Серия ежедневной практики, курс 05 — Медитация о смерти и о конце смерти (1999, Роли), занятие 6

[Speaker 2]
So start with breath, start with your breath. Deep breaths, but not forced. Then focus on the Lama in your heart, Gundu Noble Loop, the all-encompassing jewel meditation.

[Speaker 1]
Then put yourself back in the turret room, and the sunlight's coming down on you, and you've lifted up the staff, Katvanga, okay, and you're holding it up towards the light, you're looking up, and it represents, you'll devote yourself only to your practice, because you realize it's the only thing you can take with you. And if you die and take this way of thinking about self and others with you, you'll have very holy time. Then you point to the blue door, and your body's still, but your head moves to the right.

You look towards the right, towards the door, and you point the staff at it. Then you go to the door, and you look at it, and you reflect that this is going to represent practice of exchanging myself and others.

[Speaker 2]
I almost like to call it redefining myself and others.

[Speaker 1]
Then you go to the door, and the first room, these are much larger rooms, and in the middle of the first room is a big table, and there's a person sitting there on the other side, and there's one of those checkered tablecloths, and it's all laid out for eating something, and there's a stand next to the table on your side, and on top of the stand is a nice plate of food and a cup of something to drink.

[Speaker 2]
And then you approach the table, and you sit down opposite them, and they're looking at you, and you pull your magnifying glass out of your pocket, and you lean over the table, and you look at them through the magnifying glass at their eyes, and then they're glancing over at the food and the cup, and there's dessert there, of course.

[Speaker 1]
And then you realize that's what they want, and then first you give them the plate of food, and that represents fulfilling other people's physical needs, what they want, physical desires, which are legal and moral.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Then you hand them the glass, which is fulfilling their emotional needs, anticipating and fulfilling what they need emotionally. And then finally you fulfill their spiritual desires, which is dessert, and you hand them dessert. And this is like giving them sweet teachings on Dharma, or getting them interested in a book or something basic.

It doesn't have to be a Dharma book. I mean, maybe they have to start with a movie that has an uplifting moral to it, or something like that, a song that has some good lyrics to it.

[Speaker 2]
It doesn't always have to be a blatant Dharma.

[Speaker 1]
These rooms are like large ovals, and you're actually working around the courtyard, but you're still inside the building.

[Speaker 2]
And then the next room you come to is another large oval room, and it's a very similar person sitting across the table. Same things there. And this time you go around to their side of the table and ask them to sit on your side, and you sit on their side.

Musical chairs.

[Speaker 1]
And then they reach for the food themselves, and the drink themselves, and the dessert themselves. And don't forget, this represents putting yourself in their mind. The first one, in the first room, you're still maintaining the distinction of you and them, and you're watching them from another side of the table.

And you're seeing what they want, and you're supplying it. Anticipating it and supplying it. And then in the second room, you're actually putting yourself inside of them mentally, and trying to think like them, trying to understand what they like.

But from a much more intimate viewpoint, that you're actually inside of them. But you're still sort of maintaining the distinction between you and them. It's you in their body.

And this is, in practical terms, instead of just observing them and giving them what they seem to like, it's really trying to understand their lives, their background, their preferences, where they're coming from, and trying to think like them to try to figure out what it is they really need. And when it comes to the dessert, it'll be much more profound, because you'll be much better able to give them what they need spiritually.

[Speaker 2]
Then enter the third large oval room.

[Speaker 1]
By this time you've worked around all the way opposite to the turret room, so now you're in the exact western part of the building.

[Speaker 2]
You still haven't reached the courtyard. You're traveling around parallel to the edge of the courtyard inside the building.

[Speaker 1]
And there's a little cafe table, those little round ones. And there's two seats facing each other. And again, there's a person on the other seat.

[Speaker 2]
And there's this big nice cake in the middle.

[Speaker 1]
And the first thing you do in the room is, you have this little ball of string in your pocket, it's a red string. And the first thing you do when you get in is, you take the string and pull out some of the string, and you walk around to the left of the table, like counterclockwise around the table.

[Speaker 2]
And you're laying the string out on the ground, and making a circle that includes both chairs. So it's a big circle of string on the ground, on the floor, that encompasses the whole table and the chairs.

[Speaker 1]
And then you come back and finish it, and you stoop down and tie it. And that represents breaking down the distinction between you and other people.

[Speaker 2]
Now you and me is me. Then the guy says, why didn't you put the string between us on the table?

[Speaker 1]
And you said, well, you know, it really is just arbitrary. Let's put it around both of us.

[Speaker 2]
And it doesn't wreck the cake that way anyway. Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Then you sit down and you lean over the cank, and you tap on their forehead, and they tap on your forehead with their finger. First finger of your, make it third finger of your left hand, okay?

[Speaker 2]
And just tapping on their forehead like three times.

[Speaker 1]
This represents the meditation on the common enemy. Like, it won't really help just to remove the mental afflictions from your own mind. We got to work on them, all of them, in everybody's mind.

It doesn't matter where they're apart right now. If you allow the people around you to have mental afflictions, if you encourage mental affliction in the people around you, sooner or later it will hurt everybody. So it represents helping each other against the common enemy.

And the last thing in that room is that you take one fork, and you both hold it, and you take a big piece of cake out with the fork, and you both eat it off the fork at the same time. And that represents that it's incomplete to just work for what you want and your own happiness. It's not really very satisfying to be happy when everybody around you is miserable, and that we're working for a common goal, that everybody's equal in wanting to be happy and not wanting to be unhappy.

[Speaker 2]
So it represents that really everybody's the same. Then you get up, you walk around the table, and you go to the next door, just like a silver door, and you open it, and there's a strange room, hexagonal, six-sided.

[Speaker 1]
In the middle is a big incense burner, like a big sensor, like a big pot, and the smoke is coming out of it, this really beautiful, lovely smoke. And this represents bodhichitta. And I think when Americans hear the word bodhichitta, they think of some kind of ultimate love, or someone who really loves everybody, or something like that.

And it's really something much more specific, which is that I will try as hard as I can to become an angel, a tantric deity myself, so that I can really be of service to others. I can really help other people. And I'll try to be the one happy person in the world, truly happy person in the world.

I'll try to mold myself into a happy person, ultimately happy person, so that I can have the best influence on others and lead them to that. But the idea is you must do it yourself first. And that's real bodhichitta.

So when you look at the incense and the smoke coming out of it that's permeating the room, the sweet smell, it's bodhichitta. And it's the idea that I will myself stop my own death and my own aging, and I'll stop all the unhappiness in my mind. And then I'll be able to teach other people.

[Speaker 2]
Imagine the influence of a person who has done that. And bring your mind back to the lama in your heart and enjoy them for a while.

[Speaker 1]
And then there's like some light, diffusing, liquid light, warm, beautiful, golden, spreading throughout your blood veins, throughout your body.

[Speaker 2]
And then bursting out of the pores of your skin like needles of light, great needles of light. And I'll dedicate the whole karma of this whole class that we've had.

[Speaker 1]
Very unusual karma for a good-sized group of people to get together and talk about death all day, for three days or something. And then at the end to come out with some kind of feeling of love and breaking down the borders between myself and others. And to reach that state of mind by thinking about corpses and stuff, some kind of huge big karma, very unusual.

I don't think there's been another discussion like this in Raleigh today. And think about the good karma of it, the rarity of it. And then let that light go out and touch more people than before.

I'd say all the way up to the Mississippi because Petra and those guys promised they would work from the West Coast. And we would meet and drive the Golden Stake in Kansas City, I think it was. And we'd like enlighten everybody up to there and then enlighten everybody the other way.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, and then relax.