Как выполнять ежедневную практику 07 — Дар бессмертия (1998, Нью-Йорк), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
All right, so we'll do some breathing meditation. It'll be about five, seven minutes, which is a pretty long time. Try to keep your mind focused on these two rings here.

If the mind goes out to the sitar music across the street or to the taxi that's going to honk in a few minutes, just bring it back. Don't get flustered. Just calmly bring it back to your nose, okay?

And all you have to do for the next five minutes is to watch the front of your nose. And don't think about anything else. I had a great Burmese meditation teacher that a Dalai Lama told us to go study with him.

And he said, especially don't think about monkeys, okay? And then we all did. Anyway, think about the front of your nose.

You have nothing else to do for the next five or 10 minutes, okay? Until I make some kind of noise, you got nothing else to do. Try to be perfectly still, okay?

Try not to, every time you move, it bothers somebody next to you, okay? So get comfortable now. If you want to stick your feet out any way you want, do it.

If you've got to adjust your cushion, do it now. Keep it back very straight, okay? And try to make it go quieter and quieter and quieter and quieter, okay?

You've got nothing else to do except watch your nose. Okay, go ahead. Okay, relax a bit, okay?

And generally when you do that breathing meditation, later on you can start counting the breaths, okay? And normally we count 10 breaths at a time. The out breath is the first half and the in breath is the second half, okay?

So it's not like in America where you breathe in and then out and that's one breath. It's very important, it's a tradition in Indian Buddhism and Tibet to count the breath by counting the first half as the out breath and then the second half as the in breath. And then you see if you can concentrate on your breath up to the count of 10 and without the mind getting distracted to another object.

Now if somebody slams the door downstairs or something or the phone rings, your mind's going to go to it. And the point is to bring it back before you lose count. So the mind will, you'll be at three and a half and then the phone will ring and your mind, you can't stop your mind, your mind will go to the phone and then bring it right back.

And if you bring it right back, let's say you don't have to count over again, but if you sit there on the phone with your mind and wonder who's calling and you lose your count, then you have to start over again. And I know pretty good Buddhists who have gone through like a week without getting to 10, okay? Or they went to 12 because their mind got distracted again, okay?

So the point is to get to 10 and then stop, all right? Personally, I find that three rounds of 10 is good for getting into the meditation, okay? If you can do 10, do like three of those, which makes a total of 30 breaths.

And then your mind will be ready to start meditating, okay? I'm going to teach you tonight two other warm-up practices that you should do before you actually start your meditation. We're not going to get to the real meditation tonight, but I want you to practice the breathing, okay?

So when you go home, practice the breathing meditation. By the way, it's very important that you meditate the same time every day, okay? It should be a habit.

It should be like, I told people last week, I worked in this company 15 years and lunch was at one o'clock. And so it didn't matter where I was in the world. I could be in India, but one o'clock New York time, my stomach started to growl, you know?

And I used to take a nap on the bus at 5.45. No matter where I was, if I was in a puja in India, in the monastery, I'd fall asleep at 5.45, you know? And it's important to do it at the same time every day, okay? So it just becomes a habit.

Then your body gets used to the rhythm and it has a great effect on your day. Your day will go much better. You'll be much happier during the day, much calmer.

That's not the goal of meditation, but it's a good by-product if you do it every single day. Every single day at the same time, your body gets used to going into meditation. So that's much better than like on Saturday you do it for three hours or something like that.

It's like jogging, or like playing tennis, or playing music, or dancing, or whatever. If you do it at the same time a little bit every day, it's much better than some noble effort on the weekend. You're going to miss a day or two, but don't worry about it.

It's very weird that your mind will talk you into different reasons why you should miss a day, and you just don't listen to him, okay? Tell him to shut up and go meditate. Your mind will come up with 10 different reasons why you don't have to do it today and it's okay to do it tomorrow.

And you just say, no, no, we're doing it today. And you get into the habit like that. I'm going to talk about one more, the preliminary practice.

Which is called refuge, taking refuge. This is like a statement of why you're meditating. And it's a decision at the beginning of the meditation session.

I'm going into meditation because of this. I want to learn meditation because of this. And every time you meditate, you spend a few minutes and you say, I'm going to meditate because of this.

What does refuge mean? In very basic terms, you have to figure out why you're doing this meditation. If you do that every time you meditate, the first thing you do when you sit down is, first you breathe, right?

You do your breathing meditation. Then when you're done with that and your mind is already pretty low, pretty level, then you say, okay, why am I doing this meditation? And the reason is very simple and very clear.

The reason to do Buddhist meditation is to do something about your suffering. What does suffering mean? Buddhists have this thing, everything is suffering, and it seems very mystical and very weird and very pessimistic.

I heard people say to His Highness, it's very pessimistic to talk about suffering all the time. There's good things in the world too. And he just giggles all the time.

He doesn't look like he's suffering that bad. I don't know. And he said, well, you feel a lot happier if you just face it and stop trying to avoid it.

Admit what's going on. And it's very, very simple. You can count all the good things in your life.

Some people on one hand, some people on two. Count all the good things about your life. Forget all the crap.

We don't have to talk about that. Take all the good things about your life. I'll think about my own life.

Like I'm still pretty healthy. I have a good mind. I had a good training from my teachers.

I'm a monk. I teach classes. I enjoy the classes.

I have a lot of good Dharma friends. I have a very nice family. And these are all the good things in my life.

I have great students. And then I can count all those things. Then how many things of those do you have to lose?

I have to lose my health. I have to lose my brain. I have to lose the training I had is going to...

Well, that's a different thing. But anyway, I have to leave my students someday. I have to leave all my friends someday.

I have to lose my teachers someday. Unless I do something special. I'll have to leave my job someday.

I'll have to lose every single thing I own. All the things I worked for in my life. My house, my friends, my clothes, my car, my bank account, my 401k, my credit cards, whether they're paid off or not.

I'll have to leave everything. You can't keep anything. And it's very simple.

I don't have to say anything more than that. There's nothing good about your life. Nothing that you will not have to leave.

And there's no one that you care about in this world that you will not be torn away from. Period. And the reason to meditate is to do something about that.

That's the reason to meditate. When you sit down to meditate every morning, if it's just to feel good, it's not going to get you there. You have to sit down and the first thing you do, do your breathing meditation to bring your mind down calm.

And then say, why am I doing this meditation? Because all these things are going to happen and I don't want them to happen. I want to see if I can do something about it.

And Buddhism says you can. That's what Buddhism says. So the purpose of meditation is not to be calm.

It's not to be like smiley all day. The real deep purpose of meditation is, can you do something about the condition of old age and death and sickness? Is it possible for you to actually change those events into something else?

And that's the reason to meditate. And that's the reason to have this class. And that's the reason to study Buddhism.

And it's nothing less than that. And I'm not exaggerating. You can affect your death.

You can affect what happens to the people around you. You can affect what world you live in. You can actually change them.

Even your death, you can change it into something else if you meditate well. And if you can't meditate, you can't do those things. And that's what Buddhism is for.

I don't know, there's a lot of Buddhist classes going on in the United States. There's a lot of different kinds of Buddhism. They will teach different things in those classes.

Watch your breath, be happier. Learn to concentrate. You can sit for four hours.

Do this exercise. Your legs will feel better and your back will feel better. That ain't what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about when you sit down to meditate, it's with the intention of doing something about your death and the aging process of your body and whether or not you will eventually have to leave your family and the people you love. According to real Buddhism, what the Buddha taught, you can't change those things. You can't actually change those things.

These pictures of these beings who went there are real. They're not just like some pretty weird thing that they made up. Those beings exist.

They used to be like you and me. Then they did something and they went to a different place. They can be with their people that they love and they can stop the aging process and they don't have to die.

They're not like us. They used to be like us. They studied and they practiced.

That's the goal of meditation. So when you sit down, don't shortchange yourself. The reason you're meditating is to reach some kind of, by the way, some guy told me, that's okay, but I don't like the bump they have on their head.

Their belly is too big and I don't like the long ears either and they look kind of Indian to me. Don't worry, when you get to that level, you can look like whatever you want. We'll look like Playboy or whatever.

Whatever you like, you will be. And I'm not kidding and your body will be made of light and it will be extraordinary. These are lousy things drawn on paper.

But the real thing is everything you ever dreamed of and you can reach that, but you must learn to meditate. So the first thing you do when you sit down to meditate, I'm meditating for that. And there's a time limit.

You got to do it before you die. Like you got time between now and then you can do something. It's delicate.

It takes great skill and training and devotion to pull it off before you die. But you can't. But you got to, every time you meditate, every time you sit down, you got to say, that's what I'm working on here.

That's the stakes. That's what's at stake here. And you have to meditate for that reason.

It's not to improve your back or your posture. We're talking about moving into a totally different kind of reality and a different kind of being before it's too late and you die. And the stakes are that.

So you sit down and you take refuge. Take refuge means, so now when we practice on Monday nights, I'll say, take refuge. After we do the breathing, I'll say, okay, now everybody take refuge.

What you do is you say, I have to die. I have to lose everything I care about. It's inevitable.

I want to do something about it. That's why I'm going to meditate. This guy's up there, he says, maybe I can pull that off.

Maybe he's right and maybe he's wrong. But nobody else in the world is even talking about it. Maybe there's a 5% chance he's right, but there's a 0% chance outside of here.

They're not even mentioning it. Give me 5% odds. It's still worth it to be here because outside there's no odds at all.

They don't talk about doing this before you die. So in your mind you have to say, that's why I'm meditating. And that's taking refuge.

So when I say take refuge, it's going to be a code word. You're going to think, why am I sitting here today? I want to see if I can change my way of existing through this meditation.

And that's got to be a little mental exercise you have to do every morning before you meditate. So we're going to do breathing again. I want you to keep practicing the breathing.

And then when I say take refuge, you're going to say, what did that crazy guy say? Let me see. Oh yeah, I'm going to get old.

I'm going to lose everything. Maybe I can do something about it. Like that, okay?

So try, get comfortable. If your knees are not comfortable right now, then stick your feet out, please. Get comfortable.

And after you take your position, don't move, okay? It's going to be about five, 10 minutes, okay? Again.

And once you take your position, even just out of consideration for the people around you, totally quiet. Don't make a twitch, okay? When I was first learning to meditate, the guy would kick us out of the room if we even moved a bit.

I don't do that because I close my eyes. Okay, everybody ready? We'll do breathing for about five minutes, five to 10 minutes.

I want you to practice it. If you can, try to count it. Remember the out-breath is the first half and the in-breath is the in-half, second half.

If you get distracted for a number, if you get up to three and then by the time you remember, it's already a couple breaths later, you got to start over again, okay? Promise, be honest, okay? But don't be anal about it, okay?

Like if you can come back between two and a half and three and a half, it's okay. Otherwise, you'll be here all night. And then when I say, take refuge, you start really powerfully thinking, why am I doing this stupid meditation, okay?

Okay, go ahead. Now take refuge and think about why you're meditating. Okay, relax, take a break.

I'm going to talk about the third step after you do your breathing and after you do refuge and then we'll stop, okay? I mean, we'll do one little short one before we stop. The next step is called bodhichitta and it's a special kind of feeling about other people and it makes your meditation go really well.

And just after you take refuge, you go through another train of thought, and it takes just a few minutes. Normally, it's just 10 breaths, okay? It would just be 10 breaths long because in America, you have to finish this whole shtick before in about 45 minutes, right?

Because you got to go to work. And it doesn't help to sit and try to meditate for two hours, you can't, okay? 45 minutes is not bad.

It's about 10 or 15 minutes to get warmed up. It's about half an hour in meditation and then there's a little bit when you come out. And your sessions, if that's all you do in a day, that's great, okay?

It's very hard to get that much time in a day. Later on, if it's comfortable, you can do a little bit in the evening also. But start out, your goal should be about, oh, maybe half an hour of meditation in the morning.

After you finish taking refuge, which is just think over in your mind, why am I doing this meditation? It's because there's some chance it will help me escape the problem of death and maybe be able to move into, you can go to other realms, you can live there. You don't have to live in this kind of a body.

This, by the way, according to Buddhism, this kind of a body is a mistake that you made a long time ago. This is the result of some mistake you made a long time ago. You didn't have to be in a body like this.

And you can change it. This one doesn't work. This one's defective, okay?

It's like a bad, it's a lemon. It's going to get cancer or HIV or something. You can't stop, well, you can stop it, but if you don't do something, it's going to get something.

It will kill itself. Even if you don't get anything, it will kill itself. It's designed to kill itself.

Not a good body to be in. We'd rather be in a different one. And you can move into a different kind of body.

That's what these pictures are. And they're real. There are beings like that, and you can go there and you can reach that.

It doesn't hurt at all. It's very nice. And you can still be with your friends and your family.

It's amazing. It's a nice solution to everything. But all of those changes take place in meditation.

The movement between different levels, and levels you cannot see now, takes place in meditation. You must learn to get into meditation. It doesn't happen out on the street.

It doesn't happen at work. It happens, it's triggered by certain events in meditation. So you have to learn to meditate.

It's almost like a tool and not a goal in itself. But the places you want to go, you can only get there if you meditate. And you have to learn to meditate well.

The next step in the warm-up is to think, if you got really good at this stuff, and it started to work, how proud you would be to be able to teach it to other people. You see what I mean? How nice it would be that you could teach it to the people you love and the people you care about.

We don't believe in Buddhism that you should irritate other people by proselytizing. We're not allowed to do that. But if you had someone close to you that you love, and if there was the right time and the right place, and you thought they might be interested, and if you knew how to do all this stuff, and you were already getting some amazing results from it, think how nice it would be to help them.

Think what a gift it would be to give the people you love the gift of not dying and not getting old. I mean, that would be something extraordinary. If you could do it, if you could learn it, and if you could get pretty close to doing it yourself, then imagine what it would feel like to be able to help other people.

Imagine what it would feel like to be able to give that gift to other people. It would be the best thing in your life forever. It'd be like the greatest event in your whole life would be to give that gift to another person.

And so, it'd be one thing to get there yourself, but to imagine what it would be like to give it to other people, that skill, that method of not dying, of not getting old, not suffering anymore, not having any bad thought or any bad thing ever happen to them again. Imagine if you could give that to someone. Imagine if you had the ability to do that.

And that's the next meditation. It's a very cool fantasy. Buddhism says, even if it's not true, it's still a good way to think.

And it happens to be true. So, that's called bodhichitta. That state of mind, that fantasy, which is not a fantasy, it's real, that, hey, if I could learn to do this, then I could teach other people.

I could really help the people I care about. And that's called bodhichitta. So, we're going to do a very short breathing meditation again.

And then practice that one. It's just that. It's like, if I could learn to do that, who would I go to first?

I mean, everybody has their own person in their mind. It might be your pet dog or something, I don't know. But think about it.

Who would you go to first? If one day you woke up out of meditation and you figured out how to become a different kind of being, then you'd be all excited and you'd say, now I've got to go teach and decide who it's going to be and get that emotion, how it feels, how good it feels. It's really, really exciting to imagine that you could do it.

And you can. You can do it. It's very...

Think of what a wonderful gift it would be to call someone on the phone and say, hey, I've got something for you. Could you come over?

[Speaker 2]
You know, all right.

[Speaker 1]
No, really. Think about it. And that is the next part of this warm-up.

We're just getting warmed up to the real meditation. So do a little bit of breathing meditation. And when I say bodhichitta, think about bodhichitta, then go into that idea, you know, hey, come on over.

You got time tomorrow around six. I'll show you something. Okay?

Think about it. And then we'll stop. Now I'll take a few questions if people have questions after that.

So get comfortable. By now, maybe you want to stick your legs out, okay? You've been holding out, right?

If you've got to stick your legs out, just stick them out. Don't be shy. Be comfortable.

I do not want you meditating on your knees. You've got to meditate on bodhichitta, right? You can't do both, by the way.

Okay, so start with breathing meditation, all right? Put your mind on those two doughnuts. And don't let them leave those two doughnuts.

Don't let your mind leave those two doughnuts. Okay, think about bodhichitta and think about whom you would give this gift. Okay, relax.