Махамудра: мысли и ветры (2005, Нью-Йорк), занятие 4

[Говорящий 1]
So I want you to get comfortable on your seat so that your back is really straight. And place your hands down gently on your knees. Try and suck your lower abdomen in just a little bit.

It will help straighten your back. But not so much that you notice it when you're sitting, just slightly. And then feel like there's a string pulling you from the very top of your head up.

And then just close your eyes and place your focus at the tip of your nostrils. Watch the breath going out and then in. See if you can count ten breaths without losing that point of focus.

Try and be very quiet so that your neighbors can also meditate well. Now check in with your mind. See how you're feeling today.

Maybe you're a little impatient today. Maybe you feel nice because it's the weekend. Maybe you feel bad because it's the end of the weekend.

Just check. Once you've figured out how you're feeling, which can sometimes be elusive if you're not used to looking for how you're feeling, then you go on to see if this feeling is something that's fixed in you, or if it's something that's constantly changing from moment to moment. Try and catch the movement of the mind as you feel this change.

Now try to focus on the me that we normally think is controlling our feelings. This is what we call the gaccha. We'll talk about it after the meditation, but it's the thing that we believe in that's not true, that's not there.

Then see if this me you think there is besides the moment to moment feelings can actually control these feelings, or if this idea of a me is really just a delusion. Okay, you can open your eyes now. For each of these meditations...

Sorry about that, James. For each of these meditations, there is what we call the gaccha, which is something that we believe that doesn't really exist. We said there were six flavors to this emptiness meditation called Mahamudra.

So for each flavor of this meditation, there is a gaccha, the thing we believe that doesn't exist, and then the wisdom that we use to expose that untruth. So for the first one, we think of our feelings as fixed things that have some kind of permanence or weight, and because of that, we base a lot of our decision-making processes on our feelings, but in reality, they're constantly shifting and changing moment to moment, so why would anyone ever base such important life-making decisions upon these fleeting things like emotions? The second gaccha is we think that there is some sort of a controller inside us of our feelings.

There's some kind of me that's the boss, and it's not true because, of course, if we could control our feelings, we would constantly be feeling happy all the time. And if we don't, anyone in this room who feels happy all the time, raise your hand. I want to meet you because you're doing something right.

But we don't have control of our feelings. In reality, there isn't a me who's in control that's behind the show, that's the boss of it. It really is just the moment-to-moment feelings that come up that is us.

That moment-to-moment changing experience is us, and there is no other solid fixed us behind it that's running everything. It's quite a profound meditation if you spend a lot of time on it, any of these six meditations. So we'll go on to the third one after a little bit.