THE FIFTH PERFECTION is the perfection of concentration, which is dhyana in Sanskrit and samten in Tibetan. On the path to enlightenment, this is seen as calm abiding conjoined with the penetrative insight that is the wisdom of understanding emptiness.
Calm abiding, which is shamatha in Sanskrit or shiné in Tibetan, refers to the ability to abide steadily on an object of meditation for an extended period of time without any distractions.
Single-pointed concentration, which is samadhi in Sanskrit or tingédzin in Tibetan, refers to the deep meditative absorption free from discursive thought. There are two types of meditation: single-pointed or fixed meditation, and analytical meditation. Except for single-pointed meditation, all the other meditations we do within the lamrim — meditations on our precious human rebirth, bodhichitta, and so forth — are analytical, where we analyze the subject through logic and scriptural sources.
Within analytical meditation, however, there should also be single-pointed meditation. For instance, say we are meditating on the perfect human rebirth and at the end of the analysis the thought strongly arises of how incredibly precious this life is. If that happens, we should place our mind on that feeling as long as we can. Holding the mind on that experience means that the next time we meditate on that subject it will be stronger and there will be a greater possibility of actually attaining a realization.
To avert and then destroy our delusions, we need to study what the Buddha taught about them. Analytical and fixed meditations together give us the power and focus to really investigate as well as the understanding to take our analysis to its most profound level. There is no need for faith or anything else at all; it is pure rational analysis, and yet, used in the right way, it can lead us all the way to enlightenment. This is unbelievable! This is mind-blowing!
We realize emptiness by conjoining a calm-abiding meditation with a deep analysis of emptiness, called “special insight” or vipashyana, in Tibetan, lhaktong. The texts explain that we first have a realization of calm abiding; we are able to concentrate single-pointedly, totally free from attachment–scattering thought, which is göpa in Tibetan, and sinking thought or dullness, which is jingwa in Tibetan. Only when we are totally free from these subtle obstacles can we concentrate single-pointedly.
I use the term attachment–scattering thought to differentiate it from just scattering thought, which is towa in Tibetan. When we are focused on an object of meditation and our mind wanders to another object — either a nonvirtuous one, such as the desire for food, or even a virtuous one, such as thinking of the Buddha — that is towa. When the mind stays in meditation but moves from the object we should be concentrating on to another object of meditation, such as from a visualization of Tara84 to another deity, then that is göpa. Although it might still be a strong, focused meditation, it is considered attachment–scattering thought and an obstacle to our meditation.
We all have scattering and sinking thoughts when we try to meditate, but these distractions are very gross compared with the very subtle ones we must overcome to attain shamatha. Currently, under the control of attachment and other disturbing thoughts, concentration is impossible. It’s like our mind is fragmented, like a rock that has been shattered into tiny shards, or like chopped meat. We are unable to visualize clearly, maybe not even able to recite the opening prayers properly. Doing a visualization becomes like trying to cross over a huge mountain; no matter how hard we work, it is incredibly difficult. This can easily cause us to become tense and lead to lung, wind disease, which can bring physical pain in our heart, paranoia, and even insanity.
The texts talk of various levels of subtlety of sinking and scattering thoughts. The gross sinking mind is also called the foggy mind, mukpa, in Tibetan. It refers to a mind that has no clarity at all, like dark, foggy weather. Our mind is sluggish and sleepy, and often we do actually fall asleep. With the sinking thought, on the other hand, we can hold the object but not clearly, and with the subtle sinking thought we can hold the object clearly — very clearly — but the way of apprehending the object is weak; there is no energy. Because of this lack of intensity, this is considered an imperfect meditation.
There are eight remedies85 we use to overcome these obstacles, gradually moving through the nine levels of concentration until we achieve calm abiding. We will only be completely free from attachment–scattering thought and sinking thought upon reaching the ninth level of calm abiding.
Within an experience of calm abiding we can generate a realization of emptiness from the analytical meditations on emptiness we have done, which induces an ecstasy of body and mind. This whole experience is what is called the union of calm abiding and special insight.
Through developing concentration, we can attain great powers. As we progress through the nine levels of concentration, we experience greater and greater degrees of bliss, free from all distraction and sinking thought. However, that is not the ultimate reason for developing single-pointed concentration. We need to use that concentration to have the power to penetrate the subjects of the lamrim and especially the ultimate nature of reality. As it gets more familiar with the path, our mind actually becomes the path.
At present, our concentration is incredibly weak and our understanding is incredibly shallow. Any subject we study is blurred by lack of insight and warped by our deluded thinking, and when we try to meditate on it, our meditation can rarely go to any depth because of our lack of concentration. But this will change. Our progress will probably not be quick, but it will be definite if we keep at it. For now, we will slip off the object of our meditation and spend many wasted hours dreaming rather than meditating, but we will improve, finally getting to the stage where we can concentrate for hours without distraction.
Even now, we can use awareness, introspection, to check whether our mind is concentrated or not. In meditation or even just in our daily activities, we can keep a small part of our mind as a spy, checking what emotions are arising and why, checking how we are using our mind and whether what we are doing is beneficial.
CONCENTRATION ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH
Many traditions have a practice of concentration; it is not just a Buddhist teaching. For instance, the Hindu religion places great emphasis on samadhi meditations, and there are many practitioners who are able to gain the realization of samadhi through them. However, just having control of the mind — being able to focus on an object without sluggishness or distraction — is not the penetrative insight or vipashyana that realizes the true nature of things.
Concentration is not specifically a practice of a higher capable being. Even with the middle capable being, the three higher trainings needed to free ourselves from samsara are morality, concentration, and wisdom. In the lamrim texts such as Lamrim Chenmo, however, the six perfections, including concentration,86 come after bodhichitta. The perfection of concentration becomes the cause for enlightenment when we practice calm abiding using emptiness as the object and bodhichitta as the basis. It can never become the cause of suffering.
With just the three higher trainings we could enter the Hinayana path, the path of individual liberation, and achieve freedom from samsara for ourselves, without focusing our efforts on the well-being of all others. When that happens, our mind sort of dissolves, like becoming intoxicated, and it remains concentrated on that sphere of peace and happiness for an incredibly long period, for many eons.
Arhats who have attained this everlasting happiness of self-liberation do not have the same degree of compassion for all sentient beings that bodhisattvas do. They do not have the sense of responsibility to help all sentient beings be free from suffering, to take the entire responsibility on themselves. Instead, they stay in that incredibly blissful state for millions of eons, unable to benefit other beings, until a buddha finally awakens them by giving them special signs and calling them to follow the Mahayana path in order to attain full enlightenment. The main aim of Mahayana is not to attain enlightenment but to free all other beings from all suffering, which is why we need to be enlightened and to develop all the skills that are needed for that. That is why we need shamatha and an understanding of emptiness, and why concentration comes after bodhichitta in the lamrim texts.
To attain calm abiding, we need many other factors such as perseverance, the fourth perfection. The mind of calm abiding does not come from its own side; we need to do a lot of hard work to get there. Without renouncing attachment to this life, without bearing the hardships needed to develop on the path to enlightenment, how can we hope to attain perfect concentration? To put a lot of effort into developing concentration for a little while, stop, and then try again some time later will not work. Only through perseverance can we hope to attain our goal.
We also need morality. Until we have perfect morality there will be disturbances that will block perfect concentration. In his Middle Length Lamrim,87 Lama Tsongkhapa used the analogy of studying a beautiful drawing on a wall using a butter lamp. The lamp needs to be not only bright but also unmoved by any wind. No matter how bright, a flickering light will not reveal the painting to us. Similarly, the wind of our delusions will cause the flame of concentration to flicker, to be unstable. When we have calmed our delusions, the flame of concentration can shine with complete stability, perfectly revealing the object of our meditation. This cannot happen while the mind is agitated due to lack of morality, distracted by sense objects.
When we hear about the nine levels of concentration and what they entail, moving through them might seem an impossible task, but we can definitely attain calm abiding if we have the base of morality. Then, as Lama Tsongkhapa said, we will be able to hold the mind as stable and firm as a mountain for as long as we want, without the slightest distraction. This is a very worthwhile goal.
Because intense concentration is impossible while the mind is clouded by delusions, we also need strong purification practices. There are many very logical, profound subjects in Buddhism we are currently unable to understand because of our obscured mind, but with purification our mind will become more focused and our understanding clearer. Many subjects that cannot even be imagined at present will become clear as we purify the mind. This requires time, patience, and perseverance.
For instance, of the six realms88 Buddhism talks about, because we can see the animal realm we accept the teachings on it, but the teachings on the hungry ghosts and the hell beings are more difficult to accept. We cannot see these realms and, because our understanding is limited, we probably currently find such teachings on them hard to believe. When our mind is sufficiently purified, we will be able to not only understand what these realms are but we will also be able to see them without the need to physically go to such places.
The reason we meditate on topics such as the lower realms now is to prepare our mind for when we can actually apprehend these things. We get a feeling for such topics and that makes our later meditations much more effective. Because their minds were completely purified of all duality, Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and the later great teachers gave explanations that came from their own experience. We cannot contradict them simply because we ourselves have not experienced such things.
In the lamrim, most of the meditations that come before shamatha are analytical. We can only gain realizations of the different lamrim topics by thoroughly investigating them in meditation. For instance, when we study the explanations of impermanence in the texts, we go from instinctively feeling that things are permanent to beginning to doubt that they are. Then, with further checking, their impermanence becomes a certainty. Without relying on analytical meditations, we cannot break our instinctive mistaken belief in permanence. Checking on the validity of the logical reasonings in the Dharma texts is so important. If we are going to transform our life through accepting these teachings as true, we need to discover their validity through our own analysis.
This is true even of worldly people doing worldly activities. Whenever we buy something, we first investigate it to see that it is worth it. Where it was made, what materials are used, how reliable it is — there are many considerations we carefully weigh before we renounce our money. And we make sure we renounce as little money as possible for the best possible product! We even do this for something that only lasts a day or two, such as vegetables, so why not for the lamrim topics in the Dharma? It is extremely foolish to blindly accept a philosophy we will use for our entire life without checking it thoroughly.
For instance, say that we are cheated in a business transaction. Somebody sells us a faulty product and we lose all our money because of it. That in itself does not cause us to create negative karma or bind us to wrong conceptions. On the other hand, when we don’t check which meditations are beneficial, we can meditate on an object that habituates us to wrong thinking, locking us into our ignorance. Then each time we meditate, rather than developing wisdom through our meditation, we close the door to wisdom and develop ignorance instead.
There are also many people who believe that any thought appearing during meditation is a distraction and a hindrance, and therefore analytical meditation is not really meditation. They think meditation means clearing the mind completely. Such a meditation on nothingness can never solve any problems; it can never stop suffering.
Concentration without Peace
We should also understand that when we develop strong concentration, we don’t necessarily automatically overcome our delusions. People who can concentrate for extended periods can still fight, argue, and abuse others and feel negative emotions such as greed, hatred, and pride.
It is said, “The unpeaceful mind can arise by meditating on the concentration of mental quietude.” Generally, meditating is supposed to give rise to a mind of peace, so what does the “unpeaceful mind” mean in this context? Mental quietude, shamatha, just means the quiet mind, free from sinking or scattering thoughts. To have such a mind does not mean we have freed ourselves from nonvirtuous thoughts. Like having a field of potatoes where the weeds have not been pulled out, if we try to do a shamatha meditation without uprooting the weeds of our delusions, thoughts of greed, anger, pride, and the like can still arise.
For example, despite going to a spot high in the mountains and spending years on shamatha meditations, we may still be plagued with problems of frustration, depression, partiality, and so forth, because of our root delusions.89 Even in isolation, we could still be attached to the comforts of this life, such as possessions, reputation, and the like. The foundation is the self-cherishing mind, and until it is uprooted from our mind all the other weeds of delusions that grow from it will be there, interfering with the crops of virtue we are trying to grow.
The unpeaceful mind does not manifest during a shamatha meditation because our disturbed negative emotions have been temporarily calmed rather than eliminated. While we still have attachment to this life’s comforts, however, negative minds will arise when we come out of meditation. Until we can remove the root of our delusions, it is extremely difficult to become a perfect meditator. In the second Stages of Meditation volume, the great Indian pandit Kamalashila said,
Cultivating just shamatha alone does not get rid of a practitioner’s obscurations; it only suppresses the afflictions for a while. Unless you have the light of wisdom, you do not destroy the dormant tendencies.90
On the other hand, when we have subdued our mind, even problems that arise in meditation can be used. It is said that with the subdued mind, even sickness, spirit harm, and human and nonhuman enemies become helpers. There are many techniques for transforming problems into the causes of happiness, where instead of letting them disturb us, we use them to help our Dharma practice.
The Ten Bhumis
Whether we work toward liberation or enlightenment, there are five stages we pass through called the five paths: the path of merit, the path of preparation, the path of seeing, the path of meditation, and the path of no more learning.
Within the Mahayana tradition, the first path, the path of merit, refers to the period when we work diligently accumulating merit — by listening to the Dharma, reflecting on the meaning, meditating, and so forth — in order to fully realize the teachings within the mindstream in the future. With the path of preparation, we gain greater insight into emptiness, but because we have yet to realize it directly, we are still an ordinary being. This is nonetheless a penetrative insight on emptiness, where the conceptual understanding of emptiness is conjoined with a very deep meditative experience.
Then, through the continual meditation on emptiness, our mind reaches the path of seeing, and we have a direct realization of emptiness. We become an arya being. We do not have to go through death again, and therefore we won’t have to experience rebirth, old age, sickness, and yet another death.
At this level, we are on the first of the ten bodhisattva levels, or bhumi in Sanskrit, that we will slowly progress through until enlightenment on the fifth path. With this first level, we are able to manifest in a hundred forms; we are able to experience a hundred universes with our psychic powers; we are able to see a hundred eons into the past and future; we are able to attain a hundred concentrations and able to travel to a hundred buddha fields91 in order to receive teachings from the buddhas there. With the hundred different bodies simultaneously manifesting, we are able to give teachings to sentient beings and ripen their minds. We abide in this state at this level for a hundred eons.
Only the first stage of the bodhisattva levels occurs on the third path. The others occur when we have reached the fourth path, the path of meditation. Here, our direct realization of emptiness becomes stabilized and continuous. On the second bodhisattva level, all the accomplishments we could do a hundredfold on the first level become a thousandfold, so we are able to transform into a thousand bodies, travel to a thousand buddha fields, and so forth. Then with each succeeding level this number multiplies, a thousand becoming hundreds of thousands, then millions up to unimaginable millions.
Even with the fourth path there are still very subtle residual defilements, and so during that time we work on destroying even these. When that happens, when we realize the tenth bodhisattva level, we enter the path of no more learning, which directly precedes the attainment of enlightenment.
DEVELOPING CONCENTRATION WITHIN A RETREAT
What is the importance of doing a retreat?92 It is not simply to be quiet, to have a break from your family and work. One simple reason is happiness. You do a retreat because you want to search for the real method to be happy. You do a retreat in order to develop the basic human qualities of affection and loving-kindness.
Another reason is that it gives you time to put into practice the teachings you have received from your guru. It also separates you from the busyness of your normal life, where you are usually caught up in the hallucinations, sense enjoyments, and various obligations you have to others. In retreat you have time to yourself; you are free to think and be quiet, without distractions. In such a retreat situation, you are forced to come face to face with yourself in depth — to meet yourself.
Retreating also helps you draw your consciousness away from hallucination into reality. You can only change your life for the better when you recognize the hallucinations that have been catching the mind and learn to distinguish between what is true and what is false. You become a better Dharma practitioner and a better person.
Without spending time in retreat, the mind is like muddy water. But within a retreat, being alone and without distractions, the mind can become like a calm, crystal-clear lake. There is the clarity you need to help see yourself more clearly, to see your own buddha nature. To realize the ultimate nature of things, their emptiness, you need a deep understanding conjoined with a fully concentrated mind, the union of calm abiding and special insight. There is no other way to be free from samsara. To do that outside of a retreat is almost impossible.
Before the Retreat
Ideally you should do your retreat in a solitary place, which means a place that has both mental and physical solitude. In the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, Lama Tsongkhapa advised,
In this way you realize exactly
The vital points of the three principal aspects of the path.
Resort to seeking solitude, generate the power of effort,
And quickly accomplish your final goal, my child.93
Here, “seeking solitude” means striving for both physical and mental solitude, and “effort” means perseverance. You should physically separate yourself from your busy life and, for the duration of the retreat, leave behind your job and your worldly concerns, those negative thoughts of attachment that stop your actions of body, speech, and mind from becoming holy Dharma.
When Lama Tsongkhapa said “my child,” he was talking to his direct disciple, Ngawang Drakpa, but he also indirectly meant us ordinary people, advising us that first we must listen to a qualified teacher, one who has an infallible understanding of the three principal aspects of the path, and then, reflecting on them again and again, try to gain a profound understanding ourselves.
More important than physical solitude is mental solitude, keeping the mind away from worldly matters. I think this is vital because all confusion comes from the mind not being in mental solitude. You could live in a completely isolated place but still not be happy. Completely separated from other people, high in a solitary place in the mountains, your mind could still be involved with worldly concerns, with so many problems and so much unhappiness, making a peaceful retreat impossible. Really, doing a retreat or living our normal life, we all need to isolate our mind from the confusion that attachment and worldly concerns bring. This has nothing to do with whether we are in retreat or not, whether we are Buddhist or not; this is simple psychology.
Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo explained that you should have an extensive, patient mind, determined to perfect your practice even if you must spend your entire life on one meditation, such as on the perfect human rebirth. Having a patient mind, however, does not mean having a lazy mind. You shouldn’t think that because you have plenty of time you can take it easy, that you don’t have to work at developing your meditation.
Pabongka Rinpoche warned that having an extensive mind for worldly activities and a short mind for Dharma activities is the opposite of how it should be. You should have the conviction that you will succeed in your Dharma practice no matter how difficult it is or how long it takes, even if it takes your entire life. With such a strength of conviction it certainly won’t take that long; realizations will come very quickly.
Geshe Kamaba advised us to be honest with ourselves. You can easily think that you are spending years perfecting a lamrim meditation but is that really so? He said,
We say, “Our contemplations achieve nothing.” Why do you think that is? Don’t lie: you are distracted in the daytime and fall asleep at night!94
You might sit long hours in meditation but if you have a distracted mind, there is no hope of gaining any realization. Your appearance as a meditator is a complete hallucination.
The place and duration of the retreat depends on each individual’s capability. It is sometimes good to do a long solitary retreat in a physically isolated place and sometimes to do a shorter, more intensive one, or a group retreat. Generally it’s excellent to retreat in the holy places such as where the Buddha performed the twelve deeds, in any place of a great holy being, or in an area associated with the deity of your retreat. It is also extremely powerful to do the retreat where your guru is living or has lived. Doing retreat in such holy places is very effective for your mind because you receive blessings of the place. Your mind will be calm and have fewer disturbances and negative thoughts, such as attachment and so forth. It is also easy for you to realize emptiness.
Before you do a retreat, especially a retreat on a tantric deity, there are preliminary practices95 that you normally do to ensure success. You can read texts such as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras, like the Vajra Cutter Sutra, or the Arya Sanghata Sutra or Golden Light Sutra. Reading them brings incredible purification and collects extensive merit.
You eliminate obstacles through purifying negative karmas and downfalls with Vajrasattva recitation; attain the necessary conditions of collecting merit through offering mandalas, doing prostrations, and so forth; and receive the blessing of the guru through the practice of guru yoga, such as the Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. You can also collect merit by making tormas96 or water charity to the hungry ghosts, or by offering service or making offerings to the sangha. Making tsatsas97 of Mitrukpa98 is also a very common preliminary.
Retreating away from Negative Emotions
Whatever retreat you do, you must retreat away from the eight worldly dharmas. During that precious time, you need to disengage from the worldly mind, the one attached to this life. Of course, this is what you should be doing all the time, not just in retreat.
Heruka gave some wonderful advice to the great yogi Luipa, one of the lineage lamas of the Heruka Chakrasamvara teachings:
Give up stretching the legs.
Give up entering samsara.
Generate bodhichitta to attain Vajrasattva,
the Great Victorious One, for all sentient beings.99
That does not mean that you can’t sleep during retreat, that you are not allowed to lie down and stretch out your legs at night. It means giving up your servitude to the mind controlled by the eight worldly dharmas and overcoming the laziness that is attached to samsaric pleasures. For example, around other people you don’t stretch your legs, but if you are alone and you feel a little tired, the thought of getting comfortable might arise and you naturally find yourself stretching your legs. This physical stretching can lead to a mental laziness that might mean you even feel too lazy to do your daily meditation or, if you do meditate, your mind is looking for comfort — mentally “stretching the legs” — causing it to wander away from the object of concentration. The fundamental mistake is allowing your mind to be under the control of the thought of the eight worldly dharmas. In this way you waste a day, a week, a month, a year, until you have wasted your whole life.
For your retreat to be really effective, you need to see that the nature of the whole of samsara is suffering and determine to be free from it. Then you can retreat away from self-cherishing and you can keep your mind in bodhichitta.
Without having abandoned the negative attitudes of anger, attachment, and ignorance, it makes no sense to try to practice anything advanced in a retreat. Abandoning anger and attachment is the very basic practice, the foundation. Unless you do, you cannot hope to complete tantric realizations. You cannot even achieve bodhichitta or any of the lamrim realizations, because those negative emotions are the main obstacles to any spiritual achievements, destroying whatever merits you have and delaying the realizations, thus destroying your own liberation and enlightenment.
It is senseless to do a very high kind of meditation while continuously creating obstacles to realizations by not guarding the mind, not protecting it from those very gross emotional thoughts such as anger. This is something that we all have to practice. Even Christians have to practice patience, so I think there is no question for Buddhists.
Therefore, especially during the retreat, these are the fundamental practices: to stop getting angry by practicing patience; to transform the mind into compassion and loving-kindness; to generate renunciation; and, finally, to meditate on emptiness.
You have to understand the meaning of retreat. It’s not just about being silent and not eating, not seeing people, and things like that. It’s retreating away from those negative emotional thoughts of daily life. That’s the fundamental retreat; that’s the real retreat. On top of that, there are the lamrim meditations or the deity practice. Doing a retreat like that, it becomes pure.
You must plan every morning to retreat away from ignorance, attachment, and self-cherishing by practicing their opposites: wisdom, renunciation, and bodhichitta — the three principal aspects of the path.
By meditating on wisdom, you retreat away from ignorance, the root of samsara. You do this by practicing the mindfulness of dependent arising, looking at everything as a subtle dependent arising, as merely labeled. Or by looking at everything, including I, action, and object — all phenomena that appear as something real from their own side — as hallucinations. However you practice mindfulness, it comes to one conclusion — that everything is empty.
Then you retreat away from attachment, clinging to this life and worldly pleasures, by keeping the mind in renunciation, practicing meditations such as the perfect human rebirth and impermanence and death. When you are constantly aware that death can happen at any moment, there is no space in the mind for attachment to arise.
An extremely important retreat is retreating away from the self-cherishing mind. You do that by transforming the mind into bodhichitta, by keeping the mind in the thought of benefiting others, the thought of cherishing others.
On the basis of this, if you are doing a tantric retreat, by visualizing yourself as the deity, you retreat away from ordinary concepts and ordinary appearances, the thought that you, the place, and the enjoyments are ordinary. Keeping the mind in pure appearance and pure thought by retreating away from ordinary appearances is the foundation of a tantric retreat.
So knowing what retreat means is very important. You should not think it’s just about fasting, staying in silence, and hiding the body in a room. While the mind is in retreat, doing those things is also good. Otherwise, with just those things alone, it becomes a prison. That is similar to living in a monastery or living in ordination without renunciation. Clinging to worldly pleasures, there is no enjoyment; the discipline seems like torture, and keeping the vows becomes like a prison in the mind. But when the mind is guarded from attachment, living in the vows becomes so enjoyable.
The mind has been habituated to delusions from beginningless rebirths, so it’s not easy. You cannot just achieve your goal by wishing it will happen. If that were so, we would all be enlightened by now. Therefore, in the beginning you will miss out many times, but there will also be times when your practice gets done well. Then, through continuous effort, there will be more and more mindfulness, and it will become easier to remember the meditation techniques quickly and be able to avert the delusions immediately. Otherwise it will be difficult to make progress. You have to put effort into it; transforming the mind doesn’t come from outside.