Как выполнять ежедневную практику 09 — Ведомая медитация сострадания к себе (1998, Нью-Йорк), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
The first step is to count your breaths up to ten. Some books say twenty-one, but ten is normal. And you watch the breath going out and coming in.

When I say watch the breath, it means try to keep your mind on the feel of the air as it goes through your nose, especially in the front of the nose. So as the air hits your nose and you feel the air touching the inside of your nose, keep your mind there. Don't let your mind wander from that.

One out-breath and then one out-breath count as one breath. So one out-breath and one in-breath count as one breath. Try to get to ten without being distracted in a major way to something else.

If you lose count, you have to start over again. So we'll do breathing meditation for about three or four minutes, and then I'll guide you through the preliminaries, and then we'll start the meditation. So get yourself in a really comfortable position, and out of courtesy to your neighbors, try not to move after that.

We'll have a fidgeting break in about seven or eight minutes, ten minutes. That's in the meditation schedule there. But try not to move after you take your position.

Nothing. Totally still. Okay, start watching your breath.

Next we take refuge in your mind. Refuge, briefly, is the idea that you will try to follow this practice. You'll try to learn to meditate every day.

It's because of the suffering of this life that no matter what good thing comes to you, you have to lose it. If you meet someone, you have to lose them. If you get some kind of job, you have to lose that.

Whatever health you have, or beauty, or good looks you have, you have to lose. You have to lose your ears, your eyes, all your senses. You have to lose everyone around you.

The idea is that through meditation you could maybe affect that, or you could change that. So taking refuge means doing this meditation to change those things, especially for other people. So think about that for a few minutes.

Next part is to think of all the trouble that people around you are having, and to decide that you'll try to practice this kind of meditation and path to help them. Dedicate to them. Next part of the meditation is to imagine that there's a beautiful meditation seat in front of you, and that some holy being comes to meditate with you.

You can make them any way that you find comfortable, but the holiest being that you can imagine, like a true angel or a very, very beautiful enlightened being is coming to meditate with you. Focus on that. Then in your mind bow down to them.

Think about what they have that you would like to have. They don't have to die. Their body is made of light, and their mind is totally different from our minds.

Their minds are pure, clean, happy. They're constantly thinking about other people, and bow down to them for that, and pray that you could have a mind like that and a body like that. Try as hard as you can to picture a truly enlightened being physically and mentally.

Then make them some offering in your mind. Flower. Make a beautiful flower.

You can imagine the ocean, or the moon, the sky. Then we try to purify our minds before meditation, and try to think of the most negative thing you did today, or you thought, or you said to someone else. Try very hard to be honest with yourself, and identify something negative you did, and clean it from your mind.

Decide that you try not to do those things again. Then think of something that you're doing well, especially with your spiritual life. And we're talking about your spiritual life as far as other people.

Are you becoming more kind? Did you say something good to someone today? Did you hold your anger when someone irritated you?

Are you becoming more honest? And then take pleasure in something you did today like that. Take some kind of joy about that.

Think of something you did well today, controlling your own mind, making it more pure. And be happy about it. Now ask the lamas for teachings.

Ask for formal teachings like classes or books. Also ask for the secret kinds of teachings that we get all day long from other people. Many of them may be like angels or enlightened beings, and all day long people around us are trying to help us improve.

Sometimes the lessons are beautiful and positive, and sometimes the lessons are hard and negative, but in any case they help us develop. And try to pray for that kind of teachings to come to you. Either the formal teachings or the almost secret ones that come to everybody during the day from all sorts of strange people, like from your children if you have children.

Then lastly pray that the lamas stay close to you. Sometimes they change forms or may seem like different kinds of people or different people, but pray that they always stay close to you, and that lamas are always around you helping you, influencing you. If we are near really good people, really holy people, then automatically we start to to go up, rise.

And then if we're not around them it's very hard even to maintain what we have. That's the end of the preliminaries, and that's the good proper warm-up for a good meditation. And this is also the fidgeting break place.

So, fidget, and then in about two minutes we'll start again. Sorry? It's just mental.

You're not feeling the bunny. Mental. Thoughts.

Your mind doesn't have a location. Nobody should be still. You should fidget, okay?

Later you have to be still and not fidget. If it hurts you to stay cross-legged, just stretch your legs out, okay? It doesn't matter.

The point is to be comfortable. The point is to leave your bunny. Okay, we'll start again.

Now we'll start the actual meditation. Start by watching your breath again, okay? Watching your breath means glue your mind to the opening of your nose, the two nostrils, and feel the air as it comes by that opening.

Focus your mind on that. Every time the mind goes away, bring it back to that point, okay? Every time you start thinking about something else, bring it back.

We'll do that for a few minutes and then I'll guide you in a meditation. Try not to move, okay? It'll distract the people around you.

Don't try to affect your breath. Don't try to hold your breath. Just try to breathe long, quiet, smooth breathing.

We're going to do a basic tonglen meditation and this is a practice where you take away pain from other people and you give them happiness with your breath, using your breath. It's very powerful. And normally we begin by using ourselves.

So for a month or so you can practice first on yourself. It's like they asked me to give insulin injections to this old man where I used to live near my monastery and they made me practice on an orange first. First you practice on yourself and then later you do it to other people.

So first you have to visualize a situation that's going to happen tomorrow, something tomorrow. If you're doing this meditation in the morning, you try to visualize the whole day and try to pick a situation that you're anticipating that might give you some trouble. Like if you're trying to practice Dharma and you have a problem with a certain emotion like jealousy or something, then try to visualize a situation that might give you jealousy.

If you have a problem with anger, then try to visualize or anticipate a situation with someone that you're supposed to meet that day that might give you anger. It's like role-playing or something. So visualize a situation like that and imagine that you are sitting near yourself.

So the person meditating, which is you now, is sitting in a room and that other person, which is you tomorrow or that evening, is in that room and the future you can't see the present you, but the present you is sitting right next to them. And watch them start to get into some difficult situation with someone. So try to visualize it very clearly.

It should be a specific address, specific room, specific chair, specific person. You might have some kind of a problem with them. And visualize that very clearly, as if you were in the room sitting next to the person but they can't see you.

Now imagine all the emotions they have, the anger or the jealousy. See it in their heart, in their chest, like a small black ball of something, ugly black thing like tar or something, small like a marble, and imagine it in their chest. We're going to take it out of them, but first you have to imagine it.

All those negative things they're feeling, this is the future you. They're starting to get angry and they're starting to get jealous of somebody. Imagine all that negative energy, take it all the way from all the parts of their body and focus it, concentrate it in their chest, in the middle of their chest, about inside, a few inches down.

Now we're going to take that emotion out of them and then suddenly it will leave them and they'll be sitting there and suddenly they'll have this wave of happiness and they won't know why. But that bad emotion, the anger and the jealousy, suddenly it will just disappear. And we're going to take it away from them and concentrate on your breath again.

And each time you take a breath in, see that blackness coming towards you, coming into your nose, starting to come down. So take about ten breaths and take that blackness out of them. It comes up through their throat like smoke and leaves through their nose and then crosses across the room and then comes into your nose.

Take about ten breaths and draw that anger out of them or that bad emotion out of them. And feel them getting happier and happier because they're free of that emotion. When all that black is in your chest, you sucked it all out of them.

Then see a bright burst of light, like a white light, and see all that blackness gone, completely gone. So see a bright burst of light in your chest and the light spreads throughout your body like honey. And the blackness is all gone and you destroyed it.

Feel the relief from their side also. Now on your out-breath, send the light out like white light and bathe them with it like the white light goes out on your breath and then light travels across the room like a big cloud of honey. And just imagine covering them with wave after wave of white light and instead of being upset or angry or jealous, they start to feel more and more happy, more and more pure, more and more calm and peaceful and some kind of contentment.

And keep covering them with that. Every time you breathe out, think there's more light going on to them and cover them with it and feel the good feeling they have, the peaceful feeling. Now imagine them just sitting there peacefully, happy, contented, and suddenly all those negative feelings are gone from their mind and they don't really know why, but they right in front of the person that upsets them or right in front of the thing that makes them angry, suddenly they feel very happy, very contented.

They don't need those bad things anymore and they feel happy. And still your breath is covering them in white light. Now imagine that that light goes out throughout the city and it leaks into all kinds of apartments and rooms and offices and shines under the doors, through the keyholes, makes people happy.

Every time you breathe out, more light reaches to the subways and the stores and the cars. Then that person meditating in front of you, that holy being, turn them into light and bring them into your heart. Feel the light in your heart.

Okay, relax and we'll do a short prayer. And this prayer is to dedicate. We did a very good karma tonight and just to have thoughts like that is very rare for a person and even a fantasy like that.

It's a holy thing, it's a good karma. And the prayer we're going to do now, it's to dedicate that good karma, that we could really be able to do those things sometime. And that's a very, very important meditation that they teach us in the monastery.

It's probably the most important meditation and you should try it sometimes in the morning.

[Speaker 2]
Om Dukkhu Nam Dakshina Jaya Vahe Hitam Guru Radhamandala Kammayataya Nivadi Kevukun Sanam Ishe Satsoshi Sanam Ishe Nachi Dhammakuni Toba