Asian Traditions of Meditation

by Halvor Eifring

  43. Many meditations taught by the Buddha fit no list; the recommendation to remember good friends to Nandiya (Aṅguttaranikāya V 336 / Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 132), for instance, or the teaching on space as an internal object in the Rāhulovāda-Sutta (Majjhimanikāya I 423 / Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 192). It is not a closed, exclusive, or definitive list noting all possible meditations, but rather only those that are most suitable (see Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 6–8; and Vajirañāṇa, Buddhist Meditation, 75).

  44. Bäumer, “Creative Contemplation.”

  45. This is the ninth of the twenty-four causal relationships, and its arising is considered dependent on the person’s past karma (Visuddhimagga XVII 18–24).

  46. See Dhammadharo, Keeping the Breath in Mind, 26–63.

  Bibliography

  All original Pali texts cited are published by the Pali Text Society.

  Bäumer, Bettina. “‘Creative Contemplation’ (Bhāvanā) in the Vijñāna Bhairava.” In Hindu, Buddhist and Daoist Meditation: Cultural Histories, edited by Halvor Eifring, 57–67. Oslo: Hermes, 2014.

  Bizot, F. Le Bouddhisme des Thais. Bangkok: Editions des Cahiers de France, 1993.

  Bronkhorst, J. The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993.

  Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu. Mindfulness with Breathing: Unveiling the Secrets of Life (A Manual for Serious Beginners). Bangkok: The Dhamma Study and Practice Group, 1989.

  Burlingame, E. W. Buddhist Legends. 3 vols. First published in the Harvard Oriental Series, 1921. Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1990.

  Chalmers, Robert, ed. Majjhimanikāya. Oxford: Pali Text Society. First published in London in 1899. Oxford: Pali Text Society, 2003.

  Cone, Margaret. Dictionary of Pali. Volume 1. Oxford: Pali Text Society, 2001.

  Crosby, K. “Tantric Theravāda: A Bibliographic Essay on the Writings of François Bizot and Others on the Yogāvacāra Tradition.” Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1, no. 2 (November 2000): 141–198.

  Cousins, L. S. “Samatha-Yāna and Vipassanā-Yāna.” In Buddhist Studies in Honour of Hammalava Saddhatissa, edited by Gatare Dhammapala, R. F. Gombrich, and K. R. Norman, 46–68. Nugegoda, Sri Lanka: Hammalava Saddhatissa Felicitation Volume Committee, 1984.

  Deleanu, F. “Śrāvakayāna Yoga Practices and Mahāyāna Buddhism.” Special issue. Waseda Daigaku Daigaku-in bungaku kenkyū-ka kiyō (Bulletin of the Graduate Division of Literature of Waseda University) 20 (1993): 3–11.

  Dennison, P. “Na Yan: An Introduction.” Samatha: Insight from a Meditation Tradition 2 (1996): 16–18.

  ———. “Na Yan: Continued.” Samatha: Insight from a Meditation Tradition 3 (1997): 19–23.

  Dessein, Bart. “Contemplation of the Repulsive: Bones and Skulls as Objects of Meditation.” In Hindu, Buddhist and Daoist Meditation: Cultural Histories, edited by Halvor Eifring, 117–147. Oslo: Hermes, 2014.

  Dhammadharo Ajahn Lee. “Basic Themes.” Translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, August 23, 2010 (unpaginated), http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/lee/themes.html (accessed April 12, 2012).

  ———. Keeping the Breath in Mind: Lessons in Samādhi. Translated by Geoffrey DeGraff. Rayong, Thailand: N.p, talks cover the period of 1956–1960.

  Dhammasami, Bhikkhu. Mindfulness Meditation Made Easy. Penang, Malaysia: Inward Path, 1999.

  Ehara, N. R. M., Soma Thera, and Kheminda Thera, trans. The Path of Freedom (Vimuttimagga) by Arahant Upatissa. Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1977.

  Matics, K. I. Gestures of the Buddha. 4th ed. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 2008.

  Muthukumaraswamy, M. D. “Vedic Chanting as a Householder’s Meditation Practice in the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta Tradition.” In Meditation and Culture: The Interplay of Practice and Context, edited by Halvor Eifring, 186–199. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.

  Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu, trans. The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga) of Buddhaghosa: The Classic Manual of Buddhist Doctrine and Meditation. 5th ed. Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1991.

  Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu, and Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. Revised edition. Oxford, Pali Text Society, 2001.

  Norman, K. R. Theragathā (Poems of Early Buddhist Monks). London, Pali Text Society, 1969.

  Nyanaponika Thera. The Heart of Buddhist Meditation: A Handbook of Mental Training Based on the Buddha’s Way of Mindfulness with an Anthology of Relevant Texts translated from the Pāli and Sanskrit. London: Rider and Company, 1962.

  Pradhan, A. P. The Buddha’s System of Meditation. 4 vols., New Delhi: Oriental University Press, 1986.

  Roebuck, V. The Dhammapada. Penguin Classics Series. London: Penguin, 2010.

  Rönnegård, Per. “Melétē in Early Christian Ascetic Texts.” In Meditation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, edited by Halvor Eifring, 79–92. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

  Shaw S., Buddhist Meditation: An Anthology of Texts. London: Routledge, 2006.

  ———. Introduction to Buddhist Meditation. London: Routledge, 2009.

  Swearer, D. K. “Thailand.” In Encyclopedia of Buddhism, edited by Robert Buswell, 2:830–836. New York: Macmillan, 2003.

  Vajirañāṇa, Mahāthera. 1975. Buddhist Meditation in Theory and Practice. Kuala Lumpur: Buddhist Missionary Society, 1975.

  Walshe, Maurice. The Long Discourses of the Buddha. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, 1987/1995.

  8 GEOFFREY SAMUEL

  Tibetan Longevity Meditation

  Tibetan meditation techniques can at first seem complex, even bewildering, to those familiar with Buddhist meditation primarily through the simpler forms of Theravāda and Zen Buddhist practice commonly taught in the West. Much Tibetan imagery is complex, and meditation is intertwined with elaborate, even theatrical, ritual techniques. In addition, Tibetan meditation is intrinsically Tantric, and for Westerners the term “Tantra” tends to be associated primarily with ritualized sex, an association that is certainly evoked by much Tibetan imagery, though it has little to do with most Tibetan practice.

  In fact, much of this elaborate ritual can be performed through visualization and creative imagination, without the use of elaborate props, and the most advanced levels of Tibetan practice can be very direct and simple. Simplicity in the Tibetan tradition, however, tends to come at the later stages, not at the beginning. One might say that this is because the Tibetan traditions see a need to deconstruct the conditioning of everyday life, and to dissolve or weaken the ways in which our experience of the world is entrained by deeply engrained emotions and habitual tendencies, before moving to the levels of direct experience.

  As for Tantric sex, sexual practices in the literal sense do not form part of most Tibetan meditation. Today, they are confined to a small minority of committed yogic practitioners within certain specific traditions. At the same time, sexuality as a dimension of human existence is certainly not excluded from Tantric practice, and appears both in the imagery of Tantric ritual and meditational procedures, and as part of the general understanding of human psychophysiological processes that underlies the practices.

  Thus the striking and dramatic imagery and symbolism of Tibetan Buddhist practice today is deployed in the service of essentially the same goals as Buddhist practice elsewhere. Whether this was so in the earlier days of Indian Tantra is open to question. Earlier versions of Tantra in India, at any rate in non-Buddhist circles, seem to have centered around techniques of magic and sorcery, often employed for destructive purposes on behalf of local kings and chieftains.1 For the Tibetans, while some of the imagery may seem to hark back to such contexts, Buddhist Tantra, or Vajrayāna Buddhism, as it is often termed, derives by definition from a revelation of the wisdom and compassion of an enlightened Buddha. It should only be practiced with the highest of motivations, which is bodhicitta, the altruistic desire to attain Buddhahood in order to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings, a category that includ
es gods, animals, hell beings, and other spirits as well as humans. The relationship between Mahāyāna Buddhism and Vajrayāna Buddhism in Tibet is essentially one between theory and practice. The Mahāyāna teachings define the structure of the path and the goal toward which it is oriented, and the Vajrayāna provides the techniques by which it is to be attained.2

  Here it is worth outlining some basic assumptions of Mahāyāna and Tantric Buddhism in Tibet. Western understandings of Buddhism see the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni, as a human teacher living at a particular point in time whose activities formed the starting point of a tradition developed by a succession of later historical personages. By contrast, the Tibetan perspective has a different and much expanded sense of the nature of the Buddha and of Buddhahood. Within this perspective, the historical Buddha was an example, an emanation, or a projection (I am deliberately keeping this a little vague since a detailed explanation would go well beyond the scope of this chapter) of a universal principle or capability that is variously called Buddhahood, Buddha nature, Enlightenment, or the Dharmakāya. Buddha nature is present in all life, and particularly in all beings that have consciousness (the “sentient beings” referred to above). Thus Buddhahood can be seen as a potential mode of being that any living consciousness can potentially adopt. Put somewhat differently, Buddha nature is within all phenomena, and constitutes the underlying nature of the universe seen “as it really is.” There is a basic opposition here between things as ordinary beings see and experience them, with dualistic vision, and things as they are seen in their enlightened form, through “pure vision” (Tib. dag snang).3

  The various Tantric deities, in the Tibetan perspective, are aspects of this pure vision. They are devices through which ritual practitioners can access both the knowledge and, very importantly, the power of the Buddha. Lamas perform their work through the power of creative imagination, visualizing the deities and then summoning the real presence of the deities to enter the visualized forms. The deities may be evoked externally or internally, a distinction that is in any case illusory from the point of view of ultimate reality.

  While the explicit central goal of these practices is for the ritual performer to attain Buddhahood in order to relieve the sufferings of living beings, the deities can also be invoked for more immediate and this-worldly purposes, such as the attainment of health and long life, of good fortune and prosperity, or for defense against malevolent spirits and other obstacles and forces of evil. The ability to do this is grounded in the activity of lamas of the past, who established the ongoing lineages of Tantric practice by which today’s Tantric practitioners continue to control the forces of the apparent world. These ongoing traditions of Tantric practice became the property of major monasteries, passed on through the centuries by hereditary or reincarnate lamas much of whose status, charisma, and political power was associated with their connection to one or another of the lineages of Tantric practice.

  Thus Tantric lamas are above all ritual performers and teachers of the skills of ritual performance, skills that historically have been seen as of central value to Tibetan society. These skills involve the creative manipulation of the forces represented by the Tantric deities, and this is routinely done through the practitioner’s imaginative identification with Tantric deities, supported by visualization, gesture, liturgy, and a variety of ritual implements and offerings.

  Tshe-sgrub, or longevity practices, are among the most significant of the meditative processes carried out through this Tantric methodology. Their purpose is to attain a long and healthy life. At the same time, as we will see, the orientation toward the achievement of Buddhahood remains very much part of the wider context within which the practice is performed. Tshe-sgrub practices form part of a much wider repertoire of Tibetan longevity-related practices, which include medical preparations, dietary practices involving the ritual empowerment of pills made from herbal and mineral substances and their ingestion under controlled circumstances, and physical exercises, as well as practices such as the liberation of animals to generate positive karma or the performance of Tantric ritual to avert and eliminate obstacles to health and well-being or to avert the time of death. While tshe-sgrub practices are characteristically Vajrayāna Buddhist in their form and procedures, and refer explicitly to the Indian Tantric ideas of the siddhi, or attainment of power over the duration of life, these practices also incorporate both elements from the Indian alchemical tradition, and also other elements that suggest procedures of Himalayan shamanism, such as the recalling of soul-substance or spirit that has been stolen by demonic forces or otherwise lost to the surrounding environment.

  Elsewhere I have discussed the history of Indo-Tibetan alchemy4 and the evolution of longevity practice in Tibet,5 and I have also considered how one might understand these practices in anthropological terms.6 Here I will present a description of one specific cycle of longevity practices, the ’Chi-med Srog Thig, a set of practices that originated with the late nineteenth-century lama Zil-gnon Nam-mkha’i rdo-rje and is particularly associated with the late Dudjom Rinpoche (bDud-’joms Rin-po-che ’Jigs-bral Ye-shes rdo-rje).7

  The Origins of the ’Chi-med Srog Thig Cycle

  What is the ’Chi-med Srog Thig (the name means something like Creative Seed of Immortal Life)? To start with, like all Tibetan Tantric practices, the ’Chi-med Srog Thig is an ongoing continuity of practice, passed down from teacher to student. Thus, while there is a body of texts that relate to it, the ’Chi-med Srog Thig is essentially the ongoing practice tradition rather than the text. As such, it is one of the many practice traditions within Tibetan Buddhism mentioned earlier. Some of these have been handed down over many centuries, in some cases going back to Indian Buddhism; others, such as the ’Chi-med Srog Thig, go back to a specific vision or revelation at a more recent point in time. The ’Chi-med Srog Thig was revealed at the beginning of the twentieth century, in this case to a gter-ston, a term often translated somewhat literally as “treasure finder” but which we can tentatively render as “visionary lama.”8 It should be noted that none of these practices is regarded as being of simply human origin; there is always some kind of contact with the levels of ultimate reality represented by the Buddha and his various Tantric manifestations. The gter-ston is one way in which this contact can take place.

  A gter-ston is a person who is thought of as having a link back to Padmasambhava (generally known in Tibetan as Padma ’Byung-gnas or Guru Rin-po-che), the principal originating lama of the Rnying-ma-pa (Old Ones) tradition, regarded as the earliest of the major Tibetan Buddhist traditions. The Rnying-ma-pa is also the tradition that is closest to what one could call, with reservations, the “shamanic” side of Tibetan religion.9 Padmasambhava is probably a historical figure who came to Tibet from India in the late eighth century. During his visit to Tibet he is held to have bound the local gods of Tibet in obedience to the Buddhist teachings, and to have helped establish the first Tibetan monastery. He is also said to have gathered together a group of twenty-five close disciples, including the then King, Khri-srong Lde’u-btsan, and a princess, Ye-shes Mtsho-rgyal, who acted as one of his Tantric consorts and wrote down his teachings, which were concealed in cryptic forms. Buddhist gter-ston10 are regarded as rebirths of one or more of these twenty-five disciples, who carry within their mind-streams the imprint of the original teachings given by Padmasambhava. The idiom of visionary revelation is complex, but the general idea is that some precipitating event awakens these memories, and the gter-ston has access to them and can transcribe or dictate them in a form that can be practiced by his followers. The gter-ston may find physical texts and other objects that catalyze the rediscovery, or may simply uncover the teachings within the depths of his own consciousness.11

  A gter-ston may or may not be able to produce a formal textual presentation of the teachings he or she reveals. His talents may be more for visionary work than for scholarship, and it is not unusual for a gter-ston to work with one or more lamas with more gifts for the co
mpilation of the teachings in liturgical form. These lamas may also be responsible for the further propagation of the teachings. If they are heads of major monasteries, the teachings may become part of the ongoing “property” of that monastery and its lamas, and be passed on through successive generations of lamas and students in that tradition alongside the other teachings associated with the monastery. In other cases, a lama may establish a major new teaching tradition on the basis of a particular set of revelations (gter-ma, a term that can refer both to physical objects and to texts discovered, and also, as here, to a body of discovered teachings and practices). This was the case, for example, with the lama Karma ’Chags-med, who worked with the gter-ston Mi-’gyur Rdo-rje in the early seventeenth century, in the codification of his Gnam Chos (Sky Dharma) revelations. These became the basis of liturgical practice at the newly founded monastery of Dpal-yul, and in time the Dpal-yul tradition became one of the six major teaching monasteries of the Rnying-ma-pa tradition, with numerous dependent monasteries all practicing the Gnam Chos teachings.