Dalai Lama Foundation Study Circle Montreal

It is necessary to alternate stabilising meditation and analytical meditation…by merely cultivating non-conceptuality and non-analysis it is impossible to enter into the yoga of signlessness.

Even after emptiness has been realised, powerful and repeated analysis is needed. Merely to set one’s mind on the meaning of emptiness is the mode of cultivating calm abiding observing emptiness; in order to cultivate special insight it is necessary to analyse again and again. These two modes of meditation–stabilising and analytical–are alternated until analysis itself induces even greater stablisation, at which point stabilisation and wisdom are of equal strength, this being a union of calm abiding and special insight.

In Performance as well as in Action Tantra the meditative stabilisation which is a union of calm abiding and special insight is used to gain feats for the sake of aiding sentient beings and accumulating merit quickly. (p.42)

–from Deity Yoga in Action and Performance Tantra by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsong-ka-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications

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“Accumulating merit” can be approached from a psychological perspective that lends itself to experiential verification or from a spiritual dimension that requires some faith. “Merit” can be understood as “spiritual power” that manifests in day-to-day experience. When merit, or spiritual power, is strong, there is little resistance to practicing Dharma and practice itself is empowered.

Tibetans explain that people who make rapid progress in Dharma, gaining one insight after another, enter practice already having a lot of merit. By the same theory, it is possible to strive diligently and make little progress. Tibetans explain this problem as being due to too little merit. Merit is the fuel that empowers spiritual practice.

How do you accumulate merit? Engaging in virtue of any sort, with your mind, your speech, or your body results in merit. Just as merit can be accumulated, it can also be dissipated by doing harm. In general, mental afflictions dissipate merit. The mental affliction that is like a black hole sucking up merit, worse than all the others, is anger. Attachment or sensual craving can get you in a lot of trouble, but it doesn’t have the debilitating impact upon spiritual practice that anger does. Remember the warrior metaphor–standing at the gateway of the mind, vigilant, spear ready. The spear is for mental afflictions, especially anger. Nip anger in the bud. (p.208)

–from Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point Mind Training by B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications

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