Серия ежедневной практики ACI — Тонглен: размышления о практике даяния и принятия (2019, Аризона), занятие 2

[Speaker 2]
Okay, here we go. We're going to do the same meditation as yesterday, okay?

[Speaker 1]
And this is the one I'd like you to focus on today and tomorrow, okay? Then your eyes are closed lightly, not too hard, and maybe you're looking up just a little bit over the horizon, and your hands are soft, and you have a small Mona Lisa smile. Shoulders are pushed back a little bit, chest is coming out.

That means maybe your hands come back on your legs a little bit, so maybe you're not touching your knees. Try to remember not to wrinkle your forehead, keep it loose, and the stomach is slightly pulled in. Then come to the sound of the air conditioner, which is easy.

[Speaker 2]
If you're in your retreat cabin, there will be small noises, outside birds, and maybe small noises inside.

[Speaker 1]
Glue your mind to the sound. See if you can get that feeling of your mind is stuck to the sound, like glue. Other thoughts come, other memories come, other plans come, and you ignore them because your mind is stuck to the air conditioning sound.

[Speaker 2]
As you start to meditate, once in a while check your forehead, fingers, mouth, eyes, are they getting tight?

[Speaker 1]
Keep them loose and relaxed. The back is totally straight.

[Speaker 2]
You can check the back, go forward a little bit, go back a little bit, go to the left a little bit, go to the right a little bit, and find the center where your back is stacked, like a stack of coins.

[Speaker 1]
So, slightly forward, slightly back, find the middle point.

[Speaker 2]
If you have trouble concentrating, sometimes it helps me to focus on the spot, not exactly between the eyebrows, but go up a little bit, maybe a centimeter, and then go into the head below the skull, and there's a sweet spot. It's a small chakra and it helps you focus your mind. So you can experiment with that.

The main goal of your meditation, especially these two days, feel free to experiment. You have to try many different things to find the one that's best for you. You are different from everybody else in this room, so you need to experiment different things, different ways of sitting, different ways of breathing, and if you have trouble focusing you might try bringing the mind to the forehead, into the forehead, a little bit above the spot between the eyebrows, not too deep into the forehead, maybe just below the bone.

[Speaker 1]
Now please bring your mind to your heartbeat, glue your mind to your heartbeat, leave the air conditioner behind. It's difficult when the air conditioner is loud, but like all the problems in your life, it will make you stronger if you try. Now please come into the heart, into a beautiful meditation room inside the heart.

Lots of sunlight, and into an inner chamber inside the heart. The heartbeat sounds very far away. Still lots of sunlight.

You can see a small crystal of sugar, and focus your mind like a laser and put it inside.

[Speaker 2]
When you reach there, again there's a comfortable meditation room with lots of sunlight, but tiny, tiny, tiny. Almost lost in all the objects of this world.

[Speaker 1]
One tiny grain of sugar near inside.

[Speaker 2]
Now your mind becomes as wide as the Pacific Ocean, very deep, very, very wide, as wide as the world, and very calm, very peaceful.

[Speaker 1]
Spread your mind inside the sugar crystal. Include the sky, blue sky. Stretching even farther up, and you're still including the ocean.

Now turn the mind off, still as wide as the ocean and the sky, but try to stop the thoughts in the mind. Make the mind completely quiet. Now if thoughts come in the mind, just let them float, ignore them, let them fade away.

No tension in the mind, no effort. Now please invite your teacher to come and sit with you.

[Speaker 2]
Choose one of the teachers who, especially you, have a feeling that they care for you a lot, they love you a lot.

[Speaker 1]
Their whole appearance is very happy to see you, and cares a lot about you and your happiness. Wants to help you. Then let's go on a trip to our past life.

Try to imagine time and a place when you were taken care of.

[Speaker 2]
Perhaps a student of yours. You were the teacher and you had a student that you really cared about them, and you spent a lot of time trying to help them, teach them.

[Speaker 1]
Try to imagine the circumstances.

[Speaker 2]
Where were you? What country? What century?

What did you look like?

[Speaker 1]
What did they look like?

[Speaker 2]
When you were together, what did that look like? Use your imagination, have fun.

[Speaker 1]
Don't get too serious, don't get tight. Now imagine in the evening you are meditating, your student has gone home, and you are doing tong len for your student.

[Speaker 2]
Some kind of obstacle or inability to learn, and you are focusing on that, and you are doing tong len on them.

[Speaker 1]
So, try to imagine some kind of difficulty your student might have. You are meditating at home, hundreds of years ago. You are doing tong len for your student who already went home.

What kind of problem did they have? And imagine that problem as a black smoke flowing from their limbs to their heart, collecting in their heart, some kind of very unpleasant black smoke. Bring it all from their body, from all over their body, bring it to their heart.

Now look in your own heart and prepare a place to destroy that smoke. Beautiful pink lotus, fragrant, perfect shape, very beautiful, very bright, soft.

[Speaker 2]
In the middle of the lotus is a diamond, like the one in the meditation ring, a raw diamond, very powerful. The lotus represents your love, the diamond represents your wisdom, the Garjuna wisdom of emptiness.

[Speaker 1]
Get it ready for the smoke. Then we're going to breathe in the smoke.

[Speaker 2]
Imagine each time you take an in-breath, that breath, air is coming into your left nostril.

[Speaker 1]
Focus on your left nostril. Air is coming in each time you take a breath in.

[Speaker 2]
We can't exactly control where the, which nostril the breath comes in, but imagine it's coming into the left, and in time it will come into the left.

[Speaker 1]
If you have trouble breathing through your nose, you have a cold, you can breathe through your mouth, but imagine it's coming to the left nostril, in, and all the way down your spine to your heart. Now let's bring that smoke in. Each time you breathe in through the left nostril, the smoke in their heart, the blackness, starts to come up through their right nostril, like you're pumping it out of their heart with your breath.

[Speaker 2]
Maybe your legs are hurting now, maybe you're tired, you're getting tired, but if you want to be a good meditator you have to learn to ignore that you're tired, or something's hurting. Don't worry about it. It will pass.

[Speaker 1]
Focus on your meditation. The blackness comes to just in front of your nose.

[Speaker 2]
It's ready to come into the left nostril. We're going to take one breath in. The blackness will travel down the left side.

You can feel it coming down close to your spine, and then it will hit the diamond, and there will be a bright flash of light like a photograph camera.

[Speaker 1]
We'll do it on the count of three together. Imagine the blackness in front of your left nostril. One, two, and three.

Immediately comes down, immediately destroyed. Bright flash of light, and your student is already feeling better in their home.

[Speaker 2]
They are alone in their home, but suddenly they feel more relaxed. The problem they had is disappeared somehow.

[Speaker 1]
They don't really know why, but they feel much better.

[Speaker 2]
Small smoke left over from the darkness, like cigarette smoke, gray, thin.

[Speaker 1]
We can send it out of our right nostril. Clear it out.

[Speaker 2]
Then gently we push some golden light out of our right nostril into the left nostril of our student.

[Speaker 1]
Give them comfort and confidence, happiness, warmth, affection. Care for them. In their own heart grows a beautiful lotus and a diamond, raw diamond.

Enjoy how they feel. Comfort, confidence, beauty. Come back to your teacher, your own teacher.

[Speaker 2]
Understand this is why you see the love. It was because you gave love long ago, and you planted seeds in your tonglen, and that's why you're seeing this love and care about you that the teacher has.

[Speaker 1]
Ask the teacher to come into your heart, stay in your heart. Help you during these two days of silence and meditation. Please keep me silent, not just physically, but in my mind.

Stay with me in my heart. When I need you, please help me. Three final breaths out, golden light, to the world around us.

[Speaker 2]
Diamond Mountain is just a small part of this world. We send golden light out.

[Speaker 1]
Good karma of this meditation to help people around the world. And you can slowly open your eyes.

[Speaker 2]
Take a good stretch. Drink something. You guys did good.

It was very quiet. Either you were asleep or you were meditating.