«Дар освобождения», курс 2 «Прорыв к высшей реальности», занятие 13

[Говорящий 2] (0:00 - 12:55)
Please watch your breath. Come to the golden room. It's warm, and the light is rich, and it covers all the objects in the room, like molten gold.

Enjoy the warmth of the room. Look out the window at the sky, blue sky. Endless blue sky.

Look at the mountains and the valley that separates your cabin from the mountains. The valley is covered with light also. Be content to stay looking at the valley and the mountains.

Come back to the room. See your teacher seated in front of you, and they're holding your hands in your lap. Their hands are in your lap.

Just focus on the touch of the hands. There's nothing else in the world. Stay on the touch of the hands.

If your mind wanders, catch it and bring it back to the touch of the hands. Come back to the touch of the hands. Be happy and contented and stay on the touch of the hands.

Relax there. Take your rest there. Just the touch of the hands.

If the mind goes off the touch of the hands, catch it and bring it back. Come back to this room. Slowly open your eyes.

[Говорящий 1] (13:05 - 19:37)
So we've been talking about the fifth and sixth stages of meditation, okay? Dhūrmachepa and Śivachepa. Dhūrmachepa you can translate as controlling the mind, and Śivachepa you can translate as quieting the mind.

So five, level five out of the nine, and level six out of the nine. At level five, you were overly concentrated within. You were coming inside too hard, and then you got cimutama, you got subtle dullness, which is characterized...

How do you know when you have subtle dullness? You don't have any ignore, okay? You don't have any intensity or...

You're still on the object, and the mind is rather fresh, but there's no excitement, there's no enjoyment of the object, okay? That would be here. He got subtle dullness because he was focusing...

He was trying too hard to bring the mind in. Then at Śivachepa, he had compensated for the... How do you say?

He had compensated for the subtle dullness by turning on saṅgtupa. He uplifted the mind, and then he went too far. He corrected too far, and then he got subtle agitation, which is less common than subtle dullness.

Both of these states were achieved through watchfulness, śiṣṃ. That's what's in his right hand, he's holding it up. And the two critters are getting almost white, okay?

The two critters are almost completely white by now. So we're on to number 23. We're on to number 23.

This is another of the six powers, okay? We've reached another of the six powers, and this is the power of effort. I was wondering why they call it the power of effort.

Let's go through the powers so far and see, okay? So you got to... You started meditating because of the power of hearing from your teacher and the instructions, and then you used the saṅgbe-tok.

You thought about what your teacher said. Then you used the tenbe-tok, which is the ability to pull back the object. And then you got very good.

But at this point, where we are now, you've finished your saṅgbe-tok. You have a very powerful ability to catch yourself going off the object. And then for some reason they say, what do you call it, effort, all right?

I think it's as opposed to what comes later. I think it's as opposed to what comes later, which is, you can't say, right? Which is effortlessness, okay?

So I think they're emphasizing that this is the last point at which you have to push yourself a little bit. And then after that it's going on auto, auto-glide, okay? So they call it effort.

He says, well, let's go back. What the text says, when you get to number seven, which is up here at 24, okay? 23 was, oh, here you're going to use the power of effort, okay?

And the text says here, you use the power of effort to achieve the seventh and eighth levels. Of the nine levels, use the power of effort to achieve the seventh and eighth levels. That's what section 23 says.

Then at 24 you've reached what we call nambha-sivacepa, which means completely quieting the mind. Completely quieting the mind. I'm going to read the...

I wrote a summary of the text on what's happening at 24, okay? This is from the larger text, okay? At 24, your ability to bring your mind back to the object and your watchfulness are dzogpa.

It means they are completely mature and powerful, okay? Therefore, cinggul kye ka means it's very difficult at this point for you to get any dullness or to have your mind go off to something you like, okay? Cinggul ka.

But you have to use tsundru kitab and this might help you define what effort means, okay? You have to use the power of effort to prevent even subtle forms of either one. So subtle dullness or subtle agitation.

So at this point, you're just dealing with subtle dullness and subtle agitation. What is subtle dullness? You don't feel turned on by the object.

What is subtle agitation? You feel like you might think about lunch in a few seconds.

[Говорящий 2] (19:37 - 19:38)
All right?

[Говорящий 1] (19:39 - 31:56)
So at this point, if you want to know what he feels effort refers to, it's like going the extra length. We say in English, going the extra length to assure that you don't even have the subtle forms of dullness and agitation. So that would be effort.

That would be the meaning of effort. Effort would be you're not satisfied to have a pretty good meditation where you're still on the object and your mind is still fresh. You want more.

You want intensity, okay? And then effort is what takes you up to that. And then you don't want even those subconscious, about to happen thoughts about lunch.

You don't even want... You can feel thoughts running under your mind. When you're in meditation, you can feel potential thoughts about lunch running under their conscious mind.

And you feel like they might pop up, okay? So what he calls effort and what he means by the word effort when he says the power of effort is the slight extra effort or the extra... I don't know...

attention you need to stop even those two subtle forms of distraction. So subtle dullness, not feeling turned on. Subtle agitation.

Tiny thoughts running under your thought. And at this point you make the extra effort to stop even those. This is distinguished from the previous two by any great concern that you will fall into subtle forms of either.

So this is a very delicate... There's a lot of argument and there's a lot of discussion in the text about what's the difference between seven and eight and what's the difference between six and seven. And the way they phrase it in the ancient text at this point is you have no great concern that you will fall into subtle forms of dullness or agitation.

That's a Mahayanga, right? So the word great is the key. There's no serious danger that you will fall into.

But that implies that there is some danger. So the way they distinguish seven is they say no great danger or no serious danger that you are going to fall. And then later in the same text the author says there's no fear of great active attacks from them.

So there's a metaphor, which if we have time I'll go through it, but he compares the negative parts of your mind to a boxing match. And by this time you're in the final rounds and nobody's really taking the offensive on anybody. Both guys are just trying to stay up.

So it's not like anyone's mounting a major offense. Both guys are just kind of weaving and they're both ready to fall down and no one can mount a serious attack on them. Even your subtle forms of dullness and agitation at this point are unable to mount a serious attack on your mind.

But they are still punching once in a while. If we have time I'll read you the whole metaphor. It's very beautiful.

Because in the early stages, what? In the first few rounds, yeah, they're in control. You're like getting beat.

You're in the corner and they're just like... At this level you just make a slight effort and you can block. You can block.

What do you say? In Tibetan they say shorwa. Shorwa means to lose yourself.

Dekdar shor means to slip on ice. You see? Like that.

Or shor can mean to lose a game. So here, shorwa means you're not going to slip into, you're not going to fall down into, you're not going to uncontrollably fall down into agitation or dullness. But you might trip into there.

So shorwa means where you feed up, head down, and you land on your butt. You're not going to do that. You're not going to have a shorwa here.

But you might have a small trip. You might, what do you call it? Slip without falling.

Catch yourself. That's a good metaphor because at this point you're really good at when you start to slip, you can catch yourself really fast. And you won't get any form of dullness or agitation where you just totally fall into them, uncontrollably.

You start and you slip and you bring yourself back. We haven't had a state of mind for a while, if you noticed. I'm sure you were concerned.

We had a... At the first two of the nine levels we had a mode or a feeling. You can call it a feeling in the meditation that you had to work really hard to get into it.

Jimde jukpa. You had to focus really hard to get into it. So for the first two levels we had a state of mind described.

But then I don't... You start to feel like you got lazy and didn't have a state of mind that you wanted to talk to us about. But that's not true.

Levels three to seven have the same state of mind. So that's just the second one, right? The second of the four states of mind.

What is the second of the four states of mind? From level three to level seven Would you think that single-pointedness is more or the time off the object is more? The single-pointedness is more.

So the state of mind is single-pointedness but it's interrupted by dullness and agitation. You are more on the object than off the object. So you do have pretty much single-pointedness all the way from level three up through level seven.

But there's a feeling of somebody interrupting you. Which is very irritating, right? You enjoy something, you're into something.

Whether you're eating a meal or you're watching a TV show or you're reading a book. And then someone keeps tapping you on the shoulder. And we talked about it before.

That interrupts the sustaining quality of concentration. Concentration is like a food. Concentration is like a relief.

Some kind of mental relief and pleasure. And then someone is tapping you on the shoulder as if you were sleeping and someone kept waking you up. Then the ability of the sleep to refresh you is destroyed.

Same with meditation. If there's somebody there who keeps interrupting you or knocking you on the shoulder, then that's the feeling of levels three to seven. You're trying to concentrate and somebody keeps interrupting you.

Who? Dullness and agitation. In a group setting like this, there can be two kinds of interruption.

And even in a deep retreat, like a three-year retreat, there can be two kinds of interruption. One is just the person next to you sniffles or the person next to you moves or they crinkle their poster or something like that. So you have to be really careful in a group setting not to do that.

My first teacher was Geshe Nlandarkye. That's a good boy. I don't know, I met him in 1973.

Then he was teaching us like this in a group meditation. He took a single pencil. He had a bunch of pencils.

He took a single pencil and he broke it. He said, that's a person meditating alone. Then he took like ten pencils and he put them together and then he tried to break it and he put it over his knee and he couldn't break it.

He said, that's the power of ten people meditating together. So you can feed off of each other's concentration in a group. But you don't want this tapping on the shoulder thing, which physically it means shifting or sniffling.

By the way, as I said before, but I don't know if everybody got it. There's no problem with not just coming down your face. You can open your mouth and breathe through your nose and let this not come.

It just drips and it's your Arizona. It dries out. Usually it just needs a little bit of thing.

Really, you don't have to sniffle. Just let it get, see if it works for you. Just let it go.

When you get really good at meditating, you'll do that. You'll just... When you're hardcore, right?

Miksur, what do they say? Chiyorewa. Miksur Chiyorewa.

When you get to be the Yakuza of meditation. Yakuza, right? When you become heavyweight, then you're just like blind snot and you're just...

The roof can cave in and you don't stop. Somebody comes in and talks for 10 minutes and you don't even... You don't come out.

I was meditating in... I had... I don't know.

My last... When I came back from Geshe Dagye, I rented a room and I got free rent as long as I babysat the kids in the house two nights a week. It was in a...

What do you call it? Parish house. So anyway, I would just meditate and sometimes the kids would come in.

I remember one day the kids came in. They're two kids. They're like five years old.

And they came in and they're like, Mike, what are you doing? And I didn't break my meditation. I just stayed there.

And then they kept yelling, come and play with us. And I just meditated. And then they came up and tried to shake me and I just ignored them.

And then they sat down and meditated with me. 20 years later, I got a phone call from one of the kids. And he saw me on a TV thing in Manhattan.

And he said, you know, I'm a stockbroker in Manhattan and I meditate. And I never forgot where I meditated. I started the day you were...

You didn't break your meditation when you came in. So it was cool. Anyway, so outside heavyweight, cecik jupa, cecik jupa means continuing despite the interruptions by dullness and agitation.

Carrying through despite the interruptions by dullness and agitation is the mental mode from levels three to seven. Cecik jupa yi che.

[Говорящий 2] (32:03 - 32:07)
And that's all. That's all on level seven.

[Говорящий 1] (32:07 - 32:42)
It's a little bit... When we get up now into the higher parts of the chart, the whole thing becomes very theoretical for most of us. So it's a little hard to describe the differences.

So I'd like to... I'd like to more frequently meditate now. Because we're...

I think now... Most of you are through the beginning of the cold stage. You're sort of into the maturing of the cold stage.

Maybe we can push a little more.

[Говорящий 2] (32:43 - 36:12)
Okay. Watch your breath. Just your breath.

One object only. Only your breath. No other thing in the world.

Go to the golden room. Feel your teacher's hands on your hands. And then relax into that feeling.

Stay for a while. And what I'd like you to do is get in touch with your cecik.

[Говорящий 1] (36:13 - 36:22)
Try to isolate the part of your mind that catches you thinking about something else.

[Говорящий 2] (36:22 - 39:20)
Try to meet that state of mind and isolate it and see when it happens. It catches you thinking about something else. It could even be a sound in the room.

I'm your cecik. I'm the watchdog mind. Watch that state of mind do its work.

It alerts you when you're off the object. Now try to isolate and observe the part of your mind which pulls you back to the object. Tenba.

[Говорящий 1] (39:27 - 39:43)
First the alert goes off, and then the pulling back to the mind. They are so quick. They are so fast.

They are moments of consciousness. See if you can catch a moment of consciousness.

[Говорящий 2] (39:43 - 41:18)
See if you can get to know the inside of your mind. Okay, good job. Good job.

Come back. Open your eyes.

[Говорящий 1] (41:36 - 47:45)
I think as you were meditating, you might have become a little curious about something. Like, why does a certain distraction pop up at a certain time? You see what I mean?

Like, what triggers a wandering of the mind? You see? Why does the mind at 10, 19, and 30 seconds, why does the mind suddenly decide to think about something else?

I mean, that would be sort of a different way to go at the meditation rather than exerting a certain power or pulling out a certain emotion. Could we examine what they call the field of events, right? The field of causation.

Why does stuff pop up at a certain moment inside my mind? Why do I have good days and bad days in meditation? Why is it that some days the mind is just like crazy?

And then why on other days does it just seem to flow? But more particularly, in a silent moment of concentration, what is it that taps on my shoulder? Why did it choose to tap at that moment?

It seems almost like a clear pool of water. Your mind is going well. Your meditation is going well.

And then there's a blip. And what causes the blip? I read this book.

It was pretty incoherent. No, a very famous author. What's his name?

The judge in British India in the 1800s who became a yogi. Arthur Avalon. Who was a very famous juror.

And he fell in with some yogis. And then he applied his legalistic mind. He was a famous juror.

And he applied it to yoga, the theories of yoga. And he learned to translate Sanskrit better than almost anybody. And he did it secretly because he didn't want anybody to think he was crazy.

But then later he released his books on Kundalini and stuff like that. So he has a long section in one of his books describing the initial impetus of all things. Because that's a big problem in every tradition.

What caused the big bang? You are doing quantum physics. We're going to discuss what caused the big bang to explain why a blip came in your concentration.

This is quantum physics. You use the infinitesimally small to explain the large and vice versa. And then he has this long...

Then he goes way off. He gives this long incoherent thing about why something should happen at a certain time out of nothing. And the whole conversation is crazy because there is no good reason why something should suddenly happen when there was nothing before.

If there was truly nothing before. And of course our tradition says what? There was always something before.

But to try to say, you know, the non-universe was flowing along fine and then there was a big bang for some reason and then a universe started. You see what I mean? Without anything to cause the big bang.

And then somebody ran to me with a... What do you call it? Modern Science magazine, recent name.

And they said scientists had decided there must have been a big bang before the big bang to cause the big bang. Like a proto-big bang. Because of course you have to say that.

There has to be something to cause it to happen. So take that galactic thing and now bring it to your little mind trying to stay in the golden room. And there is this little flow of meditation going and suddenly there is a blip.

Is it just random? Did it just happen? Because if it is random we are always going to have blips.

Can you go to the source of the blips and turn off the faucet? You see? Can you go to the invisible source of the blips and turn off the faucet?

And that is... I hate to say the word because I sound like Billy Graham but that is morality. That is an ethical way of life.

That is being nice to others. Dharmamitra, Sri Dharmamitra, no yoga, no peace. He would rightly say, he would beautifully say, he doesn't say morality.

I don't think I have heard him say morality. He just says, he says be nice to other people. And we like to tell this story of...

There is this famous story that I heard in a class one day. He was late for class on his little bicycle thing. His collapsible...

Yeah, and he had cut off a bus. He had swerved in front of a bus and the bus had to stop. And then the bus driver yelled at him.

And then the bus went on and Dharmamitra went on. And then Dharmamitra decided on his way to our class that he had offended the driver. So he pedaled really fast and turned around and cut off to the bus and stopped next to the driver and apologized.

And that's why he was late for class. I mean, that's his level of morality. That's his level of not hurting other people.

And then he's the best, physically the best yogi in the world maybe? I don't know. He does a headstand with no hands.

Just on a sewer... We call it a sewer lid. He was in Vogue magazine or something.

I forget the magazine, but anyway.

[Говорящий 2] (47:46 - 47:47)
Anyway.

[Говорящий 1] (47:49 - 58:09)
He's like this, upside down, and he's just balancing on a corner. So if we can be extremely careful not to hurt other people and to encourage and help other people, then we are working at the source of the blitz. We are shutting off the faucet to the blitz in meditation.

So all this whole chart is pretty much useless. You are applying antidotes to blitz. These are after the fact.

The blitz happens and then you work on it. But that other approach, which is buried deep in the text, component number five of the six components of preliminaries of meditation, be a nice person. Don't hurt other people.

If we can go to the source of the blitz and shut them off, then this becomes less important and that becomes more important. So it's good to know how to deal with blitz after they happen. It's good to become a blitz maintenance man.

But it would be better to stop the source of the blitz. It's good to learn these things and it's good to apply the right antidotes at the right time. It's good to manage your blitz.

Blitz manager. It's good to be a blitz manager. But I think simultaneously, in a class or a course like this, we have to talk about the source of the blitz and we have to spend some time focusing on that also.

Which means study the yamas and niyamas. In yogic terms, the yamas and niyamas. In Buddhist terms, the ten virtues.

What I'd like to do is put a little attention on those. We were in China. We were teaching.

There comes a time in the Diamond Cutter Institute retreat where the group leaders are supposed to explain the ten virtues to their little group, which is typically ten people. So if we had 300 people, on that day we had 30 people in the group because we only had ten teachers. We were supposed to bring 30 teachers.

But everyone's sort of not looking forward to sitting down with a group of business people and explaining the ten virtues to them because they're afraid they'll think we're getting religious on them or something. Then the universal reaction, in every country, and we also did it at British Airways. We gave a program for the management of British Airways.

We gave a retreat for the management of British Airways. Then we were all kind of not looking forward to explaining the ten virtues to the vice president of operations at British Airways. Then we did it, and there was this intense sense of relief passed through the room.

In communist China, in British Airways boardroom, this intense feeling of relief, and this acknowledgement, what do you call it? This instinctive acknowledgement that this is where we should be, and this is what we should be doing, and this would make the world go right. It was very beautiful.

Whether it was in London or whether it was in Shanghai, there was the same sense of relief kind of poured through the room, and people got into it, like these big business people and these hardcore Communist Party members. They're into it. They got really into it, and they were asking great questions.

You could tell they were passionate about it by the end of the session. It was really cool. I observed our teachers teaching it, and it was fun.

Tina did it in London, and people like Nimbo and Mercy were doing it in Shanghai, Christine Walsh, but it was cool. So my proposal at this juncture, I think tomorrow sometime, I talked to Becky about it. What I'd like, oh, I didn't exactly talk, but what I'd like is, what we found out on the DCI retreats is that it works better in a small group.

So what I think we'll do, Becky will work out the logistics, but the Wednesday evening session, you just stay with your group in your cabin, and a senior, a Diamond Mountain graduate type will come, and Diamond Mountain graduate means normally they did seven years in New York, and they did seven years in Chicago. So they're good at it. So they can, they will go over with you the 10 virtues, especially the gray areas, which is where the real discussion has to take place.

Like respecting other people's relationships. Do they have to be married? What if they are estranged from each other?

What if they're divorced, but they didn't finish the paperwork yet? I think I would, what if my understanding was I could date other people, but her understanding wasn't that? And like that, you have to talk about what constitutes infidelity.

So we'll talk about that. So that'll be Wednesday evening. We'll work out the timing.

And then I thought, if you're going to do blip, what do you call it? Instead of blip management, we're talking about blip prevention, right? We're into blip prevention.

Rather, this whole chart is blip management. Maybe we should have spent more time on blip prevention, which is a lot easier. Because then the mind is flowing, and there's not this unexplained blip.

Why did it happen at this moment? Why did my mind go off at this moment? Then Thursday, maybe sometime in the morning sessions, we will keep with the groups in your cabin and go over the four powers that are used to remove old karmic seeds, old bad karmic seeds.

So whenever you talk about the process of being good to others, simultaneously you have to talk about how do I clean out all the bad karmic seeds I made before I heard about this? And there were many of them innocent, in a way. I didn't know what was the edge of, oh, this is a committed relationship or this isn't a committed relationship.

I didn't think about it when I was 18 and I did so-and-so. You know what I mean? And then I still have that seed.

So first you tell people, you know, what are the lines? And then they're all upset because they realize they didn't honor those lines their whole life. And then they say, then the immediate reaction, even in China or even in British Airways boardroom is, is there any way that I, you know?

It's really cute. It doesn't matter where you are. If a person's intelligent, which all the people on earth are, then the next thought is, is there any deal you can make about the old seed?

And so we'll do that Thursday morning, okay? We'll figure out some logistics. Like you stay in your cabin.

There's a four-step process outlined by Lord Buddha in a sutra called the Four Paths 2,500 years ago. And it hasn't changed. The system hasn't changed.

The method hasn't changed. There's a way to remove old karmic seeds from your mind. So I think to be good at meditation, to have a good meditation course, we have to address those items, those two items.

How do you prevent new bliss? And how do you deal with the old seeds that you've created that are making the current bliss? And then you use that in conjunction with this chart.

So you're an expert at blip management, and you become an expert at blip, proactive blip prevention before the blip happens. There's a thing, there's a beautiful thing. I don't know, Nyingbo wants it for some reason.

It's called maungpa makiwayo chöchen. It's an avidharma concept. I would have you repeat it, but you can't.

Anyway, maungpa makiwayo chöchen. Maungpa means in the future. Makiwayo means won't happen.

Chöchen means event. A non-event, a non-coming event. That would be like, you know, on a movie, they'd say non-coming event.

Like this is a movie that's never going to be finished, and you won't be able to see it. I have a feeling some of the trailers are for movies. They never get finished, right?

On some trailers, the movie never gets finished. It's like a movie that's never going to be finished. They show you the trailer, and then they say, you won't be able to see this after January 10th.

That's what you want to do with your blips, with the blips in your meditations. You want to make them maungpa makiwayo chöchen. You want them to be movies that never come out.

The trailer's there, the trailer is shown, and then the movie never comes out. A movie that never comes out. That's a good transition.

Okay, then we'll stop there, I think, right? Yeah.