Как выполнять ежедневную практику 19 — Ежедневная практика (1999, Нью-Йорк), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
The purpose of this class is different from the other classes. In the other classes we study the theory of Buddhism and we've gone through, actually in the last seven years, we've been through 17 courses covering the essence of the Geshe course, what a monk studies in a Tibetan monastery. The purpose of this class is completely different.

This class is mostly meant for new people and it's meant to help you design your daily practice. Daily practice means a schedule by which you get up in the morning, you do your proper preparations, you do meditations, and then you do your normal thing, whatever you do, like work or whatever, and then you come home and perhaps do some study and a little bit more meditation, and then how to close the day. What are the proper ways?

So, rather than just being a study class, this class is meant to help you design your Buddhist practice for the whole day, and specifically in the mornings, what you're going to do in your practice. So, you're welcome to sit here if you're an older student, but I'm not going to say anything different than usual. First I'd like to sell you on the idea of a daily practice.

When I first became a Buddhist, studied in India, was trained by teachers there, and then came back and really all I had with me was my daily practice. I was going to college, there weren't any other Tibetan Buddhists in the college, and the thing that I brought back that helped me the most was a daily practice. Mainly I'm talking about a schedule for your day, for meditation in the morning, and then for some study perhaps in the evening, and then how to conduct yourself during the hours between those, to really put your mind in a good place and have your mind ready for Buddhism and to be a sweet person all day.

I don't think it's possible without a daily practice. I've seen, I've had thousands of students, I've taught thousands of students, I've seen many, many people come and go from Ken Rinpoche's classes, maybe a few more thousands. I can say that the ones who just studied Buddhism didn't seem to get very far, they didn't seem very happy, they didn't seem to succeed in their lives, and the people who just practiced, meaning they didn't learn what they're supposed to do in their practice, but tried to practice, they failed also.

They just wanted to meditate and they didn't want to know anything about the theory. I've seen many of those people fail also. It's the people who continue thosam gom, it's a system that the Buddha instituted, learning, contemplation, and meditation.

It's the people who keep up this good mix of studying in a formal way, contemplating what they've learned throughout the day, and then having formal meditation sessions. You can't do Buddhism without all three, thosam gom. Say, thosam gom.

Thosam gom. Thosam gom. So, th means listening, and it means study.

You can't succeed without study. I remember my first big meditation experience was with a Burmese teacher named Goenka, Goenka Gyi, and the Dalai Lama, in 1975, told us, I was studying at the Tibetan Library under a very high Geshe Dargye, and we got a message from Thekchen Chuling, which is the Dalai Lama's private office, and it said, the Dalai Lama instructs the classes to be canceled, and everyone must attend teachings by Goenka Gyi, and all the monks from Namgyal Monastery are also being sent, forcefully, down to the Tibetan Library to study with Goenka Gyi.

So, we thought, if His Holiness is going to cancel the classes and close the library, and tell all the monks in Dharamsala to go to this guy, he must be pretty amazing. So, we were sitting around waiting for this guy to show up. We were all very excited, and we were in this large room in the Tibetan Library, and in through the door comes this short, chubby, little Indian guy without a shirt on, and he's got a towel around his waist, and sandals, flip-flops, and he's like, and we're like, oh no, you know, and he came up, and we thought maybe Goenka Gyi was canceled, and this man is supposed to tell us what, and then everybody says, no, this is Goenka Gyi, you know, and we're sort of just living on faith about His Holiness, and then in comes this lady, and she's like chubby, short lady with a sari on. She's about 55 or something.

This is Goenka Gyi's wife, and so we sit down, and we're like very skeptical, but he starts this meditation, and we meditated for 10 days straight with him. We had very few breaks, and we were not allowed to move anything, not even like this. We had to be absolutely still, and he enforced it.

No mail, no talking, you know, you couldn't wash your clothes, they were washed for you, showered at the library in a plastic enclosure, and you got fed like once a day or twice a day and like that, and we would attack the tea time, during tea time we'd all eat the sugar, and, you know, and then I remember after 10 days we were all high, like it was the first big meditation experience, and we were all totally high, and we swore that for the rest of our lives we'd get up at 3.30 and meditate all day, and I remember several people quit the library to follow Goenka Gyi, and then we went back to class with Geshe Dage, and it was, you know, more divisions of the Gelugpa list of this and that, and some of us were a little, we were sort of wondering, you know, what place does this have? Here's this Lama, this Geshe, he's going through the five divisions of this and the ten divisions of that, and it seemed very boring after Goenka Gyi's exciting teachings, and then it dawned on us, we'd mentioned it to some Lamas, and we talked about it, and we talked about it with Goenka Gyi's people, and we figured out that it was going to Geshe Dage's class that made the meditation so beautiful. It was because we had studied for a few months that when the meditation master came, we had something to meditate about, and we understood what he said, and we had a deep experience with this meditation master.

So I think you have to appreciate that the Lord Buddha designed it that you should study in an intellectual way, and then think about it during the day, and contemplation means thinking during the day and trying to do it during the day, and then meditation is straight, deep meditation sessions. So I'm going to talk mostly about the latter two. You get the intellectual stuff the other nights of the week.

So really we're talking about how do you do the Sambha and how do you do the Gompa? How do you do contemplation, and how do you do meditation? The general structure of these classes will be, we'll go through how to get up in the morning.

Some of us can't do that very well. How to prepare a sacred space in your house for meditation, then how to do meditation, physically how to prepare for it, and then there's a mental warm-up. I think the most misunderstood part about meditation, people don't understand that there's certain mental steps that you have to go for before you meditate.

It's like learning to run or jog, and you have to do some physical warm-up before you jog. So you need to do some preliminaries before the meditation. Then we'll talk a little bit about what kind of meditations to do, and then how to come out of the meditation, and then very importantly, guidelines for the whole day, how to spend the whole day, what you should do during the day to prepare for your next meditation session.

You see what I mean? So really, we consider the whole day from if you stop meditating at 8 a.m., and then all the way up to 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. that you go to bed, this is just preparation for the next meditation session. Going to work, eating, seeing your friends, reading your mail, reading books, whatever.

It's all just preparation for the next meditation session. You have to do maintenance during the off times, to have a successful meditation the next morning. So really, the next meditation session starts a few minutes after you get up from your meditation session, because you have to start setting up the next one.

I used to work for this carpenter, and he was this old, old guy, and he wouldn't let us... We wouldn't stop work at 5 o'clock, we would stop at 4 o'clock. And then he would sit there, and we had to sit quietly.

And he was this master builder, craftsman, and we used to build custom houses with him. And he would say, sit down, you boys sit down. And we'd sit down, and he'd pull out this pipe, corncob pipe, and he'd sit there, and he had this stupid 1920s hat, and these overalls, and he'd just say, we have to think about tomorrow.

Just sit and think about tomorrow. And we'd like, we have to finish the roof, and he'd say, no, no, time to think. And the last 45 minutes of the day, we would just think about what to do the next day, and we would set up the whole next day.

And then the whole crew comes in in the morning, and they just go straight to what they're supposed to do, and the whole day went beautiful. So the idea is, with meditation, from the time you get up from your meditation session all the way to the time at night, really you can view it as preparation for your next meditation session. So the point is, you can't have a good meditation in the hour that you give it in the morning, if you don't do some continual maintenance on your state of mind during the whole day.

So we're going to talk about those two things. Those are tsam and gom. Out of tsam gom, we're going to talk about tsam and gom.

And there are guidelines for how to go through the day and use it in a sweet way, and be ready to do your meditation the next morning. So we'll be doing this, mostly talking about tsam and gom. And nothing new here, nothing that I haven't taught before.

I want to talk a little bit about how important it is to meditate in the morning. It has two goals. One is, if you learn to meditate very well in the morning, then the meditation carries into your day.

And really, the goal is that you start to learn how to be in a state of meditation most of the day. And it's very, very pleasant, and it's very, very different from how you spend your day now. Like, if you do a good meditation session in the morning, and it starts to carry into your daily life, then you start to meditate about everything.

And that's the goal. So you start to, you know, I used to go out, get up, go to a two-hour commute, go to a corporate office and sit there all day and do diamond business, you know. And if you do some meditation in the morning, a couple of things happen.

First thing is, your mind is much more clear all day. Your mind is in what we call samadhi all day. And what happens is, you can be doing, you're like trying to make a deal.

I had to make deals. My business was to buy diamonds. Buying diamonds means a guy brings you 3,000, 5,000 diamonds in a special bag, a special paper, and then you spread them out on this huge piece of paper, and you look at them, and you pick them up.

You can't pick up 5,000 diamonds. So you got to have this system of checking a certain percentage of them, then you weigh them, then you check them for fakes, and you do all this different stuff. Try to figure out what the market is in Tel Aviv or Bangkok or Israel, wherever.

And after you finish all that process, then you go out, and you prepare the deal in your mind. You have to say, I'll buy 1,600 stones, and I'll give you back 2,800 stones, and I'm going to pay 3% more on the stones, but I'll give you 4% more on the terms. But you got to do the customs duty, and I need it by Thursday, but I don't want the quarter-carat stones in the parcel, and I don't want anything that's got less than a 14-degree angle on the top carat.

And you got to do 14 different aspects to the deal. I guess the goal is to confuse them so much you just agree or something, but if they're really smart, they're following everything you say. And they say, adjust the terms 2%, pay me on the day you said you would, and if you take the yellow stones also, I'll do the deal.

The point is, whatever you do for a living, even if it's just like serving food in a restaurant or something, if you have samadhi all day long, if you're in a state of meditation most of the day, the whole day is easy. Everything is easy. Problems come to you, people come to you, you have all these things going on, you can handle 14 things at once, and you're calm, and you're happy, and you're friendly, and the business is going very profitably.

And that's the idea of, that's the first goal of samadhi. The reason to do meditation in the morning is that actually you run your whole life a lot better. The opening lines of Master Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life says, whosoever is not in a state of samadhi throughout the day has their head in the lion's mouth.

You know what I mean? And that's the second advantage of meditating in the morning, having daily practice, is that if your immune system, your mental immune, you know you have a physical immune system that AIDS destroys or something like that, that gives you sort of a protective circle around you all the time. You also have a mental immune system.

Like if you are happy, and if you got enough sleep, and if you had a good breakfast, and all these conditions, if you're physically not sick, then your mind is healthy, strong, and somebody comes up and says something stupid to you, and you're like, ha ha, that's funny. You just go on. You don't get upset, and you don't have a problem with them, and you're not vulnerable.

If you don't get enough sleep, if you don't eat well, if you don't exercise a little bit sometimes, if you don't meditate, you see what I mean? Then somebody comes up and says the same thing to you the next day, and it becomes a major problem the whole day. Like you're unhappy the whole day.

They came up and said, ha ha, you're really stupid, and then all day long, the whole day, you're obsessing about it. I don't know why they said I was stupid. I know I'm dumb, but I'm not stupid.

And you're like, and you're like, it becomes a problem, not because they said anything different, you're just, your mental defenses are down, and you're vulnerable. And sleep does that, lack of sleep, not eating well, or lack of food, being sick. Half the people that you thought were really bad people in the world just have backaches, and that's what makes them grumpy.

And they, you know, you just didn't know that they had a backache all day long. And if you had that backache, you'd be twice as bad as them. So pain leaves you vulnerable, lack of sleep, not eating, and then not meditating.

So the trick is, if you meditate every morning, you get this halo. It lasts for ten hours, five hours, one hour, whatever. But it protects you for that long.

You see, I mean, you're protected from your own mind. Your immune system is pumped up. Your mental affliction maintenance immune system.

And you can deal with your mental afflictions, you know, you can handle it. And you're in a good mood all day, and you feel kind of happy, and when bad things happen, you can handle them, and you're happy, and you're strong. And meditation does that for you.

So, so far you got two reasons to have a daily practice. First one is you can actually become a much better artist, or businessman, or dancer, or whatever you are. You can do it twice as well if you meditate a lot.

You just get insights into everything. Everything is smooth. Solutions and opportunities are there all the time.

People tell me, oh, I don't have a good job, or I'm not happy, or I can't write, or I can't paint, or blah, blah, blah. And if you meditate, you find out you can do everything, you know. Just everything becomes simple.

It's like your mind is moving twice as fast as everybody else's, you know. It's fun in the diamond business, you know. You're like, I'll give you 3% there, 4% there.

And the guy is like, and then you say, okay. He's like, okay. And we made, we got up to $120 million a year from a $50,000 loan.

And this comes from somewhere. And meditation helps a lot. And I'm not saying we took advantage of people.

One of our rules was that it was always win-win. One of the rules of our negotiation was he had to make a lot of money, and we had to make a lot of money. You see, every deal was designed that he would make money, and we would make money.

But to think like that takes meditation, okay. So those are two advantages of meditation. I think, those are what you can call worldly advantages, okay.

Number three is much different. The third advantage of having a daily practice is that sooner or later you have to address the fact that you're getting old and you're going to die. Sooner or later, whatever your occupation is, or whatever you do, or whatever you're interested in, whatever your hobbies are, what kind of family you have, it doesn't matter.

It's all canceled as you get old and die. All of the stuff we've talked about, having a good time at work, having satisfying work, being able to do your work well, being able to maintain your mind and be happy during your working day, all of that stuff is meaningless the day you get your cancer, or everything. Then nothing matters.

All those things don't matter to you much. Then the stakes change completely. People come to this class, I look at a group of people, I know who's in the group, I know who's got cancer and found out last week, and I know who's just lost their husband, or there's somebody here who lost their grandfather this weekend.

For a slight period of time, you see life for what it really is. That's the third goal in meditation. Whatever job you're doing, whatever business you're in, whatever your interests are, whatever relationships you have, they'll all be cancelled on a certain day in your future.

Then the third benefit comes in. Really, I tell people about the first two benefits to get them excited, and it's true. But the third benefit is that you can actually reach a point where you can overcome your aging and your death.

These stages in which you're able to do that only occur during deep meditation. You have to be in a state of deep meditation to see the things you need to see to stop your aging and your death. I have three selling points.

They're called pen yin in Tibetan. I want you to meditate for three reasons. First one, no matter what you're interested in, if it's art or movies or business or whatever, you'll be twice as good at it if you meditate every day.

You'll run circles around the other people in the business, for example. You'll just be twice as good at it, period. Second thing is, since your mental defenses are strong, you'll just be happier all day.

You'll be much less vulnerable to anger spots or desire, runs on desire or things like that. You'll just be much less vulnerable. Your mood will be happy all day long.

That's why the Dalai Lama is giggling constantly. He's just in this good mood that you can't imagine and he's in that kind of mood all day long. You know what I mean?

And that's from meditating. The third advantage is that there are deep truths, spiritual truths that you cannot reach and you cannot experience if you don't have certain kinds of lifestyle. You have to be meditating a certain number of hours in the week to see them.

You can't see them unless you're meditating well. The main thing to see them, one of the main things is to meditate well. And then we're talking the stakes, the long-term stakes, your life and death, actually.

So those are the three benefits. That's why you have to have a daily practice. What kind of a daily practice?

And I'm speaking as an American who tried to do it for years and, you know, I went like this. I had good years and I had bad years and I've been trying to do it for 25 years and had very, very fine teachers and the point of daily practice, the most elementary point of daily practice, the most important thing, it has to be daily, okay? And, you know, it sounds silly.

Oh, guess what the most important thing about daily practice is? I don't know, do I have to practice? No, it has to be daily, you know, and it doesn't work if it's not daily.

You can just forget it, okay? You have to make it daily. It has to happen every single day.

There's no days off. Death doesn't take holidays. Old age doesn't pause on the weekends.

You have to do it every day for the rest of your life and it won't do what it does if you don't. I'm just telling you, just forget it. It doesn't work.

It's like, I don't know, there's nothing quite like it. You have to be doing it every day, okay? You have to do it every day or it doesn't work, okay?

Which means you have to decide, really the most important thing about this class is that you decide a time when you're going to do your daily practice because that's the key. After 25 years of struggling, you know, with daily practice, I can tell you the most simple truth about it is you have to go out of this room tonight and go home and before next Monday you have to decide one hour that's going to be for your daily practice. Period.

And keep it for the rest of your life. We have tremendous fights. One of my students is responsible for making sure we keep our daily practice time.

The other student is responsible for making sure all our other scheduling is done on time. And they actually fight all day long. You know what I mean?

We're always trying to chip into the practice time. You know, oh, there's something important we have to do tomorrow. The Dalai Lama wants to meet us at 9.30. Then the practice person is saying, no, that's practice time. And you're like, and then you get angry and say, come on, this is Dalai Lama. That's why you practice. No, that's not why you practice.

You practice because you have to practice. You know what I mean? And it's sacred.

And then what you do is set a time during the day. That's the practice time. And never break it.

Period. You just don't break it. And nowadays we fly around the world.

We have classes all over the world. We just got three emails from Asia begging us to start before 1.30. Could you start at 1 o'clock? A hundred more people would come if you had it at 1 o'clock.

So you just say what? Can't do it, sorry. You see what I mean?

You just can't do it. That's practice time. It took me 25 years to get here to this point.

And I urge you to just do it now because sooner or later you're going to have to do it. We schedule all our flights now after 1.30. Period. You know what I mean?

Except for flights that go in overnight. On the whole, we try to make sure that all the travel is done after 1.30. You just don't break it. And you don't give it up.

Because the first day you give up, then you might as well just quit. Because you've lost it already. Then you've broken your practice.

So you have to choose. And my suggestion is don't make it some wild thing. Don't make it 4.30. It'll last for a week. And then you'll quit and you won't get back. Make it reasonable. So set a time and make it reasonable.

Make it a time that... Put your borders on each... Put your buffers on each end of it.

Give yourself time to get up. Give yourself time to poop around. I swear to God, you can't start for 45 minutes.

Just decide. 30 minutes to 45 minutes between waking up and sitting on your meditation seat. It's impossible.

Just admit it. You know what I mean? And just plan it.

Instead of stressing out all the time. Say, I'm going to get up at 7 so that I can be meditating at 7.45. And just forget it. That's the way it's going to work.

So build in a buffer. And don't kid yourself. Why does it take 45 minutes to pee and brush your teeth?

I don't know. But it does. There's something about life.

I don't know why. But that's the way it works. And just plan it and just admit it.

This is the way it's going to work. So when you're planning your practice time, say, okay, 30 to 45 minutes after I get up. A few people like to meditate at night better than during the morning.

Morning, I think, is good. We'll talk why. But in the meantime, I think morning is probably better.

For about 75-80% of people, morning is better. So you get up. And then put a buffer after the meditation time.

Don't expect that you're going to stop meditating at 8.30 and be at work by 9. It's not true. And you know it.

You know what I mean? So, a half hour buffer to get out of the house. Why does it take 45 minutes to put your pants on and pick up your briefcase?

I don't know. But it does. I don't know why.

Did you figure it out yet? You probably figured out a way to avoid it. I don't know.

Anyway, he's weird. But it does. And just admit it.

Just face it. Don't keep being late to work and don't keep stressing out during your meditation. There's got to be 30-45 minute buffer in front of the meditation.

30-45 minute buffer after the meditation. Maybe it's trying to... No, never mind.

Anyway, you got to have... So the idea is, pick a time, have a buffer before, have a buffer after. And don't forget you have to have breakfast and shower and all that.

Consider all those things. Second thing, forget meditating less than an hour. People come to me, is 46 minutes enough?

I'm like, no, an hour. Okay, 53. And I'm like, no, an hour.

And they're like, well, an hour every other day. And I'm like, no, an hour every day. And they're like, you got to.

It has to be an hour. It doesn't work much else. I was struck, not stricken, but struck, when I was reading...

Time Magazine did that article called Buddhism in America. There's this guy dancing in the picture. But there was an article about...

That was a debate, actually. Anyway, but there was an article about... And they made an interesting point that I never thought of.

They say, most of us grew up going to church for an hour every Sunday. But really, in Buddhism, it's an hour every day. You go to church every morning.

And you go to your own church. Having done it my whole adult life, it didn't strike me that the difference between your practice and maybe what you grew up with is that we're not talking an hour at church on Sunday mid-morning. We're talking an hour in your church, which is your home.

And that's a big change. That's a big difference for most people. So, you have to put in that hour.

And forget the idea that you're going to spend a half hour or 45 minutes or something like that. Just forget it. Your life's at stake.

Don't believe the world that says you can't make it in your career if you only have 23 hours a day. That's just a lie. That's just BS.

You can't take an hour out of your day to take care of your whole millions of years into the future. You can't take an hour out of your day to decide if you're going to die or not. That's just BS.

It's what? It's 4% of your day. Whatever.

You can't take an hour out of 24 hours. That's just a lie. That's just not true.

They're trying to convince you your culture is telling you that you are a waste and you're a useless person if you don't spend that 24th hour on your business. Or if you're not doing something for that 24th hour of your day, then you're not a good person. And you're not a productive person.

You know what I mean? Because you're not producing anything for an hour a day. That's just a lie.

That's a total lie. You're taking care of the most important things of your life and your culture is telling you that's not important. And that's a lie.

Just ignore it. It's not true. You owe it to your future self.

When you're a Buddhist you have to think about yourself 10 years from now, 20 years from now. She or he is going to curse you or thank you. You have to think of it that way.

You have to thank the guy or the lady in the past life that took care of you and got you here. And then you have to be a little bit considerate of the you that's going to happen 10 or 20 years from now. Think ahead and take care of them.

They're going to be older. It's going to be harder for them to meditate. Maybe.

And they're going to accuse you. They're going to say, why didn't you take care of things back in 99 when it was easier? You have to be considerate of this person in the future.

So, carve out your practice time and make it sacred and don't break it for anybody. Period. That's it.

That's the first decision you have to make about your practice. I'd like to take a break here and then we'll do some actual meditation. So take about a 5-10 minute break and then come back.

I think there might be some refreshments. I'm not sure. So come back in about 10 minutes, okay?

[Speaker 2]
Okay, we'll start. Okay, we'll start. Hello, hello.

Hello.

[Speaker 1]
Hello. Okay, we'll start. I'd just like to do a short meditation.

Alright? This is mostly to help you... This is mostly for people who haven't meditated before much or haven't had any classical training in meditation.

These instructions come from Master Kamalashila, 9th century Indian master who came to Tibet. And very specific how to sit, how to start your meditation. So I'm just going to do a few details and then we'll get more and more fancy each week.

Okay. Begin by picking a nice meditation seat. It should be comfortable.

There's a rule about meditation. If you're not comfortable before you start, you'll be uncomfortable in 15 minutes. Okay?

That's just a rule. And even you older students, sit down, you know, just before you go off into meditation. Check and see if you're really comfortable.

Because if you're not, like my knee right now is not so comfortable. And if it's a tiny bit uncomfortable, it's going to be really uncomfortable in about 20 minutes. Okay?

So just don't be satisfied. Wiggle around until you find the place that's comfortable. Okay?

You should have a cushion that goes under your knees and under your thighs and calves, like one of those big fat square ones with about that thick. In fact, somebody just gave me a... where is that?

There's a place that sells them for $10 somewhere on Houston. Like $100 meditation cushions. Anyway, next time.

Economy foam or something like that. Anyway, check it out. Apparently very cheap.

Cheaper than three jewel... oh. No.

Just kidding. Of course, if you want a real handmade quality product, then then under your butt there should be another cushion that keeps the back of your rear end up a little higher than the front. Okay?

The scriptures are very specific about that. I really urge you to experiment. There are crescent shaped cushions that I found really good.

There's the zafu cushions, which I found are good or bad depending on how much stuffing they have in them. Like there's some that you can have barley holes and you can take them out or add more, you know, depending on the shape of your rear end. But don't be afraid to try like 15 different kinds.

Because there's about 15 different kinds. And it depends on your own body. We were in Australia.

Somebody gave Aura a nice tie seat made of straw. And she found that that was just perfect for her. Out of all of us, you know what I mean?

So, check it out. Try different kinds. Anyway, basic principle is your ankle bone, the one that always hurts, should be on top of something.

And so should your knees. And off the floor. And then a second cushion under your butt and holding up the back a little higher.

Should keep your back straight. Okay? And you'll find a place of balance to where each of your vertebrae is just right on top of the one below it.

And they say it's called the stack of coins thing. And, you know, experiment a little bit. And you'll find a place where you get vertically like this, in this plane, where you find just the right place where it's just balancing just right.

These two shoulders make sure they're even. The tendency is that when you have stress or when you're worried a little bit, you tend to tighten a little bit like that. You know what I mean?

Or like that. So you got to watch that. A good thing to do is to go like that before you meditate.

And get them down. Always before you meditate blow your nose. Okay?

People start meditating in my classes, you can hear. It's like... Your nostrils have to be clear.

Don't breathe through your mouth. Always breathe through your nose. It's a custom if you're going to do a full lotus that you pull your left leg up on your right thigh and then you pull your right leg up over that one.

Like this and then like that. It's okay to do a full lotus but if it becomes distracting forget it and don't worry about it. We're not talking about...

It's the difference in dance between how you look to the audience and how you feel to yourself. Do you dance with your eyes closed or dance with your eyes open? Do you think about how you look or are you just thinking?

Or are you just dancing? You see what I mean? And you got to get rid of the second kind of thinking with meditation.

No one's watching you and we don't care what you look like. You don't have to look like Gautama Buddha. You see what I mean?

The point is that you should be comfortable. And so don't think about how you look to somebody. Just come inside and forget about the outside world and find the place in your body that's most comfortable for you.

So it's a distinction between worrying how you look and finding a place where you can park your body and not worry about it for a half hour. Somebody asked me, are you talking an hour in a row at the beginning? I'm not.

I should have mentioned that. I'm talking an hour total. At the beginning it's probably 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off.

Then you build up to 15 on, 15 off and something like that. Then you can get up to about 60 minutes. It's okay.

I'm suspicious of a person who meditates more than like an hour and a half in a row. I would guess that your mind is just totally wandering or totally empty now or something like that. If you do a half lotus, put your right leg up on your left thigh and leave the other leg out like that.

So the left leg is like that and the right leg is up on here. Or like that. But it's not very tight.

Classically, your hands should be in what we call what's it called? Samdeng gi chakya. Meditation posture.

You take your left hand first and put it down on your lap, palm up. Then you take your right hand and put it down on that palm. Then you try to join your thumbs like that.

If you can't join them, I found it distracting. I remember for months trying to meditate and I got angry because the lama said you have to have your thumbs like that and they would fall down. And then I'd push them back up and they'd fall down and then I'd be like concentrating on my thumbs for an hour.

I'll tell you some tricks about it. If you stick your elbows out a bit, it rotates your thumbs and then they kind of like have to stay up. You see what I mean?

Also, personally, I find that heat builds up in my body and it feels better if I have some air between. If I have my arms against my chest or my upper body, I get too warm. Warmth is an enemy of meditation because you get sleepy.

It's better to be a little cold than to be too warm. So, like that. When you press in, depending on your body configuration, you should be touching your belly button.

Now, most of you will find that if you're not in a full lotus, you're touching about an inch below or two inches below. Depends on where your belly button was put there. But if you find that it's off, you can put a little cushion on your ankles, like fold a towel or something and then you'll be up and talking about the right place, like that.

Important to relax your mouth, especially the corners here, that everybody be relaxed. Important to be relaxed here. So, you know, good there.

If you find yourself going like this, you'll get tired in meditation and you'll get distracted. This is a barometer of how your mind's doing here. And this should be relaxed and this should be relaxed.

Don't breathe through your mouth, but if you're like me, buck-toothed slightly, you can crack your lips open a little bit, if it's more comfortable for you. They say part your tongue behind your teeth and touch them to the, what do they call that? Palate, lightly, behind your teeth.

Whatever's comfortable, whatever's natural for you.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
I'd like to just do some breathing meditation and we'll just do it for a few minutes. This is a system of preparing for meditation that the most, the source that I remember the most is the Abhidharmakosha by Master Vasubandhu. It was written 16 centuries ago and it describes breathing meditation.

It's called UG CUNG UG. Say UG CUNG UG. I kind of like it.

It sounds like UG UG GU BU, you know. UG CUNG UG. UG CUNG UG.

UG means breath. CUNG means exhale. UG means inhale.

So this is breathing meditation. It was always meant in Buddhism as a warm-up for the real meditation. It was never meant to be DZAM meditation.

It's just to get your mind calmed down. You see what I mean? It's used as a bridge between your everyday life and your deep meditation.

But it's not an object in itself. Watching your breath is not a particularly holy thing or virtuous. It's not like meditating on emptiness or compassion or anything like that.

It's just a neutral object. So it wouldn't be a worthy object for your meditative efforts. Which is not to say that in the highest levels of tantric practice you don't do a lot of fancy breath meditations.

But that's a totally different meditation. It has a totally different object and totally different motivation and totally different method than breathing meditation. Okay, so here we go.

Try to sit up straight. If you're in a chair, which is fine, put your feet on the floor. You just want to park your body in the most comfortable way for you.

Every human body is different. You're not going to be able to sit exactly the same way as the other person. And just as long as your back is straight, then start breathing to your nose and try to watch your breath.

It's a contradiction to say watch your breath because you can't see it. And what it means is be aware of the sensation of the touch of the wind or the air coming into the nostrils and leaving the nostrils. Watch the front of your nostrils.

Be aware of the colder air entering there. It's like a crowd moving into turnstiles. And you feel the air striking the fronts of the nostrils.

And then you feel the warm air coming out. And that's what it means to do breathing meditation. So just watch that.

We'll do about 2-3 minutes. Try to be completely still. Now I'd like you to try to count your breaths.

And this is how we do the breathing meditation. The out breath counts as the first half of the breath. And then the in breath counts as the second half of the breath.

And it's sort of a game of checkers with your own mind. And you're trying to see if you can get up to counting 10 breaths without losing count. And if you lose count, it's like chutes and ladders.

You've got to go back to the beginning. If you lose count, you've got to go back to 1. If you're really, really honest, you won't get past 2 or 3, I think.

The trick here is if you're not honest with yourself, you won't get better at meditation. You won't improve. So be very strict with yourself.

If you lose count, if you think, if your mind goes to something else and you lose your object of your meditation, then you must come back to 1. You must start over again. When you do this in real life, don't drive yourself crazy.

Stop after 5 minutes and go on to the rest of your meditation. You'll never get to 10. Some people bragged to me they got to 10 and went on to 16, actually, before they noticed that they were doing that.

Which just means they lost it, you see? So, try to do 10 breaths. Out-breath is the first half.

In-breath is the second half. Be very, very strict with yourself. Be relentless with yourself.

People have asked me, do I have to count it if the sarge slams the door? That's not really fair. I distinguish between your mind-wandering and an external event like a door slamming.

If you hear the door and come straight back and don't lose count, you can keep going. Here we go. Don't try to control the breath.

Don't try to change it in any way. Just counting. If you think of something else in a major way, you have to start over again.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, relax.

[Speaker 1]
One last point and then we'll stop. There's this special thing in the Lam Rim that says, don't forget that after you choose a meditation object, which in this case was your breath, if you let the mind go to another object, even if it's virtuous, you see, this is the point, even if your mind shifts to thinking about a Buddha or something kind you're going to do to someone tomorrow or something like that, you have blown your meditation. It's even a bad deed.

It's a bad karma. It's very interesting. So you choose your object of meditation.

What I tend to do is wander in my mind through all the projects I'm working on and that's a nice thing and I can do that later. You see what I mean? But it's actually considered like a bad karma, negative karma to choose one object and then wander to another object even if it's virtuous.

Even if it's a good thing. So be careful to keep that in mind and choose your object and stay on it. Next time we'll talk about continuing to an object which is more important than just your breath.

We say that just meditating on your breath is not a goal. It's not an ultimate goal. Also there are other objects of meditation like just trying to feel good or just trying not to think of anything or picturing a black hole or picturing a candle light or staring at a candle or things like that which have been taught as objects of meditation and were refuted by the great Buddhist thinkers as being not an object of meditation.

So you have to be careful not to fall into one of those. They don't help you. They're not in and of themselves something which has a sacred energy.

Did you have a question? He asked about the role of visualization. There are three basic kinds of meditation and one of them called jogo involves trying to get a mental picture, sometimes like a person and what you're doing there is actually seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling things in your mind as a mental object.

So like the Abhidharma schools and some other schools distinguish all colors and shapes into those which are external and those which are imagined. And they count them as real colors and shapes. It's just that they're imagined.

So the idea is to picture, for example, a perfect being. Physically and mentally perfect. Physically, spiritually and mentally perfect in your mind.

So the first thing you do is make their outline and you practice that for a while. We call this silhouette meditation. As if there's a light behind them and it's dark and all you can see is their outline.

Then you start to fill in the eyes. Then you do the face. Then you do the hair.

Then you do the shoulders. Then you fill in their body and their clothes. Then I think a lot of people stop there.

I keep going. Fill in their scent. Fill in the warmth coming off their body.

And then fill in their smiles and their blinks and stuff like that. All this stuff. And then fill in how they feel towards you.

And they love you. You imagine how much they love you. And then you go on to imagine.

Like for me, it's easy to do with Jesus or something like that. Because I grew up thinking that that was the holiest being I could imagine. So okay, Vajrasattva looks a little like Jesus.

And then I try to imagine what he's thinking like. How does he think? How does he think for five minutes?

And the exercise of visualization is powerful because it causes you to become that thing. You see what I mean? So if you keep fantasizing long enough about Jesus, you become that.

You see what I mean? And there's a very powerful effect on your mind. It's not just trying to make a pretty picture in your mind or something like that.

Or trying to, oh it's nice to be a Jesus or something like that. It's the exercise of imagining what a perfect being thinks like and feels like and looks like deeply affects your subconscious. And then you start to act it out.

And the same is true for people you don't like and you visualize them and you visualize what they said to you and you visualize how ugly they looked when they said it to you and you visualize it over and over and over again. The same thing happens, the same effect happens. You start to become them.

So it's very important to meditate on the first and not on the second. Seriously. Because the more you think about negative people, the more you become like them.

Because what you're really doing is putting yourself in their mind and trying to think like them. And it's very unhealthy. So that's one more reason not to get angry with other people because you become like that because it becomes an image in your mind and it gets burned into your mind.

You'll find a lot of times when you're meditating that you'll start meditating about what somebody said to you and how much you dislike them. You've got to be conscious about that and try to push it off. We'll stop there.

We'll do a prayer. Ernie, I've got to talk to you for a sec, okay? Alright.

You guys ready?

[Speaker 2]
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