"To reject practice by saying, ‘it is conceptual!’
is the path of fools. A tendency of the inexperienced and something to be
avoided.”
— Longchenpa
Also see:
Right Samadhi
Many people have a very warped understanding of the so called "highest teachings" such as Dzogchen and Mahamudra, thinking that these teachings allow us to bypass or skip meditation training, or that it does not require "practice" and "meditation". This cannot be further from the truth.
Here are the words from Lopon Malcolm, a qualified dharma teacher who was asked by his Dzogchen master, Kunzang Dechen Lingpa to teach Dzogchen -
Malcolm (Loppon Namdrol) wrote:
Rongzom makes
the point very clearly that Dzogchen practitioners must develop the mental
factors that characterize the first dhyana, vitarka, vicara, pritvi, sukha and
ekagraha, i.e. applied attention, sustained attention, physical ease, mental
ease and one-pointedness. If you do not have a stable samatha practice, you
can't really call yourself a Dzogchen practitioner at all. At best, you can
call yourself someone who would like to be a Dzogchen practitioner a ma rdzogs
chen pa. People who think that Dzogchen frees one from the need to meditate
seriously are seriously deluded. The sgra thal 'gyur clearly says:
The faults of
not meditating are:
the
characteristics of samsara appear to one,
there is self
and other, object and consciousness,
the view is verbal,
the field is
perceptual,
one is bound by
afflictions,
also one throws
away the path of the buddhahood,
one does not
understand the nature of the result,
a basis for the
sameness of all phenomena does not exist,
one's vidya is bound by the three realms,
and one will
fall into conceptuality
He also added:
Dhyanas are
defined by the presence or absence of specific mental factors.
The Dhyanas
were not the vehicle of Buddha's awakening, rather he coursed through them in
order to remove traces of rebirth associated with the form and formless realms
associated with the dhyanas.
...
Whether you are
following Dzogchen or Mahamudra, and regardless of your intellectual
understanding, your meditation should have, at base, the following
characteristics:
Prthvi --
physical ease Sukha -- mental joy Ekagraha -- one-pointedness Vitarka --
initial engagement Vicara -- sustained engagement
If any of these
is missing, you have not even achieved perfect samatha regardless of whether or
not you are using an external object, the breath or even the nature of the
mind.
...
Even in
Dzogchen, the five mental factors I mentioned are key without which you are
really not going to make any progress.
...
Samadhi/dhyāna is a natural mental
factor, we all have it. The problem is that we naturally allow this
mental factor to rest on afflictive objects such as HBO, books, video
games, etc.
Śamatha practice is the discipline of harnessing our natural
predisposition for concentration, and shifting it from afflictive
conditioned phenomena to nonafflictive conditioned phenomena, i.e., the
phenomena of the path. We do this in order to create a well tilled field
for the growth of vipaśyāna. Śamatha ultimately allows us to have
mental stability and suppresses afflictive mental factors so that we may
eventually give rise to authentic insight into the nature of reality.
While it is possible to have vipaśyāna without cultivating śamatha, it
is typically quite unstable and lacks the power to effectively eradicate
afflictive patterning from our minds. Therefore, the basis of all
practice in Buddhadharma, from Abhidharma to the Great Perfection, is
the cultivation of śamatha as a preliminary practice for germination of
vipaśyāna.
....
Below the path of seeing, the dhyānas are just causes for rebirth.
...
Without vipaśyanā, samādhi is useless——this is why there are three
prajñās, not only one. Meditation just isn't the main point of
Buddhadharma. Prajñā is.
.....
A perfect śamatha is nothing more than the first dhyāna, attended by five mental factors: vitarka, vicara, prithi, sukha and ekagraha. This is a universal definition.
The idea that it takes a year to develop this experience is ridiculous.
If you understand what you are doing, you can develop this experience in
as little as a single afternoon.
Since the mental factors of vitarka and vicara
drop off above the first dhyāna, when one 's motivation is to engage in
vipaśyāna, it is not appropriate to cultivate anything more than this.
....
Mastering śamatha is a preliminary practice for Dzogchen.
....
Perfect śamatha = first dhyāna
....
You are free to do as you like, but you, and everyone else, will be a much more solid practitioner if you cultivate the first dhyana.
It involves cultivating these five mental factors. You start with
mindfulness of breathing, four foundations of mindfulness, and so on.
This is no different, really, than reciting a mantra. A mantra is just
another way to perfect śamatha.
.....
In every retreat, he talks about the five capacities: one of those is
samadhi. That samadhi is just a one-pointed mind. In ChNN systems of
SMS, after level two, one is expected to be able to sit in meditation
for 2 hours a session. This is based on Rongzom's text we have been
discussing. One practices either common śamatha or mantra practice, with
an aim to arouse these five factors. Rongzom says it is irrelevant
which way one practices as long as one combines them with Dzogchen view.
...
Mastering śamatha is a preliminary practice for Dzogchen.
.....
In the early period of Budddhism, there were two yānas, śamatha yāna and vipaśyāna yāna; beginners went to Śariputra to training in vipaśyāna for stream entry; then they would go train in śamatha with Maudgalyana for further progress.
Lance Cousins wrote a very interesting article about this.
….
When one loosely rests vidyā in its own state, after coarse and subtle concepts come to calmly rest on their own, vidyā vividly abides in its own state. That śamatha is called “dwelling in the essence of vidyā”. In that state there is no lethargy or agitation in vidyā. Clarity, pristine lucidity, vividness, nakedness, and limpidity respectively cannot be seen with the eye, cannot be described with words, and cannot be established as a thing. The clarity that is like seeing, the pristine lucidity that is like an experience, the vividness that is like description, the nakedness that is like apprehending a thing, and the limpidity that is like a thought occurs in vidyā in and of itself. That alone is the wisdom of vipaśyāna. Though śamatha and vipaśyāna are given two separate names, in essence there is no difference.
-- Explanatory Tantra of Distinguishing Mind and Vidyā
.....................
The dhyāna being discussed is not the dhyāna discussed in Dzogchen
teachings. The latter does not depend on mental factors, unlike the
former. So the answer is a solid no. In fact, it is the opposite. Rig pa
(knowledge of one's own state) brings about natural concentration
(rang bzhin bsam gtan), which is unlike the dhyānas spoken of in the
lower yānas. Longchenpa writes about this extensively.
....
In dzogchen teachings one is using many different methods to discover natural concentration.
Discovering shamatha is relatively simple when you use the approaches
taught in the dzogchen tantras, rather than relying on the gradual
method introduced by Kamalshila.
Rigpa is knowledge of your own state, when you have it, you never lose it, even if you are distracted.
One point where I really disagree with Wallace is his idea that trekcho is Dzogchen shamatha. I really dispute this notion.
.....
In general, from the perspective of Dzogchen teachings, there are two
kinds of persons: people who are inclined towards perceptual objects,
and people who are inclined towards the self-appearance of vidyā.
Teachings like semzins, tummo, chulen, etc., are oriented towards the
former, and trekcho and thogal are oriented towards the latter.
In the section I mentioned, the progression is recognition, trust, and decisiveness. The Sound Tantra relates:
The recognition of one's own state is encountered with trust,
Decisiveness establishes one in confidence.
This is just a very concise summary of the basic principles of Dzogchen
teachings that are reinforced by the Three Phrases and so on.
These days, practicing śamatha accompanied with Dzogchen view is
sometimes referred to as trekcho, but it is not really trekcho. Trekcho
cannot arise out of śamatha. As The Tantra Without Syllables states:
Though the nature of vidyā pervades all,
the dharmakāya is encountered in the intimate instructions.
While it is certainly the case that practicing śamatha or mantra
recitation (they are equivalent) with a Dzogchen view is beneficial, it
is not the actual path of Dzogchen.
.....
Prajñā is not acquired through samādhi at all. However, śila provides a
basis for a focused mind (samādhi), and a focused mind provides a basis
for prajñā.
Prajñā is acquired through hearing (śrutimayāprajñā), reflection (cintamayāprajñā), and cultivation (bhāvanamayīprajñā).
The dhyānas are not required for this at all. Samādhi is just mental
one-pointedness on a object. For most people, that would be TV, these
days.
....
The only difference between the samādhi of watching TV and the training
of samādhi in the Dharma is that the former is contaminated, and the
latter is not. But the samādhi, the mental factor, is identical in both
cases, only the object is different. What makes the samādhi part hard is
that it is difficult to shift one's focus from mundane contaminated
objects to mundane uncontaminated objects, such as the path dharmas.
Hence, the need for śila as a basis for samādhi. But this has nothing
actually to do with samādhi itself. Samādhi can be focused wherever one
likes. And in the case of a practitioners, that concentration is focused
on Dharma. It also has nothing developing rarified samadhis, etc.
Samādhi here just means being able to focus the mind at will. Thats it.
People keep turning these things into strange beasts. We avoid things
that disturb our minds (śila), so that we can focus (samādhi) on
developing the three wisdoms. That's it. It's not complicated.
Its better to understand the essence of a thing, rather than pile elaboration on top of elaboration.
....
Samadhi is a natural mental factor of one pointedness. People with no
experience, who like to follow books like recipe guides, say such things
as "first dhyāna is absolutely mandatory for the path of seeing." But
then you have to ask them if they have discovered the path of seeing. If
they say no, then obviously they are just going to the basis of what
they have heard or read in a book. If they say yes, there are other
tests you can apply.
In Mahāyāna, the samadhi part is not perfected until the fifth bhumi.
There is no requirement for the first dhyāna to realize the first bhumi.
The first bhumi merely requires realization of śunyatā. That can come
about as a result of the union of śamatha and vipaśyāna, or it can be
arrived at merely through vipaśyāna. It depends on the person. All that
is really necessary is that aspiring bodhisattva can focus on their
analysis on the emptiness of objects without being distracted, but is
certainly does not mean that they have to first perfect all four or five
factors of the first dhyāna. It won't harm them if they do, but it is
not required.
You should examine Discerning the Middle from the Extremes, it presents a
concise summary of the five paths and how they are realized in
Mahāyāna. Madhyamaka texts do not discuss this so much, at least, not
early ones.
.....
That's what I meant by people who just read books. The only
concentration one needs is to be able to focus on one's analysis without
being distracted. That's it.
If one goes chasing after samadhi, one will waste a lot of time and never realize emptiness, and that is a fact.
.....
The point is that uncommon śamatha and vipāśyāna is based on knowledge
you have. Common śamatha and vipāśyāna is no different than sutrayāna
practice. The former is based on direct introduction, and it is
basically the same as the four samadhis of Dzogchen Sems sde: calmness (gnas pa), immovability (mi g.yo ba), nonduality (gnyis med) and natural perfection (lhun grub).
The first is called "śamatha," because one cultivates an experience of a
state of calmness. The second is called "vipaśyāna," because one
recognizes that movement and calmness are identical in nature. These
leads to the experience of their nonduality, and finally, the experience
of natural perfection.
But all four of these samadhis are based on having had an experience of
the nature of the mind based on direction introduction. In reality,
these samadhis are not practiced gradually but are four qualities of
equipoise on the nature of the mind.
It is a very common belief among Dzogchen teachers that Gampopa borrowed
the four samadhis and changed their names, since he had started out as a
Dzogchen practitioner. Further, Dzogchen teachers very often teach the
four yogas of Mahāmudra when they teach sems sde, for example, Adzom
Drugpa, Tulku Orgyen and so on.
M
....
Incorrect. They are conceptual. That's why they are not liberations. In
ordinary people, engaging in them generates traces, latent afflictions,
which then have to be purified. They create paths of rebirth. This is
very clearly explained in Abhidharma. They are mundane and samsaric.
...
Nope.
The dhyāna to which Chan refers is based on the realization of reality,
not supported by mental factors nor supported on a conceptual object.
.....
https://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?p=616369#p616369 “Re: Is first dhyāna necessary for the first bhūmi?
Report Quote
Post Tue Feb 01, 2022 4:37 am
Caoimhghín wrote: ↑
The title says it all. Related: Is first dhyāna necessary for any particular significant degree of Bodhi?
Malcolm:
Nope.”
“Samadhi is a natural mental factor of one pointedness.
People with no experience, who like to follow books like recipe guides,
say such things as "first dhyāna is absolutely mandatory for the path of
seeing." But then you have to ask them if they have discovered the path
of seeing. If they say no, then obviously they are just going to the
basis of what they have heard or read in a book. If they say yes, there
are other tests you can apply.
In Mahāyāna, the samadhi
part is not perfected until the fifth bhumi. There is no requirement for
the first dhyāna to realize the first bhumi. The first bhumi merely
requires realization of śunyatā. That can come about as a result of the
union of śamatha and vipaśyāna, or it can be arrived at merely through
vipaśyāna. It depends on the person. All that is really necessary is
that aspiring bodhisattva can focus on their analysis on the emptiness
of objects without being distracted, but is certainly does not mean that
they have to first perfect all four or five factors of the first
dhyāna. It won't harm them if they do, but it is not required.
You should examine Discerning the Middle from the Extremes, it
presents a concise summary of the five paths and how they are realized
in Mahāyāna. Madhyamaka texts do not discuss this so much, at least, not
early ones.”
“That's what I meant by people who just
read books. The only concentration one needs is to be able to focus on
one's analysis without being distracted. That's it.
If one goes chasing after samadhi, one will waste a lot of time and never realize emptiness, and that is a fact.”
“Below the path of seeing, the dhyānas are just causes for rebirth.”
“Without vipaśyanā, samādhi is useless——this is why there
are three prajñās, not only one. Meditation just isn't the main point of
Buddhadharma. Prajñā is.”
“Prajñā is not acquired
through samādhi at all. However, śila provides a basis for a focused
mind (samādhi), and a focused mind provides a basis for prajñā.
Prajñā is acquired through hearing (śrutimayāprajñā), reflection
(cintamayāprajñā), and cultivation (bhāvanamayīprajñā).
The dhyānas are not required for this at all. Samādhi is just mental
one-pointedness on a object. For most people, that would be TV, these
days.”
“The only difference between the samādhi of
watching TV and the training of samādhi in the Dharma is that the former
is contaminated, and the latter is not. But the samādhi, the mental
factor, is identical in both cases, only the object is different. What
makes the samādhi part hard is that it is difficult to shift one's focus
from mundane contaminated objects to mundane uncontaminated objects,
such as the path dharmas. Hence, the need for śila as a basis for
samādhi. But this has nothing actually to do with samādhi itself.
Samādhi can be focused wherever one likes. And in the case of a
practitioners, that concentration is focused on Dharma. It also has
nothing developing rarified samadhis, etc. Samādhi here just means being
able to focus the mind at will. Thats it. People keep turning these
things into strange beasts. We avoid things that disturb our minds
(śila), so that we can focus (samādhi) on developing the three wisdoms.
That's it. It's not complicated.
Its better to understand the essence of a thing, rather than pile elaboration on top of elaboration.”
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