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Kopan West — NOVEMBER 2004
By Venerable René Feusi


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Establishing a Daily Practice

[You may have a] question about this retreat, or something that was said that you don’t understand, or about how to put it into practice.  So for those who want to establish a daily practice, I advise you to start like what we did this morning.  I found it most beneficial to have a practice where you work on three things together in a balanced way: a part prayers, like we just did; a part single-pointed concentration; and a part analytical meditation.

PRAYERS

Prayers give you the blessing. They open your heart.  They make that the meditation will work.  Without blessing, if you keep on studying and meditating without doing prayers, you will feel that your meditation dries up, that the softness is missing. You have the words, the words are clear, you know it, but somehow it doesn’t move your heart, it just moves your head.  So then you will see that your spiritual practice can split between your head and your heart.  Your head knows but your heart is not able to do.  The prayers should comprise of: prostration, refuge, bodhicitta, the seven limb, mandala offering, then request to the master, then receiving the blessing by reciting the mantra.

So here during this retreat it has been done with Shakyamuni Buddha, but you can do it with Chenrezig, Tara, or Vajradhara or whatever other practices or deities you have connection with. And if you have a spiritual master, to increase the fastness of the blessing, you would see the deity as inseparable from your spiritual master, from all your spiritual masters.

CALM ABIDING

The second point to work on is calm abiding, because without calm abiding you have no penetration. Nothing sticks in your head. It just stays at the surface. Even if you understand emptiness correctly, you are not able to make any use of it because your mind doesn’t penetrate and doesn’t stay.

The same thing with Bodhicitta--you might have some good heart, but if you don’t have a certain level of concentration, you cannot stay in that state. The mind is just too much moving around all the time.

And then lam rim based on the blessing and the working on calm abiding.  The two main meditations on the lam rim are the two Bodhicittas, conventional  and ultimate Bodhicitta--personally I do both together.

BODHICITTA

So I spend one or two minutes on equanimity. I check my daily outlook, whether I have that equanimity in the way I relate to others or not.  Then the second point is quite easy once you have come to the conclusion that you accept that all beings have been your mother because you have had beginning-less lives. Whether your mother or not, at least you have been closely linked to all living beings, because the string of consciousness is beginning-less.  So then all beings have been intimate to you, very close to you. So you try to reflect on the beings which have been the closest to you in this life, and then you try to generalize or universalize that feeling that all beings have been so dear to me.

You try in your meditation to look at the beings around you, and whether you can see them as dear, as that person you hold most dear, and you try to transfer that feeling of dearness onto all beings.  Then you try to develop concentration on that state, that all beings have been so kind to me, while they have been our mothers, while they were our partners, children, parents and so forth. But think of it in a more general way to, how thanks to all beings we can use roads, cars, airplanes, eat food and so forth.  All these depend on the kindness indirectly from so many other beings.  We can reflect on this. We think we are self made and but actually, all what we are from the language we speak, to the clothes we wear, the food we eat, whatever we do or use in everyday life is always made by somebody else. So to reflect on that also makes you remember their kindness indirectly. 

And then naturally what arises in the heart is a desire to repay the kindness. They do so much for me, how can I be so self absorbed?  So naturally you feel like repaying the kindness.  It’s like your mother, she does so much for you, she asks you for a favor, of course you are going to do it.  It’s like we have such a deep debt towards them, that if they ask for a little something, you just do it —and it is so easy to do. The more you contemplate the kindness of others, you reach that state where it is natural to give something back.  It is not an effort anymore or a ‘good deed’. It’s completely natural.  It comes from the heart spontaneously.

And then on that base, you meditate on the equality of self and others. Like Shantideva says, we are all one being in reality.  We are all one universal family.  It’s like the different limbs are part of the body, so we all are members of the human family, like His Holiness the Dalai Lama would say. You try to expand your heart and mind to include or to hold in your heart all living beings. And you see that we are all equal in wanting to be happy and in not wanting to suffer.  There’s no difference at all. So then how can I be happy as long as there is one being who’s suffering somewhere. You try to stay in that state with calm abiding, where your mind is so vast it includes all living beings. You stay a little bit there, and you wish happiness for each and every one, that they don’t have pain.

Then if you have time, and you don’t need to do the analysis each time, remember the point that the suffering experienced in the world comes from my selfishness.  Basically you can bring it back to a selfish attitude because all the non-virtuous afflictions are a result of selfishness.  And that all the happiness in the world comes from cherishing others. All the happiness! How nice the planet would be if there were no killing, no stealing, and no sexual misconduct and so forth. If everybody would care for each other, the planet would be a completely different place. So you can see it from projecting out in the world that it’s exactly the same for me. If I care and love people around me, whatever action I do will be virtuous, so my own happiness will be a result of that. 

And then you can reflect that it’s impossible to reach enlightenment without bodhicitta.  If I cherish myself, I’m not even on the path to enlightenment. No matter how many prayers I do, how much meditation I do, if I don’t have the attitude genuinely from the heart of cherishing others, I haven’t yet entered the Mahayana path.

And then on that base you do tong-len.  You can start by either taking or by giving. It doesn’t matter.   Usually it is mentally easier to do the giving. You just expand love, you wish them to be happy.  Love is a genuine deep-hearted feeling, how nice it would be if they were happy.   Genuinely from your heart you wish everybody to be happy.  You send rays of light out, and you touch the heart of beings. If you put that in the context of tantra where you are a deity, from your deity’s heart you touch all beings’ hearts, and you transform them into whatever deities you practice. So if you practice Shakyamuni Buddha, you transform all beings into Shakyamuni Buddha.  You transform their ordinary bodies into the deity body, into Shakyamuni Buddha’s body. Basically, you give them everything--from everyday happiness up to the highest enlightenment. And as you visualize beings of light, yourself as a being of light and others as beings of light, it becomes very blissful, warm-hearted and full of light.  And spontaneously you see the benefit of loving others in your state of mind. Within that state of mind of wishing all beings to be happy and giving them that happiness, you experience such a well-being.

Then, while being in that state, you reflect that superficially they don’t have that happiness. They’re not enlightened because of their ignorance, because of their believing in inherent existence, in wrong self, and their mental affliction and karma. So you take away their ignorance, mental affliction and karma. And that gets destroyed. But you don’t get weighted down by their negativity, by their suffering. All these things get dissolved into the light of your heart. It just adds fuel into your love and compassion. So the more you take on the pain, the negative karma, the mental affliction, the more it increases your love and concern and compassion for them. The more you inhale their problem, the brighter your heart becomes, the more light you have. It’s like adding gas onto the fire.  If you do that, you’ll feel that meditating on tong-len is very pleasant. It’s very peaceful.

And then you aspire, you generate the responsibility of actually doing that. You think: ‘This is a nice meditation, but I’m just sitting on my cushion. I’m not doing anything.  I’m just doing that in my mind.’ Do this to make this strong determination:  I’m actually going to bring all beings to enlightenment. And I’m going to liberate them from all suffering.  But you realize that, at the moment, I’m not capable of doing that because I am under the control of karma, mental afflictions, and ignorance myself. So on that base you generate the strong aspiration to reach enlightenment for their sake. And like that you generate Bodhicitta. 

So the state of mind of Bodhicitta has two aspects. Your mind is pervaded by love and compassion for others, this genuine wish to bring all being to enlightenment, and then realizing that you are not capable of doing that because you are under the control of karma, mental afflictions, and ignorance. So you have these two states of mind simultaneously in your mind. It is said that this wish to reach enlightenment for all sentient beings is a primary mind and that the love and compassion is a secondary mind, or a companion mental factor in the state of Bodhicitta. 

If you do this meditation regularly, at the beginning it takes quite a while to actually induce each of these states of mind, but once you are acquainted with them, then you just [clicks fingers] say the outline and you are in that state of mind.  You just [makes sounds--“chu, chu, chu”] and you are in different state of mind.  You don’t need to think about it because you have thought about it so much, just remembering it you are in that state of mind.  And if you have concentration, you can just sustain it, remember it. Just like you decide to stay angry, you stay in equanimity, in love and compassion, and you stay in these states of mind, one after another.  Right?   You stay in Bodhicitta.

RELATIVE AND ULTIMATE BODHICITTA

Why did I speak about Bodhicitta?  Ah, yes.  So the main practice is the two Bodhicittas.  The other one is emptiness. So these solve all problems, you take all problems at the root.  We should meditate on this everyday. If you do meditation, you meditate on that everyday.  You spend at least ten minutes on each. And as Atisha says in a small lojong prayer, while you are with others, the main emphasis is love and compassion, friendliness.  If you are alone, the main thing is emptiness.  The main emphasis is more emptiness when you are alone. There is no ‘I’.

LAMRIM REALIZATION

And then if you see that your mind gets lazy or starts getting involved in trouble with people and things like that, then go back to the basics like the precious human rebirth. It’s good to have those in the background. It’s good to recite a lam rim prayer every day which covers all the points, like the Lines of Experience that I read. Pabonkha Rinpoche says that the realization of precious rebirth takes about two weeks to gain. Impermanence and death takes a few weeks too.  Refuge takes also two weeks. Karma takes one or two weeks. So it’s not that long to get so you don’t keep on meditating on it in depth.  But if you see that your understanding of it degenerates, then you go back to it. You see when your mind becomes completely involved in the world again, your mind becomes completely worldly. And that emptiness and Bodhicitta is not effective anymore to bring you out of that state, then you go back to basics and say, “Look what’s going on here?  I have this precious life, and it’s not going to last very long.”   It’s puts your priority again straight, to go back to basics--the suffering nature of cyclic existence, oh, I’m still there. No time to relax yet. 

HOW TO RELY ON SPIRITUAL TEACHER

So it depends on what you want.  If you want to get those realizations, the way you would do it, you would do the prayer, and you would stick two weeks on each topic.  So, for example, if you are doing retreat, usually in the lam rim, you start with guru devotion—that’s the first lam rim topic.   But as that topic is explained in the context of tantra, it’s a bit difficult to start with. It’s easy for people who have already found their spiritual master with whom they have a good connection and are already practicing tantra.  Then it makes sense. Otherwise it’s good to read the topic once to get a general idea of what it’s all about, then to reflect and meditate a little bit on it, to know you have to have that realization at some point, but you are not able to do it now because you need a vajra master to do it properly. Because in that context, in highest yoga tantra, in order for the master to give you the fourth initiation, especially the fourth one, he has to be a Buddha.  So any master who has given you the fourth initiation of highest yoga tantra is a Buddha.  Or at least from your side, you have no choice but to see him like that and to practice guru devotion as if he were Buddha.

So now in the context of lam rim, not the context of tantra, you don’t have to see him as Buddha. You have to see him as a respected master which has the bodhisattva qualities, which basically refers to having good morality, having a certain level of concentration, having a certain level of wisdom, having more love for others than for himself, and a certain level of equanimity - those are the basic qualities of a Mahayana master. He should also have more knowledge than the disciple. So if your master has those qualities, on that basis you can start developing respect and getting lessons like that. You don’t learn something from somebody if you have no respect.  You know that from school.  If you have respect and admiration for your teacher, the more you learn from the teacher, and the more your own practice will progress. 

LAMRIM RETREATS

So if one does lam rim retreat—I don’t know if it’s relevant to speak about that here because few of you are living that lifestyle, with maybe one or two exceptions. But maybe sometime you’ll do it in the future, if you do, do four sessions a day, each session exactly as we did this session - a part prayer, a part meditation, a part lam rim. The first session in the morning do guru devotion. Precious human rebirth the second. The third you would again do precious human rebirth.  And the fourth one you would do emptiness.

So with guru devotion, you would stay on that for six months, at least, the first session should always be guru devotion.  The second and third you would move through the lam rim, so you would stay two weeks on precious human rebirth.  When you feel you have really got it, you know, you have really meditated on the eight freedoms, how rare it is to get all these conditions together, how hard it is, or what you can do with it. Once your mind is steeped in this kind of understanding, your state of mind is, ‘wow, it’s so precious what I have’ then you move to the next topic, impermanence.  You would stay on that topic again.  To realize that life is impermanent or that death is certain is quite quick - in two or three days you get it--that everybody has to die, that everything is going to disappear, even this planet.  So you realize the certainty of death.  And then you go to the second point, that the actual time of death is uncertain. So that takes more work.  You need to spend two or three weeks on it, to really get it down, that death is not in ten years, it’s not in twenty years, as we all hope.  Death can really be at any moment.  Am I ready at any moment to die?  You start thinking, yes, I hope to live ten or twenty years but it’s really not sure.  So death comes to you, today might be my last day.  You live more in this perspective.  You have this long-term plan but you also live each day as if it would be your last day.

If you live within the realization of the lam rim -  this precious human rebirth, impermanence, that you can die any day, then naturally your selfishness decreases.  Because if I am going to die today, all my the persons that I am attached to, I won’t see again.  It really decreases the mental afflictions.  And then you reach the third point, if I were to die, what’s the use of my friends, my wealth, and even my body?  I cannot take it with me.  The only thing I can take with me is my state of mind.  How much attachment do I have?  How much detachment, how much love, how much understanding of emptiness—that’s the only thing we take. 

And then it’s helpful to spend a few days going over the lower realms, if you don’t have a big problem with it. It’s very helpful. It’s kind of like a cold shower. Yes, psychologically it’s a cold shower. Wow, something amazing is happening.  Yes, there’s no guarantee I won’t end up in something like that.  Myself I like to reflect on the health on this planet - reading the news, people get burned in the third degree, or things like that, or being beheaded.  Thank you so much.  Some horrible thing happens. Or being imprisoned/interrogated in Guantanamo Base. Gosh, you don’t say, “Please give me the answer to my question.” You know the torture a human being can inflict on others is just mind-blowing.  So if you were on the recipient side of those tortures. . . . 

So then, simply the health, what it is, it’s just that suffering, you don’t die. The human being has an advantage-- if you suffer too much, you collapse, you die. So the consciousness cannot stay, but in hell you don’t have a physical body so you don’t die. It’s a body of energy that is created by your karma. So you suffer and suffer and suffer and you don’t die. And if you die your karma creates the body again. It’s like a mental body, or an astral body or dream body.  The suffering lasts as long as the karma is not finished. It’s not because you die and it’s finished and you are born somewhere else.

I think it is good to know the mental affliction linked to each action so that you know that each time you are angry you actually book a space down there.  Each time you become too obsessed about something, you reserve a body in the ghost realm. And each time you are stupid, kind of dull, your mind unclear, foggy, you reserve a place as an animal.  And on that basis your refuge becomes very strong. Then you spend a week or two weeks on refuge, going through the outlines on the Buddha’s qualities. You spend two weeks on that.  And then the refuge becomes very stable - the qualities of Buddha, dharma, sangha.

Then you move on to karma. Again you spend two or three weeks on karma, the second and third session, until you feel you get all the ins and outs about it. Then you move to the Four Noble Truths, again two or three weeks. And then you stabilize your renunciation, your aspiration to reach enlightenment, again two to three weeks. And then you move on to Bodhicitta. 

So then you have the first session in the morning which is guru devotion, the second and third, Bodhicitta, and the last one, emptiness. So you would do a glance meditation to maintain the realizations you got on the other topics - a glance meditation on precious human rebirth, impermanence and death, suffering of lower realms, refuge, karma, cyclic existence, and develop a determination to be free.  You would spend 15 minutes on that just not to lose the feeling of those state, but the main bulk would be Bodhicitta, emptiness, and guru devotion. You’ll reach a point where these are quite stable in your mind.

CALM-ABIDING

Then you reach a point where you see that, if you want to have a realization at a deeper level, you need to improve your concentration. That’s where you start to put more attention on Calm-abiding. Okay, Bodhicitta, you can get it a little bit. But if you really want to feel the union with your guru in a stable way, you need to have calm abiding to be able to stay there.  And then Bodhicitta, if you want to have it in a stable way in a break time, you need a certain level of calm abiding. The same thing for emptiness, if you want it to penetrate, to really remove mental afflictions, you need to develop calm abiding. So at some point in your retreat, after a few months, you start seeing, wow, without calm abiding, you cannot go very far.  So you start working on pacing the mind on one object for 10 minutes and when you are comfortable with that you gradually extend to 15 minutes etc..  You should stop the session of calm-abiding before you are exhausted, so that you have the wish to come to it again. 

If you have a deity practice, you could use the deity’s body as an object of calm-abiding.  If you go through the nine stages of calm-abiding, —yourself as a deity.  It’s, how to say, it’s taking the result into the path.  You imaging yourself as a Buddha so you transform actually yourself into a Buddha, a body of bliss and void. You meditate on that. You develop calm abiding on that. 

In the Gelugpa tradition this is how you would gain realization during a retreat.  That’s how Choden Rinpoche, Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche lived.  Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche spent seventeen years in retreat - ten years or twelve of which doing this lam rim and a few years on tantra. Because once you have the realization of the lamrim, if you have guru devotion, emptiness, and Bodhicitta, tantra is nothing.  With tantra, in three years you can get enlightened it is said if you have the base of the lam.rim realisation.  In three years you get it, but if you don’t have the base, you can spend your whole life doing visualizations and you get nothing. You lack the ground. Basically you get imprints--all your sadhanas and prayers. It’s just imprint for a next life.  It’s great to get imprints from tantra.  Or, if you are very fortunate to be reborn in the pure lands. Choden Rinpoche also spent some twenty years in retreat.  Amy asked Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, because she was quite close to Rinpoche. She went out with Rinpoche a few times to visit doctor and to have lunch so she asks him, “You spent twenty years just on the lam rim, doing these prayers, just the lam rim?”  And he said, “You do these meditations for a while and suddenly your mind is blessed and moved by these meditations and suddenly something click in your mind and your realization comes very fast”.  You make very little progress for years and then suddenly, because of the merit of doing these practices and purifying and collecting merit, then suddenly these things come together and very quickly you get high realizations. So this is a little bit of the yogic path in the Gelugpa tradition.

Student question

Normally they say you keep it, but from my experience you get a bit bored going over the reasons.  So then you start doing it a little bit different.  Like you start reciting prayers like different praises to the guru. You would be a little bit more creative with your guru devotion than just reading the lam rim part. 

GURU YOGA

Doing your Lama Chopa, is actually guru devotion meditation because all the main points are in there.  You don’t need to do necessarily a separate meditation because in there the verses reflect on the guru’s qualities, kindness and request of blessing, so all the main point are covered.

The guru yoga of Lama Tsong Khapa may be a little bit short because you don’t have all the reasons a guru is a Buddha. In Lama Chopa, many verses remind you to see the guru as a Buddha, so doing the Lama Chopa would replace doing the lam rim on guru devotion after a while because you have all the points which remind you of that state of mind.  Basically the essence of guru devotion is to see the guru as Buddha, that you have no doubt that the guru is Buddha. It means he is here not just when you are in his presence. He is Buddha even if you are in your room, the Buddha, the guru, is right here in front of you because he has the omniscient mind.  Where there is the omniscient mind, there is the sambhogakaya from your guru’s side.  His Holiness the Dalai Lama is right there in front of you in your room even though he might be in India and very busy. It you have that realization that the guru is Buddha, then your guru is there right where you are. So that’s the first realization that you get there.  And then the second is to remember his kindness.  You see from the point you enter the path, even in previous lives, the dharmakaya, the Buddha is what made you create the virtue to have the special human rebirth in this life.  And in the life he created the condition for you to meet the dharma, give you all the teachings and initiations and things like that.  Basically he gave you the whole path to enlightenment. So you try to remember his kindness like that. He gives you worldly happiness, he gives you liberation, and he gives you enlightenment. So by thinking about his qualities, and then his kindness, then you have the right state of mind of having proper devotion.  And then on that base the blessing is very strong. They say how much blessing you receive is dependent upon how much devotion you have. So the more respect and devotion you have for your teacher, the more blessing you get from that teacher. It’s like that.  I think we all experience that in small ways, some privileged moment in our lives.  So there you just try to make it stable.

And then, especially, as long as we have an ordinary mind, which is not stable in realization of emptiness, we always project forth.  It’s natural. We always have doubts, seeing the guru as ordinary, so then one has to work with that in the outline of the lam rim—what I see is not necessarily true or maybe he manifests in such a way that for some reason I don’t know.  You try to work in ways so this doubting mind isn’t an obstacle to your devotion.  That’s a very key point.  And maybe the Buddhas manifest in such a way just to purify my mind and mental obscurations - even if he scolds you. Different stories are given as exemple- like the guy who himself was a teacher, with his close student and each time they went to visit the guru of that guru, the teacher  got scolded by his own master.  “You are so stupid.  You are so silly.” He was always criticized. So each time they went to see his guru he was criticized.  So then the disciple asks his guru, “So why do you keep on going to visit him?  Each time he scolds you. He criticizes you.  Everything you do is wrong.  Why keep on going to see him? You are a great teacher yourself. Why do you need that?”  He replied to his disciple, “Well, don’t think like that.  Actually the guru is so kind to me. Each time I go to visit him it’s like a hundred thousand prostrations because he purifies my mind. Each time he scolds me, each time he criticizes me, it’s the greatest purification.  

You see, that’s the right attitude, because that’s the way that criticism comes from. It’s karma ripening. If you haven’t created the cause, it wouldn’t happen.  But if you are able to take it, because it comes from your guru and because you have the right attitude of devotion and respect, that criticism becomes the greatest purification. 

Those states of mind become firm in your mind when you have the realizations of guru devotion. By meditating on it, it becomes firm in your mind. And then your spiritual path becomes very fast because the main interference to spiritual progress is lack of devotion, or mistaken devotion, mistaken practice with a guru. That’s the biggest obstacle for spiritual realization.

[Paraphrased comment from a retreat participant: In certain cultures, guru devotion would be hard and I think it would be hard in our culture.]

Yes, it’s the most difficult one.  That’s why you don’t have it in the book.  Because to us for now, to start there would freak people out.  Like His Holiness says, the best way to start in Buddhism is with the Four Noble Truths. Because that’s fact.  So you start there. And then you respect the teacher as a kind person.  He has more knowledge than you.  And you can see he has a kind heart. Or you can see his morality, his concentration and wisdom there, and he knows a little bit more than you.  That’s feasible.  To see the guru as Buddha, is really in the context of tantra.  It’s where it becomes indispensable.  Any questions about that? 

[Question: How to do if one hasn’t time to do four sessions?.]

So normally that’s if you are able to do four sessions a day. That’s how it is explained, at the end of Liberation, Pabongka Rinpoche also clarify a little bit, the signs of realization of the different points of the lam rim. 

So if you would do three sessions a day, if you only manage to do three sessions, let’s say you manage to do two in the morning and one at night, you would do guru devotion, moving to the lam rim in the second, and emptiness for the last one at night.      

And then if you do only two sessions a day, one in the morning and one at night, you would do guru devotion in the morning and the rest, going gradually through the lam rim at night.  You know, precious rebirth, just moving through it like that.

And if you only do just one session a day--[hearty laugh!]. . . .  My feeling is that if you do half hour, I would do as if three sessions.  I would do ten minutes, ten minutes, and ten minutes, to work on all three.

EMPTINESS

They say emptiness is very important.  My feeling is that we should read something everyday about emptiness.  Because if for a while you don’t read about emptiness, your understanding about it becomes narrower and narrower.  If you keep on reading about it, your mind becomes sharper and clearer about it.  So the more you read about it, not necessarily always the Prasangika view, but sometimes different schools, it helps.  Your mind becomes more sharp, clearer.  If you know the reasoning and you say, “I know it now,” and you just relax in that, you’ll see that your understanding just becomes smaller, smaller, smaller.  You become less precise or less sharp.

At least I see myself, sometimes I put more emphasis on it.  I read a little bit everyday on emptiness, and I get very sharp, very clear about it.  And if I don’t have time, I just do Om Shababa ,.., like that and I stay in emptiness, and, after a few weeks of doing that, my emptiness becomes very simple. [laughs].  So also you have to see that in the lam rim meditation you have three stages. How to say it? Lam rim meditation you have different ways.  You have the glance meditation. Where you just go over it.  You read the points, the outline. You know, precious human rebirth, the eight freedoms, and what you can do with it, and how hard it is to get and things like that.  That’s glance meditation. 

Then you have the actual analytical meditation.  Where actually you go into it.  You just read one point and you reflect on it experientially.  Then you try to experience, to live that point of the lam rim - I have the freedom of not being born in hell. So you imagine what it would like in hell and how it would be impossible to practice the dharma.  And you say, I’m free of that problem.  Or you say, I’m not a cripple. Or I’m not blind.  Or, I’m not stupid.  You know, some people’s minds are so stupid that they cannot get it.  Or, in this life, you become a terrorist. That’s your spiritual path.  That’s having a wrong view. So we don’t have this wrong view.  We’re not on a outer jihad. We are not completely led astray by some worldly passion, like becoming some big businessman or politician.  We are not carried away by some huge stuff that prevents us from any spiritual practice.  Imagine what it would be like.  For me, I imagine myself as a soccer player. [laughs]  Yes, it is a good meditation.  Like Beckam. [laughs] How hard it would be to practice dharma.  You have to stay on top in that sport.  You have to work so hard, training everyday, and then you have all this fame business, to give autographs to people. Also to go to TV interviews, journalists running after you, or watching into your home, trying to take pictures of you and your wife.  You wouldn’t have any private life. You are bothered all the time.  On top of that your reputation.  It’s hard to practice.  So like that you realize, in this life I’m free of that.  That’s nice. So that’s meditation analytically. 

DIFFERENT TYPE OF LAMRIM REALIZATION

So to get the experience, in an analytical you have to go quite deep, so that’s called the effortful realization of that point of the lam rim.  You get to that state of mind by meditating on each point by going into it - like how nice it is to be free.  That’s the effortful realization.  And if you do that for two or three weeks, then you go to the spontaneous level. 

Maybe reading the outlines, you go to the experience of that outline, like that. So that would be considered a realization of that point of the lam rim - when you have the effortless realization of that point that you only get after going through the effortful way.  So often people do only glance meditation of the lam rim and they think they got the experience of the lam rim. But they never even started the path. They have read the lam rim. They know it by heart.   But they haven’t entered the path of the lam rim yet.  Because you have to go through the effortful stage.  You put yourself in each stage, you live it, and then from inner experience, you come to that state of mind.  Otherwise it’s just learning it intellectually.  You hear what the lam rim topic is, you know about it in a dualistic way. Whereas the other one, it’s an inner experience.