Contemplate
- In Development: Contemplations related to the three reasons, nine examples, and ten points.
Begin With Questions
- What is buddha-nature?
- Is buddha-nature emptiness or luminosity?
- How do I engage with buddha-nature in my practice?
- If every phenomenon is like a dream or an illusion, what is not like a dream or an illusion?
What is Analytical Meditation?
Analytical meditation is a technique that focuses the mind on a specific contemplation involving abstract thought about a specific idea or experience in the context of a single meditation session designed to support integrating reasoning and experience.
An analytical meditation session can focus on any teachings, topics, or experiences, but traditionally on focuses on specific analyses, questions, or quotes from the sutras. Thrangu Rinpoche describes the two ways to develop the wisdom that perceives the nature of reality: "...analytical meditation (Tib. che gom) and placement meditation (Tib. jog gom). In analytical meditation, one reads (or listens to) a passage giving a logical argument and then one goes into a deep Shamatha meditation and contemplates this argument."[1]
Learn more in the meditation section here.
In this section, we provide some questions and ideas to serve as suggested objects of meditations related to buddha-nature teachings.
Contemplations
1. At the moment of our enlightenment will we be transformed or will our true nature be revealed? Is something that isn't here now somehow produced? The teachings say that all sentient beings "have buddha-nature". But what does that mean and how can we get from having the seed of buddhahood to actualizing buddhahood? How can we best understand our buddha-nature? There are many answers to these questions, but all of them describe buddha-nature in terms of three different models: a) production, b) transformation, and c) disclosure. In this contemplation, we will analyze each of the possible ways to understand buddha-nature:
- Is buddha-nature produced?
- Is buddha-nature a transformation?
- Is buddha-nature disclosed or revealed?
Contemplation #1
- Is buddha-nature produced?
- Seed and Sprout model - See praise to dharmadathu (Karl) find quote
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- Spend a session contemplating these ideas. Take a break to let the thoughts go and return to watching the breath for several long moments. Then come back to contemplate one final thought: If buddha-nature is produced from work, then it is relative, impermanent, and contingent. What follows from this?
- What do you think? Is buddha-nature best understood in terms of something produced?
Nine Examples
1. The buddha and the lotus
2. The honey and the bees
3. The grain and the husk
4. The gold and the filth
5. The treasure and the earth
6. The shoot and the fruit-skin
7. The statue and the tattered rag
8. The universal monarch and the woman
9. The golden image and the clay
Why Is Analytical Meditation Necessary?
Excerpted from Karl Brunnhölzl's book, The Center of the Sunlit Sky, 273-276:
...The main cause for all our samsaric problems is basic ignorance that expresses itself as our instinctive clinging to a personal self and really existing phenomena. The only means for eliminating this fundamental unawareness is to develop its opposite: an awareness through which we see our mind and phenomena as they really are. In technical terms, this is called discriminating knowledge, which is the seed for the omniscient wisdom of a Buddha...
In general, Buddhism provides a large variety of skillful means to generate insight into the true nature of mind and phenomena, but analytical meditation is the way in which this insight is developed and enhanced in a very systematic and thorough way.
.... in order to properly understand and employ his teachings, the Buddha said, we have to work with the four reliances:
- 1) Do not rely on persons but on the dharma.
- 2) As for this dharma, do not rely on the words but on the meaning.
- 3) As for the meaning, do not rely on the expedient meaning but on the definitive meaning.
- 4) And as for the definitive meaning, do not rely on ordinary consciousness but on wisdom.
Analytical meditation is the main way to make these distinctions properly, to investigate and cultivate the actual meaning of the dharma, and to provide the ground for the nondual wisdom that directly sees how things are.
....merely studying and reflecting on all of this is not sufficient.... on the Buddhist path, it is always emphasized that we should gain firsthand experience, direct knowledge, and personal certainty about the way things really are. Just as with our ordinary experiences in life, whatever we ourselves have thoroughly examined and found to be true will be an incontrovertible part of our experience. Then we no longer need to rely on other people or books. Doubts will not arise, nor will our minds be changed by others' questioning our realization. Moreover, when we have an experientially founded understanding of the correct view, we will increasingly be able to evaluate any experiences that might come up in our meditation practice. We can compare them with the correct view... and see clearly whether our practice and realization accords with what the Buddha and the great masters describe. In this way, analytical meditation is also very helpful for and informs any other meditation practices, such as deity visualization.
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Questions to Develop Contemplations
- add interactivity features
- Models of production: do you think BN is production model? (Explain what production means and then let people respond.)
- Do you think it's a transformation? (Explain what transformation means and then let people respond.)
- Disclosure? (this is the kagyu approach) (Explain what disclosure means and then let people respond.)
- If every phenomenon is like a dream or an illusion, what is not like a dream or an illusion?
- Ultimately, can we trust in something? If there's no buddha-nature, then we can't trust in anything... it's impermanent. What can we put our trust in?
- What is the opposite of a doctrinal idea? is BN a doctrinal idea or actual reality? Is it conceptually created or not?
