Медитация 7

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 0:03)
Let's start. Are you good at washers?

[Говорящий 2] (0:05 - 0:10)
Yes, it's such a great metaphor. Yeah, he can, you can, I will talk about it.

[Говорящий 1] (0:24 - 0:33)
So we'll do the three preparation meditations, then we'll do the main meditation, and then today we'll do a wrap-up meditation. So you should learn these five.

[Говорящий 2] (0:41 - 3:11)
Begin by observing your forehead. Are the muscles moving in your forehead? Are they tight?

Check the corners of your mouth. Are they tight or sometimes pulled down? Check your eyelids.

Are they relaxed or is there a little tension holding them up? Pull in your tummy just a bit. Navel towards the spine.

Then puff out your chest slightly by drawing your hands towards your hips. Bring your shoulder blades slightly together.

[Говорящий 1] (3:24 - 4:28)
We'll start the first of three preparation meditations, just warm-ups. First one is to akshobhya, to try to be totally still and unmoving. So your hands will be unmoving.

Your torso will be frozen. Your eyelids will be still. Your forehead will be relaxed and it won't change.

And your focus, mental focus, is just on observing your body and observing its stillness, that it's not moving at all. So focus on stillness. You're going to think about other things, but when your mind comes back, focus on being completely still like a stone.

If someone looked at you, they would wonder if you were alive or not.

[Говорящий 2] (4:29 - 10:26)
We'll stay there for about five minutes. Now please move to your breath.

[Говорящий 1] (10:35 - 11:34)
Move to your breath the second of the preparation meditations. Start focusing on your breath. And imagine that the breath is coming not out of the nostrils, but the breath is coming out of the forehead at a place called mindsong, which is between your eyebrows and up about half an inch.

In Sanskrit, bhruvormadhyay. And then inside the head about half an inch. So there's a hole in the lower part of your forehead.

And imagine that you're breathing through that hole. Rather than the breath slanting down as it leaves your nostrils, it's leaving your forehead straight out in front of you. Imagine breathing there.

[Говорящий 2] (11:43 - 13:13)
Please don't tighten up your face as you concentrate. Try to concentrate without tightening your face. Now as you inhale, imagine the breath brushing down the front of your spine.

[Говорящий 1] (13:14 - 13:51)
So you feel the breath as it slides down against the front of your spine to a point between your legs, which is the muladhara chakra. And feel it touch the point between your legs about half an inch into your body. So on the inhale, the breath touches, slides down the front of the spine and touches that point at the end of the inhale.

But don't pause on the inhale.

[Говорящий 2] (13:52 - 15:00)
Then exhale out again from your forehead. Now concentrate on the exhale. Long, long exhales.

[Говорящий 1] (15:01 - 15:34)
Exhale longer than inhale. And each time you exhale, see if you can send the breath out a little farther from your forehead, straight out from your forehead. But it goes a little farther than the last breath.

In the scriptures it says maybe you can get six inches out of your head, eight inches, or even a foot. So see if you can extend the exhale without effort, just gently.

[Говорящий 2] (15:35 - 15:40)
And imagine the breath coming out of your forehead and then being sucked back in.

[Говорящий 1] (16:50 - 17:50)
Now try to imagine the breath as one solid piece like a bar or a plunger on a hypodermic or something. The breath is a solid piece that's moving up out of your body, sliding out of the hole in your forehead and then sliding back down. The upper tip of that bar, which is made of blue light, slides out of the forehead and extends out in front of your head.

Then the lower, on the exhale, and then the lower part on the inhale, touches the chakra between your legs. So it's one solid piece of air that looks like blue light. And it slides in and out of the hole in the forehead in an L shape.

[Говорящий 2] (17:57 - 18:01)
When it slides down you feel it rushing against the front of your spine.

[Говорящий 1] (19:20 - 19:45)
Now be aware of a pause at the end of the exhale when the bar comes out of the head and extends out into the space in front of the forehead. There's a pause at the exhale. There's no pause at the end of the inhale, but there's a pause at the end of the exhale.

Don't force anything, just let it be natural. We'll stay there for about five minutes.

[Говорящий 2] (19:50 - 22:23)
Let your mind rest on the breath sliding. Now we'll switch to the third preparation meditation.

[Говорящий 1] (22:23 - 23:46)
To be short, take a little piece out of the back of your mind. Step back. Even let it feel like a physical stepping back from the back of your skull.

Take a little piece of your mind and watch your main mind. So the little watcher mind steps back and watches the main mind. Watch your thoughts come and go as if you were checking the weather.

How's the weather inside your mind this morning? What are the concerns of the day? What do you remember from yesterday?

You had interactions with people. Things they said or did are still fresh in your mind. Those thoughts will come, go.

It's a transition day for many of us. We're going home tonight, tomorrow. Are there thoughts coming up about that?

About what we have to do next week? Don't try to control them. Just watch them.

Check the weather in the mind today. Try to be objective and catch all the little thoughts running, passing through the mind and leaving the mind.

[Говорящий 2] (31:12 - 31:45)
Then slowly come back to your breath. Watch your breath. Then slowly come out, meditation.

Stretch, take a stretch. Okay? Any questions?

[Говорящий 1] (31:46 - 39:28)
All right then. So now we'll go on to content. Those three are just warm-up meditations.

They have no particular content, just your breath or stillness of your body or random thoughts from yesterday. I don't know. For me it's like thoughts from my science fiction novel last night and then what's for breakfast.

I don't know. What's for breakfast seems to last all day. Stuff like that.

Now we'll move on to some content. We'll do two meditations. One is something you can do after those three.

So if you have 20 minutes to meditate in the morning, do the first three for maybe 10 minutes. Try to go still and then breath and then watch your thoughts. There's a principle in Buddhism that observing something is to change it.

So if you see that your mind is going all over the place, that's probably going to help stop it from going all over the place. If you notice that you're doing something, then noticing helps to stop it. So then we'll do...

In the morning then maybe you would spend 10 minutes on your teacher, sitting with your teacher, which is what we've been talking about for the last nine days, in ancient texts that we've been reading. So focusing on your teacher. I think it's good to remember why you go to somebody to learn something.

I think there's a couple of things implied when you go to a teacher. One is that you think they have something worthwhile to learn. I think most importantly they embody that thing, so they know something but they also do it.

They're a good example of whatever they're teaching. Sometimes we admire a teacher and we admire what they know, but there's an awareness that they're not quite doing it or they're not quite embodying what they're teaching. So I think ideally we would try to find a teacher who...

Sometimes you meet a yoga teacher who can explain the yoga but who doesn't seem to be doing the yoga. So ideally you try to find one who's doing both. They know about the thing, and then they're a living example of the thing.

I think having a teacher implies those two. Ideally they should be what they're teaching, and then I want to learn from their example, from their words and from their living example. I would like to be like that.

In this next meditation we bring the teacher here and we are in their presence, we sit in their presence, and then we try to reflect upon things about them that we would like to learn. So we'll do that. And then we'll go straight into a coffee meditation, which is normally done at night as you lay down to go to bed.

After you hit your bed, it can be sitting up, it could be half laying down, it could be all the way laying down, but you bring to mind the good things you've done. Normally it's that day, during the day, but you can do the last week if you want. Some people tell me they don't have anything good to think about, then you can go back to your childhood.

There's no, what do you call it, expiration date on the good seeds in your heart. They're there from your childhood. So you can, in that meditation, is to think about good things you have done today, or this week, or this life, and just fall off to sleep with those thoughts of happiness and goodness.

That conception, it's called Dushi in Tibetan, sansnya in Sanskrit. It's to, what do you call it, you look at the good deed and you package it in your mind. You say, oh, I started it at 7.30 on her drift system, and I changed this, and then I changed this, and then I changed this, and get all the details in there, and then I walked away with it drifting slightly less and determining to ask Nick to fix it. So you package the whole karma. If you don't do that, the karma won't ripen as quickly. It will be a vague ripening.

So it's important after you do something nice to, I don't know, the Tibetan word is like conceptualize it, or review it, package it into a nice wrapped up ball. Oh, this is when I started, this is what I did, this is how I ended it, and I'm happy about that. So it's important to get the details.

Remember the details of what you did, and then leave it with a nice feeling. At 9.25 I finished, and I left. And that little deed exists in history.

In Abhidharma they say, ,NAM BAR DU BYED MA YIN PAS GZUGS, It means a cosmic photograph was taken and went out. Light from my body as I was fixing the faucet, trying to fix the faucet, actually went out into the universe. It struck the edge of the atmosphere.

It vibrated against the ether of space. And that action is now light traveling through the universe, and reverberating. It's hitting stars, it's hitting planets, and it will never stop.

They call it like a cosmic photograph was taken. I did it. The sunlight bounced off of my hands as they were moving.

That reflected light with a certain intention behind it. And that light will continue to travel forever to the universe. And just think about that.

If you package it that way, then the karma just keeps going. And you will have people fix your faucets poorly forever. All right.

All right, so let's start.

[Говорящий 2] (39:28 - 41:22)
We'll finish those two. So please come back to your breath. Relax your face again.

Normally you'd just have gone straight through, right? And please bring your teacher to sit in front of you. Knee to knee.

Your own personal teacher. Heart teacher. The one who has helped you open your heart the most in this life.

[Говорящий 1] (41:38 - 41:49)
I like to add a little sunlight, golden sunlight around them, which makes it easier to stay sharp in the meditation. Can feel the warmth from their body.

[Говорящий 2] (41:52 - 41:55)
Fragrance from their skin.

[Говорящий 1] (41:55 - 42:03)
Aware of the rustle of their clothing on their chest as they breathe.

[Говорящий 2] (42:03 - 42:08)
So it's not just a visualization, it's a real person.

[Говорящий 1] (43:49 - 44:13)
Now be aware of the pores of their skin. Focus on the pores of their skin, the tiny little holes in their skin through which air passes, sweat passes. Tiny little sand-like sprinkle through across the surface of their skin.

[Говорящий 2] (44:14 - 44:15)
Tiny pores.

[Говорящий 1] (44:40 - 45:03)
Bring your mind down into one of those pores. Pick a place. I don't know, for me it's their left forearm.

I'm going to go travel like a spaceship into one of the pores on the skin of their forearm.

[Говорящий 2] (45:12 - 45:16)
And it's dark there like space, like outer space.

[Говорящий 1] (45:18 - 45:36)
And there's a planet, an entire planet, revolving in darkness of space within the pore. And it's a whole planet with clouds and oceans, continents.

[Говорящий 2] (45:38 - 45:41)
And I'm watching the planet slowly spin.

[Говорящий 1] (46:23 - 47:39)
And I come down, my mind comes down through the atmosphere, through the clouds, through the sky, to the earth, the land of the planet, into the cities, above the cities, watching the people there. And I see the people are already enlightened, all of them, on the whole planet.

[Говорящий 2] (47:40 - 47:53)
No poverty, no hunger, no war, no anger, no death.

[Говорящий 1] (47:54 - 48:14)
Just complete happiness, contentment, harmony, serving each other. Imagine a whole planet. Watch the people come and go on the streets, coming out of doors, entering doors, and all perfectly happy.

[Говорящий 2] (48:18 - 50:11)
It's a planet which has evolved. The whole population has evolved to a perfect state of peace. And slowly leave the planet, come back into the sky with your mind.

Come outside of the clouds, back to darkness of space, back out of the pore of the skin, patch of skin on your teacher's forearm. And come back to your own body. And we'll spend about three minutes.

[Говорящий 1] (50:11 - 51:05)
Just think of good things you've done this week. Package them. How did I start the good deed?

How did I do the good deed? How did I leave the good deed? And then just be happy about the good deed.

We'll spend about three minutes like that. Choose one or two special things you did. Could be speaking to someone.

Could be helping with something. Could be just struggling in your own mind. Struggles count as better karma than successes.

In this system, to try to change, even if you fail, is more powerful karma than just sliding in success.

[Говорящий 2] (54:20 - 54:44)
Ask your lama to come into your heart. Stay there all day. You can slowly come out of meditation.

[Говорящий 1] (54:45 - 58:55)
Take a stretch. So that would be a normal meditation. The first three preparations in the morning, get it down to like five minutes.

Then five or ten minutes on your teacher. Then at the end of the day, pram, supta, meditation. Supta bhavana, that's a new expression.

Just lay down. Really, we travel the world, we see thousands of people. We teach thousands and thousands of people.

I think about 10,000 people in the last six months. After they learn about karma, the biggest struggle is to get them to celebrate what they've done right. There's two kinds of people.

You come back after a year, there's Bulgaria. There's two kinds of people. One of them are very successful.

Their finances are looking up. They have a nice partner. Their health is improving.

Their yoga is good. Then there's another kind of person that it's just not working. They come up to you and they say, I'm trying to do everything but it's not working.

Then you have a little bit of self-doubt. You're like, oh man, maybe I'm teaching them wrong or something. Then you say, are you doing the meditation before you sleep?

Which is the most important of everything. Then they say, no, I can't do it. I have trouble doing that.

I'm doing everything else. I'm taking care of the old lady's faucets and stuff. It's just not working.

Then you say, before you sleep, are you packaging the karma? Are you thinking about the good things you did today? They say, I have trouble with that.

I just keep thinking about my problems and the things that I didn't do well and the bad things I did. So you have to struggle. That's a struggle.

If you can break through that at the end of the day as you fall off to sleep, if you can break through worrying about your problems and thinking about the things you've done poorly, then you're okay. Then everything will work. There was a lady in Iskra in Sofia, Bulgaria.

She's a television star. She's the Oprah Winfrey of Bulgaria. She came to our first retreat there.

She's famous in Bulgaria because she never had a boyfriend. Every time she gets a boyfriend, it doesn't work out. Everybody gossips about it all the time.

We had a long talk about helping a lonely person. She did it. She actually did it.

She's a very determined person. She was a Fulbright Scholar in the US. She's very intelligent and she's determined.

So she said, okay, it all makes sense. I'll try. She did it.

Then she's just walking down that main street. What's it called, the street? Vitosha?

This big, beautiful guy is walking down the street. He just stops and says, hi. That was it.

She got married in July. He's a famous clarinet player or something, in the orchestra or something. He has a house in Germany, which is the Bulgarian dream.

We met him and he's beautiful. He's really beautiful. Very sensitive, kind, well-off.

They're very happy. They're really happy together. I guess she was intelligent enough to do the bedtime thing.

Some people just can't do it. I think that's the difference. So try.