Tantric Techniques (3 page)

Still, neither the falsely educated nor the uneducated can distinguish between an imputedly existent “I” and an inherently existent “I.” Both must become educated in the Middle Way view of the absence of inherent existence and the presence of imputed existence in order to overcome their innate tendency to assent to the false appearance of the “I” as if inherently existent, existing from its own side, or existing under its own power. This is the immediate purpose of meditation on selflessness.

The first step in this meditation is to gain a clear sense of the reified status of the “I” as inherently existent. Even though such a

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misconception is subliminally always present, a condition of its obvious manifestation is required. Therefore, the meditator remembers a situation of false accusation that elicited a strong response or a situation of happiness that did the same, trying to watch the type of “I” that manifested and how the mind assented to its ever-so- concrete appearance. The Fifth Dalai Lama:

A tight, firm mind thinking “I” exists in our mental continuums on all occasions of sleep and waking. However, like a mirror and an image of your face [in that the presence of the mirror yields a clear image of the face], when you encounter conditions of happiness and suffering, the mind [misconceiving “I”] manifests very strongly, but on occasions when such conditions are not encountered, it is a lit-tle unclear. Nowadays when most instructors on the view— not having analyzed whether such is manifest or not— speak about practice, they rely on impoverished words such as just saying, “The way that a consciousness innately conceiving “I” conceives “I.” Such instruction does not at all get down to the essentials—like pointing an accusing finger at someone whose face is not well seen and saying, “This is yesterday’s thief So-and-So.”

Therefore, you first need a clear notion of pleasure or pain that someone else actually caused you. If not [occurring now], you should recall a former occurrence of such to the point where it appears clearly to your mind. For example, if someone [falsely] accused you of being a thief even though the thought “I robbed So-and-So” was not in your mind, you could have strong hatred for the person, thinking, “He accused me of such a theft!” At that time, this “I,” which is the object of the accusation of theft and which is held firmly and tightly in the center of the heart, seems even as if it can be seen with the eye and grasped with the hand.

Similarly, if another person caused you to achieve a desired aim and you reflect that such and such help was rendered, the “I” that is the object helped appears vibrantly from the center of the heart. In reliance on your cultivating either of these two modes, this manifest mind thinking “I” causes other coarse thoughts to become dormant. You should allow the consciousness innately conceiving “I” to

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increase in strength; then, analyze the way that the mind conceives “I.”

Since watchfulness itself tends to cause this gross level of misconception to disappear, the first essential is said to be very difficult to achieve. You have to learn how to let the mind operate in its usual egoistic way and at the same time watch it, keeping watchfulness at a minimum such that the usual conception of a concrete and pointoutable “I” is generated. The Fifth Dalai Lama compares this dual functioning of the mind to simultaneously watching the path and your companion when walking:

It is extremely difficult within a single consciousness to analyze both the conception of “I” and the way it is conceived [the first being identification of the “I” and the second being identification of its qualities of self-sufficiency and so forth]. If the force of the analytical consciousness is too strong, the strength of the mode of apprehension [of “I”] is destroyed and becomes unclear.

Question:
How should [the analysis] be done?

Answer:
Through the force of having cultivated calm abiding,
a
you have [gained an ability] to set [the mind] on any object of stabilizing or analytical meditation. Thus, in place of observing, for instance, the body of a Buddha, you should cause a manifest mind thinking “I” to appear. While the general consciousness remains on the “I” with distinct force, a corner of the mind should watch its mode of apprehension and analyze the way in which the “I” is being conceived. For instance, when you are walking with someone on a path, your eyes are mainly looking at the path, but with a corner of your eye you are watching your companion.

a
zhi gnas
,
ś
amatha
. The techniques for cultivating calm abiding were explained earlier in the Fifth Dalai Lama’s text. For a detailed presentation see His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
How to See Yourself As You Really Are,
trans. and ed. by Jeffrey Hopkins (New York: Atria Books/Simon and Schuster, 2006), 87-119; Gedün Lodrö,
Calm Abiding and Special Insight,
trans. and ed. by Jeffrey Hopkins (Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1998), 11-213; Lati Rinbochay, Denma Lochö Rinbochay, Leah Zahler, and Jeffrey Hopkins,
Meditative States in Tibetan Buddhism
(London: Wisdom Publications, 1983), 52-91; and Tsong-kha-pa,
The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment,
vol. 3, trans. and ed. Joshua W. C. Cutler and Guy Newland (Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 2002), 27-103.

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The demand for watchfulness is mitigated by the need to allow what is usually unanalyzed to operate of its own accord; thus, the activity of introspection must be done subtly.

When success is gained, the meditator has found a sense of an inherently existent “I” that, far from seeming to be nonexistent, is totally convincing in its trueness. As the present Dalai Lama said while lecturing to Tibetan scholars in Dharmsala, India, in 1972, one has such strong belief in this reified “I” that upon identifying it, one has the feeling that if it is not true, nothing is. It would seem, therefore, that the first step in developing the view of the Middle Way is the stark and intimate recognition that for the meditator the opposite of that view is true.

Giving more detail about the sense of a concretely established “I,” the Fifth Dalai Lama says:

Previously, the “I” of the thought “I” seemed to exist in the center of the heart, but how it existed was not ascertained. From now on, a corner of awareness is to analyze it well. Sometimes it will seem to be in the context of the body; sometimes it will seem to be in the context of the mind; sometimes it will seem to be in the context of the other individual aggregates [feelings, discriminations, and compositional factors] and so forth. At the end of the arising of such a variety of modes of appearance, you will come to identify an “I” that exists in its own right, that exists inherently, that from the start is self-established, existing undifferentiatedly with mind and body, which are also mixed like milk in water.

In the face of this particular consciousness, mind and body are not differentiated and the “I” is not differentiated from mind and body. However, the “I” is seen to be self-established, self-instituting, un-der its own power, existing in its own right. It is not that one has the sense that mind, body, and “I”
cannot
be differentiated; rather, for this particular consciousness, mind, body, and “I” simply are not differentiated. For instance, for a consciousness merely apprehending a particular city, say, Chicago, the ground, buildings, and people of that city are not differentiated. These are the bases of designation of Chicago, which seems inextricably blended with these and yet has its own thingness.

Recognition of such an appearance with respect to the “I” and

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recognition of your assent to this appearance constitute the first essential step in realizing selflessness, emptiness. With this identification, analysis can work on that object; without it, analysis is un-directed.

This is the first essential [in the cultivation of wisdom]— ascertaining the object negated [in the view of selflessness]. You should analyze until deep experience of it arises. Hav-ing generated such in your mental continuum, you thereby crystallize an identification of the “I” conceived by an in-born consciousness conceiving “I” as self-instituting and as having a relation with your own five aggregates like that of water put in water. If such an identification crystallizes, analysis alone will cause you to attain ascertainment [of the absence of its inherent existence]. If you do not identify such an “I,” analysis falls apart without ever getting started.

From the viewpoint of the scholar-practitioners of the Ge-luk-pa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, most attempts to penetrate emptiness fail at this initial step, tending either to assume that the phenomenon itself is being refuted or that a superficial, philosophically constructed quality of the phenomenon, rather than one that is blended with the basic appearance of the object and is innately misconceived, is being refuted.