«Дар освобождения», курс 2 «Прорыв к высшей реальности», занятие 26

[Говорящий 2] (0:01 - 18:10)
Okay, meditate. Please watch your breath. You come to the golden moon.

Try to watch any tension around the corners of your mouth, forehead, especially between the eyebrows. Try to check your eyelids, the upper part of your eyelids. Do they have a slight tension?

Let them go. Watch your mind. See if there's any agitation, distraction, thinking about other things.

See if your mind is getting sleepy. If so, take action. Try to find a nod.

A sense of contentment in the place, the golden moon. Willingness to just be there. Without plans.

Come to the blue sky. Watch the blue sky. Endless life.

Come down to the mountains, to the valley. Struggle against your desire to think of other things or make plans. Think about what's going on in the world.

Just struggle to find a sense of contentment. Willingness to stay quietly in one place, looking at the valley. Then come back to the golden moon.

Ask your heart teacher to sit with you quietly, contented. Meditate on their eyes, gazing on you, gazing at your eyes and the love passing between you. If you start to wander, you might try making your eyes smaller.

Then slowly come back to this one.

[Говорящий 1] (18:17 - 53:37)
Just a few practical things. Towards the end of a program like this, it's really important, if you teach a program like this also, to start getting people thinking about how they're going to keep going. So you have to think a lot about that.

And there's some practical things. And I'd like the yoga teachers to talk about this too, today and tomorrow in the class. Like, in your mind, where are you going to meditate?

In your house. That's a good exercise to do at this point. Even if you're a long-time meditator, what's your plan?

Are you going to meditate in the same spot? In your house? That's a way to start the process of, how am I going to keep this going after I get out of here?

So I would say, try to think of a nice place in your house. A really conducive place in your house. If there's a quieter place, like if the front windows face the street, but there's a back room that doesn't face the street, that might be good.

I think judging where there's not noise, a lot of noise coming in is good. I have a nice back room, but it gets too hot. It's on the, what do you call it?

Southern Exposure? And then, I tried meditating there. So you want a room or an area of your apartment that doesn't get too cold or too hot.

I personally think it should be an area where there's not a lot of traffic. Like, you could put your cushion away and walk to and fro there, but there's an energy that builds up in a certain spot in your apartment or in your room or your house. So try to find a corner of the house which is more, the people aren't going to walk a lot there, and it's quieter, and the temperature there is good.

I can't emphasize enough how the room should be neat. The whole Zen thing of an empty temple with maybe one bowl, that's a good thing. That's a really good custom.

If the room has clothing scattered around it or books, books are very, very distracting. I don't know about you, but the titles of books staring at me during meditation is a bad idea. They are yelling out their names.

They are reminding me of what's inside of them. They're asking me if I don't want to open it up. So it's good to, if you do have bookshelves, cover them with a cloth.

Then the colors, as I said before, in the room, especially when you meditate, there's an option of leaving your eyes open, but you bring the eyelids down like this, but you keep the head up. There's a tendency if you keep the eyelids down that your head starts to go down. So keep the chin parallel to the floor, but drop the eyes and bring the eyelids down a bit.

Then your eye will catch whatever movements or, what do you call it, loud patterns there are on cloths or carpets or like that. So it's better to have a block of pure color in front of you or something like white. It's better if nobody moves during the meditation.

If you're sitting with other people and then somebody moves a hand or reaches out for something, then your eye will catch any motion at all, like a fan or a tree blowing outside. So if you choose to keep your eyes half open, which is useful, can be useful. You can experiment with it.

Normally the only time we ever close our eyes is when we sleep. So there's a, what do you call it, autonomic response of the body. When the eyes close, the mind thinks, oh, it's time to go to sleep.

Then it's very difficult for some people to meditate because the minute they close their eyes, their mind wants to go to sleep because the mind's been doing that for 30, 40, 50 years. So you might want to try cracking your eyes open. Which brings us to the subject of experimentation.

Like don't be afraid to experiment. Be curious. The really good yoga people I know, I think Allison's a good example.

I don't know her very well, but I know that she's really curious and she tries different things. Her class always has something new or something experimental type of thing. She seems to have, to play around, Anatole's like that.

With his diet and with his yoga, you can see him at odd moments in the afternoon trying something new. Just in between things. He's curious about his practice and he tries new things.

I think in your meditation, don't get stuck in a rut. Try four different seeds. The buckwheat ones, I discovered buckwheat ones after 20 years.

Then I didn't know that you could take the buckwheat out until it split open at this, what do you call it? Velcro thing in the bottom. I like the ones that you can, it has a velcro slit and you can take buckwheat shells in and out.

I like buckwheat because it forms to your butt, if you have one. Then you can just kind of squish around and it will change. It will fit to your bottom.

I have a good friend, Dieter Gewissner. He's been meditating for 40 years and he swears by a 4x4 block with no coating. He's sort of a hard, well, but it works for him.

Other people use those wraparound ones. I think Mercedes has a good thing. She travels with her own cushion.

If you're traveling a lot, there's a tendency to get sloppy. With your practice in general, there's a tendency to get sloppy. When you start teaching anything, there's a tendency to get sloppy.

You say, I taught a yoga class today, I don't really have to do yoga class. I don't know why that's logical, but it seems that way. Same with meditation.

Especially if you're a traveling, itinerant meditation yoga teacher, it's good to have your own setup that you travel with. She has a small one, a light buckwheat one, and she travels with it. I think Christine Walsh has a nice setup.

Her knees, she doesn't like to have her knees on the floor. She has a cushion for her bottom and then she has two cushions, a cushion for each knee. She doesn't get pain in the knee as the knees come down.

Swami, the lady Swami, Swaroop Anandas, Swami Prema, she has one of those little seats, metal seats with a little back on it that you take to football games. She swears by that and it seems to work for her. It's a metal, it has a cushion and then there's a metal L-shaped thing and then there's another cushion on that and it supports your lower back.

She uses that and she swears by that. I think almost everybody will find that if you get a cushion like this, a big rectangular one that fits under your knees, a lot of the suffering in sitting on the ground is at the bony point in your ankle and the bony point in your knee. So you need one cushion for under your bottom because your back and your bottom, for most people, should be higher.

In most traditions, in most of the scripture, they will say try to elevate the back of your butt slightly, which puts more pressure on your ankle bones and your knee bones. So then it's good to have a larger cushion under those. And for a lot of people, that makes all the difference.

They discover that whatever pain they had sitting cross-legged was just under those two points, under the ankle bones and under the knee bones. And then once they get a cushion under those, then they can sit for a long time. I find that if that cushion is too cushy, I start having bad posture, bad posture of my butt.

So work on that. Don't think it's somehow less to sit in a chair, but find a good chair. I like those old hardwood heavy chair, like not an easy chair.

Easy chair won't work, you'll fall asleep. Couches don't work, you'll fall asleep. Don't meditate on your bed, because that's all coated in sleep vibes.

So I like those old-fashioned heavy, solid. For some reason, if it's very solid, it seems better. Solid chair.

Personally, I like either with no arms or with wide arms, so I can have lots of room for this thing going on, or room for my knees. If I choose to sit cross-legged for some of the time. There's a preliminary that we do by tradition, and we're going to go through that in the next course.

So there's going to be, what, 20 courses, 20 separate courses, counting one theoretical course and one practical course. So we're finishing up now the first course, which was on meditation and emptiness. And then the second course, the theoretical part will be, I think, in April or something, in Phoenix.

And then we had scheduled the meditation part for July, but it looks like we'll have trouble finding a place big enough. So we're going to work that out in the next few weeks. This place isn't available in July.

But we kind of like it. But then again, we might outgrow it. So we're looking...

We'll let you know in a week or two what's going on with that. But the next course, April and July, April will be the theoretical, July will be the meditation course. That will be...

The whole thing is about the preliminaries and how to prepare your mind for a practice session and like that. In the meantime, practically, you can just use what we've been doing. You watch your breath, and then you go to the golden room.

This is a kind of meditation called jogam. There are three classical types of meditation. Jogam means you place the mind on a single object and you stay there.

There's no motion. It's just there. And that's what I'd like you to try until April.

So I'd like you to try that until April. It's good to have like a three, four month meditation assignment. If you switch more often than that, you don't go very deep.

If you don't switch at all, you get bored. So three, four months is a good time. What we're trying to achieve in this first course is jogam.

So jogam is the capacity of the mind to stay on a single object, a static single object, jok. Jok means to set the mind, jogam. There are two other kinds of meditation recognized in our lineage and sometimes not in other lineages, but in Tsongkhapa's lineage, the Dalai Lama's lineage.

One is called shargon. So shargon means you review a list of things. I like to think of it as synapse building.

Like you're building synapses for a certain series of thoughts. You continue a certain series of thoughts over and over again. For example, if you sat down and reviewed in your mind how to teach the pen, that would be a shargon.

First, I'm going to go to a yoga center. They're going to see the meditation poster, so they're going to get all excited. Then I'm going to offer to teach the meditation poster.

Then halfway through the meditation poster, I'm going to sneak them over to emptiness. What do you call it? Bait and switch.

Then I'm going to hold up a pen. Then I'm going to ask them, what is this? They're all going to see a pen.

Then I'm going to say, what would happen if a dog came in here? I waved it in front of a dog. What would they do?

They're going to say, chew on it. Then I'll try to get them to come to some easy noun that I can use throughout the talk, like chew toy or dog toy or bone. Okay, chew toy.

I'm going to make sure the translator knows how to translate chew toy before we get in there. Then I'm going to ask them, who's right? Is the dog right or the human is right?

Then they're going to think about it. They'll get a little confused for a minute. They'll try to tend towards the human point of view, but then they'll overcome that themselves.

I don't have to do anything. They'll understand that both the dog and the human are right. Then I'll probably throw the pen on the floor and walk away from it a little bit and say, well, what would happen if all the people in the room left and all the dogs in the room left?

Then Geshe Michael said he had found it better rather than saying, what is it? If he said, which one is it? Then, got it?

It works better. It hits them harder because they've been struggling with it being both. Then you throw it on the ground and you say all the dogs left and all the humans left.

Now, which one is it now? Then in that next moment, they hit emptiness. Their mind hits emptiness.

It's extraordinary, right? Rather than two weeks of a long lam rim one or many scripture thing, within two minutes, then they're at emptiness and they'll never forget it. You can't go back from that point.

Then immediately you hit them with, so is the pen coming this way or is the pen coming this way? Which way is the pen coming? Nobody in an audience of a thousand people in China who never heard anything about this, nobody thought it was coming this way.

After those few steps, nobody thought it was coming this way. Then you got them where you want them. Then you hit them with seeds.

Then you hit them with seeds. You say, why is that coming from your mind and why is that coming from the dog's mind? What's the difference?

They think about it and they say, there must be something different in your mind. A few college-educated people will say, because I learned that. I learned what a pen was.

My mom taught me what a pen was. That's why I conceived it as a pen. A few people will think that, but not many.

You can overcome that. You can talk about that. That's a side objection.

You come back to the main thing, which is that there must be something in a dog's mind and there must be something in a human's mind. There must be. It must be.

If it's coming this way, there must be some difference in the two minds. There must be something in the two minds which is different. Then you jump right to the...

Then you ask them, how do you think I got in the mind? How did the seed get in their mind? You have to jump to seed, okay?

I don't think there's any logical way to go to seed, but hopefully they won't notice that you jumped to it. Then you say, well, it must be a seed in your mind. Then you say, well, who put the seed there?

How'd you get the seed? Then you say, well, you must have done it for somebody else. Then in six minutes, they have the essence of all Buddhist teaching and they have enough information to have a successful life.

Then they just need to refine it. Specifically, you have to go on to how to speed it up or how to explain cases where people try it and it doesn't work. That gets into the confession or purification.

Then you can go on to yamas and niyamas and like that. So I just did a shargon with you. And I would listen to that.

This thing will be downloadable. The whole week will be downloadable. We'll give you a piece of paper in the afternoon with all the links and stuff.

But I would listen to this class and I would listen to that little vignette. And I would practice doing a shargon. You could do that.

I want you to do the lama meditation once a day. You have to promise me to do the lama meditation once a day. I will extract the mazal from you later.

Those of you who don't know mazal, it's a Yiddish word for, in the diamond business, for I agree. It's a deal. It literally means mazal u'vracha, something like that.

Something like good luck or health, something like that. But in the diamond business, we don't have contracts. In the big business, in the really high-level business, we don't have contracts, we don't have written agreements because those can be checked by the tax authorities.

No, not really. But everything is verbal. All agreements are verbal.

And you never break it. You never break an agreement. If you say mazal, it means I agree to the terms just stated.

And nobody ever breaks it. If you break it and you're known to break it, nobody will sell you a stone. So it's just a self-policing thing.

There's no arbitration. There's no suing. You're not allowed to take a person to court.

It's just all trust, totally trust. But so mazal is a very sacred thing. I give my sacred word.

And it works. It works really nice. It's amazing.

At the highest levels, that business is a very beautiful and trustworthy business. Anyway, so I'm going to extract the mazal from you and tell you that you'll do the Lama Meditation every day. But if you want to throw in a shargam, if you want to see something like emptiness, then I would suggest a shargam.

Shargams are good later in the day. Most people's mind gets more tired as you go through the day. It's not always the case, but most people's mind gets a little more tired as they go through the day.

Normally, the evening meditations for almost everybody are not that great. They should be shorter. They should be more conceptual.

You could do a shargam in the evening or the afternoon. That's just where you sit down. This would be very good for you because I want you to teach.

You see? I want everybody to teach. So that would be really good.

And you don't have to teach in a big crowd. People tell me... I think Jamie...

I took him to China or somewhere and he said, Geshe-la, I'm no good in front of a big crowd. I just can't do it. I feel uncomfortable.

I get nervous. I tie up. So I said, well, let's start with a breakout group.

You know, you start with six people. You start with seven people. And then he became the star of the breakout group.

Everybody fell in love with him. In Vietnam, we took him. We couldn't advertise the talk because it was illegal to advertise the talk until the government had approved it and the government was too slow.

And the day before we got there, we still hadn't advertised the talk. We got permission from the government just before the talk. So then Jamie puts his photo out on Vietnam Facebook and says, I'll be there teaching, you know.

And then like 600 ladies came. So you can start with small groups. You know, you can start small.

I want you to teach. Then we did a bait and switch to Geshe-la. But anyway.

But you can start with small groups. Start with your friends. And it's very, very good to do a chargong for a couple weeks on what I just did.

Because with that, you can save a person's life. With that little thing, you can save a person's life. So that's really beautiful.

So if you want a chargong, if you want to fool around with a chargong, then try that. Do that chargong. It's just, what am I going to say next?

And then what will I say after that? And if somebody says, my mom taught me how to see a pen, then how am I going to answer that? And then you come back to, you know, you review your presentation.

That's a chargong. The last traditional kind of meditation is chegong. Chegong means analytical meditation.

You can call it a problem-solving meditation. You present a problem to your mind and then you work it out. The stuff we covered in class in this last week is not something that you can grasp completely on first hearing, okay?

Americans feel more comfortable, you know, our Western society, we feel more, we normally read something and expect to understand it on the first reading. I don't know about you, but I rarely reread a book. I rarely see a movie twice, you know?

There aren't a lot of movies I've ever seen that would bear a second seeing, you know? That would still be, that I could find more in it if I saw it again. A few movies are like that.

And a few books are like that. So we're used to reading something once and then setting it down and then going on to the next thing, you see? But these ideas, these thoughts, they need to be thought about for years.

We are required in the monastery to memorize the whole book before we're taught the book. So I memorized the Abhidharma before I knew the meaning of the words. I didn't know what it was saying.

They were just gibberish words to me. So, and then you live with it your whole life. It's in your mind your whole life.

And you can call it up anytime and you can think about it. Because after 20, 30, 40 years, you still haven't found the depth of it, you know? These things are different.

These ideas are different. They have infinite depth. And you can keep digging deeper for the rest of your life.

And you won't hit the bottom. You'll still have new ideas about it. So, so a chaigong would be, for example, he said something about Nick.

He said, you're going to become famous. You're going to need everybody's meditation for years. But he said something about Nick.

He said something about that there were two Nicks appearing to me at any given time. One existed and one didn't exist. The one that didn't exist was something like gotcha, gotcha.

And then somehow they were mixed together like water and milk. And I had to try to understand why one of them wasn't there. And somehow he said my mind was doing something impossible, like something to do with parts in a whole.

And it was that I couldn't see Nick if I didn't look at his arms and legs. But if I looked at his arms and legs, I couldn't see Nick. So I must not be doing what I think I'm doing with Nick.

Nick must not be there in his parts, but he must not be something separate from his parts. If I can't see the Nick I thought I used to see by looking at his arms, without looking at his arms, but if I look at his arms and legs, I can't see the Nick I thought I was seeing, then maybe the Nick I think I'm seeing is not out there. Maybe there's some kind of Nick in my head.

Maybe there's some kind of Nick picture in my mind. And I've been living with that my whole life. And then where would that come from?

Then you try to work out a problem. Especially if you have an objection to a teaching. If there's a part of the teaching that didn't seem comfortable for you.

In Buddhism, there's a tradition that you don't reject it outright. Because you don't have enough information to reject it either. You may not have enough information to accept an idea, but it's considered good karma not to reject it without more information.

So there's a third choice in Buddhism called putting it on the shelf. So you say, I have trouble with this reincarnation thing. I'm not comfortable with the rebirth thing.

It doesn't quite make sense to me. I heard it from a pretty serious teacher. They seem to have studied very long.

Maybe they have even seen a future life. But I can't confirm it. Be honest with your practice.

I can't confirm it. I'll put it on the shelf for a while until I get more information. Don't reject it.

Don't say, I don't believe it. Because that's a bad karma. Say, I'm not going to accept it right away.

But then those should be the objects of your cegoms. Those should be the objects of your problem-solving meditation. You should be going to the shelf, pulling down that idea that you weren't sure about, and checking it every once in a while to see if you're ready to crack it yet or not.

Those are the three classical forms of meditation. I would suggest you do a lama meditation every day. Everything comes from your teacher.

Everything. That's, what do you call it? That's priority.

If you only do one meditation in the day, do a teacher meditation. Do a jogam. Sit with your teacher.

If you have a good relationship with your teacher, the rest will come. The rest will come. You can sit and do the other meditations for your whole life without a teacher, and you won't get anywhere.

It won't come. So better to, that is the most powerful meditation. Just sit with your teacher.

Be quiet. Be silent. Be satisfied to sit with them.

Don't worry that you have to do anything else. Just being in their presence is enough. They can touch your hand or something.

It's enough. They will bless you, and all other things will come. That's the most important way, meditation.

But then, it's so much fun to teach, and it's so useful. If you could do that pen thing with somebody and get them to the point where they knew how to get a good partner, or they knew how to get health, how to fix a health problem, or they knew how to get money, whatever they want. But that jargon is pretty cool.

If you got good at teaching it, listen to it again, okay? Do it. Get it.

And just in your mind, imagine yourself teaching it. Do a role-playing in your mind. Say, oh, I'll get up.

I'm going to be all nervous, but I can stall with the pen thing. I can hold it up longer, and like that. By the way, if you ever get nervous, or you ever freeze on a stage, you just started meditation.

And it looks very mystical. You're like... This time...

It's helpful. It's helpful. Everybody needs it sometimes.

But the most beautiful karma you can create, the most powerful karma you can create to understand emptiness, besides your teacher, is to teach, right? Is to help others learn it. So do that jargon.

Learn that little piece there about the pen. If you get good at that, and your crowd gets bored with that, you can learn the aspen one. The aspen one's also good.

Maybe we'll do that in the afternoon or something. And then you can do sargams on that. I think it's a much more powerful sargam if it's in the context of, I have to teach this.

I'm going to be teaching this. I've got to learn this. I've got to learn this shtick.

I saw a lady, Wendy, right? She did a play by Beckett called The Mouth or something. There's a big barrier between you and the audience, and there's just one hole.

And there's one actor, and the actor puts their mouth up against the hole, and they just recite this, what do you call it? Free flow thing. What do you call that guy that wrote Joyce?

You just do this thing where you just blah, blah, blah for two hours, and you have to memorize it. It's supposed to be a free association thing, but of course the actor has to memorize it. And she did it, and I was like, wow.

So if somebody can do that, you can remember six parts to a pen memory. Okay. All right.

So learn that shtick. Learn to get up and do that shtick. If you have that motivation, then the meditation will be much, much more powerful.

If it's in the context of I'm going to have to get up and do this in a week or two weeks or a month when I teach the poster and then do the bait and switch, work on that. Then you'll be excited about it, and you'll be into it. I don't want to screw up in front of 10 people.

I want it to be ready. So do a sargam. In the evening, a sargam.

I review meditation on the pen. How to teach the pen. Let's say how to teach the pen.

And then in the morning, a lama meditation. Lama meditation is static. Nothing has to happen.

Everything's quiet. There's no movement going on. I mean, they're breathing and like that, and they're blinking, but it's just love.

It's just a meditation on the love between teacher and the student. And make the place golden, because that keeps you awake. That prevents subtle dullness.

The sky, the light, the golden light, that's meant to prevent subtle dullness. Okay, so let's go back to the golden room for a while.

[Говорящий 2] (53:43 - 1:00:42)
Okay, so come to your breath. Come to the golden room. Then right away, ask your teacher to come.

Sit in front of you. And they lay their hands on your hands. Then come straight to the hands, feeling of the hands, the warmth of the hands.

Keep your mind there. Try to go straight to nar, feeling of contentment. The world is as it should be.

My teacher is with me. My teacher is holding my hand. And that's all I need.

That's all I need for myself, and that's all I need to help people. Stay in that contentment. So I come back to this room.

Open your eyes.

[Говорящий 1] (1:00:47 - 1:05:29)
So frequent meditations like that are much more powerful than long, rambling meditations. Okay? Frequent, short, powerful meditations are much, much more effective than long, rambling meditations.

I felt this wave of disappointment that we didn't meditate for 18 hours a day. And you can do that. I've been to those things.

I've done it. What happens is you hurt really bad. Your body hurts really bad.

And then you do wonder, you go on a huge, maybe a chance to call it international trip, and you go through your whole life. You wander through the events of your life. You wander through all the problems of your life.

You wander through your problems at work. You wander through what's going to happen to you in the future. And it has a purpose.

It has a place. It's a long review of your life and the problems of your life. And you have breakdowns.

One lady broke down crying in the middle of class because her legs hurt so bad. They torture you. And it has its place.

It has been cathartic for me to do long meditation things like that. But it's not shamatha. It's not shamatha.

And you can't see emptiness with that. It's a nice psychological review of your life. And it has its place.

It's a useful thing. But it's not a state of concentration. It's a long rambling, wandering through your life.

Something like that. So give this a try. People say, Oh, you didn't wake up at 4 o'clock and you didn't make us meditate for 12 hours.

And my knees didn't hurt that bad. And I'm not sure if I should get my money back or something. Try this.

This is real focus and real concentration. Frequent, small, 5 to 10 minute meditations. The increase in time will build up naturally.

We increased like 300% or something. If you want metrics. And we did.

But it was high quality meditation. And it will lead to shamatha. And the long rambling things won't.

So try frequent, short meditations. You can even do meditation for 10 minutes. Do some of your yoga.

Come back and do another 10 minutes. And then the increase in time will come. In a few weeks or a few months, you'll be up to whatever you want.

An hour, 45 minutes or something. But it will be high quality. So don't allow yourself to do a long, low quality meditation.

Because that's a very... I like the word pernicious. It's a pernicious bad habit.

It's like learning to pronounce a foreign language wrong. And then you can't change. You can't fix it.

You can never fix it. So don't let yourself do a long, rambling meditation where you're all dullness and agitation. Don't allow it.

If you feel like it's getting out of hand, stop it. And do shorter ones. High quality.

Is Becky here? You ready? By the way, you can talk when you step out of the door.

Anna's like, shucks, I thought you were going to invite me for that. No. When you step out of this door, you can speak.

Don't overdo it because you'll get a headache. And it's typical after a retreat like this that when you start talking again, you feel disoriented. And you feel...

you overdo it. It's like fasting and then you start on donuts. The first thing after the fast is the donut.

So take it a little bit easy, but also expect a little disorientation. It's okay. I think you're going to blab a lot, and that's fun.

And then meet people that you don't know. You have a few meals left, and use the time to create little collaborations. I like those things.

Let's go teach the poster in Flagstaff together next week. I like that. Maybe with someone that you don't know very well.

Let's try. I'll come to your city and teach, you come to my city and teach. Something like that.