
Faulty and Flawless Meditation
Reflections from Lama Eric
On the second and third Sundays of December I shared some excerpts from Dakpo Tashi Namgyal’s Clarifying the Natural State, found in the section on Eradicating Faults and Identifying the Meditation Practice. The two subheadings for this chapter are Describing Mistakes and Faulty Meditation and Explaining Flawless Meditation Practice. These are what I share:
Faulty Meditation
When people place exclusive emphasis on mental calm, their calm mind becomes like a frozen lake of ice, so that all gross and subtle perceptions of the six senses cease. Or, even if not ceasing, they become unclear and hazy. Believing this to be the meditation state, the former instance [cessation of perceptions] is a grave fault, while the latter [unclear and hazy mind] is the shortcoming known as the inert state.
Flawless Meditation
Meditation practice is known as undistracted ordinary mind. Ordinary mind simply means your mind’s natural state. When you try to correct it by judging, accepting or rejecting, it will no longer be your ordinary mind.
Therefore, undistractedly maintain the natural state of your mind with a naturally aware presence, no matter how it is or what is perceived or felt. That is simply called ‘meditating’. Other than that, there isn’t even as much as a hair-tip to adjust mentally by meditating…
This being so, as long as your naturally aware mindful presence has not wandered off, it is still the meditation training, whether your state of mind is utterly empty, remains serenely blissful, whether thoughts flow in a rush or manifold perceptions appear vividly. Therefore, you do not need to entertain doubts about these expressions of the natural state. Other than maintaining a sense of natural ease, there is no point in trying to arrest or block off the flow of thought or perception for the sake of remaining thought-free.
Please see this chapter in whole for Dakpo Tashi Namgyal’s explanation. As I unpack the sense of this—albeit from my limited perspective—I offer the following.
The reference for these passages is shamatha (calm abiding meditation) that is embraced with vipashyana (insight), this being the consummation of meditation practice in the mahamudra tradition. Though this might feel like quite an advanced practice, as followers of this lineage, developing even conceptual understanding of this teaching is beneficial and part of the view.
In our practice of shamatha or vipashyana, we need not attempt to collapse or draw the mind inwards, nor do we need to shut down the perceptions, thoughts, emotions, etc. that arise. We are not trying to forcefully impose or sustain some mindless, vacant, withdrawn, or even blissful experience. This approach of attempting to block or arrest the dynamism of mind is what Dakpo Tashi Namgyal calls faulty meditation—the inert state.
We are, rather, instructed that meditation is “undistracted ordinary mind.” Ordinary mind refers to your mind—the play of the totality of your experience—however it happens to be left just as it is. The subtle wish to add or remove something to manufacture or block some experience betrays our misunderstanding of the nature of the content of mind.
The difference between being with “undistracted ordinary mind” and common confusion lies in recognition of the nature of mind and its movement. The more we understand and begin to experience that mind’s essence is empty or open (mind is not a substantial “thing” with limiting characteristics); its nature is luminosity (though not a “thing,” there is ever-present knowing); and its manifestation is unimpeded (any and every thing we experience plays out in this open, aware space as modulations of it), the more insight will deepen and the more suffering born of confusion will lessen. Statements like “nowhere to go and nothing to do” are shared from this recognition.
When the mind’s inherent expressions of thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, are few, we rest with mind’s open luminosity. And when the borderless ocean of mind manifests as waves of thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, realizing these manifestations to be just the play of the nature of mind, we rest in this recognition.
What to do? We continue to embrace the Three Trainings. With regard to ethics, we more and more turn away from that which causes harm and embrace that which is virtuous. We continue meditation on shamatha, vipashyana, and the components of bodhichitta. And progressively, we understand, experience, and eventually realize insight into the way things truly are and spontaneously live as expressions of wisdom, compassion, and skillful activity.
