Meditations on Meditation
Lighting flashed and thunder shook the sky, the sound resonating in my ears. The wind howled and rattled all the windows and doors inside the monastery. Above us, there were uneven thuds as hailstones hit the roof and the ground.
The others were around me, all looking out the window with the same scared expression as me. We stared out into the stormy landscape. There wasn’t much we were able to see. Suddenly, there was a crash and the sound of sharp clinking of breaking glass. There was yelling. Someone was hurt… they were trapped!
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I woke in terror. My heart was beating a thousand times a minute. I could feel my pulse pounding in my ears and my hands shaking as I gripped the blankets. The window in my room revealed a clear night sky and told me that it had all been a nightmare. My husband slept peacefully next to me, unaware of what I had just experienced. I’d been having dreams from the hailstorm from many months ago and re-experiencing it in my sleep. Although I’d had my share of nightmares before, this was a recurring one that had been occurring after I got back from my pilgrimage. Coming back to the village after a long time away may have triggered it. I recognized it as one of the three types of karmic dreams, where one has been greatly affected by an event in their life recently, usually in a negative emotion such as anxiety or fear (Norbu and Katz 39).
When I told others in the monastery about the dreams I had been having, they recommended dream rituals such as chanting mantras, as recommended in the Susruta Samhita (Shreier Rupprecht, Schmidt and Young 28). Meditation is something that I have recently started engaging in. In our village, I had know some others who were strong supporters of it, and I had never had the chance to experience it myself. On my pilgrimage, I’d met a woman who was also on a pilgrimage in Lhasa and she had recommended it to me. I decided to so some more research and while I was in the library, I read a very interesting quotation from the Dalai Lama:
the main technique is to meditate on emptiness, but also, in situations of fright and discomfort, it is important to take specific cognizance of the object-the person or being who is the source of the fright or displeasure-and then cultivate compassion and love…
It is with this that I decided to try meditating, with the help of a teacher in our village to guide me. It has been a couple weeks since I started and I’ve seen a notable difference in the frequency and the intensity of my bad dreams.
It’s hard to describe what it’s like meditating, but I can attempt to describe my last experience to you.
I sat upright on the floor, with my back straight — in a position that maintained good posture so that I would not get tired. I sat on a cushion with my legs crossed. I situated myself this way so that I could sit for a while and also ensured that I was relaxed.
I had just started my meditation today and I needed to achieve calm and awareness. One of the methods I am doing this is by focusing on my breathing, a method called Ānāpānasati (Batchelor 158). I felt my abdomen moving with my every breath. My torso expanded as each nostril felt the air rush past and into my body. Breathe in… breathe out… in and out… in… out…
I had the physical aspects down, but now I needed to prepare my mind and stabilize it. I thought of a picture of the Buddha in my head . Last week, my teacher had taught me that meditation required something to focus on, and one of the most common Tibetan traditional meditation images was the Buddha (Wallace, “Tibetan Buddhist Meditation”). After learning this, I studied a statue of the Buddha until I was very sure of the outward appearance so that I could later project it in my mind (Wallace, “Tibetan Buddhist Meditation”).
Meditating is a balance of three factors: relaxation, stabilization and clarity (Wallace, “Tibetan Buddhist Meditation”). It was important to keep in mind all three of these things and to make sure that one is not going into a rather unclear daze. It requires the meditating individual to have awareness.
As I continued with my meditating, I begin to feel my mind go through intervals where I am naturally aware (Wallace, “Tibetan Buddhist Meditation”). These are short-lasting and though I am excited to reach this state, I can never stay for very long. My teacher said that I was to aim to reach many of these states, without attempting to prolong or cling to any of them (Wallace, “Tibetan Buddhist Meditation”).
My goal was to become relaxed with the awareness and clarity I had described, but in my early practices of meditation I’ve found my mind wandering, getting distracted and I know that it’s not good to get frustrated — but it’s hard to put so much effort in and lose it. I’ve learned that it’s better to just release these negative thoughts and relax my mind (Wallace, “Tibetan Buddhist Meditation”). It’s also important, however, to ensure that I do not go too far in relaxing and losing the clarity that I approach this with (Wallace, “Tibetan Buddhist Meditation”). I need to find a balance between the two, so that I can regain the awareness that I had before.
I continue breathing in and out in a calm fashion… breathe in… breathe out…
—
Looking back now to when I was meditating earlier today, I realize that I was getting somewhat distracted in between. I would start focusing on different thoughts too much and my mind would wander.
I have been doing some reading in our village library about this, and I’ve learned from an account by Martine Batchelor, who was a Zen Buddhist nun in South Korea, that there are two remedies to this problem. One of the solutions is as soon as we come back from a particular distraction , we can make it a goal not to get hooked on this type of pondering again and we can make it so that we know in our mind that even if we do have distracting thoughts, we take away those thoughts’ ability to keep us distracted (Batchelor 159). In addition, we can also try to use Ānāpānasati to focus on breathing (Batchelor 158).
I learned about how to start meditating and I wanted to share it with you all in case you wanted to as well. To prepare for meditation is not only exhale and inhale deeply (although these are very important). In order for a person to get ready for meditation, they first must think about the circumstances they are in now, and why they may want to make a change from that. Usually, it is The Four Noble Truths as taught by the Buddha, that encourage a person to want to make this change.
To further prepare the mind, there are The Three Jewels, which Buddhism describes as the components that help form the mind. These Three include The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha (“Backgrounds of meditation” 143).
The Three Jewels: The Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
There is a difference between Vajrayana and Mahayana Buddhist meditation because the former also has a fourth element, which is the Lama, who can also be regarded as the teacher in each case (“Backgrounds of meditation” 144). During meditation, each of The Three Jewels has a specific place that one visualizes in their mind (“Backgrounds of meditation” 144). The first is the Buddha, who appears as Shakyamuni Buddha,”sitting in front and a little to the left of oneself” (“Backgrounds of meditation” 144). The next is the Dharma, which can be imagined as “books or a library directly in front but a little away from one self” (“Backgrounds of meditation” 144). Finally, there is the Sangha, who can be thought of “as a compassionate being, in front and a little to the right” (“Backgrounds of meditation” 144). If there is a Lama, then he is in “golden, kingly robes, as close as comfortable and directly in front of oneself” (“Backgrounds of meditation” 144). The person who is meditating will go from left to right, recognizing each of The Three Jewels and their importance to oneself (“Backgrounds of meditation” 144). Relating back to the difference between Vajrayana and Mahana practices of meditation, the former does this process, starting from the Lama and ending with the Sangha, while the latter does this by starting with the Buddha (and there is no Lama in this case). This image in one’s mind and the movement associated with it creates a rough Mandala, which can help the individual in their meditation. The cycle is repeated as many times as the individual meditation wishes to (“Backgrounds of meditation” 145). This is a diagram of the Three Jewels of Buddhism and how they relate to Mahayana meditation. This diagram also works for Vajrayana meditation, by including the fourth picture in the centre of the diagram (it does not have a label associated with it). This represents the Lama.
As I talked about earlier, I had read one of Martine Batchelor’s works on Buddhist meditation while I was in the library. Once one starts meditation, one must continue with two important components.
Samatha (she refers to this as “concentration”) and Vipassanā (she calls this “experiential enquiry”) (Batchelor 157). The first part, Samatha, is to question what the process you’re using while meditating (Batchelor 158). This generates concentration, since you need to be aware that you are continuing to ask the question but also that you are being distracted from your true intention. Vipassanā, on the other hand, is a more deeper level questioning that does not involve this repetition (Batchelor 159). A good way I like to think of as the difference between the two is Bhagavān’s quotation from the Ratnamegha Sutra: “Calmness is one-pointedness of thought: discernment is true examination” (Ichishima 125). I thought that this quotation really helped to sum up the difference between the two different components.
This leads to a more conscious focus of important Buddhist concepts such as “impermanence, suffering and conditionality” (Batchelor 159). Although Batchelor said that this is the Korean Zen way, she said that both of these components are needed for any other Buddhist practices. While I was reading the text, I was a little confused as to how Samatha is done, since it requires focusing on both being aware and repeating this question. I will have to do a bit more research about this when I have the time!
There’s always so much more to learn, especially in our new library. This is almost near the end of my story. I’ve been writing all of this down in a journal for the past year, hoping that someone in a future generation may read it. Perhaps they will be of my kin, a grandchild, or someone unrelated to me but also interested in the scholarly pursuits that have kept me fascinated since I was a child. I hope that whoever reads this journal will realize the amazing journey that we have had. Every person in every village’s story is different. Here is but a small fraction of mine.
Now that I am at my last entry into this journal, I must bid you all goodbye. Perhaps this is not the last time that we will see each other. All is well in our little village. In this past year, we done so much together. We’ve survived a hail storm and had to rebuild much of our village, completed the construction of a library complete with some new books and a medicine factory and we’ve celebrated happy and sad occasions (including New Year’s and the death of Crazy Uncle). I’ve gone on a pilgrimage to several religious sites with memories that will last for the rest of this lifetime.
While we may not know what the future holds, we can know for sure that by practicing the Buddha’s teachings and ensuring that we are compassionate to all living beings, we will be alright.
Works Cited
Batchelor, Martine. “Meditation and Mindfulness.” Contemporary Buddhism 12.1 (2011): 157–64. Web. 1 Apr. 2015
“Backgrounds of meditation.” Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline 10 (2007): 135+. Academic OneFile. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.
Ichishima, Masao. “Sources of Tibetan Buddhist Meditation.” Buddhist-Christian Studies 2 (1982): 119–28. JSTOR. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.
Norbu, Namkhai, and Michael Katz. “Chapter 1: The Nature and Classes of Dreams.” Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light. 1st ed. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1992. 37–43. Print.
Schreier Rupprecht, Carol, Dennis Schmidt, and Serinity Young. “Dream Practices in Medieval Tibet.” Dreaming 9.1 (1999): 23–42. Web. 1 Apr. 2015.
Wallace, B. Alan. “Tibetan Buddhist Meditation.” Tibetan Buddhist Meditation. The Tricycle Foundation, n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2015.
