Part 2b.1 - The main means of practice, shamatha and vipashyana

1.a) The teaching of abandoning and antidotes

There are those two topics:

Then within the limbs of how to do the practice,
These five obscurations ought to be abandoned:
Being drowsy, dull, discursive, disconsolate,* or doubtful.
Practice the union of shamatha and vipashyana.

Being drowsy and dull will obscure one’s shamatha,
And discursive or disconsolate thoughts disrupt vipashyana.
Doubt harms both, incompatible with either one.

*= a’gyod pa: Or regretful.

Yogacharins have five obscurations of dhyana. Within true shamatha revealing clear luminosity, by drowsiness and dullness, depression is produced. Within the one-pointed lucency of vipashyana, by being discursive or disconsolate, proliferation of thoughts is produced. Times of doubt are causes of neither shamatha nor vipashyana being established. As for drowsiness, entering into it involuntarily, the mind is gathered up in it. Dullness is a neutrality where objects are not clearly known. As for discursiveness, because of objects, thoughts are emanated. As for being disconsolate, because of some action that the mind remembers, there is a very unhappy feeling. These should be abandoned. The Friendly Letter says:

Discursive-disconsolate, malicious, dull and drowsy,
Interested in desire; and being doubtful.
These five obscurations are errors about the good.
It ought to be known that they are plundering thieves.

Here being discursive and disconsolate are taken as one. Drowsiness and dullness are one. With interest in desire, malice, and doubt there are five.^[1]

1.b) Clearing away hindrances:

These five obscurations drowsiness, dullness and so on
Are summarized under drowsiness and discursiveness.
If there is drowsiness, we should try to refresh our practice.
If there is discursiveness, do one -pointed meditation.

Drowsiness and dullness are depressive sinking, so in refreshing them meditate on the eleven apprehensions as below. If there is discursiveness about other things or people, try to meditate with the subsequent nine means of resting.

1.c) Relying on the antidote, unification It is like this:

Vipashyana without shamatha is discursive complexity.
Without vipashyana, shamatha will go nowhere.
It is the highest path when these two are combined.
This is the antidote for the two obscurations.

Prajña unmoistened by shamatha is only verbal understanding. Shamatha uncompleted by vipashyana cannot succeed and cannot be expected to elevate us above the seeds of samsara. Therefore, try to unify them. The Friendly Letter says:

Without any prajña, dhyana does not exist.
Without any dhyana, also there is no prajña.
Where there are both, the black ocean of samsara,
Will have be searched for like the tracks of cattle.