“Why is it not enough to cultivate either calm abiding or special insight? Why is it necessary to cultivate both? To illustrate this: when you light a butter lamp at night in order to look at murals, if the butter lamp is both very bright and does not flicker due to wind, you will see the painted figures very clearly. However, if the butter lamp is not bright or if—even though bright—it flickers in the wind, you will not see the forms clearly. Likewise, with respect to viewing the profound meaning, if you have both the wisdom unmistakenly ascertaining the meaning of suchness and the imperturbability of a mind that stays on its object at will, you will see suchness clearly. However, if you do not have the wisdom realizing the mode of being, despite your non-conceptual meditative stabilization in which your mind remains unscattered, you will not be able to realize the mode of being, however much you familiarize yourself with meditative stabilization. On the other hand, if you have the view that understands selflessness but lack the firm meditative stabilization in which the mind remains single-pointed, you will not be able to clearly see the meaning of the mode of being. Therefore both calm abiding and special insight are necessary.”
From The Medium Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment by Je Tsong Khapa
As translated in: Middle Length Lam-Rim with Trijang Rinpoche’s Additional Outlines by Lama Tsongkhapa (and Trijang Rinpoche). Translated by Philip Quarcoo. Unpublished DRAFT translation (May 2012) by FPMT, Inc. Download the PDF here.
Photo: Offering light on Lama Tsongkhapa Day during the 2013 Jangchup Lamrim Teachings, Sera Monastery, Bylakuppe, India, 27 December 2013, © Rio Helmi/JLTOC
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