Transcripts and video excerpts
Video 3. Meditate Until You Achieve the Effortful and Effortless Experiences
(duration: 11 minutes)
(You can read the transcript of the video below. Alternatively, you can read the same transcript alongside the video by clicking here to download it or view it in a separate window.)
Meditate Until You Achieve the Effortful Experience
One thing is guru devotion. First, you do it like this, you can do like this, tsölje kyi nyongwa,[1] generating or developing the experience of the lamrim—the experience of the graduated path to enlightenment—with effort. Tsölje kyi nyongwa, [the experience] with effort, maybe, let’s see, do it for a few months. Maybe one year… Divide one year, and do one, two, or three months—whatever, you decide—on guru devotion, on the basis of the outlines. Read the commentary and on the basis of the outlines, do meditation. During those months, you go through the outlines. Whatever is not finished today, then you do it tomorrow. So you can go back again. [This is] tsölje kyi nyongwa, developing the experience with effort.
Then the perfect human rebirth, its usefulness, it is difficult to find again; then impermanence and death; and the lower realms and karma—[the meditations of the] kyebu chungwa,[2] the small capable being.
Kyebu[3] translated should be “capable being,” not “lower scope,” “middle scope,” “higher scope.” That is a kind of sign that one didn’t really pick up, understand, the meaning of kyebu. It is kind of not full, but it has become known but kyebu, kyebu chung, kyebu dring,[4] kyebu chen[5] are lower capable being, middle capable being, higher capable being.
The ordinary capable being is one who only works for this life, only thinks of this life’s happiness, only that, the happiness of this life, only that, nothing else, working for this life, like ants, like worms. An ordinary capable being does that. So it is “capable”; in the Lam Drön it clarifies that, in the Lamp of the Path to Enlightenment.
Kyebu chungwa [the lower capable being]: for some months train the mind in that, kyebu chung. Then after that, some months on kyebu dring, [the middle capable being], then some months on kyebu chenpo [the higher capable being], jangchub sem [bodhichitta] and yangdagpai tawa, right view. So, you can divide the year. That is tsölje kyi nyongwa, developing the experience with effort.
Then, after that… You do one year and, if you still need, you can do a second year, and if you still need, you can do a third year—if you still need.
Meditate Until You Achieve the Effortless Experience
After that, when you think, “Now, if I really meditate, I can get realization,” oh, then at that time you train your mind in tsölme kyi nyongwa,[6] without effort, in the effortless experience. Then train the mind in guru devotion for no matter how many weeks, months, or years it takes time to get the realization. So one meditation [in a day] is always that. Then, if you still have time in the same day, then train the mind in kyebu chungwa [the lower capable being]. Try to have the realization step-by-step of the eight freedoms and ten richnesses, how precious they are, to realize that. Then, its usefulness, then that it is difficult it is to find. Try to have those realizations of kyebu chungwa [the lower capable being] and so forth. No matter how many weeks, months, or years it takes time, train the mind. In the same day, even not at the same time but in the same day, do another meditation to get effortless experience. Then, if you still have time that same day… Like that, the tsölje kyi nyongwa [experience with effort] and tsölme kyi nyongwa, the effortless experience. So after you have that realization.
Perhaps guru devotion takes a long time so [at the same time] you can do the kyebu chungwa, the graduated path of the small capable being, to get the realization. Then, after that, the middle capable being, and after that, the effortless experience of bodhichitta for kyebu chenpo [the higher capable being], then you have the realization of that by the two techniques for generating bodhichitta. You can meditate on whichever is more effective, whichever way, equalizing and exchanging self and others [or the seven-point cause and effect meditation].
Then, emptiness. Emptiness, every day you should do some meditation on emptiness by reciting the Heart Sutra. There are many teachings, Mindfulness, dränpa zhi,[7] the Four Mindfulnesses [Four Foundations of Mindfulness], or even ngä zhi jepa,[8] the analytical meditation on the four vital points, or even a short one like this: nga chochen denpa mepe, tendrel yinpai chir, nga, “I,” denpa mepe, “I has no true existence.” That is one meditation. You can meditate so much on that. Then, tendrel yinpai chir, “Because it is a dependent arising,” tendrel yinpai chir, meditate on that. The words are nothing, that is only three words, nga chochen denpa mepe, tendrel yinpai chir, but there is a lot to meditate on. It doesn’t have to be a long prayer, it can be just a quotation or a verse. There are many verses—four verses or two verses—but there is so much to meditate on. So you can do like that, every day do meditation like that on emptiness, that is good, if possible.
If one has a lot of merit in this life and from past lives, a lot of merit from having studied or heard or read teachings on emptiness—having read, listened to, or studied, or meditated in the past—if there are a lot of imprints left, then with one or two words, or some notes, like “There is I on the I,” or “There is vase on the vase,” something, just very simple words or notes or something, then you click. When your mind is ready, so much purification has been done and so much merit has been collected and there is so much devotion to the guru, oh, at that time even just a word like that, it can click to the mind. Otherwise, you don’t understand. It is like that.
It is very, very scientific, this meditation is like a clock that depends on one machine. If this works, then depending on this machine, this turns and then altogether it is able to tell the time. Depending on all this, then it is able to give the time. So lamrim realization, each step is like that. It is very scientific. It is very scientific with the mind. It is all to do with the mind, not outside. It is all to do with the mind. It is all very scientific. It is scientific because due to causes and conditions, dependent arising: by depending on something, this happens. By depending on something, this happens. Like that, it is scientific.