The Foundation of Sravasti Meditation
Good afternoon, Khenmola. Welcome everyone to the Śrāvastī meditation teaching. We are very honored to have Khenmo Drolma from Vajra Dakini Nunnery in Vermont, United States.
As we know, Śrāvastī meditation is a unique method instructed by His Holiness Drikung Kyabgön Chetsang Rinpoche for twenty-first-century practitioners. This is a system of practice that incorporates the body and mind understanding of meditation.
This time, Khenmo will give us a series of dharma talks about three perspectives of practicing the Mindfulness of Breathing sūtra. We will meet for three Thursdays, and on each, Khenmo will teach us one of the perspectives.
We hope in November we can organize a Śrāvastī meditation retreat where Khenmo will lead us in this very special retreat and teaching. Thank you so much, Khenmola, for accepting our request. We really appreciate your kindness and your compassion.
We will begin with opening prayers. I want to call your attention to the fact that it is similar to our normal Drikung prayer book but slightly different. His Holiness’s whole view in this meditation practice is how to relate to the universality of Buddhism.
All sentient beings, especially those enemies who hate me, obstructors who harm me, and those who create obstacles on my path to liberation and all-knowingness: may they have happiness and be separated from suffering. I will quickly establish them in the most perfect and precious buddhahood.
Thus, until I achieve enlightenment, I perform virtuous deeds with body, speech, and mind. Until death, I perform virtuous deeds with body, speech, and mind. From now until this time tomorrow, I perform virtuous deeds with body, speech, and mind.
In the buddha, the dharma, and the saṅgha most excellent, I take refuge until enlightenment is reached. By the merit of generosity and other good deeds, may I attain buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.
Until I attain the heart of enlightenment, I take refuge in all the buddhas. I take refuge in the dharma and likewise in the assembly of the bodhisattvas.
As the previous buddhas embraced the enlightened mind and progressed on the bodhisattva’s path, I too, for the benefit of all sentient beings, give birth to bodhicitta and apply myself to accomplish the stages of the path.
May all mother sentient beings, boundless as the sky, have happiness and the causes of happiness. May they be liberated from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May they never be separated from the happiness which is free from sorrow. May they rest in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.
When you were born as the chief among humans, you took seven steps on this great earth and said, “I am supreme in this world.” Wise one, we prostrate to you.
Possessing a completely pure body and excellent supreme form, ocean of wisdom, mountain of gold, fame throughout the three worlds, supreme protector, we prostrate to you.
Possessing the supreme marks, face immaculate like the full moon, golden-colored one, we prostrate to you. Free from stains in the three worlds, there is no one like you. To you who has incomparable wisdom, we prostrate.
Supreme among humans, the charioteer and tamer of beings, the tathāgata who severs the all-enmeshing fetters, who with senses pacified and utterly pacified is skillful, to you who dwelt in Śrāvastī, I prostrate.
The protector who possesses great kindness, the omniscient teacher, the basis of oceans of merit and virtue, we prostrate to the tathāgata.
Pure the cause of freedom from passion, virtuous liberating from the lower realms, this alone is the supreme ultimate truth. We prostrate to the dharma which is peace.
Liberated, they show the path to liberation. They are fully dedicated to the disciplines. They are a holy field of merit and possessing virtue, we prostrate to the saṅgha.
So to start, I’m going to say a prayer to the lineage silently. I am connecting to His Holiness and all of the great lineage teachers alive today and those in the past.
It is lovely to join your saṅgha and have our saṅghas working together. I suggest that we start with a little meditation.
When I went to some of the teachings in India a long time ago, I met an extraordinary teacher, Chen-nga Rinpoche. Chen-nga Rinpoche has not really come out since those big assemblies; he has stayed in Tibet and he has a monastery for six hundred monks. But when I met him, I think he was only sixteen years old.
What I noticed about him was that he did not waste a minute of time. When he was listening to different languages that he did not understand, he would meditate. Then when it was in Tibetan, he would participate and speak.
I suggest that during the translation, if you do not understand the second language, you meditate.
The first meditation that His Holiness taught on mindfulness of breathing was not from the sūtra; it was from Burma. He said, “If your mind is really wild, put your hands right on your stomach and breathe in and out. And when you breathe in, let your stomach push out and feel your stomach moving.”
While we are listening to the translation, let us work with that mindfulness of breathing: putting your hands on the stomach, and allowing your mind to become calm as you focus on the movement of your belly.
A Vision for Unifying Buddhism
I want to begin by talking about His Holiness’s vision. I’m putting up some slides. This is His Holiness Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche, and he has led an extraordinary life.
The beginning of his teaching life, after he emerged from a work camp, was first to go into a three-year retreat and establish his own depth of meditation. Then he began gathering the lineage and passing the entire lineage—everything we need for our practice and all future generations. This includes all of the books, all of the empowerments, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books and empowerments.
In Tibetan Buddhism, every book that we study and every empowerment that we receive has to be personally passed. We look at the lineage going back to the origin of the book, back to the origin of the empowerment, so it is unbroken. If there is a break, then that particular book or empowerment has to be retired.
He personally went to libraries all over the world to find all of the Drikung texts. He made sure that he found even a lama who had received an empowerment as a child, so that each empowerment that is so precious to us today could be passed in an unbroken lineage.
Then, there were many years of spreading the dharma worldwide and sending out lamas and teachers. During this period, he was watching to see how we receive the teachings and how we were practicing.
As he was traveling worldwide, he also noticed that, due to isolation in our many periods of history, over time there grew to be prejudices. Each era of Buddhism came to think that they were the best and practiced in the most pure way. These prejudices prevented people from studying the gems and treasures of the different eras of Buddhism.
He began looking to see what would unite all Buddhists together. He developed an extraordinary vision for developing the historic Buddhist site, Śrāvastī, in India. He thought that here in Śrāvastī, he would build a temple for world Buddhism.
He envisioned in the beginning that this would be a place where the four great assemblies would come together: lay people and ordained people, male and female. He created a series of celebrations to begin with for lay practitioners.
As the temples were being built, the first series of teachings were particularly for the worldwide lay saṅgha and for young people. He had these extravaganza assemblies where he had incredible stages set up and performers from all the different Asian and Western communities.
He began teaching the Dhammapada. He didn’t just have traditional cultural displays; he also had Buddhist pop singers.
When the temples were completely built, he set about reviving the tradition at Śrāvastī that the Buddha started. The significance of Śrāvastī as a sacred place is that every year, he would spend a three-month retreat during the rainy season, and he would teach the monastic assembly. Almost all of the sūtras that we think of were taught in Śrāvastī.
The first retreat, the first international monastic assembly, was for Theravāda monks. This is the outside and the inside of the Grand Temple. It is for all of Buddhism and all world religions.
He began teaching the Śrāvastī curriculum. As these trainings were being developed, he had looked at practice for many years—how we were receiving the meditations.
He said, “I’ve given the gems of the Tibetan system, but when I look at practitioners, I see that they’re not able actually to accomplish these gems.”
He designed a whole new system for new students. Looking at the needs of 21st-century practitioners and looking at unifying Buddhism, he searched until he found what is thought to be what the Buddha actually taught as meditation: the Mindfulness of Breathing sutta.
In his wisdom, he said, “Wonderful if you are already practicing ngöndro, if you are already practicing Fivefold mahāmudrā; keep going, that’s fabulous. But I’m also going to introduce this practice that is the essence of Buddhism.”
“I’m going to see what its effects are for 21st-century practitioners who are not monks and nuns and who don’t have the kind of time to go into a three-year retreat and to spend ten years studying philosophy.”
One of the things he did at the teacher training was to take away the Tibetan cultural distinctions that we had. We all wore uniforms so that there wasn’t a distinction between monastics and laypeople. We were all sitting on the ground in the same way, so there isn’t the cultural distinction of the rinpoches being on higher seats.
He also declared that nothing should be hidden. He conceived of the Mindfulness of Breathing sutta, combined with aspects of the Tibetan yogas, aspects of Tai Chi, and aspects of Qigong. He also included walking meditation as a very deep practice.
When we do the retreat together, we will go into these yogas and breathing practices. The significant thing about how he worked with the Mindfulness of Breathing sutta is that he would give commentary from each era of Buddhism. He covers the Foundation era, the mahāyāna era, and the third era, particularly mahāmudrā commentary.
His Holiness is an extraordinary scholar, as many of you know. He has written a history of Tibet based on the Dunhuang papers. These are papers that were recently discovered in caves in Dunhuang, and they have a great deal more historical information, but they also included a Tibetan text on Chan meditation. In the winter of 2019, he finished the translation of the Chan meditation from the Tibetan tradition into Chinese.
Here is the planning committee, the second great assembly in Śrāvastī for the monastic rains retreat. There will be mahāyāna nuns, and he presented the very venerable Wu Yin—one of the great bhikṣuṇī vinaya masters and great leaders of Buddhism in Taiwan—with his new translation. When travel and assembly are allowed again, mahāyāna nuns will do the three-month retreat in Śrāvastī.
I want to begin with a quote from Lord Jigten Sumgon and from His Holiness, which is the guiding principle. “You must rule your thoughts, or your thoughts rule you,” said Lord Jigten Sumgon.
And from His Holiness: “When thoughts lead the mind, you are in saṃsāra; when the mind leads the thoughts, you are free. As you more deeply tranquilize the thoughts, you are leaving saṃsāra.”
As you know, the Drikung treasures the Gongchig. Some of you were with us in the recent teachings on the Gongchig. When we think of unifying Buddhism by appreciating the treasures of each of the eras, we think of Lord Jigten Sumgon’s instructions in the Gongchig: “In each dharma wheel, all three are also complete. The seed of the latter wheel lies in the earlier.”
In addition to the Tibetan texts on Chan meditation, His Holiness also used Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary for the mahāyāna aspect of the perspective on the Ānāpānasati Sutta. Thich Nhat Hanh’s works have also been translated into Tibetan, so it is wonderful in this era that the great teachers of our time are accessible to us.
Tonight I want to talk about the approach of working with the Mindfulness of Breathing sūtra as a framework that can hold multiple perspectives and meanings. I particularly want to emphasize foundation era Buddhism and how that is especially helpful when we are experiencing difficulty.
Let’s start with the sūtra. The sūtra is written in a very poetic way, but in essence, it is a structure of sixteen breaths. I’m going to put them on the screen so we can look at the sixteen breaths as a group.
The Structure of Sixteen Breaths
“Breathing in long, he understands I breathe in long; or breathing out long, she understands I breathe out long.” “Breathing in short, he understands I breathe in short; or breathing out short, she understands I breathe out short.” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in experiencing the whole body of breath.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out experiencing the whole body of breath.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in tranquilizing the bodily formation.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out tranquilizing the bodily formation.’”
“He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in experiencing joy.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out experiencing rapture.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in experiencing pleasure.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out experiencing pleasure.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in experiencing the mental formation.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out experiencing the mental formation.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in tranquilizing the mental formation.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out tranquilizing the mental formation.’”
“He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in experiencing the mind.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out experiencing the mind.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in gladdening the mind.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out gladdening the mind.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in concentrating the mind.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out concentrating the mind.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in liberating the mind.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out liberating the mind.’”
“He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in contemplating impermanence.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out contemplating impermanence.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in contemplating fading away.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out contemplating fading away.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in contemplating cessation.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out contemplating cessation.’” “He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in contemplating relinquishment.’ She trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out contemplating relinquishment.’”
A Spiral Path of Maturation
The whole program is very experiential. Even in the sūtras, we see that these trainings are repeated. The first time one goes through the training, it is very specific and literal. The second time in the sūtra, the monks, through the first meditative experience, achieve the seven factors of awakening.
When we first read it, we may think it is a progression. But when we bring it to practice, we see that it is a spiral. This is much closer to how we actually learn. We may be working on the series of breaths over and over, and each time we come to the practice, we may be seeing something new in our experience, and gradually our experience matures.
We can see that the method the Buddha taught is meant to be flexible and personal, dependent on our learning curve. In the same way that the sūtra talks about the sixteen breaths maturing into the seven factors of awakening, we can also see that it is a teaching about our bodhicitta maturing and a teaching about our mahāmudrā investigation maturing.
Similarly, each group of four breaths is an investigation that seems like a teaching for our practice today, but is also a practice of a whole body of maturation. For instance, if we look at the first four stanzas, traditionally this would be the foundation of mindfulness of the body. We might see it as a complete teaching of accomplishing śamatha practice. It also points out that it is a maturation that leads to single-pointed concentration.
If we look at the next group of breaths, it begins with number five: “He trains thus: I shall breathe in experiencing joy.” When we achieve single-pointed concentration, one of the signals that this is accomplished is that there is a feeling of great joy. That is how the first four breaths could be understood as a profound practice leading to fully accomplishing śamatha. At the same time, it is a clear and pith instruction for people who are just starting śamatha.
Looking at the next group of four, this would indicate the second foundation of mindfulness of feelings in the foundation era teachings. I want to go a little bit into these particular teachings, because mindfulness of feeling and mindfulness of mind are really important for us to understand. When we sit down to meditation, we are alone on our cushion.
What I find profoundly helpful in the sūtras was that the Buddha taught so many different kinds of people, and many of those people were experiencing some sort of a crisis. The instructions of meditation that he gave on feelings and how the mind works were accessible. They are earthy and address many different kinds of minds, especially when we think that we are overwhelmed with something.
Finding Refuge in Great Suffering
I want to tell you the story of Paṭācārā, one of the early nuns. She was traveling with her husband to visit her parents. She and her husband set up a camp, and he went to get firewood, was bitten by a snake, and died. She had a little baby and a toddler. She was carrying the children while it was raining, trying to get to her parents’ village, but there was a huge flood.
She laid the baby in the soft grass, took the toddler, and started crossing the river. When she left the baby, she saw a big hawk come and take it. She left the toddler on the other shore and swam back to try and get the baby, but the toddler tried to follow her and drowned in the water.
The trauma was so great that she literally went crazy. She made her way to her parents’ village and asked while she was crying, “Tell me where my parents are, I can’t find them.” The villagers said, “Oh, don’t ask. Please don’t ask about that family. Their house burned down and they all died.” She went out of her mind with grief and began acting in such a crazy way that the villagers pelted her with stones and mud.
We know today, in the great climate migrations, there are people who are experiencing this kind of suffering. We know the fires in the West caught people in this kind of emergency. This is a human condition that would overwhelm anyone with grief.
She made her way to the Buddha and said, “Help me.” He replied to Paṭācārā in a very interesting way. This is one translation of the nun’s stories by Susan Murcott: The Buddha said to her, “Don’t think that you’ve come to someone who can help you. In your many lives, you have shed more tears for the dead than there is water in the four oceans.”
He went on to say that even in other worlds, there are no relatives that can help. You could search in other worlds and there would be no kin that can help you. In this world, there are no kin that can help you either; it is only the Buddha’s path that can help you.
She asked if she could ordain. He took her to the community of nuns and she was accepted.
There are many important messages in this story of her meeting the Buddha. Particularly, the Buddha saying: “I can give you teachings, I can help you join a community. But to regain your sanity and walk the path, that is something that you have to do.” It is not something I can give to you; it is something you have to do.
If we think of the great Drikung teachers who are teaching right now—Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen, His Eminence Garchen Rinpoche—they are saying over and over again: “It is wonderful that you are coming to the teachings, but you have to practice the teachings.”
Paṭācārā practiced for a long time. As she practiced, she became one of the foremost nuns with one of the largest gatherings of students, second only to the Buddha’s mother. This is a poem from one of the nuns in her community of students:
Farmers take grain from the earth and branches from the trees. They crack open one with the other and take what is left to feed their families. You are all like unripe grain; take time to grow. Then leave the ground behind and let your husk be stripped away. I promise less is more.
Paṭācārā told us this. We sat on the ground like unripe grain. We gave ourselves to the path, and the path broke us apart. What we feared the most is now seen for what it is: true peace, freedom. All that broke apart was the darkness we had for so long been calling our whole world.
Cultivating Joy and Addressing Darkness
I am going to go back to how, in quite an extraordinary way, this training works with emotions. A lot of times when we think about our emotions, we think about what they called in the poem “our darkness.” The group of verses that talk about mindfulness of feelings talks about, first, joy. This comes from the Buddha’s life, and it also comes from a deep understanding of human psychology.
When the Buddha was at the eve of enlightenment and he was practicing with exertion and not reaching fruition, there came a point where he remembered sitting under a tree as a child. He naturally fell into meditation and remembered how joyful that was, the welling up of joy that came to him as a child. That relaxing into that joyful state of mind allowed him to then enter the state of enlightenment.
It is very interesting to realize how limited the English language is. I have talked to particularly Tibetan translators, and they say the word that we use to translate a Tibetan word into English is “joy.” But it actually is a whole spectrum of feeling from a relaxed contentment to a great rejoicing kind of big joy.
We can say that in this teaching, when we start to approach feelings, we cultivate first this memory that there is joy in life. We allow our darkness to be set aside in a memory that we are capable of joy.
Sometimes sadness, depression, or anger can become such a habit for us that we don’t remember what other feelings were like, that we are capable of joy.
We can see this reflected in the way His Holiness teaches. If we look at how he works with this in a skillful way, when he starts a big training—let’s say a big assembly in India or the teacher training he did for this sūtra—the first day of everybody gathering was like a British high tea with tables filled with cakes. Everybody began with this spirit of joy.
We know from our own experience that there is such a weight when we’re depressed or angry, when it is lasting a long time, or when we’re in a very deep habit from some upheaval in our lives. We have to teach ourselves that we don’t want to stay in this mental state. It actually feels better when we allow our mind to be released and have a moment of laughter or a moment of joy.
Regarding the second verse, “I shall breathe in experiencing pleasure,” we immediately see that we want to calm our minds down and not get attached to a moment of joy.
In this way, we’re not using meditation to somehow find joy as a prize; we’re using meditation to see how our mind works. Knowing that we’re capable of joy allows us to be more honest with ourselves about all of our feelings.
The next verse is “I shall breathe in experiencing the mental formation,” and in this context, it’s the mental formation of feelings. Then we open to all the different feelings as they arise.
The Anatomy of Feeling and Reaction
Buddhist science was so particular and observant; it fits with contemporary understanding of feelings and contemporary science of how the brain works. It was astute through direct observation. What became clear in early Buddhism was there is a difference between feelings and emotion.
Here we are starting to look at how our mind works. What is the shifting, changing feeling-tone of my mind? We begin by understanding how feeling arises.
The early science talked about the relationship between our senses and objects. For instance, we are sitting here looking at our computer. Our eyes are working, and we are seeing our computers in front of us.
In addition to having a working eye, we have a sense faculty that can hold the data that our eye receives. The early Buddhist science talked about three moments.
There is the object, and there is the eye organ and the capacity of the eye to receive information. In the first moment, the eye organ sees the object.
In the second moment, there is a feeling-tone that arises with that contact of the object and the eye organ. The feeling-tone can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
In the third moment, our mental consciousness looks at the information and the feeling-tone, identifies the object, and reacts to it.
All the resulting escalation of “I like this very much” or “I hate this, I can’t stand it”—those are all mental judgments that come after that first contact, which doesn’t have any conceptual thoughts involved.
When we talk about experiencing the mental formation and the next verse, “I shall breathe in tranquilizing the mental formation,” we are looking at that process of our mind. It escalates based on any given contact into all kinds of thoughts, reactions, and judgments. We begin to see that it is our mind doing all of that; there is nothing inherent in the object.
In our meditation experience, we are sitting on our cushion and we allow ourselves to explore our different feelings. We watch our mind become like a speeding train that takes us into a strong emotion just in a finger snap.
Seeing that we are the creators of the roaring train, we can begin to tranquilize the feeling states just back to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral.
Confronting the Five Hindrances
Then we move to the next group of verses which start out in a beautiful way: “I shall breathe in experiencing the mind.” That is a huge exploration.
In the traditional presentation of early Buddhism on mindfulness of mind, there is a whole understanding of an area called hindrances.
We can see how we have progressed in the sūtra. First, we have stabilized our mind with breathing. With that stability, we have looked at our habitual patterns and big emotions that prevent us from concentrating.
Having looked at that and feeling as though we understand a little bit about how to tranquilize the mental formations relative to feelings, we are more adventurous. We can look at the hindrances, which are desire, aversion, sleepiness or restlessness, and doubt.
I am sure you recognize these from your meditation. Those are the basic human traits that we are all working with. We find that when we are meditating, they are continuously interrupting our meditation.
This is where I really love the sūtra tradition because it is so visceral. The Buddha talked about them as fetters and chains.
I like to imagine the old movies from when I was a child, about the Romans and the gladiators. When they made people slaves, they put big chains on their arms and big metal collars around their necks, and they seemed so heavy.
What I like about this is Buddha, in his kindness, is telling us this isn’t easy; this is hard.
He talks about working with each of these hindrances, and he gives the example that totally removing this hindrance is like a snake shedding its skin. A snake will grow and have to shed its whole skin before the new skin comes.
If we think of the first hindrance as desire, and we think of how addicted our society is and how difficult it is to work with even one addiction, there is a comfort in the Buddha saying, “Oh, this is difficult, honey. It is going to be like a snake shedding its skin. It is going to be slow and scale by scale, so have self-compassion as you are working with it.”
Some of the great contemporary teachers have said if we sit with our anger or sit with our desire and actually feel it and wait until it disappears—even if we do that for one minute—we should get a medal of honor.
All of these hindrances are wonderful explorations and something we may be working with for quite a long time. We begin with a coarse level and then we see there are even more subtle levels.
For instance, when we are working with desire, at first it might be alcohol or a cigarette or a drug or sugar or even coffee. It is something specific and it is almost physical; it is so strong. At a more subtle level, it is a feeling of wanting.
You can see how smart the computers and iPhones are because they take that human condition of wanting and it’s programmed to work with our wanting. We keep shifting from screen to screen, from icon to icon, because we’re feeling that wanting.
At a more subtle level, it’s wanting to be absorbed into something. Just something to be absorbed into. It’s a quieter wanting.
Aversion is also categorized into degrees. At the coarse level, we can think of disliking or resenting or hating a person, a thing, or a situation.
Then, more refined, it’s “I don’t want.” You want to force things out of your consciousness; you want to not be here. At a subtle level, it can be just irritability or resistance.
In verses nine and ten, we are experiencing the mind and we’re experiencing the shifting of all of these different kinds of hindrances.
As we’re meditating, we might all of a sudden feel sleepy, our brains might feel foggy, or even subtly a little less alert.
Or if you’re on your cushion, you might feel so restless that you just can’t sit still. You might feel very nervous, or at a subtle level, it might feel as though your skin is just a little itchy.
Doubt is really wonderful, and I think you will recognize these states. The first level of doubt is: “I have to know the answer. Am I doing this right?”
Refined is: “Oh, maybe I should take vows. Should I take vows? Is this meditation correct? Is this what I should be doing right now?”
Subtle is when you’re sitting in meditation and all of a sudden there’s a lovely calm state and you go, “Is this it? Is this it? Am I enlightened?”
I find the kindness of Buddha explaining things that every meditator goes through so clearly and so directly to be such a tremendous help. This is because you start to see there’s nothing wrong with you. This is a normal human mind and these are the normal categories that arise in a human mind. We can relax with that and go, “Oh, okay, I just need to learn how to work with this.”
As much as Buddha—it’s not that he warned us, as he said, “Oh, honey, this is going to be a difficult journey like the snake”—he also taught: this is why you want to walk the path. This is what it’s going to feel like when you’re released from the hindrance.
He said when you’re released from desire, it’s like being released from a great debt. When you’re released from anger, it’s like recovering from a terrible illness. When we’re released from lethargy, it’s like being freed from prison. When we’re released from restlessness, it’s like being freed from slavery. When we’re released from doubt, it’s like passing safely through dangerous regions when we’re traveling.
As we progress through the sūtra, there are indications of the later stages of liberation, and that is a little bit different in each of the eras [!] of meditation.
I’m not going to go more deeply into that this evening, but you can see how, using the different stages of the meditation, what we’re learning is how to be our own teacher.
That sense of being able to be a steadfast friend and to be able to look at the darkness of the mind that the early nuns talk about. We see that it seemed like the whole world, but now we see, “Oh, this is what it means to be human and we have a way to understand it.”
The Impermanence of Mental States
The key is in verse thirteen: “I shall breathe in contemplating impermanence.”
We can start to see my mind, like every human mind, has all of these different feelings, all of these different emotions, all of these different hindrances, but they are all impermanent.
If our minds have a lot of activity, we can go back to the very specific concentrations in the early verses.
When we feel ready, we can say, “Today in meditation, I’m going to look at one of my difficult emotions and I’m going to watch my mind begin to have a feeling tone, and then I’m going to watch it escalate step by step.”
Instead of being drawn into the story, I’m going to watch the process my mind works with.
These difficult states are not me. They are impermanent conceptions passing through my mind.
I’m going to go back to the verse we started with from Lord Jigten Sumgon and His Holiness: you must rule your thoughts or your thoughts rule you.
When your thoughts lead the mind, you are in saṃsāra. When the mind leads the thought, you are free. I’m going to put that quote in the chat box also.
Two hours have gone very quickly. The next talk will be looking at the same framework and how we will look at that as a mahāyāna training in bodhicitta and how we can look at the same framework from a different perspective.
I can stay on a little after for questions, but if you have questions after the talk and want to send them to Christy, then I’ll work them into the next talk. Let’s go into the dedication.
By this virtue, may I achieve omniscience and may all who travel on the stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness, and death cross the ocean of saṃsāra by defeating all enemies: confusion, the cause of suffering.
bodhicitta, the excellent and precious mind: where it is unborn, may it arise; where it is born, may it not decline, but ever increase higher and higher.
I pray that the lama may have good health. I pray that the lama may have a long life. I pray that your dharma activities spread far and wide. I pray that I may not be separated from you.
As Mañjuśrī, the warrior, realized the ultimate state, and as did Samantabhadra, I will follow in their path and fully dedicate all the merit for all sentient beings.
May the life of the lama, the glory of the teachings, be firm. May the world be filled with holders of the teachings. May the abundant strength of the teachings’ patrons increase, and may all be auspicious so that the teachings remain for ages to come.
I am so happy that everyone has joined us to begin to work with an experiential approach to the sūtra, but using the wisdom as our skillful means while we are practicing.
This fall, we will be offering several retreats. There is one on East Coast time in October with no translation. There is one on European time—a series of three retreats.
We will be arranging a special one for the Vietnamese and Chinese saṅgha in November so that we can put these teachings right into practice.
Are there some quick questions? I know some people, particularly on the East Coast, may have to leave. Do we have time for questions now? Yes.
Questions on Practice and Theory
Sue: Hi Khenmo, thank you so much. This was wonderful. I wondered if you have a handout of the sixteen verses here that we focused on from the sūtra, and almost like labeling where the seven factors are, where the five hindrances are. Do you follow me? The four foundations of mindfulness, I tracked that, but then I started to not be able to keep up because I didn’t have the hard copy.
Speaker: Yes. I can send it here in the chat group. Yes, I will send it to Christie and I will put information in our newsletter on the Vajra Ḍākinī website. There is a resource for just the Śrāvastī teachings, and it has a password; the password is “Shravasti.”
I will make sure that the sixteen breaths are in a separate handout. The prayer book in English is on that website, and I will put this prayer book in both languages on the website in that special password-protected room.
The hindrances come in the third foundation of mindfulness. When traditional or foundation-level Buddhism taught mindfulness of mind, they taught the hindrances. Then mindfulness—the fourth, the mindfulness of phenomena—is when you get into the impermanence of thought.
The Buddha taught two major sūtras on practice. The Satipaṭṭhāna Sūtra is specifically on the four foundations of mindfulness, and this incorporates that, but it is not exactly the same as the four foundations in a neat way. There is—you cannot quite fit it exactly, but it does cover them.
Another wonderful sūtra is when he taught the monks how to teach meditation to the dying woman. Anytime you see any of the teachers giving a training to the old lady, it is one of the pith instructions that is expressed simply for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time left.
Are there other questions? I will try to make more time for questions in the next talk as well. Yes, we have one more question.
Khenmo, when I chant a mantra, I feel that I don’t have enough breath, so I have to stop to breathe in. How can I solve that problem?
Speaker: First, just relax and enjoy chanting the mantra.
What His Holiness, Garchen Rinpoche, and Khenchen Konchog Rinpoche are saying right in this moment is: it is wonderful that we are saying prayers; it is wonderful that we are chanting mantras.
Now we can really look at how to make our concentration better and use that concentration to look at the nature of our minds. When you are chanting the mantra, notice how often you are distracted. Start slowing down with each syllable and taking your time so that you are also stabilizing your capacity to focus when you are chanting the mantra.
This sūtra is very helpful because His Holiness looked at practice worldwide and, yes, people are practicing, but there isn’t a fruition. What seems to be lacking is the capacity to really focus.
He was saying: if we want to think in any of our practices about having a real depth of understanding, we have to reach the point—maybe not of single-pointed concentration—but certainly the capacity to concentrate and focus for at least twenty minutes.
If you think of how we say mantras in the Tibetan tradition—you know that it is not one hundred repetitions, it is one hundred and eleven, assuming we were only distracted ten times during the whole mālā. But most of us are distracted a lot more than that. We have to actually work with the issue of not being able to focus, work with the distraction, and build strength of being able to focus.
Is there another question this evening? Yes, we have one more question.
May I know the origin of emotion?
Yes. This is the most freeing teaching that I have ever experienced: to understand that the emotion comes from our own mind. The very brief teaching I gave—and we will do more when we are in retreat—is that your eye organ sees an object. There is a sense of pleasant or unpleasant, and then your mind takes over and says, “Well…”
Alright, I will look over at my sink. I see that there are dishes still to be washed, and I really dislike having a messy kitchen. If I had a roommate, it would be, “Well, why are their dishes [there]?” I would start to get angrier and angrier and angrier.
It is all coming from my mind, my own reactions. There is simply a sink over there and a dish in the sink, and I have produced the irritation.
It is a revelation to see that it’s not something outside making me angry; it’s my own mind piling judgment on top of judgment and reaction on top of reaction, like putting your foot to the gas pedal when you’re driving.
The marvelous thing about simplifying meditation in this way is that we have the tools to see how our very human mind works, and we stop being ashamed of being human. We can just say to ourselves, “Oh honey, just like every human being in the world, you have the same emotions and you can watch them play out.”
When we’re not afraid or ashamed, we can just watch the emotions play out and gradually observe that they become tranquilized on their own.
I’m looking at the last line of His Holiness’s quote in the chat box: “As you more deeply tranquilize the thoughts, you are leaving saṃsāra.”
What’s wonderful about this is it allows us to be more and more honest so that we can see the more subtle layers, and the shame is replaced by curiosity and compassion.
One of the most important teachings from Pema Chodron—and I trained up at Gampo Abbey for several years—was that it’s only to the degree we can be compassionate towards ourselves that we can authentically be compassionate towards others.
That seems like a good closing point. A lot to think about. Again, it’s my hope that we will have a retreat so that we can work with these things experientially on the cushion. You can see the connection between the simplicity of the sūtra and our actual practice experience, as well as the contribution of using the Tibetan yogas in combination with the practice.
Thank you so much for coming to really explore the sūtra and explore His Holiness’s extraordinary new vision of a 21st-century practice that is easy to use and easy to maintain in busy lives.
The question is about the experience when we breathe in, specifically during the fifth or sixth breath. It mentions joy and happiness. So, for joy and happiness, does it mean that we will imagine the joy and happiness, or will they come naturally?
I think we will talk about that in the next practice because His Holiness thought that it would be a good place to teach the bodhicitta practice.
What we know from the story of the Buddha is he remembered from his childhood; he had a memory of happiness.
I know from working with many different practitioners that sometimes we have to teach ourselves what it feels like to be happy again and to remember that we want that instead of our habit of anger, or our habit of addiction, or our habit of depression. It’s a very important teaching in the sūtra.
Eventually, it will arise naturally. There is an expression called “the smile of an arhat.” We know from our great teachers that when our mind is stable and when we are able to be in the present moment, there is a physical response of joy arising in us. That arises naturally with our capacity to be in the present moment for more sustained periods.
The expression “the smile of an arhat” is the inner joy that is not dependent on outer circumstances. For now, it’s something we can begin to learn about.
Thank you.
The Mahayana Perspective
Let’s go ahead and put the opening prayers up, though, and we can begin there.
I’m glad that we are together again, and I’m thrilled that we are working with His Holiness’s wonderful curriculum.
All sentient beings, especially those enemies who hate me, obstructors who harm me, and those who create obstacles on my path to liberation and all-knowingness: may they have happiness and be separated from suffering.
I will quickly establish them in the most perfect and precious buddhahood.
Thus, until I achieve enlightenment, I perform virtuous deeds with body, speech, and mind.
Until death, I perform virtuous deeds with body, speech, and mind.
From now until this time tomorrow, I perform virtuous deeds with body, speech, and mind.
In the buddha, the dharma, and the saṅgha most excellent, I take refuge until enlightenment is reached.
By the merit of generosity and other good deeds, may I attain buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.
Until I attain the heart of enlightenment, I take refuge in all the buddhas.
I take refuge in the dharma, and likewise in the assembly of the bodhisattvas.
As the previous buddhas embraced the enlightened mind and progressed on the bodhisattva’s path, I too, for the benefit of all sentient beings, give birth to bodhicitta and apply myself to accomplish the stages of the path.
May all mother sentient beings, boundless as the sky, have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May they be liberated from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May they never be separated from the happiness which is free from sorrow.
May they rest in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.
When you were born as the chief among humans, you took seven steps on this great earth and said, “I am supreme in this world.” Wise One, we prostrate to you.
Possessing a completely pure body, an excellent supreme form, ocean of wisdom, mountain of gold, famed throughout the three worlds, supreme protector, we prostrate to you.
Possessing the supreme marks, face immaculate like the full moon, golden-colored one, we prostrate to you.
Free from stains in the three worlds, there is no one like you. To you who has incomparable wisdom, we prostrate.
Supreme among humans, the charioteer and tamer of beings, the Tathagata who severs the all-enmeshing fetters, who with senses pacified and utterly pacified is skillful, to you who dwelt at Shravasti, I prostrate.
The protector who possesses great kindness, the omniscient teacher, the basis of oceans of merit and virtue, we prostrate to the Tathagata.
Pure the cause of freedom from passion, virtuous liberating from the lower realms, this alone is the supreme ultimate truth, we prostrate to the Dharma which is peace.
Liberated, they show the path to liberation; they are fully dedicated to the disciplines. They are a holy field of merit and possess virtue; we prostrate to the Sangha.
And let’s read the 16 breaths, because this is the teaching of the Ānāpānasati Sutta which we will be focusing on this evening.
Breathing in long, he understands: “I breathe in long.” Breathing out long, she understands: “I breathe out long.” Breathing in short, he understands: “I breathe in short.” Breathing out short, she understands: “I breathe out short.”
He trains thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing the whole body of breath.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out experiencing the whole body of breath.” He trains thus: “I shall breathe in tranquilizing the bodily formations.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out tranquilizing the bodily formations.”
He trains thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing joy.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out experiencing joy or rapture.” He trains thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing pleasure.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out experiencing pleasure.”
He trains thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing the mental formation.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out experiencing the mental formation.” He trains thus: “I shall breathe in tranquilizing the mental formation.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out tranquilizing the mental formation.”
He trains thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing the mind.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out experiencing the mind.” He trains thus: “I shall breathe in gladdening the mind.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out gladdening the mind.”
He trains thus: “I shall breathe in concentrating the mind.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out concentrating the mind.” He trains thus: “I shall breathe in liberating the mind.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out liberating the mind.”
He trains thus: “I shall breathe in contemplating impermanence.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out contemplating impermanence.” He trains thus: “I shall breathe in contemplating fading away.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out contemplating fading away.”
He trains thus: “I shall breathe in contemplating cessation.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out contemplating cessation.” He trains thus: “I shall breathe in contemplating relinquishment.” She trains thus: “I shall breathe out contemplating relinquishment.”
I’m just going to say a quick lineage prayer before I begin.
Welcome everyone. We’re studying this evening the curriculum that His Holiness has given for meditation for 21st-century practitioners.
Our thought is to give some orientation with these three talks and then invite everyone to come into retreat and focus on practice. When we go into practice, we’ll work with the physical exercises that His Holiness has given us as well.
Just as last week, we worked with a few quotes. I put into the chat box two quotes to start us today from the Chan or Zen tradition.
“Spring flowers, the autumn moon, winter snow; if useless things do not clutter your mind, you have the best days of your life.” That’s an ancient poem.
A contemporary Zen master said, “Joy is what we are if we are not preoccupied by something else. Until we know that joy is exactly what is happening, minus our opinion of it, we are going to have only a small amount of it.” That is Joko Beck.
As I mentioned last week, both His Holiness and Lord Jigten Sumgön in the Gongchig invited us to let go of any bias towards the different kinds of Buddhism. They invited us to see that in the three vehicles, the seed of the other two are present.
Understanding the Three Vehicles
Since we’re dividing the talks into the foundation level, mahāyāna, and mahāmudrā perspectives, I wanted to talk a little bit about the mahāyāna before we begin the sūtra.
When we read about the three vehicles, we read about growing levels of compassion and how that defines the three vehicles. That can be very confusing because sometimes we can think it defines particular practitioners of particular schools.
The terms we’re familiar with—the Hearer, the Solitary Realizer, and the bodhisattva mahāyāna vehicles—are states of mind. We can be in any one of those states of mind as we’re practicing. It has to do with our states of mind, not a particular school or tradition of Buddhism.
As Buddhism was spreading around the world, the earliest foundation level decided to limit to the Pāli Canon and the commentaries that were a part of the Pāli Canon. They decided not to greatly diversify what they study in terms of texts.
Then we have the Chinese Canon and the Tibetan Canon. The Chinese Canon has the whole body of later commentaries that came as Buddhism evolved over the hundreds and thousands of centuries [!]. The Tibetan Canon has some of the same texts, but not the Pāli.
When His Holiness was searching for what the Buddha taught in terms of meditation and what is the pith teaching, he actually did not find it in the Tibetan Canon; he found it in the Chinese Canon.
Over the centuries, as Buddhism evolved, there were great universities that arose and great practitioners. The study moved beyond the sūtras and the commentaries of the sūtras to then the great positions of logic. This included the evolution of subtle understanding of the nature of mind that came as, in the universities, they debated teachers from other religions.
There may be a difference in how we practice and what we emphasize in education, but all vehicles of Buddhism cultivate compassion and directly perceive the emptiness of self and phenomena.
What primarily changed over time was the definition of nirvāṇa or the fruition state. We all agree that the fruition is a state of mind, but what that fruition is did change.
The Pāli tradition believed that Gautama Buddha practiced for many lives before this particular historical life and achieved liberation in this life with a cessation. That cessation is never lost and continues on in unchanging peace, separate from time and space.
The Sanskrit tradition believed that Buddha practiced as a bodhisattva for many lifetimes but became liberated before his life as Gautama Buddha. He emanated from the dharmakāya as Gautama Buddha to set an example of awakening suitable for this eon. His continuum as dharmakāya has the capacity to continuously emanate, so there are many, many buddhas throughout this eon.
In the Sanskrit tradition, all sentient beings have buddha nature and the capacity to become buddhas. There is a significant text that was later historically, the Uttaratantra Śāstra, that speaks about the qualities of the Buddha’s mind and his capacity to emanate.
When we think about all of these great traditions, all of these extraordinary teachers in all the different countries, there are no neat, clear boundaries in terms of how they instruct their students to practice. The Dalai Lama talks about hearing the teachings of Ajahn Mun and how he felt it was common in practice instruction to how he understands practice.
There was a historic debate in Samye in the 8th century where a visiting Chinese Chan master was defeated and the bias arose that all of Chan meditation was then lesser. I was personally present at a conversation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Venerable Sheng Yen when they unwound that bias and greeted each other’s teachings with great respect and skillfully showed the commonalities of the perspectives.
The wonderful significance of His Holiness choosing the Ānāpānasati Sutta is that it is practiced in the Pāli tradition, in all of the mahāyāna traditions, and now in our Tibetan tradition. It is a sūtra that unites all of Buddhism.
Awareness of the Body and Breath
For the mahāyāna section of the training, His Holiness worked with Thich Nhat Hanh, the great, profound Vietnamese teacher’s commentary on the sūtra. I remember reading in Thich Nhat Hanh’s biography his description of his delight when he found this sūtra because it was such a clear description of how to practice meditation.
Now as we go into the sūtra, it really is about how we experience our minds and how to work with our minds when we are on the cushion. I’m going to put the first two in the chat box. The first four breaths are really common in all the traditions. It’s very simple, very straightforward.
His Holiness said that we are using a small amount of thinking to avoid forgetfulness, wandering, and lethargy. We’re using our breath in order to be free from thoughts, but it is thought: in, out.
Thich Nhat Hanh said on this first grouping: “The object of awareness is the breath itself. The mind of the one who is breathing is the subject, and his or her breathing is the object. The breaths may be short, long, heavy, or light. We see that breathing affects our mind and our mind affects our breath. We also see that breathing is an aspect of the body, and awareness of breath is also awareness of the body.”
You can start to see that this reflects our process of meditation. When we first sit down on the cushion, our mind might have many thoughts from the day, and we take an awareness of our breath. My breath, my breathing in and it’s long, or I’m breathing in and it’s short. It is very specific, and it gives our mind a way to focus and concentrate.
We are not making it complicated in any way. We are not visualizing it going out far or making details about feeling it enter our nostrils and perhaps on our upper lip. In this particular teaching, it is our natural breath, but we are being very specific: it is long or it is short.
Because we have details to concentrate on, the different kinds of stress and worries start to settle down. This happens because our mind is occupied with being specific about our breath.
As we steady our mind by being specific, we are ready to move into the next stage: “breathing in, I am aware of the whole body.” We can do the traditional body scan where you review all the parts of your body to see if there is tension. We can visualize ourselves filling up with light, or we can imagine our breath filling our body as though it were a balloon.
From Thich Nhat Hanh’s perspective, the calming breath is accompanied by the calming of the body and the mind. The mind, the breathing, and the body are each calmed down equally. We can then realize the oneness of body and mind.
The final breath is described in the words: “I shall breathe in tranquilizing the bodily formation; I shall breathe out tranquilizing the bodily formation.” Here it is just natural breath.
This follows the traditional Tibetan training of śamatha. First, we have a very specific object, and then we have something more abstract. Then we let go of the details and have just the calm breath, allowing all thoughts to fall away.
It is generally presented in this very straightforward way. But probably we can all say that when we sit down on our cushions, actually concentrating and learning to focus our mind can be very difficult. We can see all kinds of thoughts and emotions distracting us.
It is actually due to the attempts to focus that we see how distracted we are, how agitated we are. We see the particular kinds of emotions that are our personal habits and difficulties.
The text follows our own experience. I want to go back now to the poem that I gave you last week. It is not only the poem; it is the story of the great early nun, Paṭācārā.
You remember she was so crazy with grief. She lost her husband—he was bitten by a snake—then she lost her children in the flood. When she finally made it to her village, she found that her parents had died in a fire in their home. She had no one to turn to.
She was so crazy with grief, the villagers felt that she had to be driven away. They threw mud and rocks at her.
She went to the Buddha, and he accepts her not as a savior but as one who can demonstrate peace and joy from his own realization and show her the path. He gives her the conditions to practice by inviting her to join the nuns’ community.
In that meeting with all of those components, she regained basic sanity. It is a very important teaching story because we have to find a way to create safe, healthy conditions for ourselves to practice.
A quote I like a lot from the American khenpo, Karl Brunnhölzl, in his book on the Heart Sūtra is: “My mind lives in a bad neighborhood; I don’t like going there alone.”
This is by a doctor who specializes in trauma: “We are a traumatizing species.”
I want to acknowledge that all of us, as meditators, begin in many different kinds of states of mind. We have to find a way to accept our minds the way the Buddha accepted Paṭācārā. That includes asking for help, understanding what wise attention is, and relaxing with our very human frailties.
The Sky and the Weather of the Mind
I have a visual way of describing our minds. The Buddha taught outside, and I find the idea of weather is a very neutral way for us to begin to understand our mind. On any given day, we can open our door and find different kinds of weather.
These pictures, I thought we might think of as certainly anger, aggression, fear, and bewilderment.
If we think of our minds as a sky, no matter what weather is passing through the sky, the sky is not harmed. This is the same piece of land: one with the heavy storm clouds and one with a clear sky.
Because we each have buddha nature, we relate to that buddha nature being like the sky, with all the different weather passing through but never harming it and never actually being a part of the sky. The sky’s nature is this clear, aware, relaxed, luminous awareness.
We build confidence in meditation by remembering that we have buddha nature, and everything that is passing through—no matter how repulsive it seems to us—it is not the sky.
This is another one of my favorite quotes: “I bow to my own mind that dispels the mind’s ignorance by eliminating the mind’s self-sprung web through this very mind itself.”
In meditation, we use the mind to dispel our own ignorance.
This is an ancient quote by an ancient Roman: “I am human; I consider nothing that is human alien to me.”
When we use this perspective—that we are human and we contain many different states of mind that never harm the purity of our mind—then we can look honestly at our own minds. This is a very important perspective to hold dear as we sit down to meditate.
As we think of Paṭācārā’s story, losing so much in her journey, and we think of the Haitians desperately trying to come to a safer place, and we think of our family stories—many different aspects of our lives pass through our minds as we are sitting down to meditate.
I want to acknowledge the wonderful community of the Vietnamese saṅgha. You have family stories, and we know in this past year there has been a terrible rise in anti-Asian sentiment. There may be different hurts you carry when you sit down to meditate, just as I carry hurts with me, and everyone who sits to meditate carries different kinds of hurts.
If you are a person who has very deep wounds, it is good to have, in some part of your mind, a safety net so that you can make choices when you hear the meditation instruction.
You have the freedom to change the directions and choose what is appropriate for you to follow. Some people find it helpful to use mindfulness of the body if they sense a difficult thought arising—to be conscious of the softness or hardness of the chair, the floor under your feet, or even to have an object near you that you can look at that pulls you into the present moment.
This is in preparation for working with the mindfulness of feeling, and particularly as it is described here, the feeling—pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral—gradually moving towards looking at all the different emotional states.
The Practice of Generating Joy
It is so extraordinarily beautiful and wise that the Buddha begins the investigation of mindfulness of feelings and tranquilizing feelings and emotions with an investigation of experiencing joy.
You can see that there is a progression. Thich Nhat Hanh translates rapture as joy; the first breath focuses on joy, and the second breath focuses on happiness.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in his teaching on this sūtra, talks about how important it is to actually experience these. The Buddha is providing us the medicine to look at the difficult areas of our life to give us the strength to explore the more painful periods of our life that hinder our concentration and meditation.
The first thing we notice when we work with mindfulness of feeling is that it is a very interesting bridge. If there is a pleasant feeling, we actually feel that in our body. It is mental and physical at the same time; it is something that unites body and mind.
The distinction between the joy and the happiness is that the joy is a reflection of a more excited mind, a mind that might have a tendency that wants to hold onto that joy. Happiness is considered more profound because it has the qualities of joy but is peaceful.
Although the meditation presents it in a straightforward way, it is not always accessible to us.
“Oh my goodness, I’ve had a really hard day. I can’t just sit down and breathe in joy.”
Thich Nhat Hanh approaches this in a very beautiful way. He says, “Begin with gratitude.”
He made it quite literal in terms of the present moment. “I am breathing in, and I am grateful and joyful that I can breathe in, that I am actually alive.”
He said that if you think of each of your senses, being able to see, for instance, is not neutral; it is pleasant. The capacity to see, the capacity to hear, the capacity to speak… we know as soon as we don’t have these, that it is painful.
We can breathe in appreciating and start a seed of joy just appreciating the qualities of our physical experience.
It may be that at this moment you can give rise to this kind of joy or contentment.
But if you are having a difficult moment in life, one of the things that Thich Nhat Hanh asks us to observe is: what are the moments that we are not angry? What are the moments that we are not depressed?
If we are having a difficult time, it is not continuous. But we focus on all of the anger, the frustration, the stress. We don’t notice that throughout the day, I am breathing in the absence of anger for just this one moment, or I am breathing in the absence of stress in just this moment.
Pay attention to those moments.
This is also a place where His Holiness Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche recommends that we can do a bodhicitta practice. We can do the practice as Lord Jigten Sumgon taught, or any of the four immeasurables practices.
What is really significant about this way of starting to work with feelings is that we can begin to see that we actually have a choice.
When we spend some time being grateful, or noticing the absence of our anger, or actively doing bodhicitta, our mind and body calm down and it feels wonderful.
We can remind ourselves that we don’t have to feel stressed, depressed, and terrible; we actually are capable of changing the channel to a different mental state.
It is important to work with this because over our lifetimes, we may have developed a habit of anger, a habit of irritation, or a habit of depression that are so familiar to us.
It is easier for us to be angry than joyful, and we have to teach ourselves that we actually prefer and want to be joyful.
When we are talking about emotions and feelings, it is good to be clear about the whole process. As I was saying last week, it starts with a perception that is connected to pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
The perception can be looking at any object on the outside. Or it can be looking at any thought or memory and having a reaction of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
That is a feeling. Then our mind takes over and creates a whole series of thoughts about that feeling and that perception.
It is like when you are pushing the gas pedal on your car; we accelerate.
For instance, we can turn on the news and we can see gray patterns, and then we can see it is a bad decision by a politician, and we make a whole story about it. We get angrier, angrier, and angrier until we are shouting at the TV.
Then, we can start to get to know how our particular mind makes that escalation. We observe how we increase the anger and tell more of a story about it.
We increase the anger and have more thoughts that we are constructing to manufacture the anger. It is completely an internal process of our mind agreeing or disagreeing and fighting about one picture we may have seen.
Anyone who lives in a family, or in a community, or when you go to work at the office: if you see someone who mildly irritates you and they say something, you interpret the tone of voice, you start getting angry.
You start calling all your relatives and friends about how terrible this person is and what they said to you. But you or I have constructed all of those thoughts based on one sentence or one tone.
We get used to how our minds continually escalate.
With the mindfulness that we are cultivating, we start to see, “Oh, look at this, anger is arising. I don’t have to take it all the way to the top of the volcano. I can stop it right now when I notice it.”
Tending to Anger with Compassion
In the second two verses on mindfulness of feeling, we are talking about: “I shall experience the mental formation of the feeling and emotion.” Breathing in, I am experiencing; breathing out, I am experiencing. “I shall breathe in tranquilizing the mental formation of the feeling and emotion; I will breathe out tranquilizing the mental formation of the feeling and emotion.”
I love the way Thich Nhat Hanh teaches about this. It is so sensitive and beneficial. He talks about simply being aware that I am angry. Breathing in, I see that anger is arising. Breathing out, I see that anger is arising.
One way of interrupting the escalation is to see what is going on, knowing that it is a storm passing through our mind and just noticing. At this moment, anger is arising. I am breathing in, I am breathing out.
Concentrating on mindfulness with breathing means you are not making the story bigger. You are immediately acknowledging: breathing in, I can see I am irritated; breathing out, I am irritated.
It is very poignant. He talks about welcoming the anger as though it were a small child. There’s this anger that’s an impermanent emotion, but instead of resisting it, wanting to pretend it’s not there, or wanting to somehow stuff it, it’s, “Oh, this small child of anger, I welcome you, and I’m going to see your nature.”
If we make our mind like a battlefield, we’re not going to want to look at our mind. We’re not going to want to sit down in meditation, and we’re not going to want to be honest to see all the different parts of the human condition.
The idea of setting a field of compassion with the first two breaths of “there is joy in my mind” and “my mind is buddha nature,” not the storms passing through, allows us to look at each of the different arisings and just watch their impermanence. Looking at that anger or looking at that irritation or any of the afflictive emotions, we remind ourselves that if we maintain that state, it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good in my body and in my mind.
If we sit with the third breath, observing all of the different feeling states and emotional states, we begin to see how close our mind is to the weather, with many different states passing through. We stop identifying with the weather and we begin to identify with the sky, or with the bigger mind that is beyond the passing emotional states.
Every time we observe an emotion and we observe its impermanent nature—when we look at it and we don’t add the story to it—it can’t keep going by itself. It dissipates.
We’re building our experience in the truth of the dharma. I can see that my anger is impermanent. I can see that my jealousy is impermanent, or my desire is impermanent.
When we have a clear observation of—even if it’s only for a moment—tranquilizing one emotion or interrupting the escalation, this is a dharma experience that we can say to another dear friend: “I see your anger; this is what helped me.” In this way, our authentic experience of the truth of the dharma allows us to benefit beings, fulfilling our motivation and aspiration.
Gradually over time, our capacity to concentrate allows us to see more subtle feeling states and move more towards the beginning of interrupting some of our more fiery emotions.
I’m going to read Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary.
“These two breaths enable you to look at all the kinds of feelings arising within you, whether they are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, enabling you to make those feelings calm and at peace. The activities of the mind mean, in this case, feelings. When you are aware of your feelings and can see deeply into their roots and nature, you can control them and make them calm and at peace, even though they may be unpleasant thoughts arising from desire, anger, and jealousy.”
As we have more experience in concentration and observing the subtle states, we can start to see in our meditation when there is a very subtle pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral feeling arising.
It connects to the impulse to be distracted. It is the impulse to move out of meditation, to move towards an object, to move towards a memory or a story, or to move away from the luminous clarity of our mind. We begin to understand at a very subtle level how our mind works.
We know that no matter what kind of practice we’re doing, we have to have very precise concentration that is undistracted. This applies if we are doing visualizations in vajrayāna, if we’re doing vipaśyanā investigations of the nature of mind, or if we’re working with mahāmudrā. These two sets of verses go together in a very important way.
Even if we haven’t studied with Thich Nhat Hanh, we know the titles of his books like “Present Moment, Wonderful Moment.”
Also in our Tibetan tradition, when we have perfect concentration, a feeling of ease, peace, contentment, and inner joy arises in our mind. This is not worldly joy, but a spiritual joy not dependent on any outside condition.
I want to go back to Paṭācārā again. When we left her, she was crazy. Then she was at least sane, but we can imagine that her mind was full of grief and agitation still. But at least she could be in a community.
This poem talks about her meditation. This is based on a fragment that was left behind; she was one of the early nuns at the time of the Buddha.
“Farmers turn up the soil, plant seeds, and wait. All by itself, water pours down from the sky and turns the earth into food. All these years, sleeping on the ground, waking before dawn, and begging for every meal, where is my harvest?”
“Late one evening, I was washing my feet after another long day of sitting and walking. The water poured over my feet and onto the ground. I let my mind go, and it flowed downhill with the water towards my little hut. I went inside, sat on the bed, and lowered the wick of my lamp. All by itself, the flame went out.”
It actually takes a long time to get one-pointed concentration, especially when we’re not in retreat. In this poem, we might relate to that same cry: “I’ve been practicing all of these years, where is my harvest?”
Then there is the beautiful description of coming into the present moment and the last stages of the agitated mind leaving. It is the release into just the impermanence and present moment.
In Lord Jigten Sumgon’s biography, similarly, he had studied for years. He had studied with Phagmo Drupa and had been in retreat for years. His biography says, “Well, for the first few years, I didn’t really know how to meditate.”
This sūtra is giving us, step by step, the experience on the cushion. These are stages you will recognize.
Even though we may not have a harvest today or a harvest tomorrow, our practice is benefiting ourselves and others because we’re practicing.
I’m going to finish with a quote by the Japanese Zen Master, Dogen.
“The power of continuous practice confirms you as well as others. It means your practice affects the entire earth and the entire sky, the ten directions. And then, although not noticed by you or by others, it is so.”
I’ve left some time so that we can have some questions and answers.
Questions on Managing Emotions
Hi Khenmo, thanks so much for your teaching. For Thich Nhat Hanh, can you also give us more tips on how to control the anger? I know that we need to look into the breath, see the root and the cause, but sometimes, the anger comes right away. It’s too fast. How can we stop, step back, and then concentrate on that? I followed Thich Nhat Hanh for a while, and it’s always nice cooling.
Kenmola: The first step is to just notice. Yes, it goes very fast, and you should be happy that you can notice. Anger is like a volcano. Mostly, we don’t see it until the lava is already going to the village and burning down the houses.
Any place we stop it is good. Any time our mindfulness interrupts it going further and we notice, “I’m angry right now,” that is the first step.
One of the things I learned from Pema Chödrön is that it really doesn’t matter how you interrupt; it only matters that you do interrupt. She says you can stand on your head when you notice you’re angry. It doesn’t matter what you do; first, you just want to interrupt the volcano.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s point that I find so lovely is that so often we’re ashamed that we get angry. We start to take it on as an identity, like “I’m an angry person,” or “I have trouble with anger.” What is unique is the way he describes cradling it like a baby. The whole point is not to increase the anger by making your mind struggle as a battlefield.
It is recognizing, “I’m a human being, and every single sentient being has anger. I want to learn about this anger.”
The training that we received in the monastery was connecting our awareness to the story and the feeling. When you’re angry, you see that you have a whole story about it. The first step once you notice that the volcano is erupting is to interrupt, and then ask what happens when I let go of that story?
Often there’s a feeling in our bodies because the emotions are a bridge between our body and mind. You might feel a charge somewhere in your body, but if you don’t keep telling the story, it goes away by itself because every kind of thought is impermanent. We start to begin to have a degree of compassion for ourselves, and we connect that compassion for ourselves with our desire to help others.
If we truly want to learn how to help others, we have to see how we free ourselves from the anger. Then we have an authentic experience that we can take to someone else. There are many details and many methods, but you might find one method working better for you at one particular time. You start to have a big toolbox.
You start to say, “If I change the channel and focus on bodhicitta, I’m not angry.” Or if I do the practice of “breathing in, I’m aware that I’m angry; breathing out, I’m aware that I’m angry,” that stops it for me. Or sometimes depression can go on forever, but if we remind ourselves, “This is weather, and there will be a break in the weather, and I’m going to pay attention and find that break.” All of these different techniques are in your toolbox.
After a while, when you’re investigating anger to liberate yourself, your loved ones, and all sentient beings, it becomes something that you’re curious about. It is not something you’re ashamed of. You can decide to spend the next couple of years on anger, learning everything there is about it. You can learn what the sūtra said, or what Thich Nhat Hanh said.
You bring all those different techniques to your cushion, and you really learn about it. Then it becomes an investigation of curiosity. Finally, as you have less and less anger, you can see how much progress you have made.
The way they used to test people in the old stories of Patrul Rinpoche is he would hire a little kid in the neighborhood to throw rocks at the cave where the yogis were meditating. The yogis then would see, “I’m kidding myself. I haven’t finished anger at all. I still have lots of it.” Or they would say, “One more time I can really see what is the subtle release of it.”
It becomes a very fruitful investigation that has such great benefit for yourself and all sentient beings. When a dear friend or relative comes to you, you can say, “I’ll sit with you. Try just letting go of the story for a minute, and I’ll hold your hand while you do it.”
Kenmola: I apologize, Abraham; I forgot to break for the translation. I just want to take that image from Thich Nhat Hanh of holding anger as if one is cradling a baby. I think it is really important, particularly with what I was being very clear about in terms of wise attention and a safety net. The significance of the image of holding the baby is how gentle it is.
If you are cradling a baby, you are holding it very carefully and you are being gentle. We always can choose what we are ready to work with in terms of our emotions. We are very gentle in terms of how we work with them. We might start with small irritations first and build towards the more difficult things.
If you have extremely difficult wounds, you may need additional help from a professional therapist. In meditation, you may have to have a very good plan for how to come back to the present moment so you do not get carried away with an emotion that you cannot work with. You do not want to repeat a trauma.
Paṭācārā is a wonderful example because she dealt with her emotions that were so strong. She became well-known as a nun who helped other parents who had lost children and who were struggling with grief. So, that was a very long answer. I see another Nguyen—Nguyen Hong Quan.
Chanh Nhan: His question is about the quote you showed us from Nāgārjuna regarding the nature of mind: “I bow down to my own mind that dispels mind’s ignorance by eliminating mind’s self-spun web through this very mind itself.” It is easy for us to realize when we are angry, but when it comes to ignorance, it is much more difficult. Anger is just a feeling we can sense. But how can we, as it says here, dispel the mind’s ignorance?
Kenmola: The progression of the sūtra is very interesting. It goes from gross to subtle. First, we have to learn how to concentrate and focus. That is the same in all the traditions of Buddhism.
As we learn to concentrate and focus, we see the habits of our own mind. Maybe the biggest habits are when we are distracted by emotions. After we learn how to tranquilize the feeling states and emotions, then we start to see more subtle categories.
In order to see the nature of mind, we have to tranquilize all the different kinds of distractions. It moves through emotions and goes traditionally through the hindrances. That would include restlessness, lethargy, and doubt. There is another whole series of subtle distractions.
With our mind in a one-pointed concentration, we can apply that focus to the experience of the mind that has awareness. This is the awareness that had been previously occupied by all of these distractions. As the sūtra goes on and in the talk next week, we will investigate that layer.
Particularly, the Tibetan tradition of mahāmudrā and vipaśyanā investigations show us exactly how to ask ourselves questions and apply that focus. But if our mind is still continuously distracted, we are not able to come to any satisfactory conclusion. We are always being pulled away before we can see the truth of the nature of our mind.
Some homework, as you are already anticipating next week, is to ask: “Yes, I can see that I am angry. Who is angry? Where is the anger, and where is the ‘who’ that is angry?”
Chanh Nhan: Excuse me, but there is another question from Minh Anh. He asks that when he sits in meditation for a few minutes, he can feel a yellow light enter his body from the crown. It goes down up [!] the backbone and the lungs, and finally, he feels heat from the navel up to his chest. Is this good, or what is the meaning of this?
Kenmola: From the perspective of this sūtra, it is a distraction. We have many experiences while we are meditating, and they are neither good nor bad. But we need to learn how to make our concentration so firm that we are not distracted by any physical or mental experience at all.
At different times in meditation, colors might appear. These are mental phenomena. It is not dissimilar to why the breaths in the mindfulness of feeling move from joy to happiness.
We do not want to be attached to any phenomena that pass through. We do not want to be attached to even the happy states that feel wonderful. We want to have a clear, one-pointed concentration that we can then apply to bodhicitta, to Vajrayāna, to mahāmudrā.
Eventually, it is not in any way rigid. In the beginning, concentration takes effort. As we have more and more of a habit of paying attention instead of giving in to distraction, it becomes more relaxed. It is described as “resting” in this relaxed concentration.
For instance, if we are meditating and a great joy arises, we might think, “Oh, I want it to stay,” or, “In my next meditation, is it wrong that it does not come?” It sets up judging the meditation.
It also sets up wanting something from meditation. The meditation designed to lead us towards liberation starts to lead us towards the desire realm again. We want to keep seeing everything that passes through the mind as impermanent while we are developing our concentration, letting it go and learning how to concentrate.
There is the story of when Gampopa was studying with Milarepa. Of course, Milarepa had profound wisdom. But every time Gampopa came to him and said, “Oh, this is happening in my meditation,” he would say, “Oh, it is your digestion,” “drink more tea,” or “eat more salt.”
Eventually, Milarepa could determine that there was authentic, profound realization. But for a long time, it was just indigestion; not good, not bad.
I want to recite the two quotes we started with: “Spring flowers, the autumn moon, winter snow. If useless things do not clutter your mind, you have the best days of your life.”
Joy is what we are if we are not preoccupied by something else. We should do the dedication prayers now.
By this virtue, may I achieve omniscience, and may all who travel on the stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness, and death cross the ocean of saṃsāra by defeating all enemies: confusion, the cause of suffering.
bodhicitta, the excellent and precious mind: where it is unborn, may it arise; where it is born, may it not decline, but ever increase higher and higher.
I pray that the lama may have good health. I pray that the lama may have long life. I pray that your dharma activities spread far and wide. I pray that I may not be separated from you.
As Mañjuśrī the warrior realized the ultimate state, and as did Samantabhadra, I will follow in their path and fully dedicate all the merit for all sentient beings.
May the life of the lama, the glory of the teachings, be firm. May the world be filled with holders of the teaching. May the abundant strength of the teaching’s patrons increase, and may all be auspicious so that the teachings remain for ages to come.
How wonderful we could study together this evening. Thank you to His Holiness for this beautiful perspective on how to use all of the eras of Buddhism to understand this sūtra.
It was delightful to see that Thich Nhat Hanh had already been translated into Tibetan. This enabled him to share Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary so easily, and he was pleased to incorporate that into the teachings.
The Vajrayana and Mahamudra Perspective
All sentient beings, especially those enemies who hate me, obstructors who harm me, and those who create obstacles on my path to liberation and omniscience—may they have happiness and be separated from suffering. I will quickly establish them in the most perfect and precious buddhahood.
Thus, until I achieve enlightenment, I perform virtuous deeds with body, speech, and mind. Until death, I perform virtuous deeds with body, speech, and mind. From now until this time tomorrow, I perform virtuous deeds with body, speech, and mind.
In the buddha, the dharma, and the saṅgha, most excellent, I take refuge until enlightenment is reached. By the merit of generosity and other good deeds, may I attain buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.
Until I attain the heart of enlightenment, I take refuge in all the buddhas. I take refuge in the dharma, and likewise, in the assembly of the bodhisattvas. As the previous buddhas embraced the enlightened mind and progressed along the bodhisattva’s path, I too, for the benefit of all sentient beings, give birth to bodhicitta and apply myself to accomplish the stages of the path.
May all mother sentient beings, boundless as the sky, have happiness and the causes of happiness. May they be liberated from suffering and the causes of suffering. May they never be separated from the happiness which is free from sorrow. May they rest in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.
When you were born as the chief among humans, you took seven steps on this great earth and said, “I am supreme in this world.” Wise one, we prostrate to you. Possessing a completely pure body, an excellent supreme form, ocean of wisdom, mountain of gold, fame throughout the three worlds, supreme protector, we prostrate to you.
Possessing the supreme marks, face immaculate like the full moon, golden-colored one, we prostrate to you. Free from stains in the three worlds, there is no one like you. To you who has incomparable wisdom, we prostrate.
Supreme among humans, the charioteer and tamer of beings, the tathāgata who severs the all-enmeshing fetters, who with senses pacified and utterly pacified is skillful—to you who dwelt in Śrāvastī, I prostrate.
The protector who possesses great kindness, the omniscient teacher, the basis of oceans of merit and virtue, we prostrate to the tathāgata. Pure the cause of freedom from passion, virtuous liberating from the lower realms, this alone is the supreme ultimate truth; we prostrate to the dharma, which is peace.
Liberated, they show the path to liberation. They are fully dedicated to the disciplines. They are a holy field of merit and possess virtue; we prostrate to the saṅgha.
Just beginning with the sixteen breaths. Breathing in long, I understand I breathe in long; or breathing out long, I understand I breathe out long. Breathing in short, I understand I breathe in short; or breathing out short, I understand I breathe out short.
I train thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing the whole body of breath”; “I shall breathe out experiencing the whole body of breath.” I train thus: “I shall breathe in tranquilizing the bodily formation”; “I shall breathe out tranquilizing the bodily formation.”
I train thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing joy”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out experiencing joy.” I train thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing pleasure”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out experiencing pleasure.”
I train thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing the mental formation”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out experiencing the mental formation.” I train thus: “I shall breathe in tranquilizing the mental formation”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out tranquilizing the mental formation.”
I train thus: “I shall breathe in experiencing the mind”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out experiencing the mind.” I train thus: “I shall breathe in gladdening the mind”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out gladdening the mind.”
I train thus: “I shall breathe in concentrating the mind”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out concentrating the mind.” I train thus: “I shall breathe in liberating the mind”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out liberating the mind.”
I train thus: “I shall breathe in contemplating impermanence”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out contemplating impermanence.” I train thus: “I shall breathe in contemplating fading away”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out contemplating fading away.”
I train thus: “I shall breathe in contemplating cessation”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out contemplating cessation.” I train thus: “I shall breathe in contemplating relinquishment”; I train thus: “I shall breathe out contemplating relinquishment.”
I am going to say a quick lineage prayer, putting us—myself and you—firmly in the lineage blessings.
It is good to see everyone again. I am thrilled to be with you to share His Holiness’s beautiful curriculum for twenty-first-century practitioners. Every time I review it before teaching, I get a sense of how elegant it is. It is a refreshing, brilliant view of how to introduce meditation to practitioners today.
Most are not likely to do years of solitary retreat and do not have the time for years of study. Yet, how to convey a practice that is accessible and allows us to progress? He has done so in such a unique and brilliant way.
As we were watching the pictures of him age when you were playing the lineage long-life prayer for him, it was a good teaching on impermanence. We are now moving towards the breath where we contemplate impermanence, so we had that teaching as we were just beginning.
Pointing Out Instructions within the Sutra
In the first talk we looked at the sūtra origin, and in the second talk we looked at a general mahāyāna view. Now we are looking at a mahāmudrā view. We are looking at something within our Kagyü tradition, using the gifts and special practices of this tradition to support how we understand and work with the sūtra.
Teaching meditation in this way, introducing pointing-out instructions within the sūtra, is not actually new. If we think of when Milarepa taught, he taught the shepherd boy. He would go into the towns and teach the laypeople and the families.
Even though when he was practicing he was a profound vajrayāna practitioner doing very esoteric and wonderful practices, when he went to teach in the towns, he conveyed an introduction to mahāmudrā in an accessible way. That is essentially how we are working with this Ānāpānasati Sūtra.
His student, Gampopa, originated what we called the sūtra mahāmudrā. This is a particular method of giving pointing-out instructions as a way of uniting his studies with Milarepa and all of the previous studies he did.
Gampopa is a pivotal person in the lineage because he united all the different branches of Buddhism. He was able to convey the vast wealth of the teachings.
As you know, in our Tibetan tradition, usually there are many years of study and then we have the five-fold mahāmudrā path. The first part of it is ngöndro, and you may be practicing it. Then there are vast vajrayāna teachings.
This is really a way of simplifying all of the different skillful means by first establishing concentration and mindfulness. It creates a calm, relaxed mind that is able to focus for as long as we wish to focus.
In the last two talks, we looked at the first four verses—“I am breathing in a short breath,” “I am breathing in a long breath,” and so on. We can look at them as the very clear method of establishing calm abiding.
As soon as we have some mastery over our minds, we see all the different ways our minds get very distracted and interrupted from our meditation practice. In the last talk, we looked at the big emotions.
You can see that in order to look at the nature of mind, in order to understand the mind, first we have to be stable enough. We must be able to look at something very clearly and see the qualities and intricacies of that object.
Developing mindfulness is the foundation for everything. As we are starting today, it is very easy to think, “Why do I have to spend so long on just the śamatha practice? Can’t I just push aside the emotions so I can get to the really interesting part of meditation?”
What we learn as we go along is that, unfortunately, it just does not work that way. We have to have a degree of stability before we can actually see anything. Otherwise, our mind is always jumping away and not available to us to really begin to see what is happening in it.
Integrating Body, Channels, and Winds
The other interesting thing about how His Holiness is presenting this sūtra and the mahāmudrā instructions is that he is also opening up the Tibetan yogas and some teachings on the winds and channels. This is another tremendous support for calming down our mind and beginning to understand how it works.
I think one of the great teachings is that as we are practicing and getting close to enlightenment, we are meeting it in an embodied way. We are not ignoring the body and its energies; we are using them to support us. I am going to put on the screen a general depiction of the Tibetan system of channels.
An early Tibetan king, as he was creating the science of Tibetan medicine, invited the greatest physicians and healers from seven countries to come to Tibet. He took all of those different sciences and put them together into an understanding of how the body and the subtle energies work.
His Holiness said that he learned Tai Chi when he was in the work camp in Tibet when it was occupied, and on his travels, he learned some Qi Gong. He put together a group of exercises to support this practice.
Traditionally, these exercises were only taught after one had completed ngöndro, even to learn the first exercise. The bulk of the exercises were taught only in three-year retreat. There was a sense of these being very esoteric and secret.
As I have studied the old mahāmudrā manuals, they talk about things like vase breathing as a support for śamatha. Traditionally, when we teach śamatha, we often teach alternate nostril breathing at the same time. His Holiness’s view is that nothing needs to be secret; nothing should be kept hidden in this era.
What you can see in these two pictures are four basic cakras. You can see the top of the head, the throat, the heart, the belly, and three channels. The other picture is from the artwork of Tibetan medicine, where you can see what is not shown in the first picture, which is many smaller channels. They say five hundred channels come from the heart cakra.
We know from acupuncture, yoga, or cranial sacral work that there is a whole structure of energy systems within our body.
In this practice, we are working with things experientially. We are beginning to learn about the connection between our mind, our consciousness, and the winds—how they are inseparable and interdependent.
In the deep teachings, there is a sense that when our energies and winds are mixed with thoughts, they are impure. As we realize the nature of mind, the winds go into the central channel. They are no longer mixed with thoughts and are considered pure winds.
We have the Phagmo Drupa quote: “Why are we in saṃsāra? Because the winds did not go into the central channel.”
As an introduction to working with our energies, we can think of wind as movement. As we reflect, there is the movement of the energy in our body, the movement of our breath, and the movement of our thoughts. It all has to do with movement.
As we work with these physical yogas, we are learning that we can experience mindfulness of body as a great teacher. We are focusing on our body and our breath. We are focusing on the dawning clarity that arises at a cellular level from an unblocked system of energy running and moving through our body.
I like to think of it like this. If there are five hundred teeny-tiny channels moving into thousands and millions of little channels, the breathing exercises at first just start to unblock that whole system.
Think about it like planting a plant. You buy it from the store and the roots are all matted and jumbled. Then you plant it in the ground and all the roots straighten out. They flow out and are able to really nourish the whole plant.
Over time, there is a corresponding connection to greater levels of clarity arising in your mind. A feeling of aliveness in your body helps you see that everything is unblocked and moving in a clear way.
We can begin to understand through our direct experience the quote that is often recited: “Consciousness rides the winds.” There is a clear link between our mind, our body, and the energetic systems in our body.
His Holiness said, “Wind is a blind person with feet; consciousness has eyes but no feet.” Wind is coarse; consciousness is more subtle. Mind thinks of a body part and wind goes there. The channels bring wind and mind together.
If you get freedom of wind, you will have freedom of mind; they are linked. If you are tight or blocked, your mind is also blocked.
You can control your wind, you can control your mind. If you control your wind, worldly concerns settle.
The key, and I will come back to it, is movement. This is a quote by Maitripa: “Mind is simply the currents of mindful awareness, the expressive power of wind without any nature.”
Now I am going to bring it back into the sūtra because it has to do with seeing how your body and all of your energies support your clarity of mind. Your clarity of mind is beginning to focus more and more steadily. You are coming closer and closer to what in the stages of śamatha is called one-pointedness.
I wanted to explain it in an experiential way. One of the ways of explaining the stages of śamatha is through nature.
The Metaphor of the River
What we see when we are first beginning to meditate, or if we are experiencing a crisis in our life, when we sit down to meditate our thoughts feel like a relentless waterfall. It is said that we can experience 75 mental events in a finger snap.
When we look at the sūtra, we see the first four breaths are taking in a long breath or a short breath, experiencing the whole body, and then tranquilizing the mental formation.
With the exercises, we’re doing the same process in a different way. We’re focusing intensely on movements and our breathing in a particular way, which begins to tranquilize our minds. We find that there are distinctly different feelings in the stages of how we experience our mind.
From day to day, we might find that it’s not so much a waterfall anymore. It would be a river going through a gorge or a spring river when the snow is melting, and like a place where you go for white water rafting. There are lots of rocks, lots of obstacles, lots of turmoil, but it’s not so huge as the waterfall.
There’ll be another experiential shift eventually, that’s like a wide summer river. There’s no more white water. It’s flowing calmly, you can see the water is much more stable. It’s when our minds are stable and relaxed.
An ocean free of waves. There’s not much thought. We don’t have to keep bringing our minds back. We can maintain our concentration for longer and longer periods.
The fruition is described in two ways: like the bright autumn sky. Right now, when we look at the sky this time of year, when it’s a cloudless sky and it’s that electric blue, it indicates that it’s not a dullness, but quite a wonderful alertness.
The butter lamp or candle not moved by the wind is the quality of our awareness. There’s no longer any movement.
Even though nothing is hidden from us, even though we can attend teachings on the mahāmudrā practice, it is not going to be very effective until we have reached some sort of stability in our practice. It is said that you have to at least be at the summer river for your practice to progress into the vipaśyanā investigations.
From this perspective, and coming to understand that you are your own primary meditation teacher, you know that when you sit down and begin the exercises of breathing in a short or long breath, you see immediately the quality of your experience on that day.
Is it like Niagara Falls? Is it like the spring river? Is it like the summer river? Is it like the ocean? That allows you to check yourself and say, “Oh, I need to work more on stabilizing my mind,” or, “My mind is very stable today; I can do more subtle investigation today.”
The Natural Unfolding of Realization
What I want to emphasize is, if we look at our practice from a perspective over time, it is a very natural process. If we commit to sincerely building concentration, sincerely accepting whatever arises in our mind as not something to be feared or pushed away but something to work with, gradually we see there is a natural process going on.
I contemplate flowers in this perspective to help understand that it is a natural opening. It opens at its own speed due to the causes and conditions that I put together.
Am I doing retreats? Am I meditating every day? Am I choosing to work wisely with my mind, sometimes dealing with the big obstacles, sometimes setting them aside? Am I following the instructions of the practice manuals?
Then, just in a very natural way—and I love tulips for this because they are a very tight bud—they start to open and relax. Then naturally the petals fall away and leave emptiness.
I find this quote very helpful:
Do not regard the thoughts in your mind as something to be ejected, something that you don’t want, like you have to get rid of your thoughts.
Do not deliberately create non-conceptuality, so don’t try and get something or make something happen.
Post the watchman of mindfulness and rest. There will come a time when you rest within Shamatha meditation.
As we look at the sutra, when we worked with the first eight breaths, as I just said, we are clearing away the biggest obstacles. We are calming our mind and focusing.
Direct Experience of the Mind
The ninth verse says, “I breathe in experiencing my mind, I breathe out experiencing my mind.” That is huge.
Once we have stability, it is as though this natural process is building a momentum. In the category of experiencing the mind, we could say the mindfulness of mind, the mindfulness of phenomena, and all of the mahāmudrā investigations of vipaśyanā are included. We could say that those are areas of investigation that we are now applying that focus and clarity to.
I breathe in, experiencing my mind. As we are doing that, we are seeing the truth of the dharma, and a greater and greater joy is arising in our practice. This is because we are not meeting the obstacles of different emotional states.
We are finding that there is an inner joy arising from learning about these states. As we learn about even the more subtle hindrances, we are freeing ourselves from them. We are becoming more and more curious about how the mind works rather than the story the mind is telling, and that encourages more and more concentration.
On the right, you see the 9, 10, 11, 12—that is the third set of verses. In the middle, you see the seven factors of awakening. As we read the sutra and get to the end, it talks about how our meditation practice starts to open this natural process of the seven factors of awakening developing due to how we are practicing.
With mindfulness as the foundation, there is this delight in investigating the different states of our mind and the different phenomena arising in our mind. This leads to more and more energy in our practice and more and more happiness arising from our practice. This then leads to the calming, knowing that there is an inner joy not reliant on outer states, increased concentration, and equanimity.
These developing qualities support the development of our meditation when we get into understanding the last four verses with impermanence as a key understanding. This includes the impermanence of thought and the impermanence of any holding on to self.
The equanimity is really important. As His Holiness was teaching us about what the final verses—fading away, cessation, and letting go—were experientially, he was saying it was just so gentle.
We just let that clinging to the self, that confused state of mind, fade away almost so gently as you would touch a baby’s cheek, just letting it go.
I find the structure so elegant because you start to see that your meditation opens these natural processes. These in turn support your development and open further natural processes. They build back and forth.
Your body is supporting you, the way you are meditating is supporting you, and what you are learning is supporting you. It is all a process of the dawning of a clear seeing of the nature of mind.
Some meditation masters say vajrayāna is a wonderful, skillful means, and we get a glimpse of the nature of mind. But the steadiness and building of this unfolding process is a natural dawning. For some people, it can even be a stronger pathway or skillful means.
It just becomes spiral-like. We can take those qualities—the keen investigation—and apply them to stabilizing concentration. We start to have a joy when we see that we can build concentration, and that encourages us to practice more. Each of these ways of approaching practice that is building can be applied to any one of the sections.
Similarly, if we understand perception and how it leads to feeling and then to the whole array of emotions, it builds the joy of our practice. The keen investigation and the joy arise when we understand that we are not the emotions. They are a movement of the mind that we can calm down.
All of life gets very interesting. If it is about becoming non-distracted so that we can clearly look at the nature of mind, it gets interesting to see the most subtle level of distraction. We find that we are having a glimpse of something beyond our thoughts or a spaciousness in between them. We see from our own direct experience that we get distracted so easily.
We start to see all the little distractions, like a subtle attachment.
I get a kick out of Master Sheng Yen, who talked about how he found in deep retreat that when he had a shower and put on clean clothes, he was attached to that lovely feeling. We get more and more subtle with how we understand attachment and aversion, and we have great joy in learning about them.
This information is so important for us.
For instance, if we are doing vajrayāna meditation and the dissolution of Vajrasattva, we have been cultivating mindfulness by envisioning the seed syllable. We let it dissolve into the tip, into the very top part of the letter. We go into a state of resting in the natural state. We see that any distraction whatsoever, any movement of our mind, brings us right out of that moment of resting.
The word I like is a word that Khandro Rinpoche uses. She talks about having a habituation to oscillation. That is that fluttering. Our mind is always fluttering away from the present moment, feeling a subtle unease.
She describes it as at every moment, there is a tremendous freedom of choice to respond to our buddha nature or something other than that—a momentum of vacillation.
We trust the impulse within ourselves, and rather than staying with that, we trust the momentum of attachment or aversion. As I said in the beginning, it is all about movement. It is the movement of our mind that is unwilling to trust buddha nature and will move anywhere; it will allow distraction to pull it anywhere. We start to see how our mind is habituated to distraction, and we soften that habituation.
All of this is a part of experiencing the mind. One thing that we want to be clear about is that we are looking for this stability. We are working towards one-pointed concentration in our śamatha, but śamatha in itself is not liberative. We need to use that sharp focus and concentration, but in a gentle and relaxed way.
Over time, we are looking at the thoughts arising and dissolving as they arise. We see that there are all kinds of arisings in terms of sense perceptions, in terms of stories, memories, and planning.
We see these thoughts like writing on water, or snowflakes melting on a warm rock. We no longer have any pull, stickiness, or oscillation of moving away from the natural state of our mind.
Then we are able to actually ask some questions, to turn our mind inwards. There is a wonderful gesture that is used: instead of our gaze being on exterior phenomena, we turn it inside.
His Holiness described it as an absence of negative thought—the present-moment bliss of single-pointed concentration. We are not shutting down our senses; you can see and hear, but you are not following any of your senses. It is not relaxation; it is a balance between being alert and relaxed.
When the mind is stable and clear, look at the nature of mind. Lord Jigten Sumgön said, “Stainless mind, this is your pure land. When your mind is pure, stay in clear light; this is paradise.” And then His Holiness said, “What more purity do you need?”
Searching for the Nature of Mind
That is sort of an overview of looking at the nature of your mind. When we look at the traditional explorations in mahāmudrā, looking at our pure mind, we see it is not easy. Unless we have many special blessings from lifetimes of experience, it is not an immediate experience when we look at our mind to have that clarity and luminosity apparent.
We can begin an exploration when we look at our mind, when we have that stability and capacity to focus.
It is described as being like searching for something in your house. You want to see: what is the mind? We look very, very carefully. Is the mind in the body or not in the body?
For instance, if you are in your house and you lose your car keys, you have to go through every room and every drawer until you are totally confident it is not in that room. “I know it is not in that room; I am positive it is not in that room.”
If our mind is still moving and being disturbed, we will have to search the room over and over again. This is because we do not have confidence that we were able to search thoroughly.
We keep searching. If there is a self, is it in the body or the mind? And then, what is the nature of mind—what we experience as thoughts and appearances? What is the relationship between stillness and movement within the mind itself?
To develop this confidence, we can see the difference. As Buddhists, we could say, “I know there is no inherent self; I have read it a million times. I know that if I search for my mind, I do not see a particular color or a particular place in my body where it exists.”
We have read lots of books, but we have not changed our behaviors. We have to search so deliberately and in a focused way that we have confidence.
After conducting a thorough search, we turn towards the awareness that is looking.
Resting in Luminous Awareness
I want to return to Gampopa. There is a beautiful teaching that Gampopa gave to an old lady. Every time you hear something given to an old lady, it is the pith of the dharma—simple and easy to understand.
I like this teaching because it captures the relaxed, gentle quality. After we do a thorough search, then we can begin to relax. We know we could search infinitely and never find anything, so we can relax.
Gampopa’s teaching says, “Set the mind free. Do not keep thinking about this and that outer thing. Look inward to see how your mind is.”
The mind has such a clear, knowing awareness, no matter what it knows. The ears hear no matter what the sound is. The eyes see no matter what the form is.
It is such a clear, knowing thing. The nature of mind is luminosity—a luminous awareness.
He asked the old woman to consider this clear, knowing mind: “How does it exist? Old woman, you take a look and see. Old woman, you cannot say that it exists, nor can you say that it does not exist.”
“You cannot say that it is big, nor can you say that it is small. It is something indescribable, yet it is something that can be perceived.”
Why is this so? The reason is that the innate nature of mind is emptiness.
This is the union of luminosity and emptiness. This is the dharmakāya nature of the mind.
Keep the mind comfortable, relaxed, and free.
This begins to describe the last four stages of the sixteen breaths. “I shall breathe in contemplating the fading away.”
It is the fading away of concepts. It is the fading away of an “I” perceiving concepts. I breathe out contemplating fading away.
I shall breathe in contemplating cessation—just a continuous, gentle relaxing of that comfortable, relaxed, free mind.
It is no longer vacillating, no longer being pulled away, and has seen directly the emptiness of thoughts, appearances, and of self.
His Holiness said at this stage, the tradition in our Kagyu lineage is to teach through quotes because it is nothing anyone can do for you. It is nothing anyone can give to you. We have these wonderful songs and quotes from the early lineage masters.
From Lord Jigten Sumgon: “When one sees that mind flits from thing to thing, that not seeing anything is seeing.”
From Tilopa: “Not spoiled by the effort of good thought, not following after bad thought, and not going to the neutral; set your mind in meditation free from mental engagement.”
Again, from Lord Jigten Sumgon: “No object of meditation, not the slightest trace, no flicker of attention, not for even a moment. This is the heart teaching of mahāmudrā.”
I hope you are beginning to see the beauty of this very flexible framework. We can apply the lineage teachings of mahāmudrā directly into our practice of this sūtra in the same way we can practice it in a very straightforward way of the four foundations of mindfulness.
It gives us the tools to build the momentum of this natural unfolding. Each of our minds is unique; each will unfold at its own rate of speed, just like different flowers.
The sixteen breaths are not a step-by-step. It is more like: let’s look at the foundation and make the foundation very firm. Let’s then clear away the big obstacles.
Then let’s clear away the subtle obstacles and then experience the mind—experience how perception draws us into the world away from our nature of mind. Let’s look at all the ways we vacillate and are more comfortable with distraction than the joy and contentment that is beginning to arise.
As we see and understand that this is the way a human mind is habituated and that we can relax within that—relax within the stability and look directly—then truly we are becoming our own meditation master.
I am going to conclude with this famous quote from the Uttaratantra, which His Holiness repeated many times: “Buddha essence is ever-present in everyone because the dharmakāya of perfect buddhahood pervades all. The suchness is undifferentiated and they have the potential.”
The second verse talks about, essentially, that we are perfect the way we are. Underneath the vacillation, underneath the distraction, underneath all the clouds of emotion, nothing whatsoever is to be removed.
We have that perfect buddha nature that does not need to be changed in any way. Nothing needs to be removed, nothing needs to be added. Truth looking at truth, truth is seen. When seen, this is complete liberation.
Stabilizing the View
Finally, the lineage instructions are that due to our practice and the conditions we create working with all of the methods and skillful means, there will be moments of truth looking at truth. They will be tiny moments, and over time we expand and habituate to them instead of to the vacillation.
As we practice together in the retreats, we start with the exercises in the early morning. We experience the alertness coming out of sleep into a bright, alert mind due to the effects of the exercises. With that support, we start to see how we find a balance of relaxed and alert in an undistracted way to do meditation.
Do not underestimate the amount of diligent attention it takes to stabilize the mind.
With that stable mind, learn to look at the confusion of that belief in an inherent self. Use our tradition’s instructions to look at the investigations of mahāmudrā vipaśyanā until we can really relax the grip of that self-referencing bubble.
In its subtlest stages, it is like a drop of dye in water that permeates all of our thoughts. There is an assumption of this very subtle “I.” With a joyful tenderness, allow the grip of that subtle infusion to lose its hold and evaporate.
This is why His Holiness presents this sūtra as a complete path. We can use it in our vajrayāna practice, in the mahāmudrā practice, and in sūtra practice. It is very flexible and is a wonderful framework that can hold all these different kinds of practice.
I invite you to join in the Śrāvastī retreats. We have had great joy working together through our retreats here at Vajraḍākinī, and I believe all the students feel they have gained clear understanding using this practice.
So, we have time for some questions.
Questions on Posture and Progression
First of all, she has learned quite much about meditation from Thich Nhat Hanh. As you mentioned the flower, she said that as we see the flower—for example, on our altar—in that moment in our mind, many thoughts will arise. Maybe we will like it, or maybe we will dislike it. Does it mean letting those thoughts not distract us, but instead, we should focus on our nature of mind whenever we see the flower?
Kenmo: I was using the flower example to see how a flower opens naturally. I want to encourage you to think of your efforts in meditation as being a natural process that, due to your practice and consistency, will open on its own.
Sometimes we think we have to fight or struggle. Sometimes we think there is something we have to get.
Sometimes we think states of mind are there that we do not want, and we have to push them away. This is opposed to relaxing and seeing that over time, with each meditation session, our mind is opening a little bit more.
I liked the flower example because when the petals drop off completely, they demonstrate emptiness. One kind of example can be used in many situations.
What we were discussing about perception, for instance, when you see a flower on your altar: if you like or do not like it, it does not really matter. In both circumstances, your mind is pulled away out of meditation towards the flower.
In the Gampopa instruction, it was to essentially set the senses free. They are operating, and you are seeing the flower, but you are not thinking “like” or “dislike.” You are not letting any of your senses pull your mind away from stability and then, as you develop further, the nature of mind.
I could keep going. It is a wonderful question, but let’s get some of the other questions as well.
First of all, he would like to express his deep gratitude to His Holiness and Kenmo for introducing this sūtra. His question is, when is the best time for us to practice this sūtra? Because there are sixteen breaths, how many sessions should we practice during the day?
Kenmo: It is a framework. You may find that you would read through the sūtra once, or read through the sixteen breaths, which is a pith expression of the whole sūtra.
You may then go back and practice the first four breaths. You may spend a lot of time—many meditation sessions—on the first four breaths, building stability and concentration. Or similarly, you may be working on the second four breaths.
This is what I mean about you becoming your own meditation teacher. You do not have to do all sixteen.
As I was demonstrating, the third set—of experiencing the mind, gladdening the mind, increasing concentration, and then liberating—can be applied to the first four or the second four. There are many ways to work with it.
We have found in our practice of the sūtra that lots of short retreats are helpful. All last year we were doing one-day retreats, and next week we are going to do a four-day retreat.
When we do the retreats, we work with the traditional Drikung retreat plan of four or five sessions a day.
This includes very early morning, late morning, afternoon, and evening. It is a very effective method to progress in meditation.
His Holiness’s ideal was to have people take a seven-day retreat so that they had a really strong understanding. We also worked with at least a half an hour of walking meditation every day and spent an hour on the yogas.
Hello Kenmo. Thank you so much for your teaching. I have two questions for today. The first one: I remember Thich Nhat Hanh also mentioned that we should practice mindfulness in every moment, every act that we do every day. Here we also have this practice. Is it the same, similar, or different?
The second question is about after having the joy. You have different steps. For example, in number ten, we have the joy, and then sometimes you say, “let’s go and just be relaxed and experience the emptiness.” Sometimes you say we can explore the topics further. Should we explore the different topics, or just let the thought come and then see the thought?
Kenmo: Yes, I think I do get your point. All the great masters say exactly the same thing. Uninterrupted mindfulness is meditation.
Without uninterrupted mindfulness, we do not understand. That is the quote from Lord Jigten Sumgon that is the same as Thich Nhat Hanh’s.
This sūtra describes concentrating, developing, using the long breath, the short breath, the whole body, and tranquilizing the mental formation.
Tranquilizing the mental formation, the fourth breath, corresponds to our traditional Drikung presentations of calm abiding mind. This is meditating without support or without signs.
That is when your mind is relaxed and you are watching the thoughts arise and fall away. They correspond very clearly with each other.
As we progress in meditation, we start to see that we are capable of concentrating. We start to see that our minds are calming down.
We start to see that there are fewer big arguments and dramas in life.
We start to see the truth of the dharma connected to our meditation. A natural joy arises, alongside a desire to concentrate more, learn more about the mind, and investigate it further.
This sūtra describes what we are looking at, how we are looking at it, and combines those things.
At the same time, His Holiness says that in the joy aspect, we can practice the four immeasurables or practice bodhicitta. There is a way to put in all the different practices that we treasure as participating factors. Does that answer your question?
It is not so much a step-by-step. First, we have to concentrate.
These are the gross levels of hindrance, and these are the subtle levels. In experiencing the mind, everything is there.
We do it with more enthusiasm and confidence. As it progresses, we can finally slowly let go of the hold of this “I” that wants to control and experience everything.
Khenmo: I think what I find so interesting is that it gives like an overlaying structure. It could be an overlaying structure for vajrayāna, it could be an overlaying structure for mahāmudrā, or it can be straightforward just as it presents itself.
And so, it’s tremendously useful in guiding the structure of our meditation.
Student: Thank you so much. Tashi Delek, Khenmo. Thank you, Miss Christie, and thank you to Chanh Nhuan for translating. Thank you for the wonderful teaching Dharma today.
I also have questions, and I hope you can help me because I try to make the meditation. I also get a little bit of feeling about the warmth and the tummo, a little bit about the joys, and sometimes I also have the experience of emptiness. However, I just get the meditation for 35 or 45 minutes, and then in this stage, my body hurts, and I cannot keep in the nature of the mind. And then I stop.
I don’t ever keep it, and I move, I go to exercise, I apply the yoga. I retreat every time, many times for treating. I also come back to meditate again. However, for the next meditation, I also try to keep for 45 minutes. I cannot move on to the one hour or two hours.
Can you share with me the tips to change and to help me to increase the time for the meditation to keep the nature of mind? Because many masters I know, they can keep this in days, in months, and many years. Thank you so much for your sharing, Khenmo.
Khenmo: So, is it holding the posture? Is it sitting on the floor? What hurts in your body?
Student: It’s from my legs. Because the way that I sit, my legs will hurt. I cannot keep them in the lotus state.
So, I changed for the half-lotus, and then it also hurts me. And then I don’t waste time; I move and I go to the yoga to keep my body fresh, and then I come back to the meditation. However, just for 45 minutes, I will hurt again.
Khenmo: All right. You know, different traditions present things differently. And so, the Tibetan tradition is not rigid about posture in the beginning. And so, if you need to sit in a chair, sit in a chair.
The point is your mind. And so, I think you could be gentler with your body and then, over time, build up strength.
And over time, I think the yoga really helps. It helps you see even when you’re sitting in a chair: are your energies flowing freely and supporting the practice?
I’m grateful because I’m sitting in a chair now. I’m older, and I’m really grateful that we don’t emphasize perfect posture all the time from the very beginning. I know many traditions emphasize perfect posture all the time from the very beginning, and I wouldn’t have lasted in that tradition.
So, our goal is to have more and more perfect posture, but really, as long as your back is straight and you can put your shoulders back a little and your neck in, it’s more about your mind.
And then allow doing prostrations and doing exercises and flexibility to build a more perfect posture.
I think the Tibetan system, honestly, is so kind. They really help you see for yourself that you need to follow the instructions. For instance, saying well, you should wait until your mind is fairly stable before you do mahāmudrā.
They don’t hide mahāmudrā. They don’t say you can’t do mahāmudrā, and you find out for yourself if you’re impatient that, actually, you have too distracted a mind and it doesn’t progress until you stabilize your mind.
But there isn’t a rigidity because we’re trying to set up a state of mind that is relaxed and free, and we want the process to lead towards that. And we see for ourselves that, oh yes, we have to strengthen our bodies and we have to strengthen our posture and strengthen our capacity to focus.
It’s like the quotes, and it’s also very much like the exercises. There is very little direct instruction given; it’s more experiential. So, there isn’t a programming of what you’re supposed to think or feel.
You do the practice, notice over time there are shifts and changes and sensitivities that you understand. And the quotes are in almost all of the books on Buddhism. It’s just that with each stage of meditation, we understand a deeper nuance of the quote and it makes more sense to us.
Chis-tu: Okay, Nguyen Son Doan, please open your microphone.
Student: I would like to ask about the order of meditation on the breath. Like the first breath, the second, the third, and the fourth. So, can we mix them? Can we mix them up or we have to follow like one, two, three, four and then come back to one, two, three, four?
Khenmo: No, you can mix them. The first two are very similar and when your mind is very agitated, they’re a more narrow concentration. And you can even use other forms of concentration.
On the first night, I introduced putting your hands on the belly and then feeling your belly going in and out. So, what you see happens in those first four breaths is, first, there is a narrow concentration, and then it is more nebulous to visualize the whole body or to do a body scan. Then, the fourth one is an even breath without an object of focus.
So, it is good to quickly go through them. In the Tibetan tradition, when we are learning śamatha using a rock and a different kind of progression, the thought is that you always go through the whole progression, even if it is very brief. It is like a musician playing their scales.
But then, when you see where the area is that I need to work on today, then go right to that area and stay as long as you like.
They are all good methods. When you are doing one method, do that method completely. When you are doing another method, do that method completely.
So, if you look at how much of it has to do with concentration and how we need to stabilize our mind, that is the purpose of the first series of breathing exercises. And then, when we have a finely developed concentration, we start to see within our own humanness what the patterns are that are disturbing our mind, and we address those.
All of the systems are wonderful. Lord Jigten Sumgon felt that every path should be a complete path. I think this system is very helpful because it really has an openness to exploring so many different aspects. But they are all wonderful.
One of my friends, one of the monks that I met when I was first studying Buddhism, had someone ask him, “Why Green Tara? Why not Red Tara? Why not Black Tara?” And he said, “Well, it is like going shopping. Some people go into the store and they like blue shirts. Some people go into the store and they like red shirts.”
We have all this vast array of teachings.
What His Holiness is doing is he is saying, “Okay, when I look at all of the wonderful practitioners and all of the practices we have given, have people developed enough concentration that they can accomplish the practices? And when I look at all this array of practices and all of the suffering people and the complexity of this time we live in, what would be a pith instruction that all Buddhists could use and that would be accessible to all different kinds of practitioners?”
So, he actually said that if you are practicing another practice and you love it and are benefiting from it, do not feel you have to change. But this is a really good practice to start with, and it gives really good, solid meditation training that you can then bring to any practice.
When you find joy in a practice and when you start learning so much about how your mind works, then you want to practice more. Your discipline gets stronger and stronger, and you benefit.
Over a long practice life, there may be whole decades that you devote to one practice or another practice because that is where you are learning the most. Or, in consultation with a teacher, they can see that you would be helped with this particular practice.
So, we want to be open and flexible and not jump around a lot, but really see how to concentrate and what in our particular psychological makeup is hindering our concentration. We really work with that so that then all practices are open to us.
I visited Thich Nhat Hanh’s Blue Mountain Monastery recently, and I have been to the monastery in California. I think one of the wonderful things about this era is being able to meet some of the great Buddhas of our time. I found it just so touching that His Holiness found the translation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary and used that as part of his teaching with great respect.
Chis-tu: So, we have one more quick question.
Student: The question is about the concept of sixteen breaths. Can we understand it literally as exactly sixteen breaths where we count each one? Like, breath one: inhale and exhale is one breath, and we observe something.
Breath two: we observe something else. Or is it just symbolic? For example, can we practice the first breath of breathing in long and breathing out long until we feel we have it, which might be ten breaths or twenty breaths?
Khenmo: No, it is simpler than that, but it is noticing long or short. So, it is being very specific. It is not being elaborate in terms of the breath going out three feet, or it tickling my nose, or whatever.
It is more about how to develop concentration by being specific: this is a short breath or a long breath, and not creating more thoughts about it.
It is such an interesting practice, I find, because it has to do with our state of mind at the time. So, we might say, “I am breathing in, experiencing irritation. I am breathing in, experiencing anger. I am breathing in, experiencing jealousy.”
What is the feeling tone at the moment of your particular mental state? So, instead of having the mental state become a bigger and bigger story about why you are right and everyone else is wrong, it is more, “Okay, I breathe in, I notice that I am in this mental state, and I breathe out, and I notice I am in this mental state.” That is a skillful method of tranquilizing that mental state.
So, each of the breaths are definitely instructions, but they are quite flexible instructions. I hope that is clear. Or, they are personal instructions.
And they are extremely skillful practical instructions. So, I am breathing in the mental formation of any feeling tone, and then for the next breath, I am tranquilizing that. So, it is giving instruction. The more you work with it, the more comfortable you are with going back and forth, depending on what your internal mental state is on any given day.
Translator: So, for the sixteen breaths, we do not practice them all, right? We just try to maintain mindfulness. Is this the point?
Khenmo: The point is, it progresses as you progress. So, as your mind becomes more stable and concentrated, then where you spend the most time might be in a different section.
I would say it sets up really good habits of meditation. It is like the example I gave of the musician having scales. So, it is like having those scales, and then there might be a particular experience of mind—whether it is working with emotions or working with the mahāmudrā investigation—that is the particular area you are investigating at this moment.
So, how you are studying and how you are working with your mind is personal, but it can fit into this flexible framework.
Chis-tu: Okay, it is very clear for me. Thank you very much, Khenmo. Thank you, Cheng-yen.
Khenmo: Okay, we will finish these questions with a dedication. It is getting late. So, really, thank you for all your questions. I hope you come to the retreats, and usually after the retreat, we have a discussion period as well. We have found it very fruitful and beneficial.
bodhicitta, the excellent and precious mind, where it is unborn, may it arise. Where it is born, may it not decline, but ever increase higher and higher.
I pray that the Lama may have good health. I pray that the Lama may have a long life. I pray that your Dharma activities spread far and wide. I pray that I may not be separated from you.
As Mañjuśrī, the warrior, realized the ultimate state, and as did Samantabhadra, I will follow in their path and fully dedicate all the merit for all sentient beings.
May the life of the Lama and the glory of the teachings be firm. May the world be filled with holders of the teachings. May the abundant strength of the teachings’ patrons increase, and may all be auspicious so the teachings remain for ages to come.
So, since this is the conclusion, even though His Holiness did not put his long-life prayer in the prayer book because he was trying to make it a more universal Buddhism practice, we have to conclude.
Embodiment of the three precious jewels, Padmapāṇi, who holds the teachings of the Victorious One, seeing the all-goodness meaning with the wisdom eye, may you whose activities are spontaneously established live long for hundreds of kalpas.
No problem. We wish all his activities succeed, and that all his visions arise. We are so grateful for everything he has done to establish the lineage in this unstable era for the future, and for us in the present.
Chis-tu: On behalf of the organizers and all Vietnamese students and all the Sanghas, I would like to thank you so much for your very precious teaching. We are very honored to organize and associate with your Sangha, Vajra Dakini Nunnery, to organize this teaching. I would like to say something to everyone here.
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for this teaching. Dear Dharma brothers and sisters, Buddha said that giving is good. Even when one has a little, giving is good. An offering given from a little one is worth a thousand times its value.
So, this is the Dharma. We do not pay for Dharma, but we should make offerings for the Dharma. That means we offer dāna. Khenmo said that is a Pali word, and dāna means offering, generosity, giving, or a gift.
So, why do we have to offer dāna? Because we understand how precious the Dharma is and how much benefit the Dharma gives us to help us in this life. That is why we need to offer dāna to support our teachers and dedicate it to all beings. So, thank you so much. We hope that you will make an offering for our precious guru teachers and to support the Dharma activities. Thank you so much.