Sadhana and Formless Meditation

I am a bit reluctant to theorise too much about formless meditation. It all seems rather early. The following is just notes really.

Rimé teacher Jamgon Kongtrul: Creation and Completion about two aspects of Tantric meditation – Kyerim & Dzogrim.

Draws special attention to the self generated forms of Buddha and Bodhisattva, e.g. green Tara, Avalokitesvara, Vajrasattva in our system. That way of playing with the idea that you are a Buddha. Obviously you’re not, but something seems to happen when you impersonate them. As in a drama. Drama began in ancient times as ritual, and sadhana is a kind of ritual. Doing sadhana can be a bit like dressing up as the Bodhisattva, sitting on the world stage in front of all beings, and acting out the Bodhisattva’s myth.

That kind of sadhana drew me to formless meditation. Vajrasattva practice: purified by the mantra, end up sitting as Vajrasattva, actually being Vajrasattva… seems very much akin to the formless meditation where you are trying to sit with the direct experience of reality itself.

Avalokita Conjoint Mahamudra. Mahamudra section where you just let go into the nature of mind.

The creation stage corresponds to what we call sadhana, and the completion stage corresponds to what we call Pure Awareness, Just Sitting, or formless meditation.

Sadhana phases:

1. Build up visualisation

2. Receive adhisthana

3. Sit enveloped in blessing.

Latter corresponds to Completion stage. So this is where the pure awareness practice element appears in sadhana. You receive the adhisthana and sit enveloped in it. It is as though you have become the deity, at least for the moment. You get a tiny experience of what it’s like to be Avalokitesvara or Prajnaparamita. That is what pure awareness practice is about as well because it is about linking into your real nature, which in essence is enlightened and compassionate - beyond time, beyond location, beyond self. So I think this is the essential connection between the two forms of practice. Pure awareness practice is the essence of the sadhana. The sadhana introduces you to the true nature of your mind through imaginative identification; the pure awareness practice does it directly. Both are necessary.

Formless practice is where you almost altogether drop any kind of method, and simply sit with the state of mind, the reality itself. Of course there is work there too – work to more authentically engage, to link into the openness, clarity, sensitivity etc. – but there is no creation, no fabrication. You are trying to undo the tendency to create. Sadhana is creative; formless practice is non-creative. Doing, and undoing.

It seems to me that the more one accustoms oneself to recognising the nature of mind, the more the vipashyana dimension of things becomes obvious, and you think much more in that way. In that way, formless meditation is a very good basis for deepening the insight element of sadhana. What is great about recognising the nature of mind is that it is something you can do any time, so that also links with everyday life. It’s a mindfulness practice.

I think this may be one reason why in Bhante’s lecture ‘A ‘System’ of Meditation’ Just Sitting is what links all the stages (concentration, positive emotion, spiritual death, spiritual rebirth) in the system. He says Just Sitting is what brings the system of meditation to completion.  Interesting he uses the word Completion. He says it’s ‘in this way [that] we achieve a perfectly balanced practice of meditation, and a perfectly balanced spiritual life’. 

Bhante also says that Just Sitting is very necessary because it’s this kind of non-practice - or in other words, non-developmental practice - that can counteract the possibility of wilful meditation.

This raises the issue of developmental versus nondevelopmental models. Developmental meditation – you create something; Nondevelopmental meditation – you uncover something. The developmental model seems to entail the problem of wilful striving, which the nondevelopmental model seems to correct. Hence Bhante’s recommendation.

The two seem to parallel in some ways the Creation and Completion phases (Sadhana meditation is developmental because you are creating something; formless practice isn't because you’re not). However, it’s rather more complex than that because sadhana is often based on the perspective of Buddha Nature, and interweaves with a pure awareness perspective. Hence the Avalokita conjoint Mahamudra sadhana. The Gelugpa and the older schools have different views on Buddha Nature I gather …

Also in Bhante’s ‘system’, sadhana is seen in terms of spiritual rebirth. I find this interesting. Spoke about it on last convention (my shit pit talk).

Plus… it comes after spiritual death. I.e. after insight experience. So at very least, it’s important that sadhana is seen in context of insight. He seems to be saying that really to do sadhana one needs at least to be developing insight as well.

Spiritual death is the point at which concepts collapse and we see, just for a moment, the way things really are. Spiritual rebirth is the restructuring of a new life because of the force of that moment.

So it seems to me that in Bhante’s view of sadhana, and I’d like to check it with him, we should be working on spiritual death as well as spiritual rebirth. As I said in my convention talk, spiritual death is not a very attractive image to a lot of us, so maybe that’s the first thing we need to get over! Death is good! (Maybe the Machig Puja tonight will sort us out!)

I do think it is important we try to link into the ideas we have inherited from Bhante as much as possible, where they are useful. I think they are often more useful than they appear in the current climate. Bhante’s ideas were formed out of the ground of the contact he had with his teachers, most of whom were very well schooled in the Creation and Completion stages of Tibetan Buddhism.

Some questions from first session

§ Letting go the form – sadhana as continuity of practice.

This connects very much with pure awareness practice because it represents that point where you let go of the form and just sit with experience as it is, linking into the Buddha Nature.

§ Sadhana and everyday life

I think the formless meditation can help very much with this once one associates it with sitting with one’s Buddha Nature, the Buddha Nature one is also introduced to by the yidam.

§ Making a heart connection with the yidam

§ Visualisation practice when in a less than perfect (frayed!) mental state

I have found the pure awareness practice helpful with this too, I find it a very good way to connect with the heart. It is really about heart. That then makes a link to the yidam, if I do the sadhana connected to pure awareness practice. I find pure awareness meditation very good for sitting with unclear or ragged mental states, if I do it regularly, because it reminds me that these are only mental states, no more – so I don't identify quite so strongly with them. Again if I then connect to the sadhana I feel as though I am really doing it, even though my concentration may be quite poor, I know my motivation is right. That is what counts, and I know that it is what counts. Formless meditation connects me to my heart and my head as well. It enables me to be clear about what I can realistically do, and not to worry about what I can’t.