Серия ежедневной практики, курс 10 — Мантра Чже Цонгкапы (Ганден Лхагьяма) (1998), занятие 1

[Speaker 2]
The Asian Classics Institute presents the Je Tsongkhapa Retreat with Geshe Michael Roach, recorded live at Godstow, Connecticut in December of 1998. Session one.

[Speaker 1]
Many people, you know, when you take a tantric initiation, like Vajrayogini, one of the commitments you make is to do, in the case of Vajrayogini, four lerungs, four tantric retreats. And they involve doing mantras. And then I had many people ask me how to do a lerung, you know.

And then... That's a long story and it takes a lot of training. I think most tantric subjects should...

I really think it's good to study them with your tantric master, the one who gave you your vows, the one who gave you initiation, you know. Because there's a special purpose for initiation. Initiation involves giving permission to do certain practices.

And then after that, the person who initiated you should tell you how to do those practices. And then they should babysit you through the practices. And that's the way, generally, tantra should be taught.

Shelshe means, by word of mouth, meaning, you know, from a lama to one or two of their students. And then, you know, in the old days, it took many, many years before people would give you initiation. They would have to know you for 10, 15, 20 years.

And then only after that they would give you initiation. And then after that they would take care of your tantric needs, you know. And then I don't, you know, I...

how to say... I don't feel qualified, first of all. And then secondly, I don't feel that I could teach tantra to 50 people at once or something like that.

I don't think it's, you know... I can't do it. So, I figured the best compromise is to...

is to do a very similar retreat in a sutra way. And then you would gain all of the... you would gain a lot of experience on how to do your lerungs.

And then, when you were ready to do your lerungs, you would have a lot of... already you would know a lot about how to succeed at them. You know what I mean?

You wouldn't need too much information beyond that to do your successful tantric retreats. Those retreats require about 5 to 6 weeks of time. Properly, I think, to do 100,000 mantras.

And, you know, I didn't do them for 10 years or something after Rinpoche gave us initiation. And I didn't really think it would be so successful. The only long retreat I ever did before that was 10 days with Goenka.

And I was in Dharamsala. The Dalai Lama forced us to go to this retreat. He closed the Tibetan library.

He brought all the monks down from Namgyal Monastery. This is 1975 or something. And told us we had to do this retreat with this Burmese master.

And then when he walked in the room we were all disappointed. He was this short, chubby guy with a towel around his waist. And we were sort of rebelling against the idea.

And then they locked us in the library for 10 days with him. And the women slept in one big room and the men slept in another. And we meditated, I don't know, many, many hours per day.

And he won't let you move. And after a certain point he won't let you talk. And no mail, no reading, no music, no nothing.

And it was wonderful. It was fantastic. It was a great first retreat.

And it was really, really good. Then Ken Rinpoche was describing these tantric retreats as having to recite mantras all day. And I frankly didn't think it would be very useful for me.

Because I didn't think you could concentrate while you're talking. I mean, they teach you that also, right? So to me it didn't make much sense.

And I didn't think it would work very well. And I wasn't attracted to it much. But out of respect for Rinpoche and out of respect for the practice, you know, for the lineage, when I had a chance, then I did my first leirung.

He actually went to India to be Abbot of Sarame. And I figured, well, now I don't have classes and I have time. And so I went up in the room next to his room and did a very strict leirung.

And Geshe Losang Gyatso made food. And I didn't go out of the room for the whole time, except to pee pee upstairs there. And it was wonderful.

I mean, it was incredible. It was totally fantastic. And all these wonderful things happened.

And I learned a lot. And then I went on to do, I did maybe, I don't know, eight or nine retreats, like ten retreats like that. And I think it's good now to try to do it twice a year or something.

So then I gained experience and I talked to a lot of lamas. And I thought it would be useful for you to do a mantra retreat, an open mantra retreat, meaning a sutra. It's not a tantric retreat.

But I thought important that you went through all the formalities that you'll have to go through when you do your leirung. And then the thing about retreats is that you gain a lot of experience. You pick up experience each time you do a long retreat.

You get more and more experience. And then they become more and more familiar and more and more deep. Because you know what to expect.

I think half the scary thing about retreat is that you don't know what to expect. If you're an American, you don't know quite what's going to happen if somebody locks you up for ten days or a month. And you get a little nervous about it or something.

So I thought just to do a, sort of a dry run retreat for your leirungs. And then it's my hope that you go on this year or next year to do some of your leirung retreats. Those of you who have that commitment, it's very, very, very wonderful.

And it changes everything. And I was wrong when I thought it was dumb, as so often happens. And they're incredible.

And you should really try to do them. So I'm just going to try to give you a background in the next ten days about how to do them. And then I'm hoping you will go do them.

Go to Ken Rinpoche, get the proper instructions for tantric part of it. Or some other lama who has given you your initiation. And then do them.

It would be really nice. So here are the elements. We're going to spend about half an hour, 45 minutes.

I'll describe to you some things about doing a retreat like this. So you don't have to sit nicely or anything. Okay?

Do you want to turn off the lights just a little bit? Then we'll take a break. Then we'll do just an evening meditation of about 45 minutes.

And then we'll try to get to bed early. I know a lot of people traveled today or yesterday. I know a lot of people went to work today.

I know a lot of people drove here, which in itself is a little stressful. And we'll follow the general procedure in a retreat, which is you go in slowly. You get deeper and deeper each day, more and more strict each day.

Then you peak out. Halfway through you're at the deepest point. And then after a few days you start to come out.

So the idea, they say in scripture, to go like pouring water out of a pitcher, and it starts out a small stream, and then it gets bigger, like that. And then you peak out somewhere in the middle. My experience is at 70% you have a depression.

70 to 75%. And then you come out easy, okay? And it's very bad to start the night you get here doing 18 hours a day.

And it's very bad to do 18 hours a day and then the next day go to work. Okay, so you have to, you go like that and then you go like that. That's the idea of any kind of lay room retreat.

All those texts say that. Pabongka Rinpoche wrote a beautiful text on how to do your Vajrayogini retreats, and you should study that at some point. A lot of what we'll do here will be an open version or a non-secret version of some of those practices, okay?

Some comments about the schedule. And I'd like to make a few changes with the schedule. A friend tried very hard to pin me down on things, and there'll be adjustments as we go, okay?

On Sunday, tomorrow, 7 a.m., there's supposed to be a morning meal. I strongly urge you not to eat a full meal, okay? Juice, something very light, toast if you need, but I urge you very much not to eat the kind of breakfast I had this morning.

And generally tea and coffee, you should start getting off of them now, okay? And in a retreat you'd start to get off of them, and then maybe after three or four days you wouldn't have them anymore, okay? If you're a real coffee addict or tea addict, then give yourself like four or five days to get off, okay?

Otherwise you get headaches, okay? If you get a headache, that might be one of the things, okay? Seriously, if you've been drinking coffee every day for years, or tea every day for years, you'll get a little headache from that.

11 o'clock tomorrow, I think, good time to cover the windows, okay? You said the 34th day. Oh, no, we'll do it tomorrow.

[Speaker 2]
Will you be ready? Actually...

[Speaker 1]
At least by the next day.

[Speaker 2]
Actually, that might not be a good time, because we have to get all the tarma.

[Speaker 1]
At least by Monday. Okay, Monday 11. All right?

Is that all right? When you're in a strict retreat, you cover the windows, okay? So you can't see out.

I mean, then you just go into your own world there. All right? Yeah, I'm thinking zege on Monday 11.

So you'll be responsible for covering your own windows in your own place, okay? Generally leave enough for light, okay? It should be something that leaves you light.

This is too clear. This stuff here is too much. It should be a little darker, like butcher paper, some light paper, or something like that.

It's okay to leave it... If it's above eye level, like if you have a window that keeps going up, it's okay to leave it open at the top, okay? So you get some light.

And it's good to be able to see the sky, but not cars and people. So it's good if you leave a little at the top, you can see the sky if you're on your bed, or something like that, and the stars. That's a good thing.

To see the sky and the stars is good, but to see people or trees or deer or whatever walking around, it's not good, okay? We won't be going outdoors after... You can go outdoors tomorrow, and then Monday afternoon we'll be closing the place.

And then I'll show you how to close the retreat place properly. There's a special marker you put up. You have to prepare it ahead of time.

There's a certain ceremony you do. There's a dharma that you need to do that. After that, this will be...

Let me see. Well, I'll go back to the dharmas. Two o'clock tomorrow we'll make offering dharmas.

In a later retreat you would make one at the beginning, and then you would supplement it every day. And offerings are very important when you're in retreat, so we'll be taking a lot of time to do offerings. And then seven o'clock tomorrow we'll be doing gektor, which is a dharma for preventing obstacles.

Those are not secret, secret dharmas, okay? I won't show you how to make Vajrayogini dharmas. That you have to learn from your teacher.

But I want you to get the feeling of how to mush them together, how to get them into generally the right shape. You know, like that. And then there are details that I won't teach you that are secret that you have to learn from your tantric teacher.

Okay. We'll make them at 7 a.m. Okay? And we'll put them up and close the house at the 5 p.m. tege. Okay? There's a special... So you can make a mark at 5 p.m. on Monday after you stop talking. All right? So I give you tomorrow and another half day. All right?

And I mean really stop talking. Like no sign language, no notes. Notes is the same as talking.

Okay? And just generally not, you know... I've been in retreats with people who ended up talking with their hands and, you know...

And it's the same thing. The point is not to have any contact with anybody after that point. Okay?

Except the being you're meditating on. Okay? Yeah, I don't mind if you talk openly the next day and a half.

Okay? Get into it gradually. Okay?

And if you're on the work crew, I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk too long. Okay? I mean, I know you have to talk, but try to talk quietly.

I mean, the work crew can talk during the... You have to talk, I think. As little as possible, but I mean...

Don't burn the dinner or anything like that. Okay. There's a special ceremony for blessing your seat and a ceremony for blessing your mala, your rosary.

Everybody should have a rosary. If you don't, then let us know. Let a friend know.

Okay? Maybe we can get some emergency malas. Monday is Seichu.

I'd like to do Seichu at 7. Rinpoche is pretty strict about starting at the same time every place in the world. So, we'll start at 7.

During dinner at 6 o'clock, I'd like, Fran, if you could choose some people to prepare the offerings and stuff while the other people are enjoying dinner. Okay. The Zege on Tuesday at 11 and 5 is just rest, okay?

After that, I think they're not doing Zege. Okay? We did this at midnight one night in my room with 12 people there.

11 and... Meditating Zege on that? Yeah, that's it.

That's it for working. From then on, it's just meditating, okay? Sorry, so, is Zege effective on Tuesday, or...? No, no Zege on Tuesday. Yeah, yeah. Monday is the last day of Zege. So, Tuesday and Wednesday Zege are just rest periods.

And Seichu on Tuesday is an error, okay? So, just cross it out. It's the day before.

It's on Monday, okay? And she begged me to look at it, and I didn't look at it. So, it's no reflection on Fran.

I scribbled it on the back of a napkin, and threw it at her at midnight one night. Okay. That's all about the schedule.

Don't be shy to sleep during the rest periods. Just conk out, okay? Don't...

It's not unpatriotic. You'll need it. Okay?

When we did it with Guenkaji, we just laid down on the floor there and conked out, and that's fine. Okay, so don't be shy about it. We'll talk a lot about lung, wind problems that happen, especially during a mantra retreat.

And we'll be talking about signs, how you know when you're getting lung, okay? When you get a real good case of lung, you can hardly breathe, and it's real fun. Okay.

Right after that, you run around, take your clothes off. So hopefully we'll catch you between those two. That's got to be signs.

Okay, then I'll go through... We'll go through a little bit about the general retreat instructions. These are on page one of your...

These are just general thoughts that I've come to realize during the last few years. Number one, it's just generally in a deep retreat, don't even read books, okay? People ask me, can you read Dharma books?

Dharma book is somewhere between not reading and talking. It's okay if... It's better if you prepare before the retreat what you need to know.

And then don't even read Dharma books during the retreat. It lowers the intensity. The point of this kind of retreat is to...

is to get some intensity going, okay? And there's certain... You get some kind of advantages out of the intensity, and the intensity is a little dangerous in the sense that you might get a little...

What do you call it? Wacky or something like that. But generally intensity is what you're working for.

You want the intensity. So don't read anything. Don't read newspaper.

Don't read the boxes. Cereal boxes are popular during retreat. I memorized a few.

It's the same as talking, okay? So just avoid written material. Sykes, do you have a question?

Say if you had a useful part of your practice... If you have to do... By the way, of course you have to do your...

your, you know, Tundruk and your... and your daily stuff, you know? That's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm talking... Even if there's an instruction book about it, something like that, you can't do it.

[Speaker 2]
Talking about Tundruk, could you do that in the first meditation session?

[Speaker 1]
Not everybody here has Tundruk. No, I wouldn't do it. Everybody should be doing the same practice.

So you should finish your other stuff on your off hours, okay? We won't be doing Tundruk or other things together. Yeah.

Or as you like. However you usually do it. But you can't do it during these meditation sessions, okay?

By the way, Tse Chu is 7 o'clock on Monday. If you haven't had Vajragini initiation, then you can't come. And you get extra rest time or something.

If you have had Vajragini initiation, you're welcome to come. Well, you have to come, actually. Okay.

Number two. Long monthly retreat. You're not going to have a big problem with this, but you tend to...

Because you're doing the mantra all day long, your lips get chapped. You might want to get some chapstick or something. Number three.

Loose baggy clothes. And, you know, maybe two or three changes to get through the whole ten days without any washing. We don't have any washing, right?

No. Okay. So everybody will be a yogi.

I mean, you can wash your body, but not your clothes. Okay. Unless you want to wash something in the shower and stick it up.

But I don't advise it. You shouldn't do any other work during a heavy retreat. Somebody should be taking care of all that stuff.

You shouldn't be doing anything else except meditating and resting. Use the layer method for meditation. Okay.

So, the point is that you should stay warm enough, but not too warm. If it gets too warm, you get sleepy. Okay.

So, you know, personally when I meditate, I get warm. So I take off this, and I go down to this, and I think that's better. But you shouldn't catch a cold.

Catching a cold is a big enemy of retreat. It ruins a retreat. Okay.

You slurp, you cough, other people can't meditate. If you have a real attack of some kind of cold or coughing, please leave the room. Okay.

Please go to another part of the house, that way. Okay. Please try to keep the two doors closed, because macaroni smells are really distracting when you're meditating.

I think we should get, by the way, later, an automatic thing, you know, those door-closer things, for these two doors. Those push things, hydraulic things, I don't know. They close the door when you go through it.

You know what I mean? For these two doors. Okay.

If you're doing a retreat by yourself, you should have a first aid kit, and there's a list of stuff there. Just so you don't have to go outside. It's good to have some aspirin, even if you never take aspirin.

I take aspirin maybe once every three years, or something, but it's good to have during a retreat. Number six, very important to have sleeping tablets. I have never taken one in my life, but I've had students...

There's a certain point you get during a deep retreat, I don't know if you'll get there in ten days, when you can't sleep. Okay. If you find that you can't sleep for one night, or something like that, then the next night, take a sleeping pill.

Okay. Because if you go two or three nights without sleeping, you'll have to stop your retreat. Okay.

If that means you have a wind problem, it's very, very common. It happens to maybe a quarter of the people who do retreats. And it's better to just knock it out right away.

So don't be a hero. You know, like, after one night of not sleeping, then the next night, take a sleeping pill. And I've had students in retreat who, that worked very nicely for them.

And I've had other students who, not my students, but I've observed other students who refused to do anything, and then they ended up going to a hospital for a shot, or running around naked, and stuff like that. Okay. So, that's a rule.

If you go one night without sleep, then next night, if you can't sleep for one whole night, then next night, take some kind of pill, or something. Okay. If it goes on for a couple days, or something like that, talk to Fran Parola.

Then you have to lighten your retreat. It means you have to start working in the kitchen. Don't feel bad.

Don't think like you're a bad person, or something like that. Don't go on a guilt trip about it. Just say, okay, I have to lighten it up a little bit.

Then you cut some vegetables in the kitchen, stuff like that. But in general, try to live on the edge a little bit. Okay.

I mean, in general, don't think in your mind that you can get out of this. Okay. Okay.

I mean, just be a little bit tough on yourself, and you'll get a lot more out of it. Sometimes it won't be comfortable. I mean, there was a girl in Guinka's class, I remember, she had very bad back pain, and one day she just broke down and cried.

It was totally quiet for ten days, except for this one incident. And she was the only person that couldn't do it. And he's very strict.

He just says, forget it. You can't move. You can't leave.

And it works. So you can do it. All right.

And if you get a little loony, or a little... start having some wild dreams and stuff, don't worry about it. Just do it.

Okay. Otherwise you'll never get into a deep retreat. And if you get into a deep retreat, a lot of things will happen that you've never experienced.

And it's very good. It's very good for you. It's sometimes a little...

you know, what do you call it? It's a little disorienting sometimes, but the whole point is to get you down intensely into your mind. Okay?

Yeah? You talk about the sleep goals, but are you talking about prescription? No, no, no.

We have over-the-counter stuff, okay? Fran Perilla.

[Speaker 2]
What is it?

[Speaker 1]
It's just sleepy time or something like that.

[Speaker 2]
It's like over-the-counter preparations to help you sleep better. Do you have to tell me anything?

[Speaker 1]
Like somonex? It's like somonex or something like that. We're not talking heavy drugs or anything like that.

I'm just talking like... In fact, in a... Tibetans use butter.

We drink butter. And it works. No, it works.

Drink melted butter. And you might want to try that first. You do some yogurt with a lot of melted butter in it.

Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
You were talking about getting ready and trying to live on the edge and stay in the room.

[Speaker 1]
I've never done a retreat before, so I'm just trying to gauge what exactly you're talking about. But in terms of just like... Is it best in all cases then to try and subdue or to just stay...

Even if it's like an emotional thing that's coming up. I mean, is it better to leave a room and cry or is it better to just try and stay and fight it and not feel it? If you're going to...

No, try not to cry. And if you do want to have any kind of an incident, go outside, okay? No, I'm talking even people who have to move a lot or sneeze a lot or...

You know, if you catch a cold, then please be considerate of the other people. It must be totally silent in here, okay? And after we take your position, you're not going to move, okay?

So... By the way, we'll start that in about two days too. So, you know, for a day and a half you can move around a little bit and stuff.

But after we close the place and you take your position, you're not going to move after that, okay? And I won't go on... You can't meditate for more than about 45 minutes meaningfully in that position.

And... And I'm not going to do three hours of sitting, okay? Because I don't think it...

You just start spacing out. You know, it doesn't matter who you are. So...

And in fact, a mantra retreat, a lot of you will end up doing, that's okay. You know what I mean? But I'm talking any major...

like standing up and walking around, you know. Mantra retreat is a little noisier, okay? Because everybody will be...

You'll be muttering under your breath and other people can hear you and that's all right, okay? So this is not as... It's not like where you're sitting one-pointed on a single...

You will be one-pointed. The nice thing about mantra retreat is you're doing a mantra, you're moving, you're doing che gom, you're doing like visualizations, and it's not as hard on your body as other kinds of retreats, okay? So it's okay to be...

You know, you can shift your rosary to another hand or you can move like that. You know, that's okay. Very good to keep a journal.

You know, personally I found it very, very useful to keep a journal. You have never been quiet for ten days in a row. You've never had that much time to think.

And it's very... You come out with some very beautiful dreams. The dreams start to get very beautiful.

Your whole inner consciousness wakens up. And towards the end you start having some really beautiful ideas about how you want to change your life, okay? So throw out the 25% of the ones that you're never going to do and then write down the other ones.

And I found that just before you come out of retreat we'll stop like half a day before and you examine your life. You see, part of the point of a retreat is to plan for the four months before your next retreat. You know, what are you going to do differently?

And what I mean is after ten days of meditating you can think straighter and you get these inspirations about your life and sometimes they're very, very exciting and different and unexpected. And personally I've found that if you go with it, it works out great. You know, like all the great changes in my life have occurred at the end of retreats.

You know, like I did radical changes in my life. You know, got a different job or moved or, you know, just totally changed something in my life. They've all been after being in that consciousness for a while.

And you can trust it, okay? And then a week later you'll think you're crazy. But don't believe it, okay?

You know what I mean? Like you'll get some great ideas about what to do with your life towards the end. It's normally more in a month's retreat but you might have some insights towards the end of this retreat.

Normally it takes about 14 days to get into a retreat, deep one. So you're not going to make it in this retreat but you'll get close. And then, you know, think about it.

And keep a diary of what you're thinking and what thoughts you have and then read them later. You'll come up with some nice ideas for your life. Food is...

Don't overeat but eat enough. If you find yourself getting lungi, if your hand starts to shake, if you get a feeling like anxiety or fear in your chest, if you find it hard to breathe, like you have a walnut in your chest or something like that, or you feel afraid or something like that, or a little dizzy or something like that, then eat a little more, okay? If you find yourself getting sleepy or drowsy, then eat a little bit less.

So the food is like a throttle for your wind. And be careful, okay? Sugar, coffee, tea, sweets, even in the form of fruits I think sometimes can make you more lungi.

I think the list is on the next page. Soda is a disaster. Sweets and caffeine are a disaster.

Carbohydrates, like eating too much bread or stuff like that, makes mean lungi. Now each person gets lungi from different things and you have to study your body and see what it is. If you get a little lungi and a little high, that's okay.

You want to be there. But if it gets to be some kind of pain in your chest or some kind of feeling of fear or anxiety or something like that, then you should turn up the food a little bit. And make sure you sleep enough.

Protein is really good. Oily stuff is good. Cheese is usually good.

Anything with oil in it will bring you down. It combats lung. Nuts are really good if you're having lung problem.

Avoid juices that have a lot of sugar. There's a lot of juices on the market. If you read the label it says corn syrup.

Those will hurt you. And better not to drink that kind. Fresh vegetables, especially greens, are very good.

Milk has different effects on different people. I think most people find that it causes phlegm or it hurts your meditation. So at a certain point in this...

If you drink a lot of milk, normally you might want to start going to more water or stuff like that. Normally it will give you... It's called yama in Tibetan.

And it's congestion up here in your sinuses and here and here. Okay. If you're on a long retreat, you might want to switch to other forms of milk like rice milk or stuff like that.

Soy milk is beans. Beans are bad. Okay.

Beans give you wind. Okay. In all sorts of places.

So, you know, generally be easy on the beans. And remember that soy milk is another form of beans. You have to study what you're eating.

Okay. But you also need the protein. So you have to regulate it.

Okay. You have to be wise. Sometimes milk is quite good for people on retreat.

It brings them down a little bit. Avoid garlic, onions, stuff like that. Okay.

It's good not to eat food which is too spicy.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
And then... It's very good to have someone else cook for you and you don't even think about it. You don't have to think about anything.

Okay. This in the ancient text on Vajrayogini is called kase chanyom, which means... This whole section is called...

In the text it's called kase chanyom, means take care of your eating, you know. Get your eating... Chanyom means regulate it to the right level.

You know, not too much, not too little, not too loony, not too... You know. And it's a very delicate thing and everybody's body is different.

So you have to study it. If you can, then cut back on your eating. Okay.

Until you get loony and then eat a little more. Okay. We'll go about another five minutes and then we'll take a break.

If you can, meditate in a place which has been blessed by holy beings and things like that. Rinpoche asked us to do a fire offering here to bless the place. It was like last...

I forget. Spring? April.

April. We had a huge battle with the local spirits. Literally.

But we did it. And Rinpoche was very happy. He says, okay, now the place is blessed and we had a hard sutta retreat here.

That's like a very powerful antidote to obstacles. So this place has been blessed pretty well. I think that the previous owner who built the house was the founder of UNICEF.

He saved... I think estimates are he saved five million children or something like that. So I think there's a really good karma in this house.

So you should... It's a good house to meditate in. It's a good place to meditate.

Try to get all the junk... I mean, don't junk up the place. Keep it neat.

Okay. That's very important. Don't read the books in the library and stuff like that.

Don't even look at them. Okay. Don't read anything.

Generally when you're meditating it's good to unplug all the electricity and stuff like that. I think you'll find in the long run, if you can, it's good to find a place that doesn't have electricity in it. It has some subtle effect on you.

I'm not a new age person, but I've definitely noticed it in different places. In Arizona we're planning not even to have solar electricity or anything. Just natural light and things like that is better.

Don't talk to anyone at all. We're on page three. Stay indoors the entire time.

But we can read this for the next day and a half. Learn how to do protection practices. We'll cover that tomorrow.

Number four, take your time on your cushion and use this opportunity to get it right. Like now you've got ten days to see what works for you. And experiment with it.

I mean, I found a place where I tried over and over different things and tried different variations. I think most people don't deal with their calves and ankles well enough. Like they get the butt right and then they don't do the calves and ankles right.

So work on that. Find something which is extremely comfortable and which spreads your weight over the whole platform of your body. Because you'll find that one part of your butt starts to hurt or something like that.

It doesn't happen if you find a way to spread the weight over your whole body that's touching the ground. If you have trouble sitting, for God's sake, sit in a chair. There's no point to being a hero.

There's absolutely no benefit to hurting yourself. I've had students who tried to do certain practices and end up crippling themselves. They use a cane now.

This is ridiculous. Don't do something that would hurt you. Just sit.

Find a way to sit that's comfortable. If you have to stretch your legs out, beg the forgiveness of the holy images and stick your legs out. But it's not at all a point to hurt yourself.

If it hurts too much, you're obviously going to concentrate on your body and stop thinking about your meditation. So if you have to sit in a chair for goodness sake, bring in a chair. If you have to stick your legs out, do so.

But do it at the beginning of the session. Okay? Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
If you have a bad back problem and you've been taking some painkillers like codeine or something like that, is that okay to keep taking that kind of medicine?

[Speaker 1]
I think generally whatever medicine you're doing, don't change it. Okay? You'll just...

Something weird might happen. You know, whatever you're normally taking, take it. Okay?

Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
What about numb feet, you know, dead blood?

[Speaker 1]
If your legs fall asleep, I mean, my experience, quite frankly, is it's a little disorienting and just let them fall asleep. It's very nice. It hurts for a while.

No, then it sort of prickles for a while and then it's nothing. And once you get past the discomfort of it, it's very good for meditation. You know what I mean?

I personally haven't found anything wrong with it. You just let it fall asleep. You know?

And... I guess somebody would tell you that it hurts your blood vessels or something. I don't know.

But for me, it's like a blessing because then you can sit for another hour and nothing... You know? There's a little bit of discomfort as it's falling asleep and then after that you don't notice it anymore.

And it's very important not to... There's a pain threshold you go through, you know? It hurts for a while.

It gets worse and worse. Refuse to move. Just refuse.

Tell your body, you know, this time I'm serious. You know? And two minutes later it'll stop hurting.

You know? 30 seconds later. Always remember, it's always 30 seconds after you decide to move that it would have stopped hurting.

Seriously. You'll always find that. Okay?

So if it falls asleep, let it fall asleep. By the way, when you're doing a mantra retreat, by definition, you know, you're always... you're always going like this a little bit.

You know? That's okay. It's not like you have to go like this or something like that.

And that's the nature of a mantra retreat. It's different from a sitting retreat. When you're in a very long retreat, I've found that sometimes you might want to lean against something.

Although generally that's very bad. Okay? I don't think this kind of retreat will hurt you that much.

Okay? But if you do a long retreat, I've found it useful to put a couch behind me and if I have to do a couple extra hours of mantras I might lean on it. Okay?

Don't write letters or make phone calls. Make all your phone calls... I don't know.

You can't make phone calls. Okay. Just forget it.

There's a certain schedule of the sessions in a real lay room, and we'll do something very similar. So, 特心念者志令名我等不成全 度不成吉老 That's in the Yonden Shi Gyurma. It describes the sessions.

And we're going to do something similar. So normally you should have one session before sunrise, another session before noon, another session before sunset, and another session after sunset. Now if you're doing your retreat in the summer, that can be a real pain.

If you're doing your retreat in the winter, you don't get any time to meditate. You know, so you have to kind of judge that, but we'll follow this schedule here. If you're in a long retreat, it's good to do some kind of yoga or something like that.

If you're in a short retreat, I think some kind of quiet yoga or something like that is okay, all right? Or walking or stretching or like that is fine, during the rest times. Many short sessions are better than long ones.

The early Sakyas who first started the Vajrayogini lineage, brought it to Tibet, had a custom of twelve-minute meditation sessions, very intense twelve-minute meditation sessions, stuff like that. So don't feel like you have to sit for an hour and a half. It's better to have short ones, frequent short ones at the beginning, okay?

Once you get into posture, stop moving. Learn what you're going to do before you start, okay? We're going to spend some time on that, on the practice.

So you're going to get a specific practice and you're going to learn it. Each one of you will get a book like this. This is Ken Rinpoche's presentation of this meditation.

He taught it twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago. And we put his lecture into a book, so it's the first half of this book, is how to do this meditation. I'd like everybody to get it tonight.

You got it already? Go ahead and read that for two days, okay? And fine, beautiful, read it as many times as you can.

And especially the meditation about the nectar coming in and out, because that will be a big part of the meditation. It's a very, very fine commentary that Ken Rinpoche gave on this practice, okay? So read that.

When you do long retreats it's good to clear up your life before any fights you're having with somebody, resolve them. Take care of your teeth, that's important. I'm just talking long retreats now, if you're going to do a six-month retreat or something like that.

Take care of your physical health before whatever, you know, if you have a tooth problem or something like that. I had students who had wisdom teeth problems and, you know, schedule like two months before a gun retreat, have them ripped out, you know, like that. Take care of all that stuff before you do a long retreat.

This retreat is sort of a lead-up to the three-year retreat. We're going in January to try to negotiate with these people who own the property. If we can get a big enough piece of property then, while some people are in three-year retreat, I could see other people doing shorter retreats, like a year or six months or three months or one month or two weeks.

And I had sort of an idea for time-sharing, like the apartments in Mexico that people do, you know, and people could, if we get the property that we're looking at, then people could start building smaller retreat places a little bit farther away from the one in which the three-year retreat people will be. And then I could see people time-sharing them or something like that. Somebody could go out for a month and then somebody else could go out for another month or something like that.

And I think that would be really, really cool. Okay, so part of the idea of this is to get you in the mood for starting to do longer retreats. I see Godstown personally as a place for mainly weekend or ten-day retreats, but for stressed-out people in New York City.

And I think it will develop into that very sweetly. You know, I think it will become a real outlet for people to do short-term retreats from New York City. To have a hundred acres within two hours of New York City is impossible, and we have it.

So I'd like to develop this place more like that. And then long-term retreats, like over a month, a month to three years, I'd like to maybe concentrate on in Arizona, because I think it would be more quiet and much more wild, which is sort of the way it's supposed to be, okay? And there are people here who are training for their three-year retreat.

They'll be staying downstairs. Please don't come downstairs. Please don't knock on the door.

They'll be going outside to do special practices. If you're working here, and if you are going outside, I don't know, if you're cooks or something like that, please don't go past the legs, okay? Like, try to stay with this side of the legs, okay?

That's okay. Until that day. Until Tuesday?

Yeah. Zegle is okay outside, but after a certain point, you guys won't be going, most of you won't be going outside of the house, okay? But keep that area, that area is very tight.

That area has to be very tight. So please don't try to go downstairs or bang on the door, okay? If you go crazy, go that way.

Okay, all right. It's very good to do some kind of great virtue before you go into retreat, okay? So, in general, before you do a learning or something like that, do, like a month before, start planning some extraordinary good deed that you can do to help other people or something like that.

Something very special. You know, teach a bunch of courses, or get a bunch of books finished, or do something at ceremony to help the monks, or things like that. Do some hospice work specially or something like that.

Do some kind of big virtue just before that. That's very powerful. Please don't try to do other practices while you're doing this.

I mean, do your required practices by yourself, on your own time, during the breaks, okay? But please don't try to do anything else here, okay? I mean, don't take this time during the next ten days to try to do anything else, okay?

I know some of you brought some work from your office and stuff like that. Just forget it, okay? Don't do anything else, all right?

Work on this practice and just be aware that you're not going to be doing anything else, okay? We'll talk about doing offerings, and it's very important that you do the offerings very well every day while you're in retreat. In addition to not talking, just try not to relate to other people.

There's these rules in other retreat centers, you can't look at anybody or stuff like that. I don't mean like that, but try not to communicate even non-verbally, okay? You're here by yourself.

I mean, ideally you would be by yourself. We don't have forty rooms here. But try not to communicate with other people.

Try to keep your whole mind here. Don't do any kind of sexual activity at all, okay? That's important.

And it keeps your energy very strong, okay? And try not to eat too much. There's a temptation here because the cooks are so good, and you can ruin your retreat that way.

I think, lastly, the best way to ruin a retreat, you'll get onto some kind of thing about somebody you don't like, you know? Like, that's a demon, okay? I've had it happen many times, so I'm just telling you.

All your emotions become more intense. So, any problem you're having with somebody, you'll start having fantasies about it, you know? You'll start deciding how much you hate them, and how bad they hurt you, and how you're going to get them when you get out, and stuff like that.

So just forget it. That's a demon, and that's not true. And, you see, whatever kind of state of mind you go in with, everything gets enhanced.

The bad side gets enhanced, and the good side gets enhanced. So try to ride with the good side, okay? Like, you'll have more intense feelings about the people you love, and you'll have more intense feelings about the people you don't like.

If you want to ruin two or three days of meditation, start thinking about someone you don't like, you know? And it ruins it. It's called nirsem.

It's in Nagarjuna's list of five meditation problems, and it will ruin your meditation immediately. So just forget it, and try to ride with the good side, okay? Although it'll be difficult.

So take now a ten minute break, and then we'll do a short meditation, and then I want you to rest tonight, nicely, and that'll be good for tonight. So take a short break. Just a few short things.

Some people ask me questions. Should you keep doing your book? Yes.

Okay? If you don't say anything or do anything, will you still have anything to write? Oh, a lot.

You'll take all these horrible thoughts. Don't be disturbed. In meditation, the bad parts get intense, and the good parts get intense.

Don't be disturbed, you know? You start thinking about murdering your mother or something. Don't worry about it.

Just don't do it afterwards, okay? But it's very common, and everything gets more intense. So don't worry about that.

Somebody asked me, if you get wind, does it affect your bowel movements? Yeah, your pee-pee changes, and actually the way Tibetan doctors, I translated for Yoshi Denen for a while, and Tenzin Chodron, both are Dalai Lama's doctors, it gets more bubbly and frothy, and that's one of the indications, you know? It starts to get very, very light, and it bubbles like beer or something like that, okay?

If you sit for a long time, you'll get constipated, okay? So don't worry about that. If you find it hard to poo-poo, that's normal, okay?

If it comes out like rocks and it never did before, like that, don't worry about it. It's normal, okay? It's a little uncomfortable, and it doesn't, it's not any problem, okay, like that.

It's good to know these things, all right? What were some other questions? I forgot.

That's about it. Okay. Huh?

No, okay.

[Speaker 2]
Do you have any suggestions for when you can't breathe?

[Speaker 1]
You mean I have trouble breathing?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
There's two kinds of not breathing. I mean, one is if your breathing gets really good, if the out-breath and the in-breath start to equalize, heartbeats and stuff like that, that's very good. If you start hearing your heartbeat and it gets really loud, that's good, although it probably won't happen so much in a mantra retreat.

It's important during a mantra retreat, when you're doing a mantra retreat, you're going, a-ma-ma-ma, ha-ma-ma-ma-na-na, ha-ma-ma-ma, and that, when you keep sucking in breath like that, it's more likely to get some wind, okay? So you have to be careful to get all the air out. At the end of the mantra, you know, you go, a-mi-me-to-ri-to-chi-chen-me-si, and get all the air out, and make sure the air is out, and then try not to suck it in too fast, because if you keep going, ha-ha-ha, you know, it'll build up wind.

Is wind something that happens in your lungs? No. It's a spiritual wind that's connected to the physical wind.

They're not the same thing at all, okay? So, if your spiritual winds get disturbed, your physical winds start to get disturbed, and if your physical winds are disturbed, your spiritual winds start to get disturbed. So they're connected to each other, but they're not the same thing.

But one can give you the idea about how the other's doing. If your pee-pee gets a lot of wind in it, if you fart a lot, that's another thing I forgot to tell you, okay? That's normal, okay?

To have gas. It's a sign that you're building up a little wind, okay? That's okay.

If it's a little bit further than that, it starts to hurt your chest, and then you should try to take it more easy, like rest longer, eat a little bit more food. If it gets to be a pain in your chest, then actually skip a session or two. It's okay, alright?

I wanted to just welcome all the people who came, who traveled here. There's Ian and Gazelle. We met them in Australia.

We had a really good time with them. They came to the Diamond Cutter, then they went back home, and they have a center, and they did the Diamond Cutter there, and it was really cool. And we had a really good time with them.

They flew in this morning at 6 a.m., so they're going to be really good tomorrow. Joan Stigliani came from Italy. She's in the Master's program there, a very good seven-year program for Buddhism there.

Debbie Bai came from Australia. We met her in Melbourne, and she came to the Diamond Cutter there, and she's an old-time Dharma student from Melbourne. She helped start the center there.

Petra and Kelly. Petra helps run the FPMT organization, like a hundred Dharma centers, thousands of students, and a good disciple and a good attendant to Lama Sopa. And Kelly's also helped out a lot in those centers.

I forget what you're doing now. I'm like a forest ranger or something like that. Okay.

Kinzon came in from Canada. Hi, welcome. And Dito and Axel have been around for a while.

They came in from Germany. We stole Axel from Ford Corporation in Germany. So that's all.

Any other, does anybody have any more questions? And by the way, tomorrow, anybody who wants to have a talk before we stop talking, a private talk, and all of those people that I promised a private talk tonight, we'll start them at 11 o'clock tomorrow. So talk to Aura.

We can do private talks from, let's say, like 11 to 1, I think. And then I'll do my cheerios in there somewhere. And then if it doesn't finish, we'll do more in the afternoon.

But after Monday, we won't do any, I won't be talking either. Okay? So try to think of whatever you can.

All right? So I'd like to, tonight we'll do a short meditation. So we'll just do a classic warm-up.

You're not getting sleepy, are you? We'll do like a classic warm-up. I'm not going to go very long, because I know a lot of people travel to do this.

And what we'll be doing during the retreat is Dhanedhagyama, a very, very powerful guru yoga text. Practice centered on Lama, on your Lama, in the form of Jataka. And we'll be doing the preliminaries of that now, the normal preliminaries, and then a very short Lama Yondra, guru yoga.

It is the most famous one for our lineage. There's even special books written about it. Kristi just got finished.

They were shipped to us on this from Sarame. It's like 200 commentaries on it, by the great Lamas of our lineage. And it's incredible.

So it's a very important practice for our lineage. And it's good that you learn it. In the middle of it, there's a non-secret mantra of Jataka, and that's what we'll be reciting during the next 10 days.

So now we'll just do the preliminaries and a brief visualization, and then it will get deeper and deeper as we go. So first watch your breath. Try to get it softer and softer.

Take refuge. This specifically means that because this world is empty, because everything about your life is empty, then the world around you and the people around you can become anything you hope for, anything you can dream of, if you could just keep your vows and keep your book well. Think about bodhicitta and the possibility that you yourself could teach other people and achieve yourself a place where you don't have to die anymore, where you don't have to have anything bad happen again.

Next, invite a Lama to come. Whatever being in your mind is the holiest being you can imagine, like a perfect being. You can start with someone you know, like Dalai Lama or Khenpo Thochen, or Lama Sobhant, but make sure to think of them as perfect and in their mind, beautiful, perfect being.

Ask them to come and sit in front of you, meditate with you. Next, think of their good qualities. The one I like to think about is that they've been following their mom for lifetimes trying to help me.

And imagine that, think that they're doing that. Bow to them in your mind. Next, make them an offer.

I like to offer them something I plan to do tonight or tomorrow in my practice, something very detailed, something very simple and distinct that I plan to do for them as an offer, something to help my spiritual practice. Think of something negative you thought or said or did today, something very specific. Play it back a few times and decide that you'll try not to do it tomorrow.

Think of something very good you did, something very sweet, and play it back a few times and decide you'll try to do more of that, specific. Then ask for teachings, ask for blessings of the teachings. And then lastly, ask the great teachers and the people around you who are a good influence on you to live a long life and stay close to you.

Now go back to your breath and make it very subtle. Try to see the holy being in front of you more clearly. We'll start with a silhouette, just their outline as if there was a light behind them and you can't see any of their features but just their outline.

Then get their eyes right, fill in their eyes as if a spotlight was shining on their eyes. Then fill in the rest of their face and their hair. Then fill in their chest, their arms.

Then fill in the rest of their body. Then fill in the small movements that people make, the chest moving, the eyelids moving. Try to sit still.

Then fill in the warmth of their body, feel the warmth of their body. Then feel the scent of their body, like some wonderful scent, like an orange tree or grass. Then lastly, try to feel their mind and how they feel towards you, how they love you, how they care for you.

Then lastly, see them reach out towards you very slowly and they touch you on the chest very lightly and it gives you a great blessing for your practice, for your meditation. Then imagine that you have that holy state of mind that they have, like very beautiful, calm, happy, pure and caring state of mind that they have and enjoy it. You even start to look like them.

Ask them to come into your heart and then think of light coming from your heart, out of your heart and blessing other people, the good karma. Dedicate the good karma of starting this retreat. Okay, we'll do a prayer.

Be nice.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
This is the end of session one.