The Purpose of Meditation

From: Awakening from Belief 1
Full Transcript (available soon)
Audioclip (available soon)

Ken: The purpose of meditation, or one way to regard meditation, is building a capacity of attention. I don't know whether you've had it explained that way to you before, but you're building a capacity of attention. Why is it important to have a capacity of attention? Well, arguably, a reasonable translation of the term samadhi, which I imagine some of you have heard, is attention.

Now, those of you who are familiar with such esoteric teachings as the five paths, and the ten stages, and all of that stuff, may recall that at the end of the tenth stage the bodhisattva enters vajra-like or diamond-like samadhi and becomes enlightened or awakened--becomes buddha. Let's put this into English. The fundamental effort in Buddhist practice is to develop a sufficient capacity in attention so that you can experience your own non-existence.

Student: Could you repeat that?

Ken: That's fine. The essence of Buddhist practice is to develop sufficient capacity in attention so that you can experience your own non-existence. That's exactly what Buddha did under the bodhi tree. Such a relief--don't have to be anybody. It's a little counter-intuitive.

So, all forms of mediation practice--and it doesn't matter what--they're developing attention. Sometimes they develop attention very directly, as shamatha does. Sometimes they're getting rid of the blocks in the way of developing attention--things like death and impermanence. Many of the purification practices in the Vajrayana, sometimes they're developing energy, which you're going to use to power attention. Guru yoga is an example of that, loving kindness, compassion are examples of that. And there are also esoteric methods of developing states of attention, states of energy--but it's all about developing attention so you can actually experience what is.

Note:  Click here to read about the Awakening From Belief retreat

On samadhi

From: Eightfold Path 2
Full transcript
Audioclip

The Sanskrit word, samadhi, is a very difficult word to translate. And it has actually a wide range of meanings, but in this context the meaning is actually fairly precise. With some reservations I use the word absorption. I haven’t found anything better yet. There are lots of problems with that word but samadhi is active attention and it is composed or comprised of the union of stability and clarity. In just the resting mind there are those two aspects of the mindfulness and awareness and they come together to form active attention. But then that evolves into the stability or the resting quality and then the insight quality which is basic clarity quality. So when those two come together then you’re experiencing absorption or samadhi.

And the way that I’ve find very helpful in regarding this from the mahamudra perspective, it’s from a book called, Clarifying the Natural State. As you develop the ability to rest you naturally find that you begin to look at experience. So the way that you deepen the resting is to start looking in the resting. Now as soon as you start looking it brings an active quality into the attention which tends to destabilize the resting.

So by working at this and being sensitive to the balance, you’re not only able to look in the resting but rest in the looking. And that’s the two-liner that I find very helpful. Rest in the looking and look in the resting. Those two lines will take you a very, very long way in your meditation practice. The key thing here is to be sensitive to imbalance. When you are just resting the mind tends to grow a bit dull. When there is too much emphasis on the looking, the resting quality destabilizes.

People talk about balance. I find it’s much more useful to talk about imbalance. Because when things are in balance, we don’t experience anything, we are just there. Chuang-Tzu says, When the shoe fits you forget the feet. When the belt fits you forget the waist.

In terms of developing our skill and abilities in meditation practice, rather than trying to maintain balance become adept at detecting imbalance. And so this involves being in touch with your body, in touch with emotions, in touch with quality of attention and as imbalances arise you can quietly correct them. And there’s constant period of adjustment but the net result is that the quality of attention becomes progressively deeper and more stable. That’s the way I found most useful and most effective for working with this last one. So you are bringing attention to the quality of your attention, if you wish.

Note: Another commentary on samadhi: A Trackless Path II 5

We can come to see how things are through our own efforts

More inspiration from class 36, Then and Now!

The Joyful One (from TAN36: Then and Now (class) 00:08:33.06 - 00:11:21.05)

(download into iTunes)

The first stage of bodhisattvahood arises at the path of seeing, if you remember that from the five paths, last time. And this refers to seeing the nature of experience--which is of course emptiness--and knowing that to be how things are.

In a lot of respects, this is where practice actually begins. Which may sound completely deflating because--I mean, "I have to get that far before I’ve even got to the beginning?" And in my opinion it’s very questionable, or it's a very interesting question to consider: what does this actually refer to in terms of our own experience?

These descriptions make it sound very lofty, as do the descriptions of the five paths, where in order to attain this you have to have twenty-four hour stable samadhi or stable attention. Which seems pretty far out there. Not too many human beings ever get to that stage. So, are we relegated to sitting--being like the person who is just looking in the window and seeing all of these wonderful things that we can never know? Or is there something else going on here, where we can actually relate to this?

And my own view which is not, probably, not a traditional view, is that this is very attainable. That is, we can come to see how things are through, through our own efforts. And when we do that, everything changes; we can’t go back to our ordinary way of living. And often a tremendous joy that comes with this, because now that we know that whatever state of mind arises, whether it’s peace or disturbance, it is simply a state of mind. It has no ground, it's not a thing in itself. And so we know the freedom in everything that we experience. And that’s why it is called The Joyful One

The full audiofile of this class and the other classes in this series can be accessed HERE.