Серия ежедневной практики ACI — Тонглен: размышления о практике даяния и принятия (2019, Аризона), занятие 1

[Speaker 2]
Small smile, even if someone woke you up.

[Speaker 1]
Stomach is in a little bit, fingers are relaxed, forehead is unwrinkled, and let's come to the sound of the air conditioning. Try not to move, you're in a group. And then please come to your heartbeat.

And then please come inside your heart to a beautiful meditation room. Then into an inner chamber, inner room, into the sugar crystal, the ocean, inside the sugar crystal. The sky above the ocean is your mind.

Now please turn off your mind and push thoughts out. Now let the thoughts flow through your mind, but don't connect to them. Now please bring your teacher to meditate with you.

[Speaker 2]
Today I'd like you to focus on the quality of the teacher, where they have a great love for you and they want to teach you. They're happy to teach you because they're very attracted to you and they feel very affectionate towards you. They love you very much.

[Speaker 1]
So I'd like you to focus on that quality in your teacher. Otherwise no one would agree to be your teacher if they didn't care for you. Now let's take a trip to our past life and imagine that we were a teacher and we were helping someone.

So in some country, in some body, in some time, I was taking care of someone else. I was teaching them. Could be anything, any kind of teaching.

A job skill, or some kind of arts, or sports, or cooking. Imagine you were teaching someone. Make a nice movie.

In the times when you weren't teaching, you were doing your meditations and you were doing tong len with your student.

[Speaker 2]
So imagine, maybe it's evening time and the student has gone home, but you are still thinking about them, how to help them, what to teach them. And so you decide in your past life to do a tong len meditation.

[Speaker 1]
So imagine the student at their home and you are at your own home.

[Speaker 2]
And then try to get clear in your mind something they need, some problem they have, or something they haven't learned well. And get it clear in your mind some kind of problem, or some kind of ignorance that you would like to take away from your student in this movie, pretending movie.

[Speaker 1]
Imagine you are in their room, but they cannot see you. And you imagine all their needs are collecting at their heart in a small black cloud.

[Speaker 2]
All the problems, all the needs they have, all the things they don't understand yet, they haven't learned yet, are flowing like blood back to the heart from the arms and legs and head. Small pool of darkness is collecting at their heart.

[Speaker 1]
Very deep black darkness, sad darkness, painful darkness. Then you decide you would like to take that darkness away from them. And slowly it comes up their throat and it streams out of their nose.

[Speaker 2]
We're going to mix pranayama, breath practice. So imagine the darkness is coming out of the right side of their nose, the right nostril.

[Speaker 1]
And you are pulling it towards you with a breath from your left nostril. So the darkness is coming out of their right nostril. And you are pulling it in with your left nostril.

Pulling it towards you. Don't let it come into you yet.

[Speaker 2]
Now we have to prepare a place in our heart to destroy this darkness. So in the center of my heart, could be in the same place the meditation room was, there's a beautiful lotus flower.

[Speaker 1]
Beautiful pink color. Fragrant, very subtle fragrance of lotus. Very beautiful.

In the center of the lotus is a beautiful diamond.

[Speaker 2]
You can picture a raw diamond. You can picture the ring if you want.

[Speaker 1]
Beautiful golden ring and a raw diamond on the top. Smooth and glistening. The diamond is very powerful and it can destroy the darkness.

[Speaker 2]
So I will count to three. And on the third count then, breathe in slowly through your left nostril. We are just imagining that it's coming in our left nostril.

If you have the control of your breath, you can make it come into your left side. But maybe before that, we just practice imagining that the black smoke comes in through the left nostril. And when I count to three, it will come in and it will, fairly quickly it will come down to your heart.

And then it will touch the diamond on the lotus. And there will be a bright flash of light, like a camera flash, and then that darkness will be destroyed. After the flash, it's traditional to imagine some kind of smoke, like a light cigarette smoke.

It's all that's left of those problems of the student. And slowly you can start to push that smoke out of your right nostril, and into the air, into the sky, like the smoke from a fire offering.

[Speaker 1]
One, two, and three.

[Speaker 2]
Then imagine that the other person, the student, suddenly, without knowing why, they feel some great relief and happiness. They feel like a burden has been taken off of them, and they feel unexplainably happy and at ease about their future. Now you can start sending them even more happiness and confidence from your right nostril.

Send out some golden light, soft, comforting golden light. Each time you breathe out, golden light comes from your right nostril, and it passes into their left nostril, and it comes to their heart. Slowly you can imagine that the golden light creates a beautiful pink lotus in their heart, with a diamond of wisdom in the lotus.

So, slow breaths, golden light, from your right nostril into your student's left nostril, and a beautiful lotus of love and a diamond of wisdom forming in their heart.

[Speaker 1]
Then please come back to the present time.

[Speaker 2]
You are sitting with your teacher, with your own teacher, and again enjoy the love that they have for you. Otherwise they wouldn't agree to be your teacher. They would never want to be with you.

So, enjoy the feeling of love that comes from your teacher, which is coming from the seeds of the love that you had for your own student in the past.

[Speaker 1]
It's coming from your tonglen. Then ask your own teacher to come into your heart.

[Speaker 2]
Stay there for today. They rise up, they shrink, they turn to face the same way as you, and very tiny as your thumbnail, they come down through the top of your head, through the central channel, to stay in your heart, in that beautiful meditation room. They are happy to stay there and influence you all day, even when you are not aware of it.

[Speaker 1]
Then you can slowly open your eyes. Take a stretch.