Now that I'm back in retreat, this blog will switch back from being "general purpose" to being something more like a retreat journal.
I've read a bit about the distinction between Mahamudra and Dzogchen -- purportedly the "highest teachings" in Tibetan Buddhism (which seems to fancy itself as the highest form of Buddhism, or something). To an outsider, they look nearly identical. But for centuries, those schools argued back and forth about which method was superior. And perhaps more importantly, about which end result was "higher."
At some point, it seems, one of them finally relented and said "ok, yeah, they're exactly the same." Presumably with a bit of grumbling from the stakeholders on each side. But I get the feeling they still consider themselves superior to other branches of Buddhism, to say nothing of non-Buddhist schools.
To think that any one approach has a monopoly on enlightenment seems a bit silly to me. So I think I'll do what I'm sure I've been warned not to do, and mix and match. There are several pieces that seem consistent across approaches I've "studied" (okay, read briefly about: Tibetan Buddhism, other Buddhist schools like Zen and Theravada, Advaita Vedanta, and some new, secular "non-dualist" schools, ...):
1. Awareness seems to be the lynchpin of this whole thing. (Or perhaps "now"-ness. They seem the same to me.) I'm willing to buy this one, as it has always seemed to me that awareness precedes everything, including physical reality.
2. The non-existence of an independent "self" (anatta in Buddhism). Okay, Advaita doesn't quite say there's no self, but rather that it (Atman) is identical with the source (Brahman). This sounds easy to believe as well.
I'll use the words "the source" as a stand-in for Brahman in Vedanta, Dharmakaya in Buddhism, Tao in Taoism, etc., since I take them to be the same thing. Or non-thing. Or whatever.
3. The non-existence of... physical reality (sunyata). I'll leave this one alone for now, as it's furthest from my own experience and hard to take at face value. But I'm willing to investigate it.
Put these together, and you get things like Wu Wei, the Taoist idea of doing without doing ("Do nothing, and everything is done" -- I love that quote). Normally, if you try to stop "doing", one of two things happens: you become inanimate, or else mindless. The latter, taken to its extreme, results in some sort of dissociative state, which is not the idea. Being aware without feeling that you are the one "doing" is hard, to say the least, but it seems to follow from the first two.
It is possible to misconstrue these in many ways (e.g., #3 seems to suggest nihilism, which is wrong; #1 and #3 together may give solipsism, which is maybe even worse; all three together give... dissociated solipsism? Shudder). Which is presumably why there are codified ways to approach these ideas.
Nonetheless, given that many of them bicker (less true with the latest "non-dualist" schools -- but maybe they also have less to offer), I'm going to follow my own nose. I think the Buddha had a brilliant idea in dividing meditation up into two categories: shamatha (mental quiescence) and vipashyana (clear seeing; insight). It makes sense that one would need a mind that is both calm and penetrating to make progress.
Exactly how, no two teachers will agree on, but it seems hard to go wrong by practicing maintaining lucid awareness. Sure, at first it may be dualistic (as in unsupported shamatha or shamatha without characteristics), but hopefully it progresses toward the non-dualistic approach (rigpa) that many agree is closer to the truth. It's sort of like progressing from "doing aware" to "being aware."
So although the school I'm currently "affiliated" with (by virtue of getting guidance from a lama) teaches that one cannot progress to the second without special induction (the pointing out instruction), there seem to be enough others who managed to go without it that I won't sweat it too much.
Okay, back to the cushion with me.
I've read a bit about the distinction between Mahamudra and Dzogchen -- purportedly the "highest teachings" in Tibetan Buddhism (which seems to fancy itself as the highest form of Buddhism, or something). To an outsider, they look nearly identical. But for centuries, those schools argued back and forth about which method was superior. And perhaps more importantly, about which end result was "higher."
At some point, it seems, one of them finally relented and said "ok, yeah, they're exactly the same." Presumably with a bit of grumbling from the stakeholders on each side. But I get the feeling they still consider themselves superior to other branches of Buddhism, to say nothing of non-Buddhist schools.
To think that any one approach has a monopoly on enlightenment seems a bit silly to me. So I think I'll do what I'm sure I've been warned not to do, and mix and match. There are several pieces that seem consistent across approaches I've "studied" (okay, read briefly about: Tibetan Buddhism, other Buddhist schools like Zen and Theravada, Advaita Vedanta, and some new, secular "non-dualist" schools, ...):
1. Awareness seems to be the lynchpin of this whole thing. (Or perhaps "now"-ness. They seem the same to me.) I'm willing to buy this one, as it has always seemed to me that awareness precedes everything, including physical reality.
2. The non-existence of an independent "self" (anatta in Buddhism). Okay, Advaita doesn't quite say there's no self, but rather that it (Atman) is identical with the source (Brahman). This sounds easy to believe as well.
I'll use the words "the source" as a stand-in for Brahman in Vedanta, Dharmakaya in Buddhism, Tao in Taoism, etc., since I take them to be the same thing. Or non-thing. Or whatever.
3. The non-existence of... physical reality (sunyata). I'll leave this one alone for now, as it's furthest from my own experience and hard to take at face value. But I'm willing to investigate it.
Put these together, and you get things like Wu Wei, the Taoist idea of doing without doing ("Do nothing, and everything is done" -- I love that quote). Normally, if you try to stop "doing", one of two things happens: you become inanimate, or else mindless. The latter, taken to its extreme, results in some sort of dissociative state, which is not the idea. Being aware without feeling that you are the one "doing" is hard, to say the least, but it seems to follow from the first two.
It is possible to misconstrue these in many ways (e.g., #3 seems to suggest nihilism, which is wrong; #1 and #3 together may give solipsism, which is maybe even worse; all three together give... dissociated solipsism? Shudder). Which is presumably why there are codified ways to approach these ideas.
Nonetheless, given that many of them bicker (less true with the latest "non-dualist" schools -- but maybe they also have less to offer), I'm going to follow my own nose. I think the Buddha had a brilliant idea in dividing meditation up into two categories: shamatha (mental quiescence) and vipashyana (clear seeing; insight). It makes sense that one would need a mind that is both calm and penetrating to make progress.
Exactly how, no two teachers will agree on, but it seems hard to go wrong by practicing maintaining lucid awareness. Sure, at first it may be dualistic (as in unsupported shamatha or shamatha without characteristics), but hopefully it progresses toward the non-dualistic approach (rigpa) that many agree is closer to the truth. It's sort of like progressing from "doing aware" to "being aware."
So although the school I'm currently "affiliated" with (by virtue of getting guidance from a lama) teaches that one cannot progress to the second without special induction (the pointing out instruction), there seem to be enough others who managed to go without it that I won't sweat it too much.
Okay, back to the cushion with me.
9 comments:
So you're blogging while on retreat? This is great. I found the distinction between shamatha and vipashyana very useful too (and something I wouldn't have figured out on my own). Do you have good teachers there who can instruct you non-dogmatically? I wish you the best and am excited to hear whatever you find worth posting.
Oh hey, I've got readers (okay, a reader)! I'll have to figure out how to change the settings to email my monktastic.prasad account.
Yes, I'll probably blog a bit while on retreat. Depends on how disruptive it is.
The lama here is a born-and-raised Tibetan Buddhist, so not much leeway. The nun is a westerner, and has kinder things to say about my "exploration." As she points out, even the Buddha says there are 84,000 paths.
The shamatha-vipashyana divide is a very interesting one, and one I hope to understand better with time. Practicing awareness as shamatha vs. as vipashyana is particularly interesting.
In my (very) limited understanding, the former ("unsupported shamatha"; "shamatha without a sign") has more of a feel of "I am meditating," and also more of a sense that sounds or other objects are distractions. In the latter (perhaps exemplified by the "open awareness" practice), it's all "grist for the mill." Actually, I guess eventually the grist *is* the mill.
The thing I want to figure out is: is the divide more fluid than some schools would have you believe? It is said that -- very rarely -- when one is resting in the "ground state" of shamatha (alaya vijnana, bhavanga), one can suddenly "pop into" realization of the actual ground (rigpa). But it's not advised to expect this to happen.
Anyway, I'm way out of my depth here. Back to awareness with me :)
About vipashyana/shamatha: that sounds like the way I understand it too. Shamatha is just focusing really hard and blocking out sensations, vipashyana is noting those sensations and letting them pass.
I guess I don't understand the "ground state" of Shamatha. Is it an actual state? Googling those terms was somewhat unhelpful. Bhavanga sounds like a description of the mind, not a state you can be in, and Alaya vijnana sounds like the "base consciousness" which I don't get at all. (feel free to ignore this if you want, I don't know from Tibetan Buddhism, although maybe I should understand Bhavanga since it sounds like a Theravadan term...)
From what I know (also very limited) you can get better at vipashyana through shamatha, and vice versa, but practicing them you set out with different goals and mental states.
Anyway, keep writing! (as long as it is not interfering with your meditation or learning.) This is as close to the source as I can find these days, so I appreciate it! Sounds like a good setup you've got there. Have a good time (or would it be more appropriate to just say "have a time"?)
This setup of meditate and blog seems to be working for me. It's guided me to some resources that are helpful (actually that's an extreme understatement... maybe more on that later).
I wouldn't worry too much about bhavanga / alaya vijnana. Alan Wallace occasionally talks about them (and if I understand, he's somewhat unique in equating the two -- but others seem not to try to bridge the gap).
It may be misleading for me to call it "the ground state of shamatha." What I really mean is that apparently, when one attains jhana via shamatha (as described in the Visuddhimagga; apparently it's less exalted of a state elsewhere), one actually abides in the bhavanga with no coarse mind present (it has "dissolved into the bhavanga" as Alan puts it).
Apparently sometimes people confuse this state with the dharmakaya, or the absolute ground state. It is in this sense I am contrasting "ground states." I hope I'm not generating more confusion!
As for shamatha vs vipashyana, it's interesting to see the perspectives in Theravada vs Mahayana / Vajrayana. It is true that typically shamatha is used to block out all percepts, but in its general sense it is about calming and stabilization. So in Vajrayana, when you are in the experience of rigpa, you practice shamatha to stabilize it.
And I don't know much about vipashyana in Theravada (or in general, quite frankly), but basically any investigation has a vipashyana characteristic. For example, even if you're practicing a "pure" shamatha practice, you could linger for a second on a distraction and wonder "why did that distract me", or turn your laser focus onto the distraction and try to see its fundamental essence. Both would then be vipashyana.
It seems like if you're using inquisition to help you stabilize the mind, you might call it shamatha-vipashyana, and if you're using stabilization to deepen your realization of some absolute truth, that's vipashyana-shamatha. In Mahamudra / Dzogchen, there's a bootstrapping: first calm the mind a bit, then witness emptiness of mind, then ride that donkey into the sunset.
That's helpful, thanks. There are some words that I sort of understand there. "No coarse mind" and "bhavanga" sound similar to me to "access concentration"; basically the state where you can be calm/stabilize/concentrate. (and right, it is distinct from "dharmakaya", "the clear mind without any annoying stuff happening", and deeper levels of jhana OR insight.)
"rigpa" is approximately "fundamental wisdom"?
"Dzogchen" is a style of practice, right? What about "Mahamudra"? Forgive my ignorance of words and inability to wikipedia them; words get complicated in Buddhism.
The last bit, about the bootstrapping, sounds reasonable to me too; you can't start investigating all things if you have a million things flying around your mind. Calm down some of the distractors, and then start investigating.
"Access concentration" is itself a nebulous term. Sometimes it applies to the state just before attaining full and complete absorption, and other times, it's like this "relatively stable" mind. In the jhana of the Visudhimagga, one can abide without the slightest hint of a whisper of a thought for hours, with absolutely no interference from the "outside" world (including your body). This is resting in the bhavanga with no coarse mind.
Dzogchen is a school and system of practice that exists in Buddhism and Bon. Mahamudra is a similar tradition in another Buddhist school (Kagyu as opposed to Nyingma).
The bootstrapping in Dzogchen/Mahamudra is particularly interesting. It's calm down, have the fundamental emptiness of mind pointed out to you, and then stabilize that very knowing (rigpa) by resting in it without distraction and without meditation until you become a buddha.
Ah! Guess I'm just confusing things more then. When you say "full and complete absorption", is that a jhanic state?
And how big a deal is the Visudhimagga? I've heard people talk about it before, but is it The Meditation Guide For All Buddhists, or The Guide for one school of Buddhism, or just one of many guides?
I've heard (I think) Dzogchen meditation being called "do-nothing" meditation, where the only thing you try to do is keep from consciously directing your attention. Is that fair/correct?
I'm not an expert on Buddhist canon, but apparently the jhanas as described in the V. are agreed upon by many important scholars (Asanga, Vasubandhu, Tsongkhapa, and more recent ones) to be (1) a discrete state of deep absorption (sorry, "full/complete" are misleading because they imply final), and (2) the one the Buddha talked about as essential. Read more here: http://c-c-n.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Why-Practice-Shamatha.pdf
I do know that this level of absorption is not considered essential in some teachings (particularly Dzogchen and Mahamudra, and definitely Zen), and is apparently widely misunderstood even in Theravada.
I can even tell you that it in my reading, it seems to have been watered down for Mahamudra since ~16th century. The level of concentration that Dakpo Tashi Namgyal talks about is higher than most Western practitioners of Mahamudra describe AFAICT.
And finally, no, Dzogchen is apparently much more than that. What you describe may be more similar to Zen shikantaza. In Dzogchen, before you even begin the actual meditation, you must have realized the emptiness of mind and phenomena. At that point, yes, the idea is to never stray from that by being caught in fixation.
We're already way way past what I can say from experience, but that last one is an interesting point, because in the end one is practicing Dzogchen 24/7, and in life one must direct one's attention. Presumably the idea is something like Wu Wei, but what do I know :)
Right. Anyone I've read has said that practicing jhanas is not essential to making progress in insight (and getting enlightened, whatever that means).
That makes sense, I guess I confused Dzogchen and Shikantaza. I see now. So you never even meditate until you're really good at understanding emptiness and not getting distracted? That explains why I met monks who explained that they study for 15 years or whatever before they meditate. Sounded like Tibetan craziness to me, but I suppose there's more sense to it than I might have thought :)
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