The meditations for the Middle Scope/Attitude center primarily around renouncing the sufferings of cyclic existence, We fritter our lives away chasing after impermanent pleasures of this life and meaningless distractions. In order to develop heart-felt renunciation, it is important to meditate on the sufferings of the three lower realms. A practitioner of the Lower Scope, as we learned in Class 2, seeks to prevent re-birth in the lower realms. Practitioners of the Middle Scope have fully realized the Lower Scope and take this resolution a step farther and seek liberation.
In Class 2, we didn’t have time to talk about the lower realms so I gave a brief overview of the hot hells, the cold hells, the pretas and the animal realms. Please refer to the Wish-fulfilling Golden Light of the Sun’s descriptions. To do an analytical meditation on the suffering of the lower realms, we start with the first point in the meditation and then spend as much time as needed to cause our mind to respond. For example, on page 62 of the Wish-fulfilling Golden Light of the Sun, Lama Zopa Rinpoche describes the Hells: “The hell realm is the greatest experience of suffering. It is karmically created by the deluded mind and exists because of our karmic debt. There are also karmically-created hell-protectors with heads like animals, who prevent us from escaping until our karmic-debt is paid. The principal cause of the hells is craving.” So we would reflect on this first point perhaps wondering if hell realms could possibly exist, and if so how? We could investigate how the deluded mind creates the karma that results in the hells, and examine the idea of karmic debts, etc. Once we come to some sort of acceptance and understanding, we’re ready to move on to the next point, in this case, it’s the graphic and very vivid descriptions of each of these suffering realms. The purpose of meditating on the lower realms is to realize that such sufferings are optional, they arise from the untamed mind under the control of karma and delusions, therefore, they can be avoided through purification and other Dharma practices.
The Middle Scope meditations on renunciation focus around descriptions of the sufferings’ of cyclic existence as described in the Four Noble Truths. One way of explaining the Noble Truth of Suffering is by dividing it into eight kinds: 1) birth, 2) illness, 3 & 4) old age and death, 5 & 6) the suffering of constantly facing undesirable things and being separated from desirable ones, 7) the suffering of not fulfilling our desire, 8) the sufferings of being bound by the chains of the suffering nature of the five aggregates. We did a modified version of the meditations from Geshe Namgyal Wangchen in his book “Step by Step Basic Buddhist Meditations” (Wisdom Publications: 2009). Please refer to p. 84 in the Wish-fulfilling Golden Light of the Sun for Lama Zopa’s meditation on the general sufferings of samsara.
Achieving liberation is only possible by cutting through the delusions that bind us to samsara. Our Dharma friend, Katherine Tredwell, explained each of the six root delusions and their corresponding antidotes. She shared an excellent teaching by Ven. Thubten Chodron on this subject, please use it in your meditation practice, it is available here. One of the six delusions is doubting the Dharma teachings. We had a lively discussion about the meaning of doubt in this context. If the Buddha taught us to always question the teachings, then why is doubt a root delusion? Doubt can become an obstacle on the path to Enlightenment if, for example, you don’t accept the idea that Enlightenment exists in the first place. Likewise, if you don’t believe in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, then the very path does not exist for you.
Geshe Sopa Rinpoche writes, “We are not talking about replacing doubt with blind faith. Stable trust and faith arise from studying the scriptures, listening to knowledgeable teachers, applying logical analysis and meditation. You have to build faith on a foundation of reason and understanding. When you do that, all doubts are dispelled with confidence, and your practice becomes resolute; it rests on a firm foundation of irreversible faith.” (source: Geshe Lhundub Sopa, Steps on the Path to Enlightenment, Volume 2: Karma. Wisdom Publications: 2005). To give a mundane example, when you use your mobile phone’s navigation feature to go somewhere, you don’t question its accuracy. Based on positive experiences using it, your faith and trust increase until you confidently rely on it even in potentially dangerous situations such as traveling alone on unfamiliar roads at night.
As part of the realizations of the Middle Scope, we renounce the mind of attachment meaning the mind that clings to dualistic concepts such as “self” and “other”, and the ever-swinging pendulum between attachment and hatred. We come to see that attachment and hatred arise interdependently – as Lama Yeshe says, “The minute your fanatical view and grasping exist, the reaction of hatred has already arrived.”
We then turned our attention to the meditations included in the Great Scope. Practitioners of the Great Scope seek to attain full Enlightenment for themselves and the benefit of all sentient beings. Meditating on equanimity — seeing all sentient beings we come into contact with from a biting bed bug to a snarling dog, to a faceless identity thief as being trapped in the very same samsaric suffering that we find ourselves in gives rise to loving-kindness and compassion. Bodhicitta, the mind of love and compassion, uproots craving and attachment. Bodhicitta combined with the wisdom realizing emptiness shatter our ego and dualistic mind and give rise to Enlightenment.
The starting point for cultivating Bodhicitta is understanding how we construct our own identities, our self-images, or personas. To do this, we did the meditation on page 34 of the Essence of Tibetan Buddhism. We observe how our mind creates and reinforces an image of itself, how it struggles so hard to maintain an appearance that it shows the world while perhaps inwardly being plagued by self-pitying and self-doubt. Cultivating self-compassion based on understanding how the mind works, is an important step towards becoming a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva (literally someone with a noble, courageous mind), vows to attain Buddhahood for all sentient beings.
Further topics included in the meditations on the Great Scope that we did not have time to discuss include the benefits of bodhicitta, how to rely on bodhicitta in daily life, how to meditate on bodhicitta, and the bodhisattva’s practice of the six perfections. We will have plenty of opportunities to examine these subjects in future Discovering Buddhism modules.
In preparation for Geshe Sherab’s commentary on Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lines of Experience, you might like to read His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s book “Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment” (it is a commentary on the same text). The appendices include The Lines of Experience as well as Atisha’s Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment. The latter is the first of the lam-rim texts. There’s also a helpful glossary of key terms. Chapters 7 through 10 describe bodhicitta and the bodhisattva’s practice of the six perfections. A study guide for Geshe Sherab’s teaching is available here.
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