Part III, Chapter 4: The Testimony of Practitioners¶

This chapter reads the records left by people who actually practised the method. The material falls into four groups by the identity of the writer: Geluk geshes who completed the full training in traditional monasteries; Westerners who studied under geshes; Chinese monks who went to Tibet in the Republican period to study; and ethnographies of Geluk monasteries. All four answer the same question: to what extent was the calm abiding and insight described in Chapters 1 and 2 actually achieved by the people of this tradition. The chapter only restates and summarizes; judgment is reserved for Chapter 6.

1. A geshe's own account, first: Geshe Rabten's retreat on emptiness

Geshe Rabten (1921–1986) was a Lharampa geshe of Sera Monastery. After more than twenty years of the exoteric curriculum he withdrew, in the late 1960s, to a solitary retreat on emptiness in the hills above Dharamsala; later, at the Dalai Lama's request, he taught Westerners, and in the 1970s founded a monastery in Switzerland. He left two texts about that retreat: twelve verses, the Song of the Profound View, and an autocommentary written later. The translator, Stephen Batchelor, observes that such texts are rare among contemporary Tibetan lamas, because the Kadam tradition requires silence about one's inner realization, and that Rabten himself was usually reluctant to speak of the retreat; his biography gives it only a few pages.¹

The autocommentary begins at the start of the retreat. While "supposedly engaging in practice" in the hills, he had the wish to think a little about the meaning of the view and went to question his teacher, Trijang Rinpoche; the teacher used a hundred-rupee note as an example: "Simply through listening to his profound words, that nakedly exposed the subtle nature of things, that they exist imputedly, merely through words alone, I understood that all internal and external phenomena appear in the way indicated by his example… My mind was greatly moved."² He then lists the material on which his analysis relied: Tsongkhapa's Ocean of Reasoning, commentary on Entering the Middle Way, Essence of Eloquence, and the longer and shorter Stages of the Path; the oral records of the Kadam masters; and the reasonings of dependent relatedness, one and many, and the mutual dependence of subject and object.³

The second verse records the state of mind while the analysis was under way: "A battle was waged between appearance and reasoning." Thinking according to the way things appeared, he wondered how cause and effect, karma, and dependent origination could be valid if things did not exist that way; thinking according to the reasonings that negate the appearance, he wondered how cause and effect could be valid if things did exist as they appeared; "Thus my mind was beset with strife as though a battle were being fought inside me with clashing swords."⁴ The third verse describes his analysis of "this old monk": using the thoughts "I am a human being," "I am a monk," "I am a first-level Geshe Lharampa," "I am a retreatant in a hermitage" to let the "I" that is the basis of these designations appear, and then analyzing it by the sevenfold reasoning of Entering the Middle Way and the reasoning of one and many; the result was like searching the sky for the tracks of a bird: "nothing appears to the mind but the mere presence of clear emptiness."⁵ The fourth and fifth verses record the analysis of the trees outside his window and the pillar in his hut: distinguishing whole from parts at each level, "everything seemed to be established solely in dependence upon its own parts," while at the same time "the conventional appearance of phenomena also subsided," so that appearance was no different from a cloudless sky.⁶

One thing recurs throughout the autocommentary: the fear of nihilism. When the analysis of the pillar reached the step of "a non-existent apparition," "sometimes when such ideas came to my mind I was afraid that they might be a sign of my having fallen into the extreme view of nihilism"; at the end of the sixth verse, "sometimes I was afraid that this way of thinking might lead me into the dangerous chasm of nihilism"; the last line of the seventh verse is "But I feared that this was a nihilistic view."⁷ This agrees with the passage from the Swift Path cited in Chapter 2: fear arising at the end of the analysis is the sign of first gaining the view. In Rabten's record the fear recurs after each round of analysis; it is not a single event.

Rabten's biography adds two institutional facts. As a young man he intended, after finishing the five treatises, to go on pilgrimage and then live in retreat in the mountains; his teacher asked, "Have you no intention of becoming a Geshe?" When he said he had not, the teacher replied, "You should become one without fail. Return and complete your studies, then take the Geshe examination," and he agreed.⁸ Late in life in Switzerland he said: "I am not the only meditator in these mountains. I have arranged for others who have reached high levels of spiritual training also to come… If a person practises Dharma properly, he need have no doubts about his ability to attain enlightenment. On the basis of my own experience, I firmly believe in this ability."⁹ The epilogue to the biography records that in 1969 the Dalai Lama assigned him Western students while he was in retreat; before that, "He used to meditate regularly for nine hours a day, really meditate, not just recite something," and afterwards the retreat could no longer be strict.¹⁰

2. A geshe's own account, second: Gen Lamrimpa and Lobsang Gyatso

Gen Lamrimpa (1934–2003), trained at Sera, went up into the hills above Dharamsala in 1970 with forty pounds of flour and eighty rupees and practised in solitude for many years; in 1988, at Wallace's request, he led a one-year retreat on calm abiding in Washington State. His biographical sketch was written by a student from his own account. He says the second year was "very difficult, with no discernible progress"; after three years of cultivating patience he found himself still thinking, "One day I will respond"; he admits only a few "small" experiences and says the important change was in his attitude to life: "I never had qualified and authentic experiences, but I had an experience that the teachings of Dharma were valuable… I was 100 percent sure that the positive mind can be increased and the negative mind reduced." On emptiness he is explicit: "if you ask me whether I realized emptiness or the spirit of awakening, I have to say that I did not."¹¹

Lobsang Gyatso (1928–1997) was a monk of Loseling College at Drepung and later founded the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala. His memoir runs to 1962, and most of it concerns study, debate, monastic office, and exile. The editor notes that during his years at Drepung he often spent the study breaks in retreat in the caves above the monastery, and that he later said whatever honesty he had came from the training of that period.¹² He himself writes that, thinking back to his periods of study on the mountain above Drepung, "my mountain retreats stand out as most precious of all."¹³ Another passage records that he once meant to go into retreat in a forest; on the point of leaving he read Khedrup's guide to retreat and met in it Dharmakīrti's words, "Somebody upset at an immediate problem in a present situation who goes off into a retreat is not entering a retreat. They are just going to a place to have more trouble"; examining himself, he admitted that he wanted the retreat only out of dissatisfaction with his present situation, and gave it up.¹⁴ The memoir records no experience of calm abiding or insight.

Gedün Lodrö (1924–1979), cited at the end of Chapter 1, was a textbook author of Gomang College; having explained the whole of calm abiding and insight in the United States in 1979, he stated that his explanation came from questioning scholars and adepts and not from his own attainment.¹⁵ This statement and the tradition of silence in Rabten's autocommentary are two sides of one thing: the tradition neither proclaims inner realization nor treats its absence as a disgrace.

3. Western practitioners

Batchelor took novice ordination in the Geluk order in Dharamsala in 1974, followed Rabten to Switzerland to study Madhyamaka for several years, and eventually disrobed. His memoir records the manner of study: Rabten had his students subject the texts to rational scrutiny while insisting that their authors were fully enlightened. "It dawned on me that we were not expected to use logic and debate to establish whether or not the doctrine of rebirth was true. We were only using them to prove, as best we could, what the founders of the tradition had already established to be true… For in the end, reason was subordinate to faith."¹⁶ His departure had nothing to do with calm abiding and insight; his doubts concerned rebirth and mind-body dualism.

Wallace was a Geluk monk for over ten years, led Gen Lamrimpa's one-year retreat in 1988, and later wrote the nine mental states up as a method of calm abiding for Westerners. His estimate of the number of those who succeed was cited in Chapter 1: "There seem to be very few who achieve even shamatha."¹⁷ Dreyfus, the first Westerner to take the geshe degree, describes his own attempt to cultivate calm abiding on a deity under a geshe's guidance, in which "the restless mind refused to focus," and concludes that most people need long preparation before concentration.¹⁸

4. Chinese monks who went to Tibet to study

The records left by Chinese monks who went to Tibet in the Republican period are almost entirely about study. Xing Suzhi entered Drepung in 1937 and took the Lharampa geshe degree in 1945. His oral memoir describes the curriculum as centred on the five treatises, with logic studied first, and "in addition many commentaries written by Tsongkhapa and his disciples must also be read."¹⁹ On practice, what he records is the institution: among the four kinds of geshe, some did not care about rank and "were content once they had mastered the treatises; having taken the geshe degree, they left the monastery and went into retreat deep in the mountains for years or even decades, devoting themselves to the practice of tantra"; and in the Lhodrak region he saw hermits in huts on the mountains who "sat in meditation all year round in their huts on the mountain."²⁰ After completing his studies he himself faced three paths: teaching; "going into retreat for a period to put into practice the tantric methods learned in Tibet, by which great attainment could be reached"; or joining the Nationalist government's work on Tibet. He later returned to Tibet as a government official; the preface by the compilers says he "was deeply accomplished in meditative concentration and reached high attainment in tantric practice," which is the judgment of others.²¹ Fazun's The Tibet I Visited of 1937 likewise describes study and monastic institutions and records no practice of calm abiding and insight.²² In the Chinese records, practice in the Geluk means tantra; the exoteric calm abiding and insight does not appear.

5. Ethnographies

Dreyfus's account of Geluk monastic life was cited in Part II, Chapter 6: ritual precedes all other activity, debate training occupies the overwhelming part of the curriculum, systematic meditation is usually deferred until after the geshe studies, and the few monks who intend to meditate almost all leave the monastery for the mountains.²³ Mills's study of a Geluk monastery in Ladakh notes that the Geluk curriculum places tantra after the conventional ethical and meditative trainings, a staged separation that "did not exist to such a marked degree in other schools of Tibetan Buddhism," and cites Dreyfus's comparison of Sera with the Nyingma institute of Namdroling, in which the Geluk emphasis is "mainly logic, epistemology and debating."²⁴ Gutschow's study of a nunnery in Zangskar adds an economic observation: the monastic enterprise "is based as much on the management of property and wealth as on ritual performance and meditation," while the nuns, lacking this basis, have "little time for advanced study."²⁵ The common conclusion of the three studies is that in the Geluk institution calm abiding and insight are practised by few, after the curriculum, and mostly outside the monastery.

6. What the records say when put together

Four points. First, those who claim attainment are very few, and those who state that they did not attain are not few. Rabten's words are "on the basis of my own experience, I firmly believe in this ability," not a claim to have attained; Gen Lamrimpa states plainly that he did not realize emptiness; Gedün Lodrö states that his explanation did not come from attainment; Lobsang Gyatso's memoir records no experience of calm abiding or insight. Second, the most detailed record, Rabten's autocommentary, consists entirely of reasoning and the mental reactions that followed it: the sevenfold and one-and-many analysis of "the old monk," the whole-and-parts analysis of the pillar, and after the analysis an open vacuity and the fear of nihilism. This corresponds item by item to the four essential points of Chapter 2. Third, institutionally, those who practise calm abiding and insight do so outside the monastery, after the curriculum, and after selection by the geshe examination. Fourth, in the records of the Chinese students, Geluk practice means tantra only.