«Дар освобождения», курс 1 «Глубочайшая медитация», занятие 5

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 21:07)
So, we have determined that we would go through the two sections from this famous teaching that concern meditation and then emptiness. And we had started the meditation section last weekend. And then I felt like we should continue it this weekend rather than during the week because a lot of people flew home and came back.

Scott, you've got to crank up this baby because they're going to get sleepy. If they're not already. And so, I'm going to be continuing a discussion of meditation that we began last weekend.

Maybe by Sunday we'll get to a little bit of emptiness, continue a little bit of emptiness. Okay. Today in the morning we had a practice meditation together.

We did an hour together. I think we did 20 minutes of talking. Then we did 10-15 minutes of warm-up, meditation warm-up.

Then we did I don't think more than 5 minutes or 7 minutes of meditation. And we went deeper and deeper into an object. And by the end everybody was in deep for a few minutes, just a few minutes, maybe 3-4 minutes.

And we held it deep, way deep for 3-4 minutes and then we just stopped. And we talked more, okay. So what Pabongkha Rinpoche is saying is, that all of you, me and you, people like you and me, we hope to have a very long period of fixation on the object.

We believe that we should be capable of sitting in deep meditation for half an hour or an hour or something like that. Rinpoche, but in reality we only bump into the object once in a while. Like during a whole meditation object we sort of wander around, once in a while it gets in our way and we hit it.

But we're supposed to be meditating around, okay. So we're sort of worse than intermittent meditators. We just hit it once in a while.

Mi nyenpe, therefore, mi nyi chitlak chen chok ye, there was a custom in Tibet that rather than doing an hour, and say doing an hour in the morning, an hour in the afternoon and an hour in the evening, it was a custom in Tibet to divide your waking hours into 18 parts, right. So if you have like, I don't know, let's say you have 6 hours of meditation time, you would divide that into 18 parts, 20 minutes a piece, and you would do sessions of 20 minutes long, okay. If you include there the preliminaries and the dedication at the end, you would be on the meditation object for 5 to 7 minutes, something like that.

So rather than sitting down, especially those of you doing three retreat, you might want to try, rather than trying to do a whole hour on the object or something which you won't do, divide your day into 18 parts, do 20 minute sessions, and try to stay on the object for maybe 5 to 10 minutes, okay. Really stay on the object. It's much, much better to start with 5 minutes intensely on the object, and slowly build that up, maybe 1 minute a week, okay, maybe you increase it 1 minute a week, rather than sitting for an hour and wandering around.

If you sit for an hour and wander around, you will never improve in your meditation, and you get into a very, very addictive bad habit, and you won't even notice you have it. You will just, your meditation will be dull, and you will never know. You will just spend an hour wandering around, you will never taste real meditation, you will never get the high visions and personal experiences that result from meditation, and then sooner or later you will just quit, because nothing will be happening.

So rather, see if you can stay on the object for 5 good minutes. Do a nice long preliminary, do some breath meditation, go to the object for 5 minutes, come off the object, do a Thanksgiving meditation, think about all the people in your life who have helped you, the kindness of all the people around you, dedicate the good karma to someone else, 20 minutes stop, and then go for another 20 minutes later in the day. Don't do this 1 hour thing, or even an hour thing.

You will be off the object, and you will get used to that, and it will be very hard to change later. I teach a lot of people Tibetan, and the very best thing is if they don't have any Tibetan before, because their pronunciation is always wrong, and they know a lot of strange things, and I'd rather have someone who doesn't know anything. It's much easier to start with a person like that.

Don't get into any bad habits. 20 minutes, start with 20 minutes. Even those of you who think you can meditate, today I think we felt some deep meditation in the room, for 2 minutes, when we were on the grains of sand.

For 2 minutes we had deep meditation going in the room, and that's good. Then increase it from there. If you do short sessions, you will be able to avoid the two great obstacles to meditation, which are getting dull, just a dull feeling, dullness, and restlessness.

Thinking about lunch. You will reach a kind of meditation for 4 or 5 minutes, which is free of those two extremes. Short sessions, lots of sessions.

It's a saying. Short sessions, lots of sessions. If you keep up the principle of many short sessions, 20 minute sessions, means automatically, without noticing it, your fixation on the object will start to get longer.

But the time on the object will get longer by itself. You don't have to fight for it. And then you can start to increase the length of your meditation sessions.

You'll know, because you'll be on the object more. He's going on to the final of the five classical problems of meditation. What were the five classical problems of meditation?

Number one was called? Medlo. Which means I don't feel like meditating today.

I think I'll skip today. I'm not giving up my meditation practice. I'm devoted to my meditation practice.

I want to get enlightened. I appreciate that it's necessary to save all living beings. But I have a pretty hard day coming up and I think I'll just skip it.

I don't feel like it today. That's the meditation problem. If you have the meditation problem, number one, it's kind of a good thing because you'll never get the other four.

Number two is forgetting the instructions, which is a code word in meditation circles for losing the object completely. You're off the object completely. Normally, in the beginning, you're not even aware you're off the object.

You're thinking about lunch and then there's this mental jolt, like two minutes later you're like, ah, hey, I lost the object like two minutes ago. I've been thinking about lunch for like two minutes and I didn't even notice. That's the second meditation problem.

What's the third meditation problem? Yeah, you get on the object. You're able to get on the object.

The minute you're on the object, you will have one of two problems. You will start to get unclear. The mind's power, the mind's clarity, the mind's freshness will drop slightly.

Or you'll start to get restless and your mind will want to break off the object. Number three is really the main meditation challenge. And that's where you'll spend 90% of your meditation life, okay?

If you get past number one. And you're correcting between the two, right? What's meditation problem number four?

Yeah, you don't correct. You catch your mind is not fresh. You catch that your mind has no intensity on the object.

You do not feel like a person listening to their favorite song, right? And you know it. And you don't do anything about it, right?

Your mind is down. Or else you're not distracted to dinner yet, but you feel restless down deep. You don't feel calm and focused on the object.

You feel like you're about to think of something else, right? Gopacamana, subtle restlessness, right? So when those two things happen, you must take action.

You must correct. And the fourth fault of meditation is not to take action when you should have taken action. Think of action as the constant correction of a person driving your car, okay?

The hands never really stop. They're constantly going like this, and then they're going like that. A good driver, a bad driver is, you know, a new driver is correcting to the left, and then they go too far, and then there's this jerk, and they correct back, right?

And then an experienced driver, they can talk on their cell phone, and you know, they can text, texting, but their head is moving all the time. They're like slight corrections. A meditator at stage number four is correcting constantly, and they're not totally even aware of it.

The mind gets a little down, they spice it up. The mind gets too spiced up, they bring it down a little bit. And it's a constant, it doesn't stop for a long, long time.

You will be there for a long, long time, where you're going to have to do constant corrections. So don't feel bad, all right? You will get off, then you come back.

Then you will go down, then you come back. You come back too much, you go far, you go too much, you come back. You keep over-correcting.

There comes a time when you reach a total balance, okay? Nyon gyur samapati in Sanskrit. The mind is completely balanced.

There's no dullness, and there's no restlessness. The mind is running a middle way, very, very smooth, very, very natural. The correction process has become so fine that there's not even any tiny adjustments going on.

The mind is flowing perfectly down the middle of the two other states of mind, right? What do you think would be a problem then? Yeah, don't fix it if it ain't broke.

That was a saying in my company, in the factory. We had a big factory, and there was a saying, you know, don't fix it if it ain't broke. If it's flowing, stay away.

Let the mind flow. If the mind is flowing nicely, leave it alone. Let it flow.

Then it would be a problem if you tried to tighten up or loosen up or something like that. It would be a problem of meditation if you attempted to apply a counter-antidote to a problem that wasn't there at the moment. The fix for problem number five is antidote number eight, which is leave it alone.

Okay, don't take any action. Antidote number four is do something. Antidote number five is don't do anything.

Leave it alone. The meditation is rolling, leave it alone. Don't worry, you won't get there for a long time.

You're not doing it. de yang ching guk gyun chepa ni, sem ne gyepi padu me de yang ching guk gyun chepa ni, sem ne gyepi padu me You will not have a period in your meditation career which is not plagued by dullness and restlessness until you reach the eighth level. There are nine levels of meditation.

Until you reach level number eight, you won't experience any relief from these two extremes. You will constantly be going like this. There won't be a time when you don't have restlessness or dullness to fight with.

de yang ching guk gyun chepa ni, sem ne gyepi padu me de yang ching guk gyun chepa ni, sem ne gyepi padu me At the eighth level, your restlessness and your dullness have been subdued. de yang ching guk gyun chepa ni, sem ne gyepi padu me If, when you have overcome those two things, you keep looking for them, checking for them. de yang ching guk gyun chepa ni, sem ne gyepi padu me de yang ching guk gyun chepa ni, sem ne gyepi padu me It will disturb your meditation.

Generally, you have to keep a watchdog in mind, right? It's called xie xin. One corner of your mind has to be watching the rest of your mind.

Not all the time, okay? It's checking in from time to time to see if you left the object two minutes ago, or ten minutes ago, or an hour ago, okay? Like if the part of your mind was just watching.

When you reach meditation level eight, you call off the watchdog. You say, okay, you rest for a while. We don't have any problems here.

Now, you checking too often would become a problem. So you just cool, chill for a while, okay? You're telling your watchdog mind to chill for a while.

If you start watching when I don't have any problems, I'll have to watch for you. Okay, xie xin su wa mi ten pa le pe chok pe gyu chen tang yong ten Um, this is a thing called, it's a thing called neutrality, okay? Tang yong means neutrality.

It's similar to the word upeksha in the Yoga Sutra. That upeksha means don't see some people as friends and some people as enemies. Learn to treat everyone equally.

So there are three kinds of upeksha. One is in the practice of love. In learning to love, we try to reach a state where we treat people equally.

Equanimity in the sense of equality. Then there's a tang yong, there's an upeksha which refers to karmic content. And it means this action is neither karmically virtuous nor karmically non-virtuous.

It's upeksha. It's somewhere between. It's neutral.

Like sleeping is considered a neutral mental function. Anger is a bad kind of mental function. Compassion is a good kind of mental function.

Sleep normally is upeksha. It's tang yong. It's neither.

The third sense of upeksha in scripture is this one here. It means leave it alone. Don't mess with it.

Tang yong means leave it. Tang yong to jing. She shin gi tsongwa wa denpa.

Le fe chokpe. At this point, you are allowed. Chokpa means you are allowed to relax.

Only at level 8, you are allowed to chill, relax. Level means let it go. Relax.

Just let it go. It's a very famous word. Röpa means chill.

Let it go. Let go of the watchdog mind, which is the first level at which you do that. Not until level eight do you let up on your watchdog mind, lookout mind.

NGON GYI DANG PO MANG PO KYANG LÖ DGOS PAR GSUNG PAR THAM GYI SEM LAS RGYAS PA'I THAR SEM CING GOS KYI RONG DGOS NGON GYI LHOR BA'I LAS KHAGS SU SHES SHING GI TSO BA LÖ DGOS PAR GSUNG PAR GYI Great masters of the past from India and Tibet and China, who were great meditators, they all recognized that there was a point called the eighth level of meditation, where, because you were no longer in danger of falling into dullness or restlessness, it was appropriate to let up on your watchdog mind. For the first time in your whole meditation career, when you hit level eight, you can tell him to just calm down. You don't have to do anything.

You can take a rest. We don't need you to check whether we have dullness or restlessness, because we're up to level eight now and we're not going to get them anyway. In fact, if you intervene, it will have caused a problem, okay?

NGON GYI LHOR BA'I LAS KHAGS SU SHES SHING GI TSO BA LÖ DGOS PAR GSUNG PAR THAM GYI LHOR BA'I LAS KHAGS SU SHES SHING GI TSO BA LÖ DGOS PAR GYI ME KA CHEN DU DANG CHEN DU DANG NI PAD ZIN DAG DI MYUR LOD PA LA GSUNG PA ME ME THAM GYI LHOR BA'I LAS KHAGS SU SHES SHING GI TSO BA LÖ DGOS PAR GYI But, until such time as you reach the eighth level, KHAGS SHEN DU, on the other seven levels, you have DGEN PA, right? The mind tied to the object.

Awareness of the object. The mind is physically roped to the object. DGEN PA, NI PAD ZIN DAG DI NGAR What's NGAR?

NGAR is like intensity. The intensity. The intensity of your mind into your favorite song.

The few lines of your favorite song that you like the best. DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN DEN Calculate and understand. It's the beginning of the instrument.

DGEN PA, NI PAD ZIN DAG DI NGAR And your mind, it sinks into that, those notes, okay? That's NGAR, okay? In the middle of your favorite, the favorite page of your favorite book of all time.

NGAR. LA PA LA GSUNG PA ME Min means we aren't saying that you should release your nar, and we aren't saying that you should release the rope on the object before the 8th lama. Never.

Okay? You don't, you can't release those before the 8th lama. From Lama Dhaghi, lu-rab la-gom-ra.

Say lu-rab. Lu-rab. Gom-ra.

Gom-ra. Lu-rab. Lu-rab.

Gom-ra.

[Говорящий 2] (21:07 - 21:08)
Gom-ra.

[Говорящий 1] (21:08 - 56:01)
This was an old famous meditator's axiom. What do you call it? Idiom.

Cliché. Saying. In the old days.

Lu-rab-gom-ra means, I just got to get a catchy English thing. So, lu-rab-gom-ra. Let go, I'm not great.

Okay. Let go, fine. Meditate, fine.

Okay? Let go, fine. Meditate.

That doesn't work, right? I don't know. I don't know.

Heart meditation is heart letting go. Something like that. I don't know.

There was a saying that the best meditation was when you let go. How about meditation is letting go? Meditation is letting go.

So, that came to be a, people who had reached level 8 started to say to each other, hey, the best meditation is when you let go. Right? Other people who haven't reached the 8th level heard that.

They told the watchdog to go to sleep at level 6. And then they spent all day thinking about breakfast or lunch. You see what I mean?

Okay, they let go early. And it became a problem. Tsa nga ma simpa.

They failed to recognize the proper line at which you could let go. Kong du drenpa nga pa ni, drenpa yinpe. If you let go of your awareness before the 8th level, that's a mistake.

Chir, de jesu min damo. So don't get misled if you run into that saying somewhere. De chi chir shin, why is that?

ne chan nyo ryang, ching wa chan mo shor ne. ting yin zing le, gyan rin war gyur yin. ne chan nyo ryang, ching wa chan mo shor ne.

It is true, he says, if you get some kind of sense of surrender before the 8th level, where you're kind of letting go, you might be able to get quick progress on fixation. The fixation part, you will make some quick progress if you let go even a little earlier than you should. The fixation part will go well.

But, ching wa chan mo shor. You will fall into subtle dullness. What was subtle dullness?

It was kind of like spacing out on the object. You don't lose the object. And you don't even lose some sort of freshness of the mind.

But there's no intensity on the object. It's listening to your favorite song in the dentist's office. Okay?

I do that. I spend a lot of time there. He plays, you know, 70s and 80s hits.

Because we're about the same age. And, you know, I don't lose the music. And my mind is, you know, aware.

Because he's drilling. But I'm not really... I haven't lost myself in the music, in fact.

Because he's got his hand in my mouth. Okay? So there's no rara.

Okay? That's subtle dullness. I'm aware of the music.

And to some extent, I'm enjoying my favorite songs. But there's definitely not this deep pleasure in the song at that moment. Rara means intensity.

Shortness. So if you rush things too quickly about letting go, you know, not making effort. If you drop the effort too early, you may speed up your sensation.

But you won't have any... You won't fall into the object. You won't get lost in the object.

And then the whole process will be delayed. The progress of your meditation will be delayed. Okay?

Then, veda me nirva-vindhārtsa lekhyoṃsura-dzoghiyoṃ manche-laṅdhā It's very interesting. He said all of these descriptions about how to meditate follow for all spiritual steps that you would... for every spiritual goal that you might have.

The process is the same. All the way from the first day you heard the Buddha's teaching up until the day that you are practicing the highest forms of tantra, the process of how to concentrate is the same. The process for how to hold the object is the same.

These nine levels apply to every stage of practice from the first day you begin up to the day you become enlightened. They don't change. dekhyoṃsura-kṣerpa-cārte lekhyoṃsura-kṣerpa-cārte lekhyoṃsura-kṣerpa-cārte So, let's talk about...

dhāne khyoṃsura-kṣerpa-cārte means... Okay, so let's talk in practical terms how you're going to do your meditation now. So now you know the nine levels, you know the five problems, you know the eight antidotes.

Then, kind of, let's get more into the nitty gritty about how you're actually going to do this, all right? ney-tse-nyi-ngan-den-sok-so You are going to seek a place which has the five qualities which we discussed. Good place, good friends, doesn't make you sick, you can get stuff you need easily, you have your training ready.

shi-ne-yin-sok-tan-tsa-mo-che-te Get all these prerequisites ready. ten-de-war-nan-ran-jun-den-ge-do So, sit on your meditation cushion in a seven-part posture of vairagyana. So, vairagyana is a high tantric angel and there's a meditation posture which is named after vairagyana.

And it has either seven or eight components depending on how you count them. I'm going to give you a traditional presentation of it. We'll see.

Because he doesn't, right? So here's the traditional way of teaching it. Seven parts to a correct meditation posture.

Number one is called your legs, okay? It refers to your legs. Your legs should be in a comfortable position which will not cause you pain for the length of your meditation, okay?

It doesn't matter if you're sitting in a chair. You can have your back against the wall to extend your legs. You can do a half lotus, dorje kyutu.

You can do a full lotus, pepe kyutu. You can do sukhasana. You can just have the legs crossed but not on top of each other.

You can do any variation. You can sit in virasana with your heels under your bottom or off to the side. Siddhasana is good.

You put one heel strongly into the groin and then another heel under that. You might experiment with that to your treat. It's kind of fun.

And these are different meditation postures you can take. It doesn't matter which one you take. Park your legs.

Park your legs, okay? Nobody's watching you, okay? Except the Buddhas of the universe.

They don't care what you look like. They don't care if you're sitting in a full lotus. If you're sitting in a full lotus and concentrating on the pain in your knees, that's the most foolish thing you can do.

You're a fool. You should be sitting in a position where you can forget about your body. No part of your body will be calling up your mind and saying, we hurt down here, okay?

You want to sit in a way that's neutral, right? You don't want the body talking at all. You don't want to park your body.

If it's on a couch, like, lounging around, I don't care. Generally speaking, it's good. Well, we'll get there.

So, number two, the eyes, okay? Number two is the eyes. The eyes can be closed completely, but there's a slight danger that you might get sleepy because the only time you close your eyes normally is when you're about to go to sleep.

So, you know, 30, 40, 50 years of habituation will kick in. Close your eyes, you get drowsy right away. So, there's a tradition which is very cool.

You might want to try it, okay? Your eyes half open, and then it's very important that the chin is still parallel to the floor, right? But the eyes are gazing down.

And let the eyelids just droop, okay? Which also is a test of whether you're feeling calm or not. Like, in yoga, if your eyelids are tight and your jaw is tight here, it means you haven't relaxed into the pose.

You're still fighting your pose, right? So, like this, and then your eyes are like this. Then the classical texts say, stare at your nose.

So, there have been hundreds of years of people making the mistake of... And stare at your nose means relax the eyes into a durshti, right? Into a gaze which is neutral in the area of right here, the plane of your nose, okay?

So, don't focus your eyes on any object in front of the eyes. Let them hang unfocused in the area of the plane of your nose. So, you don't have to cross your eyes.

You're just like this, okay? But the tendency is to drop the whole head, right? So, keep the head up, but let the eyes down.

And then let the eyelids go as far as they normally go. And there will be a little slit here, and that will keep you awake, okay? The amount of light that comes into the eyes when the eyelids are drooped will keep you from getting sleepy, right?

Personally, I've found, they don't say it in the text, but I have a lot of trouble. I had a Paisley altar call. And, you know, I would start looking at the designs, you know?

And what I found in my own practice is that if the whole area right in front of your face is neutral, like an altar cloth with a solid color, it's better, okay? So, put some kind of a cloth that there's no texture to it, and there's no outline, there's no designs to it. It's better even than looking at table legs or something, because then you'll start to, you know...

So, it's like that, and then your eyes are droopy, and they're just looking down. But don't let your chin fall. Okay, that's number two.

Number three. Khenpo Jigme should be like a sertang. It means your spine should be like a stack of golden coins.

Like the vertebrae should be stacked like that as well. In reality, we know there are natural curves to the spine. In actual practice, it's the Alexander technique, kinesthetic misapprehension.

You feel like it's straight. It feels like each one is stacked on the other, okay? You shouldn't feel like each vertebra is stacked on the other one.

The equal pressure on the vertebrae, all the way up the spine, means a straight back. Many great Tibetan masters have said that the key to good meditation is a straight back. And I think that thing about tying a string to the top of your head and imagine somebody's pulling it, that can be very useful.

A clue here, or a suggestion, that actually I heard a couple from different people, but one's from a master in the art in Vancouver. He's a wushu master. What do you call it?

Tai chi, qigong master. But he said, be careful about be careful about crooking your lower back. Don't make a notch in your lower back.

And they say, you know, some good yoga teachers say that. What do you call it? Tuck the tailbone.

The tendency when you think you're sitting up straight will be to make a dent in the lower back and stick your butt out. And that actually chokes the front slightly. It slightly hurts the front.

So, is that honest? How do I discuss it nicely? And I am, I guess.

So you tuck the tailbone slightly and you lengthen the very base of the spine, just above the tailbone. So like that. That's a straight back.

And not like that. The shoulders should be equal. I tend to go like this.

And try to get the shoulders down equal. Shoulders on the back, right? The head should be, should be, the chin should be parallel to the floor.

They say in the scriptures that if you tilt the head back too far, you will get gupa, right? You will get restlessness. The mind will become restless.

If you tilt the head forward, you will get chinwa. You will get dullness, okay? So, restlessness, dullness.

And you want to keep the head erect, on the net, long neck, head up, and level. And not going up, not going down. Then you know, friends, if you meditate with other people and you peek at them, they're going like this, you know.

Alright. Okay. The teeth should be not clenched, okay?

The teeth should be relaxed. They say rong so chak. It means leave the teeth the way they normally are.

Don't clench them. Don't do anything. However your teeth fall naturally, let them fall free.

And then the tongue, chek, should, there's a trick, and you can experiment with it, okay? Where you touch the tip of the tongue, the top of the tip of the tongue, to the palate, just behind the teeth, okay? And that keeps your mouth from getting dry.

So, don't press it tightly, but let it park there. Park your tongue. Slightly touching the top of your tongue, okay?

This is the traditional posture for meditation which has been taught for thousands of years. This is the posture of Ayurthaya, okay? Sometimes an eighth element is added, traditionally, to the seven point posture.

And that's watching your breath, okay? In this tradition, watching your breath was first described in the Abhidharmakosha around 350 A.D. by Master Vasubandhu. And he had a chapter on meditation, I think it's the sixth chapter, but he describes ugyul, the breath meditation, which was, at the time, it was only used for, I like to call it putting the car in neutral, okay?

Like if you have a 1980 Volvo station wagon, especially, you have to put the brakes on, you go in reverse, you pull out of the post office, out of the parking lot, out of the parking space, and you go into reverse, right? And you're back. And then you don't, like, jam it right into first and take off, you know?

Because the Volvo doesn't like that, you know? You have to stop, pause, chew some gum, put it in neutral, wait for a while, and then you take both hands in. You put it into first, all right?

The car should be stopped, you see? The practice of watching your breath was meant to be a segue between, you know, the busyness of getting up and brushing your teeth and having your favorite herbal tea and starting your meditation. It was meant to be a segue into meditation.

It was never meant to be a meditation in itself. Then in some countries, the whole Buddhist teachings didn't get there. In Burma, Thailand, Ceylon, Vietnam, three of the great subjects didn't make it there.

They only got Vinaya and Amidharma in those countries. And then, so they got Amidharma, somebody went crazy on the breath thing, and now they just watch their breath all day. It's a nice thing to watch your breath, and it puts the mind into neutral.

But then you should pick an important object. Then you should pick some kind of object which is karmically powerful, like your mama's image, or like emptiness, or like compassion. You should put the car into first, you know?

Don't just sit there neutral all day. Like that. What did I talk about?

Oh yeah. So, counting the breath is considered the eighth part of a proper posture. You count the breath for a minute or two minutes, and then you start your meditation.

Those are the nam nam chodon, or nam nam chodon. chi ngui namo le shak du tsun kam tsam shik che te te wei de kang pa la wa shak So, there was a custom. One of the meditations you might want to try is to picture your teacher, or any other enlightened being that you honor, on the top of your head, facing the same way.

And they say, tsun kam. Tsun kam means the distance from your thumb joint to the tip of your thumb. Like that big.

You picture a lama. Your teacher, or you picture any holy being at the top of your head, facing the same way. You can...

Then you can split off another one, and bring it down to the level of your navel. che te wei de kang pa la wa shak And leave it facing your... at the level of your navel, facing up.

I don't know, shak. de yang damo ne mikpo selwa shik min jung shing juk kye na mikgo na By the way, there's a reason to put a visualization in front of your navel chakra, or in front of your heart chakra, or in front of your thumb chakra. There's a special way in Buddhism, you ring your bell and you ring your drum, right?

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and ding-ding-ding-ding-ding. And then you're supposed to ring the bell in front of your heart chakra, and you're supposed to ring the drum in front of your navel chakra. And that stimulates those chakras.

Same with visualizing objects in front of those chakras. min mikpo selwa shik min jung shing juk kye na mikgo na de yang damo ne mikpo selwa shik min jung You will not have a clear picture of the object from the first day that you try. juk kye na mikgo And you don't have to worry about it, he says.

That's natural. u dang chak shak sok chak she chik sang dang selwa me wa tabu lam selwa shik chang chung na This is nice. This is really nice.

There's different ways to meditate, which we'll go into, right? Say, jongo. Jongo.

Jego. Jego. What's the other one?

Shargo. Shargo. Shargo.

Jongo. Jongo. Jego.

Jego. Shargo. Shargo.

There are three totally different types of meditation. Jongo is where you put your mind on a single object and hold it there. Like you try to picture your lover.

Or you try to meditate on emptiness without thinking about anything else. That's jongo. Jongo means set the mind on that object.

Jeo. Jeo means set it. Go means meditate.

Jego means problem-solving meditation. Someone's bothering you at work, and you can't get it off your mind. You can't get over it.

So you have to do a jego. This person's always criticizing me. Then you say, okay, so where did they come from?

Well, you know, like everything else, it comes from me. Well, why do you think they're criticizing you? You know, you ask yourself questions in meditation.

Well, I guess I must have criticized somebody in the past. Well, have you criticized anybody in the last week? Well, yeah, you know, I guess I have.

A couple days ago I said something to so-and-so. Do you really want to get rid of this person who's criticizing you? Yes.

So why don't you just remove the seed from your mind? Okay. How would you do that?

Well, I guess I would go after the seed by refusing to criticize this criticizable person. Well, when do you plan to do this? I guess I can start tomorrow.

Yeah, well, where? At what time? You know, and this is a jego.

This is a analytical meditation. And you need it, you know? You need to analyze the people you don't like during meditation.

Don't go off the subject and start analyzing why you hate them. Okay? You will.

You're supposed to be analyzing why you cause them. But generally it devolves... There's another word.

It degenerates into a listing of their faults. Which would be a shower bomb. Which is the third kind of meditation.

Third kind of meditation is where you're... I like to think of it as building a new synapse in your mind. Like, I was reading a book about how the...

I don't know. What is it, the parts of the mind? Neurons or something.

They tend to create synapses at an incredible rate. Like one discrete thought takes several thousand synaptical connections. But you're trying to build new thought patterns in your mind.

You're trying to purposely construct new bridges of thought in your mind over which you will continually travel in the future. So, for example, a bad shower bomb would be where over and over you think of all the reasons why you don't like somebody. They make me nervous.

I walk into the room. I don't like them. They're always fucking me.

They're always too close to me. You go over the same five reasons why you don't like these people over and over until it becomes a pattern in your thinking. It becomes a solid structure in your mental building.

And then it's really hard to break. What we seem to do in Buddhist practice is do the opposite. Like, what are five reasons why I should be patient with the people who bother me at work?

And then you go through these five. What are the five problems of meditation? What are the eight antidotes to those problems?

And you purposely review. It's called review meditation. You purposely review.

You sit down very artificially and review the five problems of meditation ten times. You can say to your own mind, we're going to go through the five. Can you list ten times in a row, quickly, the five problems of meditation?

And then it gets really firm. Anything done at the core of the mind during meditation sticks with you. Anything done at the core of the mind sticks with you.

Any review meditation you do during deep meditation, it sticks with you. Scott, you're going to have ready zeroes and you're going to have ready will. Ready zero.

Okay, alright. Okay. So we're talking about Jeonbong here.

Fixation. A fixed meditation. And he says, at the beginning, if you're going to visualize a holy being, just try to get a round thing with five sticks on it.

You know? Two arms, two legs, and a head. Just try to get a blob with a smaller blob and four things coming out.

Because that's all you really honestly will get. Try to get the outline of a person. Sometimes I do a silhouette.

It's very, very powerful. If you want to learn to visualize a person, start with a silhouette. Imagine there's a sheet in front of them and someone is projecting a powerful light behind them, and all you can see is their silhouette.

And just work on the silhouette. Okay? Most people don't learn to visualize very well.

They get lazy. They don't try to visualize the whole thing at once. I often just do the eyes.

Just the eyes staring at me. Two eyes sitting there staring at me. You know?

When I was a kid, they told a story about this ghost called Two Eyes. And this farmer would wake up every night and there would be this ghost. Two eyes just staring at him at the foot of the bed.

And he would wake up and look down at the foot of the bed and there were two eyes staring at him. And it drove him crazy. He finally got a shotgun.

And he went to bed with a shotgun. And he woke up and Two Eyes was there. And he shot Two Eyes and he blew his toes off.

So anyway, I'm just hoping you won't forget the Two Eyes theory. So it's just two eyes staring at you. Okay?

And go into that. You know how like when you're mushy, you met somebody new and you're mushy and you both had some wine and you're like staring into each other's eyes. So like that with your teacher.

If you're going to meditate on the Buddha or Jesus or whoever, then just like you're falling into their eyes. Just do the eyes. So at the beginning, don't try to do the whole thing.

Just do the eyes. Sarvam meva tattva-laksam cik cakshuma. Or he says, forget the blob and the sticks and just have a golden light.

Just a golden orb. You know? This is my holy number.

Just shine it. It's like an egg-shaped shiny thing. Start with just a blob of light.

And then later start adding detail. Tela jelima je par jintam dhongpo sel mayenpa kyan. And just practice holding on to the silhouette without letting go.

Tie the mind to the silhouette. Don't lose the silhouette. You don't even have to try to improve the silhouette.

Just silhouette, but don't let go of the silhouette. Tie your mind to the silhouette for how long? Lucky if you can get five minutes.

Don't try more because you'll get a bad habit. Okay? Don't try more.

If you want, go back again. Do another meditation in ten minutes. You can do lots of little tiny ones.

Don't sit there on an object for more than five minutes. You'll get a bad habit. You won't be strong.

You won't be strong. Stop. Take a rest.

Have a sip of tea. Go back again. Like that.

If you practice on a simple silhouette, holding the mind to the silhouette, you can use that practice to explore the two states of dullness and restlessness. All the meditation instructions you need are complete in a single silhouette. You don't have to go under emptiness or bodhichitta or all that.

With a single silhouette, you can explore the five problems of meditation and you can master them without getting the arts. Just the silhouette. Rule two.

gong chen dang gyi nying le chen gyu me ma lan me pa yin This is the incomparable deep advice of the great meditators of the past. Don't get fancy. Just take a basic object and do five minute stretches on it.

The mind will come. What do you call it? They call it simla independence.

The duration will increase naturally as you go. Stick with four or five minutes at the beginning. Omni-omnity.

The duration will come. In that simla, a simple object, don't get all fancy. That's just another kind of restlessness.

Another mechanism. If you get... He's kind of wrapping up, okay?

Before he moves on to another subject. If you get dullness, tighten down on... Jin dang means tighten down on how you grasp to the object.

Tighten down on the bonding to the object. Bond closer to the object. If you feel dullness.

If you get restlessness, try to stop any distraction of the mind. Try to stop the mind leaving the object. This is so weird.

If you get pretty good at your meditation, and you reach a state of fixation, automatically dullness will start to come. There's a joke into that, you know? You don't get dullness if you have no fixation.

If you can't stay on the object for more than 30 seconds, you'll never get dullness on the object. Because you're not on the object. At that point, when you first learn to hold the object, you're going to automatically start to lose the freshness of your mind.

The freshness of the intense... Okay? That's automatic.

Then qing sun qian means, at that time, beware of dullness. qing sun qian means beware of dullness. Watch out for dullness.

Try to crank up the freshness of the mind. Try to crank up the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed nature of the mind, which in Tibetan is called clarity. Increase the clarity.

Remember that clarity never refers to the clarity of the object. It refers to the brightness of the mind, the fresh feeling of the mind. Crank up your clarity, meaning your freshness, and then tighten slightly on the object.

Tighten slightly. He compared tightness on the object to what? Do you remember?

Holding a cup, right? And if it's too tight, it'll slip out of your hands, right? Like a ball.

If it's too tight, it'll slip out of your hands. If it's not tight enough, it'll spill hot tea on your arm. And every human being, you know, by the time they're four or five, they learn renban.

They learn the proper amount of tightness. Not too loose, burnt your arm. Not too tight, the ball pops out.

And then you have to restart with your meditation. The right degree of tightness and looseness at the same time. It's that thing in yoga, you know, what do you call it?

Concentrate, but lighten up. Something like that.

[Говорящий 2] (56:01 - 56:06)
Hang on tight and dangle wispy.

[Говорящий 1] (56:12 - 1:06:31)
We'll go one more sentence. sel ca chung na gunpa dandire gosu chen ne If your fixation gets too good, right? I'm sorry.

If your clarity gets... If the mind gets too fresh, what'll happen? Restlessness.

You'll start to think about other things. Then you'll have to watch out for restlessness, right? So what he's describing is this process of driving, okay?

You will be too tight, lighten up. You will be too light, tighten up. And don't be discouraged, okay?

You are meant to correct, correct. Correct, correct, correct, correct, correct, correct, okay? You shouldn't be correcting constantly.

You should be detecting problems constantly, so don't get disturbed, right? We sat the other night, and I'll say it again. When you first start meditating, and you finally learn to listen to the state of your mind, it's a little disturbing.

How little you can concentrate. You see, you always were like that, but you were never aware of it, because you never listened to it before. So don't think you're getting worse.

You're just detecting what you've always been. All right. I want to make two pitches at this point, okay?

You're ultimately speaking, whether or not you can keep the mind on the object, and whether or not you can keep the mind fresh, has nothing to do with your own conscious effort. All right? Like, he doesn't get into it much.

Je Tsongkhapa does. It's not up to your conscious effort. Why?

There are days when you want to stay on the object, and you can. And there are days when you'd like your mind to be fresh, but it's not. And you can tell your mind to be fresh, but it's not going to be.

And you can tell your mind to stay on the object, and it's not going to. Because you don't really, in the present moment, have any control over those things. That's a basic Buddhist principle.

You don't have control over the current condition of your body and mind. You can't tell your body not to get breast cancer. And you can't tell your mind not to be depressed.

There will be days when it does, and you can't stop it. Because those things are determined by earlier events. Whether or not your body develops cancer cells, or whether or not your mind is depressed at any given moment, is all coming from something you did six months before.

And you don't have control over it in the present moment. You can plan for six months from now, but ultimately you can't make your mind be fresher or hold the object. This is all sort of a theoretical thing here.

This is saying, take the aspirin, but be aware that it might not work. You have to set up the causes ahead of time. What are the causes for having a great meditation?

He said, Tso Tso Gyep Chang Ren, collect some good karma ahead of time. Especially those of you going into three-year retreat. It's very cool to do some huge virtuous project just before you go into a long retreat.

It gives you power. It gives you karmic seeds which will continue to open during the three-year retreat. You should be one of those people who says they are a meditator and has no clue about the details of meditation.

Right? You have to develop meditation, which has both of those qualities, fixation on the author and a freshness of mind, clarity, right? Freshness of mind.

Which would include the ability to tighten down on the, what do you call it, the hole, tighten down on the hole I'm melting. As you would a ball, with the proper amount of tension, right? As I explained before, you have to be able to tie your mind to the object as if you were tying a rope to the object, okay?

You have to almost have the physical sensation as you begin a meditation of tying your mind to the object of meditation. Once you do get on the object, then dullness and restlessness are going to, you have to be able to detect when they are about to ruin your hole on the object. He didn't say detect when they happen.

He said detect when they are about to happen. Chuk means about to happen. And then instantly the watchdog mind has to raise the alarm.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We're about to think about worms. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

You know, okay? That's my object. And then jump to the appropriate antidote.

If you have dullness, tighten down a bit. If you're about to get distracted, what? It seems counterintuitive.

You have to, it's something you have to experience. That's why we're doing the January retreat, right? This is the theory course.

January is the practical course. Or, you know, your three-year retreat, all right? Just slightly practical.

So, we'll, you'll get a chance in January. We will sit down and we'll explore, you know, if listening up when you get agitated in the mind helps or not. Okay?

We'll see. Maybe we'll do little exercises, like ten-minute exercises. Okay?

Tighten up when you're already distracted. And we'll see what happens. Like that.

Let's do it. The purpose of the structure of this ten-year teaching is that we do ten days of theory, and then we go into the laboratory and try it on ourselves in a deep meditation retreat without a cell phone or laptop. We are going to do the great kindness of taking away your electronics at the door.

Okay? People charge a lot for that. Canyon Ranch will charge you a thousand dollars a day or something.

You know? All we do is give you a bunk bed and charge you for that. Okay?

For the honor of taking away your electronics from you. Okay. Once you get away from dullness, and once you've overcome restlessness, then you will start to reach ekagra.

You will start to reach a single-pointedness in life. I struggled for a long time with what does ekagra mean. What does single-pointed meditation mean?

And then my lama showed me a scripture. It said, single-pointed meditation… I used to think of it as somehow my head would get more like…

What are those guys in the cartoon? Yeah, Kodesh. I thought, maybe I'll get some kind of conehead or something.

And then he said, no, no, it refers to a single object. Single-pointed meditation means meditation which has only one object. All right?

That's all. You're meditating on your lama's form, or you're meditating on compassion, or you're meditating on the eyes of your heart teacher, and that's all. Only one object.

That's ekagra. Selche… Sechitune.

You will reach single-pointedness. Shintosowa selchenwa dengo… Genbu.

Try to maintain an intensity of the freshness of your mind, which again is the feeling of being lost in the object, okay? Just think favorite song. Think favorite music.

That's true meditation. It's not spaced out. It's a deep feeling of enjoyment, right?

It's being engrossed in the music. You feel lost in the music. You're not aware of anything else.

It's all Neil Young, you know? And you're just not thinking about anything else. You're deeply, pleasurably engrossed in the object.

That's all. It's like kissing your high school girlfriend, you know? Now, I remember.

I was in the driving. That's why Arizona doesn't do Daylight Savings Time. You don't know that?

No, they said it would ruin all the driving movies. No, I'm not kidding. Probably they have the same experience as I did.

All those legislatures. I can remember the driver of the driving coming and banging on the window of the station wagon with his flashlight, you know? And we both popped off.

And the whole place is empty. And there's no more movie. The movie's been on for an hour or two.

And that's intensity.

[Говорящий 2] (1:06:32 - 1:06:36)
That's what it's like.

[Говорящий 1] (1:06:38 - 1:16:54)
You're not thinking about it. You do. The little box thing stopped me.

I keep going. Okay. But it's like that.

Something that you're deeply... That's real meditation. Making out with your high school girlfriend.

That was real meditation. Seriously. The state of mind was a meditator's.

That's what you want. It's excited, engaged. It excludes other objects.

You know? Okay? Satsang with me.

Shinsen. Chatting primarily. This is beautiful.

Then maybe we'll stop in like five minutes. Chak chen means what? Chak chen chenpo.

Mahamudra. Mahamudra has many meanings. There's an asana called Mahamudra asana.

There's... Many schools of thought in India called Mahamudra. But in the study of meditation, Mahamudra refers to choosing as the object of your meditation your own mind.

Okay? Mahamudra is a lineage of meditation which takes your own mind as its object. He says consider one of the great beauties of choosing your own mind as your meditation object.

You can choose your mind as a foil. Or you can choose compassion. But you can also watch your own mind and explore its emptiness.

You have to say that. Watching your mind is not an innately deep meditation and it doesn't help you. It's not an innately powerful object.

Watch your mind and explore its true nature. That's Mahamudra. Watching your mind is not Mahamudra.

Watching your mind and trying to see where is it coming from. That's Mahamudra. But anyway, when you are doing the Mahamudra meditation the object of the mind is the mind itself.

Which has interesting implications on darshishin. On being aware of whether your mind is getting dull or restless. The fact that you're watching your mind already makes for an interesting scenario.

Like the mind watching the mind gets dull or watching the mind gets dull. Got it? And like that.

So into Mahamudra is built almost idiot proof safeguards. You're watching your mind as the object. If you've lost the object you don't have awareness of whether your mind is lost.

You see? It's very interesting. If you detect dullness your mind is already dull.

It's got it. One of the selling points for Mahamudra meditation is that it's very hard to get dull on the object. Because if you're on the object it's not dull because you're watching your mind.

Okay, got it? So bhikkhu, bhikkhu tsupe sem ni. The object which is your mind and the subject which is the mind watching your mind chi.

They are the same mind. chik yi chen na per na dzi we. ra nuk ri la shar wa da ma shar wa yi ga la tak pa shin du nan tong kye pa la de mo la pan ne la shir pan ne chepa Dzi we means sheep herd.

ra nuk la, ra, ra ra nuk ri la shar wa They are on the, on the, what do you call it? A hill. They're in the hills watching to see if they have lost any goats or sheep or not.

Ni ga la tak pa shin du So the, the sheep herder is watching for two things. The sheep herder is checking two things. What are they?

Are the sheep here? And are the sheep gone? Alright.

They're watching for two things, really. How many sheep are missing and how many sheep are here? Like, you can think of it that way.

They are looking what's here and what's not here at the same time. Mahamudra has that same flavor. shin du na tong kye pa la de mo la tak ne Then, this is interesting.

In the study of, in the practice of Mahamudra, in the taking the mind as the object of meditation, right? What are you examining? The nature of the mind.

Specifically, what is its ultimate nature? Where has the mind come from? Why am I perceiving depression?

Or why am I perceiving joy? Or, you know, what are the causes of the fluctuations of the mind? Where do they come from?

Which is karmic seeds, right? So, your own mind is examining each of the thoughts that comes up in your mind to determine where they came from. So, if dullness comes up in the mind and you examine where it came from, what's going to happen?

It's going to disappear. Because that's an active state of mind. To examine where a state of mind has come from is no longer thought.

So, true Mahamudra meditation, where your own mind is exploring your own mind's nature, automatically avoids the problems of meditating. Because you can't examine the nature of the mind and think about lunch. And you can't examine the nature of the mind and fall asleep.

Because you're active. The mind is active, right? It's a very beautiful thing.

And if you try Mahamudra, you'll see that. It's much easier to reach Ekadra, single-pointedness, in a Mahamudra meditation than on a meditation on your Namas form or something like that. Because the mind that you're using to explore the mind is made fresh by the exploration.

So, if you think about it, in a Mahamudra meditation, if your own mind is the object of your meditation, you have two options for stopping problems. You have two separate options for stopping dullness or stopping restlessness. Number one, explore the nature.

Take that dullness as the object of your meditation. Got it? Take the dullness as the object of your meditation.

Don't try to stop it. Just take the dullness. Say, oh, look, dullness.

Or, oh, look, I'm thinking about lunch. Now, why am I thinking about lunch? What happened?

What karmic cause is there that I'm thinking about lunch? What's the true nature of my thinking about lunch? By examining the true nature of your thinking about lunch, you have already stopped thinking about lunch.

Okay? So, it's kind of, Mahamudra is this beautiful system. Exploring the nature of your distraction or exploring the nature of your dullness removes it.

Or, he says, or, option number two, you could just undertake the traditional antidote. If you're dull, think about how cool your life is. If you are restless, think about your dad, for example.

And they will bring your mind down. Or they will bring your mind up. Got it?

So, for Mahamudra, Mahamudmin, you have two choices. You can examine where the dullness is coming from. Take the dullness as the object.

Take the agitation or the restlessness of the mind as the object. And explore its nature. And that will remove it.

Or you can apply the traditional antidote that we talked about. CHOSUN NYID SU SHESA GYE BAR GYEN DEN CHAGYA CHEN DU SHIGYI KHATSU JUNG WE If you want more detail on this, go to the First Venerable Lama's classic text on Mahamudra or his autocorrect name. SERMA, or just a proper sex name.

SERMA MIG NE SHI NE DUG DROP PA NAM KYI DE RE SHES GOSO Those of you who wish to achieve a deep state of meditation, if you are attracted to this object, you have to go for the object that you are attracted to. I happen to really enjoy picturing my lover. I could spend all day.

I do spend all day. I get in trouble. You know, I daydream all day about my Lama's form or what my Lama said, things like that.

You could take that as your object. Or you could take emptiness. You could do emptiness solving problems all day.

Okay? Solving emptiness problems all day? Like that.

Or you could focus on your own mind. And watch your own mind and think about the nature of your mind. Where has it come from?

Why am I experiencing this? Take the meditation object which is naturally attractive to you and go with it. Okay?

Ride with it. Take... I've given you a couple of options.

Mostly just think about whatever spiritually uplifting thing you get distracted by. And meditate on that. Take that as your object.

Take as your object whatever you're attracted to. I like my lover. You might like your mind.

You can focus on emptiness. Or you can focus on home life. You know?

Anything that you find attractive. She may give it to you and she goes with it. Sumadela tene semne buddho me.

I'm going to push a little bit, okay? You all right? Yes.

[Говорящий 2] (1:16:55 - 1:16:56)
Yes. Yes.

[Говорящий 1] (1:16:57 - 1:19:25)
No, no. I'm going to be late. But anyway, okay.

He's going to discuss the nine states of... The nine levels of meditation. Okay?

Here we go. So, this is cool, okay? Here's my selling point for understanding the nine levels of meditation.

Here's my selling point for understanding the nine levels of meditation. I like to school. I enjoy high school, for example.

Because it was so clear where we were. You know? You're in algebra class.

You're in college algebra class. Period three with Mr. Mortensen or whatever it was. You know?

Like, I'm in class period three. I'm in algebra. I'm in second level algebra.

And I have to finish page 45 or 46 today and be ready for a quiz on it tomorrow. Like, to me it was very comforting to know exactly where I was. You know?

You're a sophomore. You're in period three. You're sitting in that class.

And we consider you a second level algebra student. And you have this teacher and you're doing these pages today. Okay?

Now, the problem with meditation is that it's so... What do you call that? Nebulous.

It's so nebulous. Right? Like, you have no idea where you are sometimes.

You know? Am I a good meditator or not? You know?

Have I progressed in the last three years or not? You know? Where am I?

Is there any... What do you call that? Uh...

Metrics. British Airways. They excuse me.

I'm thinking about a question about a schedule. I'm like, what's a schedule? We were sitting in this room in the retreat and these two ladies were about to go into meditation and they say, how do you call it?

What's a week? And I'm like, excuse me? And they said, I forgot I have a week.

And I'm like, I'm sorry. I didn't catch that. And they said, can we go for a week?

And I'm like, maybe that's a pee pee.

[Говорящий 2] (1:19:25 - 1:19:27)
You know? I said, yes.

[Говорящий 1] (1:19:27 - 1:19:38)
Then I watched them to see what they did. And then I went to the bathroom. You know?

Yeah, it was a wee wee. Why did I talk about that?

[Говорящий 2] (1:19:41 - 1:19:43)
I don't know. Okay, yeah, yeah.

[Говорящий 1] (1:19:45 - 1:23:06)
We need metrics, you know? Like, this approach is very interesting, but how are you going to prove that it worked on the 43,000 employees in British Airways? How are you going to measure the progress?

You know? Well, people are aware of the Carmen seats. I mean, how do you measure that?

And then I'm like, that's another subject. But if you have metrics, it makes you feel happy. You say, I'm on stage four.

I got my meditation after stage four. And you also have goals, right? You say, I'm going to try to get to stage five by December.

Especially in three or two. You know? You can say, I'm shooting for a level nine by, you know, September 3rd.

And then you can count the three baths by then. So anyway, he gives 11 levels of meditation, which to me are very comfortable. They are metrics for meditation.

How do you know that you have gotten, that you're getting good? How do you know what level you're on? Here we go.

GOM CHEN PAR BUDDHA SEM NE LA MYONG BAR KHYER PAR BUDDHA If you want to become a serious meditator, you have to become familiar with the nine levels of meditation. The defining levels of progress. DE LA SEM NE BU SHES GO So here are the nine levels of meditation.

DE LA SEM GYOPA I'm going to give you the translation I used on the poster, so you don't get confused, okay? So I wrote down the translations I used 15 years ago. SEM GYOPA is setting the mind on the object, number one.

Setting the mind on the object. That's level number one. Level number two.

GYON DU GYOPA means keeping the mind on the object with brief continuity. Keeping the mind on the object with brief continuity. Number three.

LEN ME GYOPA LEN means a patch that you put on a... LEN PA GYOP means if you tear your clothing and you put a patch on it, that's called LEN PA. So it's called patch-like meditation, right?

And I don't like that translation because it makes it sound as if you are only on the object briefly. What it means is you only have patches that you are off the object. Okay?

It doesn't mean patches of time you are on the object. It means slight intervals and you are not on the object. I translate it as keeping the mind on the object with patches where you lose the object, okay?

NYAR GYOPA means maintaining the mind tightly on the object. That's number four. Level number four is maintaining the mind tightly on the object.

Level number five, GYOPA means controlling the mind. By the way, we'll go through what they are, all right? That's a long story.

We have to go through that, all right? GYOPA means quieting the mind, number six. LEN PA GYOPA Completely quieting the mind, number seven.

SAY CHITTA CHEPA Say, I'm sorry.

[Говорящий 2] (1:23:07 - 1:23:12)
I didn't say, say Chitta Chepa. I said, say Chitta Chepa.

[Говорящий 1] (1:23:13 - 1:30:22)
But you can say, say Chitta Chepa. Say Chitta Chepa. That means retaining single-pointedness.

Take heart, retaining single-pointedness. NYAR GYOPA means SUMMA PATI, right? That's reaching deep meditation.

You can call it deep meditation. Literally, it means balanced meditation. What does that mean?

Yeah, you're not falling into restlessness and so on. But we'll get to that. It's not that easy.

NYAR GYOPA GYOPA DEKU LE We'll do, we'll do, I'll go five more minutes. We'll do maybe one or two, okay? Here's the first one.

DAG PO NI LHAG PA LE ME DE DANG RANG THOD DROG KYI RUG CING You have been able to establish with your teacher's guidance what you should choose as your meditation object. With your teacher's guidance, you have been able to decide on a meditation object. DE YANG ME PHAG LA SHAR TZAM SHAR TZAM LE SHRED CHEN MI NE PE RGYUN CHOS MI THUB PA DE You are only like...

My teacher called it Bangun Daki. Say Bangun Daki. He used to call it house-flight meditation.

And I said, what's that mean? He says, you know, if there's a pile of poop on the ground, a house-flight, they land, and then they go over there, and then they come back, and then they go over there, and then they come back, and then they go over there, and then they come back. They don't hang out there, you know?

Like, they seem restless. They're always... Then he accused me of being...

Anyway. It means your mind touches the object, and then it flies away. You just touch the object, and then you're off again.

That's number one. SHAR TZAM SHAR TZAM CHEN MI SHRED CHEN MI For the most part, you're not on the object, and there's no continuity. You don't have two nickels to rub together.

Meaning, you don't have two moments on the object to rub together. Like you're on and off, on and off, on and off. Like that.

YIN MI CHUG PE DE TSE SEM LA TOG CHU SHUG PE TOG KYI CHOG DROG KYI WONG DU SHOR WA RIG PA'I BAR MEY YONG THOB SHEN CHE WEY YANG CHUNG YANG DE TSE SEM LA TOG CHUG SHUG PE TOG KYI If you examine your mind at this point in your meditation career, CHOG DROG KYI WONG DU SHOR WA RIG PA'I, you will become aware of just how, what do you call it, distracted your mind really is. RIG PA'I BAR MEY YONG THOB SHEN CHE WEY YANG CHUNG YANG And you will start to think that you're getting worse. You will, for the first time, be aware of how bad your mind is.

And you'll think your meditation is making you worse than before. But it's not. You're just aware of what's always been there.

You're just finally... It's the same when you're first trying to keep your vows. Like somebody says, Do you agree to keep a vow not to gossip?

And you say, Yes, I agree not to gossip. And then, if you really keep track of this, suddenly you feel like you're gossiping all the time and you can't stop. You've been doing that all along.

You just became aware of it. So, he says, don't be bummed out if you... The Tibetan word for bummed out is yang chung.

Don't be bummed out if you... If it feels like you're worse than before you started to meditate. It seems like your mind is more distracted than when you started to meditate.

You're just becoming aware of the state of your mind. BIN YANG THOB MA NGUR SOM PA LENG KYI It's not that you are a more distracted person than you used to be. YANG THOB LO CHEN PA'I NYAM YIN You are just discovering how distracted your mind always has been.

NYI PA NI So now, that's the first level. You're able to hit on the object occasionally. For in-person moments.

Number two. What's level number two? Keeping the mind on the object.

It's a brief continuity. NYI PA NI DE LTAR GONG DE SEM MED PAR LA ZHAG TZAM GYI YIN CHUN TSE CHOD DUG PA NI If you are able to maintain a slight continuity of the concentration on the object. It's not just moments on the object.

The fly lands and he sits for a couple seconds. Then he takes off again. He gives an example.

MA NI CHEN PAR GCIG TZAM GYI RING GONG NA DE RING GONG NYAM PAR GYUR MA LTAR GONG YIN If you have a rosary, right? A mala. And you are doing OM MANI PADME HUM OM MANI PADME HUM OM MANI PADME HUM How many beads on a standard rosary?

108 108. Why? They figured 10% is a loss already.

If you want to get 100 mantras, then say 108. 8% is a loss. So OM MANI PADME HUM OM MANI PADME HUM He says, this is beautiful because you've got a metric here.

If you can do 108 OM MANI PADME HUMS on your rosary, you can time it someday. OM MANI PADME HUM OM MANI PADME HUM And time it. If you can stay on the object for that long, which is what?

30 seconds? I don't know. You check.

Then you reach level 2. You're at level 2. I had a beautiful experience.

I was living in Namsala. We used to go back and forth to Delhi to bribe the officers to get our visas. You give the money to travel, I did.

He hands it to the officer under the table. I don't know why under the table, because everybody is watching. But anyway.

Then I was on my way back, and I got to this train, wooden convention called Pathankot. And all these Tibetan people were there, like wheeling around and rushing in and out of this room, waiting room. And I was with this British guy, and we were like, what's going on, you know?

And they said, Ling Rinpoche is here. Ling Rinpoche was the Dalai Lama's senior tutor. This was written by the junior tutor.

Then they were like, Ling Rinpoche is in there, and you can meet him. We said, can we meet him? They said, yeah, you can meet him, but you've got to have something offer.

We ran to the market. We bought these cheap Indian pancakes, and we ran back, and we said, can we go in and see him? And they said, yeah, go ahead.

And we ran in there. And what I remember most about Ling Rinpoche is that he was going like this all the time, and he didn't have a rosary. He was like this.

He would talk to you, and he would read mantras. And he forgot his rosary or something.

[Говорящий 2] (1:30:23 - 1:30:24)
But he has something.

[Говорящий 1] (1:30:27 - 1:34:38)
So 108, all right, for Monica Nichols. And then, I don't know. You can certainly time it and tell us tomorrow how long it is.

I don't know. Say them, like, not too fast, not too slow. DE'I TSE KHAB RE'I NAM TOK SHI SHING KHAB RE'I NAM TOK KYE WE NAM TOK MYAO SO BAE MYAM ONG At this point, level number two, you have somewhat subdued your random thoughts, meaning dullness, narcissist, et cetera.

And other times, they reassert themselves. So that myam, myam is a difficult word to translate. Myam means the feeling of being there.

The feeling that you're at level number two is that your mind's distractedness takes a break once in a while. You get brief breaks from your mind's own distractedness. It's like the distractions are taking a break once in a while.

That's all. Nothing more glorious than that. My dullness took a two-minute break just there.

Now I'm back in my dullness. Like that. It's very difficult to translate.

DE'I TSE KHAB RE'I NAM TOK SHI SHING KHAB RE'I NAM TOK This particular novel, and I believe the previous one, but we'll get to that. They are accomplished through certain powers. There are, I think it's the six powers.

But what helps you achieve the second level is thinking about the object. Sangha means considering the object. Thinking about the object.

SEM ME DANG PO NYID PA DI NYID LA CHING DANG MANG SHING ME DANG MYUR WE NYID SHES SHIG DANG PO DRIN PA'I CHUG PA'I KHAB NYID There are, okay. Let's review where we are. We got five problems of meditation.

We got eight antidotes for them. The process of applying those eight antidotes to the five problems will result in nine levels that you move up to. And I think it's six powers of five.

We'll get there. You'll be applying six powers to achieve, to go through those nine levels. And the last thing you got to know is there's going to be four modes of the mind.

There will be four modes of the mind. We'll talk about it. Don't get worried.

You will spend most of your time at level number two in either dullness or restlessness. Most of the time you will be either in dullness or restlessness. There will be very little time on the altar.

New way. So we call it the stage at which you are, you are progressing only with Jimmy's concentrating the mind. It's not at all a relaxed time in your meditation career.

It's a fight. Level one and level two are a constant struggle. It's a struggle.

You can say that. The mode of the mind at level one and level two is a struggle. You're like wildly fighting against dullness and restlessness, and you pretty much don't have any control over it.

It's a struggle. You're struggling to concentrate. So I'll ask you a question.

Do you think the periods on the object are longer at this point or the periods off the object are longer at this point? Yeah. So level two and level one obviously are characterized by more time off the object than on the object.

Do you want to keep score?

[Говорящий 2] (1:34:46 - 1:34:47)
I'll do one more.

[Говорящий 1] (1:34:47 - 1:38:39)
I'll do three and then we'll stop. Okay. So the third level is called you can call it past life meditation, you know, with patches where you lose the object.

You are on the object. You lose the object and you quickly sew a patch. What do you do on a bicycle tire?

You like glue a patch on it. There's a rip. There's a tear in the tire.

And you catch it and you patch it. So that's what we're doing. You catch yourself fairly quickly off the object.

And you bring the mind back to the object like a patch. The only difference between three and two is that the periods that you are off the object are decreasing. They are decreasing.

This is a time when you are strengthening your awareness on the object. Awareness is the rope that you tie to the object. So you are strengthening the capacity of your mind to hold the object.

I mean, in yoga you are strengthening muscles, right? Maybe you are strengthening attention also and intention also. But, you know, in the practice of yoga you strengthen muscles that you maybe weren't even aware of.

I heard people talking about Alice's class. First of all, they all said they really loved it and they had a really good time. And they rarely get a challenging class that they really love.

And the people who do yoga a lot, they don't get yummy classes a lot. So they were having a yummy class. And then they said, and she was...

And then they were talking about all the muscles that Alice had mentioned and where are they and what do they do and did you feel that muscle in your pelvis and what was it called anyway? And they were talking about all that. But the point is, in yoga, with a good teacher, you are strengthening little tiny muscles and big muscle groups that you were never aware of.

In meditation, you are doing the same thing. You are strengthening muscles that you were never aware of. You didn't even have a name for them.

There's apparently some muscle around your pelvis. They all forgot the name of it. You'll have to repeat it tomorrow.

They were telling me, there's some pelvis muscle and it's like tiny. And I forget the name of it. And that made me think of meditation.

In meditation, you are strengthening all these discreet little tiny mental muscles. And you will learn different names for them. The different muscles in your mind, you will learn different names for them.

And then you will consciously do exercises to strengthen each of them until the whole body of the mind is strong. Okay? So in level three, you are strengthening the ability of the mind to hold on to the object, right?

Which is a very basic muscle that you need. Then there are more subtle muscles that you will need. And you have to exercise that muscle in the mind.

So those are the first three of the nine levels. And we'll start on number four tomorrow.