Голоса трёхлетнего ретрита B, гостевой спикер: Рут Лауэр — стенограмма

[Speaker 1]
I'm very happy to be here. My name is Ruth or Lady Ruth. And I'm a student of Sharon Gannon and David Leif.

And I'm a Jiva Mukti yoga teacher. And I'm a student of Sri K. Pattabhi Joyce.

And he's been my guru since 1989. And I was a, I am or was and is a yoga teacher of Geshe Michael. Kind of accidentally.

Because he needed a yoga teacher and somehow I ended up to be his yoga teacher. And I didn't know who he was. So it was a very special time that we had because I think like Beloved Earl said, when we have these fixed ideas about who we are and who others are, it can get in the way of things.

And so it was really beautiful that we were just ordinary people. And in our ordinariness, we shined and it was just wonderful. And then after about a year, I was invited to a talk that he was giving.

And so I saw another side of Geshe Michael. But anyway, so that's why I'm here. And then when I met with you the other day, I sung a prayer from the Bhagavad Gita.

And I forgot half of it because I was excited, you know, and I couldn't remember the other half of the prayer. And my guru, he always said to memorize everything, but keep a little piece of paper nearby. And usually I always do.

But on that day, I didn't have the little piece of paper. But then I also didn't know if anybody knew the prayer either. So I think you guys sort of thought I was done.

So I wanted to start with that prayer so that we could bring it to completion. I have a little piece of paper. And we'll do kirtan style.

Om Parthaya Pratipotitam Bhagavata Narayanena Svayam Vyasena Kratitam Purana Muninam Mahabharatam Advaitamrita Varshinim Bhagavatim Ashtadasha Jainim Ambatvam Anusandhatami Bhagavad Gitae Bhavad Veshinim So that prayer is to say thank you for the Bhagavad Gita before the study of the Bhagavad Gita. So it's a very nice custom where you say thank you actually before. Like sometimes maybe you get together with somebody and then after you say oh thank you.

Like after they've done the thing that you wanted them to do or something you thank them. But this is the tradition where before you say thank you and in this prayer you say thank you to the goddess. You say thank you to Mother Nature because Mother Nature is the source of the scripture and that's what the prayer says.

Then I wanted to sing these three verses from the Yoga Sutra. They have to do with meditation. Deja Pandash Chitasya Tarna Tatra Pratyayika Tantra Dhyanam Tad Evarta Matra Nirbhasam Svarupa Shunyam Eva Samadhi So those are three sutras on meditation in the Yoga Sutra.

One after another after another. Describing meditation as first having a holy object. One that's dear to you that you would tie your mind to.

In the way that you might put your arm around a friend. And then the second one is that after you've put your arm around your friend, you might linger there for a while and get a sense of recovery from it. And the third one would be that you and your friend would join and feel together.

And that's Samadhi. Simple togetherness. Unafraid of each other.

So those are the three sutras on meditation. One turns into the next which turns into the next. So you have to give yourself a chance for one thing to naturally turn into another.

So I was in Japan a while back. And in Japan, if you want to go from one place to another, you have two options. You can take the roads, you can take the streets.

Or you can take these pathways. There are many pathways where you can go from one place to another not on the roads. And they're sort of more secretive, the pathways.

Not everybody knows about them. Like the local people know about the pathways. But if you're not a local person, you might only know about the streets unless you're with a local person.

And then the local person might take you on the pathway. And the pathways in Japan are very, very beautiful. They're built out of rocks and wood and pebbles and grass.

They're very beautiful. And when you walk on these pathways, they're often steep and narrow and more direct than if you take the street. And when you walk on the pathway, you get this feeling of how they were laid down.

You know, like this stone, and okay, now come the little pebbles, and here come the pieces of wood. It's just like something very beautiful to walk on a pathway and feel how pathways are made. So when you're walking down the pathway in Japan, and you're going from one place to another, and the pathway is really beautiful, and the stones vary in sizes and whatnot, after a certain point, you feel like it's really beautiful, and you start looking at your surroundings and everything, and maybe you start slowing down a little bit.

And then you get to a point where you feel like you'd like to sit and kind of like take in everything that you're passing by. And in Japan, I guess the culture is so old and so sophisticated that just when you start to feel like, oh, this is the time that you should sit so that you can take things in better, a bench is there, or a big rock is there, or something is there, you know, telling you what you instinctively know. And so you'll sit, take in everything, and pause, and really get a sense of your surroundings.

And then you feel blessed, don't you? You feel very blessed. And then you feel satiated because you feel blessed.

And then at a certain point, you feel, okay, I better get up and keep going, you know? And so you get up, and you go back onto the path until, again, a similar feeling happens. And that's how it is on the pathways in Japan.

Well, I have this really dear friend, and his name is John. And he's a photographer, and he's 53, and he's famous. And over the last 20 years, he's slowly gone blind.

He has a degenerative eye disease. So while he was going blind, he was teaching himself how to see, and he was trying to remember what everything looked like because he knew that eventually he wouldn't be able to see it. And now he can't see at all.

And he takes these pictures. He takes pictures. And the pictures are amazing.

Like, he touches things, and he places them through touch. And he has a sense of, like, what the weather's like, and what the air is like, and what the time of day is like. So the quality of light in his pictures is really amazing.

And when I visit him, he always wants to know what I'm wearing. And so I always get dressed up when I go to see him. And I even wear makeup and everything.

Like, I make myself look the best that I can. And then he always says, he calls me Lady Ruth because he picked it up from you. And he says, Lady Ruth, what are you wearing?

And I say, well, you know, I always wear something unusual, you know. So I'll say, well, it doesn't have buttons. Instead, it ties.

Or it doesn't button up in the middle. It buttons up way on the side. Or it gathers and kind of hangs asymmetrical.

So then he says, well, let me touch it. So he gets the sense. So he'll, like, run his finger over the tie or something.

Or I'll say, oh, it's, you know, it's khadi from India. It's soft Gandhi fabric, you know. Or see the touch of the fabric, you know.

At one time, people were very sensitive to the touch of the fabric of the clothing, you know. So he has that. He likes cotton.

So he feels it and everything. And he tells me I look really sensational. And then sometimes we go to the museum together.

And he'll say, so where are we, Lady Ruth? And I'll say, well, we're in the impressionist wing. And we're standing in front of a painting by Van Gogh.

And he'll say, oh, can you describe it to me? And I'll describe to him the painting. And then he'll say to me, yeah, but isn't there like a splash of yellow on the bottom left-hand corner?

And I'll be like, oh, yeah, there is. And it's like I overlooked what he saw. And he helped me see what I overlooked by asking me to describe what I'm seeing.

So now he's completely blind. And he needed some help getting around New York City because he was getting like almost killed all day long. And so he said he would like to have somebody help him on days where he has many different things to do, many errands and things to do.

And did I know somebody who could maybe help him? And I had a student, Holy Holly. And she had just come back from India.

And she was in India a little bit longer than she had told her workplace, her boss. So when she came back, she didn't have a job. And so I thought it would be good since she didn't have a job and he was looking for somebody.

It would be nice and she could work for him. And so I arranged it. And John, John is very successful as a photographer.

And he likes to dress well and spend money on clothes. And he's very stylish and tall and dignified. And he wears two pairs of glasses.

And and then Holy Holly, she's like really small and really slight. And she's the kind of person that she's easy to miss. So they're quite a pair.

And she likes to wear rags like the older and more holy. Holy meaning with holes in it. The clothes are the more comfortable she is.

So she's like in her rags, you know, and he's in like his pinstriped suit with his cufflinks and his double pair of glasses and his cane. And and he's real tall and she's real slight and real small. And, you know, I introduced them to each other and they're going to go walking together in New York City and do the errands.

And so, John, he puts his hand on her shoulder and they walk. And she says that is a walk that she normally has done many times and everything looks different. And everything makes her feel happy.

And she just feels so blessed with his hand on her shoulder. And then yesterday I was here and there was a dinner break. And then they said, I should go with Gayshala and have dinner.

And Venerable Jigme and Edie and Edie and me. And and so we went into Venerable Jigme's car. And it was it was Venerable Jigme and then Edie.

They were in the front seat. And then Gayshala, Michael and me, we were in the backseat of the car. And ever since the Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna, he gets into the chariot with Lord Krishna.

There's a lot of lore in India about getting into like a vehicle with holy people or teachers or people you esteem. It's like it's kind of like it doesn't always happen in the classroom. You know, and there's just something very there's all these tales about like enlightened people in chariots going places, you know.

And and so it was like I felt really blessed, you know, throwing myself in the car with with you. And it was a short ride, but because we didn't go far, you know. But then we got back in, too.

So I got to have the experience twice in a pretty short period of time.

[Speaker 2]
And I felt really blessed.

[Speaker 1]
And so I think that, you know, Gayshala, he wanted me to speak about meditation. And I don't really know much about meditation. I know that it's something that unfolds and it's it's more of a question than an answer.

But I definitely think that. It incorporates the feeling of being blessed and that you take your seat and you clean up your room and you keep your altar in a way that your guru would feel honored. And, you know, maybe it takes a while to get yourself together on your seat or maybe it takes no time at all.

But finally, you kind of get to a place where you feel blessed and you're sitting there and you don't want to be somewhere else and you don't want to be someone else. And you just accept that this is the moment where you are and this is the place where you are and this is good and this is enough. And you have this feeling of being blessed.

And that's the beginning of meditation, that feeling. And then you get to kind of linger in that feeling. So it isn't just, oh, once in a blue moon for one fleeting second, I felt blessed.

But you, you stay there and you rest and you don't feel like I got to get up and go. And even if you did feel like you needed to get up and go, you'd have it within yourself to correct yourself. And you'd say, you know what?

I don't. I don't have to get up and go. This blessing is captivating.

And so you get to kind of linger in that captivation of something from inside and out and it's heavenly and it's wonderful and you start to feel relieved. And then if you hang in there, then after a while, it's like the example I was thinking of this morning. If you've ever been on a train like in India, like once I was on a train in India for what was supposed to be like six hours or something, but it ended up being like three days.

This was a long time ago. And and I got so used to being on the train that when we got to our destination, I didn't really want to get out. I felt really like I'm good on the train, you know, and I think that it's like that, you know, meditation, like at a certain point.

It's like you're happy where you are, you know, you don't want to get out. So that's like a merger. You're not looking to go somewhere other than you're there.

So then when that happens, you see, then whether you get there, you don't get there, you still feel blessed. You know, the the feeling of the blessing, it's sort of like what you were saying about love. You don't need to be in the llama's car to feel blessed or you don't need to have, you know, John's hand on your shoulder or you don't need to be on a secret pathway.

You don't need something to trigger that feeling because it's you've awoken. And so you just feel blessed and it doesn't it's no longer like this good circumstances or bad circumstances. You know, everything is a blessing, your difficulties, your hardships, your challenges, your shortcomings, your flaws.

It's all God's grace. It's all God's gift to you. It's all a blessing.

So the capability to feel blessed has been awoken. And so you're in that state and that's important because when you feel blessed, you can bless others. If you yourself don't feel blessed, you can't bless others.

But if you do feel blessed, then people just in your presence will feel blessed. So sometimes we think that, you know, like we were always running after Guruji to get his blessing. And I'm sure you guys run after your llama and you try to get his blessing as much as you can.

That's a beautiful thing. But if you're in like India and you need to have your shoe repaired and you're in some really busy, congested, intense section of like downtown Delhi, holding on to your shoe and you see like a cobbler and he sees you coming and he thinks, oh, that lady wants to have her shoe fixed. What a blessing.

And he feels blessed that you've brought him your shoe. Then that cobbler is going to bless you. And anyone and everyone can bless you if they feel blessed themselves.

So if the cobbler feels blessed to fix your shoe. Then you're going to feel blessed to have your shoe fixed by that cobbler. I'm very honored to speak here.

Thank you. What time am I supposed to be? Oh, I have so many more minutes.

Well, I don't think I need to really take it, you know, because I have done a lot of talking over the last few years, you know. And so I can see that, you know, for you to take every minute would be appropriate. You know, but we can we can we can end then.

I love what you said to about love being neutral because you love everyone because you love everyone. Human or unhuman, kind or unkind. But just because it's neutral doesn't mean it's not passionate.

That was very, very beautiful what you said last night.