«Дар освобождения», курс 25 «Совершенное прибежище», занятие 8

[Speaker 1]
Please relax your fingers, pull in your stomach just a little bit, relax your mouth, relax your eyelids. Try to release all the tension in your forehead and your hands. Bring your chest out just a little bit.

A little bit of a smile, and then please come to your breath. Today let's just focus on long exhales rather than counting, so just long, relaxing exhales. Then please ask your root teacher, heart teacher, to come and sit with you.

And it should be very personal and pleasant. They are, I think, rather than trying to feel some sort of official respect for them, maybe just try to reach a feeling of affection, mutual affection. Like old friends, you've been through many things with your heart teacher, good times, bad times, and they're just like an old pair of jeans now, comfortable.

And there's a nice fragrance from them, like summer day or something like that. Then in your mind just praise them for something beautiful about how they act or how they treat people. Then offer them a small gift.

I think it would be nice to offer a single, simple, good thought that you had yesterday, during the whole day. Just a small but sincere good thought you had, maybe about somebody else. Then open up and be honest about something you've done recently that wasn't very nice, some small thing.

Then ask your teacher to teach you. Perhaps through the people who are here during this retreat, please teach me through the words and actions of the people around me for this week. And please stay with me.

Don't leave. And not just this life, but my future lives, wherever I go after this. I'd like you to think about the activities you did last week at work and at home.

You had certain jobs to do at work, you are supposed to finish certain things, you have to accomplish certain things. Think about some of them. And at home, you have jobs to do around the house or apartment with your family.

Just think about two or three of what you did last week. I think for myself, for example, I was working in my garden a lot because it's time of year to do a lot of work in the garden. Everything's just waking up.

And at work, as usual, I was trying to do fundraising or get support for projects. So for me, I can say, oh, last week I was trying to make my garden beautiful. And I was trying to make sure that we had enough funds to do different projects.

Then think about the steps you took to get what you wanted. In my case, I ordered some special fertilizer on Amazon. And I pulled out weeds around the house outside.

And I tried to write a contract or an agreement to help fund some of our projects. Then try to think whether those actions worked. Did they work?

In my case, did the garden respond? Did more beautiful flowers come? Does it look like the sponsors will help?

Did the actions work that you took last week? Then you can please ask your teacher to come to your heart. You know what to do.

Do it slowly.

[Speaker 2]
Ask them to stay inside of you. And influence your thoughts and words, actions today.

[Speaker 1]
Then come to your breath. Three long exhales. Don't open your eyes yet.

Don't move yet. Okay, now you can open your eyes. Take a stretch.