500 образов для медитации на шагах пути к просветлению, занятие 36

[Speaker 1]
Now, idim 36. By the way, page numbers for these idims, I spent a couple hours, I went in and I put all the page numbers from Gift of Liberation in English by searching the Tibetan, so it's accurate. But, I realized when I was doing it that a huge percentage of the lamrim, for example, this section on meditation, came from many, many other books when I was teaching it.

So, back nine years ago when we started these retreats, and during the 29 retreats, I've been pulling many, many, many things from other books. So, I wanted to warn you, it's not enough to read the book, okay? The book is maybe 20% of what you heard, and you got like 80%, whatever I was translating at that time, I was pulling from that, huge amounts from other things.

So, I would really encourage Jasmine, find a way that these teachers have to listen to the videos. That means people like Jigme and Jamie have to make sure we have the videos up as well as we can. I know some, the camera died, or somebody lost the videotape, or whatever.

But, to do your project, to teach meditation teachers, it'd be useful to have the videos, okay? And then to link the videos to the explanation, okay? Which is a huge amount of work.

Good luck. We did cover Mahamudra meditation. Maha means big, mudra means a seal, like the seal that a king uses on their orders, okay?

Which is why I put the picture of a seal, okay? This is a famous meditation where the object of meditation is your own mind, okay? It's supposed to be less likely to get sleepy.

Why? It's so interesting, and it's moving target. It's changing every few seconds, you know?

So, it's supposed to be easier to avoid dullness if you choose your own thoughts as your meditation object, okay? When you do that, it's called Mahamudra meditation, okay? There are, then what's the next thing you do after you start watching your mind?

Uh? This is how Tibetans in a debate say, what did you say? They go, uh?

Uh? You're just supposed to watch your mind? Yeah, we do that.

You can try to bring it to a present moment meditation. It got into the Lam Rim because I was studying the first Panchen Lama's devil angel at the time. He has a good Mahamudra meditation in there, and he wrote the book on Mahamudra.

He wrote a whole book about it. It's the book we use, okay? But that's not what I wanted.

Where do you go? Yeah, you go to emptiness. What's the emptiness of your mind?

It's not when you can't think of the answer, okay? It's, uh, what's the emptiness that you did in the lion's dance? Yeah, there's seeds producing your teacher, okay?

Now, when you do an emptiness meditation on your mind, you try to realize that what you hear in your mind is not you. It's coming out of seeds, okay? The seeds, what you hear inside your own head all day long is coming out of seeds, okay?

And by the time you hear it, it's too late to change it. It's very much like, what's the example I always use? Huh?

Two husbands fits everything. Light from a star. Light from a star, okay?

By the time the light reaches you from a star... They had a special thing at the Chicago World's Fair because the light from the star they were looking at left that star at the last world's a hundred years before. You see what I mean?

So, by the time the starlight reaches Diamond Mountain and you guys are now brave enough to go out and look at it, just make noise, okay? If you're very quiet, a pig might come up and smell you. Just move around a lot.

I used to meditate on the top of my house, my yard, except I used to kept sliding off to watch the stars. So anyway, by the time you see the starlight, that star could be dead. That star could already die, okay?

And it's the same with your thoughts. By the time you hear your thoughts, they have already come out of the seas. It's too late to stop them.

See what I mean? If you want to have a good meditation on your mind, you have to start a week before. Be nice to other people.

Do not ever, ever, ever... My lama used to say, ever, ever, never disturb another person's mind. If you want to be a great meditator, never, ever, ever disturb another person's mind.

And that's the way you can tell a great meditation teacher, okay? If they're talking about that, they know about meditation. If they're not talking about that, they don't really know about meditation, okay?

The most important thing about meditation is that it's coming out of how you treated people last week. Period, okay? Learn how to not upset other people, okay?

Especially with this dangerous instrument called your mouth. Okay? It's so easy to upset another person with what you say.

So think carefully before you say things. Get in the habit of thinking carefully before you say things to other people. Say things which are true, but which will inspire them and encourage them, okay?

And watch what your mouth does, okay? Then your meditation will be good next week. And if you don't watch what your mouth does, it doesn't matter how many books of meditation you read or what teachers you go to, it doesn't matter at all.

You won't be able to meditate, okay? Got it? It's a simple thing.

It's a non-self-existent. Meditation is non-self-existent. It's also coming out of seeds in your mind.

If you understand that. And that was Tsongkhapa's breakthrough in his letter to Ngaung Drakpa Tsako Umbo, the friar from Tsako, okay? Which is in ACI course number...

That's the Three Principal Paths, is also a letter. But I'm talking about... Yeah.

I think it's in course... I checked it yesterday. It's in course three.

It's in the 10th class of course three. I translated it for you, I think. There's a letter.

No. It's a letter that he wrote to... He banished his student to East Tibet.

He banished one. He said, come back after you build a hundred monasteries. I don't want to see your face until then.

[Speaker 2]
Okay? I'm thinking to do something like that with the ACI studios. But, come back when you finish a hundred.

When he finished the hundredth one, he called it Datsang. It's still there. You can still see it.

Datsang means, ha, I'm finished. I reached a hundred. It's called, I reached a hundred monasteries.

[Speaker 1]
Okay? So anyway, he sent his student to East Tibet. You know, come back when you build a hundred monasteries.

He finished Datsang, the hundredth one. He came back. But, in the meantime, he wrote a letter to Tsongkhapa saying, I just ordained the first monks and nuns in this area of East Tibet.

Then Tsongkhapa wrote him back a long letter about why the most important teaching about meditation is understanding that it comes out of seeds of what you did last week. Okay? Very, very famous letter.

Very, very important letter for us. I translated it in, I think it's class 10, ACI 3. Maybe Cornyn can check it out.

What's it, a boot? How do you tell a Canadian person? They don't say about, they say a boot?

Who's the other Canadian we had here the other day? No, it was Joel said a boot. Anyway.

Okay? That's the emptiness of your mind. What?

That meditation is not, not coming from what you did last week. That's the emptiness of your mind. Okay?

Got it? And that's Mahamudra. There's a higher Mahamudra where you use prana to see the emptiness of your mind directly.

That's a tantric teaching. I cannot give it to you. Okay?

You need to hear more Lam Rim.