Quest Magazine

Printed in the Winter 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Levine, Arlene Gay. "Make A Joyful Noise: How I Learned to Meditate amidst the Mayhem" Quest  102. 1 (Winter 2014): pg. 24-25.

By Arlene Gay Levine

Do you imagine the universe is agitated?

Go into the desert at night and look out at the stars.

This practice should answer the question.

—Lao-Tzu

From childhood on, noise had been a problem for me. Actually,"problem" seemed an inadequate word to describe my inability to deal with unpleasant sounds. Because I needed to live in a very loud (and getting louder all the time) world, I learned to fake it.

When I was a beginning teacher, the deafening screams of the students in the schoolyard at recess became a stretching on the rack for the nerve endings in my ears, so acute and sensitive is my hearing. Because I loved those kids, their joyous exuberance was something I simply learned to tolerate, often with the dubious aid of a daily dose of aspirin.

I could go on with countless and often bizarre instances of my trials and tribulations with unruly sounds, or even natural ones, like the crunch of someone chewing, which tested my abilities at patience and decorum beyond all reason. Often, despite my best efforts, I literally had to leave a room or use earplugs or any number of schemes and devices to manage my unfortunate sensitivity to sound.

However, in one area of my life I ran into an insurmountable roadblock: when I first became a student of yoga and began meditation practice. All the right steps were taken. I slowed my breath, counted the exhalations, finally descending into the Silence in which I was so grateful to swim, and then any clamor, no matter how insignificant, would send me crashing back to the world in a furious wave of anger.

The precious minutes that had been set aside for meditation were wasted on calming myself down, all the while decrying my inability to ignore the din, with an equal vehemence aimed at its source. I tried to let the sounds pass like birds or clouds against the backdrop of a big blue-sky mind, but it simply would not work.

That is, until I realized that, in fact, I was meditating very successfully on one thing: the noise! It also came to my attention that the increasingly rowdy world we were now all forced to tolerate had become a dilemma for many more people. This discovery inspired me to write a poem:

Where Will It End?

I read and reread my poem, feeling I had captured the beginnings of a burgeoning cultural crisis, particularly for tightly packed urban dwellers like myself. More importantly, during this editing process, the light of a great paradox became clear to me: the very things that cause us pain are the paving stones on the road to our liberation. The cacophony keeping me from the bliss of a tranquil mind provided both the motivation and focus necessary to learn how to meditate and thus get in touch with my Higher Self.

It was around that time I read about a particular meditation technique called "Developing the Witness,"  whereby one is present in the moment to everything that is going on. It did not matter whether it was a bodily ache, an annoying thought, or, of course, the symphony of a garbage truck rumbling by on the street below, replete with squeaking brakes and crashing cans. As I began to note and name what was occurring the  cramping of my leg, a tickle at the end of my nose,the roar of a jet overhead, some strident chatter wafting in the window from a passerby on a cell phone—I could actually sit more benevolently with these discomforts by observing them in a neutral way.

I did not need to cling to the noise or whatever interference I became aware of, did not need to develop it in my mind. Feelings would arise, and I could simply be with them in the now, without attachment. I became the witness. As I once heard it said, I could "leave the risings in the risings." The objective nature of the practice did wonders for me, bestowing a new and welcome inner repose, but I still had a long way to go. It was one thing to achieve a detached state in the privacy of my cross-legged posture at home during practice and quite another to do it out in the workaday world. 

I had begun to tame my mind and along with it accommodate myself more easily to intrusive noise; somehow my heart lagged behind. Still, synchronicities now started arriving more frequently in my life. While introducing me to Self, my ongoing meditation practice also made me less preoccupied with disruptive ego driven thoughts and more aware of intuitive feelings. These pointed me toward the unknown, toward opportunities for growth I might have missed before. 

On vacation in a small lake community in Connecticut, I urged my husband to stop our car to browse through a book sale at a lovely old church. As I perused the rows of books, my eye was caught by an unassuming pamphlet describing various ways to develop a joyful heart."OK," I thought,"this one's for me." During the rest of our stay, the booklet remained packed away with other mementos of our trip. I got around to picking up my little treasure about a week later. Back in the city and annoyed by some inconsiderate new neighbors, I randomly opened to a page.

It described a practice called metta, or loving-kindness meditation. I have learned various versions of it since then, but this simple one began by visualizing, in your heart center, an image of yourself and tenderly holding it in your heart while repeating,"May I be well, may I be happy, may I be filled with loving-kindness."You can then, in turn, place your loved ones in your heart, do the same for each, progressing eventually to someone with whom there is conflict, and expand your compassionate heart even to them. In go my noisy neighbors!

I wish I could tell you that I was miraculously able to spread the love that had been radiating through me at the beginning of my metta practice to these boisterous folks immediately, showering the Godseed within their hearts with loving-kindness blessings. Alas, that day and very many to follow, I had no luck. However, I am persistent, like seed that grows in the womb of the earth, thrusting its way through frozen ground to one day bloom in spring.

The desire to make peace with my intense noise sensitivity gave me a goal: to have a tranquil center no matter how intrusive the world, no matter how loud. Out of this particular darkness, I welcomed the light of loving-kindness and compassion into my life, invited it to purify my intolerance to noise and those that made it. As the grain of sand irritates the oyster to create a pearl, so my practice transformed my noise sensitivity.

Arlene Gay Levine , author of Thirty-Nine Ways to Open Your Heart: An Illuminated Meditation (Conari Press) and Movie Life (Finishing Line Press), has had poetry and prose appear in many venues, including The New York Times, an off-Broadway show, and on radio. She lives in New York City, where she tends a garden of words, roses, and herbs. Her article"Make A Joyful Noise: How I Learned to Meditate amidst the Mayhem"appeared in Quest, Spring 2013. Visit her Web site at www.arlenegaylevine.com/.

Printed in the Winter 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Desteno, David. "The Morality" Quest  102. 1 (Winter 2014): pg. 22-23.

By David Desteno

Meditation is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory, and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing. A number of "mindfulness" training programs, like that developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership, and productivity. 

This is all well and good, but if you stop to think about it, there's a bit of a disconnect between the  perfectly commendable) pursuit of these benefits and the purpose for which meditation was originally intended. Gaining competitive advantage on exams and increasing creativity in business weren't of the utmost concern to Buddha and other early meditation teachers. As Buddha himself said, "I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering." For Buddha, as for many modern spiritual leaders, the goal of meditation was as simple as that. The heightened control of the mind that meditation offers was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new and more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from the categorizations (us/them, self/other) that commonly divide people from one another. 

But does meditation work as promised? Is its originally intended effect"”the reduction of suffering"”empirically demonstrable? 

To put the question to the test, my lab, led in this work by the psychologist Paul Condon, joined with the neuroscientist Gaëlle Desbordes and the Buddhist lama Willa Miller to conduct an experiment whose publication is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science. We recruited thirty-nine people from the Boston area who were willing to take part in an eight-week course on meditation (and who had never taken any such course before). We then randomly assigned twenty of them to take part in weekly meditation classes, which also required them to practice at home using guided recordings. The remaining nineteen were told that they had been placed on a waiting list for a future course. 

After the eight-week period of instruction, we invited the participants to the lab for an experiment that purported to examine their memory, attention, and related cognitive abilities. But as you might anticipate, what actually interested us was whether those who had been meditating would exhibit greater compassion in the face of suffering. To find out, we staged a situation designed to test the participants' behavior before they were aware that the experiment had begun.

When a participant entered the waiting area for our lab, he (or she) found three chairs, two of which were already occupied. Naturally, he sat in the remaining chair. As he waited, a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighed in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against a wall. The other two people in the room"”who, like the woman on crutches, secretly worked for us"”ignored the woman, thus confronting the participant with a moral quandary. Would he act compassionately, giving up his chair for her, or selfishly ignore her plight? 

The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats"”an  admittedly disheartening fact"”the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress"”what psychologists call the bystander effect"”reduces the odds that any single individual will help. Nonetheless, the meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.

Although we don't yet know why meditation has this effect, one of two explanations seems likely. The first rests on meditation's documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost inone's own thoughts). My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected. The psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I have found that any marker of affiliation between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation's ability to dissolve the artificial social  istinctions"”ethnicity, religion, ideology, and the like"”that divide us. 

Supporting this view, recent findings by the neuroscientists Helen Weng, Richard Davidson, and colleagues confirm that even relatively brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathic understanding of others' distress"”areas whose responsiveness is also modulated by a person's degree of felt associations with others. 

 David Desteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Truth about Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.

Printed in the Spring 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Overweg, Cynthia. "Milarepa from Sinner to Saint" Quest 102. 4 (Spring 2014): pg. 18-21.

By Cynthia Overweg

Seated in a barren and frigid cave high in the Himalayas, Milarepa meditated day and night, staying warm with the advanced yogic practice known as tummo, the ability to generate body heat by manipulating channels of energies within the body. Weak and emaciated, he had been meditating in remote mountain caves for many years, leaving only to beg for food. Because of his strict adherence to a vow of continual meditation practice, his body had shrunken to a skeleton, and his eyes were sunken and hollow. His only source of nourishment for over a year had come from an abundant supply of nettles he found growing near his cave. He had eaten so many nettles that his sagging skin had a greenish hue. 

Death seemed imminent, but Milarepa's physical austerities had a clear and deliberate aim: he wanted to attain enlightenment or die in the attempt. So fierce was his meditation discipline that he refused to let even severe hunger interrupt his goal. When a group of hapless game hunters stumbled onto his cave looking for something to eat, they screamed in horror, believing Milarepa was a ghost. He assured them he wasn't, as they ransacked his cave looking for money. Finding nothing, they beat him. Their cruelty filled Milarepa with compassion, and he wept for them. 

A year later, a second group of game hunters showed up at his cave, but their attitude toward Milarepa was much different. They saw the value of his devotion to practice and offered him food. Milarepa told them: "I have received the oral instructions for attaining Buddhahood in one lifetime and one body. Having renounced this life, I am meditating alone in the mountains and devoting myself to achieving this enduring aim." The game hunters then left him alone to meditate.  

Fortunately for Milarepa and the spiritual legacy he left behind, he did not die of starvation, and the green pallor of his skin disappeared when he stopped eating nettles and finally took some nourishing food. The beloved eleventh-century Tibetan saint went on to realize his cherished aim and then taught many others how to do the same. 

Milarepa was a roving Tibetan yogi who devoted himself to meditation and tantric practice in caves across southern Tibet. What initially drove him to mountain retreats was an intense desire to overcome his devastating past, which included his participation in black magic, revenge, and murder. Feeling the weight of heavy negative karma and overwhelmed by remorse, he considered suicide more than once. But he found a gifted teacher who showed him a way out of darkness. 

What his life demonstrates, says José Cabezán, Ph.D., a Buddhist scholar who holds the Dalai Lama Chair at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is that "no matter how difficult one's life has become and no matter how many wrong turns one has taken, it is always possible to turn one's life around." But, at the same time, Cabezan adds, "patience on the spiritual path and an apprenticeship to a qualified master are necessary to spiritual progress." 

Milarepa learned how to turn his despair into a spiritual practice that eventually transformed him into Tibet's most revered yogi. It is said that he not only gained liberation in one lifetime, but also became a bodhisattva, a fully realized being who takes a vow to liberate all sentient beings through compassion and wisdom, no matter how long it takes. "There is always the sense that the bodhisattva starts out with basic altruism and then develops an ever more expansive vision of reality and compassion," says Francis Tiso, Ph.D., a Catholic priest and Buddhist scholar who wrote his doctoral dis-sertation about Milarepa and has studied the Tibetan saint for thirty-five years. 

"Only when Milarepa realizes that he needs to find the way to liberation "˜in one body and one lifetime' in order to avoid the post mortem consequences of his evil deeds does he go in search of a teacher who can show him the virtuous way of Buddhist practice," explains Tiso, who has written a book on Milarepa and went to Tibet several times to do research. "We only begin to see Milarepa as a real bodhisattva much later in his life, when he encounters people in various desperate situations," Tiso points out. 

Milarepa was born in southwestern Tibet sometime around 1052 and died in approximately 1135. The specific dates of his birth and death are disputed by historians, but there seems to be agreement that he lived into his late seventies or early eighties. 

Most of what we know about Milarepa's life and teaching comes from his principal Tibetan biographer, Tsangnyan Heruka, a well-known fifteenth-century Tantric master. Milarepa's story was made famous in the West in 1928 with the publication of Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa, edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, a Theosophist who also brought The Tibetan Book of the Dead to the English-speaking world. 

To glimpse the epic journey of Milarepa's spiritual metamorphosis and the mastery he gained over the nature of mind, it's useful to tell the story that thrust him into an inner hell but also led him to seek Buddhahood. Milarepa was the only son born to wealthy parents who showered him with love and material comfort. His father, Mila Sherab Gyaltsen, named him Mila Thapaga ("a joy to hear"), which proved to be prophetic, since Milarepa (repa: "cotton-clad yogi") had a wonderful voice and instead of lecturing on the Buddhist teaching, known as the Dharma, he "sang" or narrated his own lyrical poems describing his spiritual insights and mystical experiences. 

His mother, Nyangtsa Kargyen, also gave birth to a daughter, Milarepa's younger sister, Peta. They lived an idyllic life with enough financial freedom to do as they pleased. But the good times came to an abrupt and tragic end when Milarepa's father died of a mysterious disease when Milarepa was just seven years old. Although his father left a will with instructions on how his wealth was to be managed for the benefit of his wife and children, he did not leave the inheritance directly to his wife. 

Medieval Tibet's patriarchal structure usually placed women under the protection and domination of their male relatives. This was catastrophic for Milarepa, his mother, and sister, because his dishonest and greedy paternal uncle was put in charge of the family's fortune. Soon after the funeral, his uncle and aunt confiscated their wealth, blatantly ignoring the dying wishes of Milarepa's father. Milarepa, his mother and sister were forced to live like beggars without money to buy food or clothing. They were robbed of their dignity and everything they owned. Milarepa's mother nearly went mad over the betrayal and the grinding poverty she and her children had to endure. 

Once Milarepa was old enough to marry, his mother begged her brother-in-law and sister-in-law to  return at least some of their money. But they taunted her by saying, "If you are many, wage war. If you are few, cast magic." Powerless to change the situation, she asked her son to learn black magic to get revenge on their tormentors and on those who stood by and watched it happen. Her grief was so extreme that she vowed to kill herself if the treachery of her in-laws was not punished. 

Milarepa agreed to study the black arts and wreak revenge. He left home and found a lama who taught him how to cause terrible damage with black magic. He developed malevolent skills with a powerfully focused mind and a sustained determination that set him apart from other practitioners. The first spell he cast caused his uncle's house to collapse during a wedding feast when the house was filled with his relatives. Thirty-five people were killed. 

Ironically, his cruel uncle and aunt were not injured, although their sons and wives were among the dead. But Milarepa didn't stop there. He also sent a terrifying hailstorm that ruined his relatives' crops just before harvesttime. Mother and son now had their revenge, but they continued to suffer. Survivors of Milarepa's destruction threatened to kill his mother, and she was treated from then on as an outcast. His sister, Peta, became homeless, roaming from village to village working as a servant and begging for food, while Milarepa stayed in the mountains serving the lama who taught him how to do so much harm.  

It's at this point in the story that we're confronted with the full magnitude of the horrifying consequences of unbridled anger and wonder if there is any conceivable redemption for Milarepa. And that is an intrinsic element of the story: redemption is possible if you're willing to do the hard work of self-transformation. 

Milarepa was haunted by remorse and a deep longing to be free from misery. Revenge wasn't so sweet after all. "At that stage of his life, he had delusions in his mind. Most of us are not murderers, but we suffer like he did from anger, fear, attachment, pride, and confusion," says Amy Miller, a Tibetan Buddhist nun and director of the Milarepa Meditation Center in Vermont. "He realized he needed a guide to help him out of his self-absorption, and he found a qualified teacher." 

And so Milarepa left the lama who showed him the dark path to search for a teacher who could end his suffering. After failing with the first teacher he met, he was sent to the man who would open the door to his spiritual transformation. He is known as Marpa, "the translator," a title that honors his translation of precious Tantric texts from Sanskrit into Tibetan. Marpa was married, had a son, and taught many students. He traveled several times to Nepal and India to obtain his own initiations, which included secret oral transmissions of Tantric teachings. Much later in the story, he gave these safeguarded transmissions to Milarepa. 

Once under the guidance of Marpa, Milarepa was put through a strenuous and pitiful apprenticeship in which he was repeatedly denied any teaching whatsoever. For many years, Marpa constantly tested Milarepa's resolve by humiliating him in front of others and forcing him to build, then tear down and build again, a number of tall stupas. The treatment was harsh and sometimes unbearable. Milarepa broke down and pondered suicide, believing he was too great a sinner to ever receive Marpa's teaching. 

But Marpa was well aware of Milarepa's past and his inner struggle. He was helping him cleanse his bad karma and teaching him to rid himself of self-importance and ego. Although Marpa knew that Milarepa was extremely capable, even destined to become his greatest pupil, it was not until Marpa was convinced that Milarepa had earned the privilege of learning a sacred and transformative teaching that he gave him instruction. 

In today's vernacular, what Marpa did might be called "tough love," but there is also an esoteric underpinning to their relationship. Thus, Tiso suggests, it is important to reflect on the guru-disciple relationship. "The devotion that one experiences is not servile or obsequious; it has to come from who and what you truly are, which is a delicate balance of great humility"”our nothingness, and our greatness, the divine body into which we are transformed by spiritual practice," says Tiso. 

Sensing that Marpa was the key to his spiritual regeneration, Milarepa gathered the inner strength to persevere. But Marpa continued to withhold his teaching, and Milarepa reached a breaking point. He left Marpa to find another teacher. After some twists and turns involving forgery and deceit, Milarepa returned and was finally accepted as Marpa's student. It was the first time since his early childhood that Milarepa had experienced something close to joy. It was as if he had been born again. 

Milarepa began his spiritual unfoldment as Marpa (whose teaching lineage was from the Kagyu school handed down from the great Indian sage Naropa, who in turn received it from Tilopa) initiated him into the subtleties of Vajrayana, which emphasizes Tantric practice and direct experience over book learning. "Tibetans believe that every form of Buddhism is capable of transforming the mind in positive ways, but only Tantra, the esoteric path, is capable of bringing about enlightenment in one lifetime," says Cabezan. 

In the most advanced form of Tantric practice, known as the "completion stage," the goal is to "transform the physical human body into a body of an enlightened being, a nonphysical body of light," Cabezan explains. "Those who attain this are said to leave no physical remains behind at the time of death. Their bodies transform into light or rainbows." 

Once Marpa instructed Milarepa in Tantric practice, he demonstrated the possibilities that awaited him if he could meditate without distraction for the rest of his life. Marpa caused his body to dematerialize and rematerialize to become his chosen deities, known as Hevajra, Cakrasamvara, and Guhyasamaja. He also transformed his body into a lotus, a bell, and a sword as well as circles of light. The wondrous display of Marpa's powers filled Milarepa with happiness and the determination to have the same mastery over the constituents of his own body and mind. And he did exactly that. 

After many more years of meditation and practice, Milarepa could transform his body into any form he wished, including fire and water. He also learned yogic flying"”the ability to fly through the sky and travel great distances. On one occasion when he was flying over the countryside, he saw a farmer who lost a relative to his lethal sorcery. The farmer recognized Milarepa and cursed him. It was this encounter that solidified Milarepa's resolve to become enlightened not just for his own benefit, but for the benefit of all beings.  

The allure of Milarepa's mystical attainments has captivated the Western mind for centuries. It's beyond the scope of this article to attempt to explain the Tantric practices that are supposed to turn an ordinary man or woman into something superhuman. Suffice it to say that Milarepa learned how to practice the Six Yogas of Naropa and Mahamudra meditation and, having mastered them, he became free of the mind's boundaries. It was a gradual process supervised by Marpa, which is also a central theme"”the essential guidance of someone who knows the way to freedom. "The question is: "˜how free do you want to be?' We're OK being relatively free, but when something bad happens to you, or you do something bad, what then?" asks Amy Miller, whose work at the Milarepa Meditation Center focuses on helping people discover their relationship to their own suffering. 

Milarepa's life is filled with so many dramatic events that for the sake of brevity, only the highlights can be given here. Before we proceed to arguably the most compassionate moment of his life, mention should be made of his sorrow when he found the bones of his mother; his joy when reuniting with his sister; his wisdom when coming to terms with his aunt and uncle; and his gratitude for visitations from the mysterious dakinis, celestial female deities who gave him prophetic advice and instruction. But perhaps it is the final episode of his life that best illustrates his transcendent journey. 

By his early sixties, Milarepa had attained enlightenment. He spent the rest of his life teaching his disciples, including a few women, how to achieve liberation. But his cave-dwelling lifestyle and lack of academic or monastic credentials sometimes caused jealousy among other teachers and brought him ridicule. On a cool autumn day, Milarepa was invited to be the guest of honor at a wedding celebration attended by his disciples and many other guests. In the audience was the man who would become Milarepa's assassin. His name was Gesha Tsakpuwa. The Gesha (a scholarly monk) had no use for what he viewed as Milarepa's pretense to wisdom. Wanting to embarrass him in front of the crowd, he asked Milarepa a number of intellectual questions about the Dharma. 

Milarepa responded that to understand the nature of reality one should fast and meditate in the mountains. This felt like an insult to the Gesha, who kept challenging Milarepa on an intellectual basis. But the crowd booed the Gesha and told him to hush. Humiliated, the Geshé plotted a murderous revenge. And now we've come full circle in the story: revenge started this spiritual saga and reappears at the end of Milarepa's life. 

Not wanting to kill Milarepa himself, the Gesha induced his girlfriend to poison him. To get her cooperation, he promised to marry her and gave her a beautiful piece of turquoise to sweeten the deal. They hatched a plot to bring Milarepa some tainted food. 

The minute the Gesha's lover showed up with poisoned food as an offering, Milarepa knew what they were up to. Through his clairvoyance, he saw their devious scheme. When the woman offered Milarepa the food, her conscience took over, and she had a sudden change of heart. She begged him not to eat it, confessing that it was poisoned. But Milarepa believed his life's mission had come to an end and that his death could be used as a teaching on impermanence. He offered to purify her evil intentions and suggested that if she were to meditate, she could transcend the limits of her mind. He then told her the poisoned food could not hurt him and ate it. The implication is that Milarepa was choosing to die and that while the body would disappear, he would not. 

When Milarepa showed signs of sickness, the Gesha came to see him, feigning concern. Believing that Milarepa had no spiritual power, he urged him to send the illness to his own body. Instead, Milarepa transferred the illness to the door of his retreat cell, which broke into pieces and crashed to the floor. Still not persuaded, the Geshé again asked Milarepa to send the sickness to him. Milarepa did so. The Geshé crumpled to the floor, writhing in pain, and nearly died before Milarepa withdrew the poison back to his own body. 

Finally convinced of the yogi's greatness, the Gesha wept uncontrollably and begged for forgiveness. He vowed to practice meditation and to serve others. Pleased by the Gesha's sincerity, Milarepa offered to give him his teaching. 

When the great yogi died, there was a miraculous display of light in the heavens with hosts of celestial beings honoring the saint. The air filled with fragrance, and beautiful flowers dropped to earth. Then Milarepa's body disappeared in a blaze of light that became a beautiful rainbow. 

Francis Tiso summarizes Milarepa's voluntary death this way: "The choice to die becomes emblematic of the Kagyu tradition: to turn negative circumstances into skillful means; to identify oneself with ordinary humanity in order to liberate; and to emphasize spiritual practice and experience over scholarship and verbal expressions of Buddhist views." 

We may never know all the facts about the historical Milarepa, and perhaps it doesn't matter. It was his relentless pursuit of spiritual realization in the face of his frightening past that gives his story a powerful transformative resonance that has endured for nine centuries and reaches far beyond the borders of Tibet. 

In Milarepa's life, we can see shades of our own dysfunctional lives coexisting with our highest spiritual longing, and we can find inspiration to keep our own inner work alive. His arduous spiritual journey illuminates the sacred and the profane as one continuum in an ever-evolving human story.

Sources

Chang, Garma C.C. The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa. Boston: Shambhala, 1999.

Evans-Wentz, W.Y. Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928.

Heruka, Tsangnyön. The Life of Milarepa. Translated by Andrew Quintman. New York: Penguin, 2010.

The Milarepa Meditation Center. www.milarepacenter.org.

Tiso, Francis V. Liberation in One Lifetime: Biographies and Teachings of Milarepa. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic,-

 

 

 

 

 

 

CYNTHIA OVERWEG is a journalist, writer, and teacher who has presented programs at the

Krotona School of Theosophy in Ojai, California. Her study has focused on H.P. Blavatsky, Ramana

Maharshi, and Christian mystics. During the Balkan war, she traveled as a photographer with United

Nations relief organizations. Her images of war-traumatized children won awards from the National

Endowment for the Arts and the American Film Institute. In 1985, her play Madame Blavatsky was

produced in Los Angeles. Recent articles for Quest include profiles of Joy Mills and Ravi Ravindra.

Printed in the Winter 2014 issue of Quest magazine. Citation: Cianciosi, John. "Calm and Clear: Samatha and Vipassana Meditation" Quest 102. 4 (Winter 2014): pg. 13-17.

By John Cianciosi

The Buddhist term for meditation is bhavana. A better translation of this word would be "mental cultivation," which implies making an effort to bring into being certain wholesome qualities of mind through a systematic training. Often the Buddha referred to this as the practice of samatha and vipassana, or developing tranquility and insight respectively. The two most detailed discourses in the Pali Canon that describe this practice are the Anapanasati Sutta ("The Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing"), and the Satipatthana Sutta ("The Discourse on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness"). Rather than trying to present a scholastic analysis of these two discourses, I want to share with you a simplified and pragmatic description of the practice following the style of my teacher, the late Venerable Ajahn Cha.

I would like to begin by speaking about developing a good posture for meditation. The ideal posture is one that is balanced, stable, and comfortable. Whether you are sitting on a chair or cross-legged on the floor, try to sit with your back erect. Push the lower back forward a little and allow the muscles of the abdomen to relax. The rest of the back should follow the natural shape of the spine, keeping the top of the head towards the ceiling. Keep your chin tucked in slightly so that the neck is straight. You can experiment with this posture until you find what works best for you.

If you are able to sit cross-legged on the floor without discomfort, try to develop the half-lotus posture, as it gives good stability and allows one to sit for longer periods. You may want to use a cushion, as it will help keep your back erect. Practicing some stretching yoga postures will make it easier for you to sit cross-legged on the floor.

Some people sit on a low stool that is tilted slightly forward. While you are in a kneeling position, the meditation stool straddles over the calves and you sit on it, keeping your back erect. If none of these postures are possible for you, then just sit on a chair. Choose a chair with a straight back and firm seat of a height that allows your feet to rest flat on the floor. Work with your body to see if you can gradually cultivate a good, straight, and balanced posture. The more balanced and comfortable you feel in your posture, the easier it will be to sit for longer periods.

Working with the posture is in itself a very good meditation, especially when we feel very dull. At this time the breath is too refined an object, so take this opportunity to use the body. It is something tangible, it feels solid, and it can help ground the mind. The feelings of the body are immediate, present-moment sensations that can anchor the mind to the here and now. So when the mind starts moving into dull, confused, or distracted states, come back to something really obvious, like the posture. Often the state of the body reflects the state of the mind. When the mind is dull or lazy, the body starts slumping, losing its strength and energy. We can direct our attention to the experience of the body sitting, bringing the mind within the body, letting it sink into the body and animate the body with life"”mind sitting with the body. Then we can begin to experiment with improving the posture by putting a little more strength into the back and neck. Not only is this developing posture for its own sake, but it is also disciplining the mind by cultivating awareness and energy.

As for the exercise of concentration, this is what we call samatha meditation. This meditation is good for everyone, because we tend to create, think, and analyze too much. Intellectually we are very active and agile, but this can easily lead to confusion and complexity, because the nature of thought and the conditioned world is complex. We are very complicated beings and when we try to understand ourselves just by thinking, it can be very confusing. Ones mind seems like a jungle of thoughts, ideas, perceptions, and memories. So what we really need is a firm foundation in clarity and stability, where the mind can begin to rest and focus on being still, content in the present moment and not getting lost in thinking. Samatha meditation is the process of moving away from the realm of thought and complexity towards silence, stillness, and simplicity.

A very good method of meditation that can help us achieve this is anapanasati, mindfulness of breathing. This technique uses the flow of the breath as the object of attention for training the mind in awareness, concentration, and serenity. Anapanasati is quite different from breath control because it uses the natural flow of the breath. There is no contriving or constructing, making it into this or that, which is what we do with most other things. In this practice we simply observe the natural flow of the breath, allowing the mind to rest while remaining attentive to the breath. We get out of the way and let the body breathe as it wants. The rhythmic flow of the breath is in itself a very tranquil, peaceful, and soothing experience.

It requires a lot of patience before the mind will come to rest with this simple meditation object, because we are used to exciting mental gymnastics and this is just a very simple task, only observing and staying with the breath. We need to be patient and have confidence in the teachings of the Buddha and in our teachers. If we have confidence, it will give us the resolve to patiently bring the attention back to the breath, turning towards the breath more fully. When the mind starts running off and gets interested in something else, what does that mean? It means that we see greater value in those other things; we think they will give us more excitement, more happiness. We think that memories of the past or plans for the future are going to give us more happiness than staying with the breath. Thats why the mind moves away from the breath: we always seek happiness.

We can have confidence in this practice because this is what the Buddha practiced on the eve of his enlightenment, and it has been passed down to us by many great masters. Bringing this to mind helps us to focus our attention on the breath more easily. We are able to turn towards it and sustain our attention, be with it, being completely contented. If we become really peaceful and develop deep concentration, we will experience rapture, bliss, and happiness that far exceed the normal pleasures of the sensory world. If we keep this in mind when we sit down to meditate, it will motivate us to let go of all other things and give our full attention to the breath, incline towards it, be satisfied with it, knowing that it will lead to an experience of profound joy.

Now when we begin, it is quite difficult. We cant force the mind or strangle the stray thoughts. We have to be very, very patient and remain vigilant. Meditation cannot be just a mechanical exercise. We need to notice what is happening using present-moment awareness. Notice when the mind is being attentive to the breath, and also notice when the mind starts drifting away towards something else. Notice and then bring the attention back to the breath. Try to sustain the awareness that knows "this is an inhalation" and "this is an exhalation." When images, discursive thoughts, and memories arise, we notice them and we let them go without chasing them or fighting them. Its like cutting our way through a jungle made of thoughts, images, words, memories, and plans. We keep coming back to the reality of the breath. The breath is something that is present right now and can be experienced directly through the subtle sense of touch. It does not require thought or imagination. We do not need to create it. The breath comes in, this is an inhalation, we know that. The breath goes out, this is an exhalation, we know that. We simply relax and settle into being an interested observer of this natural flow as though we have nothing else to do and nowhere to go. Gradually the flow of the breath becomes more clear and prominent in the mind. Now we can begin to notice the beginning and the end of each breath with more clarity. Knowing the beginning of the inhalation; knowing the end of the inhalation; knowing the beginning and the end of the exhalation.

So we are disciplining the mind by using the natural flow of the breath as an anchor for attention. As we begin to thin out the jungle of thoughts and reduce the amount of inner imagery and discursive chatter, the mind gradually becomes more clear, silent, and peaceful. Then it is a matter of focusing more closely on the breath; inclining towards it is all you can really do. Allowing the mind to sink into the breath, to touch it, to get as close as we can to it"”the more we do that, the deeper the concentration and tranquility will become.

We can read all sorts of books on how to practice mindfulness of breathing, but the only real teacher is the experience that comes from practice. It is not a matter of "doing it right," but more of learning from our attempts at training the mind. We know that our practice is going in the right direction if the mind is becoming a little more clear, focused, and peaceful. Regular practice is very important because the skill is cultivated through repetition, learning from each meditation period. There will be many ups and downs; sometimes the mind is peaceful and sometimes it is restless; it is all a learning experience. The goal of tranquility meditation is quite simple; it simplifies the mind and focuses the attention.

It is the same with walking meditation. We can use the touch of the feet or the movement of the legs as our focus of attention. It is a very real and tangible object to anchor the mind on. Each step has a beginning and an end for us to focus on. We begin to simplify, moving away from the world of thinking, projecting, and complexity to being in the "here and now" with present-moment awareness of each step. Walking is simply taking one step at a time.

Training the mind with the right amount of effort requires awareness and patience. If we have expectations and no patience, we will soon become disheartened. The Buddha said that it is easier to go into battle single-handed against a thousand enemies armed to the teeth and to conquer them a thousand times than it is to conquer ones own mind. He did not say this to dishearten us, but the Buddha did want to stress that it is a difficult thing to do. It requires a great deal of patience.

To develop this foundation of concentration and clarity is important, as it gives emotional stability and the ability to cut through the doubts, foolishness, and obsessive tendencies of the mind. When the mind is focused in a state of clarity and stillness, it is a very powerful and useful tool. The Buddha said that a welltrained mind is the most useful thing and the untrained mind the most dangerous thing to have. An untrained mind causes a lot of trouble to oneself and others, so it is worthwhile dedicating time for the cultivation of concentration. Most teachers recommend developing a good foundation of concentration by having a regular daily meditation practice.

What is the purpose of concentrating the mind? Is it just to experience a blissful state? Obviously there is more to it than that. In Buddhism we say that concentration is only one part of the training; there is also morality and wisdom. Wisdom is the most important, but not in the sense of knowledge. Its not what we can hear from someone else, read in a book, or think out ourselves, but wisdom in the sense of really understanding the nature of experience. This is why it is so important to have a well-trained mind, sharp and clear, with the ability to be collected and to look directly at the experience. A clear mind can look directly, intensely, and penetratingly at experience, see through the superficial appearance, and see it for what it really is. What is the quality of mind that we need for this type of reflection? It is the mind that is still, silent, and fully awake; what we call "bare awareness" or sustained present-moment silent awareness.

We practice samatha meditation so we can bring the mind into this state of calmness and stillness. When we sit in meditation and concentrate on the breath, even if we let go of the breath, we can just be still, and when the mind is silent, there is this knowing, this awareness of the present. Now it is good if we can stabilize that awareness, even if we start with only a few moments. Samatha meditation gives stability to the mind so that we can stay in that alert state of knowing and emptiness for longer and longer periods.

The Buddha said that this thing I call "me" is made up of the body, feeling, perceptions, concepts, and consciousness. These are the five aggregates that make up a human being. These are the things that we are attached to and that we take to be "me" or "mine." These are the things that cause our problems; we have to reflect on and observe them more closely in order to see them for what they are. How do we do this insight meditation with reflection? We objectify what is in consciousness and then observe its nature. Take the body, for example. We can be aware of the body just sitting. If the mind is quite still, we can be aware of the posture, the nature of the body, before we start labeling it or making anything of it. Then there are the sensations of the body, especially when they become very strong. If there is pain, we can make it an object of our awareness. We stop thinking about it as being this or that, we just experience the sensation, see if we can stay with it. What is the sensation actually like? Is it really you? Is it constant? What makes it pain rather than pleasure? Why is the mind shrinking away from it? What happens if we stay and abide calmly with it? We turn the attention towards the sensation in order to understand its nature by observing it closely with bare awareness.

The important thing is not to just react to every situation. For example, when there is an itch on the leg, we can scratch it and its gone, but we havent learnt anything because we are acting mechanically out of aversion and desire. There is no freedom there. I am not saying that it is wrong to scratch, but I am talking about insight, about freeing the mind from the power of instinct, aversion, and desire.

Sometimes we can feel very tired during meditation, and the body begins to slump. What is that feeling of tiredness in the body? We can notice what it feels like instead of just reacting and giving in to it. Instead of just feeling tired and lying down, we arouse attention and begin to observe. We see the nature of this state, the lack of energy, and if we stay with it, we may also see it passing away. When we are tired and decide to go to sleep rather than sit in meditation, that is not bad, wrong, or immoral in any way. But we are not learning anything, because there is no effort, patience, or reflection on that which is difficult to reflect on. There is no insight. It is valuable for a practitioner to do that which is difficult in order to cultivate spiritual qualities and to develop wisdom.

Venerable Ajahn Cha used to say that to practice vipassana or insight meditation one had to be attentive, observe, and finally penetrate the three fundamental characteristics of all conditioned existence: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and nonself. The practice of vipassana means to continually reflect on these three signs, make them our point of reference. The easiest of the three signs to observe is impermanence, the process of change. However, it requires a lot of patience. Normally we see the arising of something, but we dont bother to hang around to wait for the passing away, especially if it is something unpleasant. For example, we may get into a restless state; the mind is agitated and the body doesnt want to sit still. If this arises during our sitting, we are encouraged to stay with it rather than giving up and walking away. We can be aware; we can objectify and observe the restless state, get to know it, and have the patience to stay around and observe its impermanent nature. It is within the capacity of everyone to see the passing away of things, just ordinary things like restlessness, sleepiness, or a little bit of pain. By making them fully conscious in the mind and staying with them to see the beginning and the end, their arising and their cessation, we can clearly see their impermanent nature.

Impermanence is a very good subject to meditate on. We can observe it in the body, in its various states of energy, pain, tension, and relaxation. We can observe it in the mental states of restlessness, dullness, peacefulness, calm, and joy. We can notice all these changing, impermanent states of body and mind, just as they are. Objectify them. Reflect on what comes into the field of consciousness, whether that may be body, feeling, perceptions, conceptions, or moods. Just observing them all as objects of awareness. Staying with them and seeing them arising and passing away. Knowing that what you see cannot be "you" because it is coming and going. It cannot be "yours" because you cannot make it stay forever. Thus clearly seeing impermanence will help us see unsatisfactoriness and nonself, because they are three aspects of the same reality.

Insight meditation cannot be done with a dull state of mind. It requires an alert, reflective mind with a sharp, attentive quality of bare awareness. A mind that is very clear, no longer chasing or fighting experiences, but sticking around to see the beginning and the passing away of that which is in the field of consciousness, that which is being experienced. This is insight meditation. The technique is not insight meditation. Some people say that if you do this technique, it is insight, and if you do that technique, it is not. That is all rather silly. It is not the technique that makes it insight meditation. What makes it insight meditation is directing the penetrating power of awareness of an alert, clear state of mind to see the beginning and the end, the arising and the passing away of the present object of experience. Seeing the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and nonself nature of experience is insight meditation. Concentration on the breath can be insight meditation if we see the beginning and the end of each breath, not just thinking about it but really knowing it, experiencing it, seeing it clearly arising and passing. We can have insight into any thought, any mood, they are all sankhara: conditioned phenomena, mortal conditions. They are all of the same nature: impermanent, unsatisfactory, and notself. The practice of insight meditation is making the object fully clear in the conscious mind and then, with a clear, aware, and alert mind, seeing its beginning and its ending.

It is possible for us to do this not only during meditation but also at other times. We can open our minds to the impermanent and continually changing nature of everything in our lives. Begin to notice the day, for example. It has a beginning, then it changes, and we call it night. In time, light begins to return, revealing the colors of the day again. We can watch the changing seasons and the weather, being continually aware of the arising and passing of all things.

The Buddha said that to do good things and to give generously is a wonderful, meritorious thing. To have confidence and faith in virtue and to live a virtuous life based on morality is even more meritorious. To cultivate the mind of loving-kindness is even more meritorious than that. However, to be aware of impermanence even for the snap of a finger is of even greater merit, because it results in the arising of insight, the knowledge and vision of things as they truly are. So we should take an interest in noticing change; notice the arising and passing away of all conditioned phenomena with a well-trained mind that is clear, focused, and aware.

Born in Italy and raised in Australia, JOHN CIANCIOSI was a Buddhist monk for twenty-three years. In 1982, he helped found the Bodhiyana Forest Monastery in Serpentine, Western Australia, and led a community of monks and nuns. He also served as mentor for the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. This article is based on a talk he gave in Perth in the late 1980s. John decided to disrobe as a monk in 1995. He is the author of The Meditative Path (Quest Books) and presently serves as director of programming at Olcott.