Как выполнять ежедневную практику 04 — Ежедневная практика для быстрого счастья (1998, Нью-Йорк), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
And start by watching your breath, okay? Watching your breath since it's invisible is a little difficult. It means put your mind on the feeling of the air moving in and out of your nostrils, okay?

And we'll start with that. Try to sit up straight. I see some people crouched over.

And the first preliminary is to take refuge or seek protection. And a very typical one would be to seek protection in the idea of an enlightened being that the instructions you're going to hear and the practice you're going to follow tonight was spoken by an enlightened being who can see into the future. So they saw that this would be useful for you 2,000, 2,500 years ago.

And go for refuge in that fact.

[Speaker 2]
Think about that fact.

[Speaker 1]
The next step of the preliminaries is to try to meditate briefly on compassion and try to think of someone specifically that you could have compassion about. And I would say choose someone that you know where you work or someone who works closely with you who's unhappy and dedicate this meditation in advance to them. The next step is to invite an enlightened being to meditate with you.

And so picture sitting in front of you some kind of being which is holy to you. It could be the Buddha. It could be someone like Tara, a female Buddha.

It could be His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It could be Ken Rinpoche. If you're not a Buddhist yet, it could be Jesus or someone else that you feel is a holy being.

But invite one to come in and give you strength while you meditate.

[Speaker 2]
Then it's a custom to acknowledge their sacred nature.

[Speaker 1]
And in your mind, you bow to them and think about something about them which you admire, some spiritual quality about them which even at this stage, you can appreciate and recognize them. And then thinking about that quality, then in your mind, bow to them.

[Speaker 2]
Then it's a custom to make an offering to that being.

[Speaker 1]
And imagine, try to think of the most beautiful physical object you've seen today and make an offering of them.

[Speaker 2]
Make it, offer it to them, the most beautiful thing you've seen today. Before you meditate, it's important to purify your conscience.

[Speaker 1]
If you have anything negative on your conscience, it blocks your meditation. So try to think of anything very negative you might have done today or said today or even thought about today and try to acknowledge it and admit it. And then try to purify it by thinking about how you would like to stop doing that.

Next, consider something you did right today, something good you did for someone else, something you did to help someone. I find that most Americans, they love to feel guilty about what they did wrong, but they lack the ability to take much joy in what they're doing right. And in Buddhism, you're required to think about all the good things that are happening to you and all the joyful things you've done today.

And think of the best thing you did for someone today and concentrate on it and try to take some deep appreciation in yourself.

[Speaker 2]
The next preliminary is to ask for teachings.

[Speaker 1]
And for example, you could ask for the blessing of the great lamas and the great enlightened beings that the teaching we have tonight strikes your heart and it becomes something that you can actually practice. And the last preliminary is to pray that your teachers stay close to you and you stay close to your teachers, that the great lamas like His Holiness or Ken Rinpoche remain healthy and stay with us. And also that the good Dharma friends you have, the people who have a good influence on you, that you can stay close to them and that they're healthy and they continue to be your friends and stay.

They continue to stay and influence you. And that concludes the preliminaries. That's like a warmup for meditation and you have to do it before you meditate.

Prepares your mind subconsciously for a good meditation. And if you have to move or shift, this is a good place to do it. If your knee is becoming an object of your meditation, then move now.

[Speaker 2]
From here on, try to be very silent so you don't bother the people around you and get your last shifting done. Okay, go back to your breath, okay?

[Speaker 1]
Watch your breath. Watch the feel of the breath on the inside of the nostrils. It's good even to choose a part of the nostril to watch, like the very front near the nose, near the opening, and pick a little place there and put your mind there like a little guard and let him stand there and watch the breath go by.

The feel of the breath on the side of your nostrils.

[Speaker 2]
Then we'll start the DONG REN.

[Speaker 1]
DONG REN means giving and taking, and the order is taking and giving. And we're going to take away the suffering of someone and then we're going to give them some kind of happiness. And it's a very beautiful and powerful meditation for knocking out your main mental affliction.

And it also has a very profound effect on your spiritual body, on your winds and your channels. And it's very important for your future practices. And it's a meditation that's based on your breathing.

So remember, you will usually be doing this in the morning before you go to work or before you start your day. And the very first object for the meditation is normally yourself. You do DONG REN with yourself, with your future self.

So concentrate on tomorrow, Tuesday. Try to think about the whole day and try to visualize very clearly the most difficult few minutes you're going to have tomorrow. Like try to predict your main mental affliction.

You know what it is. Everyone has a different one. Predict what will be your main problem in your mind.

What will upset you the most tomorrow? Whether it's anger or jealousy or desire or something, but choose the one that's the biggest problem for you and try to clearly imagine a specific circumstance tomorrow when you might have this problem. Imagine clearly the place.

It's going to be in a certain room. Imagine who's with you. Imagine what they say.

Imagine what you do. And try to imagine the negative emotion starting to come up in your mind and fix your mind on that scene for tomorrow. Get it very clear and don't be vague.

This meditation only works if you're very specific and very clear about visualizing the circumstances. Now see that negative emotion, that your biggest problem emotion. It's like, visualize it as some kind of poison in your blood, like a black current of liquid flowing throughout your body, like some kind of evil thought stream.

It's not the only thing flowing throughout your body. I mean, the blood is flowing around your body. And then along with the blood, there's this black, this thin black stream that represents that negative energy and the negative thought.

And slowly collect all of that into your heart. So you're sitting in a room. You're sitting not far away from a person who is you tomorrow.

They can't see you, but you can see them. And imagine all that negative emotion that they have is slowly all that streams of liquid or thin little streams are collecting in their heart until there's a little pool of black and it gets harder like asphalt or like some kind of very ugly tumor, small ugly tumor about the size of a large marble and gooey black evil. All of that negative energy, take it from the person's all throughout the bloodstream and collect it, concentrate it all in the heart.

[Speaker 2]
Now, it's very important to feel some kind of empathy for them or some kind of compassion.

[Speaker 1]
And you feel sorry for them. You want to remove that blackness from their heart. And you're aware of how happy they could be if they didn't have that number one ugly emotion and the one that keeps bothering them from day to day and year to year.

And you want to help them and you want to take it away from them. At least for the day. And picture it very clearly in their heart.

And then we're going to suck it out of them like a pump. Okay, so every time we're going to take 10 breaths. And every time you take an in breath, see the blackness starting to stream out of there.

It's like a stream of cigarette smoke. And it's coming up from their heart into their throat and then from their throat into their nostrils. And then every time you take an in breath, you're sucking more out of them.

And you're removing that pain of that negativity from them. And see it coming out of their nose in a stream and then collect it in another pool of blackness in front of your own nose. But don't breathe it in yet, okay?

Leave it there and then we'll work on it later. So just take 10 nice, slow breaths. And by the end of the 10th breath, try to have all the blackness out of their heart.

So all that negativity is sucked out of them. The next step is that you look into your own chest, you know, your future, your present self's chest. And you still have that black pool in front of your face, but don't move it yet.

And look into your chest, look into your own heart like a little chamber. And inside of there, see a small red flame about an inch high. It's like a candle flame and it's steady and it's burning and it's hot.

[Speaker 2]
And it represents your selfishness. First focus on that, picture it. Now give it some meaning.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, it doesn't mean much until you give it some special meaning. And what that means is, think of two selfish things that you've done today. If you're doing this meditation in the morning, you're concentrating on yesterday.

But try to think of two specific, small, selfish things that you've done today. Don't be vague. It doesn't work if you're vague.

So think of two specific. And normally they're small little things like you drank a cup of coffee and didn't offer someone else a cup of coffee or you were selfish with your time. You could have given a few minutes to someone and made them very happy or something like that.

Think of two very specific instances of selfishness today. And imagine that the light is those things, the little lamp, the little flame in your heart is those two things. And take some time and make it very specific.

[Speaker 2]
Now we're going to destroy the blackness.

[Speaker 1]
It's important that you don't keep it inside of you. You're going to offer to take it. You're going to be willing to take that blackness rather than have the other person suffer.

But it's very important that you destroy it quickly when it comes inside of you. So when I say go, you're going to take one deep in-breath and then there's going to be a stream of black that comes into your nose and down your throat. And then it's going to approach that flame and then switch to slow motion and see it get very, very close to the flame.

And then as soon as the edge of the blackness touches the flame, imagine that there's a flash of white light. Ken Rinpoche said it's like turning on a light in a dark room. And imagine that the flame goes out immediately.

The flame blinks out. And then the blackness is burnt up in like a flash of smoke. And then they say it's important to visualize a little bit of wispy smoke just vanishing into thin air.

And then meditate a few minutes on the fact that the negativity has been destroyed. And your own selfishness has been destroyed because you're willing to take the negativity. And you destroy both of them.

And meditate that they've both been destroyed, your own selfishness and the negativity of the other person, which is you tomorrow. So go ahead and take an in-breath.

[Speaker 2]
And then see yourself as a person who's not going to be selfish anymore.

[Speaker 1]
And then focus on yourself, the person that you took the negativity from. Focus on them and imagine how good they feel. Imagine how nice it would be to spend a whole day without that negative emotion.

And just focus on them and take some satisfaction in a job well done that you feel some kind of joy that you've been able to remove the main thing that makes them unhappy. And then the last step, you try to visualize growing in your chest a very beautiful, soft, pure white, snow white light spreading throughout your chest, around your heart. And it's your love for this other person that you want to help them.

It happens to be you. In the future, we'll do it with other people. But all of the great lamas have said that you begin by doing it with yourself.

So you imagine some deep, beautiful white light spreading throughout your chest and some kind of love for this other person, some kind of concern for their welfare.

[Speaker 2]
And now bathe them in this light.

[Speaker 1]
You send it out of your chest, out of your heart. It looks like a rod. It looks like a pole of light, a very gentle, soft beam about two inches wide and it's coming out of your chest.

And it's touching this other person, which is you tomorrow. And it's just bathing them in this white light. And imagine that the light enters their body.

It's making its way throughout their bloodstream, all throughout their body, this beautiful white light. And it represents the strength not to have that emotion come back. So not only are you taking away their negative emotions, but you're trying to send them some very positive energy that would give them the strength that that emotion wouldn't come back.

[Speaker 2]
And send them this light and let it flow throughout them.

[Speaker 1]
Then imagine that they get up and they start doing the rest of their day. They go about the rest of their day, but they feel lighter, like some kind of load has been lifted from them. And they feel healthy and bright, positive.

And just they feel light and happy and joyful because of some, that negativity has been lifted from them, at least for the time being. And imagine how good they feel and let them stand up and start the rest of their day feeling like that. It's important to end the meditation properly and in the same way that it's important to start it properly.

So there are two steps we do. The first one is that you ask that Lama to enter your heart, the person that we brought that was meditating with you. So they get smaller and smaller.

They start to shrink from the bottom and from the top so that by the time you finish this, there'll be about heart level in front of you, very small, about two or three inches high.

[Speaker 2]
And then you ask them to come into your heart and they're like very, very happy. And they agree. And the way they come into your heart is from the top of your head.

So slowly let them float up to the top of your head. And then they settle down on the top of your head and they're facing the same way as you. And then they get smaller and smaller till they're almost like the size of a pea.

And then they just melt into the top of your head. And then they drop, they're still there.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, they still look like perfect, their body and face, everything is perfect, it's just tiny. And it sinks down through your body. It follows the backbone in front of the backbone, like maybe about a quarter inch in front of the backbone.

[Speaker 2]
And it's coming down straight to your heart.

[Speaker 1]
And then picture them right there in the middle of your heart, tiny, in a little chamber. And there's golden light around them and put them on a beautiful flower in the middle of some beautiful lotus flower. They say it's very auspicious to put a moon, I mean, a sun flat down in the lotus.

And then they're sitting on top of this golden light of the sun. The sun is like a disc down in the middle of the flower. And they're sitting there in this beautiful warm light, golden light.

And they're very, very happy with you. It's very unusual to spend more than a half hour concentrated on some holy activity. And we just did that.

And that creates a lot of good karma. And it's very powerful if you can give it away immediately before it gets dirty by your mind. You know, your mind will start to think about what you're going to do tonight and all these other things.

Right now, your mind's in a very holy condition. So while the karma is still very pure and powerful and clean, then give it away to someone. And we're going to give it to, I'd like to dedicate it to all the people who they know some meditation, but they don't have time to meditate.

There's some problem. They have, their family's too big or they can't get a quiet place to meditate or their work is too demanding. Something kind of obstacle.

And I'd like to dedicate, each one of us dedicate the virtue we did together, the power, that people like that could get a chance to meditate every day. At least like a half hour or 45 minutes of pure, quiet meditation every day. And we'll dedicate the energy of what we did to that while it's still pure.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, relax and stretch your legs.