«Дар освобождения», курс 2 «Прорыв к высшей реальности», занятие 5

[Говорящий 2] (0:00 - 7:50)
Watch your breath, put your mind at your nose, watch your breath, and picture a moon with sunlight pouring in golden sunlight, like molten gold. It's like an orange-ish deep color. You can look out the window and see blue sky.

Then picture your teacher sitting in front of you, your own heart teacher, whoever that is. And just stay content in their presence, not doing anything, not saying anything, just sitting in a golden room with your teacher, quietly, silently, in each other's presence. The object of this meditation is the feeling of being in their presence.

Come back to their presence, and slowly come back to this room. You can open your eyes.

[Говорящий 1] (7:50 - 21:31)
So, yesterday we laughed it out. Yesterday we laughed it out. Sem Yundi Jogpa, which was the first crook in the road, right here.

And a couple more comments about that. We said that first starting to meditate, Sem Jogpa, was triggered by what? I mean, what was the impetus for that?

Yeah, learning from your teacher, okay? We can say, you can call the six powers, maybe you can call them the six impetire or something, impetuses, okay? But it's what got you to do your first meditation.

Do you have a poster? Okay, so we're on the first bend in the road, on the left. The Mars got his two instruments waving, right?

And that's Yundi Jogpa, meaning that's the point where you first have some continuity on the object. That's achieved by a different impetus called Sampey To. Say Sampey.

So, that's as opposed to Töpey To. Töpey means learning. And then Sampey means contemplation.

And that's part of a three-fold educational process in Buddhism called Tö-Sam-Gom-Sum. Let's say Tö. Tö-Sam-Gom-Sum.

So, in ancient times, traditional method of learning was first Töpey, Shruti, which means you listen to your teacher's instructions, right? Then Sampey means you go home and you think about them. It's called contemplation.

So, the difference between Töpey and Sampey is Töpey is you get the transmission from your teacher in a classroom. They give you the hearing. And then Sampey means you go home and you start thinking about it.

So, Sampey is self-motivated. You're starting to get self-motivated. Sampey is where the line between Töpey and Sampey is where you start policing yourself and doing your study at home by yourself, okay?

So, the second, by the time of this first bend in the road on the left, number nine, by the time of number nine there, you are self-running, okay? Your meditation is going out. You're at home.

You're not at the classroom anymore. And it's running on your own, okay? So, that's why it's called Sampey-Töpey.

By that time, the impetus that's keeping you running is your own practice at home. Home practice. And I think home practice is one of the things that most attracted me about Buddhism when I first met it in India.

I think the idea that a lot of the, how do you say? You know, I grew up in a church and you only practiced on Sunday for a brief period, maybe an hour. And it was very beautiful and it was very moving and I loved it very much.

I still like it. But what attracted me when I first met the Tibetans was that you could set up your own altar in your home. And you didn't have to have an intermediary between you and the boss.

You know, you could do your own practices and you could do your own rituals at home. And so, Sampey-Töpey in this context means you are now on your own, at home, practicing. And in most of these practices, until you get to the point where you can do your practice at home, self-motivated, to be self-motivated, you won't succeed.

You need to get to the point, also your yoga has to get to the point where you are self-policing. You have to get to a point where you don't have to go to a class every day. It's good to go to a class.

It's really, really good to go to a class. And you get a lot of new ideas and you get a lot of input. But pretty early in your practice, you have to become self-running.

Do you remember Drog-sa-wa, which came after Sa-sa-wa, which came after Ne-sa-wa, which came after Lek-ne, Lekpa-nye-pa, Ne-la-wa? What does Ne-la-wa say, Ne-la-wa? Ne-sa-wa, Sa-sa-wa, Drog-sa-wa, Nyam-jor-ke-yo-che?

What are those? First one, Lek-ne means it should be in a place where it's easy to find, honestly attained. These are the qualities of a good meditation spot.

We did them a long time ago. So, Lek-ne, Ne-la-wa means, Lek-ne means you should be able to find resources for your practice. And they should be not ill-gotten.

They shouldn't involve violence or dishonesty towards another person or creature. So, these are just basic meditation support systems. Lek-ne should be a place where you have food and you have things that are not stolen or killed.

Ne-la-wa. And the second one was Ne-sa-wa, I think. Ne-sa-wa is, the place should be a good place, meaning what?

It should have been blessed by the presence of holy beings. Or at least the text said it shouldn't have been cursed by people who broke their vows there. Or caused a schism in the sangha, for example, there.

Or some kind of bad event there. It shouldn't be a place where something bad came down. So, the place you choose for your meditation should be a place, if you can find a place which has been blessed by the presence of other retreatants.

Like, I was in Mongolia doing some practices and I was in a hermitage in the mountains and people have been doing meditation there for hundreds of years and you could feel it, right? So they say at least avoid a bad place. I think in America we're mostly in new places now.

Like Diamond Mountain is just beginning to feel different, but it'll take time. It'll take a couple of generations. So Ne-sa-wa.

Ne-sa-sa-wa, a good place, a good area, in the sense of what? Shouldn't be too cold. Shouldn't be too hot.

You know, you should have hot water. Toilet should work. But mainly it's that it shouldn't be out of the range of comfortable living of a human being.

It shouldn't be so cold that you get sick. It shouldn't be so hot that you can't concentrate. Sa-sa-wa.

Then we were, I was talking about Drog-sa-wa. What's Drog-sa-wa? Drog-po.

What's Drog? That was included in the last one. Yeah, you said correctly, it shouldn't be a place where you have bears breaking into your cabin, scorpions crawling all over your bed.

Drog-sa-wa means good friends, right? You should have good meditation companions. And what did this mean?

Yeah, who said it? Yeah, they should be heavyweights. The text said, looks like mafia from the corner of your eye.

You know, you walk into a restaurant and there's a mafia guy there. I was in a tea house in Japan and the Yakuza guys walked in. And you don't go like this, you know.

You drink your tea and you're kind of like. You watch them but you don't stare at them. Because then you get a tattoo.

But anyway. So, in the text it means you should have meditation companions. It says very good.

It said especially beginners. And it said at least three of you together would be good. But then it said they should be heavyweights, right?

They should be serious people. Serious, I like to call them hardcore practitioners. And if they're not, then they're just going to waste your time.

They're going to drive you down. They had a rule in my coach. I played tennis in high school.

There was a debate whether it was a varsity sport or not. Because it was too wimpy. During the season, the coach had a rule that you were not allowed to play tennis with anyone who wasn't better than you.

It was a rule. Especially not girls. So, you know, he just had a rule that you couldn't.

If you played anybody, you had to play somebody better than you during the season. And it's kind of like that with meditation. You shouldn't be meditating with people who are not serious.

It's good to meditate with others. But if they're not disciplined and they're not working hard, then they're going to just make you lazy. So, when I say home practice, it's good to do.

You must learn to do home practice. And hopefully you can make a connection with some people that you can meditate with, that you can practice with. But what I wanted to say was, don't wait for them.

Like, you can say, let's meet at 9 o'clock on Wednesday. And if they're not there by 9 or 5, then start meditating. And if they're consistently not showing up, then just stop.

You know, you have to be self-running. In the end, you have to self-run your yoga, your meditation and your study. And you can't wait for other people.

And your book. And even if nobody else is doing their book, you get out your book and you do it. Okay.

While we're on the subject, what was the last one? NYANG SROG GI RGYOR CHE Huh? Yeah.

You need your... NYANG SROG means yogi. You need your yogi stuff.

Yogi stuff. Yogi stuff means your poster with the notes on it. Okay?

You need your notes, okay? That's why the teacher went through the whole class today, was that you would be prepared. So the yogi's necessities, or yogi's...

What do you call it? Yoja can mean furniture in a house. It can mean your clothes.

Stuff you need to be what you are. So yogi stuff is your training. And you have to have with you your reference, your notes, your poster, you know, what you learned.

And it has to be ready. Someone has to have trained you. And that's the last...

I think it's five. I'm not mistaken. Maybe I missed one.

I don't think so. Okay. So we were at Gyuji Jopa.

And what I wanted to say was... So you have, by this time, that is achieved by self-motivated practice. Is this more irritating for you to hear my...

Or should I clip it on here and you can't hear me? You like the clip thing? Let's have a vote.

How many go for the clip? All right. The problem is I find myself talking like this.

Okay. Okay, we'll go for the clip. I have this theory that the big exhalation things wake people up.

But anyway. So now we're ready to talk about the first of the four modes. The states of mind.

We have what? We have nine levels. Six powers.

Four states of mind. Five problems. Eight fixes.

Okay. So now we got to our first state of mind. The first two of the nine levels are achieved by something called Drimde Jopa.

Say Drimde. Drimde. Jopa.

[Говорящий 2] (21:31 - 21:32)
Jopa.

[Говорящий 1] (21:32 - 24:45)
Drimde. Drimde. Jopa.

Jopa. Drim is a tough word in Tibet. Drim means...

There's no English word that's exact. It means concentrated conscious effort. Concentrated conscious effort.

Drim. Drimde Jopa means the first two levels require some sort of concentrated effort on your part to get into there. So to get to the place where you are on the object like a fly or you are on the object briefly, those first two levels require some rather gross and...

What do you call it? Considerable mental effort. It's not at all natural and it's not at all fun and it's not at all a flaw.

Like for the first two levels, when you're starting your meditation, it's like starting a cold car. It's like it's going to take some work to get your mind down into meditation. So Drimde Jopa means engaging only with difficulty or something like that.

Engaging only with difficult concentration. It's an effort to get started. That's a mayinga.

That implies something later, which is what? Yeah, later it's going to become much more easy. Be more of a...

What do you call that? In the groove or flow. All right.

I'm going to go back to the poster. Cool. So I'm at number 10.

Dine... Okay, Dine Sunte means I'm at number 10, okay? The elephant has a yamaka on.

All right. That's very significant. It says Dine Sunte from this point on.

Go kar che rim ke helwa. De sel chadam, ne chad che hel joa. Okay.

But the Tibetan is very... What do you call it? They over-inked it?

You can't read it. It says from this point on that the head of the elephant will start to become more white. Okay, the blackness will recede from the elephant's head.

And that represents that two qualities of meditation are increasing at this point. Say sel chad. Sel chad.

Ne chad.

[Говорящий 2] (24:45 - 24:46)
Ne chad.

[Говорящий 1] (24:46 - 24:48)
Sel chad. Sel chad. Ne chad.

[Говорящий 2] (24:48 - 24:49)
Ne chad.

[Говорящий 1] (24:51 - 31:56)
I'll start with ne chad, okay? Ne chad means fixation. Your ability to keep your mind on the object.

Your ability to stay on the object. And then sel chad means clarity. The condition of...

chad means condition, okay? Sel means clear, like ozel means clear light, right? And then ne means to stay.

So, ne chad is pretty basic, just that you're still on the object, all right? The mind is still on the object. In the first two levels...

I like this. This is good for me. In the first two levels of...

I think I have some seed for this in my pathway. In the first two levels of meditation, is the ne chad more or less? You see?

Less, right? So the time off the object is more than the time on the object. So ne chad is there.

Ne chad is there, but it's not much, okay? Then sel chad means clarity. It's a very common error in the study of meditation that people mistake clarity to mean the clearness of the object.

So Richard talked yesterday about the clarity of the face, and he said it got fuzzy at points. That's not what this clarity means. There is that clarity, meaning how clear is the object, right?

But in the study of meditation, when you talk about clarity, you're talking about the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed nature of the attention, the quality of the attention. So it's a quality of the attending mind and not a quality of the object. So you're not saying, do you see your teacher's eyes?

Do you see your teacher's eyebrow hairs? Or do you see their irises? It doesn't mean that.

Sel chad, clarity, in the study of meditation means, is your mind, like, engaged and happy and fresh? I like to call it freshness sometimes. Is your mind, like, fresh and perky?

Perky? You have sel chad when you're reading your favorite book, a really good book. A page-turner has sel chad.

What they call it. You can't stop reading. You have to keep turning pages, right?

You stay up until 2 a.m. reading the book. There's this sel chad. There's this brightness of the mind.

Or when you're looking at your favorite movie or stuff like that. Those are, like, sel chad. So at this point, at point number 10, the ne cha and the sel chad are getting stronger.

And the head is turning white. The blackness is receding. What was the blackness of the elephant?

Dullness, okay? So sel chad and ne cha are fighting the dullness here. Okay, I'm going to go on to number 11, and then we're going to meditate a bit.

Number 11 says, let me see how I translate this. Okay. du yin la gupe yul tsen du yin la gupe yul tsen So, say du yin la.

du yin means dupe, yin tsen means kama, guna means objects of the senses. Okay, objects of the senses. With a negative connotation.

Dupe means attached to the Starbucks coffee or something. Dupe means desire. Okay, so objects of the senses, but with a negative connotation.

Like attachment to taste, attachment to sound. Like over-attachment to music, over-attachment to doughnuts. That's a du yin, okay?

So du yin la, and then gupe means agitation, but in a special sense, which was? Towards something you want, towards something you like, okay? So you can also get agitated mentally about someone you don't like, but that's not what agitation means in the study of meditation.

Okay, so agitation. So du yin la, five objects of the senses, with regard to meditation, as objects to which your senses will be drawn away from your object of meditation. So try to meditate with someone sticking McDonald's french fries under your nose.

You know? It's not possible. Like, they talk about, what's this, dra samten gyi tse mo, what's that mean?

Dra samten gyi tse mo, means, what's dra? Dra chen, yeah. Sound?

Samten? Meditation? Tse mo means cactus thorn.

We had it. Okay? What's that mean?

Dra samten gyi tse mo. What's the sentence mean? Yeah, sounds are the cactus thorn of meditation, meaning they ruin your meditation automatically, as if someone opened the door while we were meditating.

By the way, if you come late to meditation, don't open the door until you see us break the meditation. Okay? Or just don't come late, it's better.

In the monastery, they use an electric cord, okay? And I'll tell you, it don't feel good. Okay, so anyway, so what he's saying is that, this is cool, okay?

He's got traditional representations of the five objects of the senses, which you normally see in thangkas as being offered to the lama in the picture. Okay? But he's ripped them off of that context and put them in this context.

It's kind of cool. So here you have, you have it in the Heart Sutra, right? Sugme, what is it?

Sugme dharme, chime dharme, rechame chime dharme, right? Sugme dharme, chime, sugme means, the mirror represents, because a mirror reflects all the visible objects in the world, you turn a mirror on anything and then that object jumps into the glass, right? So the mirror represents attractive objects of the eye.

Like, don't meditate, don't put an altar clock on your altar that looks like that, with the paisley, and then meditate in front of it. Because there's this scene, you kind of crack your eyes and then suddenly this paisley is jumping at you. And then the mind goes to that object.

The mind, if in front of your eyes you have a, some people meditate better with their eyes half open.

[Говорящий 2] (31:57 - 31:57)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (31:57 - 34:12)
Like they go like this and they look down. But if you're going to try it that way, which can be good if you tend to get sleepy, okay? Do that, but put a very plain colored object, solid color in front of your eyes.

because if there's any kind of a design, then your eye will be caught. And that's the meaning of the mirror. Okay?

The eye being caught by, by visible things. Then, these are tingsha, say tingsha. What's tingsha?

Ting, those things on string. Ting, those are tingsha. Okay?

So they got two tingsha's here. Which is, they're going to be in the heart structure way, right? Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body.

Eyes, ear, where's nose? Oh, right here, okay? Yeah.

There's a conch shell right around number 16. Right above number 16 there's a conch shell. And in Tibet, it's traditional to put water in it and put saffron in the water.

Okay? In the opening of the conch shell. So, that represents what?

Aromas or fragrances. I find smells more distracting than sound. You know?

There's some meditation centers, I know that, that prohibit perfume, for example. I find it, or donuts. We were doing, we did a hard yoga class in where?

Taipei. And it's just over a yo-jow shop. Which is like a Chinese Dunkin' Donuts.

And it just seeps through the floor. And you can't concentrate. Okay.

At least I can't concentrate. Then, these are two peaches. Kambo.

Kambo. And it means taste. Distraction by taste.

Personally, I like to brush my teeth before I meditate.

[Говорящий 2] (34:14 - 34:14)
You know?

[Говорящий 1] (34:14 - 36:15)
If you don't, if you, you know, if you eat something sweet and then you meditate, it can actually distract you, I think. And then this is called the Nambu. Nambu means a bolt of Varanasi silk.

Okay? Which would mean what? Yeah, some objects of the touch.

So those are the five objects of the senses. Okay? He's put them in the picture.

And these represent potential candidates for agitation. Potential candidates for agitation. Those five objects of the senses.

Yeah. A bolt of silk to the left of number 10. So, I think, hopefully, you're withdrawn from the senses.

Pratyahara. Right? Hopefully, your mind is withdrawn from the objects of the senses during meditation.

If they're not, then you're going to get distracted. In your mind will go. Are they, could they be yikiyo?

Could they be dharmadhatu? What's dharmadhatu? Dharmadhatu is the, is the object of the mind.

These are the objects of the five senses. Dharmadhatu is the object of the sixth sense, which is the mind. Could these exist in the dharmadhatu?

Yeah. There's a famous thing, you know. All physical objects are divided into two.

The outside ones, and then the imagined ones. So, if you're dreaming about a maple-covered donut, that's also, okay, got it? These objects of the senses, it doesn't mean you're smelling french fries during meditation.

If you're thinking about the taste of a whopper, then that also will distract you to the dharmadhatu sense objects, the ones that are just imagined. All right, we're going to do a little meditation.

[Говорящий 2] (36:19 - 40:27)
Watch your breath. The mind is tied to the breath and nothing else. There's no other connection to any other object.

Go to the golden moon. The feeling of the light is very soft, friendly, warm, like a Christmas tree. You can see the sky, the blue sky out the window.

You can see the mountains across the valley. A heart teacher comes to sit with you and you look up into their face. Your eyes move.

Now, just stay there.

[Говорящий 1] (40:28 - 40:38)
Be satisfied, be happy, be contented with nothing more than that. Just their eyes, on your eyes, with love.

[Говорящий 2] (40:39 - 44:24)
And stay quiet and contented in the golden moon. Just be content to stay with your teacher's eyes. You don't need anything more.

This is sustenance for your mind and body. And then slowly come out. Come out and rest.

It's good, you're doing good.

[Говорящий 1] (44:24 - 48:45)
You feel a concentration, right? Feels good. Feels good in the room.

And we'll just keep going deeper and deeper and more frequently. Generally, if you can't sit in a room quietly for five minutes without doing anything, you're going to have trouble meditating. And it's a modern disease, right?

I don't know if it's modern. Maybe it's always been that way. People are just hyper.

I think computers have really... I was one of the first people to buy... I bought a laptop, an Army laptop.

It had two floppy disk drives. One had the program, one had the data. And it was $5,000.

And I'm not sure they're a good thing. But anyway, we have to balance that with meditation. So generally, if you can reach a point where you can sit in a room quietly by yourself without picking up a book or turning on the internet or listening to music, can you just sit quietly in a room by yourself for even just five minutes and just be content and enjoy your life?

And not in a lazy way, okay? Not like in a... What do you call it?

Lassitude or something. You know, not laying around, but bright and engaged and happy and present without a laptop or cell phone. That's a sign that your meditation is getting better.

Okay? And if you can't do that just on a normal basis, you're not going to be meditating well. I don't think so.

Also, the condition of your room reflects your meditation. We went to China. We went to Zhuhai.

And we went to a special school. And they want to put the diamond cutter into the universities. Beijing University and Normal University and some other universities.

They want to put diamond cutter courses. Then they showed us the psychiatry department, psychology department. And they had sandboxes.

And I've never seen them. They're waist-high boxes and they have sand in them. And then on the wall there are shelves of toy soldiers, dinosaurs, little Buddhas, you know, Spongebob, everything that you could imagine.

Little houses and trees. And then children come in and they can contour the sand anywhere they want. And then they go to the wall and there's thousands of little figurines.

And then they take, like the army guys, or they take cars. And then they build a scene in the sandbox. And it's a therapy.

And Christine Walsh was very familiar with it. And so they were like freaked out because they were very impressed. But you could, they have photos of all the children standing in front of their own creation.

And it was just like seeing somebody's room. You walk into someone's house and you say, where's your room? And they show you to their room.

And then you can see the state of their meditation in the sandbox of their room. You know, if everything is just random and scattered around and, you know, then the state of mind is that. It's a reflection of your state of mind.

It's a sandbox. Your room is a sandbox, right? So, I mean, my teacher comes into my house and they just start picking up things.

You know, like for 20 minutes it's just this thing where they're putting things away, picking up things, cleaning things. And, you know, when I studied dance, modern dance, Zeva, call her. So she would just, she would not teach the class if there was anything in the room.

She would leave. And you still had to pay for the class. So if there was a purse against the wall or a T-shirt hanging somewhere, she would take your money and leave.

You know? And so these are ways that you can tell how your meditation is. What's the condition of your room?

And do you have the capacity to sit for five minutes still, quiet, engaged, and not do anything else? These are little measurements of how your mind state is.