December 1, 2008
Tibetan Buddhist Meditation is the Best
Tibetan Buddhist meditation can seem tremendously exciting, especially if you've tried more familiar types of meditation from the Theravada tradition, like watching your breathing, or the Zen lineage where you merely sitting facing a blank wall.
Some of the practices in the Tibetan meditation tradition include visualizing very elaborate images of wrathful deities with fire coming out of their mouth, holding severed heads in one hand, stomping on dead bodies with a giant clawed foot, and imagining colors of light moving up and down through secret channels inside your body.
There are stories of Tibetan monks doing incredible feats, like learning to raise the temperature of their body so much that they can sit outside in freezing cold temperatures and dry wet sheets that are placed over their shoulders and back.
Way better than just noticing each thought and labeling it "thinking," don't you think?
As dramatic as all of that can sound, and enticing as it can be to those of us who have a fondness for dramatic experiences, you have to ask yourself an important question: "Just because it's unusual or exciting or dramatic, does that really mean it's better… or even the right thing for me?"
A number of years ago after a well-known Tibetan teacher died, leaving thousands of students stranded without knowing how to gauge or guide their practice, another teacher came in to offer his suggestion. Now, the second teacher was technically a higher-ranking, more advanced lama, then the one who had died.
He came in and checked out the students and gave a proclamation. He said that it didn't seem that they were prepared for doing all of these intensive visualization practices, and instead it would be better if they went back to the basics and spent a few years merely observing their breathing as it passed in and out of their nostrils so that they could develop better concentration.
You would think that when a highly experienced teacher give you this instruction it would be received with some appreciation for his understanding of where you are and what you need. Instead, the students almost unanimously decided to kick this guy out of their school and dismiss all his advice as being an inaccurate and inappropriate.
To someone watching from the outside. It certainly seems like what was going on was a bit of spiritual arrogance or spiritual materialism. To me it seems like a very exciting situation. It reminded me of when I was a gymnast and after three years of competing very successfully, my coach told me that for entire summer I was only to work on one very basic tumbling move, and I had to do 100 times a day. At first I was upset and felt like I was being punished. Certainly, criticized. It was only at the end of the summer after I had followed his instructions, sometimes grudgingly, that I was able to experience his wisdom. By doing those basics, I was able to leap well beyond the skill that I had at the beginning of the summer.
When we go on a meditation path, whether it's Tibetan Buddhist meditation or Hindu meditation or Transcendental meditation we like to look for signs that we are progressing, not remembering that sometimes what seems like going back to the beginning is in fact another step along the way.
Comments on Tibetan Buddhist Meditation is the Best »
Steven this is a very articulate post and it reminded me of the movie Karate Kid…where he master makes the kid do the same moves again and again and again in the form of painting and scrubbing and mopping…the kid felt he was being used as cheap labour, when infact he was learning the basics of karate all along!
The master cultivates the beginners mind !
'A number of years ago after a well-known Tibetan teacher died, leaving thousands of students stranded without knowing how to gauge or guide their practice,'
I would, in this instance, question the direction and quality of the deceased teacher's teaching.
In something as personal and non-transferable as meditation practice, ensuring that the student begins taking responsibility for the contents of his own head and subsequent 'own practice' and 'own progress' must be the starting point.
The excitement and drama of lurid imaginings is almost inescapable in western culture, do we need to import more from eastern culture?
Many years ago when I was a few years into zen practice and beginning to explore other approaches to practice, I attended a new meditation group for the first time. I found myself sitting in a room in London with a bunch of other English people. I was given a crib sheet of a Japanese chant rendered phonetically for non-Japanese speakers. It was the Heart Sutra and we were expected to spend the next hour chanting this stuff that not one of us understood.
I suppose it could have been very exotic and exciting, but I was struck by how absurd and depressing it was.
All of us in that room came from an ancient, experienced and nuanced culture, riches indeed to keep us occupied for many lifetimes if we so chose, yet the thrill of the exotic was potent enough to cause us to reject our own heritage.
I love the sentiments expressed in the Heart Sutra, just as I love the sentiments expressed in some christian hymns or sufi poetry, but these days I love all this in the English language and with an English heart, informed by
the western culture that formed me.
I am never going to be Japanese, a monk or a Buddhist. The times of coming back to that basic realisation have been as beneficial to me as your monotonous practice of one single move were to you.
Nice article, as always.
Ellen,
My friend John Tarrant is a Zen roshi who likes to point out that we have translated every word of the Mu koan ("A pilgrim of the way asked the Grand Master Zhaozhou, "Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?" Zhaozhou said, "Mu.")… except the LAST WORD.
Why not?
Why do we stick with "Mu" instead of translating that to "No?"
Why do Zen students walk around saying (sometimes SCREAMING) "Mu, mu, mu, mu," as if it's a magical word.
The temptation towards specialness, especially if "special" supposedly equals "better", seems to be another of those hard-wired cognitive biases.
I plodded through an awful lot of koans, trying to convince myself that I was getting somewhere and aquiring some special, superior wisdom not available elsewhere, before realising that the standard 'orthodox' koans rely on specific cultural references that are never going to be available to a person formed by a different culture and with different cultural references.
I found I was better served considering questions and conundrums that were pertinent to me and my environment, for instance:
"Why am I driving myself insane trying to answer someone else's question that was formulated hundreds of years ago and has been variously answered many times by many, many people since?"
and
"Why don't I expend my energy on a question I would really like to consider and that need be no-one else's business but mine?"
The only merit (and a bit of a double-edged sword like most things) I can find in the whole koan business is that the orthodox method tends to encourage and develop an attitude of obssessive enquiry. It was also designed as a teaching tool for very young, uneducated novice monks, not western 'spiritual seekers' who already know how to think logically and coherently.
There are easier ways to enquire.
From my own experience I would say that the people who are drawn to the mystique of koans and zen are the tough nuts and elitist types (of which I was an arrogant example) for whom the easier ways are deemed too simple and so beneath them.
I have a great affection for the elegance of all things zen for I was caught in the joke for many years–and it is a great joke, to this day it still cracks me up!
hOW CAN I PAY TO LEARN TO RAISE MY BODY TEMPERATURE?
Hi Norman,
I don't know "how" you can pay, but I do know WHO you can pay… find somewhere that does biofeedback.
Back in 1975 or so, I began doing biofeedback to treat migraines. One of the things I learned to do was raise the temperature of my hands. After a while I could raise or lower the temperature of pretty much any part (or all) of my body.
I live in Thailand now but I am an american.The Theravadin trip here is fine though I study the the Tibetan tradition more in the Mahayana path,the other is a hinayana practice. I learned from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and basically follow breathing meditation which I learned in Boulder,CO. This is the gist of my way,basically vipassana and sending loving kindness to all beings.