Teaching Transcripts and Synopses 

Brief Introduction of Meditation

a talk by His Eminence the Fourth Trungram Gyalwa Rinpoche
in Singapore
in July, 1997

Good afternoon, all Dharma friends. As you know, today we are going to talk about meditation as well as meditation practice.

The practice of Meditation is one of the most important practices in Buddhism. It is something that is taught in all schools of Buddhism - the Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions. Meditation is not something exclusive to Buddhist practices; it is also done in other religions such as Hinduism. Buddhist meditation is however different from the meditation of other religions - you have an understanding of emptiness or selflessness. When the concept of selflessness and emptiness is with your meditation, that meditation becomes a Buddhist meditation. Actually, we all do some form of meditation, but we don't know when we are meditating. From time to time, we do simple meditation. It is like nutrition, something very important, providing medicine for our mind. We need food to maintain our body and a lot of nutrition to keep our body healthy. Meditation does the same thing for our mind. For a human being to live in good health, we need not only food but many other things. Rest in your mind is the one very important thing to have. Imagine what will happen if you don't have time to rest your mind for 24 hours? And if this continued for a week -- if over a prolonged period of time, we could go crazy!

This meditation has something to do with our physical body but at the same time, it has nothing to do with our body. I will tell you later how it is related to our body, but how at the same time, it has nothing to do with our body. Maybe you can have good rest, good food and time for sleeping, but you may not sleep well even if you have enough time to sleep. Physically, you have the time to lie down in bed comfortably but you might not get the rest in your mind. Sometimes, they are not really connected - separate and independent. Therefore, as I said earlier, we usually meditate, but we don't realize this, because real meditation does not necessarily have a link with the body. You can have meditation when you are on the bus, waiting for an appointment or lying on your bed. It is rest and a peaceful mind; it is rest in your mind. But this simple meditation or rest in the mind is our minimum requirement; it is just to maintain our bodily health, just not to become crazy.

But if you want to utilize the power of our mind fully, this is not enough. We need to go through the traditional practice. All physical things have a limit and are limited. No matter how physically flexible you are, how long you can train at the gym or do any kind of gymnastics, you can jump a lot, but there is a limit. You cannot jump limitlessly. All physical training has a limit. But our mind has no limit. It is only our thoughts that make our mind limited. Our thoughts limit our mind -- hence, limit the power of mind.

There are two things that are very important and which cover all meditation practices in all Buddhist schools and traditions. These are Shamatha and Vipashyana. Shamatha is calm-abiding, which tries to calm down your mind, and concentrate on one single object. Vipashyana means that inside, you see something extra, something new that you have not seen before.

Basically, that is to understand emptiness, the truth. That involves a lot of analyzing things in detail. But real Vipashyana can only be achieved and experienced when you achieve the first bhumi, the first level of bodhisattva, which means you are already beyond samsara.

But right now, we can still practice Vipashyana; it is called Vipashyana, but it is not the real Vipashyana It is the way to lead you to Vipashyana It is like looking at a map to reach a place -- you don't see that place yet but you can imagine, you can roughly understand the place on your map. So these are the two topics for today -- Shamatha and Vipashyana.

Shamatha means calming down your mind and having clear concentration, but it has nothing to do with analysis. Vipashyana does analyze things. Which should we practice first? From Shamatha to Vipashyana or from Vipashyana to Shamatha? Both ways are possible but usually, it is better to start with Shamatha because if you want to light a lamp and if there is a lot of wind, it would be very difficult. You have to protect the candle from the wind so that it can burn and give light. Similarly, when there are a lot of thoughts, it would be difficult for us to activate our wisdom. Therefore, it is very important to calm down the mind, and to have better concentration. Then, you can analyze things and have the illumination of wisdom.

Earlier, I said that Shamatha and Vipashyana are practiced by all the schools of Buddhism. They use different terms but they all practice the same thing; they use different methods but they lead towards the same goal. For example, in the Theravada tradition, devotees often use breathing meditation. That belongs to the Shamatha where there is the practice of the four mindfulness: meditating on your body, on your feelings, on your mind and on the rest of other phenomenon. The second one belongs to the Vipashyana practice. In the Mahayana tradition, devotees often practice great compassion. One can meditate on loving kindness, and great compassion. The Four immeasurables: immeasurable love, compassion, joy and equanimity. Equanimity means to treat everything on an equal level. That mainly belongs to the practice of Shamatha. Meditating on emptiness, not only on selflessness or selflessness of person, but selflessness of everything.