Buddhism Connect A selection of Buddhism Connect emails Awakened Heart Sangha
Contents Formless Meditation and form practices... 4 Exploring & deepening our experience of heart & head... 9 The Meaning of Spontaneity... 12 What is meant by "Daily Life Awareness Practice"... 14
Formless Meditation and form practices Lama Shenpen Hookham Summary: A comparison of the use of formless meditation, mantra, visualisation, and other techniques. A student asks: "Listening to one of your talks, I got the impression that people were finding it difficult to relate to formless meditation. Would you consider giving other meditation instruction, e.g. counting numbers, focusing on an external object or visualisation of various kinds, on an individual basis?" Lama Shenpen replies: It is true that formless meditation is difficult to relate to. It is a total challenge to our usual habitual way of carrying on, always looking for entertainment and something to grasp onto or some kind of project to succeed at - in fact anything rather than just be with our experience directly and simply. I think it does not matter if people have difficulty with it. As they go through these difficulties they learn all sorts of things about their experience, about their habits of mind. It is through sticking with formless meditation that the teachings start to make sense to us. We start to see that it is true that we are always trying to avoid looking at our experience in a direct and simple way. In fact we hardly know what is wrong and what we are doing, or even that there is another way of being. Formless meditation takes time to learn, Often people get discouraged along the way and think that they would rather have something more definite to do. I think 4
it is important to get some experience of not-doing, of relaxing and trusting our experience, and then perhaps going on to develop that further with different kinds of meditation. Some people worry that they are so distracted nothing could possibly be happening. But then, they suddenly report that they have noticed that perhaps the thoughts and feelings that come up are not the problem they always thought they were. Somehow they have found a way of being that is more relaxed and spacious so that the thoughts can come and go. They have found a kind of stability within which they can allow that to be. It did not happen that they stopped the thoughts and then found this; rather they found this by finding they could not stop the thoughts and furthermore, there was no need to. Mostly I find what people need most of all is encouragement to keep going, to keep returning to the same points over and over again until the penny starts to drop. If I start to introduce too many other practices they become a kind of seduction away from the main point. Then I am just feeding people's wish to fill up space with something definite to do - same old story as before. The other practices emerge out of the formless meditation and lead back into it - an ever deepening process. We have to get a good taste of the formless first and some sense of what that is about, then the other practices are helpful as a means of leading back into that formlessness rather than distracting us away from it. 5
Sometimes I suggest that people count their breaths up to 10 when they first sit down, but for most people the liturgy creates the right sort of atmosphere at the start, just to calm down if they have been rushing about and are particularly distracted. I will be introducing mantra practice from time to time, especially at retreats. Mantra can be used simply as a means of focusing and stabilising the mind. This would be to use it as a means for developing shamatha (calm abiding). Formless meditation produces shamatha but in a way that opens itself up to vipashyana (insight). It is the insight that brings about liberation at a very deep and complete level. Calm abiding is nice for a while, but by itself it is not a means to liberation, it's more a kind of trance: we have temporarily calmed the mind, but all the causes of suffering are still intact and eventually will rear their heads as before. Vipashyana is the radical response to suffering, really going for its root, cutting it off at its root so it cannot grow up again. Formless meditation is the basis for vipashyana: first we recognise that thoughts and feelings are like waves on an ocean that do not disturb the ocean, and this brings the calm. Then we are able to really experience the nature of those waves fully and completely, and this brings the insight and liberation. Once this is well established, mantra practice can become a very powerful means for linking into the power of the lineage. It can speed up the whole process of dismantling the distortions of Openness, Clarity, and Sensitivity like wind blowing away clouds. Mantra can be done even before we have much experience of shamatha and vipashyana as a connection with that blessing power. Mantras do have power from their own 6
side - that is why it is important to choose a mantra carefully. It matters where it comes from and what mandala it draws you into. I like to introduce people to the Prajnaparamita mantra first in conjunction with the Heart Sutra. I find people relate to this mantra very well generally speaking and I think it is because it links us so directly into truth of the Dharma. I introduce visualisations very gradually. Neither Trungpa Rinpoche nor Khenpo Rinpoche introduce visualisations until people have a very good understanding of Dharma as well as experience of formless meditation and emptiness. The trouble with visualisations is that they can just become mind games and not really change us at all. It is possible to get Enlightened without so-called visualisation practices, but nobody can get Enlightened without formless meditation. Having said all this, I have often wondered whether it would not give people more confidence in their experience if I taught a method using the Dhyana (absorption) states as are described in the life of the Buddha. The idea is that by practising shamatha very strongly you can induce a strong state of meditation (samadhi) of limitless space, limitless consciousness and so on. There are Buddhist teachers who recommend this as a way of building up one's confidence in the practice and stilling the mind. I was never taught this and was always warned off it as an unnecessary distraction. Rigdzin Shikpo practised in that way before he met Trungpa Rinpoche and found out for himself what the limitations of that way of practising are. So he can say 7
from his direct experience. He is not interested in teaching that kind of meditation at all even though it gave him a lot of strong experiences. He said that in the end you realise that it is just playing games. It is a lot of effort and it gets you nowhere. You only have to come back and start all over again from scratch with the formless meditation. I find the topic interesting and I notice different teachers say different things about it. But as I said, none of my teachers recommend it. Lama Shenpen Hookham 8
Exploring & deepening our experience of heart & head Lama Shenpen Hookham Summary: We can use words about the heart to link into an inner intuitive sense of natural responsiveness, that we could awaken and rejoice in. We are trying to discover the experience that leads us to contrast head and heart and to really experience that, so that we can take our understanding deeper. A student writes: "I didn't find it meaningful to reflect on acknowledging, aligning with, honouring and celebrating my heart. I persevered with it before and after the meditation in the hope it was having an effect, but ultimately I wasn t able to connect with it." Lama Shenpen replies: I was interested that you found this reflection (from the first book of Discovering the Heart of Buddhism) not very meaningful, as many people remark that they especially like it. Those who don t, probably don t usually bother to tell me. What your response tells me is that people are very different! "I think that if I try to concentrate much more on using positive expressions relating to the heart in daily life, my heart will open more and more." I think that when you say that using more positive expressions relating to heart might make your heart 9
open more, you are recognising and linking into a kind of natural responsiveness that you sense is there, but not very awake. When the reflection talks about acknowledging, aligning, honouring and celebrating the heart, it's just another way of focusing on that process of waking it up really. You take that inner intuitive sense that it would be good to open the heart more and really try to live like that and to respect that in yourself and others instead of dismissing it as sentimental nonsense (or whatever). And you can feel good about that. It might be a bit much to call that joy at this stage, but perhaps you can imagine that eventually that might become joyous, or at least rather pleasant, heart warming, special or however you want to express it. Does that help? "I think the phrases hard-hearted and hard-headed are very similar... having a strong impenetrable heart perhaps because it has been hurt a lot. In this case it will probably be more difficult to open up and show sensitivity /responsiveness to others. I can relate to this personally!" Again I found your comment about hard-headedness interesting. I think a lot of people take hard-headedness as a virtue, a kind of practical person who keeps their feet on the ground, their eye on the ball as it were, not easily swayed by passing emotions. So from that point of view, it doesn't necessarily imply hard-heartedness. You could be hard-headed but soft-hearted. But your response is interesting because as you say, you can cover up a broken heart by a kind of hard-headed approach that cuts the heart right out of things. 10
So hard-heartedness can hide behind hard-headedness. Anyway the main point of thinking about these phrases was just to notice that when we talk in this kind of way we are using heart and head in quite different ways. It brings out even more clearly than ever what we mean, and how we experience ourselves, by noticing what effect such words and expressions have on us. It s not that it is important to use words in one way rather than another. Rather, it s simply noticing that when we use words, we mean something by them, and it s what we mean that we are exploring here. We mean by these words something that we know from our experience, so it s what we are experiencing that is the point here. We are trying to discover the experience that leads us to contrast head and heart and to really experience that fully and properly, so that we can take our understanding deeper. The same applies with openminded and open-hearted. You are right that the two tend to go together, but I think they highlight different aspects of the same experience somehow. So it s good to use the two expressions to focus in on something we value highly in ourselves and others. Open-mindedness has a spacious sense of freedom to think and explore and open-hearted has a sensitive responsive quality that functions all the better when we are open-minded. So the language suggests an intuitive sense of openness and sensitivity/responsiveness being different but somehow inseparable qualities, don t you think? Lama Shenpen Hookham. 11
The Meaning of Spontaneity Lama Shenpen Hookham Summary: By spontaneity do we mean the characteristic that is found in a person who feels accepted and confident, and that seems to arise from being less conditioned, or can we go much deeper into the real meaning of spontaneity. A student says: "I also like your comment that 'we are much too conditioned by our background assumptions about the nature of reality to be able to link into spontaneous action straight away. Yes, I see this is true, and yet there are people who are, in my opinion, pretty close to this attractive spontaneity without any investigation into the true nature of reality - they seem to be spontaneous because they are more confident of their own acceptability. Young children have this, until they are punished and they behaviour constrained. I can see that an understanding of the 'nature of reality' will, with practice, have the same effect." Lama Shenpen replies: No, it will have a much profounder effect. It is true that poor conditioning when we are young make us even less spontaneous than a healthy well socialised person in some respects, but healthy well socialised people are still deluded and their action is only spontaneous in a very limited sense. In fact, it is likely to be appropriate action because of 12
conditioning. So it is actually conditioned action, not true spontaneity in the deepest sense. Someone who is at a social disadvantage and so, suffering more from not being able to respond appropriately, might have an advantage in that they are pushed to learn to really respond spontaneously, stepping out of their conditioning. Actually, what is meant by spontaneity here is very deep. It is not just our ordinary idea of spontaneity, but on a completely different base. Editor s Note: The quote is from Discovering the Heart of Buddhism, Coursebook Three, Openness and Clarity, page 83. Lama Shenpen Hookham. 13
What is meant by "Daily Life Awareness Practice" Lama Shenpen Hookham Summary: Daily life awareness practice means taking the awake quality that we find in meditation and bringing it into our daily life, so that we live our lives in that same space of awareness. A student writes: awareness practice'?" "What is meant by 'daily life Lama Shenpen: When I refer to daily life awareness practice, I am talking about taking that awake quality of the meditation into your everyday life. You don't just leave the meditation on your meditation seat. You step out into the space of awareness that you discover in meditation and live your life in it. The problem is that we forget to do this most of the time, so we need triggers of awareness to bring us back, to ground and centre ourselves again in the space of awareness. In the coursebooks (Discovering the Heart of Buddhism course ed.), there are many suggestions of things you could use to trigger your awareness. You can choose moments that occur regularly to use as triggers. For example, as you wake up out of bed and open the curtains, you can be thinking this is like awakening from 14
the sleep of ignorance. May this day be one more step on the path of awakening, may it awaken myself and others. As you think and wish like this, note the space of awareness in which all your sense impressions are happening and in which all your thoughts and feelings are happening. Relax into that sense of space and waking up. At the same time remember to relax into your heart. Live your life as wholeheartedly as you can from moment to moment. During the day keep bringing your attention back to the present experience and the immediate sense impressions, thoughts and feelings that are playing in the space of awareness. This means letting go of the feeling of being caught up in thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, any particular story-line that has hooked you, and just allowing yourself to be very simple in the immediacy of the space of awareness. Link it always to the heart somehow space, awareness and heart in the immediacy of your experience right here and now. You may find it helps to link into the outbreath from time to time as you do in meditation, in order to centre and anchor your awareness in the immediacy of the here and now. Doing this reminds you to let go. It also requires you to let go, which naturally creates a sense of space or gap. Often the effect of doing this is simply to slow us down, so that we notice more about the immediate situation. We may notice we are being driven by thoughts and feelings that are causing us to respond to situations in a habitual and perhaps not so skilful way. 15
So the daily life awareness practice naturally becomes an opportunity to slow down and to review our habitual responses, allowing more spontaneous and appropriate responses to bubble up. Even if you cannot always spend a long time actually sitting at meditation, you can practice this kind of awareness at any time. It is not just a matter of being in the present, as it were. It's a matter of a growing sense of significance or meaningfulness about being there. This comes about through getting the right touch, keeping a playful touch, an interest in and appreciation of direct experience, just for its own sake. Eventually, after many years of practice, the idea is that the same intensity of awareness that you have in the meditation is present in your daily activities. The same awake quality of your daily life is present in the meditation. There comes to be less and less difference between them. This is especially the case as your understanding of the fundamental nature of reality deepens. Lama Shenpen Hookham. 16