The Fourth Noble Truth refers to the way to end of suffering which is the Dharma Jewel. The Dharma must be heard from a qualified teacher, then put into practice and finally realized. The teachings are practised through cultivation of the Three Higher Trainings of morality, concentration and wisdom.
The Fourth Noble Truth refers to the way to end of suffering which is the Dharma Jewel. The Dharma must be heard from a qualified teacher, then put into practice and finally realized. The teachings are practised through cultivation of the Three Higher Trainings of morality, concentration and wisdom.
Higher Training of Morality
His Holiness the Dalai Lama explained that although the practice of morality takes countless forms, all of them have the training of abandoning the ten non-virtuous deeds as their basis. The ten non-virtuous deeds are:
Three Physical Non-virtues
1. Killing or taking away the life of a living being - from insects to humans, either personally or through others such as abetment and ordering ‘live’ animals to be slaughtered as food
2. Stealing – taking the property of others without their consent, either personally or through others
3. Sexual misconduct – committing adultery
Four Verbal Non-virtues
4. Lying – misleading others through speech or gestures
5. Divisive speech – causing conflicts between those in harmony and those in disagreement to disagree further
6. Harsh speech – abusing others
7. Idle talk – senseless chatter motivated by desire and other afflictive emotions
Three Mental Non-virtues
8. Covetousness – desiring something that belongs to others
9. Harmful intention – wishing to injure or harm to others, no matter of small or great the harm
10. Wrong views – holding onto the wrong views such as non-existence of Three Jewels or law of karma.
By abandoning these ten non-virtuous deeds and cultivating the opposite deeds, we are then engaging in morality.
Higher Training of Concentration
The practice of concentration is generally explain as calm abiding or samatha which has the nature of one-pointed concentration on any object without distraction of a mind conjoined with a bliss of physical and mental pliancy. Calm abiding is practised by Buddhist and non-Buddhists alike. If the practice is supplemented with taking refuge in the Three Jewels, then it is a Buddhist practice. When the practice is motivated by aim of achieving enlightenment for the sake of sentient beings, then it is a Mahayana practice.
The merits of calm abiding are that one’s mind and body are pervaded by joy and bliss. Through the power of mental and physical pliancy, one can then set the mind on any virtuous object one chooses. This achievement is accompanied by special qualities such as clairvoyance and emanations. The main purpose and advantage of calm abiding is that through it, one can achieve special insight (vipasyana) realizing wisdom of emptiness, thus liberate oneself from samsara. In order to achieve calm abiding, one must have the causal conditions such as:
- a quiet place for practice since noise disturbs concentration
- the place should be safe with access to clean food and water
- meditator should know satisfaction, have few wants, not involved in worldly affairs and avoid non-virtuous physical and verbal deeds
- meditator must have heard and contemplated on teachings so as to eliminate misconceptions about the subject of meditation
- meditator must know how to reflect on the faults of desire and meaning of impermanence and so on.
During actual practice, a meditator should overcome the five faults of:
1. laziness – not wishing to cultivate meditative stabilization
2. forgetfulness – not remembering object of meditation
3. lethargy and excitement – which interrupts meditative stabilization
4. non-application of correct antidotes to counteract lethargy or excitement when they arise
5. over-application of antidotes – continued application of antidotes even when lethargy or excitement has been extinguished
A meditator should apply the following eight antidotes to counteract the five faults:
Counteracting Laziness
1. faith – seeing the benefits and good qualities of meditative stabilization
2. aspiration – seeking to attain the good qualities of meditative stabilization
3. efforts – delighting in the practice of meditative stabilization
4. physical and mental pliancy – which is a result of sustained effort in practice
Counteracting Forgetfulness
5. mindfulness – maintain concentration on subject of meditation continuously
Counteracting lethargy and excitement
6. awareness – conscious that lethargy or excitement is arising or has arisen
Counteracting non-application of antidotes
7. application – engaging in the antidotes against lethargy or excitement
Counteracting over-application of antidotes
8. desisting from application – relaxing one’s effort
Through consistent practice and application of the eight antidotes, the five faults are gradually eliminated and one passes through nine states of concentration as follows:
1. setting the mind – collecting the mind and setting it at an internal object (e.g. visualized form of Buddha);
2. continually setting – prolonging and sustaining the concentration on the object for longer period than the previous state;
3. re-setting – recognizing distractions immediately when they arise and refocusing to the object of meditation;
4. increased setting – collecting the mind from concentrating on the gross and setting it more and more on the subtle e.g. from gross aspects of the visualized object of meditation to subtle aspects of the visualized object;
5. disciplining: knowing the good qualities of meditative stabilization and taking joy in them;
6. pacifying – ceasing dislike for meditative stabilization;
7. thorough pacification – through effort abandoning even subtle lethargy and excitement just after they arise;
8. making one-pointed – generating meditative stabilization continuously within the context of its being impossible for the non-conducive to interrupt the process;
9. putting in equipoise – spontaneously fixing on the object of meditation without requiring the effort of relying on mindfulness and awareness;
The above nine states is achieved through the six powers which are:
1. first state through the power of hearing;
2. second state through the power of thinking;
3. third and fourth states through the power of mindfulness;
4. fifth and sixth states through the power of awareness;
5. seventh and eighth states through the power of effort; and
6. ninth state through the power of familiarity
There are four ways in which our mind engages the object of meditation throughout the nine states of concentration:
1. forcibly fixing – the first and second states of concentration are when one begins to practise, hence, one needs to forcefully set the mind on the object of meditation to prevent it from wandering
2. interruptedly fixing – from third and seventh states, one’s concentration is interrupted intermittently by the five faults
3. uninterrupted fixing – in the eighth state when one achieves single-pointed concentration, nothing can interrupt this concentration
4. effortlessly fixing – the mind spontaneously fixes on the object of meditation without any efforts
The Higher Training of Wisdom
There are two type of wisdom that we should train in and realize i.e. wisdom that realizes the conventional truth and wisdom realizing the ultimate nature of phenomena. Of the two, it is the wisdom of realizing the ultimate nature of all phenomena that will eliminate the two obscurations – obscuration to liberation and obscuration to omniscience that prevents one from becoming a Buddha.
What is the ultimate nature of phenomena? The nature of all phenomena is that of emptiness of inherent existent. In order to recognize emptiness, we employ the Madhyamika school of reasoning on emptiness.
We are not able to recognize the true nature of emptiness of phenomena due to our conditioning to the concept of inherent existence since beginningless time. In order to recognize emptiness, we must first ascertain how our mind misconceives the nature of things as being inherently existing. For instance, as individuals, one always thinks of oneself as ‘I’. The ‘I’ appears self-sufficient and independent of the body, mind, and collection of mental and physical aggregates and continuum. We have not reflected on what constitute the ‘I’ that we always refer to as self.
Is this ‘I separated from the physical and mental aggregates? When the body is struck by an illness such as cold, one does not hesitate to say that, “I am sick”. If the ‘I’ was truly separated and independent of the physical and mental aggregates, then one can only say that ‘My body is sick’. But when we say ‘I am sick’ we mean that our body is sick, hence, suffering arises in our mind. Hence, the ‘I’ is not independent from the physical and mental aggregate.
Now if the ‘I’ is not independent from the physical and mental aggregates, is it one with any of the mental and physical aggregates? Obviously, ‘I’ is not one with any of our physical aggregates e.g. the ‘I’ is not the heart, lungs, legs nor hand etc. One would not feel less ‘I’ if one loses a leg or become a different ‘I’ when one undergoes a heart transplant.
But is the ‘I’ then one with the mental aggregates or the mental consciousness? Based on philosophical interpretation, the “I” is represented by the fundamental consciousness i.e. the sixth mental consciousness. Even with mental consciousness, there are many levels of gross and subtle consciousness. If you label “I” on the subtle level of consciousness, it is still not satisfactory as even the consciousness at the subtlest level i.e. clear light mind, cannot be the representation of “I” or that person. This is so as there is hardly anything that one can pinpoint as the basis of “I”. Hence there is no reliable basis of for the designation of “I”. This will lead to the understanding that there is no such “I”, which will come suddenly and gives one a strange experience.
In this way, one should meditate on the selflessness of person. One can reflect at this time Nagarjuna’s verse, “A person or individual is not the earth nor the water nor the wind nor the fire nor the space.” But Nagarjuna did not continue to say that therefore there is no “I”. Instead, he said, “Apart from these elements, there is no ‘I’ having an inherent existence since ‘I’ is dependent on the coming together of the six elements”.
Nagarjuna meant that not finding the physical aggregates that makes ‘I’ is not the meaning of lack of inherent existence. An individual (or ‘I’) is only designated on the collection of six elements [eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind and their respective consciousness]. This point is also made clear in Chandrakirti’s Madhaymakavatara which said that when one searches for the “I” through seven aspects of analysis, one would not find it. But the “I” is designated on its parts. Not finding the person or ‘I’ on nor amidst nor within the psycho-physical aggregates of these elements does not mean that the person or ‘I’ does not exist at all. Therefore the ‘I’ is designated in relation to the six elements. Hence, ‘I’ is a mere designation or name.
However, there is an ‘I’ which functions based on such designation in relation to the six elements. Hence, because it is designated, there is no inherent existence of ‘I’ and therefore giving the meaning of being free from two extremes.
In this way, one can develop clear insight of the lack of inherent existence of ‘I’. Normally, we develop the notion of ‘I’ that can be pinpointed [i.e. we grasp at the notion that there is a real ‘I’]. As things appear to us having inherent existence, we take it for granted that they do have inherent existence [e.g. a table is a designation of object which has a flat surface and four legs. The material and dimensions of a table is irrelevant in our “designation” of the object as table as long as it fits our perception of a table. But if we investigate whether a table truly exists on its own, we realize that it is a mere label for a collection of materials put together in a way which we identify as ‘table’].
If there is inherent existence, there can be a relation between the ‘person’ and his psycho-physical aggregate [i.e. one should be able to pinpoint the ‘thing’ or ‘element’ that is ‘I’]. Hence, there is no ‘I’ that is inherent - we can extend this analysis to oneself, to others and all other phenomena.
Based on this, since the ‘I’ that appears in our mind as inherently existing is not the aggregates nor is it different from the aggregates, such an ‘I’ does not exist. Through ascertaining the non-existence of such an ‘I’ we realize that the ‘I’ conventionally exists, based on imputation. The ‘I’ is therefore free of the four extremes of existence, total non-existence, both of these, and neither of them.
Hence, in order to build up our practice of wisdom of understanding the meaning of all phenomena being not inherently existing, we need to hear about emptiness from reading great texts in depth, then depending on hearing it from qualified guru, thus generating wisdom that arises from hearing. By reflecting on this meaning again and again, one generates the wisdom that arises from thinking. With practice, one will eventually be familiar with single-pointed meditation on the meaning that has been deeply ascertained, thus arising wisdom from meditation. When one’s mind is powerful as a result of having achieved calm abiding through practice of concentration, when one meditates single-pointedly on meaning of emptiness a physical and mental pliancy is generated just as it was during the practice of concentration. The difference is that the bliss of physical and mental pliancy was a result of calm abiding by force of meditation stabilization, while the bliss here is induced by the power of analysis. When this special meditative stabilization, conjoined with such bliss is achieved, it is known as the union of calm abiding and special insight apprehending emptiness.
From here one practices step by step and progresses from the path of preparation, seeing until one completely overcomes afflicting obstructions and obstructions to omniscience as well as their latent predispositions. In terms of superiority and inferiority, each succeeding training is superior than the former i.e. training in wisdom being the most superior, followed by training in meditative stabilization and ethics. However, each of the preceding training is the basis or support for the succeeding training. Hence, training in ethics is the most important in the beginning.
If one cultivates the Three Higher Training with proper practice of taking refuge in the Three Jewels and understanding law of karma, the rank of liberation can be attained. If one cultivates bodhicitta in addition to these and strive for highest enlightenment for sake of all sentient beings, the rank of omniscience, the superior liberation, can be obtained.
