Bodhisattva ethical restraints: Auxiliary vow 25

• Auxiliary vows 24-26 are to eliminate obstacles to the far-reaching practice of meditative stabilization. Abandon:
• 25. Not abandoning the five obscurations which hinder meditative stabilization: excitement and regret, harmful thought, sleep and dullness, desire, and doubt.
• Dullness and lethargy
• Restlessness and regret

Even though there’s no inherently existent sentient beings or any inherently existent “I,” still, having compassion for sentient beings is suitable. Even though we, ourselves, and the sentient beings and even the compassion itself exists only at a level of appearances, and are thus dependent arisings, still they function. So, cultivating compassion is definitely worthwhile because it dispels the non-inherently existent but dependently arising suffering of self and others. With that motivation let’s talk about the bodhisattva precepts.

Patience Learning Emptiness

Did that sound strange to you? To say non-inherently existent, yet dependently arising sentient beings and self and compassion, does that sound strange? Do we have any idea what in the world that means? Even if we get over it sounding strange, to get some idea of what it means? Guy was quite concerned after this morning that some of you were getting confused. And I told him, “Look, there’s no way around it.”  He was saying, “You know, wouldn’t it be nice if there were a little Gelugpa primer on what emptiness is?” And I said, “Even if there was such a thing, nobody would understand it, we’d all still get confused.”  

There’s this thing in the practice of fortitude or patience, there’s the fortitude of understanding the Dharma, the patience of understanding the Dharma. That means that everything is not going to be crystal-clear. Not at the beginning, and probably not in the middle, and maybe a little bit at the end. But in our Western mind, we want to understand everything exactly as it is right now, at least the words and the concepts. The meaning, forget about that, but the words and the concepts, we want to understand them all. We want to make everything fit into nice, neat, little boxes that we can talk about, so we sound educated. 

Learning about emptiness is not like that. Learning about anything in the Dharma is not like that. Especially the Gelugpa try and make everything make sense, but even in this process of trying to make everything make sense it’s very confusing, isn’t it? There’s absolutely no way to learn this material without being confused. There’s no way to do it. Because if we weren’t confused by learning it, we would have already realized emptiness. Okay? So, we haven’t realized emptiness, our mind’s full of wrong conceptions, and some of the material makes you go like this. That happened to Guy today. You know, like, “Oh, rebirth in samsara is not beginningless? Wait a minute, I thought I had that all down.” This is what happens, this is part of the process, and this is what makes us think. If we understood everything already, we’d be way beyond. 

If you’re confused, that’s completely natural. And don’t plan on getting unconfused for a while. Keep learning, keep asking questions, keep thinking about things, but don’t get discouraged, and don’t think you’re the only one. There are two things: either the teacher isn’t doing a very good job—“I don’t understand it because the teacher’s contradicting themselves, and this and that”—or “I’m too stupid.” Don’t go to either place; because it’s not that you’re stupid, and it’s not that the teacher is stupid either. It’s that this is the whole process of what learning about emptiness entails.

Audience: Maybe I don’t understand at all. For me, there’s something that I grasp, but my mind thinks, “It’s way simpler than all those difficult words” and then I’m afraid that I simplyfy too much.

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): Yes, sometimes it seems like there should be a much easier way to say things, and you understand something with simpler words, but then you’re afraid that you’re not understanding it correctly because it seems too simple.

Audience: Yes.

VTC: You know, the only way to know if that’s true is to keep on learning, and then you’ll figure out whether you’re on track or not on track. Keep learning and thinking about it, and see if all those complicated words and your understanding that seems rather simple, see if they match up over time. Because sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. 

Audience: I also heard a few days ago, somebody said, “It’s so simple, but at the same time we must work so hard for it. But it’s so simple.”

VTC: Yes, I think when you finally get it, it must seem simple, like, “Duh.” But in the process of getting there… But look at how many things in our life have been like that, when we look at something at the beginning – “This is like, huh?” And then after we understand it, we go, “Why, of course!” There are so many things in our life like that. This isn’t a new experience. 

Where you really must be careful is when you think you understand it. And you think, “Oh, yes, blah, blah.” And then the slightest thing happens in your life, and you’re like, “Ahhhh!! Realization of emptiness?! That has nothing to do with this, you’re wrong! I’m mad, and I’m right!” Remember that great meditator up in the mountains who grew dreadlocks while being in samadhi for so many years? When he woke up and found the mice nesting in his dreadlocks, he got really upset with them. He chased all the mice away.

Audience: The session this morning inspired me to pull out the notes I had from last time where we made that list of what to do when we feel self-pity and discouraged. I made the list.

VTC: Good! How many of you made the list? Two people. Really? Out of all of you, two people, three people. 

Audience: I wrote it down while we were talking about it.

VTC: Yes, you wrote it down, but are you going to remember you have the list? Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey said, “Oh, you take such good notes, and then the notebooks go on the top shelf, and you never take it down again and read them. And when you have a problem, you go, ‘I don’t know what to do.’” 

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: Yes, that’s it. So, the first step is knowing it, but then it doesn’t mean that it’s going to work instantaneously. That’s why on these ones about attachment and anger, the transgression is if you don’t try to apply it. But if you try to apply it and aren’t successful, you haven’t transgressed it. Precisely for that very thing that you said, that it isn’t always easy when we first apply these things. Our mind, our self-centered thought and our wrong-conception mind don’t just go, “Oh, yeah, right: I surrender.” They go, “Ahhhhh! These antidotes are totally stupid!”  It’s very much exactly like you described. That’s why we call it “practice.” The word practice implies repetition, doesn’t it? Practice doesn’t imply “one time.” Practice implies repetition, so that’s what we do.

Audience: If you forget to do the antidote, but then you remember to purify, is it still a transgression?

VTC: Well, there was a transgression, but now you’re purifying the transgression. You forgot to use the antidote, but later you go, “Oh, I forgot.” So you purify, and you make the determination to avoid transgressing in the future – that part of the purification to change something in the future—“Next time this happens, I’m going to remember the antidote.” And even as you’re purifying, apply the antidote, because unless you really resolve the initial emotion, it’s going be hard to purify. Maybe you forgot at the time (the attachment was strong, or the anger was strong) to apply the antidote, but after some time goes on, those emotions aren’t that strong. Still, you need to apply the antidote, because unless you do, in the back of your mind it’s like, “Well, I’m not as angry as I used to be, but they’re still wrong and I’m still the innocent victim,” or “That object is really desirable, and I definitely have to have it.” 

So, it’s all a process. We tend to be very, very goal-oriented, as a culture, Western culture. It’s like, “Get me to the goal!” And practicing Dharma is the process. So, we must learn to enjoy the process and let the goal take care of itself. But if we’re constantly like, “How come I haven’t reached the goal yet?” then we’re making the process very difficult. We’re actually creating obstacles for ourselves and making ourselves very unhappy at the same time by saying, “Oh, I should have really mastered this, I should understand this by now, I should have been enlightened.” I told you I’m giving a talk in Portland called “I Want to be Enlightened by Tuesday” because this is how we are—“Get me to the goal!”

So, we did 24, “Not seeking the means to develop meditative concentration.” That means not taking teachings on developing meditative concentration when teachings are being given from a teacher that you trust, who you have a connection with, and they are giving correct explanations, you’re not sick, and everything like that.

25. Not discarding the obstacles to meditative concentration

Twenty-five is, “Not discarding the obstacles to meditative concentration.” Here it says, “Not abandoning the five obscurations”—it’s usually called the five hindrances—“which hinder meditative stabilization: excitement and regret, harmful thought,”—usually malice or ill-will—“sleep and dullness, desire,”—or attachment to sense pleasure—“and doubt.”

There are the five hindrances which are those, and then there’s the five faults which come in the Asanga/Maitreya texts. But here we’re talking about the five hindrances, and these are described in the early suttas. 

Here the fault concerns the action itself, which is training in concentration meditation. When we are meditating to develop our powers of concentration and one of the five kinds of hindrances arises, we commit a misdeed associated with afflictions by letting it run its course and not doing anything to dispel it. On the other hand, there’s no misdeed when we try hard to counteract the hindrance but cannot.

So, there it is: the thing that’s important is to try. 

Many people wish to meditate, which is an excellent aspiration. However, to make progress in meditation it is extremely important to learn about the hindrances to concentration.

Because if we don’t know what the hindrances are, how are we going to know what we need to abandon and when we have good concentration?

We must determine the exact nature of each, know how they differ and where the distinctions between them lie.

We need to not just know this intellectually but be able to identify all these hindrances in our own experience, in our own mind. So that when we are meditating, we can say, “Oh, this is excitement” or “This is regret,” or whatever it is. 

In the whole world, no presentation of the mental factors clearer than Lord Buddha’s is to be found. None of the sciences propose a more intelligible explanation of the aspects and functioning of the mind. Modern science offers quantities of information, thanks to which people now have a better grasp of the world around them. To supplement it however, would it not be worthwhile drawing from Buddhism what science does not provide, such as the definitions of the mental factors? To progress in meditation it is vital to understand how the mind functions. Of course, instructions on meditation are not unique to Buddhism; they are found in other religions as well. But to improve our meditation, why not study and try applying the information so clearly presented in Buddhism?

I think there must have been a student there who was going, “Psychology is it. All we need is psychology.” 

In the present context, the five major hindrances to the development of one-pointed concentration are set out somewhat differently. Seven hindrances are regrouped as five.

The first one he says is excitement and regret. Usually, instead of excitement, they sometimes say “restlessness.” Restlessness and regret; the mind is not settled. Two is lethargy and sleep, or sometimes called “dullness and sloth,” sloth and dullness, something like that. Next is ill-will, or malice. Then there’s attraction to desire-realm objects, or desire for sense objects. And finally there’s deluded doubt. 

To analyze the hindrances to be discarded we must first identify them, then see what conditions favor them, and finally determine the ways to discard them.

When we say “identify them,” of course know the definition and things like that, but we need to identify them in our own mind like I was saying, to be able to see them, then see what conditions favor them. When I have doubt arising in my mind, what were the conditions that made this doubt come in my mind? When my mind is just thinking about sex and food, what are the conditions that made my mind think about this? When I’m sitting there doing meditative concentration on retaliation to somebody who harmed me, how did I get there? What are the conditions? So, we want to understand the causes and conditions that make those hindrances arise in our mind. 

That often has a lot to do with what we do in the break time. That’s why we say it’s so important to not just do formal meditation sessions, but to really structure our whole lives so that what we do in the rest of our life is helping our meditation sessions. Then our meditation sessions can help with what’s happening in the rest of our lives. That’s why the whole idea of simplifying our lives is there, or the reason simplifying our lives is so important.

Finally, [we need to] determine the ways to discard them.

We need to know what the antidotes to these different hindrances are. What do I do when they’re strong in my mind? What’s the Dharma medicine? And then take the Dharma medicine. Don’t just have it written in your notebook, sitting on the top shelf.

Restlessness and regret constitute the first obstacle.

Actually, in the Pali canon they usually start with sensual desire. Anyway, they’re in a different order here, it doesn’t really matter.

As we have seen, restlessness derives from attachment and is a form of mental agitation in which our thoughts are drawn to pleasant experiences or attractive objects.

Restlessness, I think as it’s described more in the Pali tradition, is just the mind being very restless. Behind that restlessness there can also be a form of attachment. When we’re restless, what’s going on? Aren’t we looking for something that’s going to bring us pleasure? Our mind is restless because we’re looking for something that’s going to give us some kind of pleasure that we can latch onto. If you look at boredom, boredom isn’t listed anywhere in the mental factors, but when we’re really bored, what happens, what’s the mind doing?

Audience: It’s very restless.

VTC: It’s very restless, isn’t it? And what are we wanting? 

Audience: Something to occupy us, something to excite us.

VTC: Something to excite us, something to give us some pleasure that’s going to be like, “Oh, yeah, this is great.” It’s a very interesting thing to investigate, especially in our day and age where I think a lot of people suffer from boredom. They’re running around looking for all sorts of things to distract them so that they have a life. 

Audience: Is it always attachment that’s behind restlessness? Or could there be other things?

VTC: I think there could be other things, like when you feel ill at ease or you have some kind of moodiness, and the mind is restless because you’re moody. There could be other things behind the restlessness, but very often it’s attachment, looking for something nice to occupy the mind.

Audience: What is restlessness then? For me, restlessness is like yesterday in the kitchen—there’s stress. Is that attachment?

VTC: No, I think that stress is something else. I think that stress is like, “I’ve got to do something really quickly, and I’ve got to get this done.” Stress is more about pressure, pressurizing yourself. Whereas restless is when there’s not necessarily any pressure on us to do something or finish something, but we’re just like, “You know, I want some chocolate, I want something beautiful, I want…”

Audience: We can’t be happy just being in the moment.

VTC: You’ll see with your restlessness that sometimes it’s mental restlessness, sometimes it’s physical restlessness. Sometimes you can’t tell whether it’s mental or physical. I remember my Vajrasattva retreat, when I did it, I had such incredible problems with my right knee. I just could not sit with that leg folded, and I had to stretch it, put it back and stretch it, and put it back again, and it felt like, “Oh, this is just so much pain here.” It finally dawned on me that it wasn’t the pain, it was the restless energy inside of me. I had so much restless energy that was coming out as “stretch my leg, wiggle, do all of this.” Why did I have all this restless energy? Because I never sat down much. I was always on the go, doing this, doing that. And when I sat down, it was like, “Naaaah! I have so much energy, I’m vibrating.”  I thought it was physical pain, but I think it was restless energy and a very restless mind. When the mind is restless, the body gets restless, too, doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s like, “I cannot sit on this seat any longer!” Have you ever had that? It’s like, “I’ve been looking at the time since the class started, I’ve been doing well sitting here, and I just can’t stand it anymore.” Boom! Out the door. You ever have that? 

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: For me, it’ll happen, and usually I’ll get angry about something. It’s like nothing’s happened or some tiny thing happened, and I’ll sit there and be “anger, anger,” or just irritation. Sometimes it’s even like, “This meditation session is going on too long” or “My teacher is telling me to experience bliss—I don’t experience bliss, and I’m so frustrated, and they all experience bliss, and I’m not experiencing bliss. I can’t stand being in this room any longer!” You ever had that? It’s like, “This teaching is too long, this meditation session is too long, this initiation is too long, I cannot stand it, I am going to freak out.”

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: Yes. When you’re on a long flight. It’s like, “Get me out of here!”

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: It’s all of that. “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be doing! What is meditation? What’s going on here? And this is just all driving me crazy!” You’ll have that type of session, then the next session you’ll fall asleep, and then the next session the meditation is so clear, so deep, and you’re really focused. This is why Lama used the expression “yo-yo mind.” That’s what it is—restlessness, mental restlessness, physical restlessness.

What do you do? What’s an antidote to it? This is where I think doing the Ngöndro practices are so helpful. Because so many of the Ngöndro practices, the preliminary practices, have to do with doing physical things. In your 100,000 prostrations, what are you doing? Where’s all that restless physical energy going? Down and up, and down and up. With mandala offerings, what are you doing? Where’s that energy going? You are doing something physical. Your 100,000 water bowl offerings—you are doing something physical. With Dorje Khadro, what are you doing? You’re doing something physical. 

Audience: Offering service.

VTC: Offering service. Exactly, exactly. Making tsa-tsas, cooking for the community, working in the forest. Because we can’t expect ourselves to go from our whole accumulation of restless energy over how many years to being able to sit peacefully for a long time. So, having these external ways of using that energy is very, very helpful. And yet we’re using that energy to create virtue. And creating virtue is so important, especially if you want to understand emptiness. It’s not just about learning the words and concepts, it’s about enriching the mind with merit and purifying the mind, so we need to do all these things.

Sometimes we come into Tibetan practice and it’s like, “Wait a minute, there’s so many different practices, I don’t know what to do. I think I’m going to do vipassana where all I do is sit and breathe.” That’s much simpler than Tibetan where you’re up and you’re down and you’re tossing and you’re offering and you’re visualizing this and visualizing that and the whole thing. But we need to work on so many different aspects of ourselves, don’t we? Let’s just say we’re very complicated creatures, so we need a path that’s going to deal with so many different aspects of ourselves. That’s restlessness.

So, we do the Ngöndro practices, offer service, all these kinds of things, and then sometimes come back to your breath when your mind is very restless. Or you can do what I often have you do when you start meditation sessions: do a body scan, and feel the sensations in the different parts of your body, release the tension or the stress in some part of your body or another. That can be a good antidote. Come back to the breath, not trying to control your breathing, but just saying “Gentle breathing,” and watch the flow of your breath become gentle. As that happens your mind also settles down.

Regret arises when suddenly [or not so suddenly] we remember past actions or errors done deliberately or unintentionally. It can be virtuous, non-virtuous or ethically neutral, timely or untimely, appropriate or inappropriate, and consists of feeling worried or concerned. 

Regret is often this feeling of “I shouldn’t have done something I did” or “I should have done something I didn’t do.” And when he’s talking about virtuous and non-virtuous, appropriate or non-appropriate, we can regret virtuous actions, and we can regret non-virtuous actions. Regretting non-virtuous actions is virtuous; regretting virtuous actions is non-virtuous. “Oh, I gave that dana offering, now I can’t afford to go to the movies. I really shouldn’t have given that much.” That’s a non-virtuous kind of regret. “Oh, I quarreled with somebody, I was really rude, I don’t feel so good about that.” That’s a virtuous kind of regret. 

Regret can come up in our meditation. Have you ever noticed this when you’re trying to meditate? Sometimes it’ll come because of an interaction you just had with somebody. This is the reason to be careful about what we do in the breaktimes. Because we’ll do all sorts of things, and then we sit on the cushion going over it again—“Why did I say that? And why did they say this?” Sometimes we regret things we said that were mean, sometimes we regret things we said that were kind, and we’re somehow stuck. 

Audience: The mind that sees I did something pretty well but could have done it better, this is where my mind goes sometimes. Is that in this category?

VTC: There might be a kind of regret in it. Like, “Oh, well, I did pretty well, but I also should have done this.”

Audience: Yes, it could be in this category? It’s still worrying about the past.

VTC: Yes, it is. “I should have done something I didn’t do. What I did was good, but I should have done something…” When we come to the hindrance of doubt, that’s more about “Does this method work?” or “Am I capable of attaining it?” It’s a little bit different kind of doubt.

Regret and restlessness—we spend a lot of time in those two, don’t we?

Naturally both restlessness and regret disturb our concentration. A tendency to daydream and reminisce prompts both of these obstacles. 

Audience: That explains that.

VTC: You’re just daydreaming and reminiscing, “Oh, I should have done this, I shouldn’t have done that, that was so nice, I want to go do that again, why am I sitting here?”

Lethargy and sleep compose the second hindrance. Lethargy derives from ignorance and is described as mental and physical heaviness and the mind’s lack of responsiveness.

So, your mind is heavy, your body is heavy—you know that feeling.

It induces all the other kinds of afflictions.

Do you ever feel when your mind and body are heavy that that’s setting the stage for other afflictions? 

Audience: Yes.

VTC: Yes? Why?

Audience: For me it’s like “What is under that? What is playing under it? For sure, there’s something playing there.” For me it’s a resistance. I’m resistant to something that I don’t want to see. But that’s the thing I have with the aggregates. Like, what’s going on? Why I block myself. Like, what is that playing?

VTC: So, the mental and physical heaviness and foggy-mindedness, you’re saying you can see that it’s not just foggy-mindedness, it’s something else going on underneath. And you’re saying often what there is, is resistance. “I don’t want to do this practice, I don’t want to acknowledge this thing, I don’t want to…” whatever it is. Sometimes it’s that. Sometimes you’re not even sure. “What in the world am I resisting?” You don’t even know.

Audience: I don’t fall asleep during my meditation; I don’t do that. But one day I was meditating, and poof! that thinking. I started to look at it. I was able to detach from it. I looked at it, and then something happened, and [snap] it went off, it was all gone, like that. Just because I said, “Whoops yes, it’s something else.” I was able to look at it, and it shifted to something else.

VTC: So, when you’re able to step back and not be in the middle of that lethargy and just look at that lethargy, that can clear it.

How do lethargy and laxity differ?

In the other list of the five faults, we have laxity, which is said to be a serious impediment to meditation. People can get very high on the stages, the nine stages, before attaining serenity; you can get to five, six, seven, and you’re fairly concentrated. But there’s a lot of laxity there, and they say it’s very difficult to realize it, to see what it is. It’s the thing of, you’re on the object, you’re not distracted so you have stability on the object, you know the object, but the mind is not so clear. Not that the object isn’t so clear, but the mind, the vividness, the awake-ness of the mind is not so present, the mind is going toward spaced-outedness. You know spaced-outedness? 

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: Yes, walking around the house, “What am I supposed to be doing now?” How often do we just walk around, “What am I supposed to be doing?” We’re like space cases, aren’t we? Space cases. So, laxity is a very subtle kind of spaced-outedness. Our ordinary spaced-outedness everybody sees, but this laxity is a much more subtle one.

Both interfere with concentration but not at the same level. Laxity is a lessening of mental tension or clarity.

He says “mental tension,” and we think tension is like a tightening, but it’s a lessening of mental clarity. The mind is on the object, but the mind isn’t vibrant and vivid.

Laxity is not a disturbing mental factor and is in fact either ethically neutral or virtuous in nature, depending on its degree of subtlety.

Still, laxity can be a big hindrance because you’re not so vivid and yet you think you’re really focused. Then you kind of get complacent and spaced-out in your meditation. Most of us don’t have that to worry about because we’re not there yet. We’re still working on the gross kind of spaced-outedness, or we’re working at the level of attachment or aversion. But to really look when we meditate – are we like space-cases? Do we sit down to meditate and just go to la-la-land somewhere, not aware of what our object of meditation is or what our mind is doing? We’re just in la-la-land.

Audience: We don’t even know what words we’re saying sometimes when we’re chanting.

VTC: Yes. Exactly. You don’t know what you’re saying when you’re chanting. Or you don’t know what prayer you’ve just finished saying. It’s like, “I’ve been doing this, but what verse was I on? Did I do this practice yet or not? I can’t even remember it.”

Sleep in general belongs to the fifth category of mental factors, changing mental factors.

That means it’s changeable; sometimes they can be virtuous, sometimes they can be non-virtuous.

According to what provokes it, it will be virtuous, non-virtuous, or ethically neutral, timely or untimely.

Timely sleep or untimely sleep.

Appropriate or inappropriate. It is characterized by the mind’s withdrawal and interrupts any activity. Sleep as an obstruction to concentration stems from ignorance [of course] and is untimely.

This is not the time to sleep. You had insomnia the whole night and you sit down to meditate and… it’s not the time to be sleeping. Or you slept very well the whole night, and you sit down to meditate and you’re still out.

Both lethargy and sleep are obviously obstacles when we are trying to concentrate with a sharp mind. They are counted as one obstruction, or one hindrance, because they have similar causes, functions, and antidotes. They are induced by mental vagueness and haziness.

When the mind is vague and hazy and we don’t do anything about it, it just increases until the body and mind are heavy in lethargy, and that increases until we’re asleep. 

What’s the antidote to that? I think prostrations are very, very helpful. I think prostrations are so helpful for so many things, and that’s why I really encourage people to do prostrations while your knees and back still work well. Because it’s a wonderful practice, and I think it’s very good for combating lethargy and sleep. Getting physical exercise is very good. You might think, “Oh, exercise makes me tired.” No, exercise invigorates you. Don’t wear so many sweaters, have the room a little bit cooler. Set a strong intention at the beginning of your session, make sure you’re sitting up straight, try keeping your eyes a little bit open, not looking at anything but letting some light come in. Dunk your head in some cold water before you come to a session. They say that—put cold water on your face. 

Audience: A shower is very good, cooling.

VTC: Yes.

Audience: I just had a question. Let’s say you were in the middle of a meditation, and all this was going on. Do you just get up and do your prostrations, then go back? Should we do it right in the middle?

VTC: If you’re doing the kind of meditation where your purpose is to develop serenity, where you’re doing it in short sessions over a period of time, then if you start to fall asleep, they say to break session and go and do something else to dispel the lethargy and sleep. But if you’re doing your regular daily practice with the community, then no, you don’t walk out of the session. Because otherwise the whole hall would be empty, and you would never get your daily practices done. [laughter]

Audience: What about when doing walking meditation?

VTC: Yes, walking meditation can be very good to do before session or in the break time. Walking meditation is very good.

Audience: Just in the session, I was thinking this morning about something Venerable Jigme said about brightening the image. I hadn’t really been able to do that before because I didn’t have the image well to begin with. Now I’ve got the image a bit clearer, and I was able to brighten it, and that helped.

VTC: Yes. It’s very helpful to imagine the colors being very, very bright. Sometimes when you’re imagining the light coming from the Buddha into you, everything’s just a haze. But if you try and get it to be bright light, that’s very, very helpful. And I think purification practice can be very good for this kind of thing.