Samten

The First Step to Waking Up

As social beings, we humans dwell in a state of mutual delusion. Our various tribes and races
work collectively to maintain this confused state. There are many names for our collusion:
culture, politics, religion, science, law, and custom, etc. Even the languages we speak and the
music we play is a product of that collusion. As a result, what we call reality is in fact, just a
mutual fabrication formed through consensus and intimidation. Recent research in both
astrophysics and neurobiology point to the fact that there is no objective material universe, but
only a subjectively perceived universe that is modeled in infinite ways by the human brain.
When such a model is shared within a tribe, a particular interpretation can become an inherited
tradition that gives the culture its unique identity. We become so attached to these shared
conspiracies of the mind that we excommunicate those who resist, and make war on other tribes
with different models.
So for the human species, Darwins principle of survival of the fittest has been subverted into
survival of the sycophant, and peer pressure governs our beliefs. This process has been repeated
for so many generations now that ignorant behavior based on mutual delusion is actually
programmed into our genes and hard-wired into our neural networks. For the last few millennia,
the most prized of these delusions have been raised to the level of religious belief. The fact that
one mans religion is another mans superstition may lead to open warfare, but seldom to an open
mind. Once we get past puberty, our mindsets are basically sealed in a cocoon of tribal
ignorance. We ignore all feedback from the environment, even in the face of great suffering, and
even to the point of extermination.
In the annals of human history, most of our tribes and most of our religions have indeed been
exterminated due in large part to this stubborn communal blindness. Strangely, the survivors
never seem to wake up; they just stumble on to the next fantasy. Over and over, our most prized
delusions crumble as their transitory nature is revealed; but rather than allow them to die
peacefully, we simply replace them with new delusions. The end product of this social madness
is called samsara, a cyclic state of ignorance and suffering. Samsara functions at both a societal
level and at a personal level, and while it is not possible to spontaneously awaken an entire
society from its collective delusion, it is possible to awaken one ego at a time. That is where we
begin the Buddhist Path.
Well over two millennia ago, Gautama Buddha perfected a method to awaken a samsaric mind
from its confused state. He understood that the spiritual practices of his day were missing the
essential point. They were mis-leading practitioners deeper into samsaric sidetracks that would
never escape the wheel of cyclic existence. Buddha also understood that awakening would not
happen by winning a philosophical debate, or by being anointed, or by magical incantations, or
by simply declaring oneself to be awakened. Intellect, theism, magic, and messianic hubris were
useless; the problem lay deeper than this. The problem lay in our attachment to the fundamental
illusion of self and other. All the rest of mankinds woes were just symptoms of this central
misperception. What was needed was a simple method to tame our habitual attachment to this
basic ignorance. He saw clearly that sentient beings are entrapped by a dualistic mindset, and

therefore any path to liberation had to begin within that duality. At the same time, that path had to
lead beyond duality, a seemingly impossible task! The genius of Buddhas discovery was that he
did indeed devise a path in which the practitioner is brought back around to one-pointedness
again and again like a Mobius Strip until ego discovers its own illusory nature as seen through
non-dual awareness.
Buddha summed up his technique as the Four Truths and the Eightfold Path. The Mahayana
schools then distilled Buddhas method into Six Paramitas. The Mahasiddhas distilled them
further into Mahamudra and Dzogchen. The Tibetan Vajrayana combined these paramitas with a
multitude of tantras and yogas. Chan Buddhism combined them with Tao, and Zen combined
them with Shinto. Yet, through all these extrapolations, the essence of Buddhas Mobius Strip has
remained constant within the Dhyana Paramita, known as Meditation. Meditation is the master
key that can unlock the door of any egos prison. It is based on two styles of practice, shamatha
and vipashyana. These are the core of the Dhyana Paramita. The Sanskrit term dhyana is related
to the Japanese word zen. In Tibetan, this is called samten. Sam means thought process, and
ten means stabilized or tamed. So, samten means stabilized mindfulness. Now, samten is not
enlightenment in itself, but it is essential to achieving enlightenment. Without stabilized
mindfulness, there is almost no hope of ever achieving the awakened state. At best, you may
have an occasional glimpse of something profound, but a moment later it will vanish.
Merely glimpsing the view of sameness and equality will not go far because the combined
power of our countless habit patterns distracts us again and again. Therefore, it is
essential to constantly preserve the face of rigpa with a stable mindfulness. This is known
as samadhi (Tib. ting gn dzin).
Guhyagarbha Tantra
Chapter 12
Padma Samye Ling Series

The other paramitas such as generosity, discipline, patience, and exertion can help improve your
karmic circumstances, but it is dhyana meditation that enables the profound leap into prajna and
beyond. When meditation unleashes prajna, uncertainty dissolves into wisdom, and because it
has been cultivated through shamatha and vipashyana, it will be a stable experience. There are no
shortcuts to this.
The Three Levels of Samten
Attainment of the Dhyana Paramita is not merely taming the mind; it is learning how to
synchronize body, speech, and mind within mindfulness. Mastering this method is actually
relaxing, and the relaxation that comes with shamatha is called shinjang. Both your mind and
your body become acclimated to the peacefulness and one-pointedness of calm abiding. Sitting
meditation becomes a natural exercise. So, this shinjang is the first level of samten. It is called
dwelling in the dharma of seeing.
The second level of samten is to accumulate the virtues of vipashyana awareness. Through
vipashyana meditation we gain insight into the three marks of existence that underlie all
phenomena: impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anatta). Obviously,
shamatha and vipashyana are to some extent dualistic and utilize conditioned effort, but there is
no other way to begin the path. You cant just snap your fingers and catapult into non-duality.

That is just wishful thinking. Remember, ignorance has been hard-wired into our neural networks
for a lifetime; it takes some effort to restore the plasticity of openness. Samten is accumulating
the sort of karma and insight that is conducive to non-dual awakening. Repeated sessions of
samten condition the body and mind with spaciousness and awareness. Through vipashyana
you discriminate the dharmas while maintaining mindfulness. In this way you can see how the
ayatanas and dhatus actually function. In other words, you wake up to how the world really
works instead of pretending to know how it works. This clarity is only possible because your
perception has been largely cleared of egos attachments. Conversely, if you havent calmed the
mind with shamatha, your vipashyana will struggle and likely fail miserably. It will just become
another toy for intellect.
The third level of samten is the natural expression of boundless energy that arises from
combining shamatha with vipashyana. When these are combined in a heightened state of dhyana,
your attention becomes both panoramic and wonderfully facile. It is steady like a mountain with
none of the jumpiness that attends to a mind that is blown about by samsaric wind. A mind thus
concentrated, purified, and made pliant can be used to liberate latent karmic accretions and
dissolve any remaining habitual ego formations (samskaras).
The Four Yogas of Mahamudra
The shamatha bhavana has its origins in the Vedic tradition long before the advent of the
historical Buddha. Buddhas genius was to combine that shamatha with vipashyana and use them
in tandem. This yoking together of emptiness and energy was traditionally called yuganaddha,
and it remains the core of theravada, prajnaparamita, tantra, hua-yen, and zen. Likewise, it is an
essential step in Dzogchen and Mahamudra. Lets walk through these steps from the Mahamudra
viewpoint of Four Yogas (naljors). First, shamatha develops a presence of awareness in the
absence of mental contents. This samadhi is called still mind or one-pointedness (tsechik).
Then, vipashyana maintains that presence of awareness while re-integrating mental contents.
This samadhi is called moving mind or simplicity (trodral). Then, as in yuganaddha, one yokes
still mind and moving mind into an inseparable unity where intrinsic awareness and appearances
dwell within a co-emergent union. From this placement, we can see that there is no real division
between relative truth and absolute truth. Hence, this samadhi is the great equanimity (nyampa
chenpo), also known as one-taste (rochik). With continued practice, one eventually achieves the
spontaneous presence of indestructible wakefulness. Now, we have moved beyond samsara and
nirvana. Because pure awareness is now spontaneously present, there is no longer any need for
structured meditation. Consequently, this samadhi is called non-meditation, (gom-me). But,
whether you call this final state Buddhahood or Mahamudra or Dzogchen, its indestructible
nature is not achieved out of thin air. Not even radical Dzogchen or essence Mahamudra can do
that. The reason non-meditation is even possible is because egos preconceptions no longer
intervene. You may still have discursive thoughts and emotions, but there is no longer any
attachment to them. Your old habitual desire to manipulate phenomena has been worn out. Your
old cultural models have dissolved. As the Tibetans say, ego has been completely used up (tense) through the samadhi cultivated in shamatha. To be sure, different types of individuals can
benefit from different practices. Some will benefit from tummo, some from yidam visualization,
some from prajnaparamita, and some from the four yogas, etc., but all paths depend on that first
humble step of taming the attention. Without that first rung on the ladder, all the higher rungs
remain out of reach.

The four samadhis mentioned above are just an overview of the Four Yogas of Mahamudra.
There is much more detail to each yoga, and there are traditionally three levels of
accomplishment for each yoga. In actual practice, however, all four yogas can manifest
simultaneously. Success depends on a stable shamatha. As the basic levels of samten deepen and
mature, they overcome the common obstacles that can thwart the practice of Dzogchen and
Mahamudra. The inability to control the body (e.g. disease, addiction, obesity), succumbing to
mindless chatter (e.g. texting), the inability to keep the attention on point (e.g. ADS), upheavals
in the kleshas (emotions), mistaking laziness for letting be (chogzhag), failure to heed the
upadeshas; all of these hindrances demonstrate a regression in your practice of shamatha and
vipashyana. There is no free ride. There is no magic bullet. You must either practice shamatha, or
you will succumb to these obstacles. It is very much like Newtonian physics; you have to
overcome inertia in order to achieve momentum. In this case, one must apply the force of
mindfulness. It might be entertaining to fantasize about quantum leaps into the boundless space
of dharmadhatu, but without samten you wouldnt be aware of it even if it happened. You would
just be trapped in a blank alaya state of ignorance.
Shinjang
Conversely, as samten is perfected you can re-engage in daily activity without losing the thread
of shamatha and vipashyana. At that point, body, speech, and mind have been shinjang-ed, as
Trungpa Rinpoche used to call it. This relaxed command of the dhatus gives rise to the
spontaneous expression of both relative and ultimate bodhicitta, manifesting as maitri, karuna,
mudita, and upeksha. This is no small matter. It is not something that can be skipped over or
written off as inferior gradual path. It is the very ground of Buddhism. First you have to tame
the mind with shamatha, and then you have to learn how to ride that pliant mind in shinjang.
Without these steps, there can be no Mahamudra and no Dzogchen.
Going back to the original practice of shamatha is important for these four yogas of
mahamudra. Even at the level of non-meditation, you still do not give up the technique
and the style of shamatha and vipashyana discipline. You use the same technique, have
the same posture, and the same sense of uprightness all the time.
Shamatha is always important. You have to maintain a shamatha-like precision of body
and speech. You have to be in that state all the time.
Over time, the shamatha technique becomes ingrained. So, even when you have attained
non-meditation, you do not just collapse and you do not become an idiot. You always
carry your dignity. But at this point, you have realized what is known as co-emergent
wisdom.
The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness
Chapter 57
~ Chogyam Trungpa

Note: the subjects of rigpa and co-emergent union are not developed here. That will come in my
next paper. This paper is just an overview of samten as the necessary first step to any higher
practice.
4

Written by Jon Norris at Nagi Naljor

For the benefit of all
January, 2013