Серия «Сутра Алмазного огранщика» — Мастер Камалашила: медитации на «Сутру Алмазного огранщика», часть первая (Аризона, 2016), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
Okay, good morning. You look bright and cheerful. We're going to do some gom rim, steps of meditation, the text.

Okay, and then we'll practice some meditation. After that we'll do diamond cutting. Okay, so here's a selection from the third gom rim.

I'm starting to doubt how they work. I used to think it was a progression, but I think it's just three separate teachings. Big parts of them are the same.

So you have to read all three to get the whole thing, I think. Then there's a fourth one that I read yesterday, the yogi gom rim. And it's just an abbreviation of the other three, nothing secret.

I think he gave the same teaching maybe in four or five places and people wrote it down. But between them is most of the instructions on meditation that are found in the lam rims. So this is from the third gom rim.

DE LA NYON BRJOR PA'I THOB MAR DE BZHIN ZHIG PA'I KU SLUG JI LTAR THOB PA DANG, JI LTAR THOB PA LA SEMS DE DE SHAR NA ZHIG NAS DUG PA BYA STE When you first want to—the first object for developing shamatha should be—for the yogi, right? NYON BRJOR PA'I should be DE BZHIN ZHIG PA'I KU. DE BZHIN ZHIG PA.

Tathagata, yeah. The one who went the path of the two kinds of emptiness. The Buddha.

KU. You should meditate on their form. And JI LTAR THOB MA DANG JI LTAR THOB PA.

Try to not just have a statue. It should be a real person. JI LTAR THOB MA.

It's as if you could talk to them. It's as if you can see them, but it's also as if you could talk to them. I like to have the fragrance from them, because fragrance is a very visceral thing.

So when you meditate on a Buddha, you can add their fragrance and the warmth from their body. You can feel it on your chest, you know, because they're sitting in front of you, okay? So don't just make it a—we're not meditating on a statue, okay?

And many teachers of shamatha have said—nice curtains, by the way. Many teachers of shamatha had said, don't stare at a statue. Like, don't open your eyes and look at a statue.

That's not shamatha, okay? Shamatha is a mental thing, so you shouldn't open your eyes. You can open your eyes like this, you know, and keep your eyes down, but it's not shamatha.

Shamatha is done inside the mind, so you don't put a statue in front of you and look at the statue, okay? sem te te shak ne shi ne drub pa ja. Shi ne drub pa ja means, that's how you should start your shamatha practice.

It's always with an image of a Buddha, okay? te shi che pe gu suk te yong ser tso ma shin. The body of a Buddha is also not completely opaque, and it's made of light, okay?

So, ser means what? Golden light. But tso ma means refined gold, like very shining golden light, okay?

And a little bit transparent, okay? Like, not like us, okay? tso ma shin du ser la tsen drub pa ja sang pa gyal ma kor kyi khin kor na nang na shu pa.

thab na tsok kyi sem chung kyi dun dze pa. gyun du yin la che pa. And then, think about all the things this being is doing to help people on this planet, okay?

So all, you know, you can imagine all the sneaky things, upaya in Sanskrit. Sneaky things they're doing to help people. Some are obvious, some are not.

They might be the irritating tourist who walks into the convenience store on the way to Tucson, and barges in your way, and teaches you something, okay? che pa te dun yun ten la drub pa kye ching. And then, try to focus on their sweet qualities, on their beautiful qualities.

And by doing so, you will be able to shiwa, sham, sham, okay? It's the sham and shamatha, shanti. You will be able to put to rest sham, ching wa and grub pa.

Yeah, so dullness means, these are the two big enemies of meditation, okay? In India, my teacher asked me to teach one of the monks to drive. He's like 18 years old, and I'm sitting with him in the front seat of this old Indian car, which is the monastery's only car.

And we're driving, 12-hour drive to Dwebul Monastery. And he's like this, and each side of the road there's rice paddies, and there's ditches on each side of the road, you know? And he's like this, and then every time I would say, you know, slow down, he'd say, What?

And I'd say, I'm not going to, No! And there's two ditches on this side of the road. And so, in the beginning, when you learn to drive, you're like this, and the car starts to drift, and then you're like this.

And then, if you watch a person's hands, who knows how to drive, they're going like this all the time. They're correcting all the time. And they can talk to you, and they can listen to Jimi Hendrix, you know, but their hands are automatically correcting like this all the time.

So meditation is like that. The word for meditation is samapati, staying in the middle. And they're avoiding the two ditches.

So what are the two ditches?

[Speaker 2]
Dullness and agitation.

[Speaker 1]
So on one ditch, on one side, is getting sleepy in your meditation, okay? Getting sleepy in your meditation, okay? You start getting sleepy, okay?

On the other side is...

[Speaker 2]
Agitation, okay?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, for me, it's thinking about breakfast, exactly. So, thinking about something else. So, on this side of the road, you can fall into the thinking about other stuff.

And on this side of the road, you can get sleepy, okay? What's the most dangerous one? Yeah, there's a very bad version of the left-hand one, where you sit too long, you meditate too long, and you learn to sit very still, and you're just spaced out.

In English, we say spaced out. I don't know in Chinese what's spaced out. You're like...

And it feels good. It feels right, you know? You think you're doing really well, because you can sit there for hours, and you're just like...

Okay, so that's more dangerous. It's less dangerous to fall asleep. If you fall asleep, you know you have a problem.

One day, I hit my head really hard on the... I was meditating next to my closet, and I fell completely asleep. And I went, boom!

And I got a big bump on my head. So, that's obvious. But if you're sitting there like this for hours, and just spacing out, like...

and you're not moving, so it feels good, then that's the most dangerous obstacle to meditation, okay? When you can get a very clear image of that person in front of you, we can call it dhyana. We can call it pretty good focus, pretty good concentration, okay?

But when they become alive, when they become alive, as if they could speak, or as if they're speaking, or they're moving purposely, like a video. When you get the still photo, you have dhyana. When you get the video, you have shi ne and hak tong.

Okay? Because then you can start examining where did the Buddha come from, and where is the Buddha going? And you can start examining the emptiness of the Buddha, okay?

So, when you get the still photo, you have dhyana, concentration. When you get the living person, really living person, the video, then you're getting close to shamatha, okay? Shamatha.

Yeah, and the still photo is dhyana, okay? And then it goes into an emptiness meditation, okay? So today I thought we'd do kamalashila in two parts, the gom rim, in two parts.

One is just starting on the first image, okay? And then after that we'll do the... He starts on the five problems and the eight antidotes, but he calls them six problems and eight antidotes, so...

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
So, in meditation, if you're in this state of meditation, you're having an interaction with this being. Is that considered...

[Speaker 1]
Close to shamatha.

[Speaker 2]
Close to shamatha?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Because immediately you're going to start to use it to examine their emptiness. Shamatha...

He has a long essay in here about the need to balance shamatha and vipasyana, and he almost criticizes... He says in India there were two groups of people. One were the, like, Hinayana practitioners, and one were the, like, Mahayana fundamentalists.

And then he said the Hinayana practitioners, their shamatha got too strong compared to their vipasyana. So their meditation was really good, but they didn't think about the emptiness of the Buddha that they're looking at, okay? And then he said some of the Mahayana people, fundamentalists, got the opposite.

They started tearing everything apart, but then they didn't focus. And he goes on a big thing about shamatha and vipasyana have to be equal strength. He says you can't plow a field.

We used to plow the fields with oxen in the monastery. It's a real experience. You have to stand on the plow, and you have to balance these two huge animals.

And it's terrible. And you're out there in the sun for, like, 12 hours. And we used to grow corn before the monastery covered the cornfields.

And he says those two oxen have to be equal strength. If you have two bulls pulling the plow, and one gets stronger, then the furrows get crooked. So you've got to have powerful shamatha, and you have to have powerful vipasyana.

And you can't let one dominate the other. You've got to have them in a balance, okay? So the next meditation we're going to do, we're going to start with stillness.

The object of the meditation is your physical body, which is very unusual. You normally don't focus on your body. So we're going to focus on our body.

Just keep scanning. Are my fingers moving? Is my...

Am I smiling and then not smiling? Is any part of my body... Is my ears twitching?

So you're going to keep scanning your body to make sure you are like a statue, okay? Then we're going to flip into the breath meditation, okay? So coming out of here, and coming in from your wings, and coming down, and then you take a gentle push here.

Bring your belly button to your spine, and push the air out from here. And try to... Just try it in a relaxed way, not in a forceful way.

Not in a... Not in a competitive way, which is very hard for some of the guys, including me. You just try to extend it out, and then it just kind of goes, okay?

So try to get the exhales. Focus on the exhales, okay? Then we're going to go into the shamatha, first shamatha object, which is...

A Buddha, okay? When you achieve the path of seeing, when you see emptiness directly, in the middle of the vajra, okay, there's two parts to that experience. One is 20 minutes, and the second one is about...

It's until you fall asleep, until you go to sleep that night. So if you see emptiness in the afternoon, you have 20 minutes on the cushion. Then still on the cushion, you have a lot of deep experiences, which are mostly related to the four truths.

The four are your truths, okay? So there are 16 experiences. Like, you can see your death, and you can see how long it's going to take you to become a Buddha, and you can see all living beings in a few minutes, okay?

You have a group, four groups of important experiences, and later they were all grouped together and called the four truths. And a bad translation would be... The four noble truths.

So it's arya. Arya means someone who saw emptiness, who is elevated. So they don't mean noble, like ethical or something like that.

They have nothing to do with that. So there's just four experiences that you have, still on the cushion, but not in deep meditation, okay? Then you get up, and the rest of the day you have all these amazing experiences, okay?

You have clairvoyance for about 24 hours, and you can read people's minds and stuff like that. But towards the end of those arya, truth experiences, one of the coolest things you see is you as a Buddha. You see yourself, what you will be, okay?

You can watch a Buddha, and it's you, okay? And it's a very specific perspective. It's not like he's sitting on a chair or she's sitting on a chair or something like that.

She's... We were trying to find a name for the press, for the Buddhist printing house, and we called it Standing on the Sky Press, because also nobody has that website. And...

And... The perspective where you see yourself as a Buddha is standing on the sky. So there's the atmosphere around the planet, like there's the blue planet, and there's the atmosphere, and you're literally standing on top, you know, and kind of like looking down, like Jesus or something, you know, like you're looking down, and oftentimes you will see your Lama next to you, or your partner, spiritual partner or something.

You will see the Buddha who brought you there with you, okay? So... The perspective is not from the ground, because then you would just see the bottom of their feet.

Okay? Okay? So I want you to try to imagine the perspective.

It's like you're in the space shuttle, space station, international space station, and you're looking out the window, and you can see one or two Buddhas on your level just standing over the world, okay? Sometimes they sit down because it's hard to stand all the time. So if you want to put a chair there, it's okay.

All right? That's okay. But what I'd like you to do, what we'll do in the meditation, the first Buddha we will develop shamatha on is you.

Okay? I'd like you to focus on yourself as the Buddha, coming Buddha, okay? When you see emptiness directly, you will see that scenario directly, okay?

And it's a feeling of telescopic feeling. It's a feeling that's projected into the future. So you're in a space station, and you see something, but you have this sense of it being telescoped into the future.

You're seeing into the future what will be, okay? And then you have to make, so start just traditional, to start with the eyes. Just two eyes.

Just get the eyes right, okay? Like two eyes. That's a nice easy place to start, okay?

Then you get the silhouette, like there's a light behind them, and you can just see their outline. Okay? So when you're first visualizing, when you first start shamatha practice, and it's always the same object at first, which is a Buddha, then you just, you get the eyes right, and then you work on the silhouette.

Okay? So it's just the silhouette, like two arms, not one, and two legs, okay? And no, I mean, you can't just go right into a Buddha, okay?

You have to work on it. So get the silhouette right. Fill in the eyes.

Then you can give them a nose. Then it's just a silhouette, and two eyes, and a nose, and a smile, but they don't have a body. They don't have anything here yet, okay?

Then you slowly fill it in, okay? And we'll stay there for like 20 minutes, and you'll have lots of time to try to fill it in. What I'd like you to do, fill in the physical form, and for each of us it will be different, okay?

Like, some guys want to look like George Clooney. Some guys want to look like, I don't know, John Wayne. But you decide, okay?

You decide what you're going to look at. So you have to think about it, you know? How am I going to look?

What will my hair color be? What will my eyes color be? You know, you decide, okay?

When I reach Buddha, what will I look like? Okay, so work on the physical, you know. So the first thing I'm going to do, me and John, right, is put some hair here, you know?

And he's going to have all his hair, you know? And, you know, work on, you know, I don't know. You know, work on things like you can remove freckles and, you know.

Like, fix the physical form to what you would like to be, okay? Don't forget that they are not opaque. They're not made of flesh.

They are, they are like made of light, okay? So don't make them mortal, okay? They are like angels, okay?

Their body is like... So get their body perfect and work on it, okay? It's you enhanced to the ultimate, okay?

And you can make any changes you want, okay? It's your visualization, okay? You can try on different bodies.

Like, first you try on, I don't know. I don't know the beautiful actresses nowadays. But, you know, I don't know.

First you can be Michelle Branch. And then you can switch it to Janice Joplin.

[Speaker 2]
You can try on different, okay?

[Speaker 1]
See which one feels comfortable. See which one feels good, okay? Then, towards the end of the meditation, towards the end of the 20 minutes, I would like you to work on the personality, okay?

So, this Geshe Michael Buddha is not, doesn't have any competitiveness. And this, so their face is a little different. And this Geshe Michael doesn't have any pride.

And this Geshe Michael doesn't have desire for hot chocolate. Stuff like that. So, so fix the personality, okay?

Clean out the personality. Your own private bad habits, clean them out. And that will change the look of their face, right?

They mess up our face, right? Like, judging other people is... It makes your eyes different, okay?

So, that's going to change the face again, okay? So work on their, clean out their personality. Okay, all the bad habits you have that you've been fighting with your whole life and didn't make much progress, today you're going to drop them.

Okay, got it? Ready to start? Okay, let's go.

And you have to do this until the video is clear. It could take a month. He says, Je Tsongkapa says, if you have good instructions, you know, and you're sincere, you should be able to get shamatha in six weeks.

He says six weeks. Those of us who have done a three-year retreat, we know it's four years. So get ready, turn off your phone.

Blow your nose. Anyone need a tissue? You want to turn your...

She wants to turn off her phone, but I don't know which one it is. By the way, I read a different Gomrim yesterday, and he mentioned the pee-pee and poo-poo thing again. But the way he phrased it there is a little bit different, and it sounds like...

I just want to be honest. It sounds like it might be, make sure you pee-pee and poo-poo before you go to sit down. And he says, blow your nose also.

So he adds blowing your nose, and he adds a particle ne, which means first poo-poo and pee-pee, then go. You know, like, get it all out. We said what?

We said even if it's an attractive place, even if there's poo-poo and pee-pee. That's the way the other Gomrim reads, so... You can take it both ways.

There you go. So relax your mouth. Relax the corners of your mouth.

Try to get a little smile. When people concentrate, they scowl, and it doesn't look nice after a few years. So...

Try to lift up the corners of your mouth a little bit. It puts less pressure on the chakra on your forehead. Relax your eyelids.

Relax your fingers. Pull in your stomach slightly. Spread your wings.

Bring your shoulder blades together a little bit. That will move your hands up your thigh. We're going to do ten minutes on...

being totally still. Like a statue. Your chest can move slightly with the breath.

Your diaphragm. But see if you can... not move your fingers.

Not move your face. Not move your eyelids. Not move your feet.

Focus on your body for ten minutes. Every time you get distracted, come back to your body. And scan it.

Am I moving anything? And I would like to see a whole room of statues, like those Chinese statues at Xi'an. Here we go.

If your feet fall asleep, if your legs fall asleep, it will hurt for a few minutes. Don't move. Then they will fall asleep, and you can sit for hours.

So if something hurts, just stay with it. And get over it. And it will stop hurting after a while.

Then please start watching your breath. The exhalation comes out of your forehead. Lower part of your forehead.

Try to find the spot in your forehead that helps you focus. The inhalation comes down your shoulders. Down, narrowing either side of the spine.

Down to the area of Dantian. Below your navel. And then push your navel towards your spine.

A small constriction of the lower abdomen. Push the air back up your spine and out your forehead. And we'll sit here for about ten minutes.

Long exhales. Long exhales. Now please start to focus on the Buddha standing on the sky.

Brilliant golden color, or whatever color you choose. It's your face, it's your body. You're looking at it from the viewpoint of outer space.

So you're on the same level. And it's very far away, but you can see it up close. Start with the silhouette.

The eyes. Fill in the face. We'll do about ten minutes.

Halfway through I'll let you know. You can switch to making a perfect personality. This is you.

Future Buddha. Taking care of the whole world. With your teacher.

Just five more minutes. Concentrate on the personality. Remove, one by one, all the bad habits that you have.

And you can sort of appreciate how the face changes when you remove them. Just five more minutes. And please come back to your breath.

Three deep breaths. Dedicate your shamatha to helping other people. And then you can open your eyes.

Stretch. Okay, any questions? Any questions?

My lama used to say, oh, everybody knows it perfectly. So how do you know when you have shamatha? First of all, it cannot be called shamatha until it has some vipasyana, right?

So it's like saying... I don't know. You have left two wheels of the car and then you're going to have to ride two wheels of the car.

I think it's a kind of effortless focus. It makes you feel happy. You feel contented.

It's not strained. And it's not difficult anymore. You can keep the shell of your body completely still.

And inside, you have control of your mind. You can tell it what to do. So there's an element of that in shamatha where you can say, slow down or focus on this.

It's like an obedient child or something. So you can talk to your mind and say, we're going to focus. We're going to go through the 25 diamond cutter meditations one by one until we're finished.

And you're not going to think about anything else. And then the body is like a shell, like a cement shell. It's not moving.

And inside your mind, kinesthetically, you feel it inside your head. You could stay there forever. You can just keep staying there.

And you're not so aware of the outside. And you can... I think there's a big component of at will.

You can go through a series of meditations and your mind doesn't wander at all. Something like that. And it's pleasant.

It feels pleasant. Physically, you might find that as you get better at meditating, you start not to hear outside things. And then you start to hear, I think, three levels.

One is, I mean, it's not the text, okay? But one is, you start to hear the sound of your breath going through the hairs of your nose. Okay?

So it's like the wind through the forest. So your mind is already withdrawn, pratyahara, from the outside objects. People talking, or the wind, or doors closing.

And all you can hear is the sound of the air going through your nostrils, past the hairs. And then, deeper than that, you can hear the sound of air molecules hitting your eardrum. It's like a pitter-patter of rain, something.

And then, deeper than that, you start to hear your blood, your blood flow in your ears. And deeper than that, you leave the outside sounds, okay? Something like that, physically.

Those are physical things. By that time, your legs are probably falling asleep. I think it takes about an hour to get there.

And then you can stay for a while. Okay? Any other questions?

So last March, you were teaching us meditation, and you mentioned that when we were visualizing Manjushri, for example, this white light represents compassion, and the golden light represents wisdom.

[Speaker 2]
And you were mentioning about this beautiful quality. So, when we are doing this Shermatang meditation, can we combine these elements together?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, for sure. When you become a Buddha, you have the power to be a chameleon. You can be anybody.

You can be a dog, you can be a tree, you can be the waves of the ocean. So, if you... What he said was, the visualization of yourself as a Buddha has to be so interesting that you don't get ching-wang gupa.

You don't want to think about lunch, and you don't get tired. So, if you want to transform it once in a while, you know... Ladies can become a man, man can become a woman, that's okay, it doesn't matter.

They don't have sex. Buddha doesn't have sex. They are something else.

So, you can become anything. So, if you feel like you're getting tired or something, you can change the color and, you know, become a different actor. Richard Gere, I don't like him so much.

But you can change the Buddha, because that's what Buddha does. And keep thinking about how... For me, it helps a lot if I think about my personality faults, like I'm competitive or I'm proud.

And then I try to imagine what my face would look like without that. And I change the face a little bit, and the pride goes away, and, you know... That's a long...

You can keep going for many minutes, days, and imagine, no, I don't have this problem anymore. I don't think about food all day anymore, like that. And then see how the face changes, you know, okay?

You can keep it changing. Champagne. Yes, champagne.

[Speaker 2]
I try to think that if I remove my bad habits or negative qualities and try to visualize how my appearance is, how my face changes. But in my meditation, I just try to imagine, for example, if I become more kind, become kinder, become less selfish, and I would imagine that my face would be more softer. Or I just try to imagine, but I'm not sure of the correlations.

So, could you please tell us the correlations between the good qualities and the appearance? Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a good question. That's 8th chapter of Avisamalankara by Maitreya. And Buddha has 32 major signs and 80 minor signs.

112 total, 32 major signs, 80 minor signs. And each one comes from a different personality trait, each physical sign. The one I like is this little thing here.

He has a little hair here. If you pull it out, it will go a million miles. And the karmic cause of that is taking your lama to the airport.

The karmic cause is taking your lama places, like driving your lama. She's going to have a lot. That's why she's got so much hair.

So, we can study that sometime. It's a long story. What you can do in the meantime, I think, is people you know who are very generous, study their faces.

And see, you know, I think they have a little cool smile. And then people who don't think about food all day, they kind of have more calm. So, choose people you know who have the qualities that you would like to have.

And see how does it show in their face. Or in their body also. So, you start a database in your own mind.

Oh, my friend who's very patient, she never has this thing. Or she never has this thing. You can use Botox or you can use meditation.

Meditation is cheaper. So, you can study people you know who never get angry. And you can study their face.

It's a nice exercise. It's a nice thing to think about. You know, look at people's face and see.

Maybe they always have a little bit of a smile. Okay, so you figure it out.

[Speaker 2]
How can we just visualize people like a lama?

[Speaker 1]
You might lose your hair or something. No, I think... You can do that, but you pick the nice qualities.

You know, you can do that. But I think you will find nice qualities in many people. And that's a good exercise, I think.

Stanley?

[Speaker 2]
When I try to focus on the visualization, like at the beginning of the meditation, you asked us to sit still and focus on the body. I already feel like my body is shaking a little bit. I try to make it still, but I still feel like that.

And then you asked us to focus on the breath. Then I feel like I'm sort of controlling the breath a little bit. And it's hard to just breathe naturally.

Then you asked us to look at the Buddha. Then I find my mind goes back to the body and breath constantly, and I have to put it back. So is there a way to get rid of the feeling of physical body?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good. Practice. There's this great sitar player called Ravi Shankar.

He can play anything. And he—what do you call that? Improvise.

He memorizes a whole song, like an hour song, and then he adds his own thing. And somebody asked him, how do you improvise like that? He says, 90% perspiration, 10% improvisation.

It means practice, practice, practice. So you just have to practice. But the main thing, I think, is don't get uptight.

Don't get tight. You know, don't say, oh, I'm back in my body. Oh, no.

You know, like, kind of flow with it. And the reason we're working here and not here is that when you focus here, you get tighter. So for shamatha, he says, these two chakras.

So that's why we're pushing here and we're breathing out here. But this chakra is very dangerous. You get very easily nervous and shaky.

So try to avoid this one. And I would say what helps me— this is an old, old Buddhist trick. Shrink the visualization to this, you know?

If it's like as big as a basketball, then make it a tennis ball. And then make it a golf ball. And then make it a marble.

And then make it a grain of sugar. Like, focus the mind. The Buddha is sitting inside a grain of sugar, you know?

And the more you shrink the perspective, the better the focus gets. It's more easy to focus. If the Buddha is, like, as big as China, it's difficult.

But if you put them inside, you say, can you just sit inside that grain of sugar? Is that okay? And they're like, yeah, there's lots of room here.

And that helps your focus a lot. So you should try that. It's very cool.

Your concentration gets much better very fast. It's a good trick. So I'd say that.

The other thing is practice. But don't force. Don't fight it.

If your mind comes back to your body, say, yeah, okay, we're back in our body. When you're ready, can we go back to the Buddha? But don't say, oh, go back to—you know, if you fight it, you'll get nervous, and you won't enjoy the meditation.

Yeah, so... Zhenzhen, you had one? No.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
In the process of meditation, I saw myself become— my body became huge, and I became a guanyin. And then I went up one level, and I went into space. And then, at the same time, I went up one level, and I saw that I had the ability to change 81 times.

And then I saw that space is a door of light between the earth and the earth. And then in today's meditation state, I saw that I could fly higher and higher. In the space of the universe, in the space of the universe, I saw many, many planets similar to the earth.

I saw above the Buddha. Is there a higher energy above the Buddha guiding the Buddha?

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so two months ago, I had a meditation, a treatment, a therapy. And I visualized myself becoming a guanyin.

[Speaker 2]
And I rise up on top of the earth, and I see myself like a really gigantic, like a really big body. And I see that I can have all these superpowers.

[Speaker 1]
And I visualize, like, there is a gate between the earth and— like, emptiness is kind of like a white light. So the gate to go to the earth. And then today, in this shamatha meditation, I visualize that I can become higher, rise higher, and I can go through the whole universe.

And I see different planets in the universe.

[Speaker 2]
I feel like there's a higher power above Buddha. Is that true? Yeah, there is a higher power which is guiding the Buddha.

Is that true?

[Speaker 1]
I think you can say that. And it's kong shing, it's emptiness. And we'll talk about it today.

We'll talk about it today. Even Buddha has to obey this power. Okay?

So I think you can say that. Sometimes when I'm with a Christian friend, and they talk about God, then sometimes I feel like the law that what you do comes back to you is God, you know? So maybe God is— or maybe higher power is— they're a person.

We believe there's a person, but who can be a principle. Like that. So you might think about that, you know.

But I like it. I think what's happening in your mind is very healthy. It's very good.

When I visualize, I can visualize my own face very clearly, and I can visualize the light very clearly. And I can also visualize the face of my Guru and the light. But when I visualize my spiritual partner, I start to be distracted.

She will be distracted by a lot of faces. And there's a face, it's a female face. I don't know if this is the direction I'm going to practice and the problem.

I want to ask you.

[Speaker 2]
So when I'm visualizing in my meditation, I can see my own face very clearly and also the light of my Lama's face very clearly. But when I'm visualizing my spiritual partner's face, then it changes. It changes to many different faces.

And one of the faces is a female.

[Speaker 1]
So I'm kind of wondering if that's the direction that I have to practice. Yeah, I think you can follow it. I think if that comes up, if something like that comes up, and if that female is very Buddha, is a very nice Buddha, then that's okay.

There's a famous statue, half man, half woman, from India. And a Buddha has both energies. So Buddha doesn't have sexual organ.

Like Buddha is all the good parts of a woman and all the good parts of a man are together in the Buddha. That's the meaning of this. It's an Indian statue.

So women have more compassion. They have more empathy. And then men often have more decisiveness and they can get big projects done.

And the Buddha has both. Buddha is a perfect mix of both. So that's partly why we practice with a partner.

Because we can balance our hormones. Like that. So it's not a bad thing.

And when you become a Buddha, you can show either male or female, whatever helps people. If you have to help a boy, you will show as a beautiful girl. If you have to help a girl, you will show as a handsome man.

And Buddha does both at the same time. So you don't worry too much about it. It's fine.

It's good. Whatever comes. As long as it's kind and sweet.

Nick has something?

[Speaker 2]
When you're trying to get shamatang, keep perfect focus, and with this meditation, like you're trying to visualize yourself as a Buddha, everybody's questions seem to be like things start happening, like almost without your direction. Is that a distraction from your focus, when things just are kind of going off?

[Speaker 1]
I think you can nudge them the way you want them. You see what I mean? So don't fight them directly.

I always say, if you start thinking about a coffee, then go there. Instead of blocking it, you can block it head on, like, stop thinking about coffee. You can say, stop thinking about coffee.

You know, like that. Or you can use the coffee. You know, and say, oh, coffee, dark roast, brown roast, golden roast.

And change your skin to gold. So I like to... You just nudge.

It's like those dogs with the sheep. You know, you just like, come around, come around, come around. And then you kind of slide back into the original focus.

So I think you can, rather than directly opposing those things, you can ride them back. You know, learn to do that.

[Speaker 2]
And if the mind is taking you elsewhere, that's not focus. It's like when it's...

[Speaker 1]
It can be focused. There's a famous, famous question. I mean, Saturday night, those people at Vajrayogini Sadhana will do it here.

It's like two hours long. It's a two hour long video in your mind. And...

So my lama went to his teacher, which was Chidjar Rinpoche, which was the student of Pabongka Rinpoche, who wrote the book down. And he said, I have a problem, you know. Is that a...

I have trouble, because the sadhana keeps changing. The scene keeps changing, and people are going here, and then 64 deities are coming here, and 24 deities are leaving. You know, like...

It's hard for me to focus on it, and I... I lose my shamatha. You know.

And he got frustrated, and he asked Chidjar Rinpoche... I think it's even in Chidjar Rinpoche's biography. They carved all his questions.

And he said, you know, what's the object of focus? He said, the whole sadhana. The whole film.

Gone with the wind. From beginning to end, is one object. It's one movie.

And that's your object. That's your meditation object. So you can...

you can incorporate it.

[Speaker 2]
That's still planned though, as opposed to just...

[Speaker 1]
That's why there's three... three levels of shamatha. There's three causes for shamatha, right?

One is technique, which we'll talk about today, you know. Like, if you get ching wang, if you get dullness, do this. If you get agitation, do this.

Inner technique inside the mind. Then there's conditions. Like, what kind of meditation seat?

What kind of cabin? You know, what kind of food is better? He gets into food also.

And then, below that is karma. Karma. In Tibetan, it's called shen sem sungwa.

What's that? Shen, sem, sungwa. S-R-U-N-G.

Protecting other people's minds. The karma for good meditation is shen sem sungwa. Sungwa, right?

Protecting other people's minds. So you watch... You're talking to Jasmine about Thailand, and you say, like, are there surfboards?

And she'll go like... Then you have to stop this, you know. And then you say, oh, I'm sorry.

You know, I don't need a surfboard. And she's like... Okay.

No, in Tibetan, that's called protecting other people's minds. So the karma of peaceful mind is to watch other people's minds. Because that's why stuff comes up in your meditation.

That's why little disturbances come up in your meditation. They're karmic. The cause is karmic.

You irritated Jasmine with this surfboard question one week ago. And then, in your meditation, your mind just goes there, and you can't stop it. You may not be able to stop it today.

You see? That gets into inner technique, but those are caused by the karma. Those are both caused by karma.

So... So if you get distractions in your mind, and you just can't stop, you sit down, and you just start having distractions, probably you have to look at the karma. Probably you have to examine your daily behavior.

Are you, like, interrupting other people? I interrupt other people constantly. My closest friends tell me that.

Those who are honest, you know. They say, I can't get a sentence out, Geshe-la. Normally you're saying, Oh, I had the same thing happen to me.

Let me tell you about it. And... You know, and...

And I think I'm being empathetic. I mean, I'm just... I'm just talking about myself.

You know, so... When you... Then the karma of that is, uncontrollably, your mind will do something next week in the meditation.

So you have to understand the deeper causes of... The deeper causes of interruptions coming up in your mind, is your daily behavior towards other people. So, if you really want to be a good meditator, you have to start on it at work, or with your family.

Like, don't interrupt people. Let them say what they wanted to say, without telling them how it happened to you too. And, you know...

Watch their mind, shen sem suwa. You know? Watch their faith while you're talking.

You know, if they go like... Then, back off a little bit. You see what I mean?

Like that. Okay? And then, that's...

That's more important than the posture, or reading gom rim, or everything else. Because that causes those things. Okay?

[Speaker 2]
In this meditation, the Buddha we are looking at is always in front of us, right? When I try to imagine the good quality of the Buddha, and I eliminate my fault, I like to imagine myself, and my own body turns to the Buddha.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, if you slide into that Buddha, that's okay. Yeah, if you go... And...

That's okay. That's fine. That's fine.

In the path of seeing the second part, not the direct part, but afterwards, you are watching yourself in the future. You are present Catherine, and you are watching future Catherine. Any more questions?

When shall we stop? Yeah, it seems to me that if you don't say that we stop here, then I would like to go on, but I don't know when would be the point that like my focus is... Yeah, get tired.

I would set your timer. You know, because if your meditation is really good, you can't remember to stop. Maybe...

That used to be a problem with Tsongkhapa. He used to go to the morning prayers. In the monastery, they start around five o'clock.

They stop about nine o'clock. But he'd be sitting there at eleven o'clock, and somebody'd shake him and say, you know, it ended two hours ago. He'd go, oh, really?

You know, so... I think it's good to set a timer. Find out what's your capacity.

You know, don't go too long. Don't go until you're tired. Okay?

Like, stop just before you're tired. So, set it for five minutes. See what happens.

Then set it... I had a yoga teacher. He has a nice book.

His name is David Swenson. He has a great yoga book. And when I did my three-year retreat, I used it.

I used the book. And... then after about a year of retreat, I wrote to her a note, and I said, can you invite him to come teach me in my retreat?

Because we have a break every six weeks or something. So, he... he agreed.

He's very famous. And he came, and... I was so surprised, you know.

David Swenson, he's like the most famous Master Sangha teacher. One of the most in this country. Then I said, I have trouble reaching my toes.

You know, I can't... I can't reach my toes. And he...

Next day, he brought me a telephone book. Like that. He said, put the telephone book on the wall.

Can you reach the telephone book? I said, just barely. He said, okay.

Tomorrow, take out one page. Yeah, and I tried it. It took three years to, you know.

And at the end, I could touch my feet, you know. So, increase your meditation one minute a week or something. Start with five minutes.

Then go six minutes. So, after a year, you'll be up to an hour. You know.

Okay, but do it very gradually like that. You don't notice that it's changing. Okay?

Then your capacity will increase. Okay? Okay, quick.

Because we are...

[Speaker 2]
I just wanted to ask about... Can you talk about the experience of Samatha and the first one, which is that the first half of the first formula, right?

[Speaker 1]
The first third. The first third of the first level of the... of which causes the formula.

Which causes the formula. It's the first third of the first level which causes the formula. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and he mentions that. He talks about Micchogme. Kamalashila even mentions that.

The name of that level is Micchogme. And... Yeah.

Vipashyana is the Diamond Cutter Sutra that we're studying all day. Okay? We just did Samatha, okay?

But Vipashyana we're about to hit this afternoon. Right now. We're going to go to Vipashyana.

Okay? So they should... The two bulls.

Equal power. Spend equal time on them. Okay?

Vipashyana is... We're going to talk about it today and tomorrow mainly. Thanks.

Sometimes. Sometimes.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, okay. This and not that. So is it that I'm so far into the this that there is no more that?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. They'll say dushe rakpa and dushe chamo. So dushe rakpa is gross discrimination.

Gross capacity of discrimination. And one is dushe chamo which is subtle capacity for discrimination. And then the cause of the highest meditative level.

Sitsay. Namkathaye namshataye chiyang me sitsay, right? Namkathaye, everything feels like infinite.

Namshataye, everything feels like infinite mind. Chiyang me, it feels like I'm in the void. And that was the one that Kamalashila objected to when he went to Tibet.

He said, people are trying to develop this meditation where they feel like they're nowhere. And then sitsay which means total concentration. But that still has dushe chamo.

And it's like the formless realm still has form. But it's chamo, it's subtle. It's subtle forms of prana.

So when they say no, dushe me, dushe me min is the cause of that fourth one. Dushe me, dushe me min. It's very confusing.

It's in the Diamond Cutter Sutra. You can find it in translation somewhere. That which is neither discrimination nor not discrimination.

So what it means if you study it in the scriptures is that not discrimination means not gross discrimination. But which is discrimination means subtle discrimination. So yeah, you never lose the capacity to discriminate.

But like when you're listening to music and you're totally engrossed in it, you are making finer distinctions. You know, like Jimmy is sliding his hand at the end of the chord. But you don't hear so much the whole song anymore.

Your microscope has gone down into the finer points of what he's doing with his hand. Then you can come out again. You see what I mean?

But all of those are samsaric. So they need to be combined with an understanding of emptiness. Yeah, they just mean he's never not in a state of direct perception of emptiness.

So that conception is a different conception. He still has conception. If he has a mind, he has conception.

But he or she is no longer seeing a dichotomy between what appears to be coming from its own side and what he knows is not coming from its own side. He doesn't see anything appearing to come from its own side. He means he has no discrimination.

Okay, let's do a little... One more question? A few years ago, I was studying in a temple in China.

There was a way to train the mind of discrimination. If the food fell on the floor, if the floor was dirty, you had to pick it up and eat it. At that time, I thought studying Buddhism was too dangerous.

I had to eat even the dirtiest food. What if I got sick or poisoned to death? Then I had a mind of resistance.

This is also a way to train the mind of discrimination. A couple of years ago, when I was studying in China in some temples, the way that they train people to have less discrimination is that when you are dining with other people and you throw your food on a very dirty piece of ground and then you still pick it up and then try to eat it. That's the way that they train people not to have so much discrimination.

That way actually disgusted me and I felt so scared. I felt like this is a very dangerous way to train people. Is that one kind of discrimination as well?

I like to eat at a good French restaurant. I really do. I think if you trust that teacher, if that's your heart lama, and they say to do that, it's good to try.

Try to do it. But in the end, the goal... It's called Ro Chok Nang.

It's in the eighth chapter of the Abhisamankara. It's one of the qualities of a Buddha, Ro Chok Nang. Everything tastes delicious.

Everything. You say, do you want this creme brulee or would you rather have ice cream? And you're like, they taste equally...

Everything tastes fantastic. The goal is that. The goal is that.

Like, rice tastes like nectar of the gods. And, I don't know, ice cream tastes like nectar of the gods. And bread tastes like nectar of the gods.

That's the goal, is to have such good karma that everything you taste... Ro Chok means what? Supreme taste.

Nang means it appears to you. Everything's delicious. You go and eat...

Someone makes you a simple rice, Phan Tong. And it just tastes like so delicious, you know. Or you have a glass of plain water, and it tastes like wine.

Okay, that's the goal. So, I don't know if that's so useful. But if you trust that Lama, if you became that Lama's student, then you have to do what they say.

One time there was a... A student came to my Lama. He was a little bit irritating person.

And then... He said, Rinpoche, Rinpoche... He was in the kitchen, and he said, Rinpoche, Rinpoche, you know, I need shamatha now.

Then there was a plate of nine bananas. My Lama said, if you eat those nine bananas, you'll get shamatha right now. And he ate them.

And he just got a stomach ache. So sometimes Lama will do something just to... Just to stop them.

Okay, let's do a little Kamalashila, and then we'll take a break. Okay? Like five minutes of Kamalashila.

Okay? No, and then we'll do an hour. But the PP and the Kamalashila are competing right now.

So... Where we finished was the picture of the little girl with the bunny. What's it mean?

I'll do it. Yeah. I will...

The Buddha... Somebody said to Buddha, how do bodhisattvas act? They said, they nirvanasize everybody.

They take everybody to nirvana. And then Kamalashila, Master Kamalashila said, and it's not the kind of attitude that I will... try my best.

Yeah. It's not that kind of attitude. It's just, I will do it.

Okay? And that's a big difference in your mind. You should play with that difference.

You know? You know, it's not like, I'll do my best to get that gardening done today. Like, I'll really do my best.

You know? And then the other state, if you flip the mind, it's like, I'll do it. You know?

And maybe you're out there at midnight with a flashlight planting a seed, but you're... but you know you're gonna do it. Okay?

So, there's a difference in the state of mind. So, Bodhisattva is like, I'll do it. It's not like, I'll do my best.

Okay? But if you read the sutra, which you now have, I think. Let's find it.

No page numbers. That's a challenge. Okay.

Okay, the bottom of the second page. It says, All these beings will I bring to total nirvana, to the sphere beyond all grief, where none of the parts of the suffering person are left at all. Where none of the parts of the person are left at all.

Okay? Phungpo Lhagma Mepa. Phungpo Lhagma Mepa.

So, there's an expression in Buddhism called the five heaps, right? Five skandhas. And I think if you just...

I'll tell you, if you want to make your life easier, substitute my body and my mind. Because that's all it really means. Okay?

The five skandhas. Technical thing in Buddhism. Just substitute body and mind.

Okay? So, at the end of the bunny part, at the end of the little rabbit part, okay, Buddha tells Subuddhi, Take everybody to the place where they have no body and no mind. No more body and no more mind.

Okay? Then you should object to that. It's confusing, right?

And there's two interpretations at least. Roughly, there's two interpretations of that expression. Nirvana, where I no longer have a body or a mind.

Nirvana, where I no longer have a body or a mind. The lower Buddhist schools, like in Sri Lanka or Burma or Thailand, okay, they think it means what? Yeah, when you attain Nirvana, you're just gone.

Right? That's why they name different kinds of vodka, Nirvana. Okay?

No, I mean, when I was a kid, and I heard the word Nirvana, it was often associated with oblivion. With oblivion. Just pooh-blah.

You know? Like, nothing's left. You know?

You're just, like, wiped out. Your whole self is wiped out. And that became a misperception in Buddhism for many hundreds of years.

People thought, if I attain Nirvana, I'm free of the world because I don't have a mind and I don't have a body. You know? Then, you know, of course, somebody like Nagarjuna came along and said, Who doesn't have a body and mind?

Okay? If that's what Nirvana is, who is it that doesn't have a body and mind? Me.

Take away your body and mind. I mean, that thing. You're gone.

Who can... If that's what Nirvana means, who reaches Nirvana? Okay?

Because there's nobody left. Okay? So that's not what Samsara means.

That's not what Nirvana means. It doesn't mean... That's like saying, I achieved happiness in relationships because I will not have a boyfriend ever again.

Okay? That's like... No, you didn't achieve happiness.

You just got rid of all of it. You see what I mean? You didn't solve the problem.

You just avoided it. You see what I mean? So it's not...

Nirvana is... You lose your body and your mind. That's a lower school thought.

And Master Kamalashila says, that's not what we think. Okay? You want to go deeper?

So there's two kinds of Nirvana. One's called hlakme. One's called hlakche.

With something left over and without something left over. The lowest schools say, if you still have a little body and a little mind, you have Nirvana with something left over. Then when you die in this life and your body goes away, you reach final Nirvana.

Okay? So, I don't know, when you're 45 years old, you reach... Nirvana with some stuff left.

And then when you die, you reach Nirvana with nothing left. Okay? And that's the lower, lower, lower school.

Okay? The highest school accepts the idea, they accept the term, because it's a Buddhist term, Nirvana with something left over and Nirvana with nothing left over. And they have a very interesting understanding of it.

They say, while you are in the direct perception of emptiness, you have reached Nirvana with nothing left over. It means you're not... have any normal thoughts.

You're not thinking about anything except ultimate truth. Okay? Then when you come out of that, for example, you see yourself as a future Buddha, you come back to having some conceptual thoughts.

Then that's Nirvana with something left over. So, which one happens first? Yeah, nothing left over happens first and then something left over happens second.

In the lower school... Yeah, something left over happens first and then nothing left over happens second. Okay, that's the highest school.

What about Tantra, John? What happens to the five heaps in Tantra? What...

If you're going to read that line at the bottom of page two from the point of view of Tantra, and they say, you got rid of your old five heaps, what do you get? You get five... Yeah, the heaps transform into the five Dhyani Buddhas.

You are the five Buddhas of the five families, okay? You are the Buddhas of the five families. I taught it like ten years ago here and I forgot everything, but I looked it up yesterday.

Okay, in the middle is Akshobhya, blue color, right? And they are the purification of your... Well, anger, but which of the five skandhas?

Is it? Yeah, it is. Yeah, general awareness.

So, in Tantra, when your mind becomes clean, pure, that mind becomes a Buddha called Akshobhya, a blue Buddha, okay? Then when your body, physical skandha, when that becomes pure, that's related to Vairochana, Vairochana, eastern Buddha, white color, okay? Purification of physical body.

And which emotion? Ignorance, yeah. Not understanding things.

Then you go north to... I always visualize New York, Canada, L.A. and Mexico. That's how I remember them.

Canada is green, so that's Amogha city, okay? Amogha city. Amogha is a different code word because it's a negative, right?

An initial A in Sanskrit is a negative, like avidya is ignorance. So mogha means to be confused, like moha comes from that. Muh, the root is muh, so moha means confused.

Amogha means, came to mean meaningful. And then siddhi means to reach it, right? So the northern Buddha is called to reach something meaningful.

Dunyadrupa in Tibetan, okay? Amogha siddhi. Purification of which skandha?

Yeah, jealousy because it's green, that's how I remember it. But the skandha of the other parts of you. It's called the third skandha, it's the other parts of you.

Okay, the third. So in Buddhism we don't say body and mind. We say five heaps.

Four of them are mind, mostly, and one of them is physical, okay? So it'd be easier to call it body and mind in English, but we call it five parts of your body and mind, okay? So, then when you purify your conception, which Buddha?

Amitabha, okay? Amitabha. Which direction?

L.A. Red color, okay? Removal of which negativity? Yeah, they call it desire.

Okay. Then southern Buddha, Ratnakara, yellow color. Generosity.

Stinginess. Removal of two negativities, pride and stinginess. And which, the purification of which skandha?

[Speaker 2]
Feeling.

[Speaker 1]
What's left, yeah, feeling. Okay, that's all that's left, feeling. So you don't have to remember all those.

John taught them somewhere in Mexico. But the point is, when the Buddha says to Subuddhi, you have to take people to a place where they no longer have a body or mind, he means impure body, impure mind, okay? So, nirvana doesn't mean you disappear, okay?

You drink a lot of vodka and you disappear. It doesn't mean that. It means your being becomes pure and every part of you becomes a Buddha.

Okay? So, when he says, hlakme nyamde, you have to take all these little rabbits to the place where they have no body or mind. The Buddha means, no dirty body, no suffering body, no suffering mind, okay?

He doesn't mean no body, no mind. But he says no body, no mind, okay? Got it?

On that note, you can fill your bodies with fresh juices and eliminate other things.