Jamyang Rinpoche
For instance, when we hear pleasant sounds, we are happy; when someone says something harsh, we get really upset. If we are still behaving like that, it means that our practice is not really good. If we had a good practice, we would have at least dissolved this sort of fixation. If we can’t dissolve this fixation, then we can say a great deal about the Dharma but it doesn’t do the slightest bit of good for our practice or afflictions.
Being unable to overcome our afflictions means that our practice has failed. If the military trains troops for a few years, yet these troops do not know how to fight their enemies on the battlefield, then the military is a failure and all its efforts are useless.
Afflictions are the enemies for a practitioner. If afflictions win, then the practitioner has failed. One can check for oneself if your practice has succeeded or failed. There is no need to ask the Guru.
When afflictions arrive, our training in renunciation and bodhichitta are completely lost, needless to mention emptiness —then your Dharma practice has been useless to you. What is the use of listing out all the amazing practices you have done? Useless! If Dharma is useful when it comes to dealing with your afflictions, then you are truly successful.
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Constantly trying to rest your mind in a state free of thoughts and thinking that this is Dharma practice is incorrect. In Tibet, many small animals called marmots hibernate for about 6 months each year. Keeping your mind in such a state is similar to the minds of these hibernating animals.
It is not necessary to control your mind in this way. What we need to address is the source of afflictions. We need to investigate where afflictions come from.
There is a certain sect in India that trains in keeping the mind still for hundreds of years. In history, the adherents of this sect have been said to achieve this feat. Long-life devas can also still their minds for hundreds of years. After all that effort, the only result is that they remain trapped in samsara.
The cause of samsara is self-grasping. When we rest our minds in stillness, this self-grasping is not dissolved, instead, on top of that, we add another layer of clinging at stillness.
In other words, we already have self-grasping, but this type of practice adds another layer of self-grasping on top of our existing self-grasping. In the meditation, a watcher observes the mind for distractions and brings it back to stillness; this watcher becomes another artificially created layer of self-grasping. Therefore, one remains entrapped in samsara instead of moving closer to liberation.
When this type of training is engaged in for a long time, one approaches a kind of state when consciousness seems to be extinguished. If this habit becomes deeply entrenched, then one takes rebirth as a long-life deva. These devas are still firmly enslaved by self-grasping.
The true view of Buddhism is to dismantle self-grasping. This is the only way to liberation. Beginning with self-grasping, discrimination arises, and the various objects of the five senses are judged as pleasant or unpleasant, attachment and aversion arises, one reacts and creates karma and all of samsara unfolds from there on…
