Серия ежедневной практики, курс 10 — Мантра Чже Цонгкапы (Ганден Лхагьяма) (1998), занятие 7

[Speaker 1]
Session 8 We'll go in several topics, okay? You're good at this. Why don't you do this?

Okay, topics are questions about the practice, comments about doing retreats, meditation, posture, everything else. You know, like things that you found that were useful, that might help other people and stuff like that. And then, I think comments about your priorities, your schedule and your...

what's the other thing? Your resolutions. You know those three, the other three lists.

So, questions about the practice, comments about your own meditation, how it went, doing retreats in general, and then comments about your other three lists, you know, your schedule, your priorities, and what's the other one? Your daily resolution, okay? And then, she's a really good monitor.

We have one hour. We're going to start talking about questions about the practice. Okay, sounds good.

[Speaker 2]
What's the difference between the bad deeds that are cleaned out from Madar Chu and then the stuff that is cleaned out from Tanisha Sangha?

[Speaker 1]
Are they the same thing? Madar Chu comes in two parts, right? Marnde, the big hunks, you squeeze them out, you know?

And then he gets to eat. And then the leftovers are skimmed on the top and they come out the top. And those are mostly dik jip.

Dik jip means... dikpa, dik jip, dikpa dang tungwa means bad deeds, like natural bad deeds, killing, stealing, lying, like that. And then tungwa means breaking your vows, you know, things that you took a vow not to do.

So dik tungs, you get eliminated. And jippa means she jip and nun jip, obstacles to your practice. Some that hurt you, like mental afflictions.

And then she jips would be more the object of mi she sel, which is, she jips are the inability to know things, or the inability to understand things clearly. That's more cleaned out during mi she sel. So during the ma dak tru, which is clearing out the impurities, it's more like broken commitments.

The bodhisattva vows, if you remember the course, they're designed around the six perfections, although they're not very obvious, you know? But they are designed around the six perfections. So if you broke a bodhisattva vow, you're hurting your six perfections.

So that would be during the cleaning up and down, down and up. And then things that you haven't understood yet, emptiness, karma, subtle things, that would be cleaned out during mi she sel, with the lamp. That's the difference.

And that's the difference between nun jips and she jips. Nun jips keep you from achieving nirvana. She jips keep you from achieving enlightenment.

Mental afflictions, obstacles, and then knowledge obstacles. I'll repeat the question because it helps them later. She said she put the double Dorje over the Lord of Death to keep...

There's a lot of visualizations where you use double Dorjes to shut things and to keep them shut. It's like a double lock or something like that. But it can also mean a long life.

So it is appropriate to use it. Like when you put a double Dorje on a lama's throne with swastikas on it, they all mean long life. So that's fine.

That's all right. You are sitting on it. Because when you use it to shut the...it's okay.

[Speaker 2]
I have a question about last year's visualization of the blacknesses, like the drupas here, then bringing down the white light on nectar.

[Speaker 1]
Then a lot of times it wouldn't move.

[Speaker 2]
I don't know. You have to push them.

[Speaker 1]
You have to push this. Put more nectar in, you know.

[Speaker 2]
One day I just imagined that there were actual beings inside my body.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, no. De means, as I said, the word mande. De means to...

It's a very unusual word, and it means what a shepherd does to sheep with a stick, or what a bullock cart driver does to the bull. It means to drive things in front of you. In the Wild West, there'd be 20 horsemen driving the cattle to Kansas City.

That's Depa. So you could bring to mind a certain kind of... No, no.

I would just turn up the... She has a problem that when she tries to push them down with the nectar, they stay. They just lock there.

I would ask for more blessings. I don't have any. I've never...

I can't think. I would just ask for more blessings and ask to push. Try bodhichitta.

You know? Try some bodhichitta. That seems to work, usually.

Think of someone who's sick. Okay? Like that.

Someone who's having a problem. And that will help, I think. You decide.

Are we supposed to imagine the black beads in the center, or... They could be all over. Mostly, when you do tonglen, you collect them at your heart.

So you could do it either way. I think it's probably convenient to collect them at your heart. Because if you're used to doing tonglen, you're doing that with other people already.

The other question is, I find that when I do the visualizations, I do them very, very slowly, so the meditation period could expire, and I've done only maybe two of them. I did that all the time. And you just cycle to the next period.

So if you did... She said she doesn't finish all six perfections in one period. So do two in one period, then do one the next period.

And that's fine.

[Speaker 2]
I remember reading from a camera to show you something about emptiness puts holes in samsara. Did you say the nectar puts holes in nectar being emptiness?

[Speaker 1]
He said, can you visualize the nectar as being emptiness? Sure, that's fine. He calls it, in his commentary, vajra nectar, or...

It would be deto nyi sum... deto nyi sum epitangye. That would be...

It would be... Especially if you're doing tantric practice, it would be dewa and tongwa. But generally, if you want to think of a meaning to it, it can be a mix of the three principal paths or something.

But he did say vajra nectar in his commentary.

[Speaker 2]
In terms of saying the mantra, I have a couple of questions. What's the difference in power between just mentally doing the whole thing, mentally saying the mantra in your head, and actually moving your mouth verbally and saying it, even if it's not loud? Is there a difference?

[Speaker 1]
Some people say... She asks if there's a big difference between saying it out loud or doing it mentally. And I think, you know, the question comes up in the scriptures, and they say one obvious advantage of doing it out loud is that other beings in the room can hear it, and that you have to imagine while you recite it that there are lots of pretas or other beings in the room who benefit from it.

That's why they say it's important to do it enough that you could hear it. You know, like enough of a whisper that you yourself could hear it. Then they say if you get good enough at it, you could do it mentally.

And then it's good to alternate. You know, do it mentally for a while, and then do it verbally for a while. Some people say they get distracted if they do it verbally.

But... And if you get deep into a retreat, I think you could switch from verbal to mental. So that's possible.

If you don't move your mouth, it's easier. I mean, you move it less, and it's easier. You could start the session off with a couple of hundred verbal, you know, and then go to mental.

How many did people do? Because I'm curious. Should we have counted?

About a thousand a day? A day? Okay, yeah.

What if we didn't count? It's okay. It's better to count.

They've got this thing. There's a famous incident in the Lam Rim where three guys go to a cave to do... They call them counting mantras, nakdong.

And they come out, and they have some tea. They make a fire, and they have some tea after a week. And they say, how many did you do?

And somebody says, 10,000. And the other guy says, I did 12,000. And then the third guy says, I just thought it was more important to concentrate on it, and I forgot to count.

And then the Lam Rim says he was the most brilliant one of all. But it's not bad to count them. You don't have to think it's like competitive or dumb or childish or something like that.

It's great. You should be proud of it. It's not embarrassing.

I think it's good to count them if you can. Some people, it distracts them greatly to actually sit there with the rosary. They lose the visualization.

And then you might try putting it here and then moving it like that. That works, on your knee. And if you still get distracted, then I think you could do it mentally, and you would lose count.

But when you're doing a Lerung, you have to count. And you have to know that you got to 100,000. If you know that you can do 100,000 in 20 days and you do 40 days, then that's okay.

How many extra do you have to do when you do 100,000? That's secret.

[Speaker 2]
I get extra because I count for all the mistakes.

[Speaker 1]
It's 10,000 of a different mantra. Okay. Do you recommend doing it daily?

Just doing it daily a lot without paying all the money? I think like 200 or 300. Most lamas say 200 or 300 is good.

You can do a couple hundred in a day. A couple rounds. Three rounds is great.

Two rounds is good. One round is, you know... One round, I mean, it depends on how your life is going.

I mean, there's this kind of thing where ritual takes over your life and you're all nervous and upset because you didn't do 200 that day. It ruined your meditation and your visualization. You know what I mean?

So you have to be... I think two mantras, if it's concentrated, is probably better than 300, if it seems like an obligation and you're rushed. I have a question between the physical and the mental.

One was in the pushing down of stuff I found on the first days. I was like... And I realized my entire body, you know, and my insides were going...

And my whole body was actually going to the bathroom. You know what I mean? And it wasn't really going to the bathroom, but you know what I mean.

I could feel it happening. And then later, and I don't know if it was that I got tired, and then it just all became mental. And so, I guess, also with the whole like shaking thing, you know, I got really...

Anyway, what's happening with the physical... Like how much is actually physical stuff that is happening to your body as opposed to...

[Speaker 2]
Like is it all really mentally and physically just having reactions?

[Speaker 1]
They say, lung-sem, jukpa-chikpa. Say lung-sem, jukpa-chikpa. The internal winds, which are not the same as your breath, but the inner winds and the mind are...

They move in tandem. Jukpa-chikpa means tandem. And that's the basis of tantric practice, Dzogchen, higher tantric practice.

So as you think, so go your winds. And as your winds go, so do your thoughts go. So they influence each other.

So if you're frightened, for example, your winds start moving in a strange way. They call it outside of the channels. And then you start breathing.

That affects your breath. It's not your breath, but it affects your breath. And that's why when you're frightened, you start breathing faster or something like that.

And then if you purposely breathe slow, you get more calm because the breathing affects the inner air which affects the mind. And that's also called lung, but that's a different lung. The lung that people say, I got lung is called, it means sok lung.

Sok lung means a kind of central wind associated in the area of your heart. And it's connected to, if you're meditating and it builds up. If you build up breath, for example, if you keep going, every time you do a mantra, that affects your inner air.

And then you get lung faster. So you have to be able to get all the air out. You shouldn't collect physical air because it affects your inner air while you're doing the mantra.

So that's one thing. And one sign of it is that you start getting shaky and like that. As you start to straighten out your inner channels, you get a different kind of shaky.

And then different kinds of inner things are happening. And you might feel different physical experiences that are very strong. And that's a sign that your mental afflictions are getting less.

And generally, every time you have an emotion of anger, it chokes your central channel. Every time you have any other bad emotions, it chokes your central channel. That's what actually kills you physically, eventually, when you die.

It's just finishing. And the process of meditation ultimately is to loosen them and not to choke that channel. So as you start to loosen it, the more sweet thoughts you have, every time you have a good thought, it loosens a little bit.

And if in your life you have enough good thoughts, and specifically in Sutra, not seeing things as self-existent, and in Tantra, not seeing things as tamo nangshan, that loosens that channel. And then you start to have some experience of shaking a little bit and like that. So that's a good sign, but it has to be controlled.

Also, if the winds get out of the channels, you start to shake. Like if you get agitated at work or when you're angry, then the winds are moving in the wrong places, and then you get shaky, or when you get nervous or something like that. And you shouldn't force that, though, on the physical...

No, don't confuse the winds with this practice. This practice is not connected with the winds at all. So, yeah, just let it flow down like oil, like someone's pouring motor oil in your head.

Yeah, very soft, like motor oil coming down the inside of your body. Nothing to do with holding your breath or pushing your breath. That's a totally different thing and very bad to do it at this point.

Just on that note, I have a quick question myself.

[Speaker 2]
If you have a lotus, and this nectar is coming down, I was wondering if it fills up the lotus at all.

[Speaker 1]
I've never seen that. I've never heard that. Normally they say it's coming straight down from his heart.

And when you do Vajrasattva, it's coming from someplace other way, a different way. But does it come from a certain part of the heart? Heart, yeah.

And sometimes you'll see... By the way, I have something I want to pass around. Margie's working on a set of 15 paintings of Jetsun Kappa's life, extremely rare, and we found the original manuscript that tells you what's going on in each scene.

And she's been translating them and working on them for a couple of years, actually. And we have a mock-up that we made to show a publisher that has some neat scenes in it. So I thought you'd like to see that.

But in those scenes, it's coming like that. And those of you who were in California last summer, was it, and you made a donation to Tenrim, we found a very rare Kadampa book, a thousand pages long, Tenrim Chemo, that the Lamrim Chemo was based on. And Lamrim Chemo is the greatest book ever written in Tibetan.

Tenrim Chemo, it was a rip-off of the Tenrim Chemo, but a kind one. You know what I mean? And Tenrim Chemo was lost, and we found a copy, and it's been input, and Ora's working on, she's about two days away from finishing the book.

So it'll be published in Tibetan and given away to all these monks in India because people donated it. During Jetsun Kappa's life, it was lost as well, and he found a copy in his life. Then it was lost after him, and we found a copy.

But in the painting, there's a very amazing... There's an amazing... You can see the scene where he's finding the book.

You can see the scene where he's finding the book. And then you can see the scene where he's teaching it to his students. So I thought those of you who were in California might appreciate that.

I got a picture of it. Oh, cool. Yeah.

Those of you who didn't see, we did a silver plate with ruby and diamonds in it to be put in the heart of the Buddha statue that Lama Zopa is working on. Which is like... How...

I'm sorry. My turn. 500 feet high?

Yeah. 500 feet high. Okay.

Oh, by the way, the nectar is not pouring down in the middle. It's not like a faucet. It's more like...

We say, imagine your body is kok tong. Kok tong means... Deities' bodies don't have anything inside.

They're just like the sky or something inside. You can visualize them as blue sky or something. Inside, they're hollow.

They're just appearing like... It's very beautiful. In a Buddha land, there's a suk, but not benpo.

Suk means visible matter. But benpo means there's no physical matter. No particulate matter.

There's a distinction. So you can see a Buddha, but actually they're just light. And they don't have guts and intestines and heart and stuff like that.

So you have to imagine yourself like that. And it's just coming down the outside. It's pouring down like that.

But you can imagine it coming down also through your channels and stuff. So I personally like to do it through my blood vessels and stuff like that. But inside of your body, think of it as...

If you want, think of it as kok tong, like filled with blue sky or something. And then the nectar just coming down and spreading everywhere like that, like oil, like very heavy oil. But not like a faucet or something like that.

So is it coming into your pores? Or is it coming... Oh no, it's coming right down to your chi tu.

Say chi tu. There's an opening right here. I mean, it's right here in the middle of your bald spot.

There's no translation. You can say center top of the head. That's how I translate it.

It's right here. And you can imagine a small opening, like very small, like a straw. Okay?

Like the width of a straw. Okay. You said all the nectar is coming from the heart Yeah, I mean, it starts at the heart.

It starts at the heart. Yeah. It comes down.

[Speaker 2]
The various colors, the blue and white, does each color have a significance that you can tell us?

[Speaker 1]
It's funny because in Rinpoche's commentary it says five colors. In Pabongka commentary it says white. And normally when you visualize five colors it's related to the five Buddha families, the five classes of the five Buddhas.

And those have significance in your vows, in your tantric vows. Your vows, your tantric vows, relate to one or another of the five Buddhas. They relate to your five skandhas.

And they relate to the purification of your five skandhas. So like, when your body becomes pure it'll change from guts and blood and skin to light. And that's represented by one of the five Dhyani Buddhas or Buddha families.

And then there's a set of vows for them. So you have nineteen vows relating to them. And then you have other general vows that relate to all five.

So you can think of the five colors like that. It's in Rinpoche's commentary. It's a blue, white, green, yellow, green, yellow, yellow, yellow, green, yellow, green, after the first one.

After the madhatu, the other nectar is gold. When you start with the lamps, that nectar is golden color. And that represents Manjushri.

The white represents Vajrasattva. You can do white only. Personally it's more comfortable for me to do a single color.

I have trouble with five colors. It starts to look like a peppermint. Did the lightness become nectar?

It's nectar, which is light. Okay. He's been so patient, his arm is like falling off.

For meditation like this, is it suitable for living permanently outside your residence, or are they especially for retreat? As far as I understand it, it's important to take them off from retreat, because they actually block the airspace around here, like the local spirits will get upset, like they can't move around them. So as I understand it, it's important to take them down and get them all down.

Otherwise it's like putting a big... I don't know. It's like putting a big...

I was going to say setting up a tent in the middle of Grand Central Station. You know what I mean? And I mean the commuters are trying to move around.

No, it's just the same thing. It creates a space that they can't penetrate, and it's very inconvenient for the local inhabitants that you can't see.

[Speaker 2]
Back there. I was just thinking, at one point I was using like a sandblaster or something. You know, when you get a high-pressure nozzle with the duty and you just...

[Speaker 1]
I think that's fine. I don't think that's any problem. If you want to do it that way, yeah.

I don't see any problem with that.

[Speaker 2]
The mantra and the visualization, are they done at the same time, or do they have to be separate, or can they be at the same time?

[Speaker 1]
The texts clearly say that you do it at the same time, and then if it's more convenient for you, stop and do the visualization for a while and then come back to the mantra. So it's clear in the text that you can do it either way. Normally you recite and do the visualization, but if you have trouble or if you want to go deep into the visualization and not so deep sometimes, then, yeah, the book clearly says you can pause, do some mantras and then go back.

And when you recite it, Ganden Lhagyama, in the long version, you stop and you insert miktsemas.

[Speaker 2]
Can you mix it up too? Let's say you're doing the Knowledge Nectar and then you want to do a sword and then you can switch that?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, can you switch the order? That's okay. The book says that clearly.

Pabongka Rinpoche's commentary says clearly. If you have a problem with speaking in public, then use that one. Do a couple of days on that one.

If you said something particularly mean to somebody, then do the Madhvaktu for a while. That's okay. Are you asking about tornas and stuff like that now?

Later. Any other questions? Do you have a question?

[Speaker 2]
I just have a question. I stole my phone for visualization. So, I'm making this video.

I don't know how many days it was. It's kind of a picture. I mean, I don't see pictures at all.

[Speaker 1]
Start something... They always say do something very basic. Like just try to get Jetsun Kappa's silhouette.

You know, they always say that. Start with a silhouette, like as if there's a light behind him and all you're trying to get is the outline. Like if he's standing behind a sheet...

[Speaker 2]
I mean, I tried that, but unfortunately it didn't work. But what I get is a kind of feeling for it. So, the question is, which is not...

I mean, it's more like, if you see something, you have the physical view on it and you have the idea that you see something. And it's just for me, my feeling is just that the physical view is missing, but I have a feeling as if I would see it.

[Speaker 1]
I think...

[Speaker 2]
Is this okay? Because I really tried... I mean, I started with balls and things like that.

[Speaker 1]
That's okay. I think it's important. The books say, don't visualize a Tanka.

You see, I think many Americans... You ask them, how's your visualization? They say, fine, you know, he's got the right thing in his left hand, he's got the right thing in his right hand, and he's flat.

You know, and no... I think, as Axel said, very important is to get the feeling of the presence of a person. A three-dimensional, breathing, warm...

I like to visualize the scent of the person. Yeah, that's very important. The emotion of the presence of the being is as important.

[Speaker 2]
It's just nothing. I mean, it's just like a black and white TV which has...

[Speaker 1]
I would visualize the presence, you know. Start with the presence, and then ask for nectar to be able to see him. Connected to that.

Connected. Yeah. They're connected.

[Speaker 2]
It's really the same question.

[Speaker 1]
I'm sorry. No, I have the other way around. You should marry Axel.

[Speaker 2]
You guys are doing it together.

[Speaker 1]
I could see, or I could visualize, but then suddenly I had the intent, OK, it's not a real feature or external being. It's a mental state. At that moment, I had that thought, that visualization, and it was gone, and I just had the presence.

And then I had... After that, I had problems to visualize again after this thought, so it's more a state of mind, and that was very present at the end. When lamas teach this visualization, they go into a long spiel about the three bodies of a Buddha and how they can be there the minute you wish them there.

They travel at the speed of omniscience. They knew a million years ago that you were going to try to visualize them. So, like, they have an alarm clock.

They know it's time to go and sit on your head. They knew a million years ago that they had to be there at that time, and they started a million years ago. I find what's useful for me is to think of Ken Rinpoche or somebody.

You know what I mean? When I lose... When it starts to become a thangka, or you lose the...

Then think of some specific lama or His Holiness that you know their face pretty well, and fill in the face from that. If you're losing the face again... By the way, in Tantra, the distinction is between sel nung and nga gyal.

The nga gyal is the presence, and sel nung is the vision. And you alternate in Tantra. Sometimes the sel nung is going well, and then you switch to the nga gyal, and then you go back to the sel nung, and then sometimes you unify the sel nung and the nga gyal.

So the vision still is important to use to develop. Yeah, in Tantra you have to get to perfection of both at the same time. Winston has two jobs.

He's going to ask the last question and tell us the next topic.

[Speaker 2]
All right.

[Speaker 1]
That was smooth. And the question itself is a segue, because... He's very good at it.

[Speaker 2]
I'm just wondering, do you calibrate your breathing in and out with the rounds of mantra? Two rounds going out and one going in.

[Speaker 1]
I think you'll find that you calibrate it to all sorts of things. It'll start out to your heartbeat, for example. When they teach Dzogrim, there's a whole bunch of calibrations going on, and you have to learn that.

But during the practice of Dzogrim, your breath is an indicator of many, many different things, and you're watching many different aspects of the breath. And it indicates the process of shugne timsum. Say, shug.

Shug.

[Speaker 2]
Ne. Tim. Sum.

[Speaker 1]
And that's different things going on with the inner airs. And you have to learn it when you study Dzogrim, which you should do. You know what I mean?

Kirim is the sadhana, dake. And if you get perfect at dake, then you've finished kirim. But on your priority list, mentally, it should be that you have to get to Dzogrim as fast as you can, because that's the only way to get out of this body before you die.

So, in the back of your mind, you should be thinking, I want to study tantra, and then especially after I finish kirim, I want to very much do Dzogrim, because really, the ultimate expression of compassion for others would be to practice Dzogrim perfectly and get out. You know, if you say, I want to have compassion, then in Buddhism that means I want to become a Buddha quickly. And then Dzogrim is the only way to do it in this lifetime.

So, during that practice, you're very much calibrating different things to you. Your breath is a signpost of many inner things going on, and you watch it for many different aspects. So, yeah, it would be fine to calibrate it to something now, like your heartbeat or the mantras.

It's a good sign if they reach equilibrium, meaning same amount of heart beat out and the same amount of heart beats in. That's a good sign. So, without forcing it, you can watch it, and slightly you can kind of nudge it that way.

You're not supposed to, in this practice, fool around with it forcefully, but if you see that you're close to getting them equal, then you can just try it. Personally, I find that when my mind is in a bad condition, I'm breathing in faster, and, let me see, yeah, in too fast, and then out slower than the in. So, that's an indication of some kind of mental affliction often, is the in-breath, how fast the in-breath is.

And that's all related to your channels. And when they're all straightened out, everything changes. Your body changes.

Okay. Winston's going to announce what the next retreat is. Okay.

And then the first question is, which is lost, but we're not telling anybody.

[Speaker 2]
So, the topic was just about meditating and about doing the retreat in general?

[Speaker 1]
Okay. The topic is about meditating and about doing the retreat in general. The first question, you're sneaking in.

And comments about God still, and how we ran the retreat. And this is not me talking. I'd rather have you guys talking.

If you have a comment, things that helped you, that you'd like to share with other people, or problems that you had that you thought maybe somebody else figured it out.

[Speaker 2]
Just in relation to the breath, what is... I found when I was lying down, not meditating, but lying down afterwards in a sort of semi-state of awakeness, occasionally there'd be these involuntary, like, breaths out.

[Speaker 1]
That's a good sign. It's a good sign. It means something in your channels is getting straightened out that was blocked before.

Like, you're dealing mentally, you're examining your anger or your jealousy of someone, and you removed a block, and that's a good sign. You might also find when you're doing mantras, when you start to get a wind problem, you're panting, like, a little bit, or you feel short of breath, or something. That's normal when you're doing a mantra retreat.

It's an early sign of a wind problem. And it's okay, but you should start watching it at that point. Just to add to that, so I felt this real kind of...

Sorry, one more thing, and your heart palpitates a little bit. So that's normal. Those are indications of an early, early warning wind problem.

[Speaker 2]
What I found is that maybe it was like a pressure cooker, and then it just burst through. Like, I felt, like, all this stuff pressurized, and then different things like we were talking about, and then, at a certain point, when we did that, everything just broke through.

[Speaker 1]
Also, you know the feeling of a sonic boom? Like this thing, like that? If you get those every once in a while, that's a very good sign.

It's just an inner, silent sonic, and it's just a jolt or something. And it means that some movement in the channels, that there wasn't any movement before. And I don't mean constant shaking like that.

I mean a sudden, like, boom that nobody else hears, and kind of a jolt, and it feels like a sonic boom, but inside. And that's a nice sign. That's a good sign.

What about dreams? Well, they say two things. I mean, they're very famous.

They say... People ask Ken Remete about dreams, and then they're waiting, you know, for some mystical answer, and he says, if you have a good one, it's a nice sign, and if you have a bad one, just forget it. I mean, they're always an indication of your mental state, generally, but not to be believed very seriously, because they're so...

what do you call it? They're easily affected by spirits, or what you ate, or a small fight you're having with somebody, or they're very... I don't know how you say...

shifting, you know. They're not to be trusted much. Good dreams are throwing up, flying without an airplane, imagining that you're saving other people somehow, all kinds of purification, like throwing up things, or things coming out.

Those are supposed to be auspicious dreams. Keeping your vows in a dream, like you're about to break a vow, and then in the dream you remember, you know, to keep the vow. Those are all good signs.

But generally they say, if you have a bad one during a retreat, don't worry about it too much. Don't think about it too much.

[Speaker 2]
I'm just curious what it would mean if you were... while you were meditating, you kept feeling like something, a hand was on your head or on your arm?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I don't have any... She said, what if you feel a hand on your head, or something like that. I mean, they often say that, in a meditation, asking a lama to bless you, you might feel their hand on your head, or something like that.

That's all I can think of. Something like that. That's pretty common.

Common. That's good. Anybody had any comments about, they found something that might help other people?

[Speaker 2]
It was a specific experience I had while I was trying to meditate, and all of a sudden I blacked out, and I found myself halfway, as if something hit me from the side, and I was nearly crashing into the person next to me.

[Speaker 1]
What were you feeling? You were asleep, right?

[Speaker 2]
It was just like a wind hit me and knocked me off my seat. What was that?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, A, I can't say. I can't say. I haven't read anything about that, and I haven't had anything like that, except when I fell asleep and hit my head on the couch.

But I would guess that some kind of channel cleared slightly, like on one side. I would guess, but I don't know much about it.

[Speaker 2]
Just to try to get the topic to the next topic, I'm going to say something.

[Speaker 1]
Whenever I found a lot of annoyances happening, I did remember that they were empty, and I found them very funny, and it allowed me to laugh, and that helped me a lot. So I just tried to say that. It seems like humor helps you learn a lot.

Yeah. It helped me a lot, too.

[Speaker 2]
Also, if there were a lot of things going on, or if other people were uncomfortable, and it was distracting to me, then I could turn that on, and that really helped a lot. That actually took away the sound of other people shouting at me. It was no longer distracting.

I could turn that to that. Yes. I want to know a couple of things.

If you can tell the special liquid for the tormas, and the rations and the sizes. I don't know.

[Speaker 1]
That's a long story. I think you have to do it with people who've done it. Elizabeth's good on it.

Ani Thoma's pretty good on it. Give me the words for the translations and stuff. Yeah.

I didn't give you the full mantras for the seat and the mantra, the mala that you would do if you were doing a lerung. So, if you plan to do a Vajrayogini lerung, you have to get instructions on those, and on everything. So, you've done a dry run, but it's all with dummy stuff.

Meaning, you know, not... I just mean like, if you plan to do a lerung, a tantric retreat, now you have to get the full version of everything. But what you've done is a very heavy sutra retreat.

That's about as heavy as you can get without going to tantra. At home, for the daily meditation, don't we need to do the lesson on the seat and the mantra? It's good to do it.

Yeah, you can say, Aum Vajra, Asana, Soha. Aum Vajra. You know who's got it?

Ask Kinzon. Ask Annie Kinzon. She wrote it down.

You can write it down afterwards.

[Speaker 2]
Well, just when I'm doing my daily practice at home, like sometimes I find that it was, in the beginning, a little distracting doing the mantra, and it seemed really effective to visualize. Should I always be doing the mantra every time I do this?

[Speaker 1]
No, you don't have to always do the mantra. But I think you got some... I was very, very skeptical about mantra retreats.

I didn't do it for eight years or something. And then I did, and if you do a long one, they're very, very amazing. The mantra has a very powerful effect on your subconscious that you don't even know.

So I would encourage you to do some. But for daily practice, I think it's more important to be in deep meditation for an hour without the mantra. So I wouldn't suggest that you...

I think to see emptiness, you have to be able to do that. So I would do some mantras, but I wouldn't... The first priority, you know, on that priority list, the first priority is to be able to meditate single-pointedly, silently, inside for an hour, straight, perfectly.

Of course, it's very important to do some mantras, but if you ask me which is more important, I don't hesitate to say you should develop the inside one. But you'll find that if you do both, it helps. By the way, without junking up your practice.

Junking up your practice means collecting practices until it's impossible to do them nicely. And Americans are really good at that. And then they get guilty.

So, use your practices like a toolkit. Do this one for a couple months and then move to the other one. When it gets stale, then move to another practice.

I found it very important to do that. When you get burned out on a certain practice, then have another four or five practices ready that you can say, okay, now I'll do this one. I found personally that every two or three months I change my practice and concentrate on something.

I might do death meditation for three weeks and then stop that and do something from the Dakye and then stop that. Until you get good at it. And then right after you get good at it you kind of get burned out on it.

And then move on to something else. I don't think I do the same one all the time. Is this a daily one?

This is a great daily one. This is a very powerful daily one. Start out with at least twenty-one mantras, a hundred if you have time, and then go into deep meditation.

[Speaker 2]
This is a great opportunity because everyone probably found something that helped them a lot. So I want everyone to have a chance to say it. They don't have to say anything.

But just start with Fran and go around. If someone wants to say something that really made a difference to help them through the retreat, please say something. If you want to, you don't have to.

I just found the mantra very powerful and I like saying it. I wish I had remembered the music to it.

[Speaker 1]
I love that song. Who knows that? Teach us that.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, teach us that. Let's do it right now.

[Speaker 1]
Then I'd like to remember it. Guru Manujam Se Sangwe Dham Dhamchen Khepe Tsukhe Sukhava Nusantrape Shabla Suvanya Me Tsewe Te Chen Chen Re Thinme Yinpe Nwampo Djampe Dukpo Ma Lu Djam Tse Sangwe Dham Dhamchen Khepe Tsukhe Sukhava Nusantrape Shabla Suvanya Me Tsewe Te Chen Chen Re Thinme Yinpe Nwampo Djampe Dukpo Ma Lu Djam Tse Sangwe Dham Dhamchen Khepe Tsukhe Sukhava Nusantrape Shabla Suvanya

[Speaker 2]
Session 8 continues on the next CD.