In My Own Words: An Introduction to My Teachings and Philosophy by Dalai Lama & Rajiv Mehrotra

Author:Dalai Lama & Rajiv Mehrotra
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Religion, Leadership, ebook, book, General
ISBN: 9781458772206
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2010-05-15T04:30:31+00:00

In developing a meditation practice, one must progress in the training of meditative stabilization, which is the mind’s abiding one-pointedly on its object. There are many types of meditative stabilization, but let us explain calm abiding (shamatha) here. The nature of calm abiding is the one-pointed abiding on any object, without distraction, of a mind conjoined with a bliss of physical and mental pliancy. If it is supplemented with taking refuge, it is a Buddhist practice, and if it is supplemented with an aspiration to highest enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, it is a Mahayana practice.

Its merits are that if one has achieved calm abiding, one’s mind and body are pervaded by joy and bliss: One can—through the power of its mental and physical pliancy—set the mind on any virtuous object one chooses, and many special qualities such as clairvoyance and emanations are attained. The main purpose and advantage of calm abiding are that through it, one can achieve special insight (vipasyana), which realizes emptiness, and can thereby be liberated from cyclic existence.

One should have all the following causal collections for the achievement of calm abiding. The place where one practices should be free of noise, since noise is a thorn to concentration: The area and water should be congenial. The meditator himself should have few wants, know satisfaction, be free from the din and bustle of the world, and should avoid non-virtuous physical and verbal deeds. Through hearing and thinking, he should have eliminated misconceptions about the subjects of meditation; he should know how to reflect on the faults of desire, on the meaning of impermanence, and so on.

With regard to the actual practice of calm abiding, Maitreya Bodhisattva, the future Buddha, says in his Discrimination of the Middle Way and the Extremes (Madhyantavibhanga): The cause of its arising is to observe the relinquishing of the five faults and the application of the eight antidotes.

The five faults to be relinquished are:

• Laziness: not wishing to cultivate meditative stabilization

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