«Дар освобождения», курс 25 «Совершенное прибежище», занятие 22

[Speaker 1]
Relax your eyelids. Relax the corners of your mouth. Relax your hands.

Pull them back a little bit. It straightens your back and your chest comes out. And I'd like to do the breathing a little bit different.

So your central channel, chong mai, comes to a place, the opening is between your eyebrows, a little bit up from the eyebrows. And this is where the end of your central channel comes out. And sometimes, when you do the breathing meditation, you can do it from this place, this hole.

So, I'd like you to watch your exhales, long exhales, but please do it from the point between your eyebrows. Guruvar Madhye, in Sanskrit. And so you're not breathing through your nose.

Actually the breath's coming and going through your nose. But imagine that it's coming in and out of this spot between your eyebrows and up a few millimeters. And let's practice breathing from there, long exhales.

It will help you to focus. And please come to your heart and make a connection with the Lama there. You can crawl into the grain of sugar, like a little tent, and sit with your Lama.

So you are with John, Pratyahara from the outer world. You're deep inside your heart and you're quiet inside a tiny space with your teacher. Look at them, make sure it's clear, the visualization, as if they were really there, breathing, warm, fragrant.

Then I'd like you to think about a Buddhist image that you are familiar with. Maybe it's a painting. Maybe it's a Buddha statue.

You, Tsongkhapa, Tara, Buddha, Guanyin, you choose some image, photograph, painting, carving, something you see pretty often. Maybe it's in your home, on your altar. Think about this image.

Try to get the details of it in your mind. What does the face look like? What do the ears look like?

What does the mouth look like? Is it sitting or standing? Bring some image to mind.

I'd like you to try to imagine where was this image made. I have a Tsongkhapa statue. I don't know exactly, I think it was made in Nepal.

But try to imagine the person who made it, or painted it, or carved it. Go back in time, trace the lineage of this image back to a workshop or a studio, and somebody was painting or carving. And they were using a model.

They had a different image, maybe a photograph, painting, carving, of an earlier version of your image. So try to go back in time to the day your image was finished, in a studio or a workshop or a factory. And the person was looking at a model of an earlier image, in my case of Tsongkhapa.

Now go back again to the day that second image was finished. And maybe you have to imagine the place where maybe it was finished. We don't know exactly.

In my case, this metal statue, the third one, I think might have been carved. And I'm just guessing or imagining maybe it was carved in a workshop and some very careful Nepalese artisan was carving a similar image to mine three generations ago. And they were using a model, a fourth image, an earlier image.

And now skip back to the first one that was ever made. And somebody saw Tsongkhapa or Tara or Buddha. In fact, I found in an ancient art book they said that the first painted image of Buddha was the Wheel of Life.

And that's the great grandfather of all images of the Buddha. And that was made by someone who was looking at the Buddha. So with your image, whether it's Tara or Guanyin or Buddha, Tsongkhapa, let's go back to the very first image.

And someone had the good fortune, someone had the good karma to be sitting in front of the Buddha, the real Buddha, or Tsongkhapa. Or someone had the really good karma to sit in front of a tantric deity angel like Tara or Guanyin. All images of all holy beings in this world started when someone was looking at or thinking about the real one.

Try to imagine that first sitting. You know, someone's lucky enough to see Tara or Guanyin and they are trying to capture that in a painting or a sculpture. Now please come back to your image in your home or on your altar or your wall.

The first image we started with. In my case it's Tsongkhapa. Nice statue someone gave me.

It's on the altar in my bedroom. Come back to that image, the first one that you were thinking about. And now try to feel different about this image.

Don't think factory, don't think store. Think, oh this is a... Ultimately this image started with the real person or the real tantric deity or angel.

Someone saw them. This statue I have is almost like proof. This statue that I have is the footprint of Tsongkhapa and it's very valuable and very rare and I'm so lucky to have it.

Then come back to the lama in front of you and thank them in your mind for this pleasant meditation. Then come back to your forehead. Three long breaths from this place of focus and you can slowly open your eyes.

Take a stretch. So the goal of that meditation is to help you keep your refuge vow. Which one is that?

Four. Four? Yeah.

Yeah, number four. So, the fourth refuge vow is to respect images of the Buddha. When I first studied with my lama, one of my jobs was to clean the temple a lot.

And I got to know the temple very well. And I would—he would say, move that image and clean the altar. And then I would grab the image by the head and my lama would like hit me, you know.

He'd say, you can't grab Tsongkhapa by the head, you know. You have to pick him up by the bottom, you know. You have to show some respect, you know.

Okay, so... And I'll tell you honestly, I mean, it's another thing that happens on the day you see emptiness directly. The meditation we just did, you have a direct experience of it.

You see? You... You have a—because you see the Buddha directly, then...

when you come out, when you get up, your whole relationship with images changes, you know. So, I'm not... I'm not the kind of person that keeps a very good altar.

I have friends who have hundred images in their house and... Dr. Wu, if you ever go to his house, it's cool. There's no place for people, it's all Buddhas.

You know, I don't do that, I just have a few. I have a few, and to be honest, I don't look at them very often. They just became part of my house, you know.

But on the day you see emptiness, your relationship to paintings and sculptures, statues, it changes. You get very... I don't know.

You feel different about them. They almost seem alive, okay? And you become very...

they feel very precious to you, and you feel very honored to have them, okay? And maybe there will be a day in this world, there will be a day when people, you know, don't remember what this image was, or who it is. It's like the photographs of you, you know.

There will be a day when the last one gets thrown out, you know. They say, who is this? I don't know.

This is some grandfather's father or something, and they just throw it out. And then the last picture of you in this world will be thrown out by someone cleaning someone's house, you know. And they say, well, this guy is weird.

They throw it out, you know. Who needs this, you know? And there will come a day in this world when you can't get a Buddha image, you see?

And... so they're precious, and... and one of the parts of this vow is to be...

is to not judge the quality of the painting, and not judge the quality of the statue, you know. And there's a... there's a joke, it's a...

well, there's a... there's a tradition that if you see a... a Buddha statue that's not made very well, you aren't allowed to say, after you take refuge in Buddha, you're not allowed to say, that's an ugly statue.

Because you're talking about Lord Buddha, okay? So, you're supposed to say, the artist was not so skilled, you know. So, sometimes I go with my friends to museums and they'll say, oh, look Geshe-la, the artist was not so skilled.

It means pretty ugly Buddha statue, okay? So... so when somebody said...

that's what we were eating, again, we had a really bad dinner, somebody said, the cook was not so skilled. Okay. So...

that's a refuge tradition. So, the goal of this meditation is to... get a bigger appreciation for the Buddha images you have, and...

maybe you want to get some more, and have them around, maybe you want to end up like Mr. Wu, I don't know. In the monastery, people give us... they give the monastery images.

And we have hundreds, we have too many to put in the temple. So, we rotate them. And they bought...

lockers like...athletic lockers. And they keep, you know, week number one, locker one, those Buddhas get to be in the temple. And then week number three, locker two, they get to be in it.

And we... it's a lot of work to change the images. And...

now Diamond Mountain is starting to collect. I got like ten more for you. People gave me...

like priceless diamond cutter sutras and stuff. There's one that rolls out from about here to the wall. I don't have room in my house.

So, I was going to give it to you guys. I have to remember, okay? And we're putting some at the college.

So, you're going to get a bigger appreciation. And that's part of taking refuge, okay? Because many many countries have pictures of angels, you know?

Like this one here, I think it's Munich or Berlin, do you know? Munchkin? Munchkin?

Huh? This one's Berlin? Yeah.

Or maybe it's Kiev, I don't remember. But Paris has beautiful ones. Mexico City, oh my gosh, a whole street in the middle of two streets, they're going into the downtown, there's, I don't know, how many?

20, 30 angel statues, one by one on these huge pillars, okay? And that's good, we should be happy, you know? All these churches have angels, and all these Muslim books have angels, and we should be happy.

It means somebody in that country saw an angel, you see? Or met someone who saw an angel, you see? So, when you see a statue of an angel in Mexico or Germany or...

or Guanyin in China, you should be happy, oh, somebody saw them, okay? And you should be excited, okay? Now maybe I can, okay?

And if you keep them around, you have a bigger chance of seeing them, okay? Alright.