Как выполнять ежедневную практику 02 — Ведомая медитация: подготовительные шаги и медитация защиты (1997, Нью-Йорк), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
All right, we'll do about 20 minutes, ready? The important thing is to be comfortable. If it's more comfortable for you to keep your plump down, then do it.

If it's more comfortable for you to sit on a chair, then do it. If it's more comfortable for you to stick your legs out or something, don't worry about it.

[Speaker 2]
You don't want to think about your body, and you don't want to move for the next 20 minutes. Okay, ready? Now watch your breath as it moves through your nose, and concentrate on the physical feeling of the breath touching your nostrils, like the front of your nostrils.

[Speaker 1]
You'll feel breath passing and touching the front of your nostrils. So pretend you're like a little man standing at the front of the nostrils, and you're watching the breath go back and forth by how it feels on your skin.

[Speaker 2]
During this period, don't try to control your breath. Don't try to do anything strange with your breath.

[Speaker 1]
Just watch it. Now we'll go to the first of the warm-ups. You have to go through these warm-ups, or you will not be able to meditate properly.

The first one is to review what you're doing and what you're hoping for. What do you want to get out of this practice?

[Speaker 2]
Imagine what it would be like.

[Speaker 1]
There are many aspects you can take, but one aspect of nirvana is imagine what it would be like never to have a negative emotion like anger or jealousy again. Try to imagine what that would be like, and make that the first part of your meditation tonight.

[Speaker 2]
Then practice compassion. It's okay if this is very artificial at first, and you pick someone that you can think about that's suffering.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so I think tonight, try to think about all the people who might be suffering from depression, especially in this area, like East Village. There's a lot of people who are depressed. They look like they're having a good time.

They're really depressed. Think about how, if you became enlightened, you could read their minds. You could see their future.

You could help them. So imagine how nice it would be if you could help them, if you could go to them and help them, because you can read their mind, because you can see their future.

[Speaker 2]
The next step is to invite your teacher to come.

[Speaker 1]
If you have a teacher, then ask them to come and sit in front of you. You can't see them, but they're there. If you don't have a teacher, then try to imagine inviting some very holy being that's the sweetest, most holy being you can imagine, male or female, it doesn't matter, and ask them to come and sit with you during your session.

[Speaker 2]
Then you show some kind of respect for that teacher, like in the scripture it says you can bow down on your right knee in your mind and pay respect to them. Then you make them some kind of offering.

[Speaker 1]
There's a lot of offerings you can make, but one is to choose something from nature, beautiful, something that no one owns, like the color of the autumn leaves and the color of the trees. This morning, after the rain and the sun came out and all the different autumn colors, you could offer that to this being.

[Speaker 2]
So offer that. It's important to, before you go into your deep meditation, it's important to make sure your conscience is clear.

[Speaker 1]
If your conscience is not clear, you cannot meditate nicely, and you can try for years, and you'll never understand why. So you look into your conscience and see if there's anything there that's bothering you. And if it is, then you look at it, you bring it up and look at it and admit it, and then clean it out.

In your mind, say, OK, that's past. I did do that, and I'm going to clean it up now, and I won't be doing that kind of thing anymore. And just in your mind, bring it up, clean it out, admit it, admit that it was wrong, and then get over with it.

[Speaker 2]
It's going to slow you down if you're trying to meditate.

[Speaker 1]
It's very important you do the opposite, and you think of something good you've done in your life, all the good things, the times you've helped people, the times you've tried to find a spiritual path. All those are very, very good things. You should be proud of them, and think about the good things you've done in your life, especially seeking this path.

[Speaker 2]
Next one is to ask the teachers to teach you, and there's different teachers outside.

[Speaker 1]
By the way, if your nose starts running, if you have to sneeze, sneeze, but don't worry about the snot, just let it go, OK? And don't move, OK, if you can help it.

[Speaker 2]
You can clean up later. Ask the teachers in your life to keep teaching you, especially the spiritual teachers, the ones you know about and the ones you don't know about. Last thing is to ask them to stay in this world.

This is not their realm. They don't have to be here. If they're here, it's to help you, so just ask them to stay here and help you.

That's the warm-up for meditation. If you need to shift or move or adjust something, do it now for about a minute. That was nice.

You stayed really still. That was good. OK, we'll start again.

You always go back to your breath. When you start again, you always go back to your breath and watch your breath coming in and out. This is a meditation warm-up.

And then later, some people made a mistake and thought it was THE meditation.

[Speaker 1]
It's just meant to get your mind into neutral. It's not THE meditation. It doesn't help to watch your breath your whole life.

You're just going to die like that. Someday you'll watch it stop. I mean, it's not the goal of meditation to watch yourself breathe.

You could also watch your earwax grow and stuff like that, but it's not the goal of meditation. It's a method to get into meditation.

[Speaker 2]
It's taught in the Abhidharmakosha, 350 A.D. It's called Ujjungu. Tonight I'm going to teach you what we call a protection meditation. This is for protection.

[Speaker 1]
It's very good at night if you're having a bad night, like a bad dream. If you've been having bad thoughts come into your mind, like even during the day, or depression or anything like this. This is a very powerful protection meditation.

First you imagine that you're sitting on a huge flower, like a huge white flower. You can feel the petals and you can smell it around you. It comes up to your knees or something.

You're sitting in the middle of this huge white flower.

[Speaker 2]
The flower is on the ground outside. Then imagine that you're in a huge valley, maybe a mile or two across. There's not much in the valley.

It's like pretty bare, like small bushes and sand rocks, like that.

[Speaker 1]
Nothing very amazing. You're in the middle of this valley.

[Speaker 2]
There's sunlight, the sky is blue, clean.

[Speaker 1]
Now around in the valley picture dead people, people that you know who have died. Picture their bodies. They could be whole or they could be rotting, or already skeletons, animals you knew that died.

Picture them spread throughout on the ground around you in the valley. The point of this is not to get scared or anything disgusting. It's to look at them and think, I don't want to be like that.

I don't want to go like that. I want to use my life for something meaningful. I don't want to die like they died.

If there is any way to stop that useless dying of good people in this world, then I want to stop it. When you look at them, don't get disgusted. Just feel sadness and say, I want to stop that.

I want to see life. I don't want to see death. I want to make people learn to live.

I won't waste my time in my life. If there is a way to stop those things, that kind of death, I will try to find it. That's what I'm living for.

This protects you because if you have this attitude, then you won't be worried about how famous you are, how much money you have, or where you're going to live. It doesn't matter. The important thing is to try to stop that kind of suffering for yourself and for other people.

When you look at the dead people there, try to imagine real dead people that you know, people that you heard about, people that you really know who died. But don't just get grossed out. Look at them and think, I want to make it…

You saw the end of Braveheart, right? The guy was inspired at the end. The more horrible things that happened, the more brave he got.

Look around and feel courage. If this Buddhism is true, then you're really doing something to stop these things.

[Speaker 2]
Around the edge of the valley, see the valley going up to some hills.

[Speaker 1]
They're pretty far away. They're like half a mile, three quarters of a mile away, circling your valley. And then from those hills, see a huge wall.

It looks like glass, but it's made of diamond. It's just pure diamond wall, like the Great Wall of China or something. It's thick.

It's many feet thick, and it's pure diamond. And imagine a wall like that around your valley.

[Speaker 2]
A very, very high wall.

[Speaker 1]
When you see the wall, think of what you understand about the path, what knowledge you have about the path. I think the most important basic knowledge that you have about the path is about karma, that the bad things in your life, you cannot blame on other people. You cannot blame them on your childhood.

You cannot blame them on circumstances. You cannot blame them on some god or some devil. If you understand Buddhism, and the more you understand, the more you realize they're coming because of what you did in your past.

If you hurt people, bad things will happen in your life. If you help people, good things will happen. And it's never any other way.

Everything is locked in. Everything is run by that fact. And when you see the wall of diamond, and you think about it, right now think about the fact of karma.

Everything that ever happened to you negative was from something you did to hurt someone. And everything that happens to you that's good is because you served other people and you helped other people. So, when you see the wall, think about karma.

[Speaker 2]
This is real protection. The last step of this meditation is, outside the wall, see a huge fire.

[Speaker 1]
It stretches for a few hundred yards outside the wall. And the flames are high. They're even higher than the wall, say 100, 150 feet high.

The flames are just bursting into the sky. Huge ring of fire. A huge wall of fire outside the diamond wall.

Like nothing could ever get through the fire to get to the diamond wall. And nothing could ever get past the diamond wall and across the valley of death to you. So, imagine a huge fire outside the diamond wall.

[Speaker 2]
You can see it well over the top of the diamond wall. And the wall is compassion.

[Speaker 1]
And you have to think about... I mean the fire. When you see the fire, you have to think about compassion.

I was in a plane one time in Chicago, and they told us it was going to crash. They told us... We were circling, and we asked them, why are we circling?

And they said, the landing gear is not working and we're going to crash. And we're trying to use up all the fuel so it doesn't burn you all up. So, they were going to try to land without any fuel.

So, we had like a half hour to think about it. Actually, it was longer. It was the weirdest feeling in the airplane that many of us, you know, we thought we would be injured or die.

And we were all... This feeling came into the plane of everyone loving each other and caring about each other. And everyone was trying to comfort everybody else.

And nobody was complaining about the food. And nobody was worried about the movie. And the importance of being about to die made everything else unimportant.

And it was the sweetest feeling of everyone helping each other and getting ready. We had to take our jewelry off because it would melt through your hand. People had to take their shoes off so they could run faster when the plane broke open.

At the very end, they made us bow down and cover our heads so we couldn't even see each other. And everyone had to think and meditate about death. It was very powerful.

People were crying and holding each other. Actually, our whole life is the same. And throughout your life, everyone else is about to die.

And there's no reason to struggle and fight with each other. And there's every reason to be kind to each other.

[Speaker 2]
Think about that when you see the flame. If you get used to this meditation, it really does protect you.

[Speaker 1]
It protects you from bad dreams or not being able to sleep or from depression. And you can use it. You've got to do it for a while.

And it works. It really does work. I've had many people use it, and it helped them a lot.

Then it's bad luck to leave your lama sitting there and get up and go home. So we ask the lama to come into our heart. And imagine that the lama is...

or whoever is sitting in front of you, that they get smaller, and they float up to the top of your head. Then they get smaller, and they come down into your heart, and they stay there. So imagine that that holy being...

They come up to your head, and they're facing the same way as you, and then they sink down through your head and down your throat, and then down into your heart.

[Speaker 2]
And it's considered a very powerful blessing to have them inside you. And the last step before we stop is dedication.

[Speaker 1]
Dedication means anytime you say anything or anytime you do anything to someone else, like just a little statement to someone or pushing someone on the sidewalk, or thinking a thought about jealousy or a thought about love of somebody, they all have repercussions. Anytime you do anything in this world, it's like throwing a stone into a pond. And every time you say something, every time you do something, you set in motion energy that lasts for years.

Little ripples go out every time you do anything. Every time you say anything, little repercussions begin that last for years. And it's a chain reaction.

The president yells at the vice president. The vice president yells at the manager. The manager yells at the supervisor.

The supervisor yells at the employee. The employee yells at their wife when they get home. The wife yells at the kids.

There's repercussions of anything you do. So just sitting here tonight and being quiet and thinking about these holy things, it has tremendous energy released into the world just from these people sitting here. So pray for that energy to help people.

And it'll touch people in ways you can't imagine. A lot of energy was created tonight, and a lot of energy went out. And pray that it helps people.

[Speaker 2]
That's the last step in the meditation. Okay, relax and stretch your legs.