We have now arrived at final reflections on insight meditation and

its transformations over time.

We will discuss this in three parts.

One, its inner conflicts that drive its transformations over time.

Two, brief thoughts towards the history of this practice,

including its modularization for use in other contemplative systems.

And three, its position in how Tibetans create stages of the path schemes,

linking together various practices.

Insight Meditation's Inner Conflicts begin with the degree to which it is

a perceptual exercise, that is intensely experiential and focused on a close

observation of our own processes, practices, appearances, and experiences.

And the degree to which it is a highly analytical meditation drawing directly

upon philosophical reasonings, even to the point of being scripted.

In either context, the constant evolution of Buddhist philosophy in its

ever-changing forms was a major impetus between equally dramatic changes in

the tenor and methods of insight practices.

The other driver is these practices' relationship to practices of calm and

concentration.

But also to other forms of meditation involving intense experiences that

are nonanalytical in character, such as the vivid visualizations of deity yoga,

the extreme experiences of sexuality and dying in body yoga or

the resolutely non-conceptual practices of the Great Seal and the Great Perfection.

Often this was cast as tense interdependence between scholars and

meditators, or panditas and yogis.

The main contemplative conundrum we must face in the Buddhist meditative traditions

in the lesser vehicle is the relationship between calm and insight meditation.

On the face of it, they seem contradictory.

Calm meditation stills and

quiets the mind, insight meditation sharpens its analytical capacities.

Calm cultivates experiences of no thought,

insight cultivates specific types of thought.

It appears that in the early period, there were most likely communities which

emphasized one to the near exclusion of the other.

But eventually, the normative perspective came to be that

the two had to be integrated into a coherent and systematic path.

The most standard resolution came to emphasize insights,

practices of observation and analysis,

at the expense of calm's practices of quieting and concentrating the mind.

This ascendancy of insight included characterizing calm

as chiefly a preliminary quieting and

concentrating of the mind, which thus turns awareness into a stronger and

more flexible instrument that can be used in the service of insight practices

oriented towards deeper and more precise forms of understanding.

In this way, calm was seen as good up

to the cultivation of a reasonably deep state of concentration.

After which point deeper absorption was seen as not only a distraction but

even actively dangerous,

due to the trance-like non-responsive states it was believed to induce.

Insight advocates thus painted calm techniques as having little to do with

those specifically Buddhist views of the of world, i.e. Buddist thought.

As well as becoming potential problematic if pursued in a radical way.

Not surprisingly then, the rich and ambiguous early rubric of mindfulness

came to be more strongly associated with insight than calm.

Whether or not viewing calm meditation is chiefly about concentration is problematic

is a topic to which we will turn very soon.

In this perspective then,

calm techniques were seen as functioning to generate preliminary concentration,

which then formed the mental foundation for the cultivation of insight.

The concentrative techniques were utilized to further sediment insight as well and

thereby eradicate deep-seated emotional distortions.

In other words, insight takes the developed power of concentration and

fixes that concentration on processes: our feelings, thoughts, bodily sensations,

appearances as well as the doctrinal teachings.

This combined with concentration was believed to actually have the capacity

to destroy one's negative tendencies.

Attachment, aversion, ignorance definitively, and

thereby alter one's very sensibilities at deep levels of being.

In this way the stages of the path begin with calm practices up until the right

degree of concentration has been achieved and then follow with insight practices.

Thus instead of states of deep concentration,

devoid of any discursive thought activity, or spontaneous visions,

the normative goal of Buddhist meditation became the internalization of central

Buddhist doctrine in the corresponding reorganization of the perceptual,

cognitive and emotional experience of the practitioner.

Thus the result of the continuous practice of observation and

analysis is essentially a knowledge of the reality of self, mind, and world.

Meditative techniques aim primarily at openness, spontaneity, vision,

or deep concentration without any discursive reference at all to the content

of a specifically Buddhist world view, such as the four noble truths and

other doctrinal categories for those de-valorized.

Inside is thus constituted as a meditative practice instead of remaining a simple,

intellectual reflection or critical inquiry

precisely by virtue of its integration with formal concentration exercises.

The extraordinary focus and concentrated power of such a mind entails that

the inquiry cuts deeper both in its understanding and in the transformative

impact of that understanding upon one's body, speech, mind, and emotions.

Even so, are there limits to analysis?

Does it shut off certain possibilities, modes of learning, passive inquiry,

or possible realizations even as it opens up others?

Advocates of calm meditation or later related forms of Buddhist contemplation,

will often portray the tension as one between contemplative practice itself, and

dry, intellectual study.

This can at times be an accurate depiction of the reality of time spent in formal

practice by different communities or individuals.

But such characterizations conceal at least as much as they reveal.

Firstly, it distorts our understanding of meditation by making it seem to be

the opposite of inquiry, when in fact, inquiry can take place in many forms,

emotional, aesthetic, narrative, and so forth and not only through analysis.

Secondly, it suggests the intellectual cannot be meditative or experiential.

While in truth, analytical meditations are practices, and

their advocates themselves are careful to contrast their proper experiential

realization from dry intellectual speculation.

Third, it can mask the diversity and complexity of calm meditation and

its engagement of more diverse processes and

experiences than simply the cultivation of deep concentration.

One possibility is to focus less on the cultivation of concentration as a skill,

and more on the nature of the unusual altered states of consciousness generated

by deep concentration.

Is there an ecstatic aspect to these states that deserves

more sustained attention?

A second approach is to reflect more deeply on the different meditative objects

used in calm practice.

And inquire whether those differences potentially reflect very different

practices rather than simply being neutral media that can be used interchangeably for

the cultivation of deep concentration.

A third approach would be to ask the question of aesthetic forms of awareness

and thus contemplation.

And how the question of aesthetics may potentially undercut the simplistic

dichotomy of practices of concentration and insight.

Indeed this dichotomy certainly masks as much as it reveals.

We can also ask about the role of emotion in mediation.

Particularly practices that transform emotion, rather than simply observe,

regulate, or dissolve it.

We might explore perceptual training, but

isn't only about cultivating concentration or

analyzing the suffering of permanent of no self, of coresponding sensory content.

Instead, contemplative techniques that worked directly with

the nature of the sense and

its sensory content for inquiry as well as possible transformation.

And then there are, of course, altered states of consciousness.

Both ordinary, extreme emotions, orgasm, flow experiences, fainting,

sleeping, dreaming, illness, dying, and extraordinary as cultivated and

deliberate contemplative practices.

There's also the visionary, beginning with the cultivation of our ordinary capacity

for a rich imaginary life and continuing in the quest for extraordinary visions.

And there is of course also the possibility of the body being

the source of direction as well as insight.

A complex topic that gets deep into the body's interior, our emotional life, and

the richly symbolic spaces of our embodied consciousness, and

our embodied unconsciousness.

We will pursue all these questions in our final discussion of the lesser vehicles,

meditative practices, and then beyond.

In terms of the oscillation of insight between philosophical deliberations and

highly experiential perceptual practices, I would like to share a personal

experience I had along these lines with a famous Tibetan teacher named

Khenpo Achuk, a famous teacher and practitioner of the Great Perfection

tradition of meditation in Eastern Tibet, who has since passed away.

I had traveled for three days of extremely long rural bus rides

in Tibet to his remote nomadic monastic complex in the hope of studying with him.

And when I finally arrived, it was strangely silent, although residences for

monks and nuns stretched in all directions across the grasslands.

And then suddenly, the day's ritual or teaching session came to an end, and

monks and nuns flooded out of the large assembly hall in the complex's center.

They were pretty interested in the very unusual presence of

an American in their midst.

But eventually,

I was able to ascertain that Khenpo was off in the hills getting some sun.

I made my way out there and introduced myself, including presenting a treasured

letter of introduction I had secured from a much younger Tibetan Lama,

who was a good friend, and who I knew Khenpo held in high regards.

However, he barely glanced at the letter before handing it to an attendant

asked me to look at his forehead, and tell me what I saw.

I was exhausted by days of bumpy country roads and wilting in the intense high noon

Tibetan sun out there on the grasslands, but I compiled and pondered his aged,

wrinkled, nomadic forehead and after a few minutes I said hesitantly, your forehead?

He obviously wasn't pleased and said you can leave in the morning.

At that point I was ready to collapse, and so

I figured I would just muster my resources and try him again in the morning.

So after a hard night's sleep, that next day I went to his residence to see him and

I managed to engage him in a conversation that seemed to make him

more inclined towards me.

And at one point he rummaged around in a drawer under the table, and

he pulled out a print photograph with zigzags of light and nothing else such

as one used to see every once in a while in those old days of print cameras.

And he put it on the desk, and he asked me to tell him what I saw.

And I immediately recognized that the pattern resembled a monastic Tibetan

high hat that was associated with a famous historic figure in

Khenpo's lineage named Longchenpa from the 14th century.

And I constantly told him that, I saw the hat of Longchenpa.

And he was clearly happy with that.

But then he rummaged around in the same drawer and produced a second picture.

Absolutely identical with the first picture.

In other words, there was just a second print.

And with an air of expectation, he asked me what I saw.

And I looked for a moment, and then I told him I still saw Longchenpa's hat, and

he was clearly disappointed, but said I could stay for a while.

He assigned me a well-known great perfection meditation called coming,

staying, going which in classic insight style involves watching your

mind's thoughts.

When one appears, you ask where it came from.

When it persists, you ask where it stays.

And when it ceases, you ask where it goes.

And I went home and spent the day in my little hut, doing the meditation,

watching my mind, and inquiring into its coming and staying and going.

And it happens I was also familiar with the classic expositions on this meditation

by none other than Longchenpa.

And, that evening after the meditative sessions were finished,

I reflected on my experience during the day and the relationship to his writings.

And, in the morning, I went to Khenpo and he asked me how the meditation went, and

I told him my experiences.

And then I made the tactical mistake of preceding to tell him

of my evening's reflections on Longchenpa's presentations on the meditation.

And as I spoke I could see that he was getting agitated.

Until finally he started scolding me in a long voice about how useless scholars were

and how texts would never get one to what really mattered,

namely genuine meditative experience.

Indeed this was a characteristic of his community

where contemplative practice was far stronger than scholarly study.

And degrees were given for

accomplishment in contemplation rather than academic study.

At any rate Khenpo's reaction was a classic example of the often

tense relationship between meditation and philosophy, experience and

text, personal realization and theoretical understanding.

Indeed, Tibetan Buddhists have long thematized these two poles in terms of

two different religious figures, the Yogi or Siddha.

The practiced one, the contemplative, and the Pandita, the learned one,

the scholarly one.

The Yogi, literally one who does yoga practices, or

the Sita, literally the accomplished one,

represents the contemplative master with deep experience and years in retreat.

In contrast, Pandita is literally master of studies and signifies an intellectual

master with deep and broad understanding of the philosophical classics.

Two interpretations of interpretation, thought, experience, community,

and the Buddhist path on the Tibetan plateau.

This dynamic at times in tension and at times in beautiful modes of integration

It's present in the long history of Tibetan literature, religious community,

thought, practice, and lifestyle.

"Buddhist Insight Meditation - Inner Conflicts" David Germano

藏传佛教禅修与现代世界：小乘佛教

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