Part III, Chapter 2: Insight: The Practice of Vipaśyanā¶

Only on the side of insight does this tradition have content of its own. The previous chapter showed that in the Geluk texts calm abiding is a training in stabilization shared with non-Buddhists, whose object can be exchanged without loss. Insight, by contrast, is made up of an object fixed by doctrine (the object of negation), a fixed sequence of reasoning (the four essential points), and a fixed criterion (pliancy induced by analysis), and all three come from this tradition's interpretation of Madhyamaka. This chapter restates the practice from the texts: first the prerequisites of insight, then its Indian source, then, following the manuals, the procedure in the session, the practice after the session, the alternation of analytical and stabilizing meditation, and the criteria for insight and for union; finally it looks at how the section of the Great Treatise on "how to cultivate insight" is put together. Judgment is reserved for Chapter 6.

1. Prerequisites: the view is heard from others, and the object of negation must first be identified

The prerequisite of insight is the correct view, and the source of the correct view is hearing. Fascicle 17 of the Great Treatise cites the Bodhisattva Piṭaka, "through hearing from others one is liberated from cyclic existence," and Tsongkhapa explains: "'hearing from others' means hearing from others the explanation of selflessness. This is said in order to refute the wrong idea that one can produce the profound meaning of selflessness from within, without hearing and reflecting on it from a spiritual friend."¹ This sentence divides the sources of calm abiding and of insight: the object of calm abiding can be any simple thing; the object of insight must first be specified by doctrine.

The specification takes the form of identifying the object of negation first. The same fascicle: "Just as, to say that a certain person is definitely absent, one must first recognize the person who is absent, so to be certain of the meaning of 'no self, no intrinsic nature' one must know well the self and the intrinsic nature that are absent. If the generic image of the object of negation does not appear, one cannot be sure that one's negation of it is unmistaken."² Tsongkhapa's definition of the object of negation follows from his ruling on the difference between the Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika: the object of negation is an intrinsic nature that exists from the side of the object without being imputed by thought. That ruling, and the dispute with Bhāviveka's lineage behind it, occupies most of the insight section of the Great Treatise and was discussed in Part I, Chapter 3. Change the school's definition of the object of negation, and the thing to be sought in the session changes with it.

The manuals say directly which school's view is taken. Pabongka says that after calm abiding one does not practise the mundane insight on coarse and peaceful aspects but goes straight to the supramundane meditation on selflessness, and that the view follows Nāgārjuna, Candrakīrti, and the Prāsaṅgika.³

2. The Indian source: the insight section of the middle Stages of Meditation

The skeleton of the insight section of the Great Treatise comes from Kamalaśīla's middle Stages of Meditation; Tsongkhapa's additions concern only the definition of the object of negation and the rules of alternation. The insight section of the Stages of Meditation is two pages long. First one cultivates the selflessness of persons: the person is not the aggregates, elements, or sense fields by nature, and permanence and unity are only imputed. Then the selflessness of phenomena: form and the rest are mere aspects of mind, and mind itself is neither one nor many; analyzing the nature of mind with wisdom, mind is not found within, not found without, and thereby one enters the non-conceptual concentration.⁴ A sentence then sets the tone: "If one does not cultivate analysis by wisdom of the nature of things, but merely cultivates the abandonment of all attention, one's conceptions will never cease and one will never realize the absence of intrinsic nature, for there is no light of wisdom." The scriptural proof is the simile of fire from rubbing wood in the Kāśyapa Chapter: from analysis arises the fire of wisdom, which then burns the wood of conception.⁵ Before leaving the session, one reflects that although things lack intrinsic nature ultimately, conventionally they retain their characteristics; otherwise the relation of action and result could not be established.⁶

The procedure of this passage corresponds item by item to the procedure of the manuals below: first persons then phenomena, analysis followed by resting, analysis predominating even while resting, and the conventional cultivated after the session. What Tsongkhapa added was to write "analysis by wisdom" out as four essential points that can be carried out one after another.

3. The procedure in the session: the four essential points

Mañjuśrī's Oral Instruction says there are many lines of reasoning for cultivating the selflessness of persons, three essential points in the reasoning of dependent origination, nine in the sevenfold reasoning, "but the analysis is carried out mainly through four essential points."⁷ The content of the four points is the same in Mañjuśrī's Oral Instruction, the Swift Path, and Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, and the same again in the Fourth Paṇchen Lama's guide to the Three Principal Aspects of the Path.

The first point is to ascertain the object of negation. One first lets the innate grasping at self become manifest. The example in Mañjuśrī's Oral Instruction is being falsely accused of theft: one has never had the thought of stealing yet is framed, and then "in our own mind a stubborn, falsely accused 'I' appears vividly."⁸ With a subtle part of the mind one observes how this "I" appears and what it takes to be the self; if one looks too forcefully, the observed "I" disappears. What is grasped is an "I" that exists on the collection of body and mind "without being imputed by thought and independent from the first," and this is the object of negation; the Swift Path says that this step "cannot be mere repetition of what others say or an understanding that stops at words; there must be a clear ascertainment in our own mind."⁹ The Fourth Paṇchen Lama's guide puts it more strongly: the identification of the object of negation "should be realized nakedly in your mental continuum without being just an idea explained by others or a general image produced by words."¹⁰

The second point is to ascertain the pervasion: if the self exists on the aggregates, it must be either one with them or different, and by using other things as examples one comes to see that there is no third possibility, "ascertaining that apart from one and different there is no other state."¹¹ The third point, freedom from true oneness: if the self and the aggregates were one, there would be as many selves as aggregates, the self would arise and cease, and earlier and later lives would be either indistinguishable or unrelated. The fourth point, freedom from true difference: if the self were different from the aggregates, a self should be pointed out apart from the five aggregates, and it cannot be.¹²

At the end of the analysis the beginner "will feel fear: on the five aggregates there is not the slightest real self; I have vanished altogether! When such great fear arises in the mind, it indicates that one has first gained the Madhyamaka view."¹³ One then maintains two aspects: in the ascertaining mind, "the ascertainment that I have no intrinsic nature, vivid and forceful"; in the appearing mind, "an open vacuity after the object of negation has been eliminated." To hold these two features single-pointedly is the space-like meditation in equipoise.¹⁴ When the force of the aspect weakens, the beginner repeats the analysis of the four points and, having regained the ascertainment, enters equipoise again; one of sharp intelligence can go straight to examining whether the "I" grasped by innate self-grasping can exist as it appears.¹⁵

4. The illusion-like practice after the session, and the selflessness of phenomena

The practice after the session is called the illusion-like practice of subsequent attainment. On the basis of the ascertainment of truthlessness induced in equipoise, one sees all appearances as appearing yet truthless, mere nominal imputations. In the Four Interwoven Annotations, Jamyang Shepa's outline describes this layer as "the way in which, by cultivating space-like emptiness in equipoise, subsequent attainment appears illusion-like and rainbow-like": in equipoise one cultivates space-like emptiness, and by its power one understands appearances in subsequent attainment as illusion-like.¹⁶ Then the same set of points is applied to phenomena: first the conditioned, with form, mind, and the non-associated factors each ascertained as lacking intrinsic nature, then the unconditioned.¹⁷ In both Mañjuśrī's Oral Instruction and the Swift Path the section on the selflessness of phenomena is shorter than that on persons; the procedure is identical, and only the thing analyzed changes.

5. The alternation of analytical and stabilizing meditation

How to meditate after gaining the view is the topic of the section "how to cultivate insight" at the end of the insight section of the Great Treatise, and it is the point on which Tsongkhapa differed most from the meditation current in Tibet in his day. His position is: once one has ascertained the correct view through many scriptures and reasonings, "if one does not cultivate it by repeated analysis with wisdom but only by stabilizing meditation, insight still will not arise; therefore, after attaining calm abiding, when one actually cultivates insight, one must cultivate it analytically."¹⁸ Pure analysis will not do either: the earlier calm abiding is destroyed and no new one is cultivated, and without calm abiding insight does not arise; "therefore one must cultivate both the stabilization attained earlier and the insight newly cultivated, that is, after cultivating insight one cultivates calm abiding on that very meaning, and so, focusing on selflessness, one can accomplish the union of calm abiding and insight."¹⁹

The rule of alternation is one rule only. When too much analysis reduces stability, cultivate calm abiding more; when too much stabilization increases stability so that one no longer cares to analyze, and without analysis no firm and forceful ascertainment of reality arises, cultivate analysis more, "so that the two parts, calm abiding and insight, are kept even." Tsongkhapa cites the final Stages of Meditation: when analysis is excessive the force of stability is weak, like a lamp in the wind, and reality cannot be seen clearly; when calm abiding is too strong, like a person asleep, reality again cannot be seen clearly.²⁰ As for sessions, fascicle 24 records the tradition of the Forest Master: when cultivating emptiness, divide the day and night into sixteen sessions and stop while things are still clear;²¹ the Instructions on the Perfection of Wisdom allows calm abiding and insight to be cultivated in separate sessions.²²

Pabongka writes the alternation as a workable cycle: gain ascertainment by analyzing the four points, hold this object with mindfulness, remove laxity and excitement with alertness, and enter equipoise; when the force of the aspect weakens, analyze the four points again and then concentrate, thus seeking stability on emptiness; once stability is gained, carry out the four-point analysis within firm stabilizing meditation, "like a small fish swimming in a clear, still lake."²³

6. The measure of insight, and union

The criterion of insight is the same word as the criterion of calm abiding: pliancy. The difference lies in how it is induced. Fascicle 14 of the Great Treatise has already laid it down: insight is accomplished when pliancy is induced by the power of analytical wisdom; pliancy induced only by resting on a single object, even with emptiness as the object, is still calm abiding.²⁴ Fascicle 24 completes the account of union by citing the Instructions on the Perfection of Wisdom and the Śrāvakabhūmi: on the object one cultivates calm abiding until pliancy arises, "and on that same object one cultivates insight analytically until it induces pliancy," and having cultivated each separately one then unites them; having attained the ninth mental state, one takes that complete concentration as the basis and cultivates higher wisdom in analyzing phenomena, "and because of analyzing phenomena the path proceeds of its own accord without effort," which is called the path of union of calm abiding and insight.²⁵

Jamyang Shepa's outline brings out both sides of this criterion. On one side, when analysis induces pliancy by its own power it also induces firm concentration, so one should not suppose "that whoever cultivates analysis diminishes the stability of calm abiding."²⁶ On the other side, whether the insight that focuses on the ultimate nature of things has been accomplished is decided only by whether one meditates on the basis of an unmistaken understanding gained through the correct view of the selflessness of persons and phenomena; other features, such as the brightness and clarity of what appears after meditation, like a lamp unmoved by wind, cannot serve as the criterion.²⁷ Geshe Sopa says the same in commenting on this passage: the translucent, rainbow-like appearances produced by long stabilizing meditation are not the illusion-likeness that Madhyamaka means.²⁸ Pabongka's measure: the special pliancy induced by the power of analysis is more excellent than the pliancy of calm abiding, and when analytical meditation can turn into stabilizing meditation without effort, one has attained genuine insight focused on emptiness.²⁹

7. How the section on "how to cultivate insight" is put together

The section at the end of the insight part of the Great Treatise titled "how to cultivate insight" occupies twenty-eight pages in the Chinese translation of the Four Interwoven Annotations. Jamyang Shepa's outline takes the section apart, and the weight of each part can be counted. What tells one how to analyze is a single sentence where the tradition's own position is stated, "when actually meditating, one should recall the view, analyze it again, and cultivate well the meaning analyzed; and on the meaning of selflessness two kinds of meditation are needed, resting without analysis and analysis by wisdom, and one must not be satisfied with one of them alone," together with the rule of alternation and the arrangement of sessions in the section "summary of the essentials of practice"; these come to less than three pages.³⁰ The remaining twenty-odd pages are two defences. One refutes the claim that analytical meditation, being conceptual, is to be avoided: Tsongkhapa says that if no analysis were needed after gaining the view, no further meditation would be needed after the direct realization of selflessness on the path of seeing either; and he argues from the Pramāṇavārttika that the ascertainment of selflessness and the grasping at self are "directly contradictory in their modes of apprehension," so that the one harms the other; Jamyang Shepa calls those who hold the refuted view "fools who think themselves masters."³¹ The other refutes the claim that the mere cessation of attention is the meditation on emptiness: ceasing attention merely refrains from conceiving the object as truly existent, "it is not a realization of selflessness," and does nothing to self-grasping; to leave the mode of grasping unbroken and meditate on some other "emptiness" is, in the earlier masters' simile, "a ghost at the east gate and an effigy sent out of the west gate."³² This proportion is a fact about the section itself: in the part titled how to meditate, the operational instruction is one sentence, and the rest of the space argues why analysis is necessary.

8. Summary of this side

The side of insight can be reduced to four points. First, it is the second stage of a two-stage practice: pliancy is first gained through calm abiding, and then, in concentration, a sequence of reasoning fixed by doctrine is rehearsed until the reasoning produces ascertainment in the mind and that ascertainment induces pliancy. Second, the view precedes the meditation and must be heard from others; meditation is the redoing, in concentration, of a conclusion reached by hearing and reflection, and Tsongkhapa counts this as a merit, since non-conceptual resting is not meditation on emptiness. Third, the whole of the operational instruction is one sentence plus one rule of alternation; the rest of the literature argues that analysis is necessary. Fourth, the criterion is pliancy induced by analysis, and the texts themselves admit that appearances of brightness and clarity after meditation cannot decide whether insight has been accomplished; what decides it is "whether the correct view was first obtained." Chapter 5 examines how the external criticisms treat these four points, and Chapter 6 gives this volume's judgment.