Как выполнять ежедневную практику 16 — Медитация при депрессии, тревоге и низкой самооценке (1999, Нью-Йорк), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
Okay, let's start. We'll do a meditation. So try to sit up straight.

Try not to move. It'll be about 40 minutes. So try to get comfortable.

Your back should be straight. And we're going to go through all the preliminary practices for a proper meditation. And this is a meditation you can do at home, all the time.

And if you really want to try it at home then you can get a copy of the tape from one of these guys. And you can follow the tape. So first thing is to put your left hand down.

Then your right hand on top of that.

[Speaker 2]
And then sit up straight. Close your eyes.

[Speaker 1]
And we'll watch our breath for about three, four minutes. So just watch your breath going in and out, which is to be aware of the feeling of the breath inside of your nose. So try to feel the breath inside of your nose as it comes and goes.

Don't try to control it.

[Speaker 2]
Now take refuge, which is to... Tonight we'll think about a Buddhist path and how fortunate we are to find it. And think about bodhichitta.

[Speaker 1]
Imagine that you're already a enlightened being and think how much you could help the people around you. If you could read their minds, see their future.

[Speaker 2]
If you could appear to them in any useful form at all, what would it be like?

[Speaker 1]
Next invite a holy being, like your lama or the Dalai Lama or any holy being to come in the room and meditate with you. Imagine that you're inviting them from wherever they are right now. They're going to come and sit down in front of you.

[Speaker 2]
Then think about that person's good qualities. One or two specific good qualities. And in your mind, bow down to them.

Make some offering to them, some precious thing.

[Speaker 1]
Especially your own spiritual life practice. Something specific good that you did today or are going to do later today. Next think about some negative thing you did today or said or thought about someone and purify it.

[Speaker 2]
Think about the trouble it will cause you. Now think about something positive you did, something good, and be happy about it. Now ask for teachings, formal teachings, and also the teachings you get from your friends and the people who try to hurt you.

And then ask the teachers to stay in your life and all your friends, your good friends, the ones who are trying to live a spiritual way also. And that's the end of the preliminaries. If you need to shift around a little bit, you can do now.

If you need to scratch something, you can start again. Go back to your breath.

[Speaker 1]
I'm going to do a meditation that's a very good meditation for when you're feeling anxiety or depressed or or you're not sure of yourself. It's called a Gratitude Meditation, Karinchena. And this is how it goes.

First you think about gratitude for yourself and your past life that got you here. So in your past life you worked very hard. The person in your past life worked very hard to be a good person, to study a lot.

And that's the reason you met the Dharma in this lifetime. The last person you were was very devoted, very intelligent, very holy person. And that's why you got here.

And think about them. Think about what they might have been like. And try to think about some kind of appreciation for them and thank them.

So try to imagine what the person was like in your last life that got you here. They must have been very, very good. Out of millions and millions of Americans you have met some kind of path, you have some kind of hope for your life that many, many other people don't have.

He or she must have done a very wonderful job. Try to think of what they were like. Imagine what they were like that got you here.

And thank them.

[Speaker 2]
Next, think about the kindness of your mother. Especially, we're going to concentrate now on...

[Speaker 1]
They made a decision to bury you. They were giving up a lot. A woman changes a lot when she has a child.

It's a lot of suffering for her. And they are mentally, they're understanding that their life is going to change permanently and they don't have as much time to themselves anymore. And all of their time will be taken up by this child.

Whether your parents were good to you or bad to you, it doesn't really matter. The fact that your mother took the time, at least took those 9 months, 10 months of suffering to bury you and went through that suffering for you, especially the suffering of birth. Regardless of whether your parents were good to you or bad, or whether your mother was noble or not in this life.

Everyone here, their mother went through tremendous pain, suffering, uncertainty to bury you. Think about it. And appreciate them and thank them for it.

It's important here to know that that mother, good or bad, granted you a body, and human body in this realm is built perfectly for tantric practice. And they gave you that body. So whether they loved you a lot or not, or whether they were kind to you or not, they took the pain to give you birth and the body they gave you is your ticket to enlightenment in this life.

And thank them for it. Now think of your father, no matter how close you were, that he helped make you. And almost everyone here, their father probably supported their mother, helped support their mother, and helped support you when you were young.

To feed a person day after day, to think all day long how to feed them, the trouble and the responsibility was taken by someone. Think about father and your mother that way, that they, in my generation, especially your father, had to work and was responsible for feeding everyone and had that responsibility 24 hours a day in their mind.

[Speaker 2]
And thank them for that.

[Speaker 1]
And then think about your first teachers, like grade school teachers. And pick one or two that was particularly kind to you, good to you, taught you many things. Where I grew up, they didn't get paid much and they had too many children in the class.

And where I grew up, they had to work late hours at home to finish all the lessons. Think about one or two teachers that you had that helped you a lot and be grateful to them. Think about the work and the trouble they took for you.

Where I grew up, being a teacher was, they were paid less than anyone, even the garbage men in Phoenix. It was a joke that the teachers were paid less and they didn't have enough money to live on practically. And they had to grade papers late into the night.

Where I grew up. And thank them and think about them. Good or bad, whether your experience in school was good or bad, they gave you the ability to read and write and in many cultures, no one would have cared to do that at all.

[Speaker 2]
Be grateful for that. And then think about the people involved in your early life when you heard about religion.

[Speaker 1]
Maybe you didn't have someone, but if you did have someone, think about them. If not, think about your parents. Where did you first hear about the idea of another world, like a heaven or something like that?

When did you first hear stories about spiritual masters like Jesus, Moses, whatever? Someone told you about them. Someone shared those things with you.

Whether they were a great teacher or not, whether they were personally a good person or not, it doesn't matter. Someone put the seed in your mind about holy beings and great beings who did something special with their lives. Think about those people that taught you those things.

Try to think of one or two specific people who first taught you about spiritual things, even if it was just maybe superficial or something. They put in your mind the seed that's ripening now and thank them. Think about your later teachers, high school, college, if you had teachers that were very influential, teachers that helped you to refine your worldly knowledge.

Think about them and be grateful to them.

[Speaker 2]
Pick one or two of the great ones. Someone who taught you something special.

[Speaker 1]
Think about friends you had when you were younger. Maybe a boyfriend or a girlfriend or maybe a close friend of the same sex, but someone who was a good influence on you. Someone who you talked about spiritual things or talked about right or wrong.

Someone who had a good influence on you personally. Someone with a good attitude in life. Someone with a pure mind that was close to you and helped you get here.

One or two of your close friends from your high school or college time.

[Speaker 2]
Thank them for that. Now think of people who have employed you in your adult life.

[Speaker 1]
One or two. Americans have a tendency to see it as because the employer was getting some service out of you, you don't need to be grateful to them. Or they were making money or profit from your work and so they are somehow bad people or self-interested people.

But a Buddhist should look at these people and say they helped me, they took responsibility to have a business and to run a business so that I could work there and I could make a living. If you've ever been an employer, it's often the case that they work much harder and have much more trouble and more pain from the whole operation than you did. Thank them for that.

That's a Buddhist way of looking at it, that they were actually working for you and they took responsibility to provide a job for you and to give you a chance to work and feed yourself and your family and be grateful to them. Buddhists, in this meditation especially, try very hard to see them as having been very kind and to provide you with the chance to make a living. Next part of the meditation is to think of all the people whose work and sweat and blood gives you life.

All the people working in stores, all the farmers working to grow things, the doctors who have trained for most of their lives to treat you, people making roads for you, people making houses for you. Think of all the support systems. Don't think of it in an American way.

Oh, they're trying to make money off me. They got paid to do that. Don't think of it that way.

In this meditation, it's very important to think of all those people in the world working for you because they love you and they take pride in producing what they produce so that you can use it and that you can live. Whether you see it that way now or not, try to imagine that all these people are working for you, specifically for you, so that when a farmer grows some crops, it's because they're thinking of you eating it. And when your doctor was in school and spending all the money to learn what he or she learned, they were doing it so they could treat you.

And when you go to a deli or when you go to a grocery store, those people are standing there all day on their feet waiting for you to come so they can serve you and be grateful to them and thank them and fight the state of mind that says, oh, they're just doing that for their own self-interest or to make money. Imagine that they are consciously standing there or working their whole lives, spending the strength of their bodies to serve you and to make sure you are clothed and fed and housed.

[Speaker 2]
Spending their lives, spending the strength of their bodies. Now think of the Dharma teachers you've had, the people who taught you about Dharma, and they brought into your life for the first time some hope, some clear path that you could make your life meaningful in a higher way, and think about them and be grateful to them.

[Speaker 1]
Now think about all the lamas of our lineage, of our tradition, and think about hundreds and hundreds, thousands and thousands of teachers, students who've passed it on generation to generation. They're about 20 years apart. All the way back to the Buddha, two and a half thousand years.

Imagine a great mass crowd of people who have taken the time and spent their lives trying to pass these things down, trying to keep them pure. And each one went through his or her own suffering to find the Dharma. Each one spent years and years trying to learn it.

Each one started out knowing nothing. Each one struggled. Each one had doubts.

Each one worked hard to learn meditation, study, understand these things. Think of thousands and thousands of teachers and students, lamas and their disciples for thousands of years. Each individual struggling to learn Dharma and then learning it, and then passing it on to the next generation.

[Speaker 2]
And be grateful to them.

[Speaker 1]
The last part of this meditation is you imagine yourself in the future, enlightened, an enlightened being with a beautiful holy body. It's like made of pure light. The most exquisite thing you can imagine.

Imagine that you're already like that and everything around you is crystal and pure and shining. And you're looking back at the path, what you went through, and you're looking at yourself now, struggling to practice properly, struggling to learn things you don't really understand very well, struggling against millions of years of bad mental habits and mental afflictions, trying to fight your way out of that kind of being into the holier being. Imagine that you're already the holier being and you're looking back at what you are now.

You're looking back at this person now. And you're grateful for their work and their efforts and all their doubts and all the trouble they're taking to try to learn Dharma. And how much harder it is for them now than it is for you.

You see, you're already enlightened and you're looking back at yourself now, appreciating all the trouble and the struggle that this person is doing to try to get themselves enlightened and you're grateful to them. So be grateful for yourself now. A person who is not pure, a person who is not good, and is trying to be.

And those people are working much harder and struggling much more than even enlightened beings. So the enlightened being is looking back and being grateful to this person. Be grateful about yourself, that at least you're trying so hard.

[Speaker 2]
The last part of the meditation, the closing of the meditation, is to focus again on the holy being who's sitting in front of you. Ask them to stay in your heart and they start to rise up in the air. And they get smaller and smaller.

They're coming towards the top of your head. And then they're sitting very lightly at the top of your head and they're only an inch or two inches high.

[Speaker 1]
Now they're facing the same way that you're facing.

[Speaker 2]
You can feel them resting on your head. Then they start to dissolve into your head.

[Speaker 1]
They become very, very tiny, like a pea. They're coming straight down your spine, just in front of your spine. And prepare for them a place at the level of your heart, like a small chamber behind your heart, about half an inch in front of your spine, at the level of your heart.

And make a nice, beautiful little chamber for them with a lotus flower and a wonderful seat made of the sun's light.

[Speaker 2]
Fragrant. And then ask them to come stay there inside of you. And they do and they're very, very happy, very, very pleased with you.

[Speaker 1]
Because you are practicing Dharma in the hardest of times. There's very little Dharma in the world. And you're trying to overcome habits that are thousands or millions of years old in your own heart.

And you're really struggling against great odds to practice this path. And they're very, very pleased and they're happy with you.

[Speaker 2]
Then you ask them for their blessing and they grant it.

[Speaker 1]
And you can feel light seeping through your veins, strength and help from them.

[Speaker 2]
And then we'll do a short dedication.

[Speaker 1]
We'll do a prayer. And it's a really good karma to do a gratitude meditation. It's a very, very strong karma because normally we don't often think of all those people as being purposely kind to us.

And whether you think they were purposely kind to you or not, try to imagine them that way. That everyone around you is working for you and trying to help you. When you feel down or a little bit unhappy, especially with your own spiritual progress or lack of it, then do this meditation and it'll make you a lot happier.

And it'll give you a lot of strength. So we'll dedicate the good karma. Satsang with Mooji www.mooji.org