Tibetan Buddhist Meditation and the Modern World

This Tibetan Buddhist Meditation and the Modern World course is being crafted by David
Germano and Kurtis Schaeffer, two professors of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the
University of Virginia (U.Va.), as an extension of a course created in 2013 to provide
intellectual and experiential learning in contemplation for our undergraduate students. Both
are closely linked to the establishment of the Contemplative Sciences Center
(www.uvacontemplation.org) at the University and the broader efforts it is leading to explore
contemplation in learning, research, and engagement throughout its eleven schools (Nursing,
Education, Arts and Sciences, Business, Architecture, etc.). It also is part of a broader effort
with other Universities to create an online platform called the Contemplative University to
offer research, learning, and engagement in contemplative studies and sciences for a global
public. We want to offer our deep gratitude to all the individuals at the University of Virginia
and elsewhere who have contributed their deep expertise and compelling voices to the course
in the form of interviews, lectures, and contemplative instructions, as well as to the various
staff members who have made possible the recording, transcription, processing, and resource
organization for the course.

The overall course is being released in four stages corresponding to the four main traditions of
Buddhist meditation in Tibet which we are exploring: the Lesser Vehicle, the Great Vehicle, the
Adamantine Vehicle, and the Natural Vehicle. We don’t yet have a schedule for the release of
the second through fourth stages, but intend to complete them all by the beginning of 2016.
As discussed below, these traditions are typically ranked in this order in accordance with
Tibetans’ sense of the increasing efficacy and profundity of their meditative systems and
techniques. Within that framework, we have organized our exploration of Tibetan Buddhist
meditation into twelve distinct types of meditative traditions, each of which constitute a
distinct unit of the class. For each type of meditation, we offer four components – (i) the
Buddhist tradition, (ii) scientific research on such traditions or linked topics, (iii) secular
adaptions or associated practices, and (iv) a contemplative lab for experientially learning
secular practices involving similar principles as the Buddhist practices in question.

The course in its first incarnation is rough and ready, and very provisional in character. We
intend to greatly improve the quality of these resources in 2016 and beyond, which we will
release within the Contemplative University platform and possibly in another version of the
course within Coursera itself. If you are interested, please sign up for announcements about its
2016 release at www.contemplativeuniversity.org. In the meantime, as imperfect and
inadequate as the present version may be, we hope that its rich diversity compensates for its
provisional messiness, and that it proves to be of some interest and value for people
interested in Buddhist meditation and its exploration in the modern times across a surprisingly
diverse range of sectors. The remainder of this document offers a general introduction to the
course and its structure.

Contemplation

There is currently a new and rapidly expanding interest around the world in practices that
allow individuals to explore, understand, engage, and optimize their bodies, minds, and
relationships. These are sometimes referred to as “mind-body practices”, “meditation”,
“yoga”, “mysticism”, “spirituality”, “self-help techniques”, and so forth, but “contemplation”
has emerged as the favored term, at least in intellectual circles, to cover these diverse
practices in general. Contemplation is an English term with a long history in European
languages, dating back to a practice in Roman times of augurs - officials or priests in charge of
discerning the will of the gods in relationship to proposed actions - defining sacred spaces
(templum) for ritual purposes that were literally “cut off” from ordinary spaces. Initially such
spaces included a grid imposed upon the sky used to observe the flight of birds, with the bird’s
spatial appearance indicating the gods’ will. Temples then were special divine sites indicated
by the gods, and “con-templation” literally is “with-temple” in the sense of deep observations
of phenomena in sacred places. In Catholicism, “contemplation” traditionally has a very
specific sense of spontaneous, natural resting in an experience of God beyond images and
concepts, and is in contrast to “meditation” which involves techniques, images, and discursive
processes. In contemporary parlance, contemplation is a common word meaning to consider
deeply, or reflect upon, as well as often meaning to not react to a situation but take some time
to reflect before action. “Contemplation” thus means different things to different people, but
we will be using it in an emerging contemporary use as a general rubric for a variety of human
practices relating to self-exploration and self-transformation aimed towards wellbeing,
understanding, and agency. Contemplation involves “practices” which are different from
ordinary daily behaviors on the one hand, and purely spontaneous visions and other
extraordinary experiences on the other hand, in that contemplation in our sense signifies
intentional practices deliberately cultivated, even if such practices may have spontaneous
elements, and may trigger unfolding experiences that take on a life of their own outside of
deliberate cultivation.

The most frequent terms used for subsets of such practices in today’s world are probably
“meditation,” “mindfulness,” and “yoga”. Meditation as a term is often strongly associated
with Buddhist traditions, though the term has a long Christian history, and the types of
practices under consideration can be found in various forms in a wide array of the worlds’
religions (Islam, Daoism, Judaism, Hinduism, Native American religions, African religions,
Shamanism, and so on). Buddhistm, however, certainly has one of the richest array of
contemplative practices in the history of the world, as well as one of the most intensively
theorized and documented traditions in terms of formal meditative literature. In the present
context, we will interpret the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist word for “meditation” (Sanskrit
bhāvana, Tibetan sgom) as functioning in a general way synonymously with how we here use
the term “contemplation.” “Mindfulness,” then, is a specific type of Buddhist meditative
practice that has become exceptionally popular of late in related secular forms. “Yoga”, though
an extremely diverse term found throughout Hinduism and Buddhism, and one which often is
as general as “contemplation” in scope, in modern times has become strongly linked to Indian
contemplative practices involving especially physical postures, movements, and breathing.

While there thus tends to be a strong association of contemplation in contemporary times

with Asia, and especially Buddhism, in fact contemplative practices are found in broad variety
of contexts, religious and secular, present and past, in every geographical region of the world.
Indeed, contemplation in the sense of reflective processes involving self-awareness are
arguably tantamount to being human. In addition, contemplation is far more rich, diverse, and
important, than simply mindfulness, yoga, or Catholic contemplation. Defining contemplation,
thus, and differentiating it - or not - from such things as ritual, prayer, athletics, art, and so
forth - is a complex but compelling issue. In addition, given the strong relationship of many
contemplative traditions to religion, the study of contemplative practices raises complex issues
pertaining to religion and secularization. In contemporary times, Buddhism has without doubt
been a dominant source in Europe and the Americas of this new and expanding growth of
contemplation in diverse human sectors outside of its traditional religious context. Within
Buddhism, Tibetan and Theravada Buddhist traditions (widespread in Burma, Thailand, and Sri
Lanka) are currently the most influential, and of these, Tibetan is perhaps the most diverse.
Tibetan Buddhism is deeply indebted to earlier Indian traditions, which it uniquely transmits in
their full diversity, but also engaged in systematic innovation and extension of these traditions
in its own right over the centuries.

Contemplation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism

However that may be, this course is devoted to exploring Buddhist meditation in the Tibetan
tradition with an eye towards its deep roots in Indian traditions, but focused on Tibetan
innovations. While we will regularly refer to India, and at times Theravada traditions from
Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, the overall perspective is always rooted in Tibetan Buddhism.
Buddhist meditation is intertwined with Buddhist philosophy, or thought - its concepts,
vocabulary, modes of reasoning, methods of inquiry, inquiries, and goals. Indeed, intellectual
frameworks are a key constitutive context for contemplation, despite the latter’s frequent
claims to be non-conceptual, or beyond words and thoughts. The historical Buddha’s first
sermon upon enlightenment is said to be the Turning the Wheel Sermon (“wheel”
representing the teachings he set in motion) which outlines a philosophy of suffering, change,
and realization framed as four noble truths: (i) the truth of suffering, (ii) the truth of
impermanence as the cause of suffering, (iii) the truth of the possibility of eradicating
suffering, and (iv) the truth of a path to such realization. Introducing such key Buddhist notions
as suffering, impermanence, interdependent origination, karma, cyclic existence (saṃsāra),
and transcendence (nirvāṇa), it outlines a pathway for its practitioners with eight features
(“the eightfold noble path”): (I) Wisdom (prajñā): (i) right view, (ii) right intention/resolve; (II)
Ethics (śīla): (iii) right speech, (iv) right action, (v) right livelihood, (vi) right effort; and (III)
Contemplation (samādhi): (vii) right mindfulness (smṛti) and (viii) right concentration
(samādhi). Through this path combining intellectual, ethical, and contemplative components,
then, one could traverse from the ordinary “cyclic existence” to the extraordinary
“transcendence” of enlightenment (bodhi). Such an individual was termed a “Buddha,” literally
an awakened or enlightened one.

Contemplation, or meditation, in Buddhism is extraordinarily diverse, and given this range, it

can be conceptually difficult to differentiate them from other forms of human practice - when
is something ritual rather that meditation? or simply a learning practice rather than
meditation? or some other type of self-cultivation or discipline rather than meditation? The
following provisional thoughts pertain specifically to meditation in the Tibetan Buddhist
understanding, though they have import for thinking more broadly about contemplation in the
modern context.

(i) Firstly, we would call attention to the quality in Tibetan Buddhist meditation of being a
practice, something deliberately cultivated and repeated over time, and highly experiential in
character. In addition, it is a practice with a formality - it has a beginning, middle, and end to
what is called a meditative session (Tibetan thun), and one is typically fully engaged in it during
that entire session. There are thus formal boundaries to these practices to the exclusion of all
other activities, and this formality extends to preferably having a special place to do the
practice separate from distracting influences, and assuming a special physical posture while
doing so (even as simple as sitting cross legged). Whether primarily physical, verbal, mental, or
emotional in character, the practice thus requires deeply experiential engagement that is fully
concentrated in fashion. This differentiates itself from many activities done in a casual and/or
multitasking environment. In and of itself, of course, this doesn’t differentiate itself from many
other Tibetan and non-Tibetan practices that do typically have discrete beginning and ends,
between which they can be done with full one pointed absorption - Buddhist ritual, video
game playing, physical workouts, sexual intercourse, therapy sessions, and so forth.

(ii) Secondly, a further differentiating feature of Tibetan Buddhist meditation is in its intent,
both in terms of the care, self-awareness, and cultivation given to questions of intent, and the
specific type of intent understood to govern the larger commitment to such practice. Intent is
enshrined in the traditional beginning components of Buddhist meditation that set an
intention for the practice in question, as well as establish contexts. This is also true of the
traditional ending components of meditation, in which one’s intent and commitments are
reviewed and rearticulated, as well as expressions made of how one hopes to bring the
practice’s experiences and potential changes forward into one’s daily life. Practices are also
classified in various ways by virtue of the intent animating the practice, such as “transcendent”
(‘jig rten las ‘das pa) meditations aiming at ultimate realization, and mundane (‘jigs rten)
meditations with more modest goals. Practitioners also are classified by virtue of their intent,
most famously in relationship to the “three types of individuals” (skyes bu gsum) spoken of by
the eleventh century Indian missionary Atisha in Tibet: those motivated by the desire for
conventional happiness and wellbeing, those motivated by a desire for definitive realization of
the ultimate meaning of self and reality, and those motivated by compassion to bring such
realization to all. This also points to meditation being linked to a broader goal or motivation to
engage in self-cultivation, personal growth, and self-understanding that directly changes one’s
experience and behavior in persistent and profound ways, and accords with a reality beyond
human conventions. This is not to say that Buddhist meditation can’t be used for much more
mundane purposes within a traditional Buddhist context, as indicated in the above, because it
most certainly can be - ranging from finding a lost item to improving physical health. But there
is a clear sense in the tradition of these larger goals and significances constituting meditation’s
overarching rationale, a rationale that ultimately is as much as about compassion as it is about
realization for Tibetan Buddhist traditions. This concern for intention as part of the practice, as
well as the types of intention in question, constitute a dynamic that allows for the
differentiation of meditation from many other types of formal practices.

(iii) Thirdly, Buddhist meditation is marked by a concern for personal experience related to the
mind, starting with intent but extending to a wide spectrum of other experiences. To begin
with, there is typically an overt and central interest in the impact that the practice has on the
mind and its cultivation, whether the practice in question is overtly focused on training the
mind – such as in practices of focused attention or insight – or focused on deeply somatic
processes – such as in practices concentrated on flow of energy in the the body’s interior. In
addition, the practices themselves typically specify the type of mental states and processes
that need to be brought to bear to the practice, and if relevant, specify techniques for
accessing and stimulating them. Likewise, there is a consistent insistence on introspectively
monitoring one’s experiences as the practice unfolds, which includes offering techniques for
correction or enhancement based upon those observations and the mind’s state at any given
point. All of this thus conveys strongly that in these practices one’s experiences and state of
mind centrally matter, and that regardless of what complex external objects and processes
might be entertained, that an inward reflexivity and self-monitoring is a persistent element. It
should also be noted that the Buddhist literature often calls attention to contexts in which one
may experience a similar type of experience or modality of being as the meditation in question
seeks to cultivate - the concentration of a falcon, dreaming, sexual stimulation, dying, and so
forth. However, while the experience may be similar or even identical, the experience itself
does not constitute meditation - meditation inevitable signifies a practice in which the
experience is being deliberately cultivated, and by implication, increasingly integrated into
one’s being, as well as a strong sense of reflexivity and self-awareness.

(iv) Fourthly, and linked to previous two points, Tibetan Buddhist meditation is centrally about
the acquisition and deepening of knowledge in its overall intent. In addition, the knowledge in
question is intimate and first person in character, rather than being primarily exterior and
objectified in focus. Thus self-understanding and self-awareness, the most intimate form of
knowledge, are generally understood to be the persistent goal of these practices, even if they
might be provisionally deployed for a more specific and pragmatic purpose – stopping hail,
healing an aching leg, or finding a lost yak.

Thus, for example, traditional Buddhist study is usually described as a triad of “listening,
reflection, and meditation” (thos bsam sgom), but in practice, Buddhist scholastic academies in
Tibet are dominated by reading, listening, and reflecting, and are often no more meditative
than studies in a modern secular University in many ways, though the shared ritual life
constitutes a contemplative dimension we have to keep in mind. What would a meditative
turn consist of in this context? Essential meditation here would involve taking the intellectual
subjects and inquiries in question, and creating formal sessions of practice. One would retire to
a place removed from other people and distracting influences like the TV or cell phone, and
assume a formal posture that can be maintained throughout the session, even if just sitting
stably on a chair. There would then be a formal beginning which would mark the transition to
full concentration on the task at hand, and which would include a short verse framing the
practice in the context of one’s desire for self-insight and self-transformation towards being of
greater service to others. The middle part would be a deep pondering of the subject at hand
that was uninterrupted and one pointed, as well as influenced by the motivation towards
experiential understanding and self-cultivation. The conclusion would then involve a formal
ending of the session, as well recitation of verses and considerations that reiterate the
commitment to carrying these insights into one’s life and benefitting others. The changes may
seem simple, but from a Buddhist perspective they are profound - activities are transformed
from purely cerebral to deeply experiential, and from mere considerations to deep
transformation. Following all of the above principles, we can thus by extension consider how
meditation may or may not be differentiated from other conventional human practices – video
games, physical work out, academic study, ritual therapy, self-help techniques, service for
others, and so forth.

The Twelve Types of Buddhist Meditation in Four Vehicles in India and Tibet

Buddhist philosophical systems, ethics, and contemplative practices were tremendously

diverse in different communities, regions, and time periods, and these differences were often
expressive of fundamental divergences. To explore these differences, we rely upon a
traditional way of grouping Buddhist philosophical systems, this, and ritual-contemplative
practices into “three vehicles” of theory and practice supporting the personal journey from
suffering to enlightenment. This scheme became normative for certain groups in India and for
all traditions in Tibet: (i) the Lesser Vehicle (Hīnayāna), (ii) the Great Vehicle (Mahāyāna), and
(iii) the Adamantine Vehicle (Vajrayāna), also referred to as “esoteric Buddhism” or “Buddhist
tantra”. Special note should be made that of course the traditions referred to as the Lesser
Vehicle in India in no way historically accepted such a pejorative designation, and themselves
were tremendously diverse with their own rubrics of self-identification. In addition, the living
Theravāda tradition cannot be reduced to Tibetan conceptions of the “Lesser Vehicle,” both
because the former continued to develop and grow long after the fixed-in-time formulation of
the latter by India and Tibetan exegetes, and because the latter’s assessment and
representation was pejorative and extrinsic in character. To this traditional scheme of three
vehicles, we will add a fourth Vehicle which is explicit in many Tibetan materials, though no
standard term ever emerged that was accepted by all sectarian traditions - we will thus
provide our own name in referring to it as the “Natural Vehicle” or “Post Tantra”. We would
acknowledge that is represents more fully the tradition of certain sects – Nyingma, Kagyü, and
Bönpo – but would argue there are elements corresponding to such a theme in the other main
sects as well - Geluk, Jonangpa, Sakya, and so forth.

We follow an indigenous Tibetan tradition in terms of characterizing each with a specific

orientational paradigm - repression, refinement, transformation, and natural freedom. We will
discuss each four in terms of foundational ideas: (i) Four Noble Truths, (ii) Compassion and
Emptiness,(iii) the themes of Power and Transformation, and (iv) the motifs of Naturalness,
Spontaneity, and Letting-be. These four, and their themes, then group together the twelve
great contemplative traditions of Tibetan Buddhism introduced successively by these
traditions:

The Lesser Vehicle paradigm of repression with the five meditative traditions (i) Ordinary
Preliminary Meditations of Buddhist Philosophy, (ii) Mindfulness Meditation, (iii) Calm
Meditation, (iv) Insight Meditation, and (v) The Forty Objects of Early Buddhist Meditation;

The Great Vehicle paradigm of refinement with the three meditative traditions (vi)
Emptiness Meditation, (vii) Compassion Meditation, and (viii) Extraordinary Preliminary
Practices of Relationality;

The Adamantine Vehicle paradigm of transformation with the two meditative traditions of
(ix) Creation Phase Meditation of Deity Yoga and (x) Perfection Phase Meditation of Subtle
Body,

The Natural Vehicle paradigm of naturalness with the two meditative traditions of (xi) Great
Seal of Natural Meditation, and (xii) Great Perfection of Visionary Meditation.

The Sources of our Twelvefold Typology of Tibetan Buddhist Meditation

These twelve meditative traditions constitute the framework for the course’s discussion of the
main streams of Tibetan Buddhist meditation. These twelve types of practice are organized
roughly by the chronology of their historical emergence, but more importantly by the way
Tibetan Buddhist traditions understand these contemplations to be systematically linked
within a comprehensive framework of contemplative practice. Most of the twelve are
immediately recognizable to a traditional Tibetan eye, but some aspects of the scheme are
unique to the present context. It is important to understand that meditative topics and
associated programs might figure prominently in the Tibetan Buddhist and Bönpo literature,
but what was actually practiced on the ground in real life was generally quite different. This
should not be surprising – text and life rarely are in lock step with each other, and the
prescriptive literature for meditation has a complex relationship with the lived reality of
meditative instruction and practice.

In addition, meditative practices and details varied tremendously over time, tradition, text, and
teacher, such that all we can do is offer generalizations that don’t begun to do justice to the
richly diverse dialog. Contemporary scholarship on Tibetan Buddhism has only just begun to
write a modern history of meditation, but it remains more ahistorical and descriptive in large
part at present. Even as it becomes more robust, we will have a history of literary descriptions,
and even with amplification from the narrative literature, artistic evidence, and archaeological
research, our understanding will remain more a literary history of meditation rather than a
history of its actual practice on the ground. Modern ethnography would help, though it too
remains in its infancy and will forever be of limited use in understanding historical realities,
while contemporary accounts from Tibetan teachers tend to be normative and often are
unclear on the difference between how it is discussed and what is actually done.

With those caveats in mind, then, we should point out a few discrepancies with our sequence
of twelve meditation traditions and their traditional understanding. In practice, the ordinary
and extraordinary preliminary meditations are usually done sequentially in these traditions. In
our presentation, however, we discuss the ordinary preliminaries as the first of twelve Indian
and Tibetan Buddhist meditative traditions, and only return to the extraordinary preliminary
meditations as our eighth mediative system, just before exploring the tantric traditions of
creation and perfection phase meditations. In between we will explore the classical
presentations of meditation in the Lesser Vehicle and Great Vehicle - calm, insight, emptiness,
and compassion. However, while these were much discussed in Tibetan literature, they were
practiced as such far less than they were taught, and were far more likely historically to be
found bundled into the ordinary and extraordinary preliminaries, the tantric practices of
creation and perfection, and/or the Natural Vehicle meditations. For example, insight is very
much the focus of the philosophical reflections of the ordinary preliminary practices;
compassion meditation is the second extraordinary preliminary practice; emptiness is an
experiential theme throughout all the extraordinary preliminary practices; the concentration
of calm meditation is believed to be cultivated in the painstaking visualizations of the tantric
creation phase meditations; calm and insight meditations are often used as preliminaries in
Great Seal and Great Perfection meditations, and so forth. This is not to say that such
meditations were not also done in their own right according to traditional Lesser Vehicle and
Great Vehicle presentations in Tibet, but on the whole, they were more likely to be cultivated
within the context of the preliminaries, or the Adamantine and Natural Vehicles. In addition,
the “ordinary preliminary meditations” are presented in their own right in the present context,
but also function to allow us to detail the basics of foundational Buddhist philosophy, as well
as reflect upon the relationship of philosophy to contemplation. Likewise, our presentation of
other meditative systems often function to introduce a variety of related Buddhist issues and
topics that we believe helps provide crucial context.

Two other meditative sets are somewhat distinctive in our exoteric practices, namely
“mindfulness” (Tibetan dran pa, dran shes) and the “forty objects of early Buddhist
meditation”. It may come as a surprise given how exceptionally prominent mindfulness has
become in recent decades outside of Buddhist circles, but in fact “mindfulness” as such was
not a central organizing principle in Tibetan traditions for thinking about typologies of
meditative practices. Certainly they were away of the classical earlier presentation of “the four
foundations of mindfulness,” and the term as such was used in a variety of ways. For example,
a type of semantic mindfulness called “purity mindfulness” (Tibetan dag dran) is central in
deity yoga, which entails understanding the philosophical import of each detail of the Buddha
visualization - what the four arms represent, the significance of the bodily color, and so forth.
In addition, it should be noted that the contemporary teaching of “mindfulness” in the
Americas and Europe is in many cases strongly influenced by Tibetan natural meditation
traditions of the Great Seal and the Great Perfection. However, “mindfulness” as a term was
not in Tibet a central organizing rubric for a central body of meditative practices in the way ten
of the other rubrics herein are (the other exception being the “forty objects” discussed next.
However, we have chosen to include it herein because of its contemporary renown, as well as
because it a central term for contemplation in the early years of Buddhism in India and
certainly preceded the later emergence of the rubrics of “calm” and “insight”. In the present
context, then, its placement also services to signify the contemplative turn itself in Buddhism,
namely the very idea of cultivated practices of watching one’s own experience, body, mind,
emotions, and perceptions in early Buddhism.

The other rubric that is not central in Tibetan Buddhism as such is the “forty objects of early
Buddhist meditation,” which is drawn from the fifth century Path of Purification (Pali
Visuddhimagga) by Buddhaghosa, which came to be the defining commentarial text in the
Theravāda tradition for understanding meditation. Classified as a subset of the Lesser Vehicle
by the Tibetans, the Theravāda have continued to the present as the mainstream tradition in
such countries as Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. Many of the individual
meditations are known to Tibetans as preserved in the various scholastic compendia known as
the “Higher Teachings” (Abhidharma), but they were for the most part little if ever practiced in
Tibet. Contemporary Tibetan traditions rarely are familiar with Buddhaghosa’s grouping into
forty, though any learned teacher will immediately recognize most of the individual practices,
at least in theory. We have chosen to preserve it as a marker of the great diversity of early
Buddhist meditative practices in India, as well as the fact that Tibetans were aware of such
meditations, even if they failed to preserve them as practiced traditions.

Another point of divergence is that we have included the extraordinary preliminaries under
the heading of the Great Vehicle, even though that vehicle is often presented as centrally
about “emptiness” and “compassion”, and the preliminaries themselves involve many ritual
elements drawn from Buddhist tantra. This is a very conscious decision that is rooted in
correcting what we believe to be limited understanding of the Great Vehicle which minimizes
its rich devotional focus, cosmological motifs, visionary elements, ritual practices, and general
focus on an ever expanding engagement with Buddhas stretching throughout the cosmos; this
also connects to the theme of an internal divine Buddha nature in all life as detailed in some
scriptures. We would suggest that the Great Vehicle practice is best thought of as three partite
from this perspective - emptiness, compassion, and pure perception, the third being a complex
term that bundles together an emotional and epistemological relational framework of
devotion, faith, visionary engagement, world building, and relationality that focuses on the
profundity of self, other, and world.

Finally, the three vehicle structure is universally accepted, but the fourth vehicle we name the
“Natural Vehicle” or “Post-Tantra” is a neologism of our own making, but rooted in a strong
Tibetan tradition to present a culminating and usually very experiential tradition as beyond the
three vehicles, though usually heavily indebted in one way or another to Buddhist tantra. The
most common rubrics for such traditions were the Great Seal (Sanskrit Mahāmudrā, Tibetan
phyag rgya chen po) and the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen), but in fact there many other
lesser known rubrics that circulated, especially in the early history of Tibetan Buddhism. It is
thus not much of a stretch to group these together and provide an overarching label. In
addition, the Great Perfection was largely specific to the Nyingma and Bönpo sects, while the
Great Seal was a term used by the other traditions, and especially the Kagyü. While there is
tremendous commonality between these two meditative traditions with their focus on open,
spontaneous, natural forms of awareness and distaste for heavily ritualized, elaborate
meditations, the Great Perfection in its normative tradition includes very distinctive visionary
meditations, as well as an elaborate philosophy and cosmology interwoven with them. For this
reason we have classified them as two distinctive types of meditative sets.

Structure of Course

Higher education is currently balkanized with the humanities divorced from the sciences,
disciplines within each largely disconnected, and then both in turn poorly integrated with the
professional schools. This situation greatly hampers our efforts to understand most
phenomena, and this is particularly true of the study of contemplation. Thus understanding
each of these with their divergent epistemological assumptions, research practices, and goals
will be important throughout the course, as well as the possible value each has to each other
in newly envisioned partnerships. “Contemplative Studies” as an academic discipline is defined
by the Humanities - “studies” tends to be a strong indicator of this - while “Contemplative
Sciences” is a contested term - some organizations promoting this with a strong bias towards
the sciences, while others see the emergent field as involving new and fuller partnerships
between the humanities, sciences, and professional schools. This course is strongly committed
to understanding the nature and value of traditional Buddhist meditation in their own complex
contexts, to the transformative power of integrated academic research on these and
associated human practices that draws upon the humanities, sciences, social sciences, the arts,
and the professional schools, and to exploring the complexities and possibilities of new secular
adaptations and transformations inspired by Buddhist meditation.

Our course is organized into twelve overall units based upon the unique twelve fold typology
of meditative traditions presented above, which are themselves organized into four sections
corresponding to the four vehicles of Buddhism. Each unit in turn then has four components:
(i) the specific Buddhist meditation in its traditional presentation and practice; (ii) modern
scientific research into its efficacy and dynamics, or on practices, principles, and processes
related to this type of meditation in our analysis; (iii) the fact, problems, and opportunities of
modern secular adaptations in a variety of educational, professional, and personal settings;
and (iv) secular practices for personal experimentation, which are either direct adaptations or
new practices designed to give an experiential sense of some of the principles underlying the
Buddhist meditative practice. Of special note is that this fourth section, which we call the
Contemplative Lab, include practices offered by individuals with deep backgrounds in Tibetan
Buddhism, but whom were asked to offer instruction in non-religious practices that give an
experiential sense of the principles and processes involved in the Buddhist meditation of that
unit. In some cases, these practices are well known secular adaptations, while in other cases
they are practices created for the course itself; likewise, some practices are things that could
be easily used on a daily basis if people find them useful, while other practices may be more
useful only on a temporary basis to reflect upon the nature of the corresponding Buddhist
practice. In each case, the practice is offered with a three part instructional module - an
opening talk on background information relevant to the meditation, the guided meditation
itself, and concluding thoughts on the types of experiences such meditation might cultivate, as
well as how such meditation might be carried forward into one’s life.