder in the world. If you say- America must be a superpower, you're going to create disorder.
I cannot find the Monastery of Heaped Fragrance,
Miles up now into the clouds of the summit.
There is no footpath through the ancient woods.
Where did the bell sound,
Deep in the sound, deep in the mountain?
The voice of the torrent gulps over jagged stones;
Sunlight hardly warms the bluish pines.
As dusk deepens in these unfathomable mazes,
I practice meditation
To subdue the dragon of desire.
"A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe. "
To wait, to patiently sit in the dark without knowing what the outcome will be, to protect and respect that which has yet no clear form -- all these are aspects of the womb.
To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.
You must be a lotus, unfolding its petals when the sun rises in the sky, unaffected by the slush where it is born or even the water which sustains it!
A simple yet profound way to create a healthy body, a stress-free mind, and a peaceful sense of well-being.
Who you are is this "motion of seeing" that is looking through your eyes right now. When you stop at and as this "motion of aliveness" - by consciously refocusing your attention to this seer; by coming to being deeply at rest at and as this one that is the "you" that you can never get away from; by no longer furthering out from this "you" and into the attempt to try and be something that is notyou; you are immediately freed from who you think you are in every given moment of this realization.
True happiness is completely causeless; it is not reliant on a thing; it is its own reward, its own pleasure. It is immutable and immovable even as it is constantly changing and forever increasing in its movement into its own manifestation.
Your true home is in being deeply at rest at and as the heart of existence itself, the "you" that you truly are and have always been. The heart is totally free of everything even as it contains everything, sustains everything and is flowing through everything - without any paradox or contradiction to any of it.