1 “Subject” here refer to the particular mind we use in this moment 2 “Object” here relates to the corresponding reality experienced by the subject (mind). 3 “Matter” relates to form existence. 4 “Energy” here relates to the potential field basic to and saturating form existence (without which form existence, being of fleeting and moment-to-moment-changing nature, would not come into existence).5 In the context of Unity in Duality Tarab Rinpoche has found it useful to refer to just three stages of meditation defined by the nature of changes in regard to the image reality: the 1st meditation stage is defined by clear visualization, i.e. by entering into an energy-field of reality (beyond the physical reality experienced on the basis of the physical body); in the 2nd meditation stage the clarity of the visualization image is changed into a non-distinct image in order to enter into a more subtle image reality; finally the 3rd meditation stage is defined by its unity nature. Here there is no more image reality and no more subject – object separation. We naturally experience these changes in image reality in the process of falling into deep dreamless sleep and in the process of dying. Throughout Buddhism there has been defined different systems of meditation stages, for instance the 10 bhumis of Mahayana Buddhism. 6 The term “inner science” is a translation of nangdön rigpa (Tib. Nang-don rig-pa) an ancient term already crowned as such at the Nalanda University. Why we have translated to the term “science” is in order to draw the attention to the similarities: an investigations is started from what can be observed by the senses the; the use of logic recognizing cause and effect as the basic tenet; not relying on dogmas, everything is up for investigations (including the words of Buddha); the results of investigations have to be verifiable. Apart from similar rules for their investigations the two types of sciences respectively use “inner” and “outer” tools – see end remark of this article.

7 Indian Inner Science of Mind and Reality relates to the 2nd – 12th Century Scholars of Nalanda University, Bihar, India. 8 A differentiation Tarab Rinpoche made explicit relating back to the Nalanda University Scholars’ implicit presentation. Tarab Rinpoche here refers to different of the Nalanda scholars, especially Asanga (approx 395-470) and Candrakirti (approx 650), expounded upon in Rinpoche’s Yogacara teachings and in the upcoming translation of Tarab Rinpoche’s book on the Inner Science of Mind and Reality – Unity and Duality.

9 Tsongkhapa is the originator of the Gelug tradition, in which His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Tarab Tulku has been educated. However, both goes far beyond just one tradition, in their teachings they embrace all the other traditions prevailing in Tibet too: Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu, Jonang, Bön.

10 I.e. loosing the natural grounding in the sense realm, a condition which easier gives rise to fear, basic to all other negative emotions. 11 In accordance with Wikipedia the ancient Nalanda University was destroyed by invaders 3

times and rebuild twice. The last time it was destroyed, which was the final blow to the ancient university, was in 1193.

12 We are normally unconscious in both these respective states of being, but with meditation abilities the yogin can train to be conscious in these natural unity states, which resemble the 3rd meditation stage when mastered.

13 Here, with Tarab Tulku, we should not see the body and mind as separate and independent entities – the body and mind of a given state are always deeply connected – the mind always operates in a way given by the embodiment and the embodiment only exists on the basis of being saturated my mind. Also seen from an evolutionary perspective the body and mind aspects developed together and entwined – See further in Tarab Rinpoches exposition on Yogacara (UD Training teaching material). 14 Six Yogas of Naropa, Suggasiddhi and Neguma.

15 Here “mindfulness” refers to the modern use of the term in accordance with Jon Kabat-Zin’s School. The term “mindfulness” in accordance with Buddhism is a translation of the term drenpa nyershak (Tib. Dran-pa nyer-bzhag), which is known in connecting with the “Four Mindfulness Trainings” (of body, feeling, mind and phenomena). This original “Mindfulness-practice”, which is a high spiritual practice, is originally practiced on the basis of shine/shamata attainment (see footnote 17) or on an energy-body like the dream body. 16 “More than 2000 peer reviewed publications demonstrating positive effects like in stress reduction, increased immune response, positive effects on headache, hypertension, anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress syndrome, chronic pain and more”. “Increase gamma wave firing which means more integrated brain functions and promotes learning; Activation of brain regions of importance for well-being, regulation of executive control of attention and integration of thinking and feeling and left prefrontal cortex with more positive emotions; The insula, which plays a role for interoception, tuning into the body, leading to self awareness and increased empathy; Stimulates neuroplasticity and results in thicker cortex of both the executive prefrontal cortex area, which control attention. Lazar et al (2005), Rakel et al (2009) and Krasner et al (2009).” Powerpoints by Associate Prof. Carin Muhr, MD, Ph.D., Uppsala University, Sweden. 17 Body sensation only operates in the present, i.e. it brings you back into the present – whereas conceptual mind operates most times in the past and future and brings body and mind together, counteracting the basic stress conditions of splitting; and otherwise also complements conceptual mind’s reality experiences in and by not being sensitive to emotional conditions or narrow conceptual views. I.e. the pure sense reality brings

you into a stable condition of inner presence, with more power to the subject side and less fear, in contact with the common humanly shared reality. 18 Ordinary conceptual mind implies that it operates on the basis of conceptual mind and/or simply on the basis of normal physical body. 19 Within Buddhism the conceptual minds’ role has always been a topic of discussion. See Samye-debate in the English translation of Tarab Rinpoche’s book: “Unity in Duality - Inner Science of Mind and Reality” soon to be published.20 Shine/shamata relates to the attainment of one-pointed mind calmly abiding ability, seeing as clearly with the mind eyes as with the physical eyes and as long one should wish. And lhagtong/vipassana is the realization on the basis of the shine/shamata attainment in regard to the nature of specific reality or topic.

21 Sherab (Tib. Shes-rab) – see footnote 20. 22 It is necessary to understand which mind-types we can use in order to approach a stage of meditation. In accordance with Tarab Rinpoche, because we in the West neither theoretically nor experientially make the same differentiations of the mind capacities as in the East, we often use the wrong types of mind for meditation. And, as we often also lack the realization of the interrelated nature of body, mind and reality we misunderstand the nature of the meditation stages and meditation realities.

23 There exists practices like dzogchen and mahamudra that in their instructions don’t emphasize the body aspect. But in accordance with Tarab Tulku the bodymind has to be developed to the same subtlety, whichever method of meditation we use. 24 The only mind type with which we can have real unity experiencing/beingness. 25 Going back into a former dream scene, manifesting in the imagery body is what we call “imagery dream”.26 In a visualization state we are always conscious, but when we dream we have to attain consciousness of dreaming; and we need to train to master this state in order to use the energy body-mind abilities, enabling us to go beyond the ordinary dream appearances, for using the dream as a basis for attaining the 1st, 2nd and 3rd meditation stages.

27 In this case the conceptual mind is of sherab semjung (the sherab semjung being one of the 48 - 102 mental functions the mind can operate through in accordance with Buddhism) rather than by the togpa semjung. Sherab has often been translated to “wisdom”, which might be a slightly misleading term – here we just cal it a more refined type of conceptual mind, which naturally only operates on a more subtle body basis. 28 ‘Void’-nature here refers to the nature of existence: that nothing exists in and by itself but is causal and changing-from-moment-to-moment and is relational by nature – here relational particularly refer to the subject (mind) – object (corresponding really appearance) interrelationship.29 Type 3 & 4 as numbered under “The condition of the feeling types of mind”

30 The object of feeling being feeling. 31 A less dual state could be expressed both by means of getting into a more subtle self-reference and by means of using into a more subtle bodymind. When we here for meditation practice talk about getting into a less dual state, then first we have to consider all those vulnerable self-references that keep us in an extremely dual and rough state – and the transformation of these. Therefore any move towards reducing these vulnerable self-references that disrupts our lives, would belong to meditation practice.

32 The inner scientist and the yogin’s objective was, apart from finding the nature of reality like the contemporary scientist, to find ways to transforming the individual into a more flexible person, i.e. enabling the person to use the full range of inner capacities body-mind wise in regard embodying more and more subtle beingness and the corresponding access to reality, for the individual to develop and transform – for the end goal of joining the most subtle nature of the humanity and the universe (the non-dual nature / rigpa nature / ‘void’ nature or nature of mind and phenomena) – the actual basis for attaining fearlessness and inner strength that naturally enables great love and compassion to shine forth.

33 There is a lot of research done on mindfulness. Kindly see for instance research by Jon Kabat-Zinn at www.umassmed.edu

34 All the case descriptions in this article have been modified in order to make the persons unidentifiable.

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One of the main interests of stress is that it has been, since the very beginning, at the heart of the psychosomatic medicine, urging researchers to link the understanding of the body and mind together. In his work, Hans Selye - 'the father of stress research' -, developed the theory that stress is a major cause of disease because chronic stress causes long-term chemical changes. In his view, the body would respond to any external biological source of stress with a predictable biological pattern in an attempt to restore the body’s internal homeostasis. He gave to this pattern the name: “General adaptation syndrome”. He discovered that the main difference between the effect of a stressor for animals and humans is that for human beings there was not only an impact on the autonomic nervous system (driving towards a “fight or flight” reaction), but also on the limbal cortex (regulating emotions) and on the neocerebellum (which analyzes and looks for a rational answer). He realized that the rational answer completely dominates the other reactions. It completely inhibits action. Thus, the stressor persists, it becomes necessary to attempt some means of coping with the stress. Although the body begins to try to adapt to the strains or demands of the environment, the body cannot keep this up indefinitely, so its resources are gradually depleted. Thus chronic diseases and mental suffering appears until - if the situation is not treated - complete exhaustion. This straight-line causal view has been argued in the 70s’, and quickly researchers agreed on a dynamic model, in which each of the reactions have an impact and is a stressor by itself. This new view paved the way to the cognitive appraisal model of Lazarus. The consequences of stress (and particularly the physiological ones) are not discussed, but the origin of its apparition has been further studied. The concept of a stressor itself has been argued. In this new approach, the interaction between the environment and the individual defines stress. Stress is experienced when demands from the environment exceed

available resources. Appraisal is also presented as a perpetual process, evolving in time as the individual re-appraises the needs and resources. Thus stress response manifests when an imbalance is perceived between the needs (be it outer or inner) and the resources. The mediating processes of appraisal and coping therefore become crucial in the understanding of stress, and how to reduce stress. For this the teachings of Tarab Rinpoche and UD are of a tremendous help. Until now, through experiences, a whole range of methods have been recognised as being efficient on appeasing stress. Experiments demonstrated that coming back in contact with body feeling, or with the present moment, strengthening mindfulness, bringing back our awareness on the movement of the breath, not following the inner dialogues and thoughts or changing the terms of those inner dialogues, all of these had a real impact on the level of stress. But none of these methods are the expression of a deep understanding of this stress response. They are proved to be true by efficiency. Thus the impact of those methods on the long run can be lessen by the facts that the underlying beliefs are not treated, and those beliefs are the base on which we are building our experience of reality. This reality we are building supports the apparition of stress. We take for granted that only a deep understanding and realization of the untrue beliefs of our view of ourselves and phenomena, will allow changes in our lives resulting in the reduction of stress. Therefor the point is not to give new methods, but to change our underlying view. Why is it so? The UD understanding of the perception of phenomena makes us realize that a being never perceives his environment, but only perceives

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his experience of the environment, based on the tools he is using in that perception process. We never perceive dön nga, only the specific experience of dön nga on the base of the mind/tools we are using. Thus the concept of outer demands or outer resources can be questioned. We can never get out of the subject-object interrelation or tendrel. The wrong view of outer demands or outer resources existing in and by themselves is the result of a solidification of our object-pole. This solidification is strong enough to make us feel and think that there would be an object out there existing in and by itself the way we perceive it; that there are demands and resources existing out there in and by themselves as they appear to me. This solidification is the consequence of two main misunderstandings: - On the one side, as human beings, at the sense level, we are almost never in a direct perception of our environment. We are trapped in an indirect mental perception (way of perceiving by conceptual mind), experiencing a mental object (in terms of an idea of the situation), not being any longer in contact with the ever changing flux of life, i.e. not being in

contact with the direct sense-minds experience or deepen feeling mind experiencing. Thus, being – as we are - trapped in the conceptual field and disconnected with the sense-field, is at the source of the appraisal of “stressful events”. It is this split within the body sense-mind and conceptual mind that is at the core of the imbalance in our experience. In connection with any difficult situation (actual or imagined) the more we identify with a rough and vulnerable level of self-reference, the more the experience we have of reality is solid, dense, limited and non-supportive. On the contrary, the stronger we manifest on a subtler self-referential level, i.e. at a subtler body-mind level, the less solid and fixated reality becomes, and the more we are in natural contact with supportive solutions in terms of inner and outer resources. - On the other side, the more our presence is trapped on the conceptual object-pole, the more solid is our experience of reality. We lose the perceptual abilities of the ever-changing-movement on the subject-pole. Thus the level of stress we perceive is depending on where we are focusing our awareness: focusing all of our presence in the

General Adaptation Syndrome

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conceptual field or opening also to the sense field, being completely drawn by the conceptual object-pole or extending our awareness to the subject-pole. In any situation, the less we are aware of the experiences of the sense field, and the more we are fixated on the conceptual object-pole, the more we experience (being aware of it or not) this disharmony between “demand and resource”, this un-peaceful feeling, which has all the consequences described above and is labelled “stress”. Thus any methods, which aim to bring back our awareness on the subject-pole and/or to go towards a reconnection of the body-mind at a more subtle level, have an impact and lessen the stress perceived. One should also be aware that this body-mind discrepancy can be the consequence of the way we are raised in our modern culture (in which bringing all of our awareness towards more and more abstract (conceptual) level is supported); but it can also be a defence system

(which consists in cutting off the feeling – keeping it all at a natural distance) in order to protect an underlying vulnerable self-reference. A method which makes great sense when we are small and reality is overwhelming – but which makes less and less sense as we grow up, may even becoming crippling. If we are in this second case, then trying to lessen the level of stress is the same as trying to lessen a protection system, which is quite impossible, if one is not working with the underlying vulnerable self-reference. Thus, if one realizes that there is an underlying vulnerable self-reference, all methods focusing on taking care and transforming this underlying self-reference will be the most efficient in lessening the stress.

Cognitive Appraisal stress model

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35 Stanley, J., D.R.Loy and G.Dorje ed., A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency, Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2009

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36 idem, Introduction, p.3 37 idem, M. Ricard at p.203

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