HtUtM - Meditations (2)

Question 1

What are the 4 meditations of a person of middling scope?

Answer 1

(Middling or intermediate scope: Overcome attachment to samsara in general)

1. Renunciation
2. Recognize / reduce / abandon our self-grasping ignorance
3. Enter and make progress on the path to liberation
4. Ultimate truth of cessation

Question 2

Med on renunciation: Purpose?

Answer 2

To enter, make progress on and complete the path to liberation.

…To achieve this, we need to consider what we should know, abandon, practice, and attain.
…Buddha says “You should know sufferings”… meaning know about the sufferings of future lives, and therefore develop renunciation
…vs focusing on the sufferings of the current life is no different from animals

Question 3

Med on renunciation: What are the various kinds of human suffering?

Answer 3

Birth / sickness / ageing / death.

And other types: separation, encountering what we don’t like, not fulfilling our wishes, etc.

Question 4

Med on renunciation: Object?

Answer 4

Our determination to liberate ourself permanently from the sufferings of this life and of countless future lives.

Question 5

Med on abandoning self-grasping ignorance: Purpose?

Answer 5

To fulfill the aim of our renunciation.

…Buddha says in 4 noble truths: “You should abandon origins” (meaning delusions, principly self-grasping)

Question 6

Med on abandoning self-grasping ignorance: Object?

Answer 6

Our determination to abandon our self-grasping ignorance

Question 7

Med on determination to enter and make progress on the path to liberation: Purpose?

Answer 7

To encourage ourself to engage in the actual path to liberation, the three higher trainings.

…Buddha says in the 4 noble truths: “You should practice the path”. (path is a spiritual realization that leads us to the pure happiness of liberation)

Question 8

Med on determination to enter and make progress on the path to liberation: What are the 3 higher trainings?

Answer 8

1. In higher moral discipline (virtuous determination to abandon inappropriate actions; like a great earth that supports the crops of spiritual realizations)
2. In higher concentration (a single-pointed virtuous mind); with distractions we cannot accomplish anything; normally this is the main obstacle to our Dharma practice
3. In higher wisdom (a virtuous intelligent mind that functions to understand meaningful objects such as the existence of past & future lives, karma, and emptiness)

…They are called ‘higher’ because they’re motivated by renunciation.
…Therefore they’re the actual path to liberation that we need to practice.

…In cutting down the tree of self-grasping ignorance, body = moral discipline, hands = concentration, saw = wisdom.

Question 9

Med on determination to enter and make progress on the path to liberation: Object?

Answer 9

Our determination to practice the three higher trainings

Question 10

Med on the ultimate truth of cessation: Purpose?

Answer 10

To prevent us from being satisfied with a merely temporary cessation of particular sufferings

…Buddha says in 4 noble truths: “You should attain cessations.” (permanent cessation of suffering and its root, self grasping ignorance)

Question 11

Med on the ultimate truth of cessation: Object?

Answer 11

Our determination to realize the ultimate truth of cessation, the supreme inner peace of nirvana, through our own experience.