AGOL 15, Гайдед-медитации — стенограммы

[Говорящий 1] (0:02 - 29:15)
So we'll go straight into it, please relax your hands, relax your eyelids, relax the forehead, the muscles of the forehead, pull in your tummy a little bit, relax the corners of your mouth, slow down your breath, relax your fingers. Then please start to follow your breath. Just gently nudge the mind towards the breath.

Start following the breath. The mind will wander off to other things and then gently coax it back to the breath. Keep your mouth loose, keep the corners of your mouth soft, and as you start to concentrate, don't tighten your face or your body, but release them.

The exhales get longer and longer as you watch your breath. Please think of your teacher, your closest teacher in your life, and please invite them to come and sit in front of you, knee to knee. They are meditating with you.

Try to get a sense that they are actually present and not just a picture in your mind. You can feel all the signs that someone is sitting in front of you that you normally feel. There's some slight noises as they breathe.

You can smell subtle fragrance, nice fragrance from their body like orange blossoms, and you can feel a little bit of warmth from them. The usual signs that someone is sitting in front of you, they are meditating with you. And think of something you love about your teacher, some quality about them that you admire.

For me, it's something, a quality that I don't have so much, and I admire and I'd like to have it. That's why, one of the reasons why they're my teacher. So think of some beautiful thing about your teacher that you would like to be yourself.

Then think of something that you love and enjoy, and make an offering to them. I'm listening. Then think of something that you've done in the last few days that you're not too happy about, not too proud of.

Some weakness that you have, anger, dislike of someone, laziness. And in your mind, be honest with your teacher and tell them, and try to make some kind of commitment to avoid it today. And please think of something good that you're doing in your life, something you're proud of.

Maybe something you've changed in the last few weeks for the better, and describe it to your teacher in your mind. Let them see when did it happen, where did it happen. Make them happy with the offering of your practice.

Being happy about your good deeds is itself a practice you can offer. And please ask your teacher to teach you today, formal teachings but also the lessons that come through other people, people who inspire you. There are lots of people in this group who are very special.

In different ways, we can watch them, learn from them. It's not just a class. We have many people here today who are working very hard for a long time to try to be good people.

We can watch them and learn from them, especially the things that we're not very good at ourselves. We can watch them and be inspired by the people around us. So ask your teacher to help you watch for the good things in the people around us today.

Try to emulate them and act like them. And lastly, ask your teacher to stay in your life. All your teachers, the people who influence you in a good way, ask them to stay close by.

The opposite of a deep talk. The good friends we have who influence our behavior in a nice way, ask them to stay close. Stay in your life.

They are precious. The karma to have them is rare. And please come back to your breath.

Watch your breath. And slowly you can open your eyes. Stretch your body.

Take a choice, do something. I thought we'd do a few questions, and then we'll do the second half of the meditation, if you have any questions, comments. I have a question.

[Говорящий 2] (29:15 - 29:38)
When you do visualize the different parts, do you have to stay with the image? Let's take an example. Like you do an offering to your teacher.

You see that maybe two, three seconds, and then you go back to your breath, or you have to keep developing the offering you do to your teacher for all the time you stay on this part.

[Говорящий 1] (29:42 - 52:52)
So, let's say you reach the part where you're making an offering to your teacher, like offering a fruit in your mind, and then do you keep coming back to your awareness of yourself and your breath, for example? Or do you try to stay on the offering and keep it going? I think most of us will start thinking about lunch or something.

I think the breath is a path to bring it back to the offering. So, I think ideally you would stay on the offering, and making the offering, and watch them enjoy it. For me, it was an apple, and they're turning the apple over, and they're looking at the apple, and they're smelling it, and things like that.

But then usually most people's mind will wander to something else, and then you can use the breath. The breath is your... I'm reading a book by Orson Scott Carter, who wrote Endless Game.

He's a great author. It's called The Secret Gate or something like that. Lost Gate.

It's about a child who figures out how to make gates between places. If they get in trouble with some adult, they can go through an invisible gate, and they can be outside in two minutes. The breath is your gate.

You can always come back to the breath and travel on the breath back to where you are. So the breath is, I think for most of us, a theme to come back to that will keep you back in the meditation, bring you back to the meditation. Because your mind usually will go to something else.

Then you come to the breath, and it's like a secret tunnel back to the subject, the object, and then like that. It's a balance between staying on the offering and not getting bored. Because there's always so much they can look at the apple.

So you have to balance. You have to balance. In meditation, you have to balance moving enough to keep it interesting and not moving so much that it gets distracting.

That's a balance. In Tibetan, it's called nyom jang. In Sanskrit, it's called samapati, to stay in a balance between not getting tired of one subject and not getting distracted and moving around too much.

Ching duet. Yay. I'm just kind of on that same question.

When you're trying to get more solvent with your meditation and you're trying to develop single-pointed concentration and your object is, say, your teacher, and your mind is moving around on the object, say, from the sound of the breath to the feeling of the warmth or just the visual image. At what point can you call it single-pointed concentration if the mind is moving around? Just personally, I think there's an idea in the Abhidharma called tsing shik ni, topa and chopa.

It's in the Yoga Sutra also. Vitaka and vichara. Vitaka means a general awareness of the object and its qualities.

And then vichara means you go deeper and start examining. Vitaka is you're just trying to get the outline of your teacher and the general, there's a person there, feeling of a person there. And they say start with the outline, like the silhouette.

It's easier to start with the silhouette, black and white. And it's just the outline of them in front of you. And then you start filling in the colors.

You could start with the eyes, is a good place to start. So first you do the silhouette as if there was a strong light behind them and you're just seeing the silhouette. And then you start focusing on the eyes, is a good place.

And then you fill in the rest of the face. And the face is a good place to pause. And then you fill in the rest of the body visually.

Because we are, the Abhidharma says we are 90% visual animals. And then start adding the other senses, the sound of their rustling of their clothing and the scent of their body. You're not supposed to be tasting them right now.

And then the feeling of their warmth. I think taste and smell come together, most of us. So you're going from Vitaka, Toppa, general, that Toppa is without the S.

So it just means an imagination of them. And then you move to Chitta, which is Vichara in Sanskrit, in the Yoga Sutra. And then you start filling in the details very carefully.

And you focus for a while on the breath, their breath. And you focus for a while on the warmth from their body. And you focus for a while on their fragrance.

And then in our tradition, it's important to go deeper beyond Vitaka and Vichara. There are eight obstacles to deep meditation. And one of them, for example, is Vitaka, which is general awareness of their outline.

And then Vichara is the details of their smell. And then you're supposed to penetrate deeper and go deeper. And it's a nice idea.

It was covered by a sangha, Arya Sangha. Then you're supposed to go beyond inhaling and exhaling. So your concentration is supposed to get so good that you are unaware of inhaling or exhaling.

And in fact, you're unaware of... At a certain point, if your prana is good, you can stop breathing. And then that, because the breathing becomes a distraction in deep meditation, the inhale and exhale.

And then you go deeper than that and you reach a feeling of physical pleasure of meditating, especially if you've been doing good yoga. Then you're like... Your body is in a very pleasant place and you feel a little bit high physically.

And then you're supposed to penetrate deeper through that. And you get to a feeling of mental happiness, like joy at being with your teacher. And then you're supposed to penetrate a little bit deeper.

And then you're just in their presence. And you're not skipping around. That's what you're talking about.

You're not skipping around to different parts of them. You are just bathing in their presence. And you are surrendering to their presence.

And you can slow down and stay there for a while. And it's not so distracting. And then if your karma is good enough, you would go into their emptiness.

And that takes a big leap. So I would kind of slow down as you approach the feeling of being in their presence, which is not dependent on the details anymore. It's just a general surrender to being with them.

And you can stop there in this meditation. Let's go back to that place. That's a good segway.

I like to put the mic up high because then I have to sit up. Let's go back to the teacher. We can study those eight sometimes.

It's a cool subject. Please come back to your breath. Start watching your breath.

Relax. Use the breath to relax. Nice, slow exhales.

Focus on the exhales. They shouldn't be jerky. They should be smooth, quiet, long.

Dear God, your teacher is in front of you. And please, with your eyes closed, you're looking at their forehead. Not exactly between the eyebrows, but a little bit higher.

And there's a soft white light there, maybe the size of a large olive, like a luminous light. Not a cold light or a sharp light, but sort of a fuzzy white light. And it's not sitting on the skin.

It's inside their head, slightly. And it's very beautiful. Now please focus on their throat.

And recessed in their throat, maybe an inch into their throat, inside their throat is a red light. You can think of it in the recess of the lower part of their throat. There's a little cave there in most people.

And you can think of it there. And it's a ruby-colored light, like a really nice ruby. And it's also about the size of an olive.

Deep, rich, red-colored light. Keep the soft white light at the forehead. Don't let it go.

And focus on the red one also. Now please bring your mind down to their chest, to their heart. And inside their chest, at their heart, is a blue light, like a sapphire.

About the size of an olive. Soft, deep blue. And focus there.

That'll be the last thing we'll do. Focus on that blue light. Keep an awareness of the white light and the red light.

But go deeper into the blue light. Please come back to your breath. And don't go too fast.

Come back to the breath slowly. Stay with the breath. And you can slowly open your eyes.

Stretch. So I think we have ten minutes, ten minutes to get your yoga dance on. Can't we?

[Говорящий 2] (52:54 - 53:06)
Yes. So yoga's going to be here at ten thirty-five, so that's fifteen minutes, ten minutes. I have a question.

How would you like us to set up our mats?

[Говорящий 1] (53:07 - 54:48)
Face this way. Okay. I'm setting as you're watching.

The yoga is all levels. And anybody can do it. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

Just come and enjoy. It's very, what do you call it, non-competitive. Just kind of fun.

You just do what you want to do. He'll make you healthy. Roku Nanda Shingla Dukpa Shuk Inam Guru Ratnamanda Gandhir Yataya Ni Ke Ke Wok Dum Sunam Geshe Sob Sob Shun Sunam Geshe Rekung Sah Yeshe Lechong We Gang Lhak Nyi D lâ Vas Shun