In Tibetan Buddhism, the paramita dhyana can be practiced on three levels.
The first level is called worldly concentration. (Some of us hear ‘worldly’ and have been trained to think ‘bad.’ If so, try calling it object meditation instead.) In worldly concentration, we practice meditating on something specific. It can be your breath, a mantra, or even an object like a flame. Your goal is to corral your wild horse thoughts into one singular focus. You teach and train your mind to come back to this one thing, much like you train a dog to sit even when birds fly by or treats are in hand.
The second level is called altruistic concentration. As you’d expect, it means sending your attention toward others in a benevolent way. One simple form of altruistic concentration is metta (or maitri) meditation. Metta means loving-kindness, and this practice offers intentions and prayers of loving-kindness toward others and expands your own compassion. The most common metta meditation is:
May they be well. May they be happy. May they be healthy. May they be at peace. May they be free.
You begin metta meditation with yourself (may I be well, etc.) and then move on to others. Some find it helpful to offer metta in this order: you, someone you love, a friend or family member, someone ‘neutral’, someone you dislike, all beings. The goal is for your circle of compassion to widen, and also to be activated within you.
The third level of dhyana is wisdom meditation. This one is less straight-forward, and it cannot be forced. It usually happens after years of dedication to meditation practice, though it can also spontaneously appear in any moment. In wisdom meditation, you see clearly and fully. You see the true nature of things, the full union of things. Your mind is not focused on one thing, but rather caught up in the wholeness of everything. I can’t speak to wisdom meditation very well, because I have only experienced it in brief glimpses. But in those moments, it’s as if you dissolve into everything around you and yet are fully and deeply connected to everything at the same time.
Lama Surya Das says, “Meditation ultimately helps us bridge the gaps between the knower, the known, and the act of knowing, revealing the wholeness that underlies all.” I know that sounds a little bit like philosophical jargon, but it’s a feeling of being caught up in the connection between everything, rather than distracted by the disconnection and distinctions.
These moments remind us that there is a wholeness that undergirds everything around us and within us.
I love how Lama Surya Das depicts meditation as the act of “awakening others…from the deep sleep of separateness, delusion, and confusion.” I look around the world and see so many people caught in this deep sleep, and it damages us all. This delusion of separation is violence to all of us.
As the month of January, and this month of practicing dhyana, comes to a close, I encourage you to discern for yourself a meditation practice that will protect you from the deep sleep of separateness. Maybe it just takes once a week, or maybe it’s a sticky note on your mirror, or maybe it’s a daily practice. Whatever it is, I hope you will bring that practice with you into the months ahead.
Let us be the awakened ones.
This post is part of the Paramita Project, where I’m practicing one of the ten Buddhist paramitas every month. You can read all my posts for January’s paramita, dhyana, here.
