Calm Abiding and Special Insight: Achieving Spiritual Transformation Through Meditation (Textual Studies and Translations in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism)

336 Pages·1998·4.35 MB·English

by  Geshe Gedun Lodro

Calm Abiding & Special Insight
This book has been approved for inclusion in Textual Studies and Trans-
lations in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. The editorial board for this series in-
cludes:

Roger Jackson
Carleton College

Karen Lang
University of Virginia

John Strong
Bates College
Calm Abiding &
Special Insight

Achieving Spiritual Transformation
Through Meditation

Geshe Gedün Lodrö

Translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
Co-edited by Anne C. Klein and Leah Zahler

Snow Lion Publications
Ithaca, New York USA
Snow Lion Publications
P.O. Box 6483
Ithaca, New York 14851 USA
607-273-8519

Copyright © 1998 Jeffrey Hopkins
First edition USA 1998

Printed in Canada on recycled paper.

All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced by any
means without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 1-55939-110-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lodrö, Geshe Gedün, 1924-1979
Calm abiding and special insight: achieving spiritual transformation
through meditation / Geshe Gedün Lodrö; translated and edited by Jeffrey
Hopkins; so-edited by Ann C. Klein and Leah Zahler.
p. compassion. (Textual studies and translations in Indo-Tibetan
Buddhism)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55939-110-3 (alk. paper)
1. Meditation Buddhism. 2. Śamatha (Buddhism) 3. Vipaśyanā
(Buddhism) 4. Buddhism--China--Tibet--Doctrines. I. Hopkins, Jeffrey.
II. Zahler, Leah. III. Klein, Anne C., 1947- . IV. Series.
BQ7805.L63 1998
294.3'443 dc21 98-34493
CIP
CONTENTS
Charts and Lists 6
Preface 7
Technical Note 10
Part One: Calm Abiding 11
Introduction 12
1 Prerequisites 19
2 Physical Posture 24
3 Objects of Observation 34
4 Nine Mental Abidings 69
5 Achieving Calm Abiding 96
6 Signs of Calm Abiding 123
7 Rising from Meditative Equipoise 145
Part Two: Expansion 148
8 Textbooks and Debate 149
9 H¦nayåna and Mahåyåna 152
10 Order and Benefits of Cultivating Calm Abiding and Special Insight 159
11 Physical Basis 170
12 Mental Bases 178
13 More Types of Objects of Observation 184
14 Path of Seeing and Related Questions 210
Part Three: Special Insight 215
15 Modes of Procedure 216
16 Progressing on the Mundane Path 227
17 Mundane Path of Special Insight 238
18 Individual Knowledge of the Character 249
19 Summary 282
Glossary 287
Bibliography 302
Index 312
CHARTS AND LISTS
Six Prerequisites for Achieving Calm Abiding 19
Four Qualities of an Agreeable Place 20
Three Systems on How to Settle the Winds 26
Four Types of Object of Observation 42
Three Meditations on the Unpleasant 48
Three Ways to Cultivate Love 52
Four Reasonings 57
Six Ways of Meditating on the Breath 59
Three Types of Laziness 71
Four Factors of a Meditative Mind 79
Factors in the Definition of Excitement 83
Five Causes of Haughtiness 84
Six Qualities of Effort 88
Three Types of btang snyoms ( ) 90
Factors in the Definition of Mental Pliancy 97
Order of Generating Pliancies 103
Stages of Generation and Cessation of Pliancies 113
Three Types of Pure Appearance 135
152
Four Types of Pervasive Objects of Observation 184
Twelve-Linked Dependent-Arising 196
Types of Rebirth 204
Three Realms and Nine Levels 216
Four Attributes of Preparatory Training 218
Skill in Causes of Calm Abiding and Special Insight 220
Three Types of Meditation 223
Four Types of Persons on Mundane Path 227
Seven Mental Contemplations 238
Three Mental Contemplations 244
Three Yogis 246
Realizations that are States Arisen from Meditation 251
Nine Thorough Enwrapments 265
Eight Thorough Entanglements 267
States Arisen from Hearing, Thinking, and Meditating 269
PREFACE
This book vividly presents an intimate and detailed picture of the intrica-
cies of meditation such that the reader is drawn into a Tibetan world-view
of spiritual transformation. In a series of lectures at the University of Vir-
ginia during the spring and summer of 1979, Geshe Gedün Lodrö gradu-
ally unfolded for a group of advanced students of Tibetan language and
Tibetan Buddhism the perspective of the Tibetan landscape of mental de-
velopment. The environment for meditative change is comprised by the
restoration of the landscape to its pristine state is wrought by techniques
that are built from inner potentialities for stability, clarity, and calm, but
these very techniques are fraught with pitfalls from inner habitual weak-
nesses. The dangers of not recognizing the actual causes of deprivation and
distortion are great, and the possibilities of implementing the wrong anti-
dote or of over-extending an appropriate one until it becomes counter-
productive are many. Subtle distinctions between types of interfering fac-
tors are needed; there is seldom a simple way to coax the mind back to its
natural state. The very measures taken to purify it can exacerbate old prob-
lems and introduce new ones. Through such detail Geshe Gedün Lodrö
makes vividly clear a Tibetan approach to meditative therapy.
Scholastic Buddhism is often thought to be dry, numerically oriented
listings of mental and physical phenomena that fail to capture the vibran-
cy, the force, of life. In this series of lectures Geshe Gedün Lodrö shows
that the heritage of Indian and Tibetan meditative lore that he embodied
lives and breathes in a relevant and realistic atmosphere of intimately in-
terwoven nuance. By constantly placing techniques of meditation in their
larger Buddhist cultural context a culture whose être is spiritual
development he reveals a living world of mental practices replete with re-
sources for describing, facing, and counteracting both superficial and sys-
temic disorders.
Born in the capital of Tibet, Hla-Ôa, in 1924, Geshe Gedün Lodrö en-
tered Dre- -dong House in Go-mang Col-
8 CALM ABIDING AND SPECIAL INSIGHT
lege) on the outskirts of Hla-Ôa at the age of nine as a novice monk. He
took basic examinations in 1940, received full ordination in 1947, and
gained the degree of ge-Ôhay in 1961 in exile in India as the first among
three scholars who were awarded the number one ranking in the highest
class. He was a scholar of prodigious learning, keeping in active memory
1,800 folios of basic texts, which in English would be at least 3,600 pages.
He told me that he accomplished this by using all spare time (such as in
walking from one place to another!) to recite texts to himself. Even more,
he was famed for his ability in debate; by his own account he was the equal
of others when taking the position of challenger but was at his best when
btedly was why he was chosen to
become a faculty member at Go-mang College before graduation.
He told me that when the Chinese began shelling in Hla-Ôa, he climbed
the steep hill above Dre- ding scene,
realizing that the type of life and opportunity for study he had had until
1959 would never occur again. He knew he was seeing the end of an era.
In exile in India, he took his ge-Ôhay degree with top honors and later
when the Dalai Lama conducted interviews of all the ge-Ôhays who had es-
caped, Geshe Gedün Lodrö was declared to be the top scholar. The Dalai
Lama sent him to teach at the University of Hamburg in 1967, where he
learned German fluently and eventually became a tenured member of the
faculty. I first met him in 1970 when he visited his main teacher and my
mentor, Kensur Ngawang Lekden, in Madison, Wisconsin. Kensur Lekden
spoke very highly of his student, and thus I wrote into a Fulbright grant
proposal three months of study with him in Hamburg while I was on my
way to India at the end of 1971. His fluid treatment of many philosophi-
cal issues during my stay in Hamburg led to my inviting him to the Uni-
versity of Virginia in 1979, when I translated the lectures that comprise
this book. He returned to Hamburg at the beginning of August of that
year, and suddenly passed away in November, slumping to the floor out-
side the door of his apartment. We had many plans to work on various
texts and systems, and indeed the world lost one of its most learned per-
sons.

These lectures were originally edited by Anne C. Klein (then a graduate
student at the University of Virginia and now a Professor of Religious
Studies at Rice University). A second editing (including identification of
Sanskrit equivalents and construction of a glossary and an index) was done
PREFACE 9
by Leah Zahler, then a graduate student at the University of Virginia who
wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on related topics; we regret her untimely death
and acknowledge that this book would never have reached publication
without her great effort. Geshe Gedün Lodrö went through the entire first
editing in English, as I have done at each stage of the manuscript.
Jeffrey Hopkins
University of Virginia