06/24/2023
GENERALLY SPEAKING, WHICHEVER STAGE OF THE PRACTICE one is engaged in, it is most important to begin by making use of a pleasant, isolated place where nothing will happen to adversely affect one’s concentration, such as people moving about or disturbances from noise. As the Six Prerequisites for Concentration points out,
Like bangles on a young maid’s wrist,a
With many there are constant fights;
With even two there will be rivalry:
So I must remain alone.
There, not only should you give up all negative and neutral activities of body, speech, and mind, but also, until you achieve a little stability, you must even for the time being abandon positive actions if they adversely affect your concentration.
Once you have stemmed the continuous flow of exhausting tasks, idle chatter, and thoughts and can rely on being free from these three faults (physical, verbal, and mental) related to concentration, make a firm resolve to devote yourself completely to the practice.
For this, it is important to have in mind the eight types of mental application that act as antidotes in eliminating the five faults, since they are indispensable accessories to putting the instructions into practice.
The five faults, as listed in Distinguishing the Middle from Extremes, are as follows:
Laziness, forgetting the essential instructions,
Wildness or dullness,
Nonapplication, and overapplication—
These are said to be the five faults.
In other words, these faults are:
• being lazy and uneager to practice;
• forgetting the words and their meaning with regard to what one is meditating on;
• being overpowered by wildness or dullness;
• not using the antidote when either of these two occur; and
• applying the antidote too strongly once one has overcome wildness and dullness.
The eight types of mental application that dispel these are described in the same text:
Interest, effort,
And their respective cause and result,
Not forgetting the object of concentration,
Considering whether one is distracted or dull,
Actually applying the antidote that eliminates those,
And, when they are pacified, letting things be.
There are four antidotes to laziness: wanting to meditate — interest; maintaining interest by diligence in exerting oneself; faith, which is the cause that gives rise to interest; and a perfectly trained and flexible, fit body, speech, and mind, which is the result of diligence. The antidote to forgetting the object of concentration is unforgetting mindfulness of the words and their meanings.
Then there is vigilance, checking whether or not wildness and dullness are occurring; actual application of the antidote to eliminate these when they do occur; and nonapplication — leaving things be — as the remedy to applying the antidote too strongly, making eight in all.
Having got this clear, sit on a comfortable seat, soft and level. As the essential point for the body, sit in the seven-point posture of Vairochana or in any other comfortable posture with your back straight. As long as you are practicing the step-by-step instructions, apart from when you have to adopt any general or specific physical postures, never sit in an ordinary fashion, lying or leaning against anything.
The reason for this is that the body is like a city, the channels are like the streets in it, the subtle energy in them is like a horse, and the consciousness is like a crippled rider. If movement is bound, the street junctions are blocked and it is impossible for the rider and horse trapped inside to move.
And just as the scales a snake uses for locomotion do not stand out unless one twists the snake, unless the body is forced into the posture, the mind will not stay still. If the right conditions are arranged in the body, realization will take birth in the mind. This is the first thing the teachers of the past have mentioned in the profound instructions.
Next, expel the stale air three times through the right nostril, the left nostril, and both together. Each time you so do, imagine all the negative actions, obscurations, illnesses, negative forces, and other adverse factors accumulated by all sentient beings in their beginningless series of lives all gathered together and being flushed out with the air through the nostrils, and that the whole inside of your body becomes pure as if thoroughly rinsed. This is like washing out a container before pouring some valuable substance into it.
After that, leave the mind in its natural state for a while, and when you have managed to lay a firm foundation for meditation that is not shaken by circumstances, first longingly arouse bodhichitta, thinking “I am going to practice this profound path for the benefit of all sentient beings filling space.
~ Dudjom Rinpoche in, A Torch Lighting the Way to Freedom: https://amzn.to/3p0uZlh
