1 – The Three Trainings that are Essential to One’s Path to Liberation

MORALITY – THE FIRST AND LAST TRAINING… and embodies all steps in between.

Training in morality has as its domain all the physical, verbal, and mental behaviors belonging to every single aspect of life that is not explicitly meditative.

These are all trainings in morality:

To life a good life.

Improving our physical health.

Exercising.

Philosophizing.

Taking care of others.

Mindful of the environment.

Not misusing resources.

A commitment to non-harming.

Benevolent livelihood.

Healthy marriage and relationships.

Raising children.

Or even

Shave your head and move to a remote place

to dedicate to intensive spiritual practice.

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CONCENTRATION, THE SECOND TRAINING

If your effort is too light, your mind will slide off the object,

but if it is too tight you will wind yourself up

and be too tense to settle into steady concentration.

Be kind to yourself when the mind wanders,

returning it with minimal fuss to the object of concentration again and again. Practice again and again until you can attain access concentration.

Tune in to anything smooth, flowing, and nice

about what you are concentrating on and experiencing.

While these two paragraphs may seem trite or sparse,

they contain the formal instructions on

how to begin training in concentration.

The speed with which we can get into skillful altered states of awareness (generally called here “concentration states” or “jhanas”).

The depth to which we can get into each of those states.

The number of objects that we can use to get into each of those states.

The stability of those states in the face of external circumstances.

The various ways we can fine-tune those states

(such as paying attention to and developing their various sub-aspects).

~~~

WISDOM, THE THIRD TRAINING

The third training in the list is wisdom,

in this case a very special kind of wisdom

that I will often call “ultimate” or “fundamental” wisdom.

This may also be rendered as “understanding” or “Insight”.

The whole trick to this training

is to understand some specific aspects of the sensations

that make up our present experience.

By training in insight,

we can improve how we fundamentally perceive reality at a bare sensate level,

such that our actual sensate experience becomes progressively clearer.

This increased clarity can become hardwired into our brains,

such that our baseline degree of sensate clarity increases.

This increased clarity can have numerous positive and

sometimes surprising implications.

Great meditators from all traditions have reported that

there is something remarkable and even enlightening about

our ordinary experiences

if we take the time to investigate them very carefully.

Let’s begin by taking it as a wholesome given that

there is some understanding

that is completely beyond any ordinary understanding,

even beyond the skillful altered states of consciousness that can be attained

if we train well in concentration.

~~~

The next premise is that

there are specific practices that can and will

lead to that understanding if we simply do them.

The third and perhaps most vital premise is that

we can do these specific practices and be successful.

The given—rarely stated explicitly but often implied—is that

we must be willing to stay on a sensate level,

at the level of the actual sensations that make up experiences,

if we wish to gain the promised insights.

The corollary of this premise is:

that we must be willing to set aside periods of practice time

during which we abandon ordinary ways of functioning in the world

and even the unusual way of working with skillful altered states of consciousness

that belongs to the training in concentration.

We proceed from the premise that

the teachings on wisdom point to universal truths

that can be perceived in all types of experience without exception.

We accept that if we can simply know our sensate experience clearly enough,

we will arrive at fundamental wisdom.

Insight practice is all about putting those broader ways of working aside

and instead

grounding attention in our six sense doors and their true nature.

While there are clear overlaps among the trainings, even on the cushion,

I feel that to try to

counterbalance our strong habits of working more broadly

is of value to most practitioners.

The primary purpose for doing insight practices is

to increase our perceptual abilities so that

the truths accessed by skilled meditators become obvious.

Thus,

rather than caring what we think, say, or do,

or

caring about what altered state of consciousness we are in:  

when training in wisdom,

we actively work to develop the clarity, resolution, precision, consistency, and

inclusiveness of the experience of all of the constantly changing sensations

that make up our experience, whatever and however they may be:

such are the formal insight practice instructions.

Insight practice can seem more daunting, complex, or bizarre

than other forms of practice.

However,

it is oddly simple.

There are six sense doors.

Sensations arise and vanish.

Notice this for every sensation.

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The gold standard for training in morality is how consciously

harmless, kind, skillful, and compassionate our intentions, words, and actions are

and how well we lead a useful and moral life.

The gold standard for training in concentration is

how quickly we can enter into specific, skillful, altered states of consciousness

on our own meditative power, how long we can stay in them, and

how refined, complete, and stable we can make those states.

The gold standard for training in wisdom with insight practices is

that we can quickly and consistently perceive the true nature of

the countless quick sensations that make up our whole reality,

regardless of what those sensations are,

allowing us to cut to a level of understanding that goes

utterly beyond specific conditions but includes them all.

~~~

Having gained at least enough morality to be

temporarily free of agitating negative mind states

and enough concentration to steady the mind,

turn your attention to the bare truth of the sensations of this moment.

This is called insight meditation,

which is designed to produce a form of knowledge or wisdom

that can transform and free us from our

core perceptual misinterpretations of sensate reality,

or as being an ego mind body.

Many people try to make insight practices into an exercise that will produce

both insights into the ordinary world and ultimate insights.

There are numerous traditions that specifically advocate for this sort of practice

that attempts to work on both fronts simultaneously.

However,

I have concluded that we should not count on ultimate teachings

to illuminate or resolve our relative issues or vice versa.

Therefore,

it is extremely important not only to practice all three trainings,

but also

not to conflate the relative and ultimate wisdom teachings.

Failure to do so causes endless problems and makes progress more difficult.