Opening the Door to Authentic Meditation
“The profound equality of all beings is only known in the moment in which ‘I’ no longer exists. Only through the recognition of emptiness is there stainless compassion. This stainless compassion, inseparable from emptiness, is none other than the ultimate samadhi.”—Phakchok Rinpoche, In the Footsteps of Bodhisattvas An authentic Buddhist master has the ability to precisely identify the unique positive qualities in a student and is able to direct those qualities towards virtuous activity—such that the student, the master, and those connected with both of them are benefited directly and indirectly. The master also has an equally powerful yet devastating ability to reveal the faults of the disciple, such that the student cannot help but face every shred of egotism with which students torture themselves, obscuring the fundamental goodness of their basic nature. In one of the Buddha’s famous teachings entitled the Samādhirāja Sūtra (Samadhi Raja Sutra) or “The King of Meditation,” the Buddha taught that attaining the awakened state—emptiness with a core of compassion—requires us to embrace this process guided by the teacher: to nurture our qualities of goodness such that they overwhelm our faults, and to clearly see the nasty habits of mind so they do not grow in power. Phakchok Rinpoche, Buddhist master and lineage-holder, clearly presents this path of authentic Buddhist training in his new book, In the Footsteps of Bodhisattvas. This process of purification can be long and gentle or short and intense, but according to all of the great Buddhist masters of the past—those incredible beings with whom you can spend ten years and never witness a moment of selfishness—it’s got to happen. If we want to be open, blissful, clear and intelligent, and if we want to enact effortless compassionate activity, we have to go through the process of assembling the conditions of …