Morelia, Mexico, May 30, 2000
Lightly edited course transcript
Preliminaries
I like to begin classes with a set of preliminaries. These are various methods to help us quiet down and get into an appropriate state of mind for meditating or listening to teachings. In order to be able to get into something fully we need to enter into it slowly and appropriately. That is purpose of preliminaries.
There are many different ways to get into a state of mind conducive for meditating or for listening. I usually follow just one of many possibilities. This method starts with counting the breath. When we are very distracted emotionally or mentally, from our work, from traveling here or whatever, it is very important to first quiet down into a neutral state. This helps us to relax. The way that we do this is to breathe normally through the nose, which means not too quickly, not too slowly, not too deeply and not too shallowly. The cycle is to first breathe out, then allow a slight pause and, because we have made a slight pause, we naturally breathe in more deeply. That is a much more relaxed way of breathing deeply than consciously taking a deep breath. As we breathe back in, we count it as one in our minds.
Then, without holding the breath we breathe out. We repeat this cycle eleven times and then repeat the count of eleven two or three times, depending on our speed. The numbers don't really matter. We can count up to any number. We do not need to get superstitious about it. The point is to occupy the verbal energy of our mind with something so that we are not thinking something else while focusing on the breath. Let us do that please.
Once we have quieted down, we try to get our energies, our mind and emotions, going in a positive way. We do this by affirming our motivation. Why we are here? What do we want to gain or to accomplish by being here, or by meditating? We are here to learn more methods to apply to ourselves personally to help us in our lives. We are not just coming for entertainment or amusement or for intellectual knowledge. We are here to learn something practical. It is the same thing when meditating. It is not just for relaxation or a hobby or sport. We meditate to try to help ourselves to develop beneficial habits for use in our lives. We don't do it to please our teacher. We are doing it because we are convinced that it is beneficial. We want to listen to something practical because we would like to be able to deal with difficulties in our lives more skillfully, and not just make our lives a little bit better, but eventually go all the way and get free of all the difficulties we have. We would like to learn methods that will help us to become Buddhas so that we can really be of best help to everyone.
When we reaffirm our motivation, not only do we look at what we are doing here at a teaching, but it is important also to look at the final aim. Although we may aim for liberation and enlightenment it is not going to happen overnight and miracles normally do not happen. Dharma is not magic. We are not going to learn magic means that will suddenly free us from all our suffering. It is not that we learn some methods and day-by-day it is going to get better and better. We need to be realistic. Realistically speaking, as we know from our own life experience, the moods and events in our lives go up and down, and they will continue to go up and down. We can hope that things will get better in the long run; but from day to day, we are going to have difficult moments. It is not that all of a sudden we will never get upset again. If we approach learning Dharma methods and in practicing them in meditation and in daily life in a realistic, down to earth way, we will not get discouraged. Even when really difficult things come up in life and even if we still get upset we are not thrown off course. This is our motivation. This is our aim. This is our understanding of what we can gain from coming to teachings and meditating and practicing.
It is important to remind ourselves of this by reviewing and thinking about it. Let's say we are very upset before a meditation session. Instead of taking refuge in food, friends, sex, television or beer we take refuge in the Dharma and meditate to help us get over being upset. Even in that situation we need to be very careful not to expect that it will be like taking a shot of heroin, as if we could sit and meditate and feel high and joyous and all of our problems would be gone. If that does happen, be suspicious. If we do the meditation properly, sure we may feel better. But it might not make us feel a hundred percent better. Unless we are super-advanced, the unpleasant mood will likely come back. As I often repeat, "What do you expect from samsara?"
When we reaffirm our motivation we say, "Okay, I am going to do this because it will help me. I will try to apply these things properly to help me get free from this difficulty that I experience and to eventually be of help to others." Whether we feel better a half hour from now or not is not the point. That is not our main focus. We are going in a certain direction in life and this is what we are doing to go further in that direction. The direction is refuge. Each time we listen to teachings or meditate, we take another step in that direction. We keep going, despite the ups and downs. That is realistic. Let us reaffirm that for a moment.
Then we make the conscious decision to meditate with concentration. This means thatif our attention wanders we will bring it back, if we get sleepy we will try to wake ourselves up. To help our minds to be clearer we sit up straight and to help our minds be clearer we can use the visualization of a camera coming into focus.
Then there is a fine adjustment that we can make. First, we try to lift the energies in our body if we are feeling a bit heavy and our energies are too low. For this, we focus on the point between our eyebrows with our eyes looking upwards but our heads staying level.
Then to ground our energies if they are running a bit wild in our bodies and we are bit stressed, we focus on the navel with our eyes looking downwards but our heads staying level. We breathe in normally and hold our breath until we need to breathe out.
Introduction
This evening I have been asked to speak about another aspect of preliminaries, namely the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma. Specifically, the four thoughts are:
1. thinking about appreciating the precious human life,
2. thinking about death and impermanence, that the opportunities that we have now with this precious existence are not going to last,
3. thinking about the laws of karma and cause and effect, in other words how our behavior affects what we experience,
4. thinking about the disadvantages of samsara, of uncontrollably recurring rebirth.
If we appreciate the opportunities that we have now with this precious human life and if we recognize and acknowledge the fact that this life is not going to last and that we are going to die sometime, if we recognize that our behavior is going to shape our experience in this life and also after we die in future lives, and if we realize that no matter what we experience in the future, because it will arise from behaving from confusion, will have a lot of difficulties and troubles, then we will turn our minds to the Dharma.
The Safe Direction of Refuge
What does it mean to turn our minds to the Dharma? It basically means taking refuge. It is quite clear that taking refuge is not something that you do after walking into a Dharma center for the first time. It is not to join a social club or a Dharma center. Taking refuge is something quite advanced and requires an appropriate state of mind. I find that the term "taking refuge" is inadequate and gives a misleading impression. In our languages, it implies something passive – that we go a more powerful person or being and say save me, protect me and we are protected. Then we don't have to do so much from our side. This is not what Buddhism is talking about. Rather, what we are talking about is putting an active, safe, positive direction in our life. That is why I call it taking safe direction. We need to have these four attitudes or understandings before we can put this direction in our life with sincere conviction. This implies that we need to have some idea of what this direction is.
What is this direction? It is Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the Three Jewels. What in the world does that mean? We often look at this in a very elementary way. We think of the Dharma as the teachings, the Buddha as the one who actually gave these teachings both verbally and in terms of his own realizations, and the Sangha refers to something like the congregation of a Buddhist church or Dharma center. That is not what Sangha means. We are talking about very advanced practitioners who already have straightforward perception of reality and are already well on the way to becoming liberated or enlightened. Even if we say, "I am going in the direction of the Dharma teachings as the Buddha taught them and as great practitioners are realizing them," this type of elementary understanding of the Three Jewels is not a very stable basis for putting this direction in our life.
What is the basis for being convinced that this is a positive direction? We need a slightly more sophisticated understanding of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The more sophisticated our understanding, the firmer our direction will be. This means that this whole topic of refuge is not something that we ought to trivialize. "I did that in the beginning when I first came to the center and now I have a red string to wear around my neck." It is a topic that we need to work on and deepen as we go further along the path. The deeper this direction in our lives is, the more stable we are on the spiritual path.
The actual direction is indicated by the Dharma Jewel, which must be understood within the context of the four noble truths. These are the four facts that any person who sees reality – a highly realized being – would see as true. They are called "noble" because that is how some people translate the Sanskrit word arya. When we see reality directly, we see these four facts. The first fact is the difficulties in life – what are they really? Then we see the real causes of these difficulties. Then we see the stopping of the difficulties in life and their causes. Then we see that there is a pathway of mind, in other words a way of understanding, that will bring about that understanding of reality by removing the main cause of the problems: confusion. When we get rid of the cause of our problems, confusion, we get rid of the problems.
True direction is indicated by the third and fourth noble truths. That is the actual Dharma refuge. Without leaving it as jargon, what we are actually aiming at is this state in which all problems and their causes are removed in such a way that they never come back again, as well as the state of mind that not only brings that about but that results from this. When all difficulties and shortcomings are removed, we have a state of mind in which we are able to use all of our abilities.
What is our Dharma direction? It is the state of liberation and the state of enlightenment. Liberation is a state in which all of our suffering and its causes are finished. Enlightenment is a state in which we are able to help others as much as is possible and where the things that prevent us from being able to do that are removed forever. Buddhas are those who have achieved both of these fully and who have shown us how to do it. They have shown us how to do it in terms of their realizations as well as by giving step-by-step instructions. The Sangha are those who have achieved at least some liberation from some of the problems and their causes and are working further, so they are already incredibly advanced.
The Gateway to the Dharma
In order to be able to turn our minds and energies toward liberation and enlightenment, we have to know two things. We have to know what liberation and enlightenment actually mean. They are not just nice words. And, secondly, we need conviction that it really is possible to achieve these. If we are not convinced that it is possible to gain liberation and enlightenment, why would we want to work toward achieving them? How do we gain this conviction? What are the steps that will lead us toward this?
One great Sakya master, Sonam-tsemo, wrote a very helpful text called The Gateway to the Dharma. He addressed this very question. He said we need three things. First, we need to recognize and acknowledge the suffering and difficulties in our lives. In other words, we have to really look at ourselves honestly and evaluate what is going on in our lives. The second is having a very sincere wish to get out of this suffering, not just to "make the best of it," but really wanting to get out of this. The third thing is some knowledge of the Dharma so that we have some conviction that the Dharma is going to show us a way out. That conviction is not just based on the nice words of some charismatic person. We have to have some actual knowledge and understanding of the Dharma and of how it leads us out of suffering.
What is the way out? It is gaining liberation and gaining enlightenment. The Dharma shows us how to do this based on the first noble truth, that of suffering. That is what Sonam-tsemo said we have to start with, recognizing the problems. And there is a cause for those problems. They are coming from somewhere. To achieve an elimination of the cause of our problems, the third noble truth, we have to have a path of understanding; and that is the fourth noble truth, which gets rid of confusion.
It is not at all easy to gain conviction that it is possible to remove the causes of our difficulties. We need to persevere and work on it. We must try to understand what this is talking about. We can start to work with this in a logical way. We experience life now with confusion. For example, we imagine that we are the most important person in the world and the center of the universe. Based on that, we always feel we have to have our way and we become very greedy and pushy. We are the most important one, so everybody has to pay attention to us and love us. If people don't pay attention to us and don't love us, then we get very angry.
We may be loveable but that does not mean that the whole world needs to recognize it! With confusion, we think everyone should recognize it. Or we go the other way and think that if people don't love us or pay attention to us something must be wrong with us and we are no good and then we have low self-esteem. In either case, we suffer. We have mental anguish and it is all coming from the confusion that we are the center of the universe and everything should go the way that we want it to.
Buddha said that it is possible to get rid of all of the misery that we experience by getting rid of this attitude of confusion that causes it. What will get rid of the confusion? Understanding. If we understand how we and everyone in the world exists, we won't be confused about it. We cannot have both confusion and understanding in one moment of mind. Understanding is the exact opponent to confusion. Since we cannot have both at the same time, which is going to win? If we examine confusion, the more closely we examine, we see that it really does not stand up to analysis. Am I really the center of the universe? Well, no, because everyone else thinks that they are the center of the universe. On the other hand, if we examine understanding, it does hold up. No one is the center of the universe. What that means is that no one is more important than everyone else. Nobody is the center of everyone else's attention and loved by all. The more we examine this, the more we see that it makes sense. It is not only true based on logic, but also from experience and from seeing how life works.
Because understanding can be verified and confusion falls apart when we examine it, not only can understanding replace confusion temporarily, but it can get rid of it forever. When we understand that there is no center of the universe, we know that not everyone will pay attention to us and love us. Not everyone loved and paid attention to Buddha, so why to us? The result of this analysis is that we don't get upset. It doesn't matter if people don't pay attention to us. What do we expect from samsara? Because we are not upset, we are able to deal with each person in a way that is warm, loving, understanding and so on, without being worried about whether they will listen to us or like us. We try our best. In this way, we work on an initial level to become more convinced that liberation and enlightenment actually are possible. Then we are not crazy for working in the direction of achieving liberation and enlightenment.
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