Медитация 2

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 0:41)
Okay, so what I'd like to do is keep going through the three preliminary meditations we started yesterday. We only got through two of them yesterday. First one was, what do you want to call it?

The stone or something? Like you're supposed to sit still as a stone, as unmoving as a stone, and as quiet as a stone. And then the second one is, used to breath meditation, but we're trying to do it with the mintsam, out of the mintsam, the spot between your eyebrows.

So let's do that again. Let's do this.

[Говорящий 2] (0:41 - 0:42)
Any questions about that?

[Говорящий 1] (1:00 - 2:17)
So these are three meditations which you can do before you start meditating on your meditation object. So these are preliminary meditations, just like warming up for a race. And they don't have objects of their own that are particularly virtuous or powerfully charged karmically.

They are just like warming up your body before you run a race. But they're very necessary. So start with the first one.

We've been doing this thing in DCI. Every time we go to a new city, we tell them we're having a competition with all the other cities in the world about which crowd of people can be the quietest. We started it in Singapore with 1,200 people in the room.

Then we did it in Malaysia and Moscow and St. Petersburg. I don't know who won. I think Singapore won so far.

Then we record it, so I can play you the recording, which group can be most silent and most unmoving.

[Говорящий 2] (2:17 - 2:49)
So the first thing to do is to cough, sneeze, clear your throat, any boogies out. Sniffle now. Then take the seven or eight point meditation posture.

And we'll try not to move.

[Говорящий 1] (2:50 - 3:10)
Not to move means obviously you don't pick up a cup of tea or look around the room. For me it means not. I tend to sway as I meditate.

[Говорящий 2] (3:11 - 3:14)
Try not to sway.

[Говорящий 1] (3:26 - 3:35)
For me it's difficult to keep my forehead from moving as thoughts go through my mind.

[Говорящий 2] (3:35 - 3:54)
I think your forehead responds to your thoughts and moves. The muscles of the forehead move. The muscles at the corner of the mouth move when you're happy or when you're sad.

[Говорящий 1] (4:04 - 4:31)
I think the muscles of your eyelids are an indication of how relaxed you are and how much have you let go of the body. So watch the eyelids. See if you're holding them up with any kind of tension and let them go.

[Говорящий 2] (4:44 - 5:36)
The shoulder blades are slightly pressed together in the back, which puffs out the chest. Helps me if I draw my hands back on my thighs towards my hips slightly. Tuck in your tummy a little bit.

Try to draw the navel towards the spine just a little bit. We'll stay here for about five minutes.

[Говорящий 1] (5:38 - 5:59)
What you're concentrating on now is simply not moving. Try not to move anything. Not your eyebrows.

Not your forehead. Not the corners of your mouth. Not your torso.

Don't move your fingers at all. See if you can sit as still as a stone.

[Говорящий 2] (6:01 - 12:56)
We'll do it for about five minutes. Now please go to your breath. Follow your breath.

[Говорящий 1] (12:59 - 13:20)
In and out. If you like, you can imagine exiting the spot between your eyebrows. Maybe a half inch up from that spot.

The breath is coming and going from your forehead.

[Говорящий 2] (13:20 - 13:26)
In the beginning, just watch it come and go.

[Говорящий 1] (15:44 - 18:54)
I'd like you to imagine the breath. The exhalation is very long, so concentrate on long exhalations of breath, if you like, from your forehead. Now when you visualize the breath leaving the forehead, make it a blue ray of light.

It's a solid piece of breath. The same breath is moving in and out of your body. Don't think of it as air which dissipates into the atmosphere.

Think of it as like a tube of rubber that slides up your body and then out halfway, and then slides back down into your body. The same breath is moving in and out like a blue piece of rubber. It never dissipates.

It's just the same things lining up and down your body.

[Говорящий 2] (18:58 - 19:06)
As you exhale, the piece of rubber, blue light, exits from your forehead.

[Говорящий 1] (19:08 - 19:23)
Make your exhales long. Some people say they can get six inches from the head. Some people say they can get a foot from the head.

See how far you can make the breath leave the forehead until it's time to drop back in.

[Говорящий 2] (21:12 - 21:27)
Now please, when the breath is inhaled, try to see that rubber bar of breath sliding down the spine.

[Говорящий 1] (21:27 - 22:16)
So feel it not only exiting on the exhale, but see it coming inside the body and sliding down the spine until it touches the chakra, the point of energy between your legs. At the peak of the inhale, at the end of the inhale, you feel something touching the chakra between your legs, sliding down the spine and touching that spot. Then when you exhale, the breath is coming out of your body, blue bar of light coming out of your body, as far as you can take it.

Try to feel the movement, the sliding along the entire spine and then out of the forehead.

[Говорящий 2] (24:27 - 24:29)
Now the final part.

[Говорящий 1] (24:30 - 24:43)
On the exhale, try to pause when the breath is furthest out of the body before you draw it back in. On the inhale, don't pause at the end of the inhale, but pause at the end of the exhale.

[Говорящий 2] (28:32 - 28:56)
Then slowly come back to your body. You can open your eyes, stretch. Any questions?

It seems that what you're doing, having us follow through, is just a rubber going out.

[Говорящий 1] (28:56 - 29:05)
Do you get that? It's like, it's one piece that keeps going like this. It's not like the air dissipates into it.

[Говорящий 2] (29:06 - 29:20)
It seems that your mind is limited to that. Your idea of where that could go is limited to breath. What is it?

Trying to get the breath to elongate as much as possible?

[Говорящий 1] (29:23 - 30:55)
It's a physical thing and not a mental thing. The mind can take it on my own, right? But you try to not go too fast.

You can also follow your heart beat. Your heart's beating. Most people can get it about this far, I think.

They say if you're really good, you can get it this far. So the heartbeat is giving you a beat to follow. And the breath, you're exhaling.

You shouldn't try to do it more than it's comfortable. I've been at ashrams where they make you hold your breath for, I don't know, eight heartbeats and twelve heartbeats. Then they have a stopwatch.

I think that's really unhealthy to hold it in. It can cause a lung condition. It can cause a nervous condition.

So I think, then you pause on the exhale. So those of you who know the practice of Dorje Deva, what? Japa.

Yeah. You can use that. On the pause on the exhale is the ah.

And then the hum is the inhale. But some people do it the other way, and I don't think it's healthy. My own experience.

I have friends who have done it that way, and they got messed up. Michael Wick is one of them. Anyway.

[Говорящий 2] (30:56 - 30:59)
Or suspending the, eventually the breath is suspended?

[Говорящий 1] (30:59 - 34:07)
Yeah. What do they call that? In yoga.

Yeah. Kevala kumbhaka. So eventually the breath just stops.

And I don't think that's a conscious thing. I don't think you think, oh my breath is going to stop. They say when, we're going to talk about it maybe later today.

At night I guess. While Obama's slugging it out. Lovely.

That it has to do with the central channel. Sushumna. And when the breath, when the air, when the prana starts to shug ne tim.

Shug means enter. Ne means stay. Tim means dissolve into the central channel.

Then the breath will stop. And then other things start to happen. Because when that happens to the winds, you start to see strange, beautiful things.

And that's called transcended body, speech, and mind. And then because the breath has stopped, because the prana has stopped, then it affects the nerves, the eight nerves at the heart that extend to the senses, the five senses, six senses. It does something to your perceptions.

It's as if you took a drug, right? Drugs do that also. So drugs affect the prana, the movement of prana in the channels of the heart, the horizontal channels of the heart.

And then with a drug, osana, in the fourth chapter of the Yoga Sutra, first verse. A drug, what do they call that stuff? Yeah, what was the old word?

Soma. Yeah, so soma would have an effect on those channels. But good meditation does the same thing.

Or a similar, better thing. And then it affects the movement of prana in the channels that extend to your sense organs. And then you see the world differently because the prana is moving differently through those channels.

And then you have visions. And then you meet angels and cool stuff happens to you. So when the breath begins to slow down, it affects the movement of prana in the eight channels of the heart, which control the five senses.

And then your perceptions change. And you see the world in a different way. And you see people in a different way.

They're going to talk about it in the lam rim, which is interesting because normally you wouldn't talk about it in the lam rim. But he's going to, so I can. All right?

You all right?

[Говорящий 2] (34:07 - 34:10)
Is that a more permanent shift or a bad shift?

[Говорящий 1] (34:10 - 35:58)
It's only as long as you're practicing. But ultimately, there's a dozen aspirin chair headaches. You see?

Because we say there's a cause below the aspirin. So there's an energy below the aspirin which can cure the headache through the aspirin. And there's something that can open your channels through yoga.

But yoga is not the real cause. And karma is the deeper cause. That's why service is so important in conjunction with yoga.

Because like serving in a hospice, like we had a hospice training yesterday. It's the cause, real cause. And then it's expressed through yoga.

Then you're able to do certain asanas which affect the eight channels of the heart. And then that affects your senses, the movement of prana to your senses. People who get old and start to go deaf or their eyes go bad, then prana is being blocked from moving to the ends of the channels that control the senses.

And ultimately that's due to the wearing out of their debit card, their karmic debit card. So they came into this life with a debit card. Every hour you are able to see or hear, you are using up your debit card.

So then somebody has to teach you how to recharge your debit card during this life or else you will lose your eyesight and your hearing. Like that. Yeah.

[Говорящий 2] (35:59 - 36:08)
When the blue spot block stays in the central channel, then don't they stop moving to the outer channels at the same time?

[Говорящий 1] (36:09 - 36:14)
Yeah, you could say that, but wouldn't that mean that you wouldn't see or hear anything?

[Говорящий 2] (36:15 - 36:16)
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1] (36:17 - 36:30)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's when you're in meditation, deep meditation. But not...I mean, you're still...

When you're out of meditation, there must be movement of prana in those channels that control the senses, right?

[Говорящий 2] (36:30 - 36:34)
So then your senses are out of the emptiness.

[Говорящий 1] (36:35 - 36:35)
Yeah.

[Говорящий 2] (36:36 - 36:38)
And how does all this lead to the direct perception of emptiness?

[Говорящий 1] (36:40 - 40:22)
During the direct perception of emptiness, your senses are shut down, so there is no movement of prana. To explain it in terms of the inner body, there must be no movement of prana in the eight channels of the heart. And then there's...

When the prana dissolves in the central channel, at the heart chakra, around the vishibhitigna, around the point where the karmas are stored, then you go into spontaneous perception of emptiness. Direct. So how can a Buddha be in that place and still be walking around and stuff?

Only a Buddha can do that. They say a normal person can't have any perceptions of the relative world and be in the direct perception of ultimate reality. Not possible.

So what's happening with the Buddha pranically is an interesting question. They don't talk about it much. What you've learned at Diamond Mountain about those things is distilled from hundreds of scriptures.

And they don't have scriptures that discuss things. Sometimes you'll find a scripture where it's called chi len. Chi len means...

There's a famous chi len of Dharmabhadra, for example. All the times he sat down with his students and they asked him questions were recorded and carved. But the questions are all over the place.

They're not arranged by subject matter. Somebody will raise their hand and ask a question about Vinaya. Monks' vows.

And then somebody will ask about Tantra. And then somebody will ask about Abhidharma. Weird stuff.

You don't get discussions in scriptures very often. So it has to be pulled from many sources. What's happening to a Buddha pranically?

I don't think I've ever seen it discussed anywhere. It must be some kind of karma where the normal laws of physics are overruled. Override.

It's a karmic override. Like walking on water. So the wetness of water is coming from you.

And one of the big examples of emptiness is that water is not wet. The wetness in water is supplied by you. So water doesn't have to be wet.

Which means you could walk on water. You could make it hard if you had the right karma. The thing which defines water would no longer be there in the water.

Which means there's no such thing as a definition either. Is fire hot? Is fire defined as heat?

Normally, yes. But if you had the right karma you could pick up a hot coal and you wouldn't be burned. Maybe you could call it a karmic override.

Well, it's helped me override two collections of merit and wisdom. Override. It's no longer called karma, but it's the same thing.

I'm going to stop you in two minutes. We have one more meditation to do.

[Говорящий 2] (40:22 - 40:36)
How about emptiness? Is it very narrow? Is it the benefit of thinking of it as a physical emergence from the in and out versus just your awareness?

And how wide?

[Говорящий 1] (40:37 - 41:26)
They say that this channel is as wide as a wider McDonald's drinking store. Yeah. But it's interesting, once you start focusing on it, it might feel as wide as six inches or four inches.

You know what I mean? There's a sort of a feeling about how wide it is. I believe that you will find that once you're focusing on it, which kind of means your mind's inside of it, it could feel two to four inches wide.

Which it's not. It's only this wide, up on the outside. But once you're inside it, it's two to four inches, maybe.

Like that. Or you have...

[Говорящий 2] (41:26 - 41:29)
How do you experience that awareness?

[Говорящий 1] (41:31 - 42:18)
I like the bar thing because it helps me when it's sliding down the spine mostly. And it helps me keep my focus on the thing going out. There's a thing, there's a similar idea in partner practice, which is called the you.

When you're doing partner practice, you're supposed to imagine that the central channels are like a you. And you're supposed to see energy coming up and down in a you. And then I think here it's the same thing.

You could get used to that idea by seeing it as coming in and out like that. And then later you could see it as a you, the energy going through. Last question.

[Говорящий 2] (42:19 - 42:24)
I'm just wondering, how does this particular meditation trigger the breath?

[Говорящий 1] (42:25 - 43:12)
The breath what? I think it would help open the sushumna and allow prana to enter. Shugne Tim.

Enter, stay, and melt into the central channel. So for me it's just like a pipe cleaner in a pipe stem. Also when I do yoga, I think, who is it?

Karola has a nice yoga series in Argentina where she... you concentrate on the feeling of the prana moving up and down the central channel as you do your yoga. I think it's nice.

I like that. Okay, let's do one more.

[Говорящий 2] (43:14 - 43:15)
We have about ten minutes.

[Говорящий 1] (43:49 - 43:55)
So please come to your breath. Count your breath. I prefer to count my breath.

You can watch it or you can count it.

[Говорящий 2] (43:59 - 44:01)
Coming and going from the forehead.

[Говорящий 1] (44:02 - 44:10)
If the breath is moving from the nostrils, to me it's angled down.

[Говорящий 2] (44:12 - 44:15)
And if it comes from your forehead, it's coming directly out in front of you.

[Говорящий 1] (45:39 - 47:59)
Then please separate out a piece of your mind to step behind your mind and watch your mind. So a little piece of your mind. I like to feel it leaving the back of my skull, almost like a little man, a little god standing there outside of the back of my skull and watching my brain think and have thoughts.

So I'd like you to not try to control those thoughts, but try to strengthen the mental muscle which has the ability to watch the thoughts. In yoga we strengthen arms and legs. We do standing poses to strengthen the legs and we do arm balances that strengthen the arms.

And it takes months and years to strengthen them, especially the inner muscles of the abdomen and the torso. But I think we don't conceive of meditation as strengthening the mental muscle. And there are different muscles in the mind that have to be strengthened, like muscles in the body are strengthened in yoga.

So one of the most important muscles of the mind is to be able to observe your own thoughts coming and going without controlling them, but just observing. So in the beginning that muscle is atrophied, it's not strong. It's like a person who's never done yoga before.

And especially their inner musculature is weak. It's the same with us. We have to build up the strength of the mental muscle that watches the mind.

So just try to watch thoughts come and go in your mind and not to be distracted by sounds outside or plans for the rest of the day, things like that.

[Говорящий 2] (48:12 - 51:13)
Just listen what kind of thoughts are coming and going. Now I'd like you to evaluate those thoughts.

[Говорящий 1] (51:13 - 51:55)
Are they mostly about the future, things you're anticipating doing today or this week? Or are they mostly about the past, which are often things that people did to hurt us or problems in our life that came before? Are your thoughts this morning mostly thinking about what's going to happen or are they thinking about what happened in the past?

Don't try to control it, just observe it. Maybe some of the thoughts are present time.

[Говорящий 2] (51:55 - 52:02)
They are awarenesses of this room, being here.

[Говорящий 1] (52:03 - 52:13)
See which are more frequent thoughts and then we'll have a vote on election day here afterwards.

[Говорящий 2] (56:20 - 56:24)
And finally, try to come to this room, be present here.

[Говорящий 1] (56:26 - 57:30)
Try to move the thoughts away from future and away from past and see if you can bring them to this room. I find it helpful to think, to bring up a feeling of contentment or surrendering to being in this room, not wanting to do anything else right now. I postpone my plans for the future and I sort of move away from thoughts of past problems and come to this room and see if I can just, rather than forcing my mind to be in this room, I like to sort of surrender and enjoy being here.

I decided to come here. I'm with good friends, we're doing good things and I just try to be happy with being in this room and in the present moment. So let's try that just for a few minutes.

[Говорящий 2] (1:01:01 - 1:01:20)
Slowly come back to your breath. Slowly you can open your eyes. Stretch.