Paramita of the Month

The six paramitas, or six perfections, are qualities practiced on the Mahayana Buddhist path. They are: generosity, discipline, patience, joyful diligence, meditation, and wisdom. We highlight one of the paramitas each month.

The Paramita for May is Meditation.

From Rebel Buddha:

Transcendent Meditation          

The practice of meditation here is not much different from our earlier practices of calm abiding and clear seeing, which steadily increase the power of our concentration and the sharpness of our intellect. However, when you bring the outlook of awakened heart to your practice of meditation, the power of your practice intensifies.

When you look at your mind now, it's not like you're just hanging out with a new friend in a café, drinking chamomile tea and listening to each other's stories. You've done that. You've already made friends with your mind, and now you're ready to see beyond the level of thoughts and emotions to the mind's true nature.

When you reach this point, you can ask your spiritual friend for special meditation instructions on how to look directly at your mind. It's like going to the barista at the café and saying you're ready for something a little stronger, a grande mocha or macchiato, something that will really wake you up. Like the boost you get from an espresso, the instructions you get from your spiritual friend energize and wake up your meditation practice. You begin to see what you have never seen before-the transparent, radiant awareness that is mind's true nature. When you recognize your own awareness at this level of meditation, it's like waking up from a dream. Before, you were fooled by the dream appearances created by your customary thoughts. As these begin to dissolve, you realize, "Oh, that was just a dream. Now I'm awake."

The practice of meditation, in this sense, is a way to step further into the space of openness and joy that you've started to discover. It's how you wake up to the brilliant clarity and panoramic awareness of the experience of emptiness. Eventually, you reach a point where you can click into a state of wakefulness anywhere or anytime. You don't have to be sitting up straight on a cushion. You could be working at your computer, picking up your kids from school, or sitting at the bedside of a sick friend. At that point, except for mindfulness, all you need to bring to any situation is the thought of compassion.

© 2010 Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. All rights reserved.

 

Je Gampopa writes in the chapter on The Perfection of Meditative Concentration in his Jewel Ornament of Liberation:

"Even though you may have the practices of generosity and so forth, it is called scattered if you are without meditative concentration. Furthermore, without meditative concentration you cannot achieve clairvoyance, and without clairvoyance you cannot benefit others."

 

Gampopaalso describes the methods how we should train our mind and how we can work with discursive thoughts:

 

"Without distraction, you can enter into meditative concentration. You should train your own mind. You should meditate and apply the remedy for whichever afflicting emotion is strongest.

1. To remedy attachment, contemplate ugliness.

2. To remedy hatred, contemplate loving-kindness.

3. To remedy ignorance, contemplate interdependent origination.

4. To remedy jealousy, practice equalizing yourself and others.

5. To remedy pride, practice exchanging yourself and others.

6. If you have equal afflicting emotions or discursive thoughts, then practice watching your breath."

 

Patrul Rinpoche explains that there are two preliminaries to developing meditative concentration.

1. Giving up Mundane Concerns

As regards renouncing mundane concerns, our mind will never settle into a state of one-pointed absorption as long as it is under the sway of attachment to parents, relatives and friends or attendants. So we must give up all our habitual preoccupations and busyness, and remain alone in an isolated place suitable for meditation.
Being attached to rewards and honours, praise or good reputation, or trifling necessities and then pursuing them will only obstruct the authentic path, so we must cut through any expectations and anxieties about such things, and train in being content with whatever comes our way.

2. Letting Go of Discursive Thought

Even though we may be in an isolated place, not seeking possessions and such like to any great extent, if our mind falls under the power of desire, a genuine state of meditative concentration will not arise in our being, and our mind will be unable to rest in a state of absorption. Therefore thoughts of desire must be given up. To turn our thoughts away from attachment to desirable things is particularly important for gaining the special higher levels of concentration, so we should certainly turn the mind away from craving after members of the opposite sex by reflecting on the cause, the fact that they are not easy to obtain; their nature, which is impure; and the result, which involves a lot of harm, and so on.
Moreover, we must understand that the eight worldly concerns and all thoughts of the present life are our real enemies. We must reflect, therefore, at some length on the problems caused by negative thoughts of desire, and, generating a sense of inner dignity, make heartfelt efforts to abandon them, no matter how many may arise.

 

 

Chenrezig
May we practice with fervor, and may our fervent practice bring benefit to all beings!