The
Natural State Vs. Concentration Practices
-Making
Sense of It All
Ben:
One thing I've always had trouble wrapping my mind around in
terms of Pemako's practice teachings is the reduced emphasis on
concentration meditation. Techniques of gently focusing and resting
the attention on the breath or a mantra or the space between
eyebrows. These techniques were essential in the first five years of
my practice. Awakening experiences, stabilizations, karmic
purifications, all of these benefits arose from my concentration
meditation practice.
For
me, my meditation practice afforded me a stability, peacefulness,
and a focus that made my subsequent tantric practice possible.
Then
recently I had been listening to a Lion Faced Guru Podcast episode
and something Kim Rinpoche said struck me. I have been contemplating
it with a kind of marvel since then. To paraphrase him, he said: The
tantric teachings of the Pemako lineage substitute the stability from shamatha with the stability of
awakening and the natural state.
From
a yoga advaita perspective, any stability mistakenly attributed to
the ego self is really the misperceived stability of the Self. From
the Pemako teaching standpoint, any stability found through
concentration practices is not separate from the stability inherent
to the natural state. Awakening to and stabilization of the natural
state can therefore replace many years of meditation practice.
It
was nice to have that discrepancy resolved in such an emphatic way.
Kim:
Hi Dr. Ben. How have you been?
We
do do mantra repetition in gentle manner (don't we?) and it is very
important. Though this has changed lately, I churned mantras day and
night for years and years, and had "stabilizations, karmic
purifications, all of these benefits". Especially guru mantras
have a strong pacifying effect but this pacification does not lead to
momentarily silenced mind but to gradual recognition of the natural
state.
I've
talked about the problems of shamatha meditation so much that I think
people here are sick of hearing it, ha, but I can't relate to when
you say, "stability, peacefulness, and focus". Sure, I
developed a lazer like focus but at the same time, even when the mind
was quiet, I felt like I was on a ego trip. I didn't feel good or
natural at all. I had done lots of drinking in my previous years and
shamatha felt similar to that in the sense of bypassing issues and
not having real sobriety! That didn't begin to change until I was
able to cut through all layers of the mind with tantric practices.
During my purification practice I went back to trying shamatha every
now and then but it felt as weird as it did in the beginning. The
ultimate meaning of shamatha/shi-ne is the natural state. Because it
is possible to skip gentle concentration practices that not only are
unable to reveal the natural state (because it doesn't cut through
the formless mind, the substrate) and are also so time consuming, why
not go directly to the bedrock, the ground (bhumi) beyond
instability.
>To paraphrase him, he said: The
tantric teachings of the Pemako lineage substitute the stability from shamatha with the stability of
awakening and the natural state.
- My
question is: Why would you spend so much time on gentle concentration
practices when it doesn't lead to the recognition of the basic state?
Because Shakyamuni is said to have practiced meditative absorptions
that he learned from his hindu teacher after he is said to have
attained full enlightenment, is probably the reason why there is
still lots of confusion about this whole one-pointed
concentration/samadhi/jhana/dhyana thing. This in turn makes
buddhists unable to see the mistake that golden chains are still
chains, whether they are made of negative destructive emotions or
subtle states of meditation. I find it extremely weird how most in
this religion that is considered a wisdom tradition, make such a
drastic mistake. I recall Tenzin Palmo contemplating this aloud in an
interview, saying that even Shakyamuni Buddha couldn't help people
get awakened. One thing is the ancient influence of hindu meditations
and another is the lack of practices that directly generate
awakening. There are not many of those but there are some, like the
2PF. Then on the other hand when people think of buddhist
practitioners they think of smiling peaceful monks with shaved heads
who sit in silent meditation. There has been systematic propaganda of
monasticism going on for thousands of years, and now everyone is
paying a high price for it because it has such a strong impact on the
whole world, wherever buddhism is taught. Buddhism has had 2.5
thousand years to make a difference ad it hasn't even reached step
one that you could say that the people of the world can trust the
buddhist teaching, that it will help them to remove their self-based
suffering, here's how it all works, here's how it is done. Incredibly
painful.
Tenzin
Palmo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKoIK6pQMzY
Back
to concentration practices.
I
learned everything from the dynamicity of concentration from a
Chinese martial art called yiquan, or yi chuan, lit. intention
boxing. See this video.
I had done gentle concentration for years in meditation and then,
through the three types of intention taught in yiquan, realised that
intention can be kept at low volume, which is what is done in
shamatha meditation for extended periods of time, but it can also be
taken to higher volumes. In yiquan, there is shi li, which means to
momentarily increase the intensity of focus, and there is fa li,
which is sudden explosive intention or maximum intention in the form
of explosion. Now, all of these are different expressions of
concentration or intention but the outcome is very different. If we
look at this from the perspective of yogic practice, the former leads
to mental quiet and ability to focus on one thing, while the latter
has the power to shatter the whole construction of the mind, and
through doing so reveals that part of the mind that isn't affected or
spoiled by self-based beliefs or notions. Yasutani Roshi, Japanese
zen master, in his talk about just sitting or shikan taza said that
one needs to sit in such an intense way that if someone touches you,
sparks will fly. I think he was describing shi li sitting which if
done for longer periods is exhausting because you use your vital
energy to keep up that heightened intensity. This also misses the
point of recognition of the basic state. Explosive type of
concentration or shamatha has the power to cut through the whole
self-construction to make the original nature appear. This original
nature is nothing else than oneself as a buddha, or mahasiddha
grounds, bhumis.
Buddhist
tradition started with the first awakening experience that Shakyamuni
had, that he didn't get from subtle states of meditation. These
meditative states neither removed his existential dissatisfaction.
So
what we do in Pemako is to put the horse in front of the cart, rather
than behind it, and drive like a horse cart should be driven. What we
have here is the absence of false or misleading ideas that take
practitioners to subtle but strange places that they believe is the
true teaching.
As
far as I am concerned, the only practice in yoga is to recognise
one's basic nature that is fresh, clear, sober, settled and devoid of
self-based marks or habits. To me there is no other buddhist dharma
practice except to recognise it and to unify our psyche with it,
meaning to see the emptiness of all mind phenomena. What is a sign of
proper emptiness practice? Awakenings! Bhumi openings! Bhumi
perfections!
There
is no other solution to suffering and confusion of the unnatural
state, than the natural state, and that has nothing to do with being
focused or distracted, being in meditation or not.
