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Meditating on Nagarjuna's MMK
Does anyone know of a way to meditate upon the MMK? I've heard in several books to meditate on it, but none of them give a method. Maybe someone here can help me.
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A specific way to meditate upon Madhaymaka ? Madhaymaka is more or less a system of thought in discerning the finer relationship with emptiness, There are many commentarys to it, however it all looks pretty much the same regardless of system of view once you actually meditate upon it.:D
There are a few ways to meditate upon emptiness, The emptiness of self, The emptiness of Phenomena, The emptiness of self and phenomena.
Starting of with we need to find the object of negation is we are meditating upon the emptiness of self, We need to find the perceived object of self and perform an examination upon it to see if we can find a inherantly perceived self, and once the analytical side of this is done we perform a placement meditation upon our outcome of the analytical meditation according the commentarys and concentrate upon the absence of a perceived self.
For the emptiness of phenomena i find the best method is to do a similar analytical approach to finding the self, in a similar fashion once the object of phenomena we are looking for cannot be found we do a placement meditation upon the outcome, The best way to do this is to imagine phenomena dissolving into spacelike emptiness and dwell in that concentration. For meditating upon both subjects we perform such analytical meditations and we dissolve the perceived Self and all other phenomena into space like emptiness and dwell in such.
Commentarys i find most helpful are From books such as Joyfull path of good fortune, and the Heart sutra.
A simple counter to this is when abiding and dissolving into space like emptiness we must remember as well that this emptiness is also empty !
Therefore if you do this you will be engaging correctly.
According to tantras an intergral part of attaining enlightenment is attaining the union of Bliss and emptiness, When meditating upon emptiness and dissolving my self and phenomena into it i visualise My self and other phenomena gradually dissapearing into a bright white light untill finally all that is left is emptiness its self.
And for the second yes, Placement meditation is in referance to " Calmly abiding upon this concentration without mental sinking or mental excitement "
or do you know how to read mimpham's commentary? I know this is meant for a tantric teacher and student ,but i can't find one.
Thank you again for the meditation it helps more than you can imagine, I will use it ..
Well its helpful to imagine it ( Clear white light) Once everything has dissolved into it just perceive this, Realizing all phenomena are the same way Non other then appearance.
There not alot of help i could offer if you dont have a tantric teacher only a qualified master could really explain such profound tantra to a ready student.
Reciting the Essence of wisdom sutra regularly before meditation sessions is always a great help for accumulating the positive potential to eventually realize such !
As for the Bodhisattvacharyavatara it is a very good read and an essential guide to practising the Bodhisattvas way of life, Of course in order to deepens ones understanding of this text it requires careful reading of the commentarys and it is extremly useful to begin daily meditation upon Lamrim subjects as this is Buddhas essential meanings of al his sutra teachings.
Yes there is a hell of a lot of underlying significance to the Heart sutra my own kind teacher wrote a book on the subject and i was blown away with the level of profoundity that can be found from so few words on the commentary he did to the Essence of wisdom sutra.
You probably shouldnt be reading either of these books without the guidance of an authentic teacher.
Try Essence of the Heart Sutra by HHDL
I'm not an expert, but my guess would be to read a small section of the MMK slowly. Nagarjuna will discuss a topic and give objections to various ideas about it. Where we had a view, we will arrive at a meaningful lacking of that view. Nagarjuna is leading us to the middle way by helping us to arrive at this experience of a meaningful lacking. I would meditate on that experience.
It is like staring at the empty space of where an old, familiar building stood for a very long time. The empty space is meaningful for us because it represents the absence of the building that we once knew. We are reflecting or "meditating" on the absence of something.
As far as 'meditation' on emptiness goes, the most common approach is the four point analysis. It is an analysis, however. You won't find mind emptying techniques related to the books you are reading, simply because direct realization in a Zen-like fashion is actually subject of mockery by Tsongkhapa and company.
i realized this when i read Dogen's Extensive Record. I feel that it was inadaquate to help me. Nagarjuna fired my imagination like no other. It feels truer for my disposition.
No, the absence of views is a simple absence which does not posit a view. The positing of views, like existence or nonexistence falls into extremes.
Views can be used to achieve a release of views (which is Nagarjuna's purpose). However, that release is not itself a view.
this is examined in cessation so i will study and get back to you
Still reading MMK by Jay Garfield. will get back on cessation
It is not Nagarjuna's purpose to release from views, only from wrong views. The view of emptiness is itself a view, a correct view, but not one we should cling to. It's only clinging to views that causes suffering, not views themselves.
Buddha never said we need to abandon all views.
Its worth remembering that Nagarjuna based his lengthy ramblings about emptiness and Dependent Origination on the suttas.
v 7 Ch15 of the Mulamadhyamakakarika :
"The Victorious one, through knowledge of reality and unreality, in the discourse to Katyayana, refuted both "it is" and "it is not" .......is referring to SN 12.15 in the Pali Canon. "Katyayana" is 'Kaccayana Gotta' :
"'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle" (SN 12.15)
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.015.than.html#kaccayana
When meditating, just relax and let go...no need to 'do' anything or meditate 'on' anything.
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In other words, just blank your mind? I don't think this is the correct view of emptiness as expounded by Buddha Shakyamuni and Nagarjuna. "it is" or "everything exists" has a specific meaning, namely to 'exist inherently', meaning existing independently or without depending upon the mind.
The correct view that leads to liberation is the mere absence of such existence, but this absence is not nothingness. This is the correct view that avoids the two extremes of "it is" and "it is not".
Very good point Tsongkhapafan.
Agreed!
I should have said release from clinging to views. My bad. Thanks.
this makes no sense.
I think because you asked how to meditate upon it
i once read a quote suppozed of nagarjuna's about how to meditate on a mosquito bite, but its impact failed to leave an impression because he was an ascetic, so maybe sitting on it woULD HELP, unless it's ""paperback"", because of course nagarjuna was known to be an pathetic ascetic but maybe it's good luck and its got his magic bones LOL HAHAHAHA
Yup creates the causes to futher ones own Ignorance plus its not right speech either. :hrm:
Uhh ? Who said anything about 'blank your mind'......... not I, Tsongkhapafan!
Perhaps you've been focussing on prayers and deity practices rather than basic tranquility and insight meditation. If our minds are filled with concepts of 'this' and 'that' as well as having feelings of superiority to others in discussions, we will never fully understand emptiness.
Be at ease, be well and happy.
Perhaps you'd like to give a specific meditation instruction?
Meditation without an object is not the same as blanking the mind.
Mahamudra, Dzogchen, and other practices rest the mind in its natural, empty, and luminous state.
These meditation traditions certainly dont contradict Nagarjuna in any way.
There is no such thing as a mind without an object because they are mutually dependent upon each other. The mind, to exist, has to know and it cannot know itself as it says in the scriptures. As Shantideva says "just as the blade of a sword cannot cut itself, the mind cannot know itself". There is a good reason for this - if a mind can exist without an object, then the mind would exist inherently. This is definitely not Nagarjuna's meaning!
That depends on what you mean by mind.
There are different levels of mind and awareness.
The "mind" is a conventional phenomena.
Conventional phenomena is not the point of the subject/object less methods of Dzogchen and Mahamudra.
Sure. My instruction is "Relax".
Bliss is a conventional phenomenon and is very much the point (along with emptiness) of Mahamudra meditation (it's the 'Maha' bit). It's important to realize the union of conventional and ultimate truth if you want to get enlightened.
I've got my feet up, drinking a nice cup of coffee and reading the daily paper,but I don't feel any closer to enlightenment. :coffee:
Any other suggestions?
Nobody is saying that. The bliss/conventional concept as it applies to Mahamudra is not universally accepted. Its a Gelug interpretation, bliss or clarity along with emptiness are associated with the ultimate truth for just about everybody else.
This is one of the points that a lot of other Tibetan scholars have taken issue with in regards to Tsongkhapa's views on emptiness and the two truths etc.
Personally, I think Tsongkhapa was right on about a lot of these things, particularly his discussions of the conventional truth and valid/invalid cognitions.
Not according to Buddha, who says in the Heart Sutra through Avalokiteshvara, "There is no form, no feeling, no discrimination, no compositional factors..." The sutra view is clear: in emptiness, there is no feeling. Why? Because it's a conventional truth that doesn't appear to a mind single pointedly absorbed in emptiness. That's the case unless you're practising from a Vajrayana Mahamudra point of view where you're learning to see things from the point of view of a Buddha: the union of conventional (bliss) and ultimate (emptiness) truths. Bliss, as feeling, is not an ultimate truth - how could it be?
I totally agree.
Thats one of reasons why clarity is used instead of bliss in the other traditions.
Its a slippery slope and people have been debating it for centuries. Its incredibly difficult to describe the ultimate truth without falling into one of the two major extremes.
Personally, I find the bliss/void dichotomy to be quite problematic.
I have been taught that clarity has a specific meaning - it's the ability of the mind to know, which again is a conventional characteristic of the mind, so that doesn't solve the problem.
I don't think it has to be problematic. The four profundities of the Heart Sutra can explain it with a little re-phrasing:
bliss is empty; emptiness is bliss. Emptiness is not other than bliss; bliss also is not other than emptiness.
From the point of view of experience in meditation, bliss and emptiness are inseparably one, like water being poured into water, but from the point of view of names they are nominally distinct and so they can be distinguished from each other. Bliss and emptiness are not the same, but they are also not different - you can't have one without the other. My Teacher explains it as 'one phenomenon with two names'. This is much more skilful than thinking of it as one phenomenon with two parts, because when you starting thinking in terms of parts, the mind creates a dichotomy and feels that they are inherently separate whereas two names is easier - where does one name end and the other begin? They are not really separate but they are also not the same.