3

Space and Stillness: Varieties of Formless Meditation

PATRICIA DAI-EN BENNAGE      TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE

GAYLON FERGUSON      VEN. AJAHN SUMEDHO

 

I’ll begin by asking each of you to speak about your understanding of formless meditation from the point of view of your tradition. In Zen, for example, formless meditation often goes by the name of shikantaza, or “just sitting.”

PATRICIA DAI-EN BENNAGE: Yes, we say “just sitting,” but the “just” in “just sitting” doesn’t mean “just” in the usual way. It means thoroughgoing, total sitting. It’s like the feeling you would have if you were riding a horse at an incredible speed and you fell out of the saddle and found yourself between the saddle and the ground. What kind of state of mind would you have there?

Shikantaza is thoroughgoing, total attention to everything, a tremendously powerful practice. It’s like a huge gymnasium opens up in front of you in which there are no lines of demarcation, no markers to go by. You don’t know what to do with that immense space, but you can learn to have deep trust.

The abbot I trained with in Japan talked about allowing ourselves to be babysat by the universe. Since the universe is good, it takes no effort to be babysat by it. We simply allow ourselves to be present. In Zen, we have a recitation: “Abandon myself to breathing out and letting breathing in naturally still me. All that is left is an empty cushion under the vast sky, the weight of a flame.”

Abandoning ourselves to breathing out means no effort. It means allowing the causes and conditions of where we are in the universe to do the breathing for us. All that’s left is the great emptiness and the vivacity of who we are.

TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE: In the Dzogchen tradition, we introduce people to form practice precisely in order to introduce them to formless practice, the nature of mind. In formless meditation, we abide in the boundless view, without any judgment, without observer and observed.

Spontaneous meditation and flexible action is what formless meditation really is, and in the process of doing it, we experience emptiness, clarity, and bliss. However, if we grasp at these, it does not work. We have to be aware but not grasp. We call this “self-liberation.”

Formless meditation is ultimately about self-liberating the observer. No one is grasping, because there is no observer to grasp. Everything is effortlessly self-liberated into space. This is the experience of emptiness, which in turn leads to fearlessness. With nothing there, there is nothing to fear. Yet there is also unceasing clarity: the flow of life never stops, experiences never stop. Everything is lively and fully there, without anybody doing anything.

This kind of clarity offers a deep experience of hopelessness—not in a bad sense, but in a positive sense of having no need to go anywhere or get anything. When the emptiness and clarity, the hopelessness and fearlessness, are inseparable, the experience of bliss—happiness with no reason to be happy—is produced.

GAYLON FERGUSON: Formless meditation might appear more mysterious than it is. There’s a sense in which the attitude of formless meditation, which is not to manipulate whatever arises in our experience, is there whether we’re doing practice with form or without form. There’s continuity between the two. Appreciating them both is a matter of understanding the view of the teachers of the lineage—namely, that one could practice without any gaining idea, without pushing anything away, but nakedly and directly experiencing the vividness of whatever arises in one’s experience, whether it’s emotional or perceptions of the world. Nowness is really the essence of formless practice as well as practice with form.

Formless practice is the simplest of all, but we could complicate it by talking about it. Although it is fundamentally uncomplicated, within formless practice, there is still progression. The Mahāmudrā tradition of formless practice speaks of four stages: one-pointedness, stabilizing the mind in its own essence; simplicity, where there are no further complications to deal with; one taste, the seamlessness of nonduality; and finally, nonmeditation, not manipulating the sacred world in any way. These are simply further levels of spaciousness and vividness.

VEN. AJAHN SUMEDHO: In the Vipassanā tradition, you begin by examining the impermanence of conditions. After your practice deepens, the sense of personal identity lessens and attention is awakened. Once you realize the state of awakened attention—what we call the unconditioned, stillness, or the still point of awareness—you gain perspective on the conditions of the present. You witness rather than grasp and identify. With this insight into the truth of cessation, you have direct insight into emptiness and nonself.

At that point, we no longer seek identity in and attachment to worldly conditions—the sense of ourselves as a personality and the illusory world that most people need for identification. This reality doesn’t need an object for its existence. It’s a natural state of being that isn’t created or dependent on conditions.

Once there is realization of awareness and nonattachment, then there’s no need to use form anymore, because the path of awareness is very clear. Awareness does not require an object. Its natural state is not a created state. Most people are always looking for something they conceive of or that they imagine. Awareness—what we call the gate to the deathless—is learning to realize this natural state of being. Then we don’t need a form any more. We can just be present with the existing forms as they rise and cease. We can use form, but we don’t need it anymore, because our insight embraces form rather than depends on form.

Would you describe this as a practice or as an attainment?

VEN. AJAHN SUMEDHO: When you’re talking about attainment and meditation, it sounds like you’ve got to get something you don’t have. The Buddha was pointing to something quite obvious, suffering, which is a very banal human experience. In investigating that truth, we let go of the causes rather than attain anything. It’s a matter of relinquishing, letting go—of nonattainment really. Wisdom isn’t an attainment. It’s a natural state we begin to recognize and access through our awareness of existence as it manifests.

Some students get to this quickly, others take much longer. In either case, I don’t let people delude themselves, thinking they have to do something in order to become something. But obviously, they need meditation retreats and formal practice to realize the natural state of awareness that needs no object.

How do meditation with form and formless meditation work together?

PATRICIA DAI-EN BENNAGE: In order to have formless practice, the forms around it are essential as a support. Therefore, we put extreme emphasis on the quality of the seated posture. We are not invited to allow ourselves to be more comfortable. We are asked to deal with what comes up sitting in that position and to see how often the pain is not physical but comes from the mind. One needs to understand this or formless experience will not be possible.

All of the myriad forms support the formless experience, especially in the monastery, where I lived a cloistered life for twelve years. We didn’t have interviews often, only if we really felt we had something to discuss with a teacher. But our teachers never took their eyes off us—where we were, the sound we made with our slippers, the way we reached for something, the way we passed something to someone else, the tone of our voice, our body language in standing at a distance or near to other people. What we do on the cushion should be manifest in sitting, standing, lying down, and walking.

TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE: In Dzogchen, we refer to form and formless meditation as meditation with attributes and meditation without attributes. It’s very traditional to do meditation with attributes before going into meditation without attributes. The usual style of meditation with attributes is “calm abiding” (gzhi gnas). One begins with effortful calm abiding, which develops into natural calm abiding, and finally into ultimate calm abiding, which is essentially the beginning stages of formless meditation.

At the effortful stage, one is dealing with all the external problems that dominate us—sounds, discomfort, movement of the thoughts, and so forth. One might also have internal obstacles, such as falling asleep or becoming extremely creative, having many ideas and projects. Working with all of these requires effort.

We usually need to practice calm abiding for a long time and follow strict rules, but it all comes down to being alert in the moment and focusing on an object. Gradually we begin to develop stability. We find the calmness more inside of us than in the object of meditation. Eventually we feel the same calm even when the object is removed. That is natural calm abiding. The mind is clear, sharp, and stable, and those characteristics are still there when the objects are removed.

Once we achieve the ultimate calm abiding, there is no sense of observer or observed. We abide in ultimate stillness. When you are finally able to rest there, that’s formless practice.

VEN. AJAHN SUMEDHO: Naturally, you start out from the point where you are, which for most people is attachment to objects and ideas. So your teacher directs your attention to the impermanence of conditioned phenomena—their arising, presence, and absence.

When you see the nature of conditioned phenomena and mental formations as impermanent, that which is aware of the impermanence takes refuge in transcending the conditioned realm. You are now at the gate to the deathless realm, the unconditioned. Allowing things to cease in your mind, you have insight into the Third Noble Truth of cessation. With this perspective on human existence, you have insight into the Fourth Noble Truth, the path of nonattachment, or nonidentity, with conditioned phenomenon. At this point, there’s no need to use form anymore because the path of awareness is very clear.

GAYLON FERGUSON: In the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages of Vajrayāna, we begin with calm abiding and insight (śamatha and vipaśyanā). The student begins with mindfulness of body and breathing as objects, and then moves to insight into the nature of reality and some experience of spaciousness or egolessness. At that point, one begins to work with compassion practices to awaken the heart. Those mind-training or lojong (blo sbyong) practices often involve resting the mind in its basic nature, in its fundamental goodness, as the basis for compassion practice.

The full development of the formless aspect of this path is called Mahāmudrā in the Kagyü lineage and Dzogchen in the Nyingma lineage. In those advanced meditation practices, the essence of mind is itself taken as the formless object of meditation. Alongside those techniques, Vajrayāna uses visualizations and mantras as part of what’s called the development stage of sādhāna practice. This is accompanied by a completion stage, in which you dissolve the visualization. You no longer rest your mind on visualizing something or saying a mantra, but rest in the essence of what you’ve been connecting with through the mantra recitation and visualization. The completion stage of sādhāna practice, then, is another instance of formless practice.

Are there different kinds of formless meditation experience?

GAYLON FERGUSON: To answer that, one would need to have practiced in all those traditions.

PATRICIA DAI-EN BENNAGE: Correct. To actually taste each of those—that’s a rare person. How can we open our mouths to make a judgment about a style in which we have no experience, no guided training?

TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE: It’s very important to define more precisely what formless meditation means here. Does it simply mean meditation without an external object? Does it refer to a feeling in the body? Does it refer to whether you are focusing on the emotions in the mind or not?

As far as Dzogchen is concerned, formless practice does not have much to do with emotions or feelings or external objects. Ultimately, it’s about the observer. At some point you have to get beyond that. That’s real formless meditation. Everything else is an approximation of formless meditation. You might experience bliss, but there’s definitely somebody who wants that bliss and does not want to let go of it. You cannot say the experience is not bliss, but it’s not real formless meditation. There’s no “object” per se, but meditative experiences become objects.

GAYLON FERGUSON: This comparison of experience across traditions applies not just to formless meditation, but to meditation altogether. Is all Buddhist meditation in essence the same? Certainly it’s all a matter of the wakefulness of the Buddha. There’s an essence of wakefulness that is the nature of mind and it is inseparable from the nature of reality. That understanding is held by all the traditions. At the same time, there’s undoubtedly a different flavor of practicing satipaṭṭhāna, the Theravāda tradition; shikantaza or zazen; or formless meditation within a Vajrayāna sādhāna. I’m sure the experience of a specific tradition has its particular flavor.

PATRICIA DAI-EN BENNAGE: I believe that the fruits of practice come in many flavors, but that there is some commonality that manifests as growing spaciousness and acceptance over time. This commonality covers not only Buddhism but also any practice of giving up ego for the greater good of sentient beings. The flavors are important, but I’d like to hope that there is commonality that runs through numerous traditions.

TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE: There are a few issues we are mixing here. In essence, formless meditation has got to be the same, because formless is formless. What makes the difference is the form, how one is introduced to the form, the development of the form, and how one enters into the formless from there. These are the things that create the differences.

When it comes to the formless, every tradition has different ways to do it. I always encourage students to listen to other teachers and learn from them, but it’s always important to have one thing that you follow completely. That’s not a question of one being better than another, but if you’re focusing on too many things, you might not have anything in the end.

All sorts of forms in all sorts of traditions support formless meditation. Not only that, everyday human experience supports it. Imagine carrying a big weight, walking for many miles, and then setting it down. Imagine that moment. You say, “Aah,” and in that very moment you can have a great life experience that does not belong to any tradition. It needs no label. A moment of physical or emotional exhaustion can give you great access to stillness. Everybody has that, even if they haven’t heard one word of Dharma.

Is that a Dzogchen experience?

TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE: Yes, definitely. Dzogchen is unique in engaging less with the conceptual mind and emotions. We need to engage them to some degree because they are within our experience, but we engage them minimally in achieving formless experience.

GAYLON FERGUSON: Formless meditation is ultimately about nonconceptual wisdom; the fruit of all of these practices would not be a matter of the technique or the practices themselves. We would look for fewer fixations on self, more gentleness, and more compassion. That would be the proof in the pudding of formless meditation.