Медитация 5

[Говорящий 1] (0:07 - 30:49)
So, we'll go through the first three meditations and then we'll add another one today, okay? So, get ready. So, start your sadhana.

We'll start with the meditation where we try to be completely still and not move. Draw in your tummy, push your belly button towards your spine slightly and keep that tension. Relax your forehead, relax your eyelids.

Watch for tension in the upper part of the eyelids. Draw your shoulder blades together, pop out your chin. That might involve drawing your hands back towards your hips, away from your knees.

You can try to feel, sometimes I think you can feel prana moving from your thumb to your first finger if you touch them together or even just keep a small gap between them like a sparkler. Let your fingers be still, let your torso be still. Balance your torso, open your hips.

Go back and forward a bit until you find the center. Watch the corners of your mouth. Let them relax or even smile a little bit.

If you feel sleepy, if you didn't have enough sleep, you can crack your eyes open a bit, but don't look at anything. And then settle into being completely still. Try not to move even your forehead.

Try to keep the muscles of your forehead still. Don't move your whole upper body, don't move your toes. And we'll stay like this for about five minutes, completely still, like a stone.

There's no meditation object yet, except trying to be still. Now please come to your breath, start watching your breath. If you like, you can imagine that the breath is coming in and out of the lower part of the forehead, between the eyebrows, and a little bit higher.

See if you can lengthen the exhales. It's as if you are pushing the breath further and further away from your forehead, straight out from your forehead. And also watch the breath coming in and traveling.

You can feel it running along the inside of the spine, all the way down to a spot between your legs on the inhale, but still the exhale is longer. Now change the breath to like a blue-colored light. And it's one piece, sort of like L-shaped, which is sliding up and down your body.

It slides out from your head, maybe six inches, on the exhale. But even as you exhale, part of it is still in your chest. And when you inhale, it all moves down.

The end of it touches a spot between your legs. The top of that bar at that point is at your chest. So there's a piece of it, the air is a solid piece of blue light that's sliding in and out of your nose, and then down your spine.

And see if you, especially as it travels from the neck down to the hips, try to feel the sensation of the breath sliding against the spine, the inside of the spine. Now lastly, try to pause at the end of the exhale. No pause at the end of the inhale, but try to pause slightly at the end of the exhale before the blue light starts to return to your body.

See if you can gradually work the tip of the blue light farther and farther away from your body. Then pause, and then bring it back in. And we'll spend maybe five minutes here, and then we'll take a break.

And slowly come back. Take a stretch, take a stretch. Open your eyes.

Any questions about that, or anything else this week so far? Almost. I have a question that's out of date.

All right. I've been thinking about it. In the study of the Chitra, you've spoken of at the end of the path of preparation, when we have a direct experience of an origination, when we see the mental image, and how that process forms the reality.

And I've been thinking about that when we then move into the direct experience of emptiness. It seems to me that a mental image is a positive thing, in the sense that it opens up, right? And there's a label that's placed.

Emptiness is an absence from what I understand. So it seems to me there might be something different happening in the direct experience of emptiness that's not happening when I'm seeing it, for example. Yeah, there's an argument about it.

There's a debate about it. So just before you see emptiness directly, you might be standing in front of a stove, making tea for your teacher, and you're looking at the water, so therefore it's not boiling. And you're staring at the pot, and suddenly you realize that your eyes, the eyes can only register columns and shapes.

And scientists would say that the cells at the back of the eye, and in the Abhidharma they say the same, there are tiny cells at the back of the eyeball, and they can only register colors and shapes, and they can't make decisions about what an object is, right? And so in science they would say light is bouncing off of the pot, the metal, and the black plastic candle, and the metal of the pot, and then that light strikes the cells at the back of your eye, and then the eye registers a spherical shape, or a round shape, and a straight shape where the hand is. And then a scientist would say it sends that information to the brain, and then the brain has to decide, make a decision about what the object is, based on past experience.

And a person who's, what do you call that? You lose your ability to conceptualize things. There's a psychological disease.

It's like Alzheimer's or something, dementia. It's like dementia, but you lose your ability to recognize what it is. So your eye is still working, and it's still registering a circular and a straight thing, color, silver and the color black.

And it's still sending that information to the brain, but the brain can't cognize it properly, can't recognize it anymore. So that's how a scientist would explain looking at a pot. In the theory of karma, what we would say is your mind, your eye does register round, silver, and straight black.

And then at the moment, maybe at the moment that that hits the cells at the back of the eye, then from the mind, from the opening of a karmic seed in the mind, karmic seed opens simultaneously. Everything is very well timed in the theory of karma. So I see round, silver, straight black.

And as that's coming towards me, a karmic seed is opening in my mind. And it creates a small image of a pot, and then it overlays that on the round and the black. And it could have been an elephant.

The mind could have interpreted it as an elephant, depending on which karma opened in the mind. That's why two people, whoever you dislike most in your life, or whoever irritates you the most in your life, there's someone who thinks they're fantastic. So the same sense that are being interpreted by one person as a nice person, and by another person as an irritating person, and it applies to rock and roll music and stuff, rap songs especially.

So we don't believe your mind is interpreting those things. I guess you could say that the act of interpretation is a karmic seed opening in your mind, simultaneous to the data coming in, and then they meet somewhere. Okay.

Then there's a couple of questions raised by that. If you focus on the data, is that also coming from a karmic seed? We say yes, but...

Just a battery of people.

[Говорящий 2] (30:49 - 30:51)
Ah, I think you just leaned on me.

[Говорящий 1] (30:51 - 39:08)
Oh, sorry. So that's the answer to that question before you ask it. It's, if you were just investigating the silverness, that's coming from patches of silver that a karmic seed interprets as a bigger patch of silver.

So there's always a seed opening, and there's always an image coming out of your mind, and being placed on the raw data, and that creates an object for you. I think it's that way, yeah. So Tim's question is not that.

Tim's question is, okay, so after that, you supposedly, you go, that's called chod chok, highest perception in the regular world that you can have, where you catch yourself making things by seeds opening in your mind. And then you go into a, that can be done standing and looking at a pot on the stump. That doesn't require being in a deep state of meditation.

Okay? Then you go sit down on your meditation seat, and you go into a deep state of meditation. And then the first experience triggers the second experience, which is the direct reception of emptiness.

And then sometimes that gets into the word topa, which means, R-T-O-G-S means realization. R-T-O-G means an idea, having an idea, which can often be wrong. Okay, I think so, as opposed to I know so.

Okay, so topa with an S is I know so. I realized it. Realize always means it's correct, right?

I thought he was my friend, and I realized he was a creep or something like that. And then topa means I think he's my friend. You know, I think, I think so.

You know, like you're not sure, or you imagine that he is, okay? So the process in some schools of Buddhism, the process of the mind creating an image and creating of a seed opening and an image coming out, and an object being created is called topa in some schools of Buddhism, okay? Especially the second school, South Surabica.

And then the perception of emptiness is called topme, so not topa, which implies that you're not creating an object. When you look at emptiness, when you go into the direct perception of emptiness, you must just be seeing, they believe the absence of something. So seeing that the pot is a product of a karmic seed opening in your mind, and being made on some sense data is a positive experience.

In Buddhism, it's called dependent origination. The mind is creating objects. But then Tim's question is an old question.

It's like, I don't know, it's about 1800 years old. And somebody said, well, if you see emptiness directly, that must be an experience of an absence of something, right? So you're like seeing that there's no such thing as a pot which is out there on the stone.

And it appears to my senses, and then I interpret it. The scientific idea is wrong. It's not that there's really a pot out there, and my eyes see it, and then my brain interprets it correctly or not.

We say that there's an image coming from the mind, and it's meaning data, and an object is created. So Tim's question is an old question, which is, after you realize that the pot is coming from a karmic seed that opened in your mind and created a tiny little image of light, made of light, the pot's only this big, and it's at the back. What do you call that in dance, in ballet?

There's a thing called Alexander Technique. And they're really big on a thing called kinesthetic misapprehension. So you are doing Vajrabhadrasana, sorry, Vajrabhadrasana, right?

And you think your arms are equal. It feels to you like they are level. And if someone asks you to put your arm down, you go like this.

So you misperceive that your arm is, where your arm is. When you reach Chod Chok, looking at the pot on the stove, there is a perception, a feeling of the image coming out of the karmic seed as existing in the back of your head. It's not true.

It doesn't have any location because it's mental. But it feels like kinesthetic misapprehension that it's about this big in the back of your head. The pot is an image in the back of your head that pops out of your head and goes out of your eyes and goes on to think, right?

So that's a positive thing. Then you go into deep state of meditation and it dawns on you that there are no other pots in the world. The pots that you used to think are there, which are out on the stove, without any karmic seed opening your mind.

Those never existed and they couldn't exist. So then there's this big sense of loss. It's like you lost all your friends.

You know, all the things that I thought were there weren't there. And that's supposed to be emptiness. Now, to get to Tim's question, when I have that sense of loss that things are gone, is that sense of loss also popping out of a karmic seed?

And if it is, then isn't it really a positive thing? So when a karmic seed creates an object, it creates it as something, okay? It creates it as something.

So is the pot coming out of my mind? Yes. Is it an image made of light that's only a quarter of an inch high in the back of my mind, being placed on some sense that, yes, it is.

But is the pot still metal? Yes. Why?

The image is being created as a piece of metal. As a piece of metal. Just because it wasn't metal in the first place doesn't mean it's not metal.

The image is being created as metal. That's also the answer to the question, are there no people outside of my own head? Am I really alone in the world?

And the answer to that question is, yes, you are surrounded by people. Are they coming from me? Yes.

Are they popping out of little karmic seeds in my mind? Yes. Are they real?

And then the answer is yes. Can I interact with them? Yes.

Are they outside of me? Yes. The mind is creating them outside of you.

So they have an independent existence outside of you because they are being created by your mind as an independent outside of you. You can fall in love with them. You can have a fight with them.

You can be like this president.

[Говорящий 2] (39:09 - 39:10)
Like that.

[Говорящий 1] (39:11 - 43:19)
They are coming from your mind, but as separate people. So that's the same answer. I believe the same answer about emptiness.

Is it ultimately a perception that's created by karmic seeds opening your mind? Yes. So how could it be a negative thing?

In the same way that a person could be an outside independent thing. The seed is opening. The object's being created as an absence of something.

And the schools that say that somehow the process of the creation of objects through karmic seeds doesn't apply to the time that you see emptiness, right? I believe those schools are wrong. I don't think you can defend that idea.

All things come from karma. All things pop out of karmic seeds. You can't suspend that for the 20 minutes that you see emptiness and then emptiness is somehow coming from its own side.

That would be the opposite of emptiness. That would be wrong. But the second school of wisdom has, you know, they struggle with that because they think if it's coming out of my mind and if it's a creation, it can't be an absence because absences are always uncreated.

All right? Can an absence change? We say no.

In its degree, it cannot change. Either something's there or it's not there. If it's not there, it's 100% not there.

It can't be halfway there, halfway not there. Absences are always absolute. They're always 100%.

They never are more or less absent. You can't say a three-headed purple elephant is absent from this room, pretty much. You know what I mean?

It's either there or it's not there. If it's not there, it's 100% not there. Then a lot of people and a lot of Western philosophers or students of Buddhism get confused about the question of, if an absence is absolute, does it have to be permanent?

Does it have to last forever? The answer to that is obviously no. I mean, you can be out of money today, but you can get some money tomorrow.

The absence of money in my pocket currently is absolute. It's not like I had an absence of somebody. You see, it's either you have money or you don't have anybody, but that could change.

But when I get some money, the absence of money will be gone, but it will not have fizzled out of existence gradually. You see? So it's not impermanent.

I'm sorry, it's impermanent, but it's not unchanging. It is, I'm sorry, it's impermanent. But it's unchanging.

It never gets more or less. It's either there or it's not. It can blink out of existence, but it can't get gradually less.

I can't gradually lose my absence of money. I get money, and in that moment, I've got money, and the absence of money is gone. But the absence of money never got more or less.

So a lot of people have trouble with that. A lot of Buddhists have trouble with that. So my belief, even in a deep state of meditation on emptiness, which is an absence, that's still a creation of your karma, okay?

As an absence. In the way that people are creations as outside independent things that you can relate to. One more question, and then we can go there.

[Говорящий 2] (43:21 - 43:35)
When I realize that the law of gravity is going on in my own perception, then it's not going by anymore. It's embedded in me. It's not going to pull me down anymore.

What happens about the law of karma?

[Говорящий 1] (43:35 - 46:37)
Yeah, yeah, good, good, yeah. Old question. So are laws of nature coming from my karma?

And we have to say yes. And the assumption then is that they can change, or that they could behave differently, right? If something is being created by my mind, it can no longer be constant, which means I could fly, or all the cities in the third chapter of the Yoga Sutra are based on that idea.

Even time and space itself is a product of my karmic seeds opening. So therefore, those things could be shortened or lengthened. And we have an everyday experience of that when we're at the dentist.

And time seems to be moving very slow. And then when you're kissing somebody you love, time seems to change and move faster. And so we can experience time as well.

And the law of gravity seems to be relative. It could happen differently. But what about the laws of karma?

Could the laws of karma also shift in such a way that I did something to hurt somebody and I got a good result, for example? Because in theory that's possible. If it's possible that the law of gravity could shift for a yogi, then is it possible that the law of karma could shift also?

So the question is, if it's true that things are a production of my past deeds, my karmas, then can they no longer be constant? Are all laws unconstant? Can they change?

And the answer is that the law of karma is coming from your perceptions. And it cannot change. It will be constant in the way that absences will also be constant.

So why can the law of gravity shift but the law of karma can't shift? So you should ask that question. And by the way, I'm not addressing it the other way you could address it, which I don't think is 100% honest.

But I'm just saying that you could say some people could see the laws of karma as shifting. Like evil people can believe that they could lie and something didn't happen, right? That's true.

You can be deluded about the laws of karma, but I don't think the laws of karma change at that time. It's just that you don't perceive them as correct. Because you really want an ice cream.

And there's only one left.

[Говорящий 2] (46:38 - 46:39)
You know what I mean?

[Говорящий 1] (46:43 - 48:55)
But like, I ate all the ice cream the other night. You'll find out when you go home, okay? Sorry about that.

See you with God. But yeah, it's his question in a way. It's possible that a production of the mind can be constant and unchanging and still be a production of the mind.

Because, and here I'm going beyond scripture because scripture kind of, whereas it doesn't cover all the questions that a western mind might ask. I don't think I've ever seen, well yeah, there are discussions of that. But I call it patterns.

There are common patterns. For example, there's only six kinds of creatures in the universe. According to the scriptures, you're either human or you're an animal or you're a spirit.

Or you're, there are six possibilities and never seven and never five. There's always only six possibilities. Rebirth.

And then you say, why? If the mind can make anything, why are there only six? Why can't there be seven and why can't there be five?

And I feel like the answer is all the permutations, all the possible combinations of karma can only come out in six ways. And all the possibilities of human interaction can only create two possibilities with the laws of karma. You do good, you get good, and you do bad, and you get bad, and that.

So they're not independent. They are created by your mind. The laws of karma are created by your mind.

But they cannot be, but they are constant. Okay? That's my answer.

And that's as far as I ever got on that question. All right.

[Говорящий 2] (48:55 - 48:58)
But what I'm trying to say is they are constant.

[Говорящий 1] (48:59 - 1:01:18)
Yeah, yeah. Things can be constant and be a production of the mind. Which means that they are changing from instant to instant.

But they are still constant. The same with the absence of a self-existent thing called entity. Okay?

Because they are, now here's the hard part. They are produced by karmic seeds as a constant thing. So the as is very important.

The as is very important. As in the same way that people are produced as independent outside things, which I can interact with. Are they coming from the mind?

Yes. Are you the only person in the universe? Shouldn't you be ultimately lonely?

No. Why? They do come from my mind, and I can interact with them.

Because they come from my mind as independent people with their own minds. Okay? Got it?

One more meditation. Here we go. Please come to your breath.

Watch your breath. There's a tendency when you start to focus on something, you lose your stillness. Your body moves around.

Your forehead crinkles and uncrinkles. Mouth gets higher and softer. See if you can concentrate on your breath, but not lose the looseness of your face.

And please take a little piece of your mind and separate it out from the back of the head, from the back of the skull. And like a little person who's going to watch the rest of your life. So put yourself in a part of your mind.

Step back from your mind and observe and watch your mind. Just watch thoughts come and go. It's kind of disturbing, actually, how flighty the mind is.

The mind is jumping from thought to thought wildly. And the second disturbing thing is most of those thoughts are not very important, and not very nice, not very kind. Mostly very primitive thoughts about, am I going to get something to eat, or will something that I want happen to me?

But don't judge them and don't try to change them, but just observe the state of your own thoughts. What kind of thoughts are coming up in the mind, passing from the mind, and new thoughts coming? See how they jump around like a monkey.

And they're as selfish as sometimes children, young children are selfish, and they don't think about other people. You know, please come out, relax. We taught in Russia this last month, Scott's in charge of that program for a Russian bank that has 30,000 employees.

So we're training them slowly. And Amid Diller came to Bulgaria, Amid Diller and her husband, Mark Ross, who's coming this weekend, I think. So I went to observe him teaching a class, because I've never seen him teach before.

And he said a very interesting thing that I like. He said, let your mind rest on the update. So normally I say focus on the object, or hold the object, or concentrate on the object.

But then the way he was talking, it made me feel like the object was like this for him. And in his mind, he just rested on it, rather than focusing. You would take, for example, the picture of your teacher in the way he was talking.

So I guess he doesn't do it that way. Because he said, just rest your mind on it. And it made such a big difference to me.

And it was just a verb. It was just a little word. Instead of focusing it, I said, curl up on the object and rest there.

And try that sometimes. I find it very useful. It's just a little thing, but it really is helpful.