Phurpa Tashi Rinpoche
Generally speaking, worldly meditation and meditation that leads to liberation share the common characteristic of giving rise to less thoughts, to the extent of being thought-free. What then is the difference between these two?
From the perspective of qualities increasing, if one merely extinguishes all thoughts and rests in a non-differentiating state, you may feel as though your meditation is quite peaceful and comfortable, but the qualities of renunciation, Bodhichitta and faith are not increasing. This means that your meditation is inclining more and more towards worldly samsaric meditation. No matter how long you are able to rest in this state, whether for several minutes, for several hours or, as the beings in the form and formless realms are able to, for six thousand to eight thousand great eons, it is completely useless for liberation.
On the other hand, if the time you rest in this state is not very long, yet the qualities of renunciation, Bodhichitta and faith are increasing day by day progressively, it means that your practice is truly increasing and this, then, is meditation that leads to liberation.
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When you are experiencing dullness or distracting thoughts in your meditation, do not try to get rid of them and rest in the state of quietude. Even if you manage to do so, due to the wrong method being used, it is very hard to lay bare the nature of mind.
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Not knowing how to turn afflictions into wisdom, there are two possibilities:
(1) You continue to follow afflictions thereby continuing cycling in samsara;
(2) You use an extreme method to suppress afflictions, this blocks your meditative view from deepening.
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When starting with shamatha with an object or reference point, the beginner’s meditative view is very coarse. Although less thoughts arise, which means that the mind is no longer within the seventh consciousness (mānas-vijñāna) but has entered the grasping of the sixth consciousness, the mind nonetheless focuses on a reference point. This indicates that it is still within the territory of consciousness. This is very normal for a beginner.
As practice progresses, the mind will gradually enter a subtler and purer state, to the point where it transcends the confines of consciousness. To achieve this, the right methods are indispensable. If one is simply stuck on one method of practice, your insight will not progress very far.
I have seen many Chinese meditators whose method of meditation requires them to accumulate a certain number of sessions with each session lasting at least 2 hours daily. It is said that by accumulating this number of sessions, the practitioner will gain a certain depth of realization.
However, many people have practiced several thousand sessions (amounting to many thousand hours of meditation) yet their meditative view remains within the boundaries of shamatha with reference point. Their meditative state is quite coarse, they have not even progressed to a more refined and subtler state of shamatha (calm-abiding). The reason for this is using inappropriate methods. Although they practice meditation daily, all they gain is a habituation of this method of placing their minds. There is no deepening of insight whatsoever.
(According to Rinpoche, "reference point" refers to any of these possibilities: a physical object, a visual object, a visualized object, or simply a mental object held in the mind such as "emptiness", "clarity", "awareness", "mind", "nature of mind" etc.)
