Abandoning, Transforming, Transcending - Mingyur Rinpoche - 16/11/2025 (3/3)

Transforming thru awareness

If we are new to meditation, we need first to train on how to rest awareness in an object (5 min a day) at least for one month.  Then we must train to rest with pain.  We can train with pain using the acupressure point in the hand [between the thumb and index].

Meditation

• Let the mind in its natural state
• Press your hand and feel the pain
• The pain is now your support
• We don’t fight with nor run away from pain, just feel it.
• Now rest your mind in open awareness again.

Now we made friends with pain, because we used as support for our meditation.  When you look at pain, there are four possible expereinces:

• Pain disappears
• Pain remains but changed, transformed, moved from one place to another
• Pain stays equal and you can watch it
• Pain become bigger, stronger

All the experiences are good, only if the pain becomes really big you’d better stop.

Poison becomes medicine

This practice shows the way to deal with any disturbing experience: anger, sadness, dullness, sleepiness.  All become support for our meditation.  They become friends, and help us to develop awareness.  When we feel a disturbing emotion and we don’t fight it, we develop compassion.  We feel it as they are, without changing, reacting or removing, and that’s the wisdom, seeing the reality as it is.

Sometimes when we look at the disturbance it will be still too much.  Then we must turn our attention to something easy.  For example, change focus to another emotion less intense.  At the beginning we may struggle welcoming disturbing emotions. We may approach them with a fake welcome, but even a fake welcome is useful because we start dissolving our aversion.

Therefore, the practice of watching the emotion has as first benefit that you make friends with it.  Secondly, when you see the river, you are out of the river.  When you see the emotion, you are automatically creating a gap, and you are not carried by it.  If the emotion disappears it is also great, because then you experience a non-conceptual state.  When you see the emotion, your awareness becomes bigger than the emotion.

Wisdom

If we start looking closely, feeling it, not staying with our assumptions about the kleshas or suffering, we connect with our wisdom.

Meditation

• Rest your mind in open awareness
• Look at the disturbing emotion. If you can’t find it, rest in the gap.  If there is a very strong emotion, first look a weaker emotion.
• Watch closely it, and ask, “Where is my emotion?” Maybe you will cry, or laugh.  If your emotion disappear it is also very good.
• Rest your mind again in open awareness

When you look where the emotion is, you may not find it.  That means that you already begun wisdom.  Wisdom is the opposite of ignorance, that is the landmark of the unhealthy sense of self, the perception of things as permanent, singular and independent, perceiving the emotion as one thing and being part of us.  In reality, it is made of pieces: sensation, thought, label, object, beliefs.  Although we perceive the emotion as having an entity, in fact is all the pieces linked.  For example, if we hate something and we remove the object, does the hate hold? Therefore, emotion is interdependent and changing all the time, impermanent.

How to transcend the emotion?

We look at the pieces, at the changes, and we discover we cannot find anything, yet we can still feel something, but the emotion is not solid, it’s not real.

We can experience it by looking at my face.  Look at it closer.  Maybe you are looking at my eyes.  Without changing the direction of your eyes, can you see my chin clearly? No, you can’t.  You only see clearly the eyes.  We can continue the process: narrowing down to one eye, then the eyeball, next only the iris, etc.  Although we think we see the full face clearly, it is just a mental reconstruction of my face.

We can also experience with sounds.  My name is Mingyur Rinpoche, but to pronounce it, we extend over time.  When you hear “Rin”, “gyur” is already gone, and “po” has not arrived yet. Therefore, we cannot pinpoint the moment where the name is pronounced.  This is emptiness.  Although something appears, we cannot pinpoint.  Realizing that is the wisdom.  When we see, hear, or think we experience the wisdom, but we don’t recognize it.  That summarizes the practice of wisdom.  We don’t do anything.  We just experience and recognize that we cannot grasp it, and we rest with that.  This wisdom is already present and free.  Actually, nothing can bind us.  What bind us is our own concept, made by our fixation mind.

Meditation

• Rest your mind in open awareness, just be.
• Whatever comes to your mind, be with it, vividly present, but noticing that you cannot really grasp them.  Rest with it, as it is.
• That’s it.

You can also apply reasoning asking, “Who hates whom?” It is emptiness, just like a dream.  The person is also empty, and the hatred is just like a dream.  The hatred maybe disappears a few seconds, and then comes back again, maybe stronger than before.

We can mistake this view if we just pretend, by intellectual understanding that things are empty, but they appear vividly.  That would be nihilism.  For example, if someone hits me it is not enough to say, “The person is empty” and “The pain is empty.”

In the end, all the emotions become wisdom (the five kleshas become the five wisdoms), the positive aspect of the emotion remains, while the ignorant (permanent, singular, independent) aspect disappears.  Like the gold mixed with mud, by refining it, its qualities become clearer.

Next time you get angry ask, “Who is angry?” and the anger maybe will disappear a few seconds.  Or just be with the anger, seeing its impermanence, yet you can see it.  These are the methods: by questioning, and by seeing and resting as it is.

In summary we have explained three methods and we can choose which one seems appropriate.  Using always the same method will not work.  Even if we are using transcending or transforming a lot, sometimes abandoning can be more effective.  Whatever method we use their essence is awareness, loving-kindness, wisdom, and all the three qualities in union.

Abandoning, Transforming, Transcending - Khenpo Kunga - 7/12/2025 (3/3)

 [Teaching translated by Adam Kane] This is the continuation of my notes of the Tergar webinar teachings.

Knowing the essence [of kleshas].

We have five sense consciousness that are always oriented outwardly and are supported by the mind consciousness (6th) that is behind them.  Then there is the 7th consciousness, the afflicted mind, that we cannot get rid of easily, because it takes the 8th consciousness, the storage consciousness, as an object, and clings to it as a sense of identity.  Due to that, kleshas are ready to arise in all of us.  They will arise when causes and conditions met, but the readiness to arise is what allows it to happen.

We must not blame ourselves or put us down, because it is our condition.  Not only that, kleshas are cause of we continue accumulating karma, and perpetuate our samsaric existence.  Fortunately, kleshas can transform because their nature is impermanent.  Moreover, the external phenomena that trigger them, look solid, but their nature is like a bubble.

First, the klesha arises (triggered by something), but immediately after, we can acknowledge its arising through awareness and vigilance.  Thanks to that we can take control and apply any method that we are using.  With wisdom we stop accumulating karmic imprints, that hold us wandering in samsara.  After realizing the arising, we can apply the antidote: abandoning, transforming, or knowing its essence.

There are two ways of knowing the kleshas: knowing the essence and knowing its nature.  The essence of kleshas is emptiness and its nature is luminosity or clarity.  Knowing emptiness by concept is not enough.  We must experience it, and the best method is analytical meditation.  In the other hand, resting meditation allows us to see their luminous nature.  Seeing both empty essence and luminous nature, the klesha can dawn as wisdom.

Three ways to engage in investigation

1. Look at the shape of the emotion. When an emotion arises, we ask, “What is its shape, color, form?” When we do that, we can’t find it.  From the point of view of form, we must admit that the emotion is empty.
2. Look at the location. “Where does it arise? Where is it abiding? Where does it go when it goes?” We can’t find it either. This is another piece of evidence of the emptiness of the emotion.
3. Look at its relationship with the mind. “Is the mind and the afflictive emotion the same?” It can’t be the same because wherever the mind was manifesting the afflictive emotion would also be present.  We can’t say that they are separated either.  If it was the case, it will be possible to find the klesha independently from the mind, but this doesn’t happen.  We can only conclude that the klesha arises when the causes and conditions are present.

Although this method has been very useful to me, I learnt that for many people it is not, because they prefer to just rest.  Fortunately, there is another way based on the luminosity of the emotion. Whatever method we use, the result of manifesting the beneficial qualities of the emotion and dawn the emotion as wisdom is the same.

The resting practice

There are three steps:

1. Look at the afflictive emotion.
2. Recognize how we reacted to it.  Maybe we don’t like it, or we hold to it (i.e. for desire).  We may experience attachment or aversion.
3. Look at the experience-er.  Who is actually knowing the emotion?

Usually, we don’t or can’t rest our awareness in our afflictive emotion, as we experience the relaxed open awareness and the emotion as opposites.  That is not the case with a positive emotion like loving-kindness and compassion.  Just by resting, the afflictive emotion becomes weaker. It may happen that by resting, the afflictive emotion vanishes and we enter in a calm abiding experience (objectless shamata).  If that happens, we just rest in that state.  If the emotion remains, that becomes shamatha with object.  Both are fine to practice.

Kleshas are strengthened by our mental imprints (secondary forces): attachment, aversion, fear, doubt… For example, if we experience anger, maybe on top we generate aversion because we don’t like anger, which boosts and increases it.  When that happens, we rest our awareness in those secondary reactions and prevent the boost of anger.

The third technique is to look at the know-er, at the experience-er, that is the luminosity or clarity of the mind, the awareness itself.  When we look at the know-er we find the mind, the rigpa.  We see that by looking to us, by looking in.  When we do that we don’t need to examine, or debate, “Is it good? Is it bad?” We don’t need to follow our emotions.  We just relax looking at the experience-er. Doing like this the klesha cannot take any action, it naturally liberates by itself.

The two first techniques are shamatha practices.  Just by resting the emotion liberates by itself, as in the classical example of snowflakes falling over a hot stone that melt immediately.  With the third technique, looking at the knower, the emotion often vanishes without allowing its push to operate, and is usually called self-liberation.

All three stop the emotion to operate and can be described as liberation beyond harm.  The classical example is a thief entering in an empty house.  If a klesha arises, it doesn’t matter because it cannot harm.  All comes down to the wisdom of empty luminosity.  All the emotions become our friends, supports for our practice.

Question: Why don’t we work with positive emotions?  Is it because we are attached to them or because they don’t generate karma?

Answer: Positive emotions don’t disturb our mind, they allow to rest our mind.  These qualities are present naturally in our mind, and that is why they don’t disturb.  Instead, afflictive emotions are temporary and disturb the mind, we can’t rest the mind when they are present. However, when we experience compassion, we can feel upset because we connect with the aspect of seeing the suffering (empathy) more than the alleviating the suffering (compassion). Being that the case, we must intentionally focus on the aspect of alleviating the suffering.

Abandoning, Transforming, Transcending - Khenpo Kunga - 28/11/2025 (2/3)

[Teaching translated by Adam Kane] This is the continuation of my notes of the Tergar webinar teachings.

Transforming

We’ve seen that concerning abandoning, being aware of the klesha was the most important method.  This applies also to transforming and transcending.

We can ask: when the kleshas are transformed, how or where are they transformed?  There are three ways:

•  Bodhicitta that belongs to lojong
•  The form of the deity, that belongs to development stage practice
•  Yeshe, wisdom, that belongs to the completion stage of the path of liberation

Lojong style

The best way is using the Joy of living 2 methods, applying compassion.  When we have a klesha, is like our mind becomes sullied, contaminated.  We feel ill and this is cause we accumulate karma in the future.

First, we need to raise awareness, “I have this klesha in my mind.” Then we reflect, “Not only me have this klesha, but also many others have it. When they have it, it can be a cause to accumulate karma.”    That leads us to wish, “May my klesha prevent other beings from having it. May this klesha ripen in me instead of other beings. May them be cleared from it.”

There method has five steps:

1. Activate awareness, and see the klesha as a fault.
2. Having seen it, recognize that other beings can also experience this klesha.
3. Consider the suffering the klesha provokes in other beings when they experience it.  That activates our compassion, to take that klesha into us.
4. Appreciate to have developed compassion for other beings. Out of the klesha we made something useful.
5. Reflect on the process and acknowledge that doing the previous steps are causes to attain buddhahood.

Development stage style: transforming the klesha in the deity

In my mind stream I have the kleshas that can be transformed in the Buddhas (of the five families). The reason is the essence of the kleshas is wisdom, and the root of the five buddha families.

This is based in the recognition of the most subtle aspect of the mind, the 8th consciousness, the alaya-vijnana.  The undeluded aspect can be called rigpa or pure awareness.  In the alaya-vijnana there is also one aspect without recognition, the deluded aspect, that can be called alaya itself.  The deluded aspect is the basis for the 7th consciousness, the self-grasping, mainly to the sense of self, that is the reason that the five poisons manifest. Otherwise, when the 8th consciousness is not deluded, there is rigpa (recognition) and the five wisdoms manifest as the five Buddha families.

For example, when desire arises, its nature is Buddha Amitabha, so we can bring to mind his image and rest the mind on it.  This is the traditional way to act.  But we can generalize and see any emotion (anger, delusion, desire…) in the form of the same deity (e.g. Tara) or the form of the lama.  The key point is that we don’t try to stop or block the thought.  We see the klesha in the form of the deity.  That is the key of transformation.

This way of doing is based on the development stage practice, therefore if we don’t have a foundation on the development stage it is very difficult to use this method of transforming the kleshas into deities.  If we lack of mastery, we can transform the klesha into bodhicitta, generating compassion and so on.  If we are familiar with the development stage, this practice is however very beneficial.

Completion stage style: transforming kleshas into yeshe, original wakefulness

There are two stages:

• Transforming into the path of wisdom
• Essence of wisdom, that is equivalent to knowing the essence

Emotions are not totally bad, as they have faults, they have also qualities.  We start by recognizing that we (ordinary samsaric beings) all have kleshas.  Any attempt to get rid of the kleshas would not help, as we can’t access the consciousness without them [We need kleshas in our path] What we do is when we recognize a klesha we separate its qualities from its faults.

For example, if we are jealous, is because we see good qualities in others, instead we wouldn’t become jealous.  When recognize jealousy, we acknowledge that we see good qualities in others, and we rejoice in that.  That makes jealousy go away, while we keep the rejoicing aspect.

In the case of pride, we see our own good qualities, which is OK, but we let go the part where we see us better than others.  Pride then can lead us to dignity and confidence.

If we look at anger, it arises when we see the fault in something or someone else.  Instead of blocking the feeling or the fault, we generate compassion.  It doesn’t matter if the fault is true or not, we generate compassion for the being may free from the fault.

In the case of attachment, we see something or someone as delightful.  We can enjoy the delightfulness and make an offering or transform it into love.

Delusion doesn’t have a particular way.  It is a foundation to other kleshas.  Therefore, when we transform the other kleshas, delusion is also transformed.  That is why it doesn’t need a specific method of transformation.

Abandoning, Transforming, Transcending - Khenpo Gyurme - 16/11/2025 (2/2)

 [Teaching translated by Joseph Faria] This is the continuation of my notes on the Tergar retreat teachings.

Tranforming

How to transform emotions? Like the beautiful statue in the shrine [behind Khenpo-la] made of clay, we can transform the muddy mind into the crystal mind.  Mingyur Rinpoche explained yesterday how to do it with visualization.

We explained the abandoning of emotions of the Sutra path. In the Mahayana path we move on to transform the emotions. Finally in the Vajrayana we transcend the emotions.  In the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions we do transformation with the recognition and awareness methods.  In the path of transformation, we don’t discard any emotion, but we see in them the nature of the deity through visualization.

The difference between relinquishing and transforming is that in the first path we see the emotion as flaw, as something we need to get rid of, like a poison, or a dangerous animal.  In the path of transformation we do not see it as flaw.  The third path is that of recognition.  In the recognition we do not see the emotion either as flaw, moreover we see it as something pure and wonderful, and then we try to befriend the emotion.  When we look at the emotion we don’t try to avoid or transform it, but to work directly with it to liberate us.   The goal of the three approaches is similar because is to tame or pacify our mind, and reduce the experience of suffering, transforming it into awareness, compassion, and wisdom.

For example, if I get angry at the translator, because I think he is not doing well his job, and I want to hit him, I can question “Why I am angry? Maybe he is sick, or he didn’t sleep well and that is why he do not translate well.”  I can also look at me, “Maybe I don’t speak clearly.  He tried his best.  Why am I angry?”  This is the path of relinquish.

In the path of transformation we don’t follow, react to the anger, but rather we transform it by visualizing as the deity, the yidam (Buddha, Tara, etc.).  The visualization of the deity neutralizes the emotion because we cannot hold simultaneously in mind two opposite emotions.  This connects us with the positive qualities of the deity and reduces the power of the negative emotion.  Although the deity has a human appearance, its essence is love and wisdom, so we focus mainly on its essence.

For example, if we must deal with craving, we can transform it in Amitabha.  We don’t think on Amitabha as separate, but we think of desire as a beautiful form of wisdom.  The human appearance [of the deity] helps our mind to work with it, but the transformation is thru the essence characteristics.  Instead of falling in the energy of desire, we turn our attention to the nature of Amitabha, we think we possess the qualities of Amitabha.  Even if we cannot visualize, we can think on the qualities, so we can transform the emotion that way.

Do you know Amitabha, White Tara or Buddha Shakyamuni?  Was Buddha a man? Was he compassionate? Was he a good or bad man?  When we think of Buddha there are three ways. 

• In the Vajrayana we think on Buddha as someone not afflicted by emotions, but can manifest his nature of love, compassion, and wisdom.
• In the common (Sutra) vehicle we think of the Buddha as a wise man, with a compassionate behaviour.  His love is not only for humans, but extends to all sentient beings, including bugs and mosquitoes.
• [in the Mahayana] The Buddha can explain the true nature of things, as empty of inherent existence. When we work with emotions [in the common vehicle] we think of the Buddha as a noble being endowed with love and compassion and wisdom in front of us and we wish to transform ourselves into someone similar to the Buddha.
• In the Vajrayana the Buddha is not an ordinary individual, in terms of his enlightened qualities. When visualize us as the Buddha, we think having the same nature of love and wisdom.  Working that way, as soon an emotion arises we think of us with these enlightened qualities.

Meditation

• Let’s do some practice. Would you like to visualize yourself as a Buddha or in front of you?  We will visualize us as Buddhas.  Do you think your mind has the same qualities of Buddha’s?
• Look at any emotion is present.  Maybe you think you think not having any emotion.  Whatever you think or feel recognize it as it is.
• Now visualize yourself as Buddha, whatever you think or feel.  Visualize it as a dream, although it appears, is not real, like a rainbow in the sky.
• Think about the essence of Buddha as possessing love, compassion and wisdom.
• Think that your own qualities are the same of the Buddha, that you and the Buddha are indivisible.
• Just rest your mind

No matter what emotion arises, if we follow them, we accumulate karma and we experience samsara. Now when we experience a negative emotion, not only we don’t follow, but we use them to visualize us in a pure form.  That way, the emotions become weaker and we start to purify our karma.

Let’s practice again. We will combine the three approaches of relinquish, transformation and recognition, that we can practice separately, together.

Meditation

• Sit with your back upright and release tensions in the body.
• Keep your attention to not get lost, think on any thought or emotion that arises, ‘I don’t want to follow’
• Contemplate the afflictions that disturb other beings.  Consider any emotion you are experience replaces the same emotion experienced by all other beings.  Wish that the emotion of all these beings comes to you.
• Imagine how wonderful would be that all the beings get free of this emotion, and formulate the intention to prac-tice liberating all them from this affliction.
• Imagine now the Buddha Shakyamuni in the space in front of you.  Think on his qualities: love, compassion, and wisdom.  Reflect that he looks at all us thru these qualities.
• Thinking on the qualities and the teachings of the Buddha, form the intention to bring all this into practice.
• Visualize light irradiating from the Buddha and it strikes you, filling you with blessings, and liberating you from all the disturbing emotions.  Now you are inseparable from the Buddha, you transformed into the Buddha.
• Now all your emotions has transformed in the essence of the Buddha: love, compassion, and wisdom, the same nature of the Buddha Shakyamuni.
• Visualize the light reaching all the beings, and their emotions also transform into love, compassion and wisdom.  All them also become Buddhas.
• Our mind and the minds of all beings become inseparable from the Buddha’s mind and rest with it.

Abandoning, Transforming, Transcending - Khenpo Kunga - 21/11/2025 (1/3)

[Teaching translated by Adam Kane] This is are my notes of the Tergar webinar teachings.

Abandoning

All the teachings of the Buddha are contained in these three methods: abandoning, transforming, and knowing the essence. We can classify the teachings in three categories (or traditions): the sutras, the vajrayana and the pith instructions, that are connected to each of the methods.

In the sutra tradition we mainly use abandoning, in the vajrayana we use mainly transforming, and the pith instruction use mainly knowing the essence.

The Tibetan word nyon mongs (klesha in Sanskrit) is not easily translated in English. Nyon means “sullied”, “contaminated”, and mongs means “confused”.  Therefore, it means “contaminated due to the confusion”, although it is usually translated as “conflictive emotions”.

All the 84000 kleshas can be condensed in 20 categories, that can still be summarized in 5, to finally go down to three root kleshas: attachment, aversion and delusion, of which delusion is the ground for the other two.  Attachment and aversion contaminate our mind, that makes us generate karma and due to that we wander in samsara.

So, if samsara is due to kleshas, removing the cause will stop wandering in samsara. That is why abandoning emotions is practiced.

How to get rid of kleshas?

There are 3 steps / styles:

1. The best is to stop the cause of klesha to arise, which will keep us away from it.
2. If we are unable, the klesha arises and we need to be aware, then we need to apply an antidote, but this is more difficult.
3. The final recourse is not let the klesha engage in any action. For example, if we experience anger we could fight with someone, so we stop that from happening.

The causes of kleshas

To get rid of kleshas we need to know their three causes:

a) Being close to the object that triggers the klesha. Maybe we can remove physically from the presence of the object, but sometimes we cannot, and then we change our mental perception of the object. For example, if I get angry at someone, then we can keep distance, but if not, we can change perception: “this person has been my mother” or distinguish the person from the kleshas behind his/her behavior.

The best meditation is, however, on impermanence: the person, the situation, myself are impermanent, we don’t know what is happening in the future, maybe they or I will not be here tomorrow.

For desire, we can apply loving-kindness and unpleasantness.

• For example, depending or their age compared with ours, this lady is my mother, sister, daughter.
•  Reflect on the unclean parts of the body

We can also reflect on the lack of essence of the objects of desire/aversion.

b) Aversion and attachment happen because we hold self-grasping. Buddhas don’t experience it because they don't have self-grasping. Generate a clear understanding and no assumptions to decrease your self-grasping.

c) Lack of awareness. With awareness we can block the arising of kleshas, and therefore it is the most important to do.  We need also carefulness. Imagine a ground full of sharp rocks and walking barefoot; with carefulness we can avoid being hurt.

Abandoning, Transforming, Transcending - Khenpo Gyurme - 15/11/2025 (1/2)

[Teaching translated by Joseph Faria] This is the continuation of my notes on the teachings of the Tergar retreat.

Today we will discuss how we relate with thoughts and emotions.  When we talk about what exists out there, what we experience in mind, and how we like or dislike, the fundamental root of all of it is our mind.  Because the fundamental root of all joy and suffering is mind, we must tame, pacify, relax our mind, and then our experience will become also relaxed. Instead, if we have an untamed mind, all the emotions: anger, jealousy, will disturb us, and then nothing can satisfy us.

How many minds do you have: one, two…?  [people answer] Only one, OK.  And is your mind clever or stupid?  Is your mind peaceful or disturbed?  When we wake up our mind starts telling things: “What I should eat for breakfast?”, “What should I wear today?”, “Should I have a shower?”  Then, is the mind sharp or peaceful?  Maybe we have two minds? One mind inside that is clear, and one mind outside that is muddy.

We will talk today about training, taming, the mind. Which one we will train? The inner mind, that is clear like crystal and we call also Buddha nature, is peaceful, or the muddy mind that is shows anger, jealousy, depression, anxiety.  It the muddy mind also peaceful?  Can we transform the muddy mind into the crystal mind? [discussing with the public] Is the muddy mind also crystal mind?  Does it come from the crystal mind?

There is a Gampopa’s quota “The essence of thought is dharmakaya.”  It says that klesha is also wisdom, because it is empty, clear, and knowingness.

The first method to deal with emotions is abandoning or relinquish them, we don’t say that kleshas are wisdom, but in the Mahamudra teachings we refer to emotions as being also wisdom.  In the sutrayana approach we relinquish the kleshas and the wisdom manifests by itself.

Things are empty in their essence. But in this context, we don’t recognize or realize the emptiness of things.  In our distorted perspective, afflictions are afflictions.  So, we try to abandon or relinquish them.  For example, if we have attachment, we want different things.  And we want more, again and again.  That becomes a problem.

Although the essence of our mind is Buddha nature, it manifests as the muddy mind. Can we control our muddy mind? Do you follow your muddy mind or is the other way around? We only follow our muddy mind, we don’t listen our crystal mind. So, we train to not follow the muddy mind.  This is the method of relinquish.

When you experience something, you question your mind, you ask, “Why? Why do you want this?  Why don’t you like this person?” This is the training: questioning, criticizing your muddy mind.  We question all our emotions: “Why are you sad? You should love and accept them.” That may have a certain power to change the muddy mind.

Although there are a great number of afflictions, all can be summarized into three: attachment, aversion and ignorance.

The training is questioning.  For example, with attachment “Why I need to follow? Where this attachment comes from? Why I want this?” “Because it is so beautiful.” “Really?”  It can be anything: money, fame,...  And when you debate, you don’t impose, don’t force.  You don’t give answer, you just keep asking “Why?”

We do the same with anger, “Why you are angry at him?” “Is they stupid, ugly?” “Really, how is it?” You debate, and also you give love and compassion: “This person also wants to be happy, the same as you. Why are you angry at them?”  Then your angry mind becomes softer.

• Antidote to attachment is meditation on revulsion
• Antidote to aversion is meditation on love and compassion
• Antidote to ignorance is meditation on interdependence

What is ignorance? Not understanding truth.  It’s a state of dullness, doubtful, or blank, where we cannot understand.  You keep debating until your muddy mind finally replies, “I don’t know”, and then you can give an answer from wisdom.

Where this ignorance come from? From not recognizing the true nature of mind, the true nature of things.  When we look at this ground, the nature of mind, there are two qualities: emptiness and the radiance/experience, called luminosity.  These two qualities are not something different, are inseparable, they are empty luminosity.  Though we don’t realize this inseparability, and we consider emptiness and luminosity as distinct.  This is the basis for the ignorance.  That leads to experience the duality: perceiving luminosity as the object being out there and emptiness as the subject being inside.

Therefore, some things appear as attractive, other unattractive, and other as neutral, that makes us generate the afflictions of attachment, aversion and ignorance.  And lead by these afflictions we act, say and think which generates karma.

The karma then, create mental habitual imprints that, when they awaken, makes us experience (bad karma) pain and suffering, but also (good karma) happiness and joy.  This is interdependence: the three kinds of accumulated karma lead us to experience suffering, happiness or neutral.

Not realizing the inseparability of emptiness and luminosity is the root cause of accumulating karma. Therefore, realizing the inseparability leads to the cessation of accumulating karma. The antidote of ignorance is training in the understanding of interdependence.

• In the Theravada we meditate on interdependence thru impermanence, suffering, and lack of self
• In the Mahayana we meditate on emptiness, seeing all phenomena as an illusion

To practice abandoning we cultivate a counter idea.  For example, “Is this flower real or not? It’s true or not? It’s permanent or impermanent? It’s independent or interdependent?”  We do that because we cannot hold both perceptions at the same time.  Your mind thinks it is permanent, but when you see its impermanence, you cannot hold the perception of permanence.  To counteract our attachment to solidity of things, we must cultivate the view of non-solidity.  As the Indian scholar Dharmakirti said, mind cannot hold opposite views on an object, like self and selfless, good and bad, permanent and impermanent.  Therefore, making one view stronger in our mind immediately reduces the other one.

Meditation on antidote of ignorance.

• Sit with the body upright and at easy
• Start seeing all the things as unreal, or illusion.
• Although things appear as there, outside, and mind appear here or inside, start to look at them as there is no separation between the appearances and the subjective mind, and rest on it.
•  Rest your mind with no particular object

Abandoning, Transforming, Transcending - Mingyur Rinpoche 14/11/2025 (1/3)

This is the first post of the series on this topic, based on the teachings of Mingyur Rinpoche, Khenpo Gyurme, and Khenpo Kunga.  Rather that accurate transcription, this are my notes taking during the teachings and after, revising in detail the recordings.

There are 3 ways to deal with emotions:

i. abandoning or removing the kleshas,
ii. transforming,
iii. transcending, seeing their true nature.

In vajrayana, the view is that our true nature is always beyond, peaceful, unborn, nothing can pollute or destroy it.  It is like sky.  But we cannot recognize it.  Therefore, in the ordinary level we must practice abandoning, and in the intermediate level transforming, to ultimately be able to transcend it.  Despite we hold the ultimate, vast open view (absolute level), our behaviour is careful and humble (relative level).

I had panic attacks many years.  I even thought I had heart problems, but checking with doctors I got convinced it was the panic.  Then I asked my father how to get rid of panic and he told me, “Don’t try to get rid of panic”, and I asked, “Why?”  He said that

i. Fighting panic attacks would make them bigger [Rinpoche use the example of pizza meditation: the more we want to avoid thinking of pizza, the more pizza appears in the mind]  I discovered that one main reason of my panic was aversion to panic.
ii. There is no need of getting rid of panic, because we have wonderful qualities beyond it.

My father instructed me to watch stormy weather.  I did it, despite I was quite scared.  After he asked me if the storm changed the nature of sky, and I replied “No, it can’t change it.”  Likewise, our innate qualities [the sky] are beyond thoughts and emotions [the clouds]

Do you want I introduce you your inner sky? [people vote yes raising their hands] “Ok. The introduction is finished.”  You may ask, “Why?”  Our inner sky is awareness, compassion and wisdom. These three qualities are present 24h/24h. This is not an idea or belief.  We can experience it.  But we may have hard to recognize these qualities and sustain its recognition.

• Awareness is the knowing quality of the mind.
• Love and compassion is the feeling of not wanting to suffer and longing for happiness.
• Wisdom is discerning, identifying, detecting.

These qualities are in us 24h/24h, even when we sleep.

When you raised your hand, you did it because

• you were aware, (awareness)
• and there was discernment: “Do I want it or not?” (wisdom)
• and the purpose of raising hand was to obtain something [learn=love], or to avoid something [stay ignorant=compassion]

For example, [holding a rose] when you look at this flower, the three qualities manifest: seeing the flower is awareness, recognizing the flower as flower is wisdom, and having a reaction of liking or disliking is love and compassion.  Even while we sleep, if you have cold or a mosquito bites you, you react.  The problem is that we don’t recognize the qualities [Rinpoche use the example of recognizing a watch as watch]

One simple way to learn how to recognize our innate qualities is breath meditation.  How many of you are breathing right now? [people raise hands] Great!  The introduction is finished.  Do you understand?  When I asked you and you raised your hand, you connected awareness with the breath.  Meditation is not about having a strong concentration, but remembering the breath, although other experiences manifest.

Meditation

• Feel the body, the gravity, the contact with the sit, and relax your muscles.
• Breathe naturally and be with the breathing.
• Open your eyes, and relax the mind without any particular focus.

We call this style "abandoning", because when we experience something disturbing, we bring our mind to the breath.  Usually, when we have a disturbing emotion, our mind entangles with it or fights it, which fuels the emotion.  Now, the focus is on the breath without fighting the emotion or getting lost with it.

[The] Methods of controlling afflictive emotions can be subsumed into three: rejection, transformation, and recognition. 

Rejecting these emotions is the ordinary approach of the sutras. 

Desire is renounced though contemplation on repulsiveness, hatred through contemplation on love, 

And stupidity though meditation on interdependent relationship. 

“Creation and completion”, Jamgon Kontrul, pg.37

Kleshas (disturbing emotions) are the base of suffering.  We generate aversion towards what we don’t like and crave about what we like.  When we have aversion, we also experience craving to get rid of what we don’t want.  When we have craving, we also experience aversion of losing or not attaining the object of craving.

Therefore, we must work with the kleshas, that are usually classified in five families: craving, aversion, ignorance (i.e. not knowing and wrong perception), pride, and jealousy.

We can apply the simple style method [breathing meditation] with all the families.  But we can also apply the elaborated method of using an antidote:

• Craving → unpleasantness of the body (for physical attraction), impermanence, interdependence, and suffering
• Aversion → loving kindness and compassion
• Ignorance → impermanence (dissolves solidity), and the twelve links of interdependence

1. The antidote to craving for physical attraction is unpleasantness of the body

Meditation

• Feel the grounding sensation in the body and relax it, let mind and body sink in.
• Place your attention in the forehead, and let the skin, muscles, disappear.  Only the bone remains.
• Go down all the head and dissolve the skin, flesh, blood... until only remains the skull.
• Go down all the body and dissolve the skin, flesh, blood... until there is only a skeleton.
• Continue with your cushion, and everything around you. Extend the experience, transforming everything (people, houses, animals) into skeletons.  Include all your country and beyond until you reach the ocean.
• Come back from the ocean all the way to your place making all again normal.
• From your feet to head let your body become normal again ending with your forehead.
• Rest a few moments with your mind and body as it is.

This meditation helps to renounce to attachment.  Contemplation on suffering helps too: life is pervaded by suffering, and we cannot do anything about it.

2. The antidote of aversion is love

We look for happiness and want to get rid of suffering all the time.  Every breath, blink, body movement, are expressions of our loving-kindness and compassion.  This is also true for all the beings.  They look all the time for happiness and try to avoid suffering.

Meditation 

• Relax your body.
• You are attending the teaching because you look for happiness.  You may be liking it, which is loving-kindness, or not.  If you don’t like them is compassion.
• Recognize that every thought and emotion that arises in your mind is the manifestation of loving-kindness and compassion.
• Not only you, but all the people experience the same.  They constantly look for happiness and try to avoid suffering.
• May all of us find the causes of happiness and avoid the causes of suffering.
• Not only in this place, but in the whole world.  Not only people, also animals.  May all the beings have happiness and its causes.  May they be free from suffering and its causes.
• Open your eyes and rest your mind with the feeling of innate love and compassion with no particular object or reason.  Just feel an inner well-being and sweetness.

Path to Buddhahood - Bibliography

Path to Buddhahood: Teachings on Gampopa's Jewel Ornament of Liberation, Ringu tulku, ed. Shambala

The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, - translated by Khenpo Könchog Gyaltsen, ed. Shambala, text available on line

Le Précieux Ornement de la Libération, translated by Padmakara

The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, translated by Herbert V. Günther, ed. Shambala

Ornament of Precious Liberation, translated by Ken Holmes and Thubten Jinpa, Ed. Wisdom

Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche - Lesson 2. Confession

Find the teaching here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yiUOzBLs7g&t=74s

Introduction

Shakpa means to split, like doing it with a log.  In this context means to cut with the negative actions.  In chapter 1 Shantideva explained what is bodhicitta.  This chapter is about generating bodhicitta.

Aspiration bodhicitta

First, we must develop the wish that sentient beings, ideally all beings, that wants to get free of suffering, whatever the situation they are, they succeed.  Next, we want that all the beings reach the ultimate happiness, that the Buddhist call enlightenment.  This is the aspiration bodhicitta.

Action bodhicitta

It is not enough to wish, but then we must explore want we must do in order that wish happen.  First working on ourselves, and then also find how we can help others.

In some traditions we take vows on aspiration and action bodhicitta, but other traditions do not.  When taking the vows, we take at least one of the vinaya vows.  According the teachings, it is not necessary to take the vinaya vows with the bodhisattva vows.  Before taking the vow is recommended to do some purifications.  There are eight: 

• Making offerings to all the Buddhas (present, past and future):  When we give we can have some pride 'I do have, and I give' as being superior, but when offering we are acknowledging the superior qualities of the subjects of our offerings.  Traditionally, the monks doing this ceremony had nothing, being renunciants [to material wealth], so the offering can be just made in the mind. We can do it with whatever, which will reduce our attachment to anything: flowers, beautiful objects, food, clothes, incense, songs, anything that is pleasant; and also ourselves, our body, any virtue present, past, or future.
• Making prostrations: it is a form of paying respect with our body, speech, and mind.  This make us humble, reduce our arrogance and pride.  Pride and arrogance stop us from learning from others.  If we are humble, we can even learn from people with a lot of bad qualities.   Also, this will open our eyes to see all the qualities in others.  Often, we cannot see any quality.
• Taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.  The Buddha is a teacher, is the one that teach us how to get rid of suffering, that show us the highest teaching.  He is the one that know how to do it, so we want to become like him.  The buddha Sakyamuni explained that is not the only Buddha, that there were buddhas in the past and there will be in the future.  Not only that, but we all have the potential to become a Buddha. Because I do have the potential, I want to reach it, and when I get enlightened I will help others.  Second, we take refuge in the Dharma.  The Buddha only shows the way.  There are two kinds: the experience of the Buddha, and the teachings of the Buddha.  So we can study, practice and eventually experience the teachings.  This one is the most important object of refuge.  Third, we take refuge in the Sangha, those that engaged in the path, it refers to anybody that has experience in the Dharma.  We do that, because we need to learn from someone that have some experience in the Dharma.

Confession means recognizing what is an inadequate because negative actions are not beneficial for me nor for the others, either in the present or in the future.  There are four points:

• Recognize the wrong on the negative actions.
• Take a clear decision to reduce this actions
• Try to do the opposite to the negative actions
• Make a commitment to not repeat it again, and also tame the emotions that lead me to it 

Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche - Lesson 1. Bodhicitta

 Find the full talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R_nDFuvHaU

Introduction

This is a very popular text.  It already was in India, as the many commentaries in Sanskrit prove.  Also in Tibet have been largely propagated, and there are commentaries in all the schools.  One of the foremost Tibetan teachers is Patrul Rinpoche (c. XIX), that almost taught it permanently, of which one of his students received from him more than 40 times.  There are also many translations to western languages, in particular to English.  Ringu Tulku is using for this teaching, the translation to English from Padmakara.  Rinpoche has taught also many times this text, and he has been broadcasting in bodhicharya a very detailed one, that is still ongoing.  This teaching is a summary of every chapter.

Structure of the book

• Chapters 1-3 How to generate bodhicitta
• Chapters 4-6 How to maintain bodhicitta
• Chapters 7-9 How to increase or develop bodhicitta
• Chapter 10 Dedication

What is bodhicitta?

Bodhicitta has to part: wisdom and compassion.  Wisdom means that there is a possibility to find a way to transform ourselves and free from the suffering of samsara.  Is the development of our inner qualities that will leads us to find the true happiness.  Most of us believe that we will find happiness in the outer things; but this is not correct.  So we develop understanding, meditation even faith to transform ourselves.

But we are not transforming ourselves only for our own sake, but to help all the other beings.  Because everyone wants to be happy and get free of suffering, I must try to find a way to bring that to everybody.  And due to that I will develop all this qualities.  This is the compassion aspect.  This is the motivation [of the bodhisattva]. And having wisdom and compassion is having generated bodhicitta.

From the Buddhist point of view, the reason we do things is very important.  The positive effect of our actions depends more on the reasons , than in the action itself.  Rinpoche quote from the book, "How to become richer quicker", the hint to succeed "give more to people what they want, and give less what people don't want".  Bodhicitta is similar, but if we do that to become richer, we can become successful in business, but not a bodhisattva.  But if we do it to make people get happy and free of suffering, then we are in the bodhisattva path.

Therefore, the first step is to set the right motivation.  Shantideva points out that we do a lot of positive actions and negative actions.  And we have very difficult to diminish our negative side, so the balance is near to zero. If we have the right attitude [bodhicitta] then our negative actions can be overpowered, even if it take us a lot of time and we encounter a lot of difficulties.  Because nothing becomes more important to us than help everybody to liberate from suffering.  So bodhicitta becomes the strongest antidote to our negative emotions.  Having this intention, our actions will be good for us and for others, there will be no negative, wrong side in them.

Those who developed this intention can be called a bodhisattva, is like being a knight of compassion, a heir of Buddha, a prince Buddha.  Once we have bodhicitta, we must become enlightened.  There is nothing better to wish.   

When Rinpoche was in the school, many authorities visited and some asked me "when you grow up, what you would like to be?".  And they expected that Rinpoche replied being a doctor, engineer, but wishing this can only solve some transitory problems.  We all want to be happy and get rid of all the suffering, and similar to us anybody else. That is the motivation of a bodhisattva.  Acquiring that, we clarify our purpose, although it can take time and it is not going to be easy, because there is nothing better than that. And this make this motivation precious.  Moreover, this motivation is very rare, because many people have never even thought about it. 

Maintaining bodhicitta will help us to overcome tall our negativities, even we have done some negatives actions, it is like an strong fire that can burn anything, it becomes the strongest antidote of all the negative emotions.  Anger, hatred, greed, attachment, jealousy, envy, arrogance, self-centeredness,... compassion is their opposite.

Aspiration bodhicitta is the wish to all beings get free of suffering, and action bodhicitta is putting it into practice.  When we want something first he have a thought, but then to make it real we must take some action.  When our aspiration becomes really strong, then we go into action, and we practice bodhicitta whatever we do, even sleeping.

If we thing way people suffer, it is not because they want, but because they do not how how get free of it.  That way, we work on ourselves to be able to help others.  The method of training is the six paramitas, that we will explain in the future chapters.

Beyond religion - 5. Compassion and the question of justice

The question of justice

• It is possible to introduce compassion in justice?  For some the idea of it means allow perpetrators of offenses go unpunished.  But compassion do not involve surrender to misdeeds of others.  It requires great fortitude and strength of character, as many of the great fighter against injustice of recent times showed (Mandela, Gandhi, Mother Teresa,...)
• So face to injustice, the compassionate attitude is standing up. but non-violently, which instead of a sign of weakness is a sign of courage.  In a quarrel, people that know the rightness of their position are more prone to stay calm.
• In some contexts, doing nothing makes you partially responsible of the continuation of the destructive behavior.  But the only way to change a person's mind is with concern, not with anger or hatred.

Broad and narrow concepts of justice

• The general principle of justice is the universal precept of fairness and remedy based on recognition of human equality.  The application of justice is the exercise of the law within any legal framework.  For example in a specific time a legal framework may allow the discrimination of people (based of ethnic origin).
• "When a country's legal system enshrines national unity and social order as its highest priorities, and deems any actions construed as undermining these values as criminal offenses, that legal system will not serve genuine justice."

The role of punishment

• Some people consider that certain offenses deserve provoke suffering to the offender, including death penalty.
• Major religions have idea of remedy or of restoring the balance.  Theistic approaches is that of divine judgement, and Buddhists that the law of karma assure we will experience the result of our previous actions.  What would be the function of punishment in a secular basis?  It is about revenge or preventing future wrongdoing?
• Indeed, punishment has an inevitable and important role to regulate human affairs, to discourage actions and generate security and confidence in law.  But discouragement must be proportional.  However, this needs limits.
• If we recognize the ability of humans to change, death penalty seems unacceptable.  Reacting aggressively to an assault is common to animals and humans, but revenge looks exclusively human.
• Indulging a craving for revenge creates an atmosphere of fear, further resentment, and hatred.  By contrast, where there is forgiveness there is a change for peace.

Distinguishing the action from the actor

• All human beings are able to change.  People being reckless when young may become responsible  and caring when maturing.  This applies even for those who have committed the most terrible deeds.
• Therefore rehabilitation education, including meditation training, can help in this process as it happens in some jails.

Altruistic punishment

• Altruistic punishment is theoretical concept of economic research.
• Punishment can be applied in a way which benefits everyone, including wrongdoers themselves.  It illustrates that revenge is not necessary, but the correction of the wrongdoing, in everyone's interest.

Forgiveness

• The past is beyond our control.  The way we respond to past wrongdoing is not, however.
• Sometimes we behave in a rude or harsh way out of anger and irritation, and later we feel remorse.  We naturally forgive ourselves, so we can extend this attitude to others.
• Forgiveness is very much liberating on oneself.  Entertaining resentment towards someone destroy our peace of mind.

The scope of ethics

• Ethics as a mechanism to maintain social order will only cover the outward human behavior.
• If it relates only to the impact of actions on others, feelings and intentions behind the actions will be ignored.
• But the very notion of ethics makes no sense without a consideration of motivation.  If our motivation is pure, genuinely directed toward the benefit of others, our actions will naturally tend to be ethically sound.

Horizontal and vertical freedom

What is horizontal freedom?

When we meditate thoughts and emotions arise.  But from time to time, the thoughts and emotions pacify, there is a gap, an horizontal gap.  When that happens, we can continue to meditate resting in the awareness itself.

What is vertical freedom?

Although during the meditation arise thoughts and emotions, we can practice without getting involved with them.  Then we can feel a comfortable space despite their presence.  There is a vertical gap, an space between our meditation and the thoughts and emotions.  We we entangle with them the gap disappears. 

Watch the video that illustrates the gaps

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s Pith Instructions on the Great Perfection

The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralised into oneself. This produces a tremendous energy, which is usually locked up on the process of mental evasion and a general running away from life experiences. Clarity of awareness may, in its initial stages, be unpleasant or fear-inspiring; if so one should open oneself completely to the pain and the fear and welcome it. In this way the barriers created by one’s own habitual emotional reactions and prejudices are broken down. 

When performing the meditation practice one should develop the feeling of opening up oneself completely to the whole universe with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind, ridding oneself of all protective barriers. Don’t mentally split into two when meditating, one part of the mind watching the other, like a cat watching a mouse. One should realise that one does not meditate to go deeply within oneself and withdraw from the world. In Buddhist yoga, even when meditating on chakras there is no introspection concentration. Complete openness of mind is the essential point.

The ground of samsara and nirvana is the alaya, the beginning and the end of confusion and realisation, the nature of universal shunyata and all apparent phenomena. It is even more fundamental than the trikaya and is free from bias toward enlightenment. It is sometimes called the pure or original mind. Although prajna (wisdom) sees in it no basis for such concepts as different aspects, the fundamental aspects of complete openness, natural perfection, and absolute spontaneity are distinguished by upaya (skilful) means as useful devices. All aspects of every phenomenon are completely clear and lucid. The whole universe is open and unobstructed, everything mutually interpenetrating. Seeing all things nakedly, clear and free from obscuration, there is nothing to attain or realise. The nature of things naturally appears and is naturally present in time-transcending awareness; this is complete openness. Everything is perfect just as it is, completely pure and undefiled. All phenomena naturally appear in their uniquely different modes and situations, forming ever-changing patterns full of meaning and significances, like participants in a great dance. Everything is a symbol, yet there is no difference between the symbol and the truth symbolised. With no effort of practice whatsoever, liberation, enlightenment, and even Buddhahood are already fully developed and perfected. This is natural perfection.

This everyday practice is just ordinary, it is life itself. Since the underdeveloped state does not exist there is no need to behave in any special way or try to attain or practise anything. There should be no need of striving to reach some exalted goal or higher state. This simply produces something conditional or artificial that will act as an obstruction to the free flow of the mind. One should never think of oneself as sinful or worthless, but naturally pure and perfect, lacking nothing.

When performing meditation practice one should think of it just as a natural function of everyday living, like eating or breathing, not as a special formal event to be undertaken with great seriousness and solemnity. One must realise that to meditate is to pass beyond effort and beyond practice, beyond aims and goals, and beyond the dualism of bondage and liberation. Meditation is always perfect, so there is no need to correct anything.

Since everything that arises is simply the play of the mind, there are no bad meditation sessions and no need to judge thought good or evil. Therefore one should not sit down to meditate with various hopes or fears about the outcome: one just does it with no self-conscious feeling of “I am meditating” and without attempting to control or force the mind, and without trying to become peaceful. If one finds that one is going astray in any of these ways, one should stop meditating and simply rest and relax for a while before resuming.

If, either during or after meditation, one has experiences that one interprets as results, they should not be made into anything special; recognise that they are just phenomena and simply observe them. Above all, do not attempt to recreate them as this opposes the natural spontaneity of the mind.

All phenomena are completely new and fresh and absolutely unique, entirely free from all concepts of past, present and future – as if experienced in another dimension of time; this is absolute spontaneity.

The continual stream of new discovery and fresh revelation and inspiration that arises in every moment is the manifestation of the eternal youth of the living dharma and its wonders. Splendour and spontaneity is the play or dance aspect of the universe as guru.

One should learn to see everyday life as a mandala in which one is at the centre, and be free of bias and prejudice of past conditioning, present desires, and hopes and expectations about the future.

The figures of the mandala are the great day-to-day objects of one’s life experiences moving in the great dance of the play of the universe, the symbolism by which the guru reveals the profound and ultimate meaning and significance. Therefore, be natural and spontaneous; accept and learn from everything. See the comical, amusing side of irritating situations. In meditation, see through the illusion of past, present and future. The past is but a present memory or condition, the future but a present projection, and the present itself vanishes before it can be grasped.

One should put an end to conceptions about meditation and free oneself from memories of the past. Each moment of meditation is completely unique and full of potentiality of new discovery so one is incapable of judging mediation by past experience or theory.

Simply plunge straight into mediation at this very moment with your whole mind, and be free from hesitation, boredom or excitement.

When meditating it is traditional and best, if possible, to sit cross-legged with the back erect but not rigid. However, it is most important to feel comfortable, so it is better to sit in a chair if sitting cross-legged is painful.

One’s mental attitude should be inspired by the three fundamental aspects, whether the meditation is with or without form, and it may often prove desirable, if not essential, to precede a period of formless meditation by a period of meditation with form. To provide for this eventuality many classes of preliminary meditation practices have been developed over centuries of Buddhist practice, the most important being mediation on

breathing, mantra recitation and visualisation techniques. To engage in the second and third of these practices, personal instruction from one’s guru is required, but a few words on the first would not be out of place here as the method used varies little from person to person.

First, let the mind follow the movement of the breath, in and out, until it becomes calm and tranquil. Then increasingly rest the mind on the breath until one’s whole being becomes identified with it. Finally become aware of the breath leaving the body and going out into space, and gradually transfer the attention from the breath to the sensation of spaciousness and expansion. By letting this final sensation merge into complete openness, one moves into the sphere of formless meditation. 

In all probability the above description of the three fundamental aspects will seem vague and inadequate. This is inevitable since they attempt to describe what is not only beyond words but beyond thoughts as well. They invite practice of what is, essentially a state of being.

The words are simply a form of upaya, skilful means, a hint that if acted upon, will enable one’s innate wisdom and natural perfect action to arise spontaneously.

Sometimes in meditation one may experience a gap in one’s normal consciousness, a sudden and complete openness. This experience arises only when one has ceased to think in terms of meditation and the object of meditation. It is a glimpse of reality, a sudden flash that occurs

infrequently at first, and then, with continued practice, more and more frequently. It may not be a particularly shattering or explosive experience at all, just a moment of great simplicity.

Do not make the mistake of deliberately trying to force experiences to recur, for to do so is to betray the naturalness and spontaneity of reality.

Why we meditate? - Session notes

Session February, 16th

• Losar 2024 Message from Tsoknyi Rinpoche
• How To Be Happy, Calm & Focused w/ Tsoknyi Rinpoche & Daniel Goleman
• Daniel Goleman and Tsoknyi Rinpoche discuss their book, "Why We Meditate"

Session March, 1st

• Find the body

Session March, 15th

• Gentle Vase Breathing – Guided Technique

Session March, 2nd

• Beautiful Monsters & Handshake Practice

Session April, 12th

• Beautiful monsters meditation (19')

The science of meditation - Summary of the book

The science of meditation (2017)

by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson

There are two paths in meditation: the Wide Path and the Deep Path 

The Deep Path has two levels and the goal is enlightenment.  Following the path develop some traits: selflessness, equanimity, loving presence, impartial compassion 

• Level 1: the yogi style
• Level 2: householder style

The Wide Path has three levels and the goal is altered traits and better health performance

• Level 3: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Transcendental Meditation 
• Level 4: meditation apps
• Level 5: mental gym (in development)

Meditation is a generic term like sport.  Each one must find their practice and do it. 

Interest by academic research has been increasing: from 1970-2000 there were less than 10 articles per year, since 2000 there has been an exponential growth reaching more than 1000 articles in 2020.

Even short daily dose improves biology and emotional life.  There are many other possibilities for development, but also dangers. 

Ancient clues [70's]

Dan and Richie discovered meditation in India: watch sensations; discover how we claim sensation as "mine"; and how they change all the time.

Spiritual traditions "converge in description of an internal liberation from everyday worry, fixation, self-focus, ambivalence, and impulsiveness [...] a keenly alert 'nowness' and loving concern for all." 

Modern psychology was clueless about this range of human potential , and focused on fixing single problems (like anxiety) while Asian psychology offered ways to enhance our positive side.

Science identified waking, sleeping, and dreaming as major mental states, while samadhi was controversial without supporting evidence. 

Visuddhimagga (path to purification) is the meditation manual used by Dan and Richie as reference.  The method starts with concentration:

• Waterfall experience: acknowledge the monkey mind
• River-like experience: thinking activity slows down 
• Still lake experience: mental activity become very low.
• Jhana (7 levels): all distracting thoughts cease 

Buddha said that Jhana is not liberation.  Proposed the practice of open awareness, "an alert but non-reactive stance in attention." The path of insight start being aware of thoughts instead of following them, and seeing them as momentary experiences of mind. 

The after is the before for the next during

Abhidhamma is the compendia of Buddhist psychology, the theory for meditation manuals like Visuddhimagga.  Describes all the possible states of mind. 

• Unhealthy states of mind: desire, self-centeredness, sluggishness, agitation...
• Healthy states of mind: even-mindness, composure, ongoing mindfulness, and realistic confidence. 
• Body and mind together: buoyancy, flexibility, adaptability, and pliancy.

The signs of progress: shift from unhealthy to healthy, effortless stabilization in the healthy, embodying confidence, buoyancy,... 

The signs of stabilization: becoming traits not only meditation experiences

This Asian working model has been tested over centuries. 

The first course of "The Psychology of consciousness" by Dan, (1974) was a great success, but it still lack of scientific data and was very much based on guess-work.

The first article "The role of attention...transformation of consciousness" (1977) put emphasis on altered states, not yet on traits "missing the true point of the practice".  For the Dalai Lama "the true landmark of a meditator is that he has disciplined his mind by freeing it from negative emotions." 

The after is the before for the next during:

• After are the changes that last from previous practice
• Before is the baseline prior to the practice 
• During is the experience happening in the meditation 

"In other words, repeated practice of meditation results in lasting traits - the after" 

In 1975, Bruce McEwen presented a study in the society of neuroscience: stressful events produced lingering neural scars in a class of rodents.  It was the first time with a proof that experience can change brain, which was unthinkable until then.  The question that arise was "could meditation change brain too?" 

In 1992, Richard Davidson proposed in public the concept of neuroplasticity, that is repeated experience can change brain, i.e., behavior can be modelled by experience, not only by genetics.  Nature and nurture interact. 

There is evidence that brain of deaf people reused areas controlling hearing for visual processing. 

The same way than PSTD set the sensitivity of amygdala to threat very low, growing up in a secure environment, with empathic parents, sets stronger emotion regulation (altered traits). 

Western philosophy

For Aristotle the goal of life was a virtue-based eudaimonia (flourishing). Virtue is reached by the "right mean" between extremes: courage between risk-taking and cowardice, moderation between self-indulgence and ascetism.  But virtue need cultivation effort, including self-monitoring. 

Stoics pointed that feelings about life events, not the events themselves, determined happiness.  Equanimity is reached distinguishing what we can control from what we cannot. 

Reinhold Neibuhr's prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

The Greco-Roman tradition considered qualities such integrity, kindness, patience, and humility, key to enduring well-being.  This is similar to the ideal in Buddhism of inner flourishing that nourishes "the very best within yourself."

Modern psychology uses the term well-being as term for the Aristotelian flourishing.  Carol Ryff proposes a model of well-being with six arms:

• Self-acceptance
• Personal growth
• Autonomy
• Mastery (of life)
• Satisfying relationships
• Life purpose

Meditation seems to cultivate some (many) of these capacities.

The best we had

First, there is a lack of replication of many studies on meditation effects.  This is a general problem of research, in particular in behavioral sciences.

Second, there is a bias of publication only positive results, while failures or non-significant results remain unpublished.

Third, the studies do not often distinguish the type of meditation practitioners do.  Max-Plank institute has un study with three types of practice:

• Breath focus: has a calming effect but don't create positive mood
• Loving-kindness is not calming, but create a positive mood
• Monitoring thoughts is neither calming or positive thinking inducer.

Fourth, counting hours of practice is often ignored

Fifth, to determine the uniqueness of meditation benefits studies must have control groups.  Any positive intervention has some positive effects on people, at least for a while.  Richard Davidson concluded that "many reported benefits can be attributed to expectation [NB: placebo?], social bonding in the group, instructor enthusiasm, and other."

Sixth, definition of mindfulness is ambiguous.  Some people use as a synonym of meditation, despite it is only one of the variety of methods.

1. Noticing when the mind wanders in the meditation: focus, wandering, noticing.  This aspect can also be called concentration.
2. Floating awareness that witness any experience without judging or reacting [Jon Kabat-Zinn definition]
3. The Pali term "sati" is translated also as awareness, attention, retention, and discernment.

Therefore, we must look to the trait changes described by the spiritual traditions.  They identified this changes that could reflect in the brain:

• Reactivity to disturbing events
• Compassion and empathy
• Attention circuitry
• The sense of self

Plus having a healthy body and a healthy mind.

A mind undisturbed

Our prefrontal cortex gives us the possibility to imagine the future.  This advantage is also a curse because we can worry about it and also regret the past, remembering it.  Epictetus said "it is not things that happen to us that are upsetting, but the view we take of these things."

Allan Wallace study on Mindful Attention Training, showing that amygdala response softened.  But untrained people also reduced response during attention exercise, indicating and altered stated not a trait.

Zen meditators respond to pain decoupling evaluation (this hurts) from sensation (this burns).

People suffering from PSTD and burnout are not longer able to put a halt to their brain's stress response.

Carol Ryff found that people with a strong sense of purpose in life recover quickly from stressors [in lab conditions]

Meditators had less cortisol during TSST (their Social Stress Test), and perceived the test less stressful than non-meditators.  The reason is the stronger connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.  The stronger the link, the less the person is hijacked by emotions.

MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) reduce reactivity of amygdala, also long-term meditators has less reactivity and stronger connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.  The good news is that resilience can be learned, and the trait is proportional to the amount of practice.

Primed for love

In the 70s, Sharon Shalzberg brought a method learned from Goenka, called metta in Pali, loosely translated as "loving-kindness".  In the format she proposed, you silently repeat phrases like "May I be safe, ""May I be healthy," and "May my life unfold with ease," first wishing this for yourself, the for people you love, then for neutral people, and finally for all the beings - even those whom you find difficult or who have harmed you.  In one or other version, this is the form better studied of meditation on compassion.

Kristin Neff added the term self-compassion.  Although in the east traditions compassion includes oneself, is not the case in the western tradition.  Neff definition of self-compassion includes being kind to yourself instead of being critical; seeing you failures and mistakes as part of your human condition rather than some personal failing; and just noticing the imperfections instead of ruminating about them.

Research classified empathy in three kinds

• Cognitive empathy let us understand how the other person thinks, we see their perspective.
• Emotional empathy make us feel what the other person feels.
• Empathic concern or caring lies at the heart of compassion.

In a experiment, subjects were instructed to share the emotions of people in the videos.  fRMI revealed that such empathy activated the insula, that is also active when we suffer.  A second group was instructed to feel love for those suffering, which activated the same part of brain that for maternal love.  In only eight hours of training their brain reacted clearly different.

The transformation of meditation on compassion, instead of emerging gradually as recovery from stress, emerges faster, even after a few minutes of exercise. And has a surprising and unique effect: the brain circuitry for happiness energizes too.

Tania Singer found that empathic resonance with the pain of others activates a neural alarm that tunes us with others' suffering, alerting us of potential danger.  But compassion involve circuits for feelings of warmth, love, and concern.  Moreover, compassion muted the empathic distress that can lead us to empathic exhaustion and burnout.

The Buddhist tradition of loving-kindness emphasizes extending our compassion to all the beings.  But how we can do that, including people that we don't like.  The Dalai Lama suggest to recognize the "oneness" of humankind, to realize that all them do not want suffering, and looking for happiness.  As he use to say "the first person to benefit from compassion practice is the one that feels it," which is confirmed by the activation of happiness circuits with the practice.  Also that "the ultimate source of peace is in the mind - which, far more our circumstances, determines our happiness."

Attention

In the 80s, Richard affective research showed how emotions push and pull attention.  In the 90s, contemplative neuroscience discovered how the prefrontal cortex manages our voluntary attention.  With the research some categorization appeared:

• Selective attention: focus on one lement, discarding others
• Vigilance, mantaining a constant level of attention
• Allocating attention, to notice small or rapid shifts on experience
• Goal focus, or cognitive control, keeping a goal, avoiding distractions
• Meta-awareness, tracking the quality of our awareness, noticing wandering or mistaking

Selective attention: Mindfulness (on MBSR training) strengthens the brain's ability to focus on one thing and ignore distractions.  The neural circuitry for selective attention can be trained.

Vigilance: Clifford Sharon and Allan Wallace study showed that meditators (on a three month retreat) improved vigilance.  Meditators who regularly practiced some form of "open monitoring"  (or open awareness) reversed the increase of attentional-blink of aging, even doing better than younger people.  Even very short training shows improvement (study with 17 minutes).

Allocating attention: Information consumes attention, therefore a wealth of information means a poverty of attention.  Heavy multitaskers are more easily distracted in general.  When they try to focus on a single task, they use more areas than just those relevant to it - a neural indicator of distraction.

Goal focus: Cognitive control can be strengthened.  With just ten-minute sessions of breath counting was enough to measure improvement, and the biggest gains were among the heavy multi-taskers.  Event academic result improve significantly.  Cognitive control also helps to manage impulses (response inhibition), and the benefits remains long after the training. 

Meta-awareness: in our normal perception there is an experience, and awareness lies in the background ("mere awareness").  Meta-awareness switch perception bring awareness to the forefront, and laying the experience in the background, holding judgement or emotional reactions. Therefore we can track our attention, noticing, for example, when our mind wondered from our goal, or noticing errors of what we do.  Meta-awareness also endow us to notice or unconscious bias.

While some aspects of attention improve just after a few hours (or minutes!) of practice, this doesn't mean it will last.  For example multi-tasking will weaken your focus.  Therefore, engaging in a regular practice is the way to lasting benefits.

Lightness of being

We live in a world our minds build rather than actually perceiving the endless details of what is happening.  In his first vipassana retreat Richard Davidson experienced heavy pain of long hours sitting in meditation posture.  It was unbearable until he had a shift of perception.  The pain didn't vanished, but he changed his relationship to it.  It became a raw sensation - not "my pain".  Every waking moment of our lives we construct our experience around a narrative where we are the star.  Similarly, we can deconstruct that story we center on ourselves by applying the right kind of awareness.

While we do nothing, there are brain regions that are highly activated (the default mode), even more that during a difficult cognitive task.  When scientists asked people what was going on in their minds during these periods of doing nothing, surprisingly, it was not nothing!  They reported their mind was wandering most often focused on the self: "How i am doing this experiment? I wonder what they are learning about me. I need to pass this phone call..."  All mental activity focused on "I" and "me" that is called "the monkey mind".

In a large study, Harvard researches asked thousands of people to report their mental focus and mood at random points through the day, and concluded that "a wandering mind is an unhappy mind". Because the self ruminates on what's bothering us, we feel relieved when we can turn it off.

Meditation instruct us to notice distraction, which activates the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the default mode.  This connection is stronger in long-term meditators that on beginners, and the stronger the connection, the quieter the monkey mind.

Vasubandhu (V c.) observed "So long as you grasp the self, you stay bounded to the world of suffering."  Cognitive science tell us that our sense of self emerges as a property of the many neural subsystems that thread together among other, streams, our memories, our perceptions, our emotions, and our thoughts.  Any of those would be insufficient for a full sense of self, but in the right combination we have the cozy feel of our unique being.  While almost every contemplative path holds lightness of being as a primary aim, paradoxically, there is very little research on it, but show three stages in how meditation leads to greater selflessness.

Novices in meditation keep their mind from wandering by activating neural wiring that can quiet the default mode area.  Our sense of self gets woven in an ongoing personal narrative that threads together disparate parts of our life into a coherent story line.  This narrator resides mainly in the default mode but brings together inputs from a broad range of brain areas that in themselves have nothing to do with the sense of self.  The seasoned meditators had less activation within the default areas.  Intriguingly, the long-term meditators would have the same lessened connectivity in the default mode during meditation than during resting.

Meditation manuals say letting go of thoughts, at first, requires some effort.  Later, though, whatever thoughts come to mind are like a thief entering an empty house: there is nothing to do and they just leave.  Also common sense tell us that learning a new skill takes hard work first and progressively becomes easier with practice.  Also happens in meditation according to neuroscience, prefrontal cortex no longer do effort to do the work.

Lessening the grip of the self, always a major goal of meditation practitioners, has been oddly ignored by research, focusing in more popular benefits like relaxation or better health.

Stickiness, the fixation to a mental state, emotion or thought, seems to reflect the dynamics of emotional circuitry of the brain, that underlie the traditional causes of suffering -attachment and aversion.  The Dalai Lama is a great living example of lack of stickiness.  Once was asked for his happiest moment of his life and he replied "I think right now."

Mind, body, and genome

The meta-analysis of research on meditation as treatment for pain concluded that is a good alternative to purely medical treatment.  However, no study has proof clinical improvement on chronic pain by removing the causes of pain -the relief comes in how people relate to pain.  Despite most people find relief after the MBSR training, many drop the practice after a while.

There is a study on how meditation lowered the cytokine levels, that are present in many skin reaction related to inflammatory process.

In a meta-analysis of studies with patients with heart issues, the results were "encouraging" but not conclusive.

Some studies find that meditation would have salutary epigenetic effects.  Loneliness raise levels of pro-inflammatory genes, while MBSR lowers them, and also lessen the feeling of loneliness. Another meta-analysis concluded that practicing mindfulness was associated with increased telomerase activity.

Concerning which kind of meditation has which kind of impact, Tania Singer compared loving-kindness with mindfulness practice.  Breath meditation was more relaxing, while loving-kindness and insight boosted heart rate, indicating more effort.  Richard Davidson found that long-term meditators had a slower breath rate just sitting still. 

Brain also changes shape with meditation, mainly in this four areas:

• The insula, which attunes to our internal state and powers emotional self-awareness
• Somatomotor areas, the main cortical hubs for sensing touch and pain
• Parts of the prefrontal cortex that operates in paying attention and in meta-awareness
• Regions in the cingulate cortex instrumental in self-regulation
• The orbitofrontal cortex, also part of the circuitry for self-regulation

At the age of fifty, longtime meditators' brains are "younger" by 7.5 years compared to non-meditators of the same age.  Meditation helps preserve the brain by slowing atrophy. While there is a doubt that atrophy could be reversed, it seems possible to make it slow down.

The current thinking is that meditation changes the relation with all kind of emotions, rather than changing the ration of positive to negative ones.  With higher levels of meditation practice, emotions seems to loose their power to pull us into their melodrama.

What is true, what's not, and what we don't know about the impact of meditation to get a better health?  There is evidence about the neural, biological, and behavioral changes produced by meditation, and how they help to maintain help -for instance, in better emotional  regulation and sharpened attention.  The point is that what we know make worth serious research about the benefits.

Meditation as psychotherapy

Tara Bennet-Goleman combined mindfulness with cognitive therapy in the 80s.  She understood that the lightness of thoughts viewed through the lenses of mindfulness, she got with the practice of vipassana, mirrors the principle of "decentering" of cognitive therapy, observing thoughts and emotions without identifying with them.  Bringing mindfulness into the sessions, complemented Dr Young's therapy with this lens of mind.  Observing breath mindfully, calmly, and clearly, helped patient to overcome panic attacks.  Independently, John Teasdale, and Mark Williams created the MBCT for depression, and showed that cut relapse by half, more than any medication.

Research also showed that mindfulness could lessen anxiety and depression, as well as pain, with a similar improvement of medication, but without troubling side-effects.  On the other hand, no benefits were found on eating habits, sleep, substance use, or weight problems.  When it came to other psychological troubles, like ugly moods, addictions, and poor attention, the meta-analysis found little or no evidence that any kind of meditation might help.  Actually, the use of control groups in the studies evaporated the evidence of benefits.  Therefore, the positive findings are only a reason to justify more extensive studies with more patients, during longer periods.

Apart from the equivalent effectiveness compared to medication of mindfulness to treat depression, anxiety, and pain, without side-effects, it also reduced the psychological stress.

Meta-analysis showed that MBCT was effective to lower the relapse of depression, and the more severe the depression the larger the benefits of MBCT.  The reason, is that patients were more able to decenter (step outside the thoughts, and see them coming and going instead of being carried away).  Also the more they practice the lower the risk of relapse.

There are still many open questions: what is the added value of mindfulness compared to cognitive therapy? what disorders does meditation relieve better than current standard psychiatric treatments? Should these methods be used along with those standard interventions? What specific kinds of meditation work best to relieve which mental problems -and what is the brain's circuitry involved? [NB: meditation teachers suggest to do meditation on top of standard psychologic/psychiatric treatment]

Loving-kindness practice has been used to treat PSTD, if it works if offers a cost-effective group treatment.  Moreover, PSTD symptoms include numbness, alienation, and a sense of "deadness" in relationships -all of which loving-kindness might help reverse by the cultivation of positive feelings toward others.  War veterans dislike the side effect of drugs used in the classical treatment, so they look for alternate treatments.

[NB: skip the dark nights section because is too complicated to explain and summarize]

A Yogi's Brain

Although we could try to compare meditation training of yogis with elite sportsmen, in meditation the better you get the less you care about your ranking - let alone social status, wealth, or fame.  That made difficult to convince true yogis to participate in the research.

The study of effects of meditation is about something intensely private, one person's inner experience -while the tools to data are machines that measure biological reality, not the inner experience.  Technically, the inner assessment requires a "first-person" report, while the measurements are a "third-person" report.

Francisco Varela proposed an idea to close the gap between the first and third person: using a "second-person", an expert on the topic studied, with a well-trained mind, that will provided better data that a not trained mind.

The Dalai Lama send Matthieu Ricard to Richard Davidson lab.  Matthieu was a French seasoned practitioner, that before becoming a Buddhist monk had a PhD on molecular biology with the Nobel laureate François Jacob.  His contribution was key to set the protocol, and to convince to participate other seasoned yogis, like Mingyur Rinpoche, whos first test was so much out of scale, that make them believe a malfunction of the fMRI.

Hidden Treasure

The experiences with Mingyur Rinpoche had other surprises.  Gamma oscillations usually happen for a few seconds when we have an aha! moment.  The measure of Mingyur Rinpoche during meditation provided unprecedented values, persisting for minutes.  The gamma oscillations persisted also in yogis during the deep sleep.  The massive levels of gamma activity in the yogis and the synchrony of the gamma oscillations across wide spread of the brain suggest the vastness and panoramic quality of awareness that they report.

Antoine Lutz wrote in one study that beginners after a week of training on yogis practices, they look similar in meditation to them.  But there is a remarkable difference between during resting between yogis and beginners.  Also, yogis have a remarkable talent at entering a specific meditative state within a second or two, which is also a proof of altered trait.

The reaction to pain is also different.  In a experiment where people were warned before having a painful experience, subjects anticipated the pain, and kept stuck to it after the sensation finished.  On the contrary, yogis, didn't anticipated, and quickly come back to rest state after the experience.  This let them be fully responsive to a challenge when it happens, without letting the emotional reactions interfere before or afterward, when they are not longer useful.  This seems an optimal pattern of emotional regulation.

In 1992, by request of the Dalai Lama, Richard Davidson made a lecture to the monks of Namgyal Monastery.  He include a demonstration of EEG measuring the brain activity during the practice.  When preparing the the sensors on the head of the monk, all the public started laughing.  Richard thought it was due to the funny look, but actually they laugh at measuring mind only on the head, without looking at the heart.  Fifteen years later, Richard's team collected data that made them realize compassion was very much an embodied state, with tight links between the brain and body, and especially between the brain and the heart, like the fact that yogis' heart beat faster compared to novices' when they heard sounds of people in distress.

There are a variety of compassion practices that can matter when measuring effects:

• Nonreferential compassion, a state in which love and compassion permeated the whole mind with no other discursive thoughts.
• Sustained, caring attention is being present to another person, enhances empathy.

The findings discovered so far, has to do more with the availability of data, than with a plan to cartography the vastness of human experience.  This situation is comparable to the parable of the blind men and the elephant.  Also we must know that these yogis are very rare, so in Asian cultures call them "living treasures".

Altering Traits

"In the beginning nothing comes, in the middle nothing stays, in the end nothing goes" Jetsun Milarepa, XII c.  Matthieu Ricard explains it: at the start of the contemplative practice, little or nothing seems to change in us. After continued practice, we notice some changes in our way of being, but they come and go.  Finally, as practice stabilizes, the changes are constant and enduring, with no fluctuation. They are altered traits.

Beginners find improvements in attention very early on, including less wandering after just eight minutes of practice.  Small improvements in molecular markers of cellular aging seem to emerge with just thirty hours of practice.  Still, all such effects are unlikely to persist without sustained practice.

Meditation over years (1000 to 10000 hours of practice) make deepen the mentioned effects, and emerge other benefits, like changes in the hormonals indicators and lessened stress reactivity, the brain connectivity for emotional regulation strengthen and cortisol lessens.

Loving-kindness and compassion practice over long term enhance neural resonance with another person's suffering, along with a concern and greater likelihood of actually helping. Attention, too, strengthens in many aspects with long-term practice: selective attention sharpens, the attentional blink diminishes, sustained attention becomes easier, and an alert readiness to respond increases. And long-term practitioners show enhanced ability to down-regulate the mind-wandering and self-obsessed thoughts of the default mode, as well as wakening connectivity within these circuits -signifying less self-preoccupation.  These improvements generally tend to become traits.

Not all changes occur same speed.  For instance, the benefits of compassion come sooner than does stress mastery. Shifts in very basic biological processes, such as a slower breath rate, occur only after several thousand hours of practice. Some seem more strongly enhanced by intensive practice on retreat than by daily practice.

Practice makes converting meditative states to traits.  Yogis not only experience gamma oscillations during meditation, but also at rest.  Also their response to physical pain during simple mindfulness practice have the inverted V shape.  Moreover, for them concentration becomes effortless, contrary to novices, that need effort to enter in meditative state.  Some Buddhist traditions call this level of stabilization as the recognition of the "basic goodness" [aka: buddha nature, innate well-being]. There is an ongoing long-term study that conjectures that meditation seems to transform the resting state-the brain's default mode-to resemble the meditative state.

There is a common belief that 10000 hours of practice allow us to master a skill.  Some skills need far less, like memory that only needs 200 hours.  Concerning meditation, the way of practice makes a difference: meditating one session a day is very different from a multiday or longer retreat.   For example, the slowing of breath is much more correlated with retreat that with daily practice.  In retreat, usually there are teachers to provide us guidance.

Which forms of practice are more helpful to which people?  One study found that for people with extreme worries and anxious thoughts had more relief with yoga that with MBSR.

The three levels of practice used - beginner, long-term, and yogi- are grouped around different types of meditation: mainly mindfulness for beginners, vipassana for long-term (with some studies with Zen practitioners), and Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra for yogis.  Can we extrapolate insights from mindfulness and apply them to vipassana, and from vipassana to the Tibetan practices?

Richard Davidson, Cortland Dahl, and Antoine Lutz created this typology: 

• Attentional: these meditations focus on training aspects of attention, whether in concentration, as in watching the breath, a mindful observation of the experience, a mantra, or meta-awareness, as in open presence.
• Constructive: cultivating virous qualities, like loving-kindness.
• Deconstructive: as with the insight practice, these methods use self-observation to pierce the nature of the experience.  They include "nondual" approaches that shift into a mode where ordinary cognition no longer dominates.

Spiritual traditions direct us to actualize the very best of us in lasting traits.  For example in Mahayana Buddhism practitioners should cultivate generosity, ethical conduct, patience, perseverance, meditation, and wisdom.  These qualities seem to match the indicators of brain changes found in the research.  The view of the yogis that participated in the lab is that all we have Buddha nature, but fail to recognize it.  The practice consist on recognizing all these qualities that are already in us, and lead us to recognize the Buddha nature.  From this perspective, the remarkable neural and biological findings among the yogis are signs not so much of skill development but rather of this quality of recognition.

Experiments with babies showed that there is an innate preference for kindness.  These findings are consistent with the view of intrinsic virtues like an intrinsic basic goodness, and the training of loving-kindness and compassion consists in recognize and strengthen these qualities already present in us.  Is would be the same that actualizing our potential to speak.

Although in the contemplative traditions the goal has been always the altered traits, nowadays most of us would prefer an easy and brief practice, a pragmatic approach that borrows what works and leave behind the rest.  In the deep paths, meditation represents just one part of a range of means helping to increase self-awareness, gain insights into the subtilties of consciousness, and, ultimately, to achieve a lasting transformation of being.  These daunting goals require lifelong dedication.

A healthy mind

Richard Davidson and his team developed an app for people, like many, cannot attend regularly meditation sessions and have not developed yet a regular practice by their own.  Healthy Minds cab be tailored to practice on the cushion, or while doing something else.  The app works the four pillars of well-being created by Davidson, based on the neuroscience, cognitive science, modern psychology and spiritual tradition findings.

Helping children develop kindness seem an obvious, good idea -- but at present this valuable capacity is left to chance of our education system.  Developmental psychologists tell us that there are differing rates of maturation for attention, for empathy and kindness, for calmness, and for social connection.  One serious program to develop these capacities is the SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) co-created by Daniel Goleman.

What if by transforming our minds, we could improve not only our own health and well-being but also for those of our communities and the wider world?  The Dalai Lama encourages all to do three things: gain composure, adopt a moral  rudder of compassion, and act to better the world.  We can also contribute to the urgent needs by: reducing greed and selfishness, reflect and act to reduce eco-calamities, and promote more kindness, clarity, and calm.  We need more people of goodwill, who are more tolerant and patient, more kind and compassionate.  And these qualities are not just adopted but embodied.