Disclaimer: Below are notes taken by me during Rinpoche’s talk and not his direct teaching of Dharma. Do feel free to comment and let me know if i made any mistakes below. Thank you and have a good read and practice.
Khenpo Tashi Tsering Rinpoche gave Dharma teaching at Subang Jaya on 15 June 2015 about 8.30pm.
Rinpoche introduced that he could not joke like Tsoknyi Rinpoche but this is joke. Then he continued with his life story when he was young, he tries to avoid his dad, whom is serious looking, and only go back him when his mother is around.
He emphasised that love, kindness and compassion is taught in all religion.
When someone bad talk others or you, our reply should be silent.
When someone hit or harm you, we should feel scared for their sake by not hurting him.
When someone gossip of you, we should not reaction. This is cause by others pointing our fault and if we reply, we will be pointing their fault and the fault pointing continues on and on.
Rinpoche then explained the one of the few ways of Samatha practices are as follows:
Blissful mediation/experience
Clarity meditation /experience
Non thought meditation /experience
As a Beginner in meditation, Rinpoche advise that we need support and focus on it and concentrate. We start this sitting properly and by feeling blissful from head to toe and toe to head, there is blissful and joyful (a common one) moment that happens without reason. What is important is that we do not be attached to this feeling of peace.
Actually, everyone has it (The feeling of bliss and joy) all the time. It is not the result of meditation that caused the feeling of bliss but, instead, we started to realise it at that moment.
When we encounter that blissfulness, we should not feel attach to it and maintain that feeling of non-attachment. This is the instruction of this meditation and a way to develop and improve our practice.
At the meantime, Rinpoche explained the essence of the blissfulness is emptiness. He repeated that we should remind ourselves that this is emptiness even though it is temporary.
Why don’t be attached at that time?
Because if we do, we will fall in the Samsara cycle again. Thus, the attitude is to not be attached in order to get out of this Desire realm that we are currently in.
As we continue and maintain our meditation as above, our mind may/will become sharper and clearer in time. When this state happens, we began to understand the meaning of ‘people hitting us’, ‘harming us’, ‘bad talking us’ and etc. At that instance, it is called CLARITY meditation.
In order to reach a better practice, we have to continue to maintain the above and continuously practice slowly.
We begin to be able to count/recognise the feeling of things that we did not previously recognise or aware before. But Rinpoche explained that we should be careful at this state because we may be in a state that we thought we have reach a greater level of understanding when we have not.
During this state of awareness, we should remain calm and not be excited or attached about it. Instead, Rinpoche advised that just let it be as it is, invaluable, like it is nothing. Just like normal.
This also applies when we visualise a deity and it becomes crystal clear to us. At that moment, we should, again, not be attached to this clarity and maintain in this state and JUST LET IT BE.
In the Sutra text, a lot of talk/text written about emptiness. However, to date, we don’t have a definition about emptiness (Sunyata) to describe the real meaning. The Non-thought experience could be explained when we have a certainty of emptiness or the experience of emptiness.
By meditating Samata, we could reach this experience. Even in Dzogchen practice, we could reach this similar experience of non-thought or emptiness.
What do we think or feel at this point then?
When we meditate, it doesn’t mean that we have to close the door, switch off the lights or close the windows to prepare for meditation. Instead, someone can meditate even without the above circumstances.
Once upon a time, a person, Z, saw Milarepa keep singing a song while doing the same gesture. He said he wants the same like him but I couldnt be as Calm as you and asked him how do he do so? Milarepa reply that he doesn’t have a field, house, father, mother sister and gave up everything. This absences of objects helped me with this blissfulness. Z understood what Milarepa said literally and started giving his things, properties, home and etc to everyone as he understood from Milarepa and he isolated himself in a jungle and act like Milarepa’s same gesture. In time, he felt hungry and realised that there is no food around. In time, he felt thirsty, but there isn’t any water nearby. During this time, he realised that he was facing more problem instead. He decided to head home, but he realised has no home as he had given it away, he needed to eat but he has no money to buy any food…then, finally, he said to himself: “the one who gave him the most problem was Milarepa”. hahaha.
The point is there is no instruction for all the animals in the jungle. The difference between Milarepa is Milarepa went to isolated place on the instructions of the Guru but Z did not.
With this simple understanding, Rinpoche advised us that when we do go for meditation, we must and should go with the instructions and blessing of our Guru.
In addition, what is the difference between a Dharma practitioner and those that do not?
Rinpoche explained that whenever a problem is encountered by a Dharma practitioner, we, somehow, are able to handle this known problem.
Dalai lama once said my flesh and your flesh is the same. When my flesh is hurt, the ‘hurt’ I experience is the same as the ‘hurt’ that you will experience when in the same situation.
The difference, however, is that we, as Dharma practitioners, can understand and accept this problem/experience and it becomes less painful. While without Dharma, we may not able to reach an understanding of these suffering. This, in time, resulted in more problems occurring.
This is because when we experience these problems, we tend to have lots of questions in regards to these problems which creates more problems such as Why this pain us experienced by me?, Why am I suffering like this? and etc etc. Rinpoche said that this is the main difference. He continued explaining that on the outside, people like us, our wealth is increasing but our mental strength is decreasing.
What should we do when we face a problem then?
Thus, Rinpoche introduced a practice for us to use whenever we face such circumstances.
When the problem arises, in your mind, close the vajra and below that have a sever blue HUNG and below that have blue AH. (Another definition of Om Ah Hung, just for reference)
Slowly, AH becomes invisible together with HUNG within the mind and just focus on the HUNG. Just maintain that Hung in mind and, we will realised that the other distractions will dissolve automatically. You may test this when you have lots of stress of problems such as business loss, divorce, sadness and etc.
Just visualise the HUNG and AH merging, and focus on the AH.
As you continue to maintain (focusing) on AH, Rinpoche explained that slowly and slowly the HUNG and AH would disappear and dissolve into emptiness. Then, we remind ourselves that other problems in different colours and those problems too slowly disolve.
Rinpoche clarify that AH is the archer or Chinese archer or it can be in any form or language of AH.
Then, Rinpoche ended his talk by practicing the above meditation with all of us, which i felt was very insightful as he gave direct guidance as we sat and meditate as a group.
Hanx Vision 