Как выполнять ежедневную практику 12 — Увидеть пустоту напрямую и создать собственное просветление (1998, Нью-Йорк), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
We're going to try about 10 minutes, okay? And I'd like you to focus on your breath. They say watch your breath.

In our lineage, watching your breath is a way to start a meditation. It's not a meditation in itself. It's like when you want to back a car out of your garage, you put it in reverse, you back it out, and then you don't jam it into drive right away, right?

You stop, you go to neutral, and then you put it in drive. You see what I mean? Like if you go from reverse to drive right away, it just grinds the gears, right?

So the point of breathing in Buddhism, the original scriptures, which I can show you if you'd like sometime, Abhidharmakosha, 350 AD, Vasubandhu, I think it's in the 7th chapter. He teaches a thing called ujjumu, which means watching your breath. And then I'm afraid that later in some traditions, it became the reason to get dry.

They forgot that it was just a preliminary, and it became what you do for 10 years. Which according to all the original books of Buddhism would be a waste of time. Because watching your breath by itself doesn't get you enlightened.

It's just a way to calm your mind down. And then you go on to some important meditation. But it is an important practice to calm your mind down, so we'll do it.

And you should get good at it. Last thing to say about it. What it means to watch your breath is not to keep one eye open and see if there's any dust particles coming and going and stuff like that.

It's watching the tactile sense. It's the feel of the air hitting these two parts of your nose, the front of your nostrils. So you're going to take your mind and move it down to the tip of your nose and then go down around here to these two donuts here, to these two rings.

And you're going to park your mind right there, like a guard at a movie theater. And you're going to watch people come in and out. So you don't follow the breath down into your lungs, and you don't follow the breath out.

You park your mind at the tip of your nostrils, and you're just aware of the feel of the breath as it passes that particular area. And you don't move your mind beyond that. You'll find out that coming in it's a little cooler, and then going out it's a little warmer.

And that's all. It's no big deal. Park your mind there.

Every time you catch your mind wandering, bring it back. And park it there. What will bring your mind off that is usually noise.

If someone moves next to you and makes a noise, the mind automatically goes out. Then you have to bring it back in gently. Don't freak out and say, Oh, I'm a bad person.

I'm a sinful person. My mind has gone somewhere for two minutes. Just, okay, bring it back.

So we'll try. Try about ten minutes. Sit up straight.

Take that position.

[Speaker 2]
Try to stay very quiet. Relax a little bit. Move your legs around.

[Speaker 1]
I think everybody looked good. A couple people had very stiff mouths. Like that.

It tires you out after a while. So keep your mouth, especially right here in the corners. It's a trick.

If you keep those loose, it'll be good. Keep your forehead. Try to relax it.

Some people tend to, especially people who carry heavy briefcases around, they tend to be like that. Sometimes you can go like that and just knock your shoulders down a little bit before you start. I noticed a few people had their mouth open.

Your mouth gets dry and then you start to swallow, which will disturb your meditation. Or you'll slobber all over your clothes and that's not good either. Alright.

We'll talk a little bit about what you do after that. There's a specific preparation you do mentally for meditation. After you've got your breathing and you've been watching the breath for a while and it slowed down your mind and slowed down your breathing, then you go through a special meditation, pre-meditation.

According to our tradition, the meditation won't be successful unless you do this. If you just plop down on your seat and try to meditate immediately, you won't be able to meditate properly. You have to do breathing and then you have to go through some sort of a mental warm-up.

There's a special warm-up you do mentally. The first one is to think about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Why are you going to meditate?

Everyone came here with a different idea. I remember the first meditation I went to, I was like 18 and it sounded really interesting and I was going to go and I had all these expectations of what might happen if I closed my eyes and sat there for 20 minutes. Maybe I would see God or something, you know what I mean?

You have your own little expectations. Everybody has an idea of why they came here. Everybody has a reason why they came here to this place tonight.

It's important to go over your motivation before you start meditating. We call it taking refuge. Taking refuge in this case means think about what you want the meditation to do.

If you came in here thinking that somehow meditation would make you calmer, you might be disappointed. If we did a good death meditation, everybody should go home shaking or very un-calm. The goal of meditation is not to just be calm.

Does it help your body? I mean it does. You will be more concentrated at work.

You will be physically more healthy if you meditate. But that's not the main reason. You have to think of the main reason to meditate, which is this.

If you divide your life, we did it last Friday, good things and bad things. Everybody was giggling at the end, I think because everybody was depressed. You can divide your life into the good things and the bad things.

The bad things we don't have to talk about. It's having to go to work. It's having commitments that you don't want to have.

It's getting sick when you don't want to. It's losing your friends. It's losing your family.

It's having your body change and get older. It's becoming disillusioned with people and with life and with other things. And being depressed a lot or sad a lot or something like that.

And as you get older, thinking more and more that maybe there's not any great thing to do with this life. Those are the bad things and you don't need me to tell them. You have them.

You think about them. Buddhism said then there's a lot of good things that you have. So far you didn't get cancer or maybe you did, I don't know.

So far you're still walking. So far you're still supporting yourself. So far you have had some good friends and some of them are still around.

Maybe you did meet a nice spouse or something like that. Maybe you have children. I had a woman call me yesterday.

She's a very devoted student in these classes. She's about, I don't know, 55 maybe. She had two children.

One girl and one boy. The girl died about eight years ago. It almost made her crazy.

The boy was killed yesterday in a motorcycle accident. So now she's completely crazy. She just called me and she couldn't even talk.

She sounded like a person from another planet. She couldn't even get the words out to tell me what happened. It really is like that.

I was thinking, Buddhism says that even the nice things in your life will go away. Even the nice things in your life. When he was young, the guy was young.

Even the nice things that you get, which are unusual, they have to leave. They will leave. Then you'll be in that situation.

It will happen like that. Every good thing that's happening to you is temporary and it goes away. When you sit down to meditate, after you do your breathing, you don't sit there and watch your breath for two hours.

It doesn't help anything. You watch your breath until your mind calms down, which is the point of watching your breath. Then the first thing you do is say to yourself, why am I doing this meditation?

What do I want to get out of this meditation? In Buddhism, in real Buddhism, you want to find out what's making those people die. She's such a sweet student.

It's Linda Waldron who wrote the poem for the class. Sweet, sweet, sweet lady. Very beautiful lady.

Got up and did a poem in one of the last classes. Brought her son to see if she could hook him up with one of the girls in class and stuff like that. They just died.

It'll be like that. When you meditate and when you sit down, you have to think, I'm meditating to see if there's some reason why these things happen to people and if there's something I can do to stop it. I put some kind of faith in this meditation for that.

Taking refuge means thinking about maybe there's a way to change those things. Real Buddhism is that. Real Buddhism means that according to Buddhism, you can change those things.

She didn't have to lose her son and her daughter. She will not have to get old and die if she trains herself properly. It's about the same as learning to play piano.

You have to put the same effort into it and seriousness. You can change those things. You can find out why those things are happening in your life and what you can do about it before they happen.

Because after they happen, it's too late. Now there's nothing to do about her son and her daughter. You can't change that now.

It got too late for her. She didn't practice enough. She didn't do what she had to do.

For that thing, it's too late. The first thing when you sit down to meditate is to think, that's why I'm meditating. Am I suggesting that her son and daughter didn't have to die if she had been meditating properly?

Yes. Am I suggesting that she wouldn't have to die if she had been meditating properly? Yes, that's what I'm suggesting.

According to Buddhism, all those things happen because of certain karma. Karma is something you can change and something you can affect. You don't have to die.

Your children don't have to die. But you have to change certain things. Then people should be thinking, sounds good, sounds wonderful.

New York Times never reported anybody who didn't die. There's an obituary page, but there's not a non-obituary page where they list all the people who reached eternal life or something like that. That's a reflection of the realm that we are in.

If you live in the world of the New York Times, if you accept the world view of the New York Times, if you think what's important is what the New York Times think is fit to print, you will be in this realm and that's all you'll ever see. There are other beings in this place, on this planet, who have practiced these things and who have changed and who are in a different realm now. They are experiencing life on a different plane that you cannot see right now.

To you, they look like normal people, but they are already gone to someplace else. Because you haven't been meditating or practicing, they still look like normal people to you. You can be sitting next to a person who has already reached nirvana and they can look the same to you.

That's a reflection of your state of mind and not theirs. They can be already in a Buddha paradise and you might not be aware of it. So don't think that because you haven't seen anybody, there aren't people already doing it or people who have done it already who are sitting around you.

It's not impossible. That's the real reason to meditate. So first thing you do when you get down to meditate is to think about that possibility.

If you accepted it just because I said so, you're not a very good Buddhist. Buddhists are not supposed to accept anything because somebody said so. I'm just saying it's possible.

You have to prove it on your own. And you can if you meditate well. First thing you do in meditation is to think about why you're meditating and think about what we've said.

That's what your first meditation should be about. We're going to practice that for a few minutes. We'll watch your breath for a while and then when I do this, this is what they do in a Tibetan meditation when they meditate together.

The leader will go like that. And that means now shift your mind to the first warm up for meditation which is to think about why you're meditating. And think about what I said.

You don't have to believe it now. But try to think about the possibility that there are certain people, maybe people sitting around you who have already gone to another plane, who are experiencing life on a different plane. And maybe you could use meditation to get there.

The first act of meditation after you watch your breath is to think about those things. When I stab my fingers, you're going to move your meditation from where? Those two donuts.

Okay? Very small. Your whole mind has been focused on the sensation of air touching these two rings right here.

Your mind is parked down here. And then take your mind into your heart. Okay?

And concentrate. Think about those things I said. Why did you come here to meditate?

Maybe you weren't planning on coming here to meditate on those things, but you're stuck, okay? And think about it. Think about the possibility.

There are holy beings in Tibet and people that the Tibetans have taught that have reached very, very high things, very, very different places. And think about that that's why you would like to meditate. They are already in a place where they don't have their family dying around them and they aren't getting old.

Those things are not happening to them anymore. And you have to think about it. Think about the possibility.

And think about that's why you're meditating. And that's all we'll do tonight. Okay, after that we'll stop.

We got cookies downstairs which are the sworn enemies of meditation. But since you already finished, you can have them, right? So, okay.

Start on your breath. Make sure your posture is good. Watch your mouth, okay?

Don't let the corners get too tight. Don't let it flop down open. It's really bad in the summer with flies and stuff.

And then... But don't make it too tight either. Very natural, very loose.

Like rubber. When I snap my fingers, go to thinking about the real reason to meditate.

[Speaker 2]
And we'll do about five minutes on each. Excellent.