Tuệ Uyển chuyển ngữ

While Mingyur’s visit to Madison had yielded jaw-dropping results, he was not alone. Over the years in Richie’s lab, those twenty-one yogis have come to be formally tested. They were at the height of this inner art, having racked up lifetime meditation hours ranging from 12,000 to Mingyur’s 62,000 (the number he had accomplished while going through these studies, and before his four-years-plus wandering retreat).

Each of these yogis completed at least one three-year retreat, during which they meditated in formal practice a minimum of eight hours per day for three continuous years—actually, for three years, three months, and three days. That equates, in a conservative estimate, to about 9,500 hours per retreat.

All have undergone the same scientific protocol, those four one-minute cycles of three kinds of meditation—which has yielded a mountain of metrics. The lab’s team spent months and months analyzing the dramatic changes they saw during those short minutes in these highly seasoned practitioners.

Like Mingyur, they entered the specified meditative states at will, each one marked by a distinctive neural signature. As with Mingyur, these adepts have shown remarkable mental dexterity, instantly and with striking ease mobilizing these states: generating feelings of compassion, the spacious equanimity of complete openness to whatever occurs, or laser-sharp, unbreakable focus.

They entered and left these difficult-to-achieve levels of awareness within split seconds. These shifts in awareness were accompanied by equally pronounced shifts in measurable brain activity. Such a feat of collective mental gymnastics has never been seen by science before.

A SCIENTIFIC SURPRISE

Recall that at the last minute the bedridden Francisco, just a month before he died, had to cancel attending that meeting in Madison with the Dalai Lama. He sent his close student Antoine Lutz, who had just received his PhD under Francisco’s mentorship, to present in his absence.

Richie and Antoine met for the first time just one day before that meeting, and from the start their two scientific minds melded. Antoine’s background in engineering and Richie’s in psychology and neuroscience made for a complementary pairing.

Antoine ended up spending the next ten years in Richie’s lab, where he brought his precision mind to the analysis of the EEGs and fMRIs of yogis. Antoine, like Francisco, has been a dedicated meditation practitioner himself, and the combination of his introspective insights with his scientific mind-set made for an extraordinary colleague in Richie’s center.

Now a professor at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France, Antoine continues to pursue research in contemplative neuroscience. He has been involved from the start in the research with yogis and has coauthored a stream of articles, with more coming, reporting his findings.

Preparing the raw data on the yogis for sifting by sophisticated statistical programs has demanded painstaking work. Just teasing out the differences between the yogis’ resting state and their brain activity during meditation was a gargantuan computing task. So it took Antoine and Richie quite a while to stumble upon a pattern hiding in that data flood, empirical evidence that got lost amid the excitement about the yogis’ prowess in altering their brain activity during meditative states. In fact, the missed pattern surfaced only as an afterthought during a less hectic moment, months later, when the analytic team sifted through the data again.

All along the statistical team had focused on temporary state effects by computing the difference between a yogi’s baseline brain activity and that produced during the one-minute meditation periods. Richie was reviewing the numbers with Antoine and wanted a routine check to ensure that the initial baseline EEG readings—those taken at rest, before the experiment began—were the same in a group of control volunteers who tried the identical meditations the yogis were doing. He asked to see just the baseline measures by themselves.

When Richie and Antoine sat down to review what the computers had just crunched, they looked at the numbers and then looked at one another. They knew exactly what they were seeing and exchanged just one word: “Amazing!”

All the yogis had elevated gamma oscillations, not just during the meditation practice periods for open presence and compassion but also during the very first measurement, before any meditation was performed. This electrifying pattern was in the EEG frequency known as “highamplitude” gamma, the strongest, most intense form. These waves lasted the full minute of the baseline measurement before they started the meditation.

This was the very EEG wave that Mingyur had displayed in that surprising surge during both open presence and compassion. And now Richie’s team saw that same unusual brain pattern in all the yogis as a standard feature of their everyday neural activity. In other words, Richie and Antoine had stumbled upon the holy grail: a neural signature showing an enduring transformation.

There are four main types of EEG waves, classed by their frequency (technically, measured in hertz). Delta, the slowest wave, oscillates between one and four cycles per second, and occurs mainly during deep sleep; theta, the next slowest, can signify drowsiness; alpha occurs when we are doing little thinking and indicates relaxation; and beta, the fastest, accompanies thinking, alertness, or concentration.

Gamma, the very fastest brain wave, occurs during moments when differing brain regions fire in harmony, like moments of insight when different elements of a mental puzzle “click” together. To get a sense of this “click,” try this: What single word can turn each of these into a compound word: sauce, pine, crab?fn1

The instant your mind comes up with the answer, your brain signal momentarily produces that distinctive gamma flare. You also elicit a shortlived gamma wave when, for instance, you imagine biting into a ripe, juicy peach and your brain draws together memories stored in different regions of the occipital, temporal, somatosensory, insular, and olfactory cortices to suddenly mesh the sight, smells, taste, feel, and sound into a single experience. For that quick moment the gamma waves from each of these cortical regions oscillate in perfect synchrony. Ordinarily gamma waves from, say, a creative insight, last no longer than a fifth of a second—not the full minute seen in the yogis.

Anyone’s EEG will show distinctive gamma waves for short moments from time to time. Ordinarily, during a waking state we exhibit a mixture of different brain waves that wax and wane at different frequencies. These brain oscillations reflect complex mental activity, like information processing, and their various frequencies correspond to broadly different functions. The location of these oscillations varies among brain regions; we can display alpha in one cortical location and gamma in another.

In the yogis, gamma oscillations are a far more prominent feature of their brain activity than in other people. Our usual gamma waves are not nearly as strong as that seen by Richie’s team in yogis like Mingyur. The contrast between the yogis and controls in the intensity of gamma was immense: on average the yogis had twenty-five times greater amplitude gamma oscillations during baseline compared with the control group.

We can only make conjectures about what state of consciousness this reflects: yogis like Mingyur seem to experience an ongoing state of open, rich awareness during their daily lives, not just when they meditate. The yogis themselves have described it as a spaciousness and vastness in their experience, as if all their senses were wide open to the full, rich panorama of experience.

Or, as a fourteenth-century Tibetan text describes it,

… a state of bare, transparent awareness;

Effortless and brilliantly vivid, a state of relaxed, rootless wisdom;

Fixation free and crystal clear, a state without the slightest reference point; Spacious empty clarity, a state wide-open and unconfined; the senses unfettered …1

The gamma brain state Richie and Antoine discovered was more than unusual, it was unprecedented—a wow! No brain lab had ever before seen gamma oscillations that persist for minutes rather than split seconds, are so strong, and are in synchrony across widespread regions of the brain.

Astonishingly, this sustained, brain-entraining gamma pattern goes on even while seasoned meditators are asleep—as was found by the Davidson group in other research with long-term vipassana meditators who have an average of about 10,000 hours lifetime practice. These gamma oscillations continuing during deep sleep are, again, something never seen before and seem to reflect a residual quality of awareness that persists day and night.2

The yogis’ pattern of gamma oscillation contrasts with how, ordinarily, these waves occur only briefly, and in an isolated neural location. The adepts had a sharply heightened level of gamma waves oscillating in synchrony across their brain, independent of any particular mental act. Unheard of.

Richie and Antoine were seeing for the first time a neural echo of the enduring transformations that years of meditation practice etch on the brain. Here was the treasure, hidden in the data all along: a genuine altered trait.

STATE BY TRAIT

In one of the many studies Antoine spearheaded, when volunteers new to meditation were trained for a week in the same practices that the yogis do, there was absolutely no difference between the volunteers’ brains at rest and when they were trying to meditate on cue, as the yogis did.3 This contrasts with the remarkable difference between resting and meditation in the yogis. Since any learnable mental skill takes sustained practice over time to master, given the massive hours of lifetime meditation among the yogis, we are not surprised by this vast difference between novices and masters.

But there’s another surprise here: the yogis’ remarkable talent at entering a specific meditative state on cue, within a second or two, itself signals an altered trait. This mental feat stands in stark contrast to most of us meditators who, relative to the yogis, are more like beginners: when we meditate, it takes us a while to settle our minds, let go of distracting thoughts that overwhelm our focus, and get some momentum in our meditation.

From time to time we may have what we consider a “good” meditative experience. And now and then we might peek at our watch to see how much longer the session should last.

Not for the yogis.

Their remarkable meditation skills bespeak what’s technically known as a “state by trait interaction,” suggesting the brain changes that underlie the

trait also give rise to special abilities that activate during meditative states— here, a heightened speed of onset, greater intensity, and extended duration.

In contemplative science, an “altered state” refers to changes that occur only during meditation. An altered trait indicates that the practice of meditation transformed the brain and biology so that meditation-induced changes are seen before beginning to meditate.

So a “state-by-trait” effect refers to temporary state changes that are seen only in those who display enduring altered traits—the long-term meditators and the yogis. Several have shown up during the research in Richie’s lab.

One example. Recall that the yogis show a pronounced elevation in gamma activity during the open presence and compassion meditations, far greater than in the controls. This elevation in gamma activity was a change from baseline, their everyday levels—marking another state-by-trait effect.

What’s more, while they rest in “open presence,” the very distinction between a state and a trait blurs: in their tradition, the yogis are explicitly instructed to mingle the state of open presence with their everyday life—to morph the state into a trait.

READY FOR ACTION

One by one they lay in the scanners, their heads held firmly in place by cumbersome earphones. There was one group of meditation novices, and another of Tibetan and Western yogis (lifetime average 34,000 hours); each one had his or her (yes, there were female yogis) brain scanned while doing a compassion practice.4

The specific method they deployed was described by Matthieu Ricard, who collaborated on the study, as follows. First bring to mind someone you care about deeply and relish the feeling of compassion toward that person— and then hold that same loving-kindness toward all beings, without thinking of anyone in particular.5

During the session of loving-kindness each person heard at random a series of sounds, some happy, like a baby laughing; others neutral, like background sounds in a café, or still others, sounds of human suffering (like screams, as in the studies in chapter six). Just as in previous studies of empathy and the brain, for everyone the neural circuitry for tuning in to distress activated more strongly during compassion meditation than when those vocal signals of suffering came while the person was at rest.

Significantly, this brain response for sharing another person’s feelings was greater in the yogis compared to beginners. In addition, their expertise in compassion practice also upped action in circuitry typically involved while we sense another person’s mental state or take their perspective. Finally, there was a boost in brain areas, especially the amygdala, key for what’s salient; we feel another person’s distress is of compelling importance and pay more attention.

Tellingly, the yogis but not the beginners showed the final part of the brain’s arc to action, a jump in activity in the motor centers that guide the body when we are ready to move—to take some decisive action to help, even though the subjects were lying still in a scanner. The yogis showed a huge boost in these circuits. The involvement of neural regions for action, particularly the premotor cortex, seems striking: to emotional resonance with a person’s suffering it adds the readiness to help.

The yogi’s neural profile during compassion seems to reflect an endpoint of the path of change. For people who have never meditated before, absolute beginners, the pattern does not show up during their meditation on compassion—it takes a bit of practice. There’s a dose response here: this pattern shows up a bit in beginners, more in people who have put in more lifetime hours of meditation, and to the greatest extent in the yogis.

Intriguingly, yogis hearing sounds of people in distress while they were doing loving-kindness meditation showed less activity than others do in their postcingulate cortex (PCC), a key area for self-focused thought.6 In the yogis, hearing sounds of suffering seems to prime a focus on others.

They also show a stronger connection between the PCC and the prefrontal cortex, an overall pattern suggesting a “down-regulation” of the “what will happen to me?” self-concern that can dampen compassionate action.7

Some of the yogis later explained that their training imbued them with preparedness for action, so the moment they encounter suffering they are predisposed to act without hesitation to help the person. This preparedness, along with their willingness to engage with someone’s suffering, counters the normal tendency to withdraw, to back away from a person in distress.

That seems to embody the advice of Tibetan meditation master (and Matthieu’s main teacher) Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche to yogis such as these: “Develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages ….”8

PRESENCE TO PAIN

An eighteenth-century Tibetan text urges meditators to practice “on whatever harms come your way,” adding, “When sick, practice on that sickness …. When cold, practice on that coldness. By practicing in this way all situations will arise as meditation.”9

Mingyur Rinpoche, likewise, encourages making all sensation, even pain, our “friend,” using it as a basis for meditation. Since the essence of meditation is awareness, any sensation that anchors attention can be used as support—and pain particularly can be very effective in focusing. Treating it as a friend “softens and warms” our relationship, as he puts it, as we gradually learn to accept the pain rather than try to get rid of it.

With that advice in mind, consider what happened when Richie’s group used the thermal stimulator to create intense pain in the yogis. Each yogi (including Mingyur) was compared to a meditation-naive volunteer matched for age and gender. For a week before they came to be studied, these volunteers learned to generate an “open presence,” an attentional stance of letting whatever life presents us come and go, without adding thoughts or emotional reactions. Our senses are fully open, and we just stay aware of what happens without getting carried away by any downs or ups.

All those in the study were first tested to find their individual maximal heat point. Then they were told they would get a ten-second blast of that fiery device, which would be preceded by a slight warming of the plate—a ten-second warning. Meanwhile, their brain was being scanned.

The moment the plate heated a bit—the cue for pain about to come—the control groups activated regions throughout the brain’s pain matrix as though they were already feeling the intense burn. The reaction to the “as if” pain—technically, “anticipatory anxiety”—was so strong that when the actual burning sensation began, their pain matrix activation became just a bit stronger. And in the ten-second recovery period, right after the heat subsided, that matrix stayed nearly as active—there was no immediate recovery.

This sequence of anticipation-reactivity-recovery gives us a window on emotion regulation. For instance, intense worry about something like an

upcoming painful medical procedure can in itself cause us anticipatory suffering, just imagining how bad we will feel. And after the real event we can continue to be upset by what we have gone through. In this sense our pain response can start well before and last long after the actual painful moment—exactly the pattern shown by those volunteers in the comparison group.

The yogis, on the other hand, had a very different response in this sequence. They, like the controls, were also in a state of open presence—no doubt one some magnitudes greater than for the novices. For the yogis, their pain matrix showed little change in activity when the plate warmed a bit, even though this cue meant extreme pain was ten seconds away. Their brains seemed to simply register that cue with no particular reaction.

But during the actual moments of intense heat the yogis had a surprising heightened response, mainly in the sensory areas that receive the granular feel of a stimulus—the tingling, pressure, high heat, and other raw sensations on the skin of the wrist where the hot plate rested. The emotional regions of the pain matrix activated a bit, but not as much as the sensory circuitry.

This suggests a lessening of the psychological component—like the worry we feel in anticipation of pain—along with intensification of the pain sensations themselves. Right after the heat stopped, all the regions of the pain matrix rapidly returned down to their levels before the pain cue, far more quickly than was the case for the controls. For these highly advanced meditators, the recovery from pain was almost as though nothing much had happened at all.

This inverted V-shaped pattern, with little reaction during anticipation of a painful event, followed by a surge of intensity at the actual moment, then swift recovery from it, can be highly adaptive. This lets us be fully responsive to a challenge as it happens, without letting our emotional reactions interfere before or afterward, when they are no longer useful. This seems an optimal pattern of emotion regulation.

Remember the fear we felt when we were six years old about going to the dentist to get a cavity filled? This could mean nightmares at that age. But we change as we grow older. When we are twenty-six, what might have loomed as a trauma in childhood becomes ho-hum, an appointment to schedule in the midst of a busy day. We are a very different person as an adult than we were as a child—we bring more mature ways of thinking and reacting to the moment.

Likewise, with the yogis in the pain study, their many years of meditation practice suggests the state they were in during the pain reflects enduring changes acquired through their training. And because they were engaged in the open presence practice, this, too, qualifies as a state by trait effect.

EFFORTLESS

As with any skill we sharpen, within the first weeks of meditation practice, beginners notice increased ease. For instance, when volunteers new to meditation practiced daily for ten weeks, they reported the practice progressively got easier and more enjoyable, whether they were focusing on their breath, generating loving-kindness, or just observing the flow of their thoughts.10

And as we saw in chapter eight, Judson Brewer found a group of longterm meditators (with an average lifetime practice of about 10,000 hours) reported effortless awareness during meditation in association with decreased activity in the PCC, that part of the default network active during “selfing” mental operations.11 When we take the self out of the picture, it seems, things go along with little effort.

When long-term meditators reported “undistracted awareness,” “effortless doing,” “not efforting,” and “contentment,” activation in the PCC went down. On the other hand, when they reported “distracted awareness,” “efforting,” and “discontentment,” activation of the PCC went up.12

A group of first-time meditators also reported an increase in ease, though only while they were actively being mindful—a state effect that did not persist otherwise. For the beginners, “increased ease” appears very relative: going from exerting great effort—particularly to counter the mind’s tendency to wander—and getting a bit better at it as the days and weeks go on. But the easing of their effort goes nowhere near the effortlessness found in the yogis, as we’ve seen in their remarkable performance in the on/off lab protocol.

One metric for effortlessness here comes down to being able to keep your mind on a chosen point of focus and resist the natural tendency to wander off into some train of thought or be pulled away by a sound, while having no feeling of making an effort. This kind of ease seems to increase with practice.

Richie’s lab group initially compared expert meditators to controls in the magnitude of prefrontal activation during focused attention on a small light. The long-term meditators showed a modest increase in prefrontal activation compared with the controls, though the difference was, strangely, not very impressive.

One afternoon as Richie and his lab team sat around a long conference table pondering these somewhat disappointing data, they began to reflect on the large span of expertise even within the so-called expert meditator group. This expert group actually ranged in practice hours from 10,000 to 50,000 —a very large spread. Richie wondered what they would find if they compared those with the most versus least amount of practice. He had already found that with higher levels of expertise, there’s an effortlessness that actually would be reflected in less rather than more prefrontal activation.

When the team compared those with the most versus those with the least amount of practice, they found something truly striking: all of the increase in prefrontal activation was accounted for by those with the least amount of practice. For those with the most lifetime hours of practice, there was very little prefrontal activation.

Curiously, the activation tended to occur only at the very beginning of a practice period, while the mind was focusing on the object of concentration, that little light. Once the light was in focus, the prefrontal activation dropped away. This sequence may represent the neural echoes of effortless concentration.

Another measure of concentration was to see how distracted the meditators are by emotional sounds—laughing, screaming, crying—which they heard in the background while focusing on the light. The more amygdala activation in response to those sounds, the more wavering in concentration. Among meditators with the greatest amount of lifetime practice hours—an average of 44,000 lifetime hours (the equivalent of twelve hours a day for ten years) the amygdala hardly responded to the emotional sounds. But for those with less practice, (though still a high number—19,000 hours) the amygdala also showed a robust response. There was a staggering 400 percent difference in the size of the amygdala response between these groups!

This indicates an extraordinary selectivity of attention: a brain effortlessly able to block out the extraneous sounds and the emotional reactivity they normally elicit.

What’s more, this means traits continue to alter even at the highest level of practice. The dose-response relationship does not seem to end even up to 50,000 hours of practice.

The finding of a switch to effortlessness in brain function among the most highly experienced yogis was only possible because Richie’s group had assessed total lifetime hours of meditation practice. Lacking that simple metric, this valuable finding would have been buried in the general comparison between novices and experts.

THE HEART-MIND

Back in 1992, Richie and that gallant band of researchers brought their tons of equipment to India, hoping to measure the most seasoned meditation masters near where the Dalai Lama lives. Next to his residence sits the Namgyal Monastery Institute of Buddhist Studies, an important training ground for monk-scholars in the Dalai Lama’s tradition. Richie and his researcher friends, you’ll remember, were unable to collect any real scientific data from the mountain-dwelling yogis.

But when the Dalai Lama asked Richie and his colleagues to give a talk on their work to the monks in the monastery, Richie thought maybe the equipment they schlepped to India could be put to some good use. Rather than just a dry academic talk, they would give a live demonstration of how brain electrical signals can be recorded.

And so, two hundred monks were dutifully sitting on cushions on the floor when Richie and friends arrived with their suitcases filled with EEG equipment. To place a headful of electrodes takes quite a bit of time. Richie and the other scientists worked as quickly as possible to secure all the electrodes in place.

The demo that evening used as subject the neuroscientist Francisco Varela. As Richie placed the electrodes on Francisco’s scalp, the view of Francisco was blocked. But when Richie completed his task and moved out of way, a loud chorus of laughter erupted from the usually very staid monks.

Richie thought the monks were laughing because Francisco looked a bit funny with wires coming off his scalp electrodes like a big bundle of spaghetti. But that was not what the monks found funny.

They were laughing because Richie and his team had told them of their interest in studying compassion—but they were placing electrodes on the head, rather than the heart!

It took Richie’s group about fifteen years to see the monks’ point. Once yogis started to come to Richie’s lab, the group saw data that made them realize compassion was very much an embodied state, with tight links between the brain and body, and especially between the brain and the heart.

Evidence for this linkage came from an analysis that related the yogis’ brain activity to their heart rate—a follow-up to the unexpected finding that the yogis’ hearts beat more rapidly compared to novices’ when they heard sounds of people in distress.13 The yogis’ heart rate was coupled with the activity of a key area in the insula, a brain region that acts as the portal through which information about the body is conveyed to the brain and vice versa.

In a sense, then, the Namgyal monks were right. Richie’s team had data suggesting that with yogic training the brain becomes more finely tuned to the heart—specifically during compassion meditation.

Again, this was a state-by-trait finding, one that occurred in the yogis only when they meditated on compassion (and not during other kinds of meditation, at rest, or among those in a comparison group).

In short, compassion in the yogis sharpens their sense of other people’s emotions, especially if they are distraught, and heightens sensitivity to their own bodies—particularly the heart, a key source of empathic resonance with the suffering of others.

The variety of compassion may matter. Here the practitioners were engaged in “nonreferential” compassion. In the words of Matthieu, they were “generating a state in which love and compassion permeated the whole mind with no other discursive thoughts.” They were not focusing on any specific person, but rather were generating the background quality of compassion; this may be especially important in engaging the neural circuits that tune the brain to the heart.

Being present to another person—a sustained, caring attention—can be seen as a basic form of compassion. Careful attention to another person also enhances empathy, letting us catch more of the fleeting facial expressions and other such cues that attune us to how that person actually feels in the moment. But if our attention “blinks,” we may miss those signals. As we saw in chapter seven, long-term meditators have fewer such blinks in their attention than do other folks.

This cancellation of the attentional blink numbers among a host of mental functions that change with rigorous mind training—and which scientists had thought to be frozen, immutable, basic properties of the nervous system. Most of these are little known outside scientific circles, where they are taken as strong givens—a challenge to that status jars the assumptive system of cognitive science. But discarding old assumptions in light of new findings is the motor of science itself.

Another point. We expect that the lightening of self and lessening of attachment in the yogis would correlate with a shrinking of the nucleus accumbens, as was found in long-term Western meditators. But Richie has collected no data on this from the yogis, despite the falling away of attachments being an explicit goal of their practice.

The discovery of the default mode and how to measure it, as well as its crucial role in the brain’s self-system, has come so recently that when the yogis were coming one by one through the lab, Richie’s team had no inkling they might want to use the baseline to measure this shift. Only toward the tail end of this stream did the lab get the resting state measures needed—and on too few yogis to have robust data for the analysis.

Science progresses in part through innovative measures that yield data never seen before. That’s what we have here. But that also means the slices of findings we have on the yogis have more to do with the serendipity of measures available to us than with some careful assay of the topography of this region of human experience.

This highlights a weakness in what otherwise might seem quite impressive findings on the yogis: these data points are but glimpses of the altered traits that intensive, prolonged meditation produces. We do not want to reduce this quality of being to what we happen to be able to measure.

Science’s view of these yogis’ altered traits is akin to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. The gamma finding, for instance, seems quite exciting, but it’s like feeling the elephant’s trunk without knowing about the rest of its body. And so, too, with their missing attentional blink, effortless meditative states, ultrarapid recovery from pain, and readiness to help someone in distress—these are but glimpses of a larger reality we do not fully comprehend.

What matters most, though, may be the realization that our ordinary state of waking consciousness—as William James observed more than a century ago—is but one option. Altered traits are another.

A word about the global significance of these yogis. Such people are very rare, what some Asian cultures call “living treasures.” Encounters with them are extremely nourishing and often inspiring, not because of some vaunted status or celebrity but because of the inner qualities they radiate. We hope nations and cultures that harbor such beings will see the need to protect them and their communities of expertise and practice, as well as preserve the cultural attitudes that value these altered traits. To lose the way to this inner expertise would be a world tragedy.

IN A NUTSHELL

The massive levels of gamma activity in the yogis and the synchrony of the gamma oscillations across widespread regions of the brain suggest the vastness and panoramic quality of awareness that they report. The yogis’ awareness in the present moment—without getting stuck in the anticipation of the future or ruminating on the past—seems reflected in the strong “inverted V” response to pain, where yogis show little anticipatory response and very rapid recovery. The yogis also show neural evidence of effortless concentration: it takes only a flicker of the neural circuitry to place their attention on a chosen object, and little to no effort to hold it there. Finally, when generating compassion, the brains of yogis become more connected to their bodies, particularly their hearts—indicating emotional resonance./.

Thứ Ba, 27 tháng 1, 2026

TIỀN THÂN PHẬT PHÁT BỒ ĐỀ TÂM

Cách Bậc Thầy Tối Thượng của Chúng Ta Phát Khởi Bồ-đề Tâm và Các Chủ Đề Khác

Nguyên tác: How Our Supreme Teacher Generated Bodhicitta and Other Topics
Tác giả: Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö
Việt dịch: Quảng Cơ
Biên tập: Tuệ Uyển

***

Liên quan đến Bậc Thầy tối thượng, đầy lòng bi mẫn của chúng ta, Kinh Báo Ân[2] nói rằng: vào một thời điểm nào đó trong quá khứ xa xôi vô thủy, khi Ngài vẫn còn là một phàm phu, mang đủ mọi trói buộc, do sức mạnh của nghiệp, Ngài đã rơi vào địa ngục mang tên Cỗ Xe Lửa. Ở đó, Ngài trở thành một người lực lưỡng, cùng với một người bạn bị buộc phải kéo một cỗ xe chở vị hộ vệ địa ngục đầu trâu tên là Abang[3].

Khi người bạn đồng hành kiệt sức đến mức không thể kéo xe nữa, người lực lưỡng đã nói với Abang:

“Xin hãy khởi lòng từ bi đối với anh ấy.”

Lời nói ấy khiến Abang nổi giận dữ dội, và hắn đã dùng một cây đinh ba bằng sắt đâm vào cổ người lực lưỡng, giết chết ông. Nhờ đó, nghiệp ác của một trăm đại kiếp được tịnh hóa, và ông được giải thoát [khỏi địa ngục].

Rất lâu về sau, Ngài tái sinh làm con trai của một người thợ gốm, tên là Bhāskara[4], ở miền nam cõi Diêm Phù Đề (Jambudvīpa). Ngài khởi lên lòng sùng kính mãnh liệt đối với Đức Phật Đại Thích Ca Mâu Ni (Mahāśākyamuni), dâng cúng Ngài một bát canh và năm vỏ sò xà cừ (cowrie), rồi phát nguyện với lời mở đầu:

“Ôi đấng Thiện Thệ (Sugata),
nguyện cho con và tất cả chúng sinh có được thân tướng
Một quyến thuộc, một thọ mạng, một cõi tịnh,
Cùng những tướng hảo viên mãn tối thượng,
Thảy đều y hệt như Ngài.”

Nhờ đó, lần đầu tiên Ngài đặt tâm mình hướng đến Vô thượng Giác ngộ. Kinh Hiền Kiếp[6] nói rằng:

Trong một đời quá khứ, khi ta mang thân phận hèn kém,
Ta đã dâng lên chút canh
Cúng dường đức Như Lai Thích-ca Mâu-ni,
Và lần đầu tiên phát khởi tâm hướng đến Vô thượng Giác ngộ.

Đó là cách Ngài lần đầu tiên phát khởi Bồ-đề tâm. Sau đó, về việc tích tập hai tư lương, theo quan điểm của Thừa căn bản, đại kiếp vô số thứ nhất kéo dài từ lúc Ngài là con trai người thợ gốm và Đức Mahāśākyamuni xuất hiện ở thế gian cho đến thời của đức Như Lai Rāṣṭrapāla[7]. Trong khoảng thời gian ấy, Ngài đã tôn kính bảy mươi lăm nghìn vị Phật.

Trong đại kiếp vô số thứ hai, tính từ khi Ngài là con trai một vị Bà-la-môn, dâng cúng bảy đóa hoa sen (utpala) xanh lên Đức Dīpaṃkara, cho đến thời của bậc Thiện Thệ Indradhvaja, Ngài đã tôn kính bảy mươi sáu nghìn vị Phật.

Trong đại kiếp vô số thứ ba, kể từ khi Ngài là một vị vua dâng cúng lên Đức Sugata Kṣemaṅkara và xây dựng một bảo tháp để thờ xá-lợi của Ngài, cho đến khi Ngài xuất gia và phát khởi Bồ-đề tâm trước Đức Phật Kāśyapa, thì người ta nói rằng Ngài đã tôn kính và làm hoan hỷ bảy mươi bảy nghìn vị Phật.

Luận Tạng (Treasury) nói rằng đại kiếp vô số thứ nhất kéo dài từ thời Đức Śākyamuni cho đến thời Đức Ratnaśikhī; đại kiếp vô số thứ hai kéo dài cho đến Đức Dīpaṃkara; và đại kiếp vô số thứ ba kéo dài cho đến Đức Phật Tỳ Bà Thi (Vipaśvin).

Sau đó, Đức Phật đã trải qua một trăm đại kiếp để tạo lập các nhân duyên cho những tướng hảo thù thắng của thân. Khi còn là con trai của một vị Bà-la-môn, Ngài đã đứng trên một chân trước Đức Phật Puṣya, khi Ngài đang an trụ trong định đẳng trì trên yếu tố lửa, và nhiễu quanh Ngài suốt bảy ngày. Ngài đã dâng lời tán thán bằng bài kệ mở đầu:

“Bậc Lãnh Đạo của chúng sinh,
Chẳng có bậc tu hành cao thâm nào như Ngài trong khắp các cõi trời.
Ngay cả thế gian này cũng không, hay thậm chí trong cõi của Đa Văn Thiên Vương (Vaiśravaṇa) cũng chẳng thể tìm ra.
Nơi các thiên cung tối thượng, hay bất kể phương chính, phương phụ nào, họ đều chẳng hiện hữu.
Trên khắp mặt đất này với núi non và rừng rậm đại ngàn, liệu nơi nào có thể tìm thấy một bậc như Ngài?”

Nhờ vậy, Ngài đã tích tập được công đức của chín đại kiếp. Rồi sau chín mươi mốt đại kiếp nữa, khi Đức Phật Ca Diếp (Kāśyapa) xuất hiện ở thế gian, [vị Phật tương lai] đã là con trai của một vị Bà-la-môn và tôn Ngài làm thầy. Do đã tạo đủ các nhân cho những tướng hảo của thân, Ngài trở thành điều được gọi là Bồ-tát ở địa vị xác định.

Sau khi viên mãn các nhân duyên để thành tựu những tướng hảo thù thắng, Ngài tái sinh lên cõi Đâu Suất (Tuṣita), mang tên Śvetaketu, là một Bồ-tát chỉ còn một lần tái sinh nữa. Sau đó, Ngài sinh vào cõi Diêm Phù Đề (Jambudvīpa) với tên Siddhārtha, là một Bồ-tát trong đời sinh cuối cùng.

Nương trên thân hỗ trợ ấy, vào lúc chạng vạng, Ngài đã hàng phục Ma vương tại Kim Cang Tòa; vào nửa đêm, Ngài an trụ trong thiền định; và đến rạng đông, Ngài đã chứng đắc tam-muội kim cang.

Theo truyền thống Đại thừa, đại kiếp vô số thứ nhất tương ứng với địa thứ nhất, tức địa của hạnh nguyện phát tâm; đại kiếp vô số thứ hai tương ứng với các địa từ thứ hai đến thứ bảy; và đại kiếp vô số thứ ba tương ứng với các giai đoạn còn lại, cho đến và bao gồm địa thứ mười.

Đại Chú Giải về Bát Thiên Tụng[10] giải thích ba mươi ba đại kiếp vô số.

Về sự khởi đầu của các đại kiếp vô số, Nhiếp Đại Thừa Luận[11] nói rằng:

Đầy đủ sức mạnh của thiện căn và nguyện lực,
Tâm an trụ vững chắc và tiến tu thù thắng,
Vị Bồ-tát bắt đầu tiến trình
Kéo dài suốt ba đại kiếp vô số.

Bản dịch dưới đây chuyển ngữ đoạn văn trên sang tiếng Việt với phong cách trang trọng, phù hợp với văn phong Phật học:

Quá Trình Tu Tập Qua Ba A-tăng-tỳ Kiếp

Khi hội đủ bốn yếu tố này vào lúc bắt đầu Lộ trình Tích lũy (Tư lương vị), đó được coi là dấu mốc khởi đầu của các đại kiếp bất khả tư nghị.

Kiếp Thứ Nhất: Thành tựu Sơ địa

Trong thời kỳ này, Ngài là Thái tử Vīryakārin, con trai của Vua Vijaya. Ngài đã thụ nhận giáo pháp từ Đức Như Lai Arciskandha. Bằng việc cúng dường, tôn kính Đức Phật cùng tăng đoàn quy quyến trong suốt sáu trăm sáu mươi triệu năm, Ngài đã chứng đắc Sơ địa (Hoan hỷ địa).

Kiếp Thứ Hai: Thành tựu Thất địa

Đến đại kiếp bất khả tư nghị thứ hai, vào thời của Vua Diệu Tướng tại thành Kim Sắc, bậc thầy khi ấy là Thương gia Prajñābhadra. Vị này đã thụ giáo và tôn kính Đức Như Lai Ratnāṅga trong một ngàn năm. Nhờ việc tích lũy các công đức như vậy, Ngài đã hiện chứng Thất địa (Viễn hành địa).

Kiếp Thứ Ba: Thọ ký và Bát địa

Trong đại kiếp bất khả tư nghị thứ ba, Ngài là một học giả Bà-la-môn trẻ tuổi tên là Kumāramegha (Vân Đồng học tử). Tại vùng lân cận Cung điện Hoa Sen của Vua Jitāri, Ngài đã dâng cúng năm đóa hoa ưu-bát-la (sen xanh) lên Đức Thiện Thệ Nhiên Đăng (Dīpaṃkara).

Sau đó, Ngài trải mái tóc vàng của mình trên mặt đất như một tấm thảm và phát nguyện:

"Nếu Ngài không ban cho con lời thọ ký [về sự giác ngộ trong tương lai], con nguyện sẽ để thân xác này héo mòn."

Đức Như Lai thấu rõ tâm nguyện đó, Ngài bước chân lên mái tóc ấy và ban lời thọ ký:

"Trong tương lai, ông sẽ trở thành vị Phật hiệu là Thích Ca Mâu Ni (Śākyamuni)."

Nghe vậy, vị Phật tương lai tràn ngập hỷ lạc và bay bổng lên không trung bằng chiều cao của bảy cây thốt nốt. Ngài hiện chứng nhiều trăm tỷ tam-ma-địa (định) và đạt đến Bát địa (Bất động địa).

Từ Thập Địa Đến Đạo Quả Viên Mãn

Sau đó, Ngài tiếp tục tái sinh trong nhiều kiếp tiếp theo dưới thân phận là Đế Thích (Śakra), Tế Mục (Sunetra) và các hóa thân khác, luôn nỗ lực vì lợi lạc của chúng sinh. Cuối cùng, vào thời Đức Phật Ca Diếp (Kāśyapa) — khi tuổi thọ loài người là hai mươi ngàn năm — Ngài là một người con của gia đình Bà-la-môn. Vị này đã phụng sự vô số chư Phật và tích lũy công đức trong suốt một đại kiếp bất khả tư nghị. Nhờ đó, Ngài đã hiện chứng Thập địa (Pháp vân địa).

Sự Đoạn Tận và Giác Ngộ Hoàn Hảo

Thông qua Kim cương du-già tam-ma-địa tại điểm cuối của Thập địa, Ngài đã tận diệt hoàn toàn các chướng ngại cùng với tập khí của chúng, không còn khả năng quay trở lại — đây chính là Đoạn đức viên mãn. Bằng cách đạt được trí tuệ thấu triệt bản chất của vạn pháp (như quán) và sự đa dạng của vạn pháp (tận quán) — đây chính là Chứng đức viên mãn.

Thành Tựu Tứ Thân

Như vậy, Ngài đã đạt được sự giác ngộ vĩ đại với tự tánh của Ba thân (Tam thân):

1• Báo thân (Saṃbhogakāya): Thành tựu viên mãn lợi lạc cho chính mình.
2• Hóa thân (Nirmāṇakāya): Thành tựu viên mãn lợi lạc cho tha nhân.
3• Pháp thân (Dharmakāya): Là chỗ dựa cho cả hai thân trên. Tự tánh của ba thân này, hay sự chứng ngộ về Pháp giới (Dharmadhātu) với hai tầng thanh tịnh bất khả phân với các phẩm hạnh thanh khiết, chính là:
4.Tự tánh thân (Svabhāvikakāya). Như luận Hiện Quán Trang Nghiêm (Abhisamayālaṃkāra) có chép:

Tự tánh thân của bậc Năng Nhơn,
Có tự tánh và đặc tính
Của mọi phương diện thanh tịnh toàn hảo,
Khi đạt được các phẩm hạnh vô lậu.

Và về thân với các tướng chính và tướng phụ rạng ngời tại cõi Đại Sắc Cứu Cánh (Great Akaniṣṭha):

Vì bậc đầy đủ ba mươi hai tướng tốt
Cùng tám mươi vẻ đẹp phụ
Thụ hưởng giáo pháp Đại thừa,
Nên đây được gọi là Báo thân (Saṃbhogakāya) của bậc Năng Nhơn.

Về những hoạt động không gián đoạn nhằm lợi lạc vô biên chúng sinh cần được điều phục:

Thân mang lại lợi lạc
Cho chúng sinh theo nhiều cách khác nhau một cách bình đẳng,
Cho đến chừng nào thế gian này còn tồn tại,
Đó chính là Hóa thân (Nirmāṇakāya) bất tận của bậc Năng Nhơn.

Bằng cách này, bậc Đạo sư tối thượng, đấng Nhân sư Độc tôn (Lord of Sages), đã thực hiện những gì được phân loại là mười hai công hạnh quan trọng nhất của Ngài trong cõi thế giới này. Kinh Tối Thắng Tửu (hay Bảo Tính Luận - Sublime Continuum) có chép:

Ngài thị hiện sự giáng sinh,
Rồi rời khỏi cung trời Đâu Suất (Tuṣita),
Nhập thai và đản sinh.
Ngài tinh thông các môn nghệ thuật,
Vui hưởng cuộc sống cùng các vương hậu,
Rời bỏ hoàng cung, tu tập khổ hạnh,
Ngài ngự trên tòa sư tử giác ngộ,
Khuất phục các thế lực ma vương (Māra),
Thành tựu Chánh đẳng Chánh giác, chuyển bánh xe Pháp,
Và rồi thị hiện nhập Niết-bàn.
Đó là những công hạnh mà Ngài hiển lộ
Khắp những cõi giới hoàn toàn bất tịnh
Cho đến khi nào thế gian còn tồn tại.

Lần chuyển Pháp luân đầu tiên diễn ra tại Vārāṇasī (Ba-la-nại). Lần chuyển pháp thứ hai (trung đẳng) diễn ra tại núi Linh Thứu (Vulture’s Peak). Lần chuyển Pháp luân cuối cùng diễn ra tại Śrāvastī (Xá-vệ) và những nơi khác. Việc các lần chuyển pháp này có thể diễn ra đồng thời được gợi ý trong luận Giải Thích Ý Định (Exposition of Intention), rằng:

Một lời sấm (kim cương ngữ) duy nhất và lôi cuốn,
Vốn không phân biệt và chẳng hề sai chạy,
Nhưng lại được hiện ra dưới nhiều khía cạnh khác nhau
Tùy theo căn cơ của mỗi người đệ tử.

Các Kỳ Kết Tập Kinh Điển

Kỳ kết tập đầu tiên diễn ra tại hang Thất Diệp (Nyagrodha Cave), nơi được xem là đủ yên tĩnh và biệt lập. Kỳ kết tập thứ hai được triệu tập khi các vị tỳ-kheo tại Vaiśālī (Tỳ-xá-ly) thực hành mười điều vi phạm nền tảng. Vua Aśoka (A-dục) đã đóng vai trò là thí chủ hộ trì cho vị A-la-hán Yaśas tại tu viện Kaśmipuri ở Vaiśālī. Bảy trăm vị A-la-hán đã vân tập, bác bỏ mười điều sai trái này và cùng nhau biên soạn lại các giáo pháp.

Kỳ kết tập thứ ba diễn ra tại tu viện Kusana ở Kashmir dưới sự bảo trợ của Vua Kaniṣka (Ca-nị-sắc-ca) xứ Jālandhara. Vị trưởng lão A-la-hán tên là Siṃha đã triệu tập năm trăm vị A-la-hán (trong đó có ngài Purnika), năm trăm vị Bồ-tát (trong đó có ngài Vasumitra), cùng năm trăm bậc trí giả (paṇḍita) phàm phu. Họ đã cùng nhau xác lập thẩm quyền cho mười tám bộ phái và biên soạn lại hệ thống giáo pháp.

1- Kỳ kết tập đầu tiên diễn ra tại hang Thất Diệp (Nyagrodha), nơi được xem là có sự biệt lập cần thiết."

2- Kỳ kết tập thứ hai được triệu tập khi các vị tỳ-kheo tại thành Vaiśālī (Tỳ-xá-ly) thực hành mười điều vi phạm nền tảng. Vua Aśoka (A-dục) đã đóng vai trò là thí chủ hộ trì cho vị A-la-hán Yaśas tại tu viện Kaśmipuri ở Vaiśālī. Bảy trăm vị A-la-hán đã vân tập, bác bỏ mười điều sai trái này và cùng nhau biên soạn lại các giáo pháp.

Mười điều vi phạm (Thập sự phi pháp): Bao gồm những việc như giữ tiền bạc, dùng bữa sau giờ ngọ (có chút sai biệt về thời gian), hay uống rượu lên men nhẹ. Sự bất đồng về 10 điều này chính là ngòi nổ dẫn đến sự phân chia giữa Thượng tọa bộ (Theravada) và Đại chúng bộ (Mahasanghika).

3- Kỳ kết tập thứ ba diễn ra tại tu viện Kusana ở Kashmir dưới sự bảo trợ của Vua Kaniṣka (Ca-nị-sắc-ca) xứ Jālandhara. Vị trưởng lão A-la-hán tên là Siṃha đã triệu tập năm trăm vị A-la-hán (trong đó có ngài Purnika), năm trăm vị Bồ-tát (trong đó có ngài Vasumitra), cùng năm trăm bậc trí giả (paṇḍita) phàm phu. Họ đã cùng nhau xác lập thẩm quyền cho mười tám bộ phái và biên soạn lại hệ thống giáo pháp.

Bất phân chia, không đầu, giữa hay cuối,
Chẳng nhị nguyên, vượt thoát cả ba thời,
Vốn vô cấu, ly niệm, tánh Pháp giới,
Chân lý này, bậc du-già thấy trong định.

Sự Tôn Kính Giáo Pháp

Vì trên thế gian này chẳng ai uyên bác hơn bậc Chiến Thắng (Đấng Thế Tôn),
Và thực tại tối hậu chẳng thể được thấu triệt hoàn toàn nếu thiếu bậc Nhất thiết trí,
Nên đừng bao giờ làm xáo trộn những kinh điển mà chính bậc Đại Tiên (Ṛṣi) đã thuyết ra.
Làm như thế sẽ hủy hoại truyền thống của bậc Năng Nhơn và gây tổn hại đến Chánh Pháp thiêng liêng.

Năm Vị Đệ Tử Đầu Tiên

Năm vị đệ tử trong nhóm quy quyến đầu tiên (Năm anh em Kiều Trần Như) bao gồm:

1. Ājñātakauṇḍinya (Kiều Trần Như)
2. Aśvajit (Át-bệ / Mã Thắng)
3. Bhadrika (Bạt-đề)
4. Vāṣpa (Thập-lực Ca-diếp)
5. Mahānāman (Ma-ha Nam)

***

Translated by Adam Pearcey with the generous support of the Khyentse Foundation and Terton Sogyal Trust, 2021.

https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/jamyang-khyentse-chokyi-lodro/how-buddha-generated-bodhicitta