Rock climbing without arms:
Study as the Basis of Meditation

By Nicholas Ribush

One often hears the criticism that the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism is merely “intellectual” whereas the other traditions are “practice” and therefore much superior. Such views are mistaken. All the pure traditions of the Buddha’s teachings are precious, and each is valid for the practitioners for whom it was intended. The Buddha taught for the benefit of all, and since sentient beings’ minds are so different from each other, naturally he gave a huge variety of teachings. Therefore, it is silly to hold that one Dharma tradition is better or worse than another. There are people for whom study is the best means of transforming their minds and, for a while at least, should be their main form of practice.

The Gelug tradition stems from the teachings of Lama Tsongkhapa, a highly realized Tibetan practitioner of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. On the basis of teachings he had received from great masters of the main Tibetan Buddhist schools of his time – the Nyingma, Sakya, and Kagyu – and especially the graduated path (lam-rim) tradition of Atisha, Tsongkhapa wrote many books on various sutra and tantra subjects, the most famous of which were his clear expositions of the doctrine of emptiness, the heart of Buddhist wisdom. The founder of the Gelug tradition led the life of a pure monk, bodhisattva, scholar, and tantric yogi and was rightly given the epithet “the second Buddha.” His integration of scholarship and meditation practice serves as an example to us all.

Enlightenment is not reached all of a sudden but by degrees, through gaining progressively the series of realizations shown in the teachings on the graduated path to enlightenment. Realizations are gained by meditating on the path, but our minds have to be fertilized by prayer, purification, and the accumulation of merit. Without these practices, our meditations will not bear fruit and will be just like seeds cast on a freeway.
So, keeping in mind the indispensability of the auxiliary practices (such as the preliminaries performed by Lama Tsongkhapa), let us consider the root of realizations: meditation on the path.

On the one hand, Sakya Pandita said, “The person who meditates without first studying is like an armless rock climber.” On the other, the great Naropa, while still a learned academic at the famous Indian monastery of Nalanda, was admonished, “You know the words, but do you know the meaning?”

This article can be read in its entirety in Mandala