Медитация 2

[Speaker 1]
Okay, here we go. So, a little bit of a smile, and try to keep it during the meditation. It's a Mona Lisa smile.

And the eyelids are relaxed. Try to relax, like don't get too serious about your yoga, and don't get too serious about your meditation. Try not to be tense.

Try not to try too hard. It's a beautiful day. We have a beautiful lake, Chalapa, outside.

We are sitting with beautiful friends. We had a good yoga, and I had a good cappuccino. Everything's relaxed.

Relax your fingers. Pull in your stomach slightly. That will straighten your lower spine.

Relax your forehead like a baby's forehead, and slowly come to your breath, and start to follow your breath. Gently and happily focus on your breath, and try not to think about too many other things. Long exhales.

Then we'll go to a desire realm state of mind. You can focus your mind on, for example, on some outer noise in the room. In this room today, we have a pretty loud air conditioner.

We have bird noises outside. We have some hotel staff doing things outside, making some noise. Sometimes a person inside the room coughs or makes some noise.

So pick one of those. For me, the air conditioner is strongest. And focus on this desire realm state of mind.

Every step up through the form and formless realm levels is an exercise in comparison. We focus on the level that we're at right now, for example, the air conditioner in the desire realm, and then we compare it to the next level deeper into the object. And the next object we're going to choose is the first level of the form realm.

It's actually the state of mind which creates a form realm birth if you die in that state of mind, or having practiced that state of mind a lot. And we're going to make the comparison by using our heartbeat. So please move your attention from the air conditioner to the heartbeat inside your chest.

And naturally, you'll have a feeling that it's much quieter to follow the heartbeat than to follow the air conditioner. The rough awareness of your mind noticing things, which in Sanskrit is called vittarka, that's focusing now on the air conditioner. And then the part of your mind that wants to go deeper, vichara, will go to the heartbeat.

It's like hearing a song on the loudspeaker at the grocery store. That's vittarka. And then if you pause and stand without moving in the grocery store to listen to some detail of the song, that's vichara.

That's more like digging into the object, going deeper into the object, examining the object. So classically, in this movement from the desire realm to the form realm, your rough awareness, rough noticing is looking at the air conditioner. And then your examination, looking deeper, that's looking into the form realm and seeing the quiet beating of your heart in your chest.

So slowly now, let's focus on the air conditioner and then look ahead into the form realm at the heart and move into observing the heartbeat. You're outside the heart, you're watching the heartbeat. The transition will take a few minutes.

Each step up in this requires a gacca of meditation. You will leave something behind because it's not as quiet as the place you want to go. And the process of leaving behind what is not so quiet to go to a more quiet place will take a few minutes.

So let's make that transition to a more quiet place, the beating of your heart. Notice that the concentration on your heartbeat has a nice effect on your body. The prana is moving nice, and you feel some kind of nice alignment in your meditation, in your posture.

There's a feeling almost of pleasant relief that you are in a more quiet place called your heartbeat. You're watching the heartbeat, and it's more quiet and pleasant. Now we'll move from the first form realm level meditation to the second.

The two mental functions of vidharka and vichara, noticing the heart beating and focusing more deeply on the heart beating as an observer, as we enter the second form realm level, those two qualities of the mind will drop out completely. And there'll be a sensation of not watching the heartbeat, but staying in the heart and beating. Try to make this second transition.

Drop the rougher states of mind, noticing, checking, and drill down deeper into the object, become the beating of the heart. There's still an awareness of the alignment, the pleasant alignment of the body, especially if you've been doing your yoga practice every day. And there's this pleasant sensation because it's more quiet to be the heartbeat than it is to watch the heartbeat.

Now we'll move to the third form realm. The big difference here is that the pleasant feeling of the mind, and the pleasant feeling of the quiet, that becomes an obstacle. And you drill down deeper into the object.

Now you're not thinking about, oh, it's so nice, it's so quiet. You just be quiet without thinking, oh, it's so nice. A deeper kind of quiet.

At this level, the two meditation tools of the mind are well-developed, strong. Your smoke alarm, sheshin, your smoke alarm is very sensitive now. If the mind tries to go back to the air conditioner, or even if it tries to watch the heartbeat instead of being the heartbeat, or even if it says to yourself, this is nice, this is so quiet, then that smoke alarm will make a small beep, beep, beep in your mind.

Oh, my mind has gone back to the air conditioner. Then there's another meditation tool in your mind. It's like a hook and a rope, and it hooks the mind that's looking at the air conditioner, and it pulls it back into the super quiet heartbeat, being the heartbeat.

So now we are the heartbeat, and we've gone deeper in the third form realm level, deeper than thinking, oh, this is really nice and quiet. We went to an even more quiet place. Now let's move to the fourth form realm level.

The pleasant alignment of the body, especially if you've been doing yoga regularly, drops out. It's a distraction in the fourth form realm level to be aware of how good it feels to have a good alignment in your posture, your meditation posture. Cancel that.

Each time we move up, we cancel something. In the fourth form realm level, focus on deep quiet. Go beyond pleasant mental feeling and a pleasant physical feeling, and make a special effort to feel as though you're focused on a single point.

Find a single point of... a feeling or a sensation of single-pointedness beyond physical or emotional feelings. We'll stay here for a few minutes, still inside the beating heart.

Now we'll move to the first formless realm level, which is called namkad taye, or endless space. Simply take that single point. Stay on the single point.

Drop the beating heart. Leave the beating heart behind. Only the single point now.

Way beyond noticing and checking, and way beyond the pleasant feeling of your posture and the pleasant feeling of the quiet. The body now is as though it was anesthetized. We're in one single point moving into the formless realm.

Now think about space that holds our planet, our sun, our stars, and begin to stretch out from that single point. Extend the focus to all of space. Start like a wave coming from a single point.

It's easier for me if I stay in the horizontal plane, and it's easier for me if I just think of going left and right. As you get more experience in the meditation, you can increase that to front and back. So imagine your mind flowing away from you in either direction from that single point, continually expanding for the next few minutes.

No awareness of your physical environment or body anymore. Now we'll move to the second formless realm. We always leave something behind to drill down deeper.

In the first formless realm level, we were imagining the mind moving from a single point to all of endless space. So like a boat on an ocean, we were using the ocean to chart our position, but that's also a distraction. So in the second formless realm level, we drop this imagination of endless space.

We drop the places where we can measure where we are, and we move into pure consciousness, pure awareness. No more points of reference. We are meditating inside of an endless awareness.

Even thinking about endless awareness takes some kind of effort. It reduces our concentration. Let's move to the third formless realm meditation.

What will we drop? Drop this perception of infinite awareness and move into the third formless realm where you are no longer holding anything. It's just nothing.

No holder, no holding, nothing to hold on to. Drop the infinite awareness. Now we move to the fourth formless realm level.

It takes some effort to think, I'm not holding on to anything and no one's holding. Let's go to the deepest kind of quiet. The effort to hold on to nothing, it feels like some kind of darkness, and all the levels before that felt like some kind of distracting effort.

So in the fourth formless realm level, I choose not to choose. I will not think about any particular object like infinite awareness, and I also choose not to think about holding on to nothing, beyond all choice. I choose a deeper kind of nothing.

Now that my mind is in a nice space, I will start the real meditation. I will place in front of my mind a holy object, a teacher, and the emptiness of that teacher. Those nine states of mind before, starting with the air conditioner, going to the four form realm levels, going to the four formless realm levels, those were exercises in sharpening my ability to meditate.

They feel good. It feels like real meditation. I found spaces in my meditation that I never reached before, but I understand those are only instruments.

They are not the goal. It's like building a powerful microscope. The point is not the microscope.

The point is what I put under the microscope after I build it. So I realize those eight states of mind are very attractive. They're almost addicting like a donut, but I know to help myself and others, I need to focus that microscope on something holy.

So I choose my heart teacher. Any teacher in your life who has helped you a lot, your mother and father are very powerful and holy teachers for each one of us. And then all your school teachers, all the teachers who taught you your occupation, and spiritual teachers or priests, choose one and bring them to meditate with you in front of your mind.

Choose one. Make them real. This is not meditating on a photograph or a painting or a statue.

We are focusing on a real person. Their chest is moving with the breath. Their eyes are blinking.

Their face has a smile. There's the fragrance of a good person coming from their body. Even this teacher has emptiness.

What is the emptiness of this teacher? There's no teacher in my life who came into my life without a karmic seed. Right now, the teacher sitting in front of me is coming out of a karmic seed in my own mind.

Beautiful, silver, karmic seeds in my own mind are opening. Small images of this lama are coming out, one after another, and they present themselves to my mind. And that's what it is to meditate on my lama.

So for just one minute, try to imagine a silver seed in the back of your mind. Try to imagine the seed opening, and try to imagine the lama coming out. It's a picture, but it's a perfect picture.

It's a real lama, and it can teach me to become a Buddha. Try to imagine the silver seed, and try to imagine the lama coming out. As long as I have these seeds, I will have a lama.

As long as I have these seeds, I will have a lama. Who put this seed in my mind? I did.

Mainly, when was it in my past life? Do you remember planting this seed? Probably not.

Is the memory somewhere in your mind? Yes. So let's pretend we remember.

Think about your lama. Think about the laws of karma. Law number one.

All the forces that created the kind of lama I have must have been the same kind of thing that I did in the past. Second law of karma. I've known my lama for, oh, four years, five years, ten years.

But the karmic cause, maybe it was only a few days. Maybe it was a very special hour spent with them in my past life. Maybe they were a completely different person.

Maybe a male was a female. Maybe an American was a Saudi Arabian. Maybe I was a different person.

Maybe I was male or female. I lived in another country. Maybe the seed was planted thousands of years ago.

So now, even if we cannot remember planting the seed for our lama, let's pretend we remember. Let's imagine. Let your imagination go very, very free.

Create a movie, excitement, adventure, romance. Make a beautiful story of your past life. Whatever comes into your mind.

Because whatever comes into your mind is coming from the same seeds that created your lama. And if you keep doing this meditation, you will be able to look backwards in the wheel of life, and you will see the actual events that have planted your life now. Okay, five minutes on your personal movie.

Every day for our 30-day meditation challenge. You can make it more grand. You can add more detail.

Five minutes on the meeting between you and your lama in your past life that planted that silver seed in your mind. Then please come back to the present moment in your meditation. If my lama is coming from those seeds, then my lama has emptiness.

Because emptiness means there's no lama in my life. Which I did not create. Now come back to your breath.

Three long breaths with each exhale. A golden light coming from you and spreading to the people of this world. Sharing your good karma of this meditation with each living being.

Then you can slowly open your eyes and take a stretch. That's called the Dance of the Lion. It was taught by the future Buddha, Maitreya, to a sangha 1,700 years ago.

And bodhisattvas use it after they see emptiness directly, in the minutes after they see emptiness directly, to understand more about emptiness and the wheel of life. Okay.