Базовый курс ACI 3: Прикладная медитация (2019, Аризона), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
All right, class four is pretty simple. It's about the posture, okay, of Vajracana, meditation posture. I think as a teacher, I mean, once you've decided on your own posture, once you've got used to your own posture, you don't think about it much.

But when you're a student, it's very important, and you want the teacher to be clear about how you're supposed to sit, and things like that. So, traditionally, it's a big subject. People take it very seriously, okay?

So, I think just be aware, even if you meditate every day, and you just sit down and you do your regular posture, the people you're teaching, the people you're going to be teaching this course to, many of them have never meditated before, or they went to some not very authoritative meditation somewhere, and they want you to tell them how to sit, okay? So, it's good to think of it in an organized way, and in the ancient books, it's very organized. The teaching on how to sit is very clear and organized, okay?

So, your presentation should also be organized. Don't just say, okay, do this, you know? Like, go through each of the eight parts, one by one, because those...

Also, yoga is the same. I see a lot of yoga teachers, people have never done yoga before, and then they tell them, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the people are like, ahh! You know?

So, when you're teaching people who haven't done meditation, or yoga, and they don't come from that culture, they don't come from a... maybe they're in their country, people don't do that much. You have to start at the beginning, okay?

And so, this is a very nice, ancient presentation of how to sit, okay? The posture, alright? So, there's eight characteristics of the posture, and I'll go through them one by one, okay?

And what I'm encouraging you to do is, keep this list with you when you teach meditation, and go through the list with people, and help them, okay? And same with yoga, when you teach yoga to new people, what's the goal of a first class in yoga? That they come back.

That's the only goal, the rest doesn't matter. That you can do a headstand, or, you know, you know the Sanskrit words, or... it doesn't matter at all to the new people.

There's only one goal to a first yoga class, is that they come back, and they feel like they got some achievement, that they could do it, you know? So, I know my first yoga teachers, which are the Jiva Mukti people, David Livesharing Ganon and Lady Ruth, they, in their beginning classes, they never do a pose that everybody can't do, you see? They never do a pose that not everyone, that anyone in the class cannot do.

And they thought about it for a long time, and they, that's how they designed their yoga class. The same for meditation, okay? It doesn't matter how much you know, it doesn't matter how many scriptures you read, it doesn't matter if you know the Sanskrit, or...

all that matters is that they meditate, okay? And keep it in mind when you teach meditation, and it's hard to get modern people to do something every day. It's extremely difficult to change people, people's habits.

I think that's why the green stretch pen in Mexico thing is so, it has such great potential, because you guys are teaching kids, and kids will do what you tell them, and adults don't. So, make it interesting, don't do anything they can't do, okay? And your goal is only one thing, that they meditate for ten minutes every day.

And if you fail in that one thing, then you failed as a meditation teacher. It doesn't matter how long you can sit, or if you can do a headstand and cross legs or something, it doesn't matter. It doesn't help them, okay?

Okay, so go through the posture slowly, make sure they can do it, okay? Alright, so the first posture is your legs. What do you do with your legs, okay?

And traditionally we sit in a full lotus posture, or a half lotus posture. In DCI, we encourage people to sit in a chair, because we don't want to make it difficult. Modern people don't eat well, they don't exercise much, their legs are a mess, their knees are a mess, their back is a mess, okay?

It takes years to fix a modern person posture. So, just be aware of that, okay? They're not from ancient India.

They are people who ate too much their whole life, and sat in a chair their whole life, and breathed pollution their whole life. No, they are. 65% of Americans are obese, that means almost double the normal weight.

And they can't walk easily, their knees hurt. So, the worst thing you can do is put them on the ground and say, do a full lotus. Their knees are already damaged by overweight, okay?

So, be careful with people's knees. Knees are very sensitive, extremely sensitive, okay? And so, you also, I saw many people, I had one student in New York who damaged her knees for her whole life, and she used a cane.

Some Lama insisted that she sit in a full lotus, and she's used a cane since she was about 30, because of that, okay? So, don't push people, okay? The knees are very sensitive.

They're the easiest thing in your body, one of the easiest joints to hurt, okay? And then you think you're being a great yogi, and you're just damaging your precious body, okay? So, don't be a hero, and don't let your students be a hero.

You see somebody doing a full lotus, yell at them. Don't do that. And after many years, you can do it, okay?

But I think if you're going to be a good meditation teacher, you should watch your students, and you know who can do a full lotus and who cannot. And don't let them hurt themselves. They are your responsibility.

Their knees are your responsibility. Seriously, okay? And there are, I don't know, there are many great yoga teachers who had knee operations and hip operations, okay?

So, don't push it, okay? Ask them to sit in a chair, all right? Now, there's a big debate, you know, should I put my left foot up first, should I put my right up first?

Our tradition is left foot up first, okay? Or, you know, if you do a half lotus, the left foot is up, okay? And if you do the right foot, I don't care, Buddha doesn't care, okay?

Don't worry about it. But, in general, left foot up has some benefits, okay? According to our tradition, prana benefits, and you'll learn about it when you reach Diamond Way teachings, okay?

But starting from the left is Vamamarga. It's traditional for our lineage, okay? So, usually we do things with the left foot first, okay?

So, if you're going to do a half lotus, then put the left foot up first, okay? I think something that my yoga teachers never told me until I met David Swenson, who's a great yoga teacher. He came to my three-year retreat and helped me, and he didn't know me.

I just wrote him a letter, and he came, and he's super famous, and he took the time to come, and he said the most comforting thing to me. I couldn't talk, but he could talk, and he said, listen, everybody has a different body, you know? Everybody has a different body, and there are some yoga poses, Geshe Michael, that you will never do in your life.

Get used to it. Like Urdhva Dharma, you know? We all have two or three poses at least.

He said, look, you can practice, and practice, and practice, and he's the only one who did, I think, a serious video in the world, in the world. And he said, look, there's just some things you can't do. Everybody's body is different, you know?

And I like to say, God gave you two yoga poses. It means there's two poses you can do that nobody else can do. I like to look at the positive, you know?

Like, I like this one, I can do this one, you know? When people say I'm going to take a picture, Geshe-la, I have to, or they ask me to teach a class, this is always in the, this one's always in the class. The ones I can't do are never in the class, okay?

So, you know, some people will never be able to do a full lotus safely, okay? And don't, don't, you're not a bad person, okay? Your mom just didn't give you the right bones.

You can write her a letter, tell her why, why can't I do full lotus. It's your fault. Okay, so anyway, left foot up first.

If you do do a full lotus, then the right foot, okay? And that's the tradition, okay? If you can slowly, gently, with the help of your yoga teacher, learn to do a full lotus, and comfortably, then your meditation will be better, okay?

Now, in the DCI program I say it will, it won't be, but in this Diamond Mountain teaching I can tell the truth. Your meditation will be better. You will progress faster if you can do a full lotus, okay?

And I practice all the time. When I eat dinner, I always put one foot up. You know, me and Tim had a fight today because there wasn't enough room for all the chairs, and I was kicking him with my knee, right?

And so, I try to do it everywhere, even when I'm riding in the car, or I'm at the movies, I will put my feet in a half lotus, and I'll just get used to it, okay? So, you can do that, and don't push it, okay? Yoga will help a lot, if you do yoga.

Okay, that's the first one. When you teach it, you have to judge your student, right? That's a teacher's first requirement.

You have to look at your students and judge, you know, how much should you tell them, okay? Am I lying when I tell DCI people to sit in a chair, and that there's no difference? If that's lying, then there's no Abhidharma school, there's no Sutra school, there's no mind-only school, there's no lower middle way school, okay?

Understand? You have to adjust the teaching to the student, okay? Alright.

Who did that? Yeah, Buddha, maybe it's okay. Alright, second characteristic, the second of the eight postures, how do you put your eyes, your eyeballs, okay?

And we talked about it, I guess yesterday. It's a very subtle thing, and if you meditate for... Amazing.

It's not bad. Okay, as far as your eyes, people have a tendency to close their eyes too hard, okay? So, I think, we usually don't, when you say muscle, you usually think of this muscle, but you have muscles here, and if you squeeze too hard, you will get tired.

Your meditation will not go as well. So, try to learn to close your eyes softly, and don't scrunch up this part of your face, okay? There's a chakra here, a small chakra called Ajna Chakra, and don't tighten it.

This area especially should be soft. BRUL BOR MA BRDZAD, between the two eyebrows. It should be soft, okay?

Try to keep it soft. The minute you focus, most of us, we squeeze it, because you're trying to focus. Then try to stay aware of it, and try to keep it soft, okay?

And that affects your eyes, okay? That affects how you keep your eyes. And again, each person's body is different, and your prana is different from my prana.

So, the big thing you have to learn about meditation is to experiment what's good for you, okay? And maybe it's not what's good for me. So, you know, one pair of jeans doesn't fit everybody.

We should bring one pair of jeans, and a tight one, and make everyone put it on. So, everyone has a different body, and you know, don't think you have to fit into one thing. The important thing is to be creative, and experiment, okay?

And try many different ways of sitting. There are many, many kinds of cushions, okay? Many, many.

I have a friend Dieter in New Jersey, one of my Lama's close students, and he insisted on sitting on a wooden block. And I, just looking at him, my butt hurt. And he insists that this is the best way, you know?

And for him, it was good, okay? The only thing the scripture says about your cushion, and again, maybe it's not, doesn't apply to everybody, but it says the back should be higher than the front, okay? Whatever you use, the back should be higher than the front.

But again, people have different buttocks, their spine is different, and the only mistake you can make is to suffer for a long time with a seat that doesn't work, you know? Try many different kinds of cushions, you know? And for many years, I watched what everyone's using, I said, can I try your cushion?

Personally, I like the, what do you call those things? Hulse. Buckwheat hulse.

It's like a grain, and you use the skin, right? It's the skin of the grain. And I like it, because it changes according to your bottom.

It will move around. I don't like the very tight, tall ones, okay? So, if it's me, I would say buckwheat.

I would also say, pranically, try to avoid synthetic materials, even in your clothing when you meditate, okay? It's oil, it's carcinogenic, okay? Avoid nylon or, what is that stuff?

You know all the, huh? Polyester, yeah. Try to use cotton or wool.

Try to use natural materials in your meditation outfit, okay? And in your meditation seat, okay? I have a friend, Devorah, she uses three cushions.

She puts two under her knees. She puts one under each knee, and then she has a bigger one for her bottom, and it looks pretty comfortable to me. So, if your knees have trouble, if you're not loose here, then do a lot of prenatal classes.

That's what I did. No, just kidding. We got those kids, Tim.

Speaking of prenatal classes, I got to show off my new nieces, okay? They are not my granddaughters, they're my nieces, okay? That's Nick and Erin's new baby, Amalie.

She's about three hours old or something. She still has goopy eyes, and Veronica was yelling at me how to hold her. I like that.

And Ava and her new friend, you got that one, Tim? That's Adam and Katie's baby. Oh, her granddaughter.

The one on the left, the one on the left.

[Speaker 2]
Just kidding.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Yeah, I think natural fabrics, and it's nice to have, I mean, there's a bunch of layers you can have, okay? As far as sitting, a rug in the room is nice.

Which one is that? Amalie. Send money dad.

Yeah, we're learning, okay. Oh, it's very healthy. It's doing very well.

Michael and Melissa's baby was born very, very early, like 27 weeks. At 25, it cannot survive. It was born very, very early.

At 26 you have, the lungs begin, but at 25 there's no lungs. It has to die. The child has to die.

And just barely made it, and now it's quite healthy, okay? It's doing very well. We'll find a picture, okay?

Okay, it's doing very well. The baby's doing very well. Yay.

Okay, so I would, if it's me, I would put a carpet first, okay? Because it keeps you from getting cold. In a retreat, or when you're meditating on the floor, you have to make sure you don't get cold, okay?

Because normally the floor is colder. If you're in an apartment, oftentimes the floor, even if the floor is wood or something, it's cement under there. Cement is very bad for your body, okay?

It's very, very bad to sit on cement to meditate. It's also very hard, and not comfortable, but there's something about cement, in my opinion, which hurts your body during meditation. Interestingly, I have tried marble, and it's very good, okay?

So, it can be hard, and it can be good, okay? If you have a chance, you know, marble is quite good to meditate on. I have a diamond dealer friend, I wanted to do a retreat.

He said, don't worry, I have a bungalow. Bungalow in English means like a small retreat cabin. He said, you can stay there for two months.

I said, okay. Then I went there, there were 17 rooms, whole staff of cooks and servants, and the whole thing is marble, white marble, and it's excellent for meditating, okay? Cement is not good, okay?

Brick is okay, brick is okay. But I will put a carpet, because if you get cold, it hurts your meditation a lot. If your bottom gets cold, or your legs get cold, it's very bad, okay?

So, I have some kind of carpet. Then personally, I like to have like this one. Can you hold that, Mr. Human Computer?

This is great, get one of these, okay? There's a company in Shenzhen, it's called, what's it called? FDA?

No, but what's the, the cushion company? Lion's Dance Cushion. They stole my name, but it's okay.

You can buy one from them, okay? It covers your knees, okay? It covers your knees.

So, you need a carpet, and then you need a big cushion, and then you need your bottom cushion. And if you want to try some knee cushions, but that's if you don't have flexible knees, okay? And my suggestion is bak kwe, and don't use synthetic materials in the cushion either, okay?

Don't use the foam, or stuff like that. I think it hurts your meditation, personally, okay? Alright, okay, second thing is your eyes.

Eyes can be, I've tried many, many, many ways. I've tried many years. Again, what I said the other day is, in yoga also, if you get in the habit of looking like, you know, you're waiting for Maitreya, and dursti, right?

Where you keep your eyes. If you keep your eyes focused in yoga, it's very helpful for the yoga. It hurts less, okay?

And you're just kind of like that, okay? And in the scripture, it says keep your eyes on your nose. So, many people did this.

And, okay, it doesn't mean that. It's a very famous stupid thing. It means keep your eyes focused here, okay?

Like, if you put your hands here, here's your nose, right? American longer, Chinese shorter. But, wherever is your nose, put it here, put your hands here, and keep your eyes focused like that, okay?

It means that my eyes are looking up, but I'm not looking at anything, okay? Don't look at anything. Put your eyes, in my practice, put your eyes slightly up, and don't look at anything.

So, you can do that way. And many people ask me, do you have to close your eyes completely? And the scripture says no, not at all.

You choose, okay? What's the rule? Experiment.

Try different ways, okay? Try what's good for you. What's good for you and what's good for me is different, okay?

So, if it's me, I will focus, I will look at something, like I'm looking at the top of the door, and then I will stop looking at it, and I'll focus here. Which, you know, when you're listening to good music, you're like, or you're thinking about your boyfriend in high school, and you're not looking at anything, right? And that's focus, that's concentration, okay?

So, like that. And then I close my eyes, but the eyes are still looking up, okay? In my opinion, that's one very good for you.

The prana moves very well. You can also, especially if you didn't sleep well, if you had trouble sleeping, if you're sleepy, okay? First of all, we had a nice meditation session in our, we used to have a retreat center near New York, and we made a funny plan.

We gave the students a big lunch, and then we had meditation class, and everyone was struggling, you know? And then we said, okay, don't do that. Now you can see it doesn't work, right?

So, don't eat before you meditate, alright? Eat something tiny, or have some tea or something, but don't, and I think coffee is probably bad for meditation. I would get used to not having coffee during meditation.

And then, eat lightly, or eat after meditation, okay? Don't eat before meditation, okay? Unless you need a little energy, eat something small.

Okay, now it is legal to have your eyes like that, and just crack them a little bit open, and it keeps you awake when you're sleepy, okay? It helps you stay awake, okay? So you, but then the chin tends to come down, okay?

When the eyelids come down, the chin comes down, and that's not good, okay? When you do this, it pinches the prana. The prana can't flow to your neck, okay?

So, the neck has to be straight, the chin has to be parallel to the floor, okay? But you can close your eyes halfway, and again, don't focus on anything. Don't focus on anything.

I found in Long Retreat, that if you are a person who likes to crack their eyes, make sure there's nothing in the room that you like to look at, okay? For me, it's books. When I see books, I'm like, you know, so when I do a retreat, I always take the books out of the house.

The first day, I don't meditate. I take the book, I take all the books out of the house, and I put them in boxes, and my first, in my three-year retreat, for a year and a half, we didn't have any books. For the first 18 months, we didn't have any books, and then you can focus.

And we didn't have any paisley carpets, okay? What do you call it? Trouble?

Trowel? Yeah, that's a mind-only debate. Don't have some, just have a plain cover, okay?

I like to sit in front of my altar, I like the altar to be about this high, and then I have a one single color cloth, like, you know, purple cloth, red cloth, yellow cloth, and then my eye isn't, you know, looking around. There's nothing to look at. Okay, so keep your chin up, and then you look down, and that's okay, okay?

It's harder to concentrate, but if you're sleepy, it's better, okay? Maybe you want to practice both, and see which one's better for you, okay? That's tradition.

I know Tim, I have to speed up. Okay, sit up straight, okay? When you meditate, sit up straight.

It's interesting, if you ever see an x-ray of your spine, I think there's three curves in it. It's not straight, your spine is not straight, okay? Nobody's spine is straight.

You can't sit up straight, there's no such thing. The spine goes like this, and, but feel straight, okay? Kinesthetically, feel straight, okay?

And so, the spine has to be straight. I think that's one of the big benefits of a full lotus. You can't, it's hard to have a droopy spine if you're in a full lotus.

You know, it's hard to slouch in a full lotus. I guess you can do it, but it's hard, okay? If you learn to do a lotus, your spine will be straight.

If your spine is straight, a lot of meditation books, they don't talk about the eight postures. They just say, when is it keep your spine as straight as a stack of coins? Yeah, stack of coins.

Keep your vertebrae like a stack of coins, okay? Straight, from Yali's happy bucket. Anyway, she has a system in Taiwan where you put your coins every day in a box, then you send it to John Brady or Tim, I don't remember.

Okay, so back should be straight, okay? Shoulders straight, okay? Personally, I find it helpful, my one yoga teacher, I think Teresa was talking about it, they say glue your navel to your spine.

The first time I heard it, I'm like, what? I like it, it's smart, it's a good thing. It's a good thing to say.

Push your belly button towards your spine. Try to kiss your spine with your belly button, okay? And that will, if you tighten the stomach slightly, it tightens the muscles in the lower back, and then you don't get tired, and then you sit up straight.

So, a strong abdomen is the key to a straight back, okay? You think you should practice your back muscles, it's not the back muscles. What's keeping the back straight is here, lower abdomen, middle abdomen, okay?

That's why it's good to do sit-ups. Crunches? They call them crunches nowadays.

Do lots of crunches in your yoga. You look cool, you have, I have a two-pack, I'm working on it. I don't like to drink that much.

But, no, it's healthier and you can sit straight, okay? So, this is the key here, okay? Alright.

So, don't complain during Ashtanga, or you can complain. Okay, number four, shoulders should be level. It's pretty basic, but I do have a friend who always meditates like this.

I'm not kidding, you know, I say your shoulders are crooked. They're like, what? It feels normal to them, you see what I mean?

So, that's again why it's useful to have a yoga teacher. Ballet is very, very, very good for keeping your shoulders straight. So, in my three-year retreat, we did ballet every day for a thousand days.

We did ballet. We had a, what do you call, a gopher? You know what's a gopher?

There's a little, like a big mouse, they dig a hole. There's gophers around here. You don't see them very often.

They don't like to come to the sun. But, we did ballet and we played classical ballet music, and this one gopher come up and he always listened to the ballet music. One day we put an offering out next to his hole, and he's like, hmm, it's a big plate of cookies and stuff.

So, he's very smart. He got up on the plate, he grabbed the plate with his two arms, and he, like, and then the plate goes like a dump truck, and then it all goes into his hole. And he's so smart.

Then, and then, so, anyway. So, watch your shoulders. It's good to have a teacher.

It's good to have a yoga teacher. I tend to do that. I think when you do a lot of computer work, or you're nervous, or people give you too much work to do.

So, you need a yoga teacher to bang on your shoulders and tell you, okay? So, they should be equal, alright? And it's useful to push together the two shoulder blades in the back.

These two bones here, triangular bones, push them together in the back, and then your chest comes up. And then it's better for your spine, okay? So, don't go like that, you know, but slightly keep a pressure here, you know?

Here, and here. Keep a little pressure during the meditation. Just learn to keep it, okay?

And it's good for you. Alright, we did that pose today, right? What do you call that?

Bashamushman? This thing, where you hold this in the back. That's good for you, okay?

She'll teach you the Sanskrit. Okay, your head should be, the chin should be level with the ground, parallel to the ground, okay? And it's very famous, if the chin comes down, you'll get sleepy, okay?

The prana will be choked, and you'll get sleepy. And if the head goes up too high, some people meditate like this, and then you get restless. The mind will get restless, okay?

So, the two most important things to teach your students about meditation is it's a middle path between sleepy and busy, okay? Yeah, monkey and elephant, okay? Too busy and too sleepy, and you want to go between, okay?

So, if you want to get sleepy, you want the elephant to come, or if you want to invite the monkey, okay? So, keep your chin level. And it helps to meditate with other people, because they can tell you, you know, your chin's up, and you're like, no it's not.

That's a, we aren't aware of how our body is. You do Warrior Two, right? I'm like this, I'm always like this, you know?

And people are like, put your arm down. I'm like, it's perfect. I can feel it, you know?

So, you need someone to look at you and say, no it's not, you know, okay? Alright, so watch your head. That's number A, B, C, D, E, five, right?

Number six, how do you keep your mouth, okay? How do you keep your mouth is important. If the mouth is too tight, it will make you tired, and the meditation won't go well, okay?

If it's like this, here, okay? You have a very important three channels. There are 72,000 channels in the body.

Three are most important. They are here, they start here, okay? One is here, and one is here, and one is here.

And they go under the skin, under the skull, they come down, and they go in front of your spine, about a quarter inch, how many? Two millimeters? Two millimeters?

Five millimeters, half centimeter. And they start here, the three channels start here, okay? There's two here, which is why you have nostrils.

They form around those channels in the womb, okay? So, and here there's a knot, and these three channels cross, and they continue, okay? So, if you go like that, you are choking your prana, and you won't have a good meditation.

And if you smile, it loosens up these two channels, and that loosens this knot, and then the prana flows sweet. So, a small Mona Lisa smile, can you find me a Mona Lisa? I went to the Louvre with Veronica and her sister, and you know, she's about half a mile away, but if you look carefully, they think maybe Leonardo da Vinci's pants fell down or something, and she's, I don't know, I don't know if it's true, but she's like, maybe something's open, I don't know.

She's like, that smile you should have in meditation. There you go. Right?

Something's going on. Or maybe I just got too much Nagarjuna. Yeah, anyway, small smile like that.

I call Mona Lisa smile, very famous, okay? Not a big smile, a little smile. Her channels are doing very well.

Okay, small smile. The book says keep your mouth in a natural position, okay? Some people meditate and their mouth starts to open up, you know, and in a long meditation it will get dry, the mouth will get dry, and then you'll be swallowing all the time, okay?

If you meditate a lot, swallowing smells, sounds like a garbage truck. Yeah, no, if you meditate a lot, if you meditate a lot, swallowing is very disturbing. It sounds like trying to meditate in New York when the garbage truck's outside, okay?

So, so close your mouth and keep it moist, keep it moist, okay? If you keep your mouth open, if you breathe through your mouth, your mouth will get dry, and then you swallow, and then the garbage truck comes, okay? And you will get disturbed, okay?

There's a custom in Tsongkapa's lineage, and we'll talk more about it later, but you don't open your eyes, you don't look at things, you don't play music, you don't look at mandalas, you know, you don't drink during meditation, you don't disturb your meditation, okay? That's a tradition in this lineage, and I think it's correct. Okay, so drink, drink throughout the day, drink pretty well before meditation, and then take a nice pee-pee.

They didn't say that, right? Take a big pee-pee just before meditation. Okay, all right, so the mouth should be comfortable, natural, and not open, and a small smile, okay?

Loose, loose smile, okay. Number seven. Okay, here we go.

That's just about how to keep your tongue, and I don't know, they say keep the tongue against your palate, and I tried like 25 different ways. My Lama finally said, just natural, just whatever is normal, you know, don't think about it. There's a long story in the scripture about how you won't get thirsty if it's in the right place.

You can, that's something you have to experiment. I just tell you experiment, okay? Learn to experiment, okay?

Don't get stuck with one cushion, or one way of sitting, okay? Try everything. Same with yoga, you know, go to a hundred teachers and see which one is good for your body, because what's good for your body is not good for my body, okay?

Okay, alright. Number eight. This is optional, okay?

I mean, sometimes it's included in the eight, and sometimes it's not included, and you get seven, okay? So, sometimes they count this one, and sometimes they don't count this one, because it's not technically your posture. It's how you breathe, okay?

It's how you breathe. If you can breathe through your nose, breathe through your nose, okay? If you have a cold, or you have boogers, or you have allergies, you're not a bad person.

You can breathe through your mouth, or your ears, okay? Some days you just, you know, it's stuffed up, you know, you can't do anything, okay? So, some days it's going to be stuffed up, then breathe through your mouth.

But traditionally, breathe through your nose. You have a lot of, what do they call these things? Sinus cavities here, and there's a big school of yoga that says it's very important to breathe up into the sinus cavities, if you can.

So, you can try it. If you have time, Monday, Tuesday, try to breathe up into the cavities, and I think it actually helps your oxygen get to your brain or something. It's a big thing.

Every morning in my retreat for a thousand days, I did this, there's a soft tube you can push up, and then you do a neti, you do a, you pour water in your sinuses. So, if you have training about that, if someone teaches you how to do it, it can help your meditation. I did it every day during my retreat.

You just start with this little pot, and you go like this, and it takes a few days to learn how, and then it will go up and pour out the other nostril. And then you do it this way, and it pours out. If you don't do it right, you choke, and you spit up, but you have to be patient.

And then if you want to, there's a medical tube, catheter, that they use for peepees, and you can push it, you push it up your nose, and you clean it out. And it goes all the way back to your, you can feel it in the back of your throat, okay? So, I used to do that.

It's pretty cool. It can help your meditation, especially in a long retreat. The goal is to get more oxygen to your brain, okay?

So, check it out, experiment with it, okay? Don't say it's stupid. It might be stupid, but try it.

Try everything, okay? I found that for the first time in my life, my passages were really open, and I could breathe a lot easier. And that made the meditation go better, because I got more oxygen, okay?

But you need training. Someone, you have to learn from someone who knows how to do it. You can tear the tissue here, so you need some training.

Somebody has to teach you how to do it, okay? All right, people use a thread in ancient times, with knots on it, and they go, and then the thread goes back, and then they... No, that's it, I did it every day with a tube, with a catheter, plastic tube, but it's cool.

But it's for a long retreat, okay? If you do a long retreat, you can try, but you learn from someone who has a good teacher, okay? Because you can hurt your...

These are very sensitive tissues, okay? So, don't do it from a book. Don't do it from a YouTube, okay?

YouTube! Okay, okay, good. And as I told you, personally, and I've been meditating many years, that thing about a full exhale is very, very helpful, okay?

Anytime you do a three or four week retreat, if you're a normal person, you will get LUNG. LUNG means tightness in the chest, nervous feeling, headaches, crazy thoughts, upset thoughts, anger, shaking your hands, okay? If you meditate more than two weeks, you will get it, okay?

And you have to know about it. And personally, I found that if I exhale normally, and then push a little more up, I don't get it. I don't get that, okay?

So, it's important. If you feel yourself start getting nervous, or you feel, I don't know, very sensitive, you know, very, very sensitive, you get upset easily, okay? Then try to breathe out longer, okay?

More breath out. When you reach the end of the breath, a natural pause, then a little bit more, okay? Just push out a little bit more, okay?

And also, when you do forward bends and stuff like that, some teachers really advise it. What's his name? Rodney Yee is big on that, and it's nice, okay?

If you have some obstacle when you do forward bend, then you can try that, okay? When you get down there, then breathe out again, and you can go further, okay? The stomach will come in.

That's one of the most important meditation advices I can give you, okay? If you meditate regularly, and you let prana build up in your chest, you're going to have a bad time. You're going to have, the mind will get irritated, and the body will get nervous, and okay?

If you see it happening, work harder on your exhales, okay? If it gets serious, eat heavy, greasy food. That's traditional method to stop it, okay?

So, eat, popcorn is very popular at Diamond Mountain, with more butter than popcorn, okay? And it chak, we call lung chak. Lung chak means, it breaks the tightness in your chest, okay?

My Lama used to give me a whole bowl of butter. Bata marcu, say bata marcu. I got Lung, he says, oh bata marcu, I'll make you a bata marcu.

No, no, no, I'm okay. It's a whole bowl of butter. Ghee, ghee, clarified butter, and it has some cubes of boiled flour, boiled dough, and then you put lots of sugar, because you can't eat it.

But definitely, it breaks the Lung. Yeah, it does other things too, okay? But I've done it, and it helps, okay?

So, greasy, heavy food, if you start to get nervous in your meditation, okay? All right, if you, especially if you're in retreat. We're going to take a pee pee break soon, I promise.

I mean, you won't have any teacher. Let me see, what book does Je Tsongkapa use for these eight? He uses Gomrim, Bhavana Krama, Bhavana Krama, written by Kamalashila, okay?

Who wrote the famous Diamond Cutter Commentary, okay? Greatest book on karma, and I taught it. Probably there's some recordings, if you're interested in those three.

He wrote three short meditation manuals. So, there's three Bhavana Kramas, and they became the standard for all Tibetan schools. Sakya, Kagyu, Gelugpa, Nyingma, they all use Kamalashila's Bhavana Krama, okay?

So, it's a great book, and it has all this stuff is in it, okay? All right, yeah, sometimes these are called the eight point posture of Vairochana. Vairochana is a Tantric Buddha.

It's the center of the five Dhyani Buddhas, meditation Buddhas. Color is white, okay? And has a special ability to relate to people, okay?

When Vairochana goes to a bar, he acts like a truck driver. When Vairochana goes to teaching, he looks like a monk. When Vairochana goes to DCI, he has a Thai expensive suit, okay?

So, this is Vairochana's special quality. Vairochana can talk to anybody in their own language, okay? That's Vairochana, okay?

So, oftentimes these eight or seven qualities are connected to Vairochana, and when you teach them, they say, I'm going to teach you the Vairochana eight, okay? Vairochana, okay? Vairochana.

Vai means many different kinds. The word very comes from Vai. Roch means light, like shining light, okay?

And R and L are interchangeable in Sanskrit. So, loka, which means the illuminated world, the world loka, and roch are the same root. Loka came into lucid words like that, okay?

So, Vairochana means can appear in any costume, according to what people need, okay? That's the Vairochana, okay? All right.

So, not all rochas are crawling around on the ground. Yay! That's it.

We finished the eight-point posture, okay? So, we're going to take a break now, and stretch your legs, have something to drink, okay? And then we'll come back and we'll keep going.