The Preliminaries means shamatha meditation – basic, formless meditation.
This also includes the idea of the Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind (to the path of Enlightenment): 1. the precious opportunity of a human life; 2. impermanence and death; 3. the reality of karma (cause & effect); and 4. the suffering that is samsara – normal life.
Kongtrul, one of the early commentators on these slogans, says: “Take an attitude of devotion to the path of loving-kindness.”
After something of a gap, I’m back to posting Practice Notes on this site, and hope to continue the Meditation Guide as well, as time allows.
This gap has roots in a complex matrix of causes and conditions, prime among them my depression and confusion following the death of my mother… of which I may write more later. It all has created something of a gap in my meditation practice as well, and so, casting about for some way to get back on the path, I have been digging into my past practices. I’ve begun to do yoga regularly again, and have been relying heavily on anapana – following the breath – and some chanting of the Gate Gate mantra – as well as some minor rituals – reciting daily vows at my morning altar.
These have all been helpful, and I’m feeling closer to resuming a solid daily meditation practice.
Another thing from my past practice that has been very helpful is lojong practice, which comes from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, most famously in this country from Chogyam Trungpa and his disciple Pema Chodron. Though Trungpa was a controversial character, his ‘crazy wisdom’ has been a powerful stream in US Buddhism, and his book Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness has been a powerful influence on my practice.
Although my formal practice was Zen, I have also practiced tonglen, or sending and taking, and used the lojong slogans in my mindfullness practice.
Tonglen is a very powerful practice that should be undertaken only with a solid foundation of shamatha – formless meditation – and preferably with a teacher’s guidance. Of course, I always disregarded that advice and just jumped in where angels fear to tread, but I realize now I really do need a teacher for truly developing the practice. And I certainly would not presume to guide anyone into this practice via this blog.
Even without a teacher, however, the lojong practice – the slogans themselves – seems to be very helpful in dealing with the difficult process of putting the teachings into practice and dealing with the vagaries of everyday life in the Twenty-first Century. The slogans are very down-to-earth practical advice, “a grandmotherly finger-point” on how to apply the Buddha’s teachings to your life situations. Even without understanding them properly and deeply, they are helpful.
I have read Trungpa’s book several times straight through and been through it taking one slogan a day quite a few more times. In addition, I created cards for myself summarizing his commentary about each of the slogans and have been through those more times than I’ve counted. I posted a few of them on the original Shunyata’s Apprentice blog several years ago.
The point of going through the fifty-nine slogans is that one becomes very familiar with them, so appropriate ones tend to come to mind in various life situations, prompting reflection and a meditative awareness that can help turn potential disasters into highly enlightening experiences. “Poison as medicine” is how Pema Chodron describes this process.
In my recent attempt to get my practice back on track, the slogans have been immensely helpful, and I have been going through them with renewed intensity, finding new ways to keep them active in my mind, including making a small booklet from my cards that’s convenient to carry around and refer to. I also have begun posting computer-generated versions on my Instagram feed… with links to these further explications included.
So welcome, if that’s what brought you here! Hope you find these explanations enlightening! Even better if it motivates you to read Trungpa’s little book yourself! Here are a few independent bookseller sources.
The call to meditation can be thought of as: “Let’s sit and breathe!”
At least that’s a very good place to begin. But the breathing practices in a yoga class are not what I mean by breathe. Much simpler.
Just breathe.
Don’t think about it, don’t work at it, don’t conceptualize it. Just breathe. It’s the most natural thing we do. The most important thing we do. The one thing we must do to make it through the next few minutes alive.
But sometimes, breathing is very hard. That’s how yoga can help. Again, you don’t really need it, but it may be helpful if you have some of the modern problems with natural breathing.
We civilized, over-wrought, over-thought, under-worked modern humans have often got ourselves into such a state that we have forgotten how to breathe naturally. We have learned some bad habits, or our tensions have created some problematic patterns in us that make us breathe in unnatural ways.
When you meditate, you want to breathe in a completely unforced, relaxed and natural way without trying to control the breath at all. If you have a lot of tensions and anxieties, you may be in the habit of shallow, high breathing that almost seems natural to you, so to overcome that bad habit you may need to work with your breath some before you even try to meditate.
That’s how a yoga class could help. Not the fancy, controlled pranayama exercises, or any of that. Just the relaxing part. The part at the end of class when you lie flat of your back and relax everything for ten minutes.
Corpse pose, they call it.
That’s the kind of breathing you want to be able to do in meditation. Not too tough… so simple a dead man could do it. Well, maybe not, but….
The great thing is, you can do that at home. You don’t need a mat, you don’t need a bolster, you don’t need incense, you don’t need weird music, you don’t need an expensive yoga teacher. You just need to lie down flat of your back and relax everything. Preferably on the floor or some relatively firm surface, not the bed or the couch. Those tend to put us into sleep mode, and sleep is not meditation.
But, for a very good example of natural breathing, just watch a sleeping baby. What moves? The child’s belly. And how does it move? When the child breathes in, her belly rises slightly; as she breathes out, the belly collapses. Notice the shoulders, the chest. They don’t move. Perhaps every now and then, a little shudder and a big breath and the chest lifts a bit on the inhale. Then it’s back to the belly breathing.
That’s how you want to be breathing as you lie on your back relaxing. But don’t force it, just watch it. If you persist, if you stay relaxed and just watch – it helps to lightly place your hand on your belly so you can feel it – your breathing will return to this relaxed natural state. At various times during the day, try to notice what’s happening with your breathing. Again, don’t try to change it or control it, just notice it. Watch it and as you watch it, it will begin to fall into this pattern of its own accord.
After enough attention in this way, your breathing will begin to just stay in this natural mode most of the time. You’ll also begin to notice that one of the first indicators of stress of any kind is that the breathing changes. A single thought can change your breathing. That change can alert you to the power of the thought, and noticing it can defuse that power.
This is one of the ways meditation can help you. When you meditate, it’s very easy to notice your breathing. Noticing it during meditation helps you to notice it in the rest of your daily activities.
Paying attention to the breath is one of the best, simplest, and most practiced ways to begin to meditate. One great thing about observing the breath is that you always have it with you! So you can meditate anywhere, anytime. No special equipment required… no candles, CDs, incense, temples… you get the idea!
Once you’ve gotten comfortable with sitting upright and found your natural, unforced breath, you are ready to begin meditation.
All that is required is to put the two together: sit and breathe!
(Well, technically, sit upright and observe your breath breathing.)
Luckily, or karmic-ly, I got an assignment with a recon squadron as my SEA deployment inevitably came up, and after a few more months of training, an emergency leave due to my father’s first heart attack, and a trip to survival school, I was on my way to Danang.
Surrounded by Vietnamese refugees who didn’t like Americans very much, Danang was an armed camp (popularly known as Rocket Alley) and there were no trips into the surrounding countryside, save a very scary bus ride to China Beach, no stops along the way. Under these conditions, I didn’t meet many locals. There were many indigenous workers on the base, and I got to know a few of them, but not well. But after a few months, I got transferred to our detachment in Thailand.
In Thailand, we could go into town whenever our schedule allowed, and there was much greater contact with the local, Buddhist, population. I was in love with the Thai people immediately. One of the workers in our ‘hooch bar’ – a small recreational facility our group shared with the hooch, or barracks, next to us – whose name (I think) was Ba, became my friend, and it is to him that I attribute my conversion to Buddhism. He was a very calm and kind man, and he patiently explained the ways of Thai culture to any of us who would listen.
I was particularly interested, and he liked me because of that, I suppose, so he talked to me a lot. In one conversation, he was relating to me the story of the Buddha watching a musician tune a stringed instrument. I don’t remember the details of the story, but I remember very clearly the beatific look on his face, the great compassion of his smile, and the softness of his tone of voice as he said to me, “Buddha say, not too much…” holding one hand up above his head “…not too little,” hand down at waist level, “…juuust enough!” …hand floating through at chest level, big smile and kind eyes looking into mine.
In that moment, it was all clear to me. I knew that this was my own miracle, my own glimpse into the mystery, my own religious truth. These words set me on the path of the Buddha’s teachings that I still follow today. And of course, if you study Buddha’s teachings, you learn that meditation is very important. To say the least.
Although, in the same way that many “Christians” don’t follow the teachings of Christ very closely, most Buddhists don’t practice meditation, – they expect the priests and the monks to do that, and they give alms so they share in the merits of the ones who do meditate – it is clearly what the Buddha himself and all of his primary followers over the 25 centuries hence teach as the thing you must do if you want to come to know Truth. Meditation is “the way” to be able to live in that realm of “just enough” all the time.
I began then, using the very limited resources of the base library at Nakon Phanom, to study Buddha’s teachings. I took every opportunity to hang out on the street near the house in town where novice monks could often be seen on the porch, or outside the gate of the local Wat Shri Thep monastery to watch the monks sitting around the huge well in the courtyard.
Without going into the whole story, I will say that being in the Air Force, especially in the American war on southeast Asia, was very hard for me. Seeing the monks gave me a sense of peace and happiness that was otherwise very hard to find in that setting.
Little by little, I began to think of myself as Buddhist, or at least wishing I could be Buddhist. It seemed unattainable. I didn’t realize then that many authors I had read in college, people like Kerouac and Ginsburg, were actually Buddhist. It seemed to me that only Asians could be Buddhist. Standing outside that monastery gate looking in, I felt relegated to the position of permanent outsider.
Shunyata's Apprentice 