Meditation Practice and Q&A

This text is translated from the Chinese transcript of the teaching.

2024.07.21 Taipei

GarTul Chimi Dorjee Rinpoche

Note: for the practices mentioned in this text, please always follow Rinpoche's live guidance.

The Essence of Meditation

We do not want to make meditation complicated and serious. We want to share it with you in a simple way, based on experience.

The core of meditation is inner experience, and it is closely tied to our inner relaxation. Whether you can meditate well depends basically on your experience. If you can let yourself be stable and relaxed, you are doing it right. If you are full of stress and force yourself to hold a particular posture, that is not quite right.

We will go slowly, and the instructions will be gentle and brief, so that everyone can easily understand and use them.

Preparing Before We Begin

Since everyone has just come in from outside, body and mind are a little unsettled, maybe even somewhat uncomfortable. So first we will relax for five minutes.

The way to relax is to count the rhythm of the breath: one, two, three, then breathe in, one, two, three. If this pace does not suit you, you can count one, two, breathe out, then breathe in, one, two. In any case, keep the length and rhythm of the breath even.

This technique can settle our mind immediately.

A Common Misconception in Practice

Most people have a bit of a misconception when they practice. We seem to follow the instructions very earnestly, but inside we carry expectations and hopes. We want to gain something from it, we want to reach a higher level of realization, and we come to meditation with this kind of desire.

The Buddha said that all of his teachings are for training our own mind, for taming our own mind. But because we carry the desire to attain some particular state, in the process we end up practicing by following the hopes in our mind.

The Basic Responsibility in Practice

With this attitude, we do not take responsibility for our own practice. We do not really take charge of our mind; instead we move forward by following desire.

In any meditation, you have the responsibility to know what you are doing, and, based on that knowing, to support yourself and give yourself strength in that practice.

With this solid foundation, you need to understand what the practice actually is. Do not rush into a practice just because someone says it is good. You need to know what the practice is for, how to do it, and what function or benefit it has once you have done it.

What often happens is that we do not understand the teaching or instructions of the practice at all. Simply because we have hopes, cravings and imaginings inside, we put the body there to practice, but the mind has no clear idea, and our inner responsibility is completely unclear.

What Meditation Is

In Tibetan, meditation is called gom, which means habituation: building a habit. It sounds simple.

There are many different ways to build habits, but on the level of the path, the habit we want to build is the habit of inner liberation.

Why build another habit? Because what we experience is based on all sorts of different habits; there are already habits within us. Take the posture of the body, for example: a particular posture produces a particular effect.

On the mental level, we actually do not understand what our mind is doing. There are all kinds of emotions and thoughts, and based on these emotions and thoughts we go through the same experiences again and again. You could say that we are almost always having the same experience in different situations.

Three Levels of Mind

The First Level: The Thinking Mind

Right now we open our eyes and look around. The five senses all face outward toward the external world. This is how we naturally make contact with the outer world.

Once this connection happens, we begin to think. We start thinking about specific things, judging whether this is good or bad, right or wrong, and this judgment brings belief. The process from thinking and judging to belief is what we call the thinking mind.

How we think and how we view outer things cannot change the reality of those things, but this judgment does affect how we experience them. For example, if you think something is good, you want to keep it close to you. If you think something is bad, you feel offended when it comes near. All of this experience comes from your own beliefs and judgments.

The Second Level: The Emotion Mind

This experience of wanting to draw near and wanting to push away is what we call the emotion mind. It is the mind that experiences outer conditions after the thinking mind has judged them good or bad. You could say that everything we experience is emotion or feeling: happy because we think something is good, sad because we think it is bad.

Our experience is the experience of emotions, and emotions are strongly influenced by the thinking mind.

The Third Level: The Identity Mind

All these experiences affect the third level of mind: the identity mind. When we feel happy, this mind thinks, "My situation is great." When we are angry, it feels, "I am just this angry," or even, "I am this anger." When things are bad, it says, "I am sick," or, "I am so worn out."

Emotions affect how we identify with our state. This is a very subconscious state that we cannot easily understand or control. The process goes from the thinking mind affecting the emotion mind, and then affecting the identity mind.

This process often leaves a deep inner voice that influences us, such as, "I am just this bad." That affects our emotions, the emotions begin to swing, and it even affects the brain. The brain goes blank, gets stuck, cannot function at all, and everything is in chaos.

Understanding Our Own Mind

This kind of understanding of ourselves is very important. Before, when we said "my mind," we thought those emotions were what we call my mind, or we took "this is just how I am" to be our mind. But we never knew where these thoughts and emotions came from, and of course, because we did not know their state, we could not change them.

For all of us, this should be a very natural and shared experience.

The Foundation of Practice

Practicing based on our understanding of our own mind is the most important foundation of all practice. With this as the foundation, you can build better habits that help you deal with these three levels of mind.

We build better habits through practice. While practicing, you will also feel that the practice makes sense. You will not blindly jump into just any practice, and you will not expect to gain something from it.

You know that through particular habits we can change our old, unhelpful habits. When you build new habits based on the techniques taught, you will find it wonderful: you do not have to sit here meditating forever.

You may even quickly have some experience. When you take up your own responsibility and get your mind in order, and also understand what meditation is meant to do, then with understanding on both sides, it becomes easy to build new habits.

Building new habits means dealing with our own mind; it has to be applied to our mind. Then you will find that it brings benefit. If you are committed enough, results may appear within one or two months. With this practice of taming the mind, how much time you put in depends on how much you value your own practice. It is you who supports yourself in practicing, and how quickly the benefit appears depends on how much you put in.

The Fourth Level: The Pure Mind

Let us look at our actual state. Who am I, what am I? Whatever you think or feel, what you experience is your emotions.

We can see our state immediately. Based on this emotion, we can see where we are right now: do you feel at ease and happy, or stressed?

Then look at your thinking mind: where does the stress come from? Does it come from our messy thoughts? Or does it come from how we identify ourselves? For example, constant self-criticism: when the identity mind is constantly criticizing itself, you feel very stressed.

When you feel stress, check whether this self-critical mind is at work. Then find a way to replace it. Replace it with what? With different thoughts: actually I am very fortunate, I am blessed, I am good.

When you replace that self-critical state with these positive thoughts or feelings, you immediately feel relaxed, and a very deep positive strength may even appear. Then your emotions become steady, and your thinking mind can start working again. We know that when we lose our temper, the brain cannot think clearly.

Observing your actual state does not come from imagination; it comes from your experience. What we experience is changing all the time, so our actual state is also always changing.

You need to adjust according to your actual state: when you find something is off, adjust it. In this way you can purify your state and improve the quality of your life.

This is the principle of meditation. First we deeply understand our own state. Everyone has their own unique state, so we also need to approach our practice in a unique way. Put your mind on the practice, follow the instructions, and you will find that it can purify the different levels of our mind.

Take the identity mind, for example. You think, "I am just this stupid," "This is just how I am," and you take this to be the real you, and with this identity you react to outer things in all sorts of ways. But sometimes you are clever and sometimes you are foolish, sometimes you are someone to others and sometimes you are something to yourself. All of this comes from what other people say you are; it is all temporary outer circumstance.

You decide who you are based on these messages, but you are one person. How could all of these be you? If you think it through carefully, you can see that these cannot all be me. They are all a temporary self decided from outside, not the real me. Then what is the real me?

Through this kind of reflection, you honestly peel away the three layers of mind we talked about. Peel away these outer conditions, the so-called temporary identities. Peel all of them away.

Then you will find a state that you can feel but cannot point to. Like the sky, beyond words, a vast and boundless space, we call it the pure mind. It is completely unstained. If you can rest in it, and rest long enough, you will feel complete relaxation. Your emotions become very steady, and basically no thoughts stir in your mind. It is a very peaceful and comfortable state.

Breaking Old Habits

Once we understand that all these connections have certain effects and cause things to happen, we can build new habits through meditation.

Why build new habits? Because our thinking mind has a habit: whatever it sees, it responds immediately. For example, walking down the street, or scrolling TikTok and so on, we see that someone else has something and wonder why we do not, and we go straight into instant judgment. Then the emotions start riding a roller coaster, swinging wildly again and again.

From childhood until now, in this life, we have not understood why things are the way they are; we have simply built all kinds of habits by doing what others say. For example, when we see what clothes someone is wearing, we think, "That is great, I want it too," or, "I do not want that." Different results begin to arise depending on personal experience.

Everyone judges differently. Our judging, thinking mind cannot change the outer world, yet it does affect our emotion mind. The emotion mind has a habit just like the thinking mind: reacting immediately. What we call emotion is reaction, immediate reaction. What we call thinking is immediate judgment.

For example, when we meet a situation, we judge immediately and then react immediately. The thinking mind and the emotion mind keep running nonstop, and we feel very tired and completely exhausted.

We need to break the habit of the thinking mind and the emotion mind running so fast, and build new habits. Our identity mind also has a habit: immediately deciding who I am and what I am like.

But think about how many "who I am" and "what I am like" you have accumulated from childhood until now. How could all of them be you? Yet we have not noticed this, or even cared about it, and so we are affected by all three layers of mind.

If we can strip away and remove all these temporary states of mind, you will find that your true face is a pure, confident, vast space. This is what we can see once we are able to remove the influence of these three layers.

How the Practice Works

During these five to ten minutes of focus, what we are doing is taking the breath as the object of our meditation and our own body as the object of what we feel. We are looking inward at ourselves.

More practice helps us become more and more sensitive to ourselves. You can feel your own sensations more easily, and you become clearer. You can even feel the hidden stress and tension inside you; you can feel tensions you were completely unaware of before.

We work directly through the mind. Mind and body influence each other, and in particular, the state of our mind always directly affects the body. Because some methods of training the mind are not so easy to grasp, we say to take the sensations of the body as the guide.

Once there is tension in the body and some place feels stuck, what you are actually feeling is the state of your mind, because the state of the mind is reflected in the sensations of the body. As long as your mind is steady, your body will be light and at ease.

From my own meditation experience: sometimes I would deliberately try to correct my body posture, but often I could not, because there was contrived effort in it. I could feel something, but there was always some tension.

But after meditating for about half an hour, I would slowly relax. Once the mind relaxed, I found that the posture I had been trying to adjust had appeared by itself. There was no need to adjust it anymore. The body posture was already in its best state, with no adjusting needed. The muscle tension had relaxed, the whole body became light and at ease, and the posture was completely right.

This is the result of meditation. You know very clearly that when your mind is steady enough, your body becomes light and at ease, and through the body's sensations you can more easily feel the state of your body. So the point is to relax the mind and not be tense.

The Breathing Meditation Technique

In this breathing meditation, what we experience and feel is the contact between the breath and the body. Air from outside enters us; this is the breath we say we follow. Actually we are not following the breath; we are following our feelings: how the in-breath and out-breath feel inside the body.

Because the breath may go to the head, to the throat, to the abdomen, to the whole body, with every breath you are able to feel your whole body through the breath.

The guidance in this meditation may change, and the techniques may keep changing, because we may say feel your head, feel your abdomen, feel this or that place. The guiding technique changes.

The Principle of Meditation

The techniques or guidance of meditation keep changing, but the principle of meditation does not. What is this principle? It is to not make any judgment and not make any reaction. Do not think, "Why is this in-breath so cool," "Why is the out-breath so warm," "Is this bad?" No such thoughts. You simply and plainly are aware, aware of the sense of contact between the breath and the body.

That sense of contact may change; the feeling will certainly change. But you do not cling to "this is how it should be." You simply do not make any judgment or reaction.

Not judging here is what we mean by breaking the habit of the thinking mind. For that one minute, five minutes, ten minutes, you simply make no judgment at all, and this lets our thoughts calm down.

Not reacting at all addresses the habit of our emotion mind, which always keeps reacting immediately. We want to break this habit.

The Purpose of Practice

When we meditate, we know that we are following the breath and feeling the sensations, and our purpose is to train the mind. So our thinking mind focuses on the breath and the sensations, our emotion mind makes no reaction, and we simply follow this meditation technique to train the mind.

What we are actually training is this: not reacting immediately and not judging immediately.

Practical Instructions

For some of you this may be the first time hearing this, and at first some may find it hard to do. That is fine; just go slowly and make the effort. When you go home, if time and place allow, you can practice on your own. Here in our group practice, whether or not you are able to, whether or not you feel at ease, we will just try to do it for about ten minutes.

It will not be long. The point is not to judge immediately and not to react immediately. Just follow the breath, follow the feeling of the breath moving in and out of the body.

Keep it simple. We do not need extra effort to breathe. From infancy until death, everyone breathes naturally; just put your attention on the breath. At first you may attend to the tip of the nose, and later the place of attention may change, but in any case, feel the breath and how it feels inside your body.

The Guided Meditation

First practice:

• Relax the body and let the mind be calm
• Notice your natural breathing
• Apply no pressure and no contrived effort; let the breath be gentle and smooth
• Place your attention on the tip of the nose and feel the in-breath and out-breath
• Now move your attention to the point between the eyebrows
• See whether you can feel anything at the point between the eyebrows
• Make sure you are not using too much effort: no effort at all, nothing contrived
• The breath should be natural and gentle
• Through every out-breath and in-breath, keep your attention at the point between the eyebrows
• Slowly and gently open your eyes

The more focused you are, the more detail you can feel; it depends on how calm your mind is. Remember to stay natural and not use force.

Second practice:

• Remember the meditation technique: the point is that we are training our own mind
• Follow the feeling of the breath
• Now our thinking mind no longer judges, and our emotion mind no longer reacts immediately
• With the support of this technique, we can train our thinking mind and emotion mind
• This is the key. Understand this key, so that you do not get lost in the technique
• Remember to relax, natural and uncontrived
• Body relaxed, mood steady, breathing naturally
• Feel the sensation of the breath at the crown of your head
• Whether breathing out or breathing in, just feel the crown of the head
• Now bring your attention to the throat; remember to keep the breath gentle and smooth
• Just feel the sensation in the throat
• Whatever you feel there, do not react immediately and do not judge; just feel it
• Now bring your attention to your heart, breathing gently and naturally
• Try to feel the sensations around the heart
• With every in-breath and every out-breath, feel the heart
• Whatever you feel, just observe, without judging and without reacting immediately
• Now move your attention down to the navel
• Feel the sensation at the navel
• With every in-breath and every out-breath, feel the navel
• Now slowly and gently open your eyes

Questions and Answers

A student asked: You just introduced three kinds of mind: the first is the thinking mind, the second is the emotion mind, and the third is the identity mind. Coming back to our real life and to practice, since we have thousands and thousands of thoughts, feelings and identities, which thoughts, feelings and identities should we cultivate?

There is no absolute answer. For example, when we are hungry and go to eat, the first bite will never make you full. Only by the fiftieth or sixtieth bite do you feel full.

The point is that we should never throw away the first bite. You cannot say, "It will not make me full, so I will not eat the first bite." This is a very instinctive physical response for us, but when it comes to practice, we forget this point and think that if we do one thing, then everything will work.

Do not think about how to do something. Instead, return to our own reality: what our actual state is, that is, our experience and our emotions. At the very beginning of the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha taught that the first thing is to know your own suffering, to know where your struggle lies.

There is so much suffering that it is hard to explain clearly. Some is in memory, some is in thought. But which suffering do we need to know? Know the suffering of your most basic state, the suffering you are experiencing right now. That is the suffering you need to deal with, and that is your real suffering. The suffering of the basic state is your present suffering.

For example, if your knee hurts, how do you adjust? If your emotions feel a bit out of balance, how do you adjust? You need to see the source, or make changes according to its state.

In different situations we have different experiences that come and go, but you need to find a way to deal with the actual state of each experience, the actual state you are experiencing. That is your real suffering. Connect with it, and then adjust.

Life Is Like a Highway

Our life is like a highway. It is not always straight. Sometimes you turn right, sometimes left, and there are even traffic lights, so we need to know when to turn, when to stop, when to speed up and when to brake.

At any point along the way, if we suddenly stop paying attention, there will be an accident. But if we are aware all along the way, nothing will happen.

We often carry all kinds of emotions, expectations and so on. Our thoughts run wild and our emotions fly everywhere, sometimes faster than anything, and so we often break down, and it also affects our identity mind.

We have such strong habitual tendencies that even if we work very hard to attain some great accomplishment or realization, it is difficult. Why? Because we do not have that awareness, so we can never avoid accidents.

Once you have this awareness, your road becomes clear and smooth. Whether you need to make a U-turn or there is a pothole in the road, you can get through lightly. So the point is this awareness.

In any practice, the most important thing is to know that we have these three levels of mind and all sorts of habitual tendencies. With this understanding, training the mind becomes meaningful to us. It is not some instruction from outside; you will see more clearly and understand better why it matters.

The Key Point

Whatever the situation, do not forget the key point I just mentioned. It is like when we have a stomachache or a fever: we should take medicine. Take the right medicine and you are fine; take the wrong medicine or eat randomly and there will certainly be lots of problems.

Where is the key point? It is that we need to purify our own mind and build new habits. And we give the same importance to the techniques of practice. That is, on one hand we emphasize the techniques of the practice itself, but at the same time we know that the emphasis of practice is on purifying the mind and building new habits.

Then we will not be like before: although we had a pure connection with the Dharma, we did not know what to do, so this month we did this practice and next month another one, jumping randomly into any practice, never really training our own mind through practice. We should use the Dharma to train our own mind.

This can build a wonderful connection. The practice of the Dharma, and our experience of purifying the mind and building new habits: these two together are equally important, and together they make a wonderful connection that brings about our inner transformation.

After we are transformed through practice, our mind will have more appreciation and more gratitude for the practice itself. We will feel that it has truly brought benefit. This is how real change happens.

The Buddha also worked with his own thoughts and emotions in this way, and we should work with our thoughts and emotions in the same way. The transformation we need is not going to the gym to build muscles; it is inner transformation, transforming all our past limitations and suffering.

Sitting here, we are not carrying any heavy load on the outside, but inside we carry all kinds of baggage. So we need to know that what we must deal with is our inner baggage. This is very important.

The Results of Practice

The results or benefits of practice affect how we view our body, mind and emotions. Suppose today you think, "This body of mine is truly so precious, what a wonderful gift." What effect would that have?

Let us summarize once more. What is meditation? It is building a new habit. At the beginning, meditating will be harder. After one or two months, you will meditate spontaneously. All our old habits began this way too.

When you can begin meditating quite naturally, your thinking mind is purified. The emotion mind is purified as well. Your identity mind will no longer randomly identify with this or that; it will be clearer, even friendlier.

The Importance of Commitment and Regularity

Before doing it, of course, we need to know what we are going to do and why it matters. And of course, entering real practice means actually doing it. The challenge there is that you must commit, and you must have some regularity.

For example, I myself have started to get some fat on my belly. Although I want a strong body, I have not taken the responsibility to exercise; I have not really made the effort to make my body strong, so naturally I get a big belly.

The point is that once you know how important this is, you need to truly commit and truly do it regularly. How much commitment and enthusiasm you have, that is, how interested you are in doing this and how much you support that interest in yourself, will show in how quickly you can reach your goal.

The Variety of Meditation Techniques

There are many methods of meditation. Counting the breath or watching the breath is one. Then there is deity yoga, and meditations on loving-kindness and compassion; there are always many meditation techniques. This time we will focus on breathing meditation.

Breathing meditation is simply following your own breath. There will be some instructions to focus on particular parts of the body; they vary.

When you follow the breath, you are actually following the contact between the breath and the body. Like the air outside and your nose: when the air enters your body, there is always contact.

So you are actually following the sensation. When you breathe in and out there is a sensation, and the sensation moves: it goes to the head, to the crown, to the throat. With every breath you can feel here and there; it goes to the abdomen, to the whole body.

With every breath, you can follow the sensation. You can actually feel your body.

The Technique Changes but the Principle Does Not

The technique of meditation will change; the guidance may shift to here or there. But what matters most is the principle of meditation.

The principle is: when you follow these techniques correctly, you should not fixate or judge, as in "this is it" or "it should be like that." Therefore, you also do not allow yourself to react immediately.

We have a thinking habit: the thinking mind habitually judges immediately. Now we are trying to break that habit. For five or ten minutes, we try to let our thinking become very clear and stable.

Reacting means the emotion mind. We are trying to build the habit of not reacting immediately, because we have a very strong habit of reacting.

While practicing, we follow the breath and try to feel the sensations. We know we are training our mind. As we follow this, our thinking mind focuses on the breath and the sensations, and our emotion mind does not react immediately.

Through this meditation technique, we are actually purifying our mind. In fact, we are practicing not judging immediately and not reacting immediately. We are trying to gain time here, instead of running on our automatic mode.

Reminders for Practice

Please remember: the meditation technique is for purifying and training your mind. Through the technique, we follow the breath and the sensations. During that time, we are training our thinking habits: the thinking mind should not judge, and the emotion mind should not react immediately.

So with the support of this technique, we are actually training our thinking mind and emotion mind. You must remember this key; otherwise you will get lost among all the techniques and in the end just find it boring or difficult.

This understanding makes things very clear. Because instructions are often given in a hurry, many meditation courses out there may just tell you to spend the whole day doing something, without much explanation.

Today our time is limited, so we focus on introducing it and trying to practice it here.

Final Points

Whether or not you feel at ease, just find a way to practice for about ten minutes. It will not be long. The point is not to judge immediately and not to react immediately. Just follow the breath, follow the feeling of the breath moving in and out of the body.

Keep it simple. We do not need extra effort to breathe. From infancy until death, everyone breathes naturally; just put your attention on the breath.

Remember to stay natural and not use force. The steadier your mind, the more you can focus; the more you focus, the steadier your mind becomes. They support each other.

Closing

That is all for today's sharing. After we dedicate the merit, we can have individual questions and answers, because the point is not to listen to my ideas. The point is to bring these ideas into our own experience and keep becoming familiar with them through committed practice.

Everything we have shared is closely related to your own experience and your own thoughts. So make sure you stay with your own experience and keep practicing regularly.

Thank you all for your practice.