receive our newsletters
join Friends of FPMT
Lama Yeshe, Kensington Town Hall, 1975. Photo courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
In 1975 during their first trip to Europe, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave a weekend seminar in England, once again demonstrating their charisma and knowledge, and the profound effect of Buddha’s wisdom on Western people. This seminar was published in the book Freedom Through Understanding and covers the purpose of meditation, bodhicitta, the importance of motivation, tonglen and the shortcomings of attachment, among other topics. Produced by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, this is one of the few works that feature both Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This short course was also videotaped and is available on the LYWA YouTube channel.
Today we share an excerpt from Chapter 4 from Freedom Through Understanding: “How to Meditate” by Lama Yeshe:
In order to awaken, or become conscious, we need to practice meditation. We tend to think we’re conscious most of the time but actually we’re not; we’re unconscious. Check up; really check up. But by gradually developing our meditation practice we slowly, slowly integrate our mind with reality.
Also, when we meditate we often encounter obstacles to our practice and experience much trouble and frustration. The fundamental character or absolute nature of our mind is clean clear – we call this nature clear light – but relatively it is obscured by misconceptions and other hindrances that prevent us from seeing reality. It’s like the sky obscured by clouds – when a strong gust of wind comes and blows away the clouds, the underlying clear blue sky is revealed. It’s the same thing with our mind. Therefore, when we try to meditate, we encounter hindrances and lack of clarity and find it very difficult to concentrate single-pointedly on an object. When this happens, instead of getting disappointed we should employ the methods contained in Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism to purify our mind.
When our meditation is not going smoothly we should not push. The mind is like a baby; babies don’t like to be pushed – we have to treat them differently. Instead of pushing them we have to play with them in a psychologically skillful way. Then they’re OK.
Similarly, we have to play a little with our mind. When it becomes impossible to meditate, we shouldn’t push. Instead, we should just leave our mind where it is and do some purification practice. This will decrease obstacles and make our mind more powerful.
Read all of Chapter 4 from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and watch a video of Lama Yeshe offering this teaching:
Watch Lama Yeshe giving this teaching on “How to Meditate”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7q6JA91IcI
From the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website, you can order a print copy of Freedom Through Understanding, order an ebook, listen to the audio book, read the book online, access translations, or download a PDF.
Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.