Part III, Chapter 1: Calm Abiding: The Practice of Śamatha¶

The six chapters of Part III treat one concrete case: the meditation of Tsongkhapa's school, the Geluk. Parts I and II discussed Madhyamaka soteriology mainly on the basis of the treatises of Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti and their modern interpretations. Only one tradition in history wrote that soteriology down as a step-by-step manual of practice and had it carried out by a monastic order that has lasted six hundred years. This chapter and the next restate the practice of calm abiding and insight from the tradition's own texts; Chapter 3 reads Tsongkhapa's own account of his realization; Chapter 4 reads the records left by people who actually practised the method; Chapter 5 collects the criticisms made by other Tibetan schools and by modern scholars; Chapter 6 gives this volume's judgment. The first four chapters only restate and summarize. Judgment is reserved for the last two.

The sources fall into three layers. The first is the two sections on calm abiding and insight in Tsongkhapa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path (Lamrim Chenmo; fascicles 14–16 and 17–24 of Fazun's Chinese translation), together with Kamalaśīla's three Stages of Meditation on which it depends. The second is the tradition's manuals of oral instruction: the Fifth Dalai Lama's Mañjuśrī's Oral Instruction, the Fifth Paṇchen Lama's Swift Path, and Pabongka's Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, which turn the theory of the Great Treatise into a procedure for the meditation session. The third consists of twentieth-century explanations by Geluk geshes to Western students and records of actual practice.

1. The definition and criterion of calm abiding in this tradition

The Great Treatise takes its definition of calm abiding from the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra and the Śrāvakabhūmi: the mind rests undistracted on a single object, and the measure of attainment is pliancy of body and mind. Tsongkhapa repeatedly insists that the criterion lies in pliancy and not in the presence or absence of conceptual thought. He cites the middle Stages of Meditation as the standard: when one who cultivates calm abiding develops pliancy of body and mind and gains mastery over the object as desired, calm abiding has arisen.¹ Two consequences follow. First, reaching the ninth mental state does not yet count as calm abiding: even when the ninth state is attained, if pliancy has not arisen, it is not posited as calm abiding, let alone insight. Second, before pliancy arises this concentration still belongs to the desire realm and is not a concentration of the access level of the first absorption or above; only when access is attained is calm abiding attained.²

The same criterion separates calm abiding from insight: calm abiding is stabilizing, insight is analysis by wisdom, and the difference between them has nothing to do with whether thought is present. Fascicle 14 says that pliancy induced merely by resting on a single object is still the practice of calm abiding, even when the object is emptiness; only pliancy induced by the power of analytical wisdom accomplishes insight.³ This sentence fixes the division of labour between this chapter and the next. Calm abiding is only a training in stabilization and involves no doctrinal content, which is why Tsongkhapa says that without going on to insight, "such a concentration is shared with non-Buddhists."⁴ What belongs to this tradition alone appears on the side of insight.

2. Before the session: prerequisites, posture, preliminaries

Tsongkhapa compiles six prerequisites from the three Stages of Meditation and the Śrāvakabhūmi: dwelling in a suitable place, few desires, contentment, giving up many activities, pure ethics, and abandoning the thoughts of desire and the rest; "pure ethics, seeing the faults of desire, and dwelling in a suitable place are the chief of these."⁵ Pabongka makes the prerequisites practical: if one practises with the six causes complete, "the attainment of calm abiding should take no more than six months."⁶

The posture is the eight-point posture of Vairocana: legs, eyes, body, shoulders, head, lips and teeth, tongue, and breath. The Swift Path says the eighth point, the breath, must be even and gentle: "if the breath is uneven, one may slowly count the exhalations and inhalations up to twenty-one and then meditate, and one will thereby be a fit vessel for concentration."⁷ The manuals place this counting among the six preliminaries. Mañjuśrī's Oral Instruction is explicit: "counting twenty-one breaths and the like is said to be the means of blocking distraction"; the gloss by Ngawang Rapten in the Four Interwoven Annotations on the Great Treatise says the same, calling the counting "the supreme means of blocking the outward-scattering conceptual mind."⁸ In this tradition counting the breath is a clearing before the session and not an object of meditation, which differs from the Theravāda use of mindfulness of breathing as a primary object.

3. The object: the body of the Buddha

The Great Treatise lists four kinds of object following the Śrāvakabhūmi; among the objects for purifying conduct, the five of impurity, loving-kindness, dependent origination, the elements, and the breath each counter one affliction.⁹ The manuals compress the table to one item: the body of the Buddha. The Swift Path says that meditating on the Buddha's body serves many purposes, one of them being "to become a fit vessel for the deity yoga of the Mantra Vehicle"; the method is to visualize light radiating from the heart of the guru above one's crown and Śākyamuni "about the size of a soybean, resting in the space before one's navel." Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand gives the size as a thumb and the same location.¹⁰

The Great Treatise is specific about how coarse the image may be. The measure of first holding the object is "first to apprehend clearly, in order, one head, two arms, the rest of the body, and the two feet, and then to think of the body as a whole"; if even half of the coarse parts appear, one should be content even without brightness. The rule for holding the mind is: "having observed the object clearly, if even the slightest aspect appears, hold the mind firmly to it, lift the mind, and rest right there; do not analyze afresh."¹¹ The Swift Path adds a rule: if one wishes to meditate on yellow and red appears, or on one figure and many appear, "do not follow it," but rest single-pointedly on the object originally intended.¹² All these rules point the same way: in the stage of calm abiding only resting is allowed, not analysis, and the simpler the content of the object the better.

The Geluk mahāmudrā lineage is the exception. In the First Paṇchen Lama's autocommentary on his Root Verses on Mahāmudrā, the object of calm abiding becomes the clarity and awareness of the mind itself; one first holds it tightly and then relaxes; when a thought arises one recognizes it or cuts it off like a swordsman. The First Paṇchen himself judges this section: it is merely a marvelous means for a beginner to accomplish stillness of mind and a way of introducing the conventional nature of mind, and without pliancy it is still a single-pointedness of the desire realm.¹³ The object changed; the criterion did not.

4. Mindfulness and alertness

Two instruments hold the mind in place. The Great Treatise cites the commentary on the Ornament of the Mahāyāna Sūtras: mindfulness and alertness are what settle the mind, the first by keeping the mind from scattering from its object, the second by knowing correctly once it has scattered. Mindfulness must be forceful and definite. This is Tsongkhapa's direct criticism of a method current in his time: if the meditator has no definite apprehension and merely rests dully, then however clear the mind may be, forceful mindfulness will not arise and subtle laxity will not be destroyed, so the concentration will have only faults.¹⁴

The balance between tightness and looseness is the hardest point in this chapter, and all four texts admit it. The Great Treatise: if one lifts the mind too much, clarity comes but stability is hard to produce because of excitement; if one relaxes too much, stability comes but clarity is lost because of laxity; "the boundary of the right degree between tight and loose is hard to find." It cites Candragomin's verse: "If I strive, excitement arises; if I give up striving, sinking returns; this balance is extremely hard to find; my mind is disturbed; how am I to meditate?"¹⁵ Pabongka turns this balance into three factors, stability, clarity, and the force of clarity, and says that whether the force of clarity is present "can only be known by our own experience; it cannot be made clear in words."¹⁶

Alertness is used intermittently: "neither too soon after settling in concentration nor too late, but observing from time to time in between."¹⁷ Pabongka's image is a scout watching for the enemy: alertness is not itself the antidote to laxity and excitement; it only detects them.¹⁸

5. Laxity and excitement

There are only two obstacles to calm abiding. Laxity is coarse or subtle; subtle laxity has both stability and clarity but the clarity lacks force, and it is most easily confused with concentration. Tsongkhapa says that those who reach such a concentration, adorned with non-conceptuality, bliss, and brightness, "mistake it for the non-conceptual gnosis in which the gnosis of meditative equipoise and the subsequent attainment are mixed together."¹⁹ Excitement, following the Compendium of Abhidharma, means scattering toward an object of desire specifically; subtle excitement is a state in which the object is not lost but a corner of the mind is already preparing to bring up a pleasing object, which Pabongka describes as "like a hidden current surging beneath ice."²⁰

The antidotes form two series. For laxity, "the mind is drawn too far inward and loses its hold on the object, so one should attend to something pleasing that makes the mind flow outward, such as the image of the Buddha," or attend to the brightness of the sun and moon. For excitement, "think of impermanence and the like, and excitement is quieted"; if excitement is too strong or prolonged, "set aside the main practice for a while and cultivate disenchantment."²¹ Pabongka arranges both series as escalating steps. For laxity: first loosen the mind by meditating on a vast object; then set the object aside and uplift the mind by reflecting on the freedoms and endowments, the Three Jewels, the spiritual friend, and the qualities of the awakening mind; then visualize a ball of white light at the heart, utter the syllable "phaṭ," and send it up through the crown into space; failing all that, leave the session and go to a cool place or a height. For excitement: for subtle excitement relax the hold slightly; for coarse excitement think of impermanence; there is no need to leave the seat.²² To notice and not act is a fault; "one should cultivate the intention to act." To keep watching after laxity and excitement have subsided becomes a hindrance in turn; "one should relax the effort and cultivate equanimity." These are the last two of the five faults and eight antidotes.²³

6. Sessions and their length

The Great Treatise answers the question of how long a session should last in one sentence: "The teachers of all the Tibetan schools say: short sessions, many of them." Two reasons are given. If the session is short one stops while still eager to practise and comes to the next session gladly, whereas a long session breeds weariness; and a long session tends to fall under laxity and excitement, so that a faultless concentration is hard to produce. Tsongkhapa admits that the Indian treatises give no explicit statement; the Śrāvakabhūmi and the other great treatises "do not state the measure of the session clearly," and only the final Stages of Meditation gives three units, one "ghaṭikā," half a session, and a full session.²⁴ The translators' notes in the Chinese edition of the Four Interwoven Annotations convert these to twenty-four minutes, and to four and two hours (six sessions a day) or six and three hours (four sessions a day); Geshe Sopa's commentary gives twenty-four minutes, an hour and a half, or as long as one can. The two reckonings of "half a session" differ; this volume records both without deciding.²⁵

The manuals settle "short sessions, many of them" as eighteen sessions a day, each short and free of laxity and excitement, and "one should stop while the wish to meditate is still present."²⁶ Two twentieth-century records give comparable figures. Wallace, teaching calm abiding to Westerners according to the nine mental states, has beginners sit for twenty-four minutes, allows up to four hours a session at the ninth state, and gives three, six, and nine months of full-time practice for those of sharp, middling, and dull faculties; Gedün Lodrö, trained on the textbooks of Gomang College, says that if one can maintain clear observation for a four-hour session calm abiding can be achieved, but one must practise every day without a break.²⁷

7. The nine mental states, six powers, and four attentions

The schedule of progress comes from the Ornament of the Mahāyāna Sūtras and the Śrāvakabhūmi. The nine mental states: placement, "withdrawing the mind from all external objects and directing it to the inner object"; continuous placement, repeated placement, close placement, taming, pacifying, thorough pacifying, single-pointedness; and at the ninth, equipoise, "without application and without effort, the concentration of the mind continues of its own accord and proceeds without distraction." The six powers are hearing, reflection, recollection, alertness, effort, and familiarity, each accomplishing one or two of the states. The four attentions: in the first two states the mind operates with forcible engagement, in the middle five with interrupted engagement, in the eighth with uninterrupted engagement, in the ninth with effortless engagement.²⁸ This table is the largest formal difference between this tradition's calm abiding and the Theravāda scheme of forty meditation subjects: Theravāda classifies by object, the Geluk grades by the state of the mind.

8. The measure of calm abiding, and what comes after

The sign of attaining calm abiding is pliancy. The Great Treatise cites the Compendium of Abhidharma: "What is pliancy? It is the cessation of the coarseness of body and mind, a serviceability of body and mind whose function is to remove all obstructions."²⁹ Pabongka describes the process in more detail: the inside of the crown of the head "feels heavy, like the touch of a warm hand on a freshly shaven head"; then mental pliancy, bodily pliancy, and their bliss; the mind is joyful and exultant; a little later the exultation subsides and one obtains the unmoving pliancy that accords with firm placement on the object, "and at that moment one obtains the serviceable calm abiding included in the access of the first absorption."³⁰ Geshe Sopa, commenting on the same passage, says the energy-wind pervades the body and the brain feels a slight weight that is not unpleasant.³¹ Mañjuśrī's Oral Instruction warns that at the ninth state some pliancy is already present, and "at this time wild pride easily arises, thinking one has attained concentration," which is why complete pliancy is taken as the boundary.³²

After calm abiding, this tradition does not go on to the four absorptions and the eight attainments. Pabongka says that the further access levels, the absorptions, and the four formless attainments can be achieved, "but since there is little point in them, there is no need to practise them"; nor does one practise the mundane insight that regards the lower level as coarse and the higher as peaceful, which can only suppress the manifest afflictions; one who has attained calm abiding turns directly to the supramundane insight that analyzes selflessness.³³ This arrangement agrees with the position of fascicle 17 of the Great Treatise: calm abiding is only the support of insight and not an end in itself.

9. Summary of this side

Taken together, the eight sections show three features of Geluk calm abiding. First, it is a practice shared with others. The prerequisites, the posture, laxity and excitement, the nine states, and pliancy are none of them this tradition's invention; Tsongkhapa himself notes the sources one by one in the Śrāvakabhūmi, the Stages of Meditation, and the treatises of Maitreya. Second, it is strictly separated from insight. Tsongkhapa's Middle-Length Treatise says it most directly: one who has not yet attained calm abiding and is newly cultivating it can only set the mind single-pointedly on the object; achievement is impossible within analyzing the object in many ways.³⁴ So the side of calm abiding contains no doctrinal content, and taking the body of the Buddha or the mind itself as the object is only a convenience that could be changed. Third, it is acknowledged to be difficult. Geshe Sopa says that in Tsongkhapa's time very few people in Tibet were familiar with the Indian treatises on calm abiding, and many argued that all thinking is bad; Wallace quotes his teacher, "There seem to be very few who achieve even shamatha," and says that attaining even the first absorption is "very, very rare in today's world"; Gedün Lodrö, having explained the whole of calm abiding and insight, states that his explanation came from questioning scholars and adepts in his youth and not from his own attainment.³⁵ The difficulty of calm abiding is a fact to which Chapter 4, on the records of practitioners, will return.