Учения Великого ретрита, часть 1: Ветры медитации (2011, Боуи), занятие 1

[Говорящий 2]
Okay, let's start. Shakyamuni Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, Shantru, Arju, Dharmakirti, Tathagati, Jhanyen, Vipassana, Nidhi, Yoga, Venture, Sanghe, Jhula, Shukla. I'd like to start the meditation, and get comfortable.

[Говорящий 1]
You start by watching your breath, close concentration on your breath. Then you ask your heart teacher to come.

[Говорящий 2]
Your heart teacher comes and sits in front of you to meditate on you.

[Говорящий 1]
Then we bow down to our heart teacher by thinking of one of their beautiful qualities. Then we make an offering to our heart teacher. The best offering is something good that you've done in the last few days.

Offer it like a flower, the offering of your practice. Then purify your heart for meditation by thinking of something negative you've done in the last few days, and confess it openly to your heart teacher. Then also whisper in your teacher's ear something, another good thing you've done in the last few days or a few months, some kindness you've shown to somebody.

Also bring to mind some kindness you've seen another person do.

[Говорящий 2]
There's plenty of examples in this class.

[Говорящий 1]
Think of a goal in your personal life, somebody you would like to be in a week or a month. Try to picture clearly what you would like to become in a week or a month. Get a strong, clear picture of what you would like to be.

Then ask your heart teacher to help you, guide you to become that person that you'd like to be. Then ask your heart teacher to stay always close, guide you today and the rest of your life and beyond.

[Говорящий 2]
Then we'll start the actual meditation.

[Говорящий 1]
That's the warm-up of the preliminary. Then follow your breath again.

[Говорящий 2]
Put your mind on your breath. Keep your mind on your breath.

[Говорящий 1]
Then to start today, we'll do a very simple meditation. It's called Drabba Nirsha. I'd like you to just place your mind, use your mind to look at your own mind.

Step back from your own mind and look at your own mind. Try to become aware of what you're thinking, what you're feeling, as we sit here. What thoughts are going to your mind?

What feelings are going to your mind? So we'll spend a few minutes and concentrate on your own mind. What thoughts are there?

What feelings are there?

[Говорящий 2]
Especially I'd like you to look for, evaluate how you feel.

[Говорящий 1]
What kinds of emotions? What kinds of feelings? Are they happy feelings or sad feelings or not much of either?

Do you feel comfortable? Do you feel uncomfortable? Do you feel happy, nervous?

[Говорящий 2]
Try to get in touch with your feelings.

[Говорящий 1]
And on a larger scale, in your life, step back from your whole life, look at your life as it is now, and do you feel that you're happy in your life? Is your whole life right now, do you feel happy in your life?

[Говорящий 2]
Don't judge or don't deliberate, just try to check.

[Говорящий 1]
Do you feel happy in your life? Does your life feel contented? And do you feel at peace?

Do you feel quiet and happy about your life? If your mind wanders, bring it back to the question. How do you feel?

How's your life going? Do you feel a sense of contentment or peace about your life? Don't ask why you feel how you feel about your life.

Don't look too deep. Just try to think about your life and your state of mind, your mind. And is it a happy mind?

Is it a peaceful mind? Is it a contented mind? Then the last step of every meditation is to think of others in need, in our life, in our world, and send them the sweet energy of your meditation.

Offer the goodness of meditating to others.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay, then we'll start.

[Говорящий 1]
Clocks run slower in this part of the world. They all have really long hair, longer than mine. And more.

Not so gray. Okay, we'll start. It's an honor to teach here, to be asked to be taught here, in such a holy place.

Such a grand experiment going on here. And I'm not allowed to talk about the outside world at all. Except to say...

Your work is going very well. And already you have brought great changes in the outside world. I don't know if you don't know.

I can't tell you. But it seems like your great effort and your meditations are having a profound effect on the world, the state of the world. And beautiful things are happening, unexpected beautiful things are happening.

I think... It reminds me of when Ken Rinpoche used to do prayers when the meds were down five minutes. Like, same kind of forces are at work.

And profound beautiful things happening in the outside world. And it's the great effort of the retreatants, and all the people working so hard to keep them here. And Mama Christi is working very hard.

The caretakers are. Those who haven't broken down yet are working hard. And there are many hundreds of people helping on the outside.

Unexpected help coming from everywhere. So it's a very beautiful thing you're doing here. And there's profound, beautiful things happening because of your work.

So keep it up. There's a little bit to go still. There's a little bit to go.

So... I had an idea for my teaching. Me and Lama Maru were, you know, thinking about what to do here.

And the idea came to Lama Maru would teach bodhichitta. Changing the world, right? Which is what the people here are already doing, right?

Their retreat is already changing the world. In a way, everything they do in this retreat is bodhichitta already. So then Lama Maru kindly agreed to teach that.

And then I thought I would talk about concentration or meditation. Because they kind of go together, right? So if you can meditate well, then the meditation itself can change the world and lead to kindness.

I feel if we understand how the world works, and we understand where things are coming from in our life, then inevitably we come to compassion. Inevitably, a person who understands the world has to come to compassion. And then we didn't know what Lama Kristi was going to teach, but we figured it would probably fit in somewhere.

Which it will. So my plan for the four days is... I thought on the first day we could review what we know about meditation, how to meditate, and the traditional presentation of the levels of meditation.

I thought it might be useful. I can remember when I was in Tibetan retreat, and I had all the books, and I had all the charts and the meditation poster. We put the meditation poster up on the yurt, and I had to hit my head on it every time I went across the yurt.

But it didn't help at all. And I didn't look at it after a few days. I just walked around it.

So I thought... I don't know. I was trying to think about my three-year retreat and what I think would have helped me to do a better job.

You know, like the challenges I had six months in, and then one year in, and then two years in. And then I thought... I was trying to think of the most useful thing for the retreatants, and also for the rest of us.

And I think I'd like to go over the traditional teaching on meditation in the first day. And then there's a beautiful... You know the traditional chart that we use with the elephant and the rabbit and all those guys?

It only goes up to a certain point, you know? The ninth meditation level, which is what that goes up to, is not the meditation level you need to see emptiness directly, for example. So the chart goes up to, just before, the deepest forms of shamatha, the deepest forms of meditation.

It actually sort of ends just before that, and it's not very clear on what happens after that. And so I thought it would be nice to go through what happens when you do get very good meditation, and you keep getting higher and higher, and then you're just about to reach what we call shamatha, or you could say perfect meditation, right? Then there's sort of a, what do you call it?

Gray area, or there's a dark area. Between shamatha and... Between the end of the meditation chart, and what happens to you when you see emptiness directly, what's happening to your state of concentration?

That area is sort of gray in the scriptures. It's sort of a difficult area. You have gained single-pointed ekagra.

You have gained single-pointed concentration. You're not quite to shamatha, to the deepest form of meditation yet. Then there's a bunch of things that have to happen, and they're very strange, and they're very unusual.

So I was working on that myself, and there was a very beautiful presentation of moving from the ninth level of single-pointed concentration up to shamatha through certain pranic means, like using the inner body and working with your prana. So since Diamond Mountain, so many people are interested in yoga and the inner body, I thought that would be really beautiful to talk about the transition from the highest states of... the nine states of meditation up to shamatha.

And then there are some beautiful descriptions through the centuries of what happens to your inner body between the highest meditation and shamatha. And those have to do with shinjang, or shraddha. Shinjang means...

Traditionally shinjang means a sort of blissful state of body and mind, which is what pushes you over the... What do you call it? It pushes you over the last hurdle before you see emptiness directly.

Like you get a state of bodily and mental bliss, which is called shinjang. And then that takes you into shamatha, and that's a tool with which you can perceive emptiness directly. And then there are some beautiful explanations of what's happening to your inner body, to your prana, during those final steps before you see emptiness.

So those are very... What do you call it? Those are sort of very attractive to me.

The whole question of what's happening in your inner body at that state is very... What do you call it? You're not allowed to talk, either of you.

Intriguing to me. And I thought it would be cool to talk about that, because then maybe you could work on your inner body and sort of bring those states on more quickly if you could work from the inside with your prana and also to your meditation, you see? So I thought the second day, those pranas, there are certain good kinds of prana which during shinjang replace bad kinds of prana in your body, okay?

The bad kinds of prana have a special name. It's called neng ngen len, and you can't repeat it after me. Neng ngen len, it's very difficult to say in Tibetan.

It's like she shuffles, she shows... It's like neng ngen len. Neng ngen len is a very, very difficult idea.

And each ancient school of India has a different thought about it. What is neng ngen len? But just briefly, traditionally, neng ngen len means some kind of very, very subtle, almost like shadow of negativities.

You can call it subtle negativities in your being, which are still there after you reach nirvana. So you reach nirvana, you no longer have ignorance, avidya, you no longer misunderstand things. And you have destroyed the seeds for that misunderstanding.

But you still have neng ngen len. You still have some subtle shadow of negativity in you. And then that's linked to a prana in your body.

And when you achieve shinjang, when you get to the highest stages of meditation, the prana in your body does certain things to that shadow. The prana inside you shifts, and then that shadow is affected. And it makes it...

Then you can see emptiness, and then also it speeds you towards enlightenment. Okay, so I thought the second day we could talk about neng ngen len as a kind of prana, and how different schools present it. For example, my noble school has a special idea about it.

Diamond Mountain is about the only place I can talk about these things because everybody else is behind you. Then the third day I thought there are special kinds of meditations you can do to help change the prana in your mind, in your body, as you reach the highest stages of meditation. They all involve observing your state of mind.

In the beginning of the path, pre-tsoklong, before the first of the five paths, there's a thing called drabha-girsa, which means close awareness. For example, your feelings. So the meditation we did at the beginning was a sort of a drabha-girsa, where you are watching the state of your own mind.

Then I thought on the third day we could go a little further and talk about the details of sheshin. Sheshin is the ability to watch your mind during meditation. So it's also a kind of watching your mind, but it's a very specific watching of your mind, which is mostly focused on am I at a state of equilibrium?

Am I at the right place between being too busy and not being busy enough? And that's the story of your life, whether you're on this side of the tent, and that's the story of your life, whether you're on this side of the tent. Everybody, even in a retreat, is struggling with the question of how much activity is too much, and how little activity is too little.

One makes the mind dull, and one makes the mind distracted. And so really, a retreat, especially a long retreat, is an exercise in trying to find the balance between being so busy that you are distracted, and not being busy enough, and then getting spacey, or sleepy, or bored, or uninspired. And then all of us have that balance to maintain.

All of us need to struggle to find the balance between being too busy in our lives and being peaceful enough, but then not getting bored, or unchallenged, or uncreative. So we'll talk about xie xie and yin bar sense between those two extremes. Then we'll go to a special kind of Mahamudra.

Mahamudra has many meanings. You all know. There's a beautiful teaching by His Holiness the First Panchen Lama, called Damsin Shangde.

And in there, as many of you know, he presents a discussion within one person's mind of the positive state of mind and the negative state of mind. So it's a Mahamudra poem. It's like a 50-page poem, in which inside one person's mind, the negative states of mind are battling the positive states of mind, particularly with regard to understanding reality.

And more particularly with regard to understanding the reality of your mind. So that's a much more advanced version of learning the skill of watching your own mind. How does your own mind not just feel?

Or how does your own mind distract or not distract? But how does your own mind look at the world? And then you step back from your own mind and become a witness.

And you observe how your own mind is observing the world. And there's a fight going on there. And then in that Mahamudra practice, it's an interesting practice, because it's sort of a, what do you call it?

Self-induced schizophrenia. You are seeking to introduce into your mind a counter-agent to the normal way that the mind sees reality. And it's a purposeful, and what do you call it?

Nobody can help me, because you can't talk. It's a very conscious attempt to introduce into your mind a voice which whispers to you when you are perceiving things, the world, the wrong way. You see?

So a person who practices that version of Mahamudra then becomes a little bit strange. More strange. Because they are, inside their mind they're having a struggle all the time.

They're having discussion. And the purpose of that Mahamudra, the purpose of that version of Mahamudra is to introduce an angel into your mind who will start talking in your head and arguing with the devil in your mind. Okay?

So we'll go through that on the third day. Different ways to watch your own mind. Then on the fourth day, I thought we could again review some of the traditional teachings on physical circumstances which are helpful for a retreat or for meditation.

So these are conditions in your life, whether you are in retreat or whether you are having a regular job or a life. These are conditions that will support a peaceful or happy state of mind. Okay?

So on the fourth day, we'll continue through. Some of them you know. Some of them you've heard before.

And some of them you haven't heard before. Some are from tantras. Some are from the Lamrim.

Some are from the older Indian literature. But these are ways to affect your physical environment that can help you meditate better and enter a deeper state of concentration. Then I thought at the end of the last day we could go into...

There's a special Mahamudra meditation you can do, watching your mind and being very sensitive about the degree to which your mind takes the world as being magic. Okay? The degree to which your mind sees the world as being a magical place.

And ways to watch that state of mind. Ways to observe that state of mind and to foster a state of mind which takes the world as more of a miracle than everyday. So I thought that would be a nice place to leave it.

So basically it's a long journey through different kinds of meditation. What's happening with your prana when your meditation is not going well. How can you change that prana?

How can you learn to watch your mind more carefully? And then what are the highest things you can put your mind on as you watch it? That's the plan.

I prepared a big reading. It's 600 pages of Tibetan. And I finished 10 of them.

You're not going to get a reading. But what I thought was... I tend to overdo it and I thought that what I'd do is just go through the the 600 pages and take out the most important things which is what I should have done anyway.

And then I thought maybe somebody could transcribe the teaching. You see what I mean? Because rather than...

My Lamas encouraged me rather than doing a long translation of hundreds of pages. Perhaps it would be more beneficial for people at this stage in my life. If I just regurgitated it to you in a way that mattered to you and then if someone could transcribe that and then that would be better than 600 pages of interlinear space.

You know, ancient Sanskrit in Tibetan. You know, because it's difficult to understand. So that's my plan.

So I hope some people would be willing to help with that afterwards, okay? So here we go. I thought first we could go through the traditional stages of meditation before we reach the treatment of the special pranas in your body which could...

If we could learn to work on those pranas that we could concentrate better and our meditations would go better and our practice would go better. So there's a lot of preliminary work to do before that. So I thought to talk about that work one more time.

What I'd like to do before we do that is do another meditation. So if everybody could sit up straight. Start to watch your breath.

Go back to your breath. We won't do the preliminaries because of time and this is a continuation of the meditation we just did. So where we left off before was we were watching our mind.

We were observing our own mind. Let your mind stay where it is. Step back with a little part of your mind and start to watch your mind.

See how do you feel here in this tent. Are you tired? What are your plans in your mind?

What's going through your mind right now? How much energy do you have? How do you feel at this moment?

Step back and observe your own mind. See now focus on your feelings. How do you feel right now?

Do you feel happy or a little bit down? Neutral? Try to focus on how you feel.

You can include your physical feelings. Do you feel hot? Is it comfortable?

Do you feel uncomfortable? How does your body feel today? Then come back to your mind.

How does your mind feel? Do you feel pretty happy or neutral? Then I'd like you again to step back and look at your life in general, your whole life.

How's your life going now, at this juncture in your life, in this season of your life, in these few years of your life? Do you feel happy? Are you content with your life?

Do you feel like your life is going well? And do you often feel some sort of peace about your life, happiness? I think most of us, maybe all of us, if our life is not completely happy, I don't know about you, but for me my life has rarely been completely happy.

And I think about the periods in my life that I wasn't completely happy. And I think maybe all of us tend to think that there's some adjustment we could make in our life. Maybe if we could just do more yoga, or maybe if our meditation was going better, or maybe if one or two people in our lives, it could be a partner, it could be a boss, it could be children, it could be a friend, it could be our relatives.

We feel like there is something that is something that is blocking us from being completely happy. I think many of us feel our lives are fairly happy, and then our lives are marred by slight unhappinesses, or certain people, or certain events, or certain situations in our life that we feel are preventing us, or that are blocking us from reaching complete happiness. I think most of us sense where it would be like to be completely happy.

We see it on the horizon. We sense it like light at the end of a tunnel. But inevitably there seems to be something between us and complete happiness that is somehow blocking us from that happiness, or preventing us from reaching that happiness.

I'd like you right now, in your meditation, to try to identify one thing that you'd like to change about your life. It could be a person in your life that you'd like to change, or it could be a situation that you're in that you'd rather not be in, or it could be something about your physical health, but what is it in your life? Please identify now.

We all have a sense that there's somebody or something blocking us from being completely happy. What is it in your case, in your personal case? What's standing between you and this sort of soft glow of complete happiness?

What would you like to change the most? Then I'd like you to we're almost finished with this meditation, but I'd like you to look into the roots of this problem, this person or this situation. What are the roots of the problem?

How did it start? How did you first meet the person? What were the circumstances in your life that brought this problem to you?

What's the history in your life which brought to you the few things that are holding you back from being completely contented and happy? Then I'd like you to release the meditation and then slowly come back to this one. So I thought to do the whole traditional teaching on meditation in like 45 minutes, okay?

Nine levels, five problems, eight antidotes, six powers, four stakes, okay? Let's see if it's possible. It's kind of fun to try.

So in the traditional presentation of meditation, it comes from different sources, and I'll state the sources as we go. One is called Uttar Namje, Madhyanta Vibhanga, by Lord Maitreya, who's the coming Buddha. In his text, which is 16 centuries old, written down by Master Sangha, he set forth the five classical problems of meditation and eight corrections for those five problems.

So we're going to go super fast. It's a horse race, okay? Through the whole stick, okay?

Because you guys know it, I'm just reminding you, but we have to go through it to get to that high state of meditation just before Samatha, okay? So the first problem for all meditators is called lay low. It's one of the only Tibetan words that sounds like the English, and it means to lay low, meaning it's laziness.

I like to call it not feeling like meditating today, okay? So I don't feel like meditating today. And if you cannot overcome this problem, the rest of the problems will never happen to you, okay?

And I have it every day. I mean, don't think it goes away, okay? It doesn't go away.

It's there, lay low, okay? And because it's maybe the most serious of all meditation problems, there are four corrections for it, okay? Which is how we get eight corrections for only five meditation problems, okay?

So the corrections for lay low are called deba, dönpa, tsulwa, and shinjang, okay? So deba, deba means faith or shraddha, but in this case it means a clear understanding of all the cool stuff that's going to happen to you if you learn to meditate, okay? A clear vision of the beautiful things that will happen to you if you learn to meditate well.

Okay, that's deba. I was trying to think about the coolest things that I like about meditation, or I think are the coolest things, and I think the coolest thing is you could get, if you meditated well, you could get some sort of intuition or sixth sense about the state of the world and where the world is going, okay? I think that's cool.

I think if you meditate very well, you can get sort of an overview of the next 500 years or something, or 1,000 years, or 10,000 years, and you would get some sort of insight into the way that this planet is going to evolve in the coming centuries. You would get a deep vision. You know, people are always putting out statistics about how much oil is going to be left in 20 years or what's the population going to be in 50 years, but try to imagine just sitting in your room and having some kind of vision about the way the world is going to go on a gross level, the spiritual level of the world, where it's going to go, and to be able to see that clearly and to feel the currents in that movement, and to see the currents, and to be able to ride them or to sense them and see where they're headed in a very gross level. I think that's very beautiful, you see? To be able to see the future, to be able to see, to plot mentally, the spiritual evolution of this entire planet.

It comes. If you meditate well, it comes, and that kind of ability comes. And it's very, very beautiful, and it makes you very, very happy because then you can see the beauty that is evolving in this world, like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon.

You can see where this world will go if you meditate well. You can follow those currents, okay? Just for me, that's a single...

I'll put that as the single quality that you could be excited about. If you could learn to meditate well, you would see these currents and you could contribute to them and help guide those currents, you see? I think that's a really beautiful paper.

Dunpa means because of... because somebody told you how cool meditation was, you want it, okay? Dunpa means you want it.

Like someone's telling you how cool it would be to be able to see the currents of spiritual history of this globe and to affect them directly. Then you should get some kind of hunger in your belly for meditation. You should say, I want that, you know?

I would really like to be able to do that. Dunpa. So it means, naturally you want to work hard, okay?

You want to do the effort that's necessary. You cannot get good at meditation unless you try every day and unless you put some serious time into it, okay? I have people who, I say, do you do yoga?

They say, yeah, I do yoga. I say, let me see your yoga. And then I'm watching them and they do a couple of poses and then they go get a drink of water.

And then they do a couple of poses and then they go do some emails. And then they, then I don't know, then they're wrapping their mat up around the second story in the sky. I'm like, wait, where are you going?

It's not done. I'm like, wow. You've got to work hard and you've got to work every day.

And then, that's sulwa. Sulwa means it's not going to happen. If you do it part way or if you do it briefly or if you don't really want it bad enough, then you're just going to get melo.

You're going to give up. And you will never see those things in history. And your life will pass in a boring worldly way and you'll get old and you'll be watching DVDs.

And that's it. So, sulwa means hard, regular work. Every day, hard work.

No matter what other people are doing. Nobody else is doing it, just do it yourself. Sulwa.

If you get sulwa, then you get shinjang. This shinjang is not the same as the shinjang we're going to talk about later. This shinjang means you get good at it.

What do you call it? You get wired. You get wired.

Like your yoga is wired. And you're just really good at it. And the minute you get on the mat, you feel like your body changes.

You sit down on the mat and your body changes and your breathing changes. And that's shinjang. Shinjang is just like in the groove.

You sit down and you're in. And that's shinjang. It's not the same shinjang we're going to talk about later.

It's what happens if you work hard on a regular basis. And there's no other way. You have to work hard every day.

And that's the only way. So that's the first problem of meditation and those are the first four corrections. Second problem is dhamma jepa.

It's called dhamma jepa. Dhamma jepa means you forgot the instructions. Okay?

In meditation it doesn't mean I forgot the instruction. It means you lost the object. In meditation, the problem of meditation called forgetting the instruction refers specifically to losing your object.

Losing the object of your meditation. You're supposed to be meditating and suddenly you don't know how much time has gone by but you're suddenly aware that you're not thinking about the object anymore. I think it's not so bad that you lose the object.

It's that you have no clue about is it three days have gone by? When did I lose the object? And then you're like, dang, I'm going to get back on the object.

You get back on the object and in like 30 seconds later you're like, where was the object? And so the second problem in meditation is just lose the object completely. The mind goes off the object.

You start thinking about lunch. My favorite thing is breakfast. I don't know.

But then that happens at every meal. So I don't know, what's a better time to eat? I mean to meditate.

Because there's always a meal after that. I don't know. But anyway, forget the object completely.

Off the object completely. The correction for that is called jempa. Jempa means you pull your mind back to the object.

Jempa in Tibetan means to remember. In colloquial it means I think about it. But in meditation it means unjempa, more unjempa, which means to drag the mind forcefully back to the object.

Jempa means drag. Drag it back. So that's jempa.

What problem are we on? Three, right? You can't stop.

That's pretty bad. Three is called chingu nyi, chingwa and gupa. By the way, some ancient texts split them and treat them differently and they say there are six obstacles.

Chingwa means you get tired in a meditation. You start to space out. You either get tired or you space out.

If you want to induce chingwa on an experimental level, just eat too much and then try to meditate. Then you can see what chingwa is. I don't have to explain it.

Eat before meditation. Eat too much. Eat stupid food, like sugar and carbohydrates and greasy food and then try to meditate.

And you'll get chingwa and you don't have to ask me. If you don't sleep enough, you'll get chingwa. You feel dull.

You feel tired. I once asked David Lai, how can I prevent getting sleepy in meditation? What can I do?

While I'm meditating, what should I do when I get sleepy? He says, sleep more. The night before, just sleep more.

And sleep enough. Sleep enough. That's for you guys especially.

It's no big virtue to stay up all night and then you can't meditate the next day. Sleep as much as you need to sleep. If it's 7, if it's 8, if it's 9.

If it's over 12 hours, I would cut it. Sleep what you need to sleep. And if the 4-session thing is not working, if it makes you a little cuckoo, then do 3 sessions and get enough sleep.

Sleep is totally necessary. You've got to have sleep. Or it's just not going to go.

You'll use up the 3 years and all those caretaker trips. You won't get anywhere. You've got to have enough sleep.

Gopa means thinking about breakfast, thinking about dinner, thinking about something else. Gopa means the mind is distracted. The solution for those there's a joke in the meditation text because the solution for them is not a solution.

It's called session. Session means the ability to watch your own mind as you meditate. Particularly the ability to watch your mind to see if it got sleepy or to see if it got distracted.

So the capacity to watch your own mind and see if it gets sleepy or distracted is called session. If you think about it it's not a correction for Chihua or Gopa. It's just a recognition of it.

It's just an awareness of it. So in the traditional meditation text there's a joke. There's no correction for number 3 because really session just rings the alarm.

Session just says, my mind's not concentrating right now or my mind's sleepy right now. But that's a big deal. If you can step back from your mind and see that the mind is not working at optimum, then you can do something about it.

Problem number 4 is dumichepo. Dumichepo means don't do anything about it when you detect that your mind is sleepy or your mind is thinking about life. That's called dumichepo.

Dumichepo means failing to take action when you should take action. The correction for that is very exotic. It's called taking action.

And then you know, if you're feeling sleepy you take action for that. If you're feeling distracted, you take action for that. That'll be a lot of our talk.

We'll talk a lot about that. What you do for the two classic problems of meditation. Meditation in Sanskrit is samapati.

In Tibetan it's nyongjuk. It means to maintain a state of balance. To maintain a state of equilibrium between thinking about too much stuff and not thinking about anything.

So really it's just a balance. The word for meditation, one of the main words for meditation is to maintain a balance or maintain an equilibrium between thinking about too much stuff or being spacey and not thinking about anything. Alright?

The fifth problem is called dujjepa which means to take action when action is no longer required. When the mind is cruising and the mind is on a good roll, then, I don't know, I used to have a diner factory, right? Jewelry factory.

And they would say, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. So if the mind is going well in meditation, then leave it alone and let up on the observation of the mind. Relax the observation of the mind slightly so that that doesn't become a distraction.

So those are the... And the antidote for number five is tanyam sukshapa which means leave well enough alone. If the mind is going well, if the meditation is going well, don't interfere.

So those are the five problems. Those are the eight classical solutions. Now we'll go to the nine levels of meditation.

Okay? I'm going to pull out some notes but I think I got it in my head. Let me see.

Let's see. One is called samjopa. The first one is called samjopa.

Samjopa means setting your mind on the object for the first time. Okay? Just putting your mind on the object.

That involves something very serious and something very major. That involves the selection of an object, right? So, before you put your mind on a meditation object, you have to decide what you're going to meditate about.

And that's a huge decision. That's a very, very big decision. In a three-year retreat, that's a major decision.

Because, you know, you could be stuck with the same object for six weeks or something, or six months. You have to choose an object carefully. It doesn't sound very glorious.

To say I reached the first meditation level doesn't sound very glorious. But the proper selection of an object is crucial. Then there are six powers, or six ways of getting to these different levels of meditation.

The power which allows you to get to level one is called tipidok. Tipidok means learning about, what do you call it, candidates for meditation objects from your teacher. Okay?

Like going to your lama and discussing with them, by handwritten notes of course, what would be the appropriate object for the next lehru, or... You see? So the selection of an object draws from tipidok, which means learning, or studying, or consultation with your lama.

And getting some guidance. Lama Krishna has been, I think, guiding people very well in retreat. And you can go check in and get a prescription from the doctor about what would be a good meditation object for you for the next week, or month, or six months, okay?

And that would be tipidok. The second level, the second of the nine levels of meditation is called gyur jopa. Gyur jopa means for the first time, after some effort, you're able to maintain your mind on the object for brief periods of time, for maybe half a minute, or a single minute at a time, you're able to get some continuity on the object, okay?

Brief periods of continuity on the object, okay? But mostly, if you counted up minutes, much more minutes off the object, okay? So, most of us never get past two.

I don't think so. I... On most days, I have trouble getting past two, okay?

To getting more time on the object than off the object is a struggle, okay? So that's called gyur jopa, where you're able to have some continuity on the object, but you're off the object more than you're on it, okay? By the way, around here, there's also some feelings, there's three or four, they're called feelings, related to the nine levels.

The feeling around here, between one and two, is that when you first start to meditate, and you're aware for the first time of how your level of concentration, how good it really is, they say you get a feeling of depression, okay? Or you feel upset. You know, you're like, you know, like, now that you really listen to your mind and you're aware of how much your mind is on the object, you begin to be aware that you're not on the object very often, okay?

And then they say you feel a little bit upset, or something like that, or, you know, dismay. And then they say, don't feel bad. It was worse than that before you started noticing.

And don't feel like so. Don't beat yourself up. It's normal to think at the beginning of the process that you're getting worse.

Because you were always bad, but you were never aware of it, okay? And now that awareness is growing, and your meditation is improving, but it feels like it's getting worse. So at the beginning, don't be, you know, don't feel bad if you think your meditation is getting worse.

If you think your meditation is getting worse, it's probably getting better, but that's not for sure either. Gyananjogpa says some slight continuity on the object. That's achieved by, called Sambuddho.

Sambha means considering the instructions you got from your teacher. So, the instructions are granted from your teacher, right? How to meditate.

You reach level one at your teacher's house when they're telling you what would be a good meditation object. You reach level two at your house when you are starting to work. Sambha means contemplation.

Even while you're eating dinner, or you're relaxing, or you're doing your gardening, or whatever, you are considering the object that your teacher gave you. Like you're thinking about it. And then that enables you to have some slight continuity.

Gyananjogpa. So those are the powers at number two. Those two, there's a mode, right?

There's four modes, if you care. There's four modes. That's called Jantajogpa.

Jantajogpa means the first two levels require quite concerted effort. Like you're going to need a lot of effort to get your mind on the object for the first time. And to maintain any kind of continuity of the object, they require substantial effort.

It's called Jantajogpa. Level three is called Lendajogpa. Lendajogpa means...

Lend means...Lenpa means a patch, like the patch you put on some clothing when it gets a hole in Tibetan. And Lendajogpa means mostly you're on the object, and then you have some periods off the object. So the difference between level three and level two is that you're more often on the object than off the object.

But you have gaps when you're off the object, and you have to patch those gaps. So it's called patching stage. Level three is called patching stage, where you're starting to patch the meditation.

Lendajogpa. That level is achieved through jenpa. Jenpa means the ability to drive the mind back to the object.

So to reach level three, where you're mostly on the object, you have to have an increasingly developed capacity to bring the mind back to the object after you lose it. That's Lendajogpa. And that's jenpa.

The fourth state is called Nyewajogpa. Nyewajogpa means you are... the mind is on the object constantly.

The mind is strong on the object. You have a good grasp. You're holding.

You're maintaining the object well. Nyewajogpa means close close application or something like that. That's Nyewajogpa.

That's also achieved through jenpa. Jenpa meaning now you're able to drive the mind back constantly to keep it... Jenpa is fully developed by that point.

The ability to drive the mind back to the object is fully developed by level four. But something else is also fully developed, which is chingwa and gopa. Chingwa means what we said, you got tired, you started to space out.

So at that point, chingwa and gopa. Gopa means distraction. You're able to stay on the object, which qualifies you for distraction and sleepiness.

You can't get distracted if you're not on the object. Like, never being on the object doesn't count as distraction, got it? I can honestly say I have achieved the highest states of meditation where I didn't think about the object once during the whole meditation session.

But that takes practice. Okay. So that's nirvana gopa.

But you still have pretty heavy... You have pretty serious distraction and dullness, okay? Agitation and dullness, chingwa and gopa.

The next stage, what do you call it? It's called duwa chepa. Duwa means to tame or to subdue.

It's the word vinaya in Sanskrit. Duwa chepa means... What happens when you get on the object is you start fighting against dullness and agitation, right?

You focus the mind increasingly inwards. So your meditation is getting better. It's almost like a pratyahara.

So you're better able to draw your mind in and keep your mind in. That has two undesirable results. One is that you get tired.

The effort required to draw the mind totally in and to keep it there, it makes you tired. And it leads to some kind of chingwa. Chingwa chamo, which is the big enemy of all meditators.

Chingwa chamo means subtle dullness. Unnoticed dullness of the mind. Lack of excitement or pizzazz.

Lack of pizzazz in your meditation. So at that point, duwa chepa, you are able to, you become able to defeat the subtle dullness, which comes from overly concentrating the mind in. Or feeling tired from the effort of keeping the mind inside.

The next one is called what? Shiwa chepa. What number are we on?

Six, right? Shiwa chepa. Shiwa chepa means to put it to rest.

To put it to rest. At shiwa chepa they say you are exploring the other half of dullness. So what happens when you have dullness is you have to do a thing called sankhepa.

Sankhepa means when the mind gets dull or when the mind gets sleepy from effort or from overly drawing the mind in. The effort or from tiredness. Then you start to get tired and you start to lose it.

Then they say you have to, what do you call it? Perk the mind up. So sankhepa means to perk the mind up.

The way you do that is to think about something cool. Something that you find cool. For example, you're supposed to think about something like oh, how lucky I am that I made it to the 10th.

Sorry, not the first day. I made it to the 10th for the Great Retreat teachings. You know, like I didn't die on the way or something like that.

I'm one of the X number of people who made it to the 10th at the Great Retreat teachings. And that's supposed to perk you up. Just considering all the people who died on the way or who didn't make it here.

You know, you're not one of them. So you're supposed to feel perked up. That's called shivacepa.

You've basically overcome gross savadholas. Okay. Then there's a thing called nama-shivacepa.

Nama-shivacepa means totally... What are we on? Six, seven.

That's seven. Seven is nama-shivacepa. Okay.

You have overcome subtle dharmas. You have overcome subtle agitation. Mostly.

Like it's difficult for them to come back. Like mostly you've overcome them and it's difficult for them to come back. You can almost maintain a whole session of meditation just with that.

Just with that much effort. Having stopped them. Still, they say there's no danger of wallowing in them.

But there's a danger of them happening. Got it? So it's the difference between shorwa and chula means you're not wallowing in them.

You're not like... Like at least you're pretty sharp. The next one is called svecchikta-cepa.

Svecchikta-cepa. Level eight, right? Svecchikta-cepa means you're really good.

You don't have any serious opposition from subtle dullness or subtle agitation. But it requires some effort to start. At the beginning of your meditation, you need to exert some effort to stop them.

Okay? And then it's not required anymore. So at the beginning of your session, as you go into a meditation session, you check your mind.

You check in for subtle dullness, subtle agitation. And then you punch them out and they're gone for the whole session. All right?

Like that. That's called svecchikta-cepa. Svecchikta-cepa means single-pointed mind.

You reach the state of single-pointed mind. Okay? Levels three up to level seven.

Level seven. Three, four, five, six, seven. Those five levels are called cedu-cepa.

Ceci-cepa means they can still be interrupted by dullness, sleepiness, or by thinking about lunch. Okay? Those five levels are still liable to interruption by thinking about lunch or sleepiness.

All right? That's called ceci-cepa. When you get to level eight, that's not the case anymore.

Okay? Level eight requires cedu-cepa, means you still got to... What do they say?

There's a beautiful thing in the scripture, they say... I forget. Anyway, you will have an uninterrupted meditation except for the beginning.

Okay? Except at the beginning. All right?

So, that's called cedu-cepa. You have to put a little bit of effort out. All right?

We're up to level nine, the final level of the traditional meditation instructions. Level nine is called... What is that called?

It's ceci-cepa. Then... What is that called?

Ceci-cepa. And then... Nyoga-jupa.

Samapatti. It's called the balanced meditation. Okay?

Nyoga-jupa means at level nine, you no longer have to put out any effort to get to a state totally free of dullness and distraction. Okay? You sit down, the backs of your hands touch your knees, and you're already in a deep meditation.

Right from the beginning. No effort is required. It's a cedu-cepa called nyong-su-jupa-tok.

Nyong-su-jupa-tok means you're so good at it, and you're so used to it, that the minute the hands come down on the knees, you're into a state of deep meditation, and you're just there. Now comes the fun part, which is what I was trying to get to. We still have time.

That's not shamatha. Okay? It's called shi-ne-je-tumba.

Shi-ne-je-tumba means it's a close-but-no-cigar shamatha. Okay? It's called close-but-no-cigar shamatha.

If you want to know it's about working a cigar, you've got to ask me later. It means it's called dusam-cecipa. It means you are still the state of mind is still in the desire realm.

Okay? The state of mind is still in the desire realm. You are not free from the desire realm.

It's close to shamatha, and you're doing very well. You know, how many people reach level nine? I don't know.

Very few. Okay? By the way, you don't have to be a Buddhist, and you don't have to have high spiritual things in mind to reach level nine.

Certain baseball players have it, certain cricket players have it. It's just total concentration. It's the capacity for total concentration.

You can be not spiritual, and if you have the karma, you can reach high states of concentration. All right? So level nine is like a high state of concentration.

Level nine is not yet aimed at the ultimate object, which is trying to understand where everything came from. Okay? Trying to understand where your world has come from.

Okay? Which leads us to one more meditation. Okay?

Are you ready? Okay. Sit up straight.

Watch your breath. Stay in your breath. Come back to that vision.

Come back to that question of how happy are you in these years of your life? Are these years of your life going well? And frankly, I mean, it's a frank evaluation.

How happy am I right now? Am I at peace? Do I feel contented with my life?

If I'm not completely contented, if my life is not fully happy, if I had to identify one or two things which were preventing my happiness, what would they be? Maybe a person, maybe a situation, maybe a place, maybe something about your health. What stands between you and that glowing light of complete happiness in your life?

Then review, what's the history of the circumstances which brought this person into my life, or this challenge into my life, or the circumstances into my life, or what's the history of my physical illness or unhappiness or depression? What's the history behind, what were the events leading up to the things which are preventing me from being completely happy? Now let's turn a Mahamudra twist to that last part.

How much of the history of that problem or that person or those circumstances or that health problem, how much of that has come from my own behavior? How much of that has come from how I've treated others? How much of my history is tied up into the history of what's preventing me from being happy?

How much of the person or the circumstances or the health problem that I have now, that's holding me back from complete happiness, how much of that is, has been my responsibility? How much of that is coming directly from my own behavior? How much of what most upsets me or makes me unhappy in my life is a reflection of my own behavior in the last few months and years?

Then slowly come out of this meditation. Release the meditation. Come back to come back to discipline.

So I was thinking a lot about my interior retreat and I was thinking a lot about, you know, if I had known this or if I had known that, maybe it would have been a more fruitful, it was very valuable, very beautiful time of my life and a very important event in my life. But I, I was trying to think how could I, what could I say that would help somebody else in a three-year retreat to avoid maybe some basic mistakes and, you know, move faster towards their goal. I think one important exercise for all practitioners in general, but especially if you're in a three-year retreat, I think it would be to sometimes, maybe while you're having a meal or relaxing, resting, to think about how do I feel right now in these few weeks or in the last few days?

Am I, am I becoming noticeably happier? Is my practice, is my retreat, are the practices I've chosen to concentrate on, are they leading not every day, right, but gradually, very slowly, over weeks' time or months' time? Is my state of mind becoming more contented and more at peace with myself?

Is the process of retreat making me happier? And I think sometimes we get so caught up in the Sanskrit sources and the, you know, textual proofs that we, sometimes we fail to just ask ourselves the most basic question is, am I, it's not even is my concentration better or like that? I think the barometer of your meditation and the barometer of your understanding, one of my first lamas, Geshe-la Dage, he told me, are you happier?

You know, do you feel happier than you were a month ago or six months ago? Is, is your practice resulted in an increased feeling of contentment or happiness? And if it's not, then it needs adjustment.

Then something is, then there's some kind of small, I think sometimes it could be small, some kind of small problem. It's not that we weren't reciting the right pages or we didn't get up at the right time or something like that. There has to be some deeper cause.

I think it has to do with intention. I think it has to do with how much of what I'm doing right now, am I doing because I want to contribute to other people's happiness. You see?

How much of my current practices are, do I have very conscious desire to help others or is my retreat mixed up with some other motivations, you see? And it always is. All of what we all do is mixed up.

The intentions, the motivations are always mixed up. But I think the ability to step back and observe your own mind and examine the motivations and I don't think it's even a thing of confessing insufficient motivation or I don't think that's the way to go. I think it's more like what can I do?

How will this retreat help me to serve other people better? So rather than making it an exercise in rooting out insufficient motivations, I think you can cover it in a lot more exciting way if you just say how will my current practices enable me to take care of people better? Because all of us are doing good practices.

I think all of us are. I don't think we need maybe such a big change in what we're doing. Probably the time you get up is okay.

And probably the sun that you're residing in is okay. And probably whatever you're doing as a child or the family you have, probably for you there's a karma involved and they've come to you for a reason and you're going to reach enlightenment through that set of people and circumstances. So I don't think oftentimes it's...

I mean, people tend to come to a lama and say, I don't know if I should be doing this sadhana or that sadhana or I don't know if this daily is good for me or maybe I need another daily or maybe I shouldn't get up at 3.30, maybe I should get up at 4 o'clock. I don't think I don't think that's the main thing. I think just to try to develop the capacity to step back from our mind and look at our mind and say, am I happy?

Do I feel at peace? Do I feel more and more at peace? And I think to ask the question to ourselves, how can I serve others with what I'm doing now?

What application can my current practices and life and job and family, how can I use them to help other people? And that's enough. And then the happiness will derive from that, I think.

There are some inbuilt problems to our happiness. Our mind and body have from beginningless time there are certain structural problems in our mind and our body. And then we can correct those, but first we need to learn about them.

So I thought tomorrow we'll discuss how to go from love of mind to shamatha, a state of concentration with which you can really help people. And we'll talk about structural parts of the inner body that we can work on to serve others better. So I'd like to do a dedication.

[Говорящий 2]
Satsang with Mooji London, UK Satsang with Mooji I had the pleasure to meet some of the retreatants for the first time.

[Говорящий 1]
I'd like to ask a favor so that we can get everybody in. Try to come on time. Try to end on time.

Please bring lots of paper and pen. I think it's nice. The paper and pen seems to work well because you can take the papers home and re-read the ideas that we have together.

Please maybe write down your questions before you come. Have them clear in your mind before you come. And then just try to be on time.

I extended the time here to meet everyone, but we only have half an hour each. Try to be totally ready. I'd like to thank all the other people for coming.

Most of the people here are supporting the retreat in some way. I'd like to thank you for that. It's been very beautiful.

It's a major... The last retreat we did was four or five people. This one is 40, 50 people.

We count the caretakers. It's a huge undertaking. It's a very, very ambitious undertaking.

Of course, the building of the 30 cabins was not a small thing in itself. I'd just like to thank everybody, the retreatants and the other people here. You've really inspired people all over the world.

People all over the world talk to me. They are very, very inspired by your deep commitment and your devotion and the fact that you built this place and what you've done. You're really inspiring people all over the world.

And they love it. They're very excited about you. You guys are making it happen.

I ask you to keep going, okay? We need everyone's help. It's beautiful.

Your support and their efforts have come together very sweetly. Be happy. Take joy in what you're doing.

They're doing a great job and you guys are doing a great job. It's a beautiful thing that so many people would care about each other and take care of each other. Be happy about it.

That's all. Let's see you guys.