Thu, 25 Dec 2008
Test Drive
As I've mentioned, I'll be doing a week long retreat starting Saturday. We've been asked to wear robes for the retreat. I dislike playing dress up, but gave in and bought a maroon wrap around skirt (they called it a chuba in the catalog) and a maroon shawl. I put them on today and did a short meditation, sort of a test drive. I looked like a Christmas present wrapped in red polyester. Otherwise my day was spent translating one of my web scripts, Boger's Card Repertory, into my new and yet unpublished Web framework. Eventually I will convert all my software, including this blog over to the new framework. What I have now is sort of an archeologist's dig, constructed of different layers.
Enough chit chat. I often go back to my notes from Khenpo Karthar's mahamudra teaching in Crestone. The plan is to eventually produce a book from these teachings, but until then I will rely on my notes. Here's what he had to say on shamatha practice in mahamudra.
There are three parameters or characteristics of resting the mind properly. The first is absence of distraction. You do not allow your mind to wander to outer or inner objects. You keep your mind in freshness, the direct experience of the present. While undistracted you must not tie the mind up or bind it. You do this by not exerting too much tension in body, speech, or mind. So the second point is effortlessness. You let your mind come to rest freely. The third point is that while engaging the faculty of mindfulness, one does not treat the practice as a remedy to distraction. You simply remain aware of your thoughts. The recollection does not oppose the thoughts. So the third point is that you rest the mind in a state that is aware of itself. There is no duality of thoughts and mindfulness. These points are summarized as resting undistractedly, resting freely, and resting in self aware mindfulness. Another description of the practice is no distraction, no meditation, and no alteration. These correspond to the three gates of liberation. The first gate is not to prolong the past. One of the things we tend to do is prolong the past by thinking about it. When you do not, the mind enters the gate of absence of characteristics. The second gate of liberation is not thinking about the present, which is attempting to alter or control it. When you abstain from this and don't try to limit it or change it, you enter the gate of emptiness. The third thing we do is beckoning the future. This includes speculation about progress in the practice. This is the hope or fear that the practice is or is not working. The freedom from these is the gate of absence of aspiration (wishlessness.) So all these are descriptions of the same thing. It is allowing the mind to rest without the pollution of the past, present, or future.
