11. The First Kukuräja
The First Kukuräja, Lord of Dogs, whose father was Kukuräja Gatu and whose mother was Dawa Dachen, was a bhiksu learned in the five branches of knowledge and particularly expert in the eighteen mahäyoga tantras of Mantrayäna. Aspiring after the essential meaning, he asked Atsantra Äloke for the essence of the teachings. The latter summarized them for him thus:
It is thought that creates the duality of mind and object; 
It is wisdom that perceives them as non-dual.
Meditation means understanding there is nothing to enter into or to exit from.
Not grasping what appears is the state of self-liberation!
Kukuräja perceived without any shadow of doubt the state of self-liberation of his mind and of all the phenomena of vision. Then he perfectly understood the meaning of the primordial state and expressed his realization thus:
I am Kukuräja!
Being without birth or death, mind itself is Vajrasattva.
The dimension of Vajrasattva's body pervades the whole universe
And not even the sky can be an example of it.
Meditating means not being distracted from this understanding!

Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland Chandra also says one gains the four jhanas on the fourth ground (was it?). That doesn’t sit well with me: That the path of seeing is four grounds before the four jhanas.
Manage
· Reply · 41m
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu I like Daniel Ingram models. Perfecting one axis doesn't mean perfecting another. More rational, pragmatic approach to the path towards perfecting sila, samadhi and prajna :)
Manage
· Reply · 37m · Edited
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu Path of seeing does not require four jhanas, and four jhanas does not require path of seeing
Manage
· Reply · 38m
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland This isn’t the way Chandra presents the paths and grounds in Madhyamakavatara, but I kinda have a feeling it’s not so important in his work.
Manage
· Reply · 36m
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu Yeah. That's my point. Daniel also wrote about the problems of the Bhumi models. Basically mixing up a lot of axis
Manage
· Reply · 35m
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland What I meant was that since he says the four jhanas are attained in later grounds after the first ground (which corresponds with the path of seeing), therefore he says that for the bodhisattva the four jhanas depend on the path of seeing.
Manage
· Reply · 34m
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
· Reply · 34m
André A. Pais
André A. Pais Is attainment of shamatha equivalent to attainment of the 4th or 8th jhana?
Manage
· Reply · 18m
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland According to whom? 😛
Manage
· Reply · 17m
André A. Pais
André A. Pais That's what I am asking. Is jhanas and shamatha the same? No, right? Concentration is not really something I've studied at all. It shows, right? 😉
Manage
· Reply · 15m
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland Here’s how I think about it: Can you have jhana without samatha? No. Can you have samatha without jhana? Yes. Is samatha without jhana samma samadhi? No.
Manage
· Reply · 14m
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu Right samadhi/concentration
Manage
· Reply · 11m
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu As part of the eightfold path.
Manage
· Reply · 11m
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu "The Suttas usually define Samma-Samadhi as the four jhanas"
Manage
· Reply · 11m
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu Even in Tibetan, Dzogchen, Mahamudra, it's stated:

"
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. "
Manage
· Reply · 10m
André A. Pais
André A. Pais What does shamatha without jhanas actually entail? Mere single pointed concentration? What do the jhanas add?
Manage
· Reply · 9m
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu It can refer to formless realms, or pre-jhana states like "access concentration"
Manage
· Reply · 9m · Edited
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu How does jhana help.. I think Malcolm explained well: "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."
Manage
· Reply · 7m · Edited
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland In the suttas the Buddha and the people who ask him things are quite often concerned with what kind of direction they should take concentration practices on. Personally, I think the jhana formulas, which are almost always repeated in full in the suttas, were one of the main practical things the Buddha taught: How to achieve a unified mind in a consistent and fruitful manner.
Manage
· Reply · 6m
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland I think that might have been a hot topic of the day: Knowing the immense benefits of samadhi, but lacking “scientific” thinking about it.
Manage
· Reply · 5m
Soh Wei Yu
Soh Wei Yu 2011:

(8:29 PM) Thusness: removing the fetters is not to say no-emotion and be like a machine...
Through compassion u can also remove fetters
in the Theravada model, how are u to remove the 3 poisons?
????
(8:32 PM) AEN: through insight, tranquillity, dispassion
(8:33 PM) Thusness: so what is lacking in the 7 phases of insight?
(8:35 PM) AEN: the 7 phases of insight are focused on the insight portion
but i guess dispassion should arise after emptiness?
(8:36 PM) Thusness: it helps
so in addition to that, u must also practice samadhi
for tranquility and calm

(11:53 PM) Thusness: as for u, do some meditation to improve ur samadhi.

(2:29 PM) Thusness: the 10 fetters is removed by the perfection of ??? (jie4, ding4, hui4; precepts, samadhi and wisdom) in Theravada teaching
Manage
· Reply · 1m · Edited