Полный Танец льва: на лифте к прямому восприятию пустоты (2018, Аризона), занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
Go a little bit further in the lion's stance this morning. And I was reading the instructions for it again. I found it three times in the sutras, and, you know, Maitreya, and also Kedrup Jeyas.

I think Kedrup Jeyas is the most beautiful explanation. And there's five parts, and I thought you might, I have to review what they call a part. You know, where did the part start?

Where does part one start? Where does part one end? Okay, so you might want to make some notes.

This is not on your homework. It's just if you teach it to somebody, you should know where part one stops. Okay, so part is part one.

By the way, it's singha, vijun, vidha, right? Like shaking roar of the lion. We call it lion's stance, but singha, say singha.

Vijun, vidha. And the Russian word, grom, thunder. Okay, like that, right?

Okay, all right. When you go up through the eight levels, and then you go to level nine, which is, level nine has these two parts, right? You do a wheel of life, which means dependent origination, which means you go to your past life and see where things came from, which means your present life depends on the past life, right?

That's dependence. And then we're going to, today we're going to finish level one. We'll go back to the teacher, and it doesn't have to be the same teacher, okay?

I think it's good to appreciate all your teachers. And you might use your mom, or a grade school teacher, or something like that, okay? So you come back to your teacher, and then we're going to compare our vision of the teacher as someone who comes from our seeds, our past life seeds, compare it to our normal perception of them as, oh, teacher's irritated today, or teacher is nice today, or, okay?

Like that, and you don't think of where that's coming from. You see what I mean? So there's always a correct perception involved in your wrong perceptions, okay?

You are perceiving a teacher. They do exist. There is someone talking to you, teaching you, and that's not wrong.

That's a correct perception. We call pramana, correct perception. But at the same time, with most of the time, we have a feeling about the teacher that they are deciding what to say today.

They are thinking. They are planning the class. They wrote the homework, okay?

It's too long. Wait till you see today's. And in your heart, you have a feeling that they decided how long to make the homework.

They wrote the questions. They wrote this one weird question that they didn't cover in class, and things like that. That feeling is what's wrong, okay?

That feeling is what's not real. And the teacher, the part of the teacher that that feeling sees is not there, and that's emptiness, okay? So there's two perceptions going on when you look at the teacher, right?

Number one, oh, this is the person who helped me when I was in school, and they taught me many great things, and I'm so grateful to them. That's correct. That's a correct perception.

But there's a feeling under it that, oh, this person decided what to put on the homework. This person's making it too long. This person didn't cover this in class.

That feeling that it's coming from them is wrong, and we always have both feelings going on. So obviously we're not saying emptiness is that there's no teacher there, okay? It's not true that Buddhism says there's no teachers, and you shouldn't respect your teacher, or something like that, okay?

It's just that any problem you see with the teacher is coming from you. Just kidding. Any good things are also coming from you, okay?

It's all, okay? So the homework is coming from you. Don't blame me.

I'm just a postman. What's it mean, postman? Who wants to explain postman?

Nobody, it's too early. Bertha, Bertha, from Mexico.

[Speaker 2]
When you do something and it's like you wrote yourself a letter.

[Speaker 1]
Good. Keep going.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, and then you mail it. You wrote something, Bertha, you are just, you know, bad things. And I take the whole comments, say that three days later, I get it.

I wish I didn't make it up to them, you know?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, understand, okay? You write a letter. Geshe Michael writes a letter to Geshe Michael, say you are stupid, and then give it to the post office.

And then three days later, it's probably Mexico City. In my town, it's three weeks later. The postman is 90.

Then the postman comes back with my letter. I have a letter for you. And I open it up and I get angry at the postman, okay?

So they're not the person who wrote the letter, okay? Everything that you experience, including homeworks, you wrote the homework. I'm just the delivery man, okay?

I'm just the UPS guy, all right? And I'm just delivering to you wisdom that you shared past life, okay? So at level nine of the Lion's Dance, we're going to go into dependent origination, which is where did this teacher's good quality come from, okay?

And it's tradition to focus on a good quality. You could focus on a bad quality, but then you just increase those seeds. You just strengthen those seeds.

It's not that the teacher has no bad qualities. They have bad qualities. But it's like the bad qualities of your wife or your husband.

If you focus on them, they will just grow bigger and bigger. So do what you can to fix them. But focus on something sweet, okay?

Because life is short. And my life, I was 25 yesterday. Then something happened, okay?

I'm like, whoa. And then when you hit 60, you get this wisdom. I met my old lady the other day, 94.

I asked her, tell me what happens at 90. But at 60, you realize, don't waste your time with stupid people. And don't waste your time with stupid things.

You don't have time. So just focus on the cool things and enjoy the cool things. And just, you see some, do you know the Tibetan saying, du ri yagya manum?

If you smell a fart, don't go like this. Oh, who farted? Where is it?

Like, don't smell a fart twice. It's a Tibetan saying. Just put your nose up to the good side.

Don't worry about, you don't have time. So anyway, we focus on the good things of a lama or a teacher. We go into the dependence of it, which is, it could be past life, it could be what you did last week, okay?

That's dependence. And then we're going to come back and imagine the teacher, how we met the teacher the first time. Was it an accident?

Did I just happen to be there? And then we're going to pretend that we're going to bring a new teacher, right? Who didn't come from us.

We're going to purposely try to imagine a teacher who didn't come from us. And we're going to look at them and think about them. And then we're going to counsel them and ask them to go away, okay?

That's what? Emptiness. That's emptiness.

In Lion's Dance language, that's called gope nyom jung. Say gope. Nyom jung.

Cessation meditation. It just means cancel. Cancel meditation.

Cancel this teacher who didn't come from you. They don't exist, okay? Cancel it.

Gope nyom jung, okay? When we reach that, we have finished the first round of the five rounds of the Lion's Dance, okay? So we're going to go for that today.

All right. And then we'll do some other stuff for a while. Then I'll take you back down if we have time.

That's the second round, okay? You go from, you go back down from nine to eight, seven, six, five, four. Where do you stop?

Yeah, it's traditional not to go back to the air conditioner. It's traditional to stop at four mil, at the heartbeat, okay? Four mil number one, okay?

And that'll be the second round. So that's the first two rounds of the Lion's Dance. I think it's on your homework today.

I think today in your retreat cottage, you have to do the two levels, okay? And you can do it once, you can do it twice, all right? It's up to you.

This homework number two, you probably won't have time to do the meditation twice. I'm sorry, I've gotten a little crazy. Three is even worse, okay?

I don't know about four yet, okay? All right, so please get ready to meditate. Turn off your phone, which you're not using anyway.

Blow your nose, it really helps, okay? And you're welcome to record if you want to record, okay? Especially if you think you might like to listen to it this afternoon, then you can follow it.

Nice view, dude. Okay, let's go. ,BA'I RGYUNG, ,BU'I RGYUNG, ,BU'I RGYUNG, ,BA SHES, ,BA SHES NI, Okay, Lion's Dance.

Let's try two rounds, okay? So normally, we would start with our breath. We're going to start, jump straight into the air conditioner, except it's no air conditioner.

So how about little noises in the room, okay? Little noises in the room. Personally, I decide if it's a 10-breath day or a 20-breath day.

10-breath day means I'm late for work. I try to do about 10 breaths per level, per level. And then 20-breath day means I have time and I can go slow.

So let's do a 20-breath day since we're on retreat. Rest your mind on the sound like you rest your head on a pillow. Don't fight, don't struggle, just have fun, relax.

Buddhists, like people from other religions, tend to specialize in feeling guilty. And the deeper they go into Buddhism, the more guilty feelings they have because it's impossible to do all the things you're supposed to do. So today, let's just try to have fun and enjoy the meditation.

And we'll worry about all the other things we're supposed to do later on. This is, being here, sitting here, is what you're supposed to do right now. Enjoy it.

Life is short. Then please come to your heartbeat. And then come in your heart inside.

Beautiful, sun-filled, sunlight-filled meditation room. I like to put lots of cushions on the floor. It's quiet.

You can feel the heart beating around. And now we expand the space within the heart. And there are outer rooms around the edge of the heart.

And we go into an inner chamber, into the center of the heart, deeper part of the heart, core. And the walls of the heart are still beating, but they're difficult to hear now. They sound far away.

The inner core of the heart, once we get inside, it's still a very beautiful, expansive space with lots of sunlight. And inside that inner core of the heart, there's a small table next to you. On the table is a small sugar bowl.

And you dip your finger in. And it comes out with some crystals on it, sugar crystals. And you focus on one of those crystals.

And you decide to put your mind inside the crystal. You kind of squeeze in one side of the crystal. But when you get inside, again, there's even a more beautiful meditation room, meditation space, lots of light, comfortable cushions, beautiful altar.

And you're meditating inside a crystal. Inside the inner chamber of your heart, inside your heart, inside your body. More quiet, no heartbeat sound.

From that single-pointed place, we're going to show off our flexibility, mental flexibility. So, inside this sugar crystal, we will imagine huge ocean, infinite ocean. Deep blue, deep water, very quiet, stretching beyond the horizon.

Follow it with your mind, deep and wide. Infinite, and show that you can go from a very tight focus to a very broad focus. This is flexing your meditation muscle.

Still inside the crystal, first formless realm. Now we'll add the blue sky above the ocean, goes farther and farther, no limit. Follow the sky to the edges of the ocean, as high as you can, and stretch your meditation muscle farther.

Infinite sky. You would be more quiet if we turned the mind off completely. So, just as an exercise in concentration, and not because it has anything to do with emptiness, we'll turn off the mind, stop thinking.

If thoughts come out, feelings, pictures, then face each one, stop it, and come back to the silent mind, which is not thinking. Fourth formless realm level. We will keep the mind turned off, no thinking.

But if random thoughts come up, then just let them flow through the mind. Don't confront them, don't attach to them. Don't engage with them, just let them flow through.

Ignore them. Go to a more quiet core of the mind without thinking. And ignore the outside level, surface level of thoughts, feelings.

Now, for the first time in this meditation, we bring a meditation object, which should be something meaningful, something important, not like the sky, or the sea, or the heartbeat. It should be something which has a heavy karma, which can make our mind more elevated, more beautiful. And so we're going to invite one of the teachers in our life to come to this room, sit in front of us, meditate with us.

So choose one of the teachers in your life. All of us have many, many teachers. Some of them we don't think about, or we don't recognize them.

But even people who have heard us in our life, they're also teaching us about ourselves and about our reactions. So bring a teacher to sit with you. Now, think of one beautiful quality of this teacher, something that helped you, even if it was painful, and write a movie about how you got to this point.

How you planted that quality that you see. After that, we'll take a break. So just five minutes, travel to another country, to another time in history.

Imagine who you might have been, and enjoy it. Finding the time and place where you planted the seeds to see your teacher this way. And now please come back to your teacher.

Three long exhales at the end of each exhale. Please, the lungs will pause, the breathing will pause, and then push out a little more air. And this prevents a buildup of tidal air or extra air in your lungs, and that helps prevent nervousness or anxiety during meditation.

So three long exhales. When you come to the end of the exhale, push a little bit more out. The stomach will tighten.

And then slowly open your eyes. Take a stretch. And drink something, okay?

Joel, you have a microphone? Okay, any questions about that part? No, okay.

When you choose a teacher, it's easy to go for a llama or somebody like that. I've had people in my life who were very contentious, and I chose to see them as teachers. My question is, at what point can you discern if I'm just giving that negativity more and more juice by bringing it into my thinking versus honoring the role that I now perceive in them?

So the question is, if, you know, kind of the mood today was maybe we take as a teacher, we visualize someone who gave us trouble, and maybe someone who hurt us. And then we try to see how they improved us and made us stronger. And the question was, you know, what if I kind of start to focus on them, what they did to me, and then the whole meditation becomes that?

And maybe it would just make my seeds stronger for thinking about how they hurt me. Actually, the same thing happened to me during this meditation. So let's see what we should do.

I think it takes some courage to use a teacher in the meditation, someone who hurt you in the past. And then I think it takes a lot of strength or discipline to try to focus on what you learned from it, how you grew from that experience. And I think what happened to me probably were the same.

I started to wallow in how they hurt me, and it kind of strengthened my negative seeds about them, that my feelings that they hurt me. And I forgot to think very much about how they improved me, which probably means they didn't improve me. I don't know.

But yeah, I think it just takes awareness. And we call it sheshin. Sheshin is a mental function that you can learn to develop.

It's a smoke detector in your mind, and it's supposed to go off, beep, beep, beep, if you find your mind going somewhere else. So I think that's a separate skill that we have to develop. And it's kind of a detector that the mind is wandering or the mind is going someplace where it shouldn't be going.

And it's a part of meditation muscle that we're not born with it. And as a meditator, you have to develop it, and you have to purposely develop it. So in my house the other night, I have three fire alarms.

One by one, they went off for no reason. Just, it's not, I changed the battery, they still went off, and so, actually, I just tore them out of the ceiling and called the electrician the next day. I said, you put them back, put another one there, you know?

And then, not for the electrician to come. It was a couple of days. And then I was thinking during those couple of days, I'm sort of worried that if there's a fire, I'll just sleep through it and keep sleeping for a long time.

And so it's like that. You have to install a new piece of your mind that watches the rest of your mind to make an alarm. And yeah, that's all you can do.

If you keep going on that train of thought, you just strengthen the negative seeds, yeah. So, I'll try to improve my smoke detector also. Anybody else?

I get the microphone, Geshe-la. This is from the live stream, so this isn't my question. Okay.

Just kidding. No, it's actually a live stream. I won't blame it on you.

This is from Katie in Colorado, Katie Fetch. You mean the mommy, the pregnant mommy? Soon-to-be mother, yes.

She asks, in the eighth levels, I have trouble with the physical body versus the body in the meditating room. Like I go back and forth between the visualization and my body in real time. Any suggestions?

Well, if your body's kicking, that's a problem. Wait six months. It will start.

Yeah, sometimes the knees of your body are stronger than your meditation, right? Your knees hurt, or your back hurts, or you took Utta's yoga yesterday and everything hurts. But, yeah, there's a skill.

We shouldn't ignore our body, right? If something hurts, you should check it out. If you're like me, if something hurts inside, I tend to just wait a while and a couple weeks and see if something's going on or not.

So, and I think it's important, if something really feels strange inside your body, you should go to a doctor. There's a kind of laziness where you're like, oh, I don't want to think about it, you know? I feel shy to go to the doctor.

My doctor is like more difficult to see than Trump. But then you, you know, I think as you get older, you see people die at strange moments and you're like, oh, if something feels strange inside my body, I should ask somebody who knows about it and I should do something. But then there are other parts of your body, old pains and problems with your knees or with your back.

And I think as a meditator, you have to learn to ignore it, you know? You have to check it out, make sure it's not, you know, something wrong with your heart or something. And then once the doctor said there's nothing really there, then you have to learn to ignore your body.

So that's, you know, if you meditate really seriously an hour a day, most of the time your legs will fall asleep and there's pins and needles in your legs for a while. And just stay there. Don't move.

Okay? If you move, it'll feel better for a while and it'll hurt again. If you don't move, it'll hurt a lot and then it'll go away.

And you don't have to think about it. Don't get up quickly, you will break your ankle, okay? Because your legs fell asleep.

So my suggestion, I mean, if you're going to meditate seriously and you have some kind of pains in your body, you have to just learn to ignore them and work through them. It's a matter of willpower. It's not going to get better as you get older, unless your karma is really improving.

And I think you have to learn to be a tough guy. There's a place in meditation to be a tough guy and you just have to sit it out. But also if you've had some kind of event in your life, someone criticized you yesterday or something happened personal, on a personal level, someone did something to you or something said something to you, that's like a physical pain.

It will come up in your mind as you're meditating. And I think as a meditator, at some point, you just have to learn to be a tough guy, okay? It's not going to go away quickly.

You can try to deal with the seeds, but until the new seeds take over, you're going to have those pains, physical and emotional pains. And I really think, my own experience, I've been meditating for, I don't know, 45 years. Sometimes you just have to tough it out and you have to say, okay, my legs hurt, I understand, they're not going to not hurt.

Okay, let's go back to the meditation. You can break your meditation, but then your meditation doesn't improve. So I think at some point you have to learn to ignore your body.

Because that pain is coming from your seeds, you can change it. And you should work on changing it. But there's always a time gap between the new seeds and the old seeds.

So during that time gap, which is like while the husband is still yelling, okay, but you know it's coming from you, you just have to be a tough guy, you know, smile, and tough it out. I think you have to be tough to be a meditator, okay, to be a serious meditator. You have to learn to ignore the pain, okay.

One more question, and then we'll take a break. So before, yes, the question actually came from Alex Rowland, not Katie. So it was still funny and applicable, but sorry.

I don't think Alex has anyone kicking you. But if you do, congratulations. She's a, Alex is a girl by the way.

Nope, okay. There's another one online I can grab. There's another question online.

Okay, quick, and then these guys want to pee pee. I was informed yesterday that I keep announcing a pee pee break and delaying it, it's really cruel. So this is a question from Taiwan.

The person's name is Singing Lin. The question is, sorry, when you mentioned about the blue sky above, I feel like I'm outside of the earth, in the cosmos. Have I gone too far and need to pull back?

Yeah, I used to teach it, go all the way to the end of the universe. And nowadays I'm kind of trying to match the sea with the sky, two different kinds of blue. But if you go past the blue into outer space, and keep going, that's even better.

The name of that level is nam kha thay ye, which means endless space. nam she thay ye, which means endless consciousness. And yeah, that's even better.

If you can do it, that's even better. Yeah, that's fine. Okay, let's take a little break.

10, 15 minutes. And then we'll come back. And we'll go back down.

Just so I can say I did round number two with you. Okay? All right.

We still have to do the emptiness part. Okay, so we finished the meditation about our teacher's quality. We traced it back to our past life.

And now we're going to go into a cessation meditation, which means we're going to focus on how that's not coming from me. Okay? And that's emptiness.

The original Maitreya's instructions are RTEN CING BRAL BYUNG LUG MTHUN DANG, LUG MTHUN LA RTOG PAR BYED LUG MTHUN DANG means how did I get in trouble? Meditate on that. Or how did this beautiful thing come to me?

Meditate on that. That's called LUG MTHUN. LUG MTHUN means then go the other way, back out, and cancel a teacher who's not coming from you.

So really the second part of dependence is the emptiness. You see? So here we go.

Sometimes the LUG MTHUN nowadays is called LUNG RDOG, which means same thing. Reverse the feeling that this teacher is not coming from you. Okay?

That the homework is not coming from you. Okay? Here we go.

Ready? And we won't spend long on it. So this time let's start with a breath.

Counting breaths. Since we're doing a deeper retreat this week, it's possible you will start to get LUNG. LUNG is sort of an honor to get LUNG.

It means you're meditating. You're trying to meditate. LUNG means excess of prana in your body and you start to feel nervous or anxiety.

You have trouble sleeping and a very nice way to prevent it is this trick of when you exhale during your meditation push out some more air. After the muscles tighten at the end of the exhale then exhale a little bit more. Not like don't go crazy with it but just comfortably exhale a little more.

And then extra prana, extra breaths which are related won't build up in your body. So here we go. Let's take ten breaths.

Counting exhale first, inhale second. And on the exhales be careful to after the natural pause of the lungs push out a little bit more. Keep a relaxed face.

Don't get all serious. Enjoy meditation. You're on vacation here at Diamond Mountain.

Have some fun. And please bring your teacher to mind again. Bring them in front of you to meditate together.

Then I like to think of how I first met my teacher. There's the normal well there's the history of it which was I was in a certain place and they came to that place and we met each other and that perception is correct. That's how it happened and there's nothing wrong with that but there's a second perception that always goes along with the first one which says that that meeting was by accident I was in a certain place.

They happened to come to that place at that same hour and then we met each other and that part of the perception of my teacher is mistaken. There are no accidents in life because that teacher coming into my house appearing at the door is actually coming from me, from my seat. So their coming to my house is coming from me.

And when they left my house that day those seats were wearing out and they left the house. So during this next meditation which is stopping meditation and we're starting round two of the lion's dance try to remember how you met this teacher and try to acknowledge that the first perception is correct. You did meet them.

They did come to your house. They did leave your house. That part is correct.

But try to get in touch with this other feeling that it all happened by accident or it was coming from their side and try to cancel that feeling. Try to stop that feeling and recognize that their coming and their going or what's coming from your seats. Okay, here we go.

Now we'll come back down the eight levels which will complete the second round. So come back, drop the meditation on zhig and come back to stopping the mind. Very, very quiet and not worrying about extra thoughts.

Leave them on the outside. I usually spend half the time coming down than I spend coming up. Level seven we're coming out from the center of the mind.

Mind is still turned off but we are fighting to stop random thoughts and that creates a little noise in the mind. Back to the infinite sky. Back to the ocean.

Back to the sugar crystal. Back to the inner core of the heart. Lots of sunlight.

Back inside the heart with the walls beating. Lots of sunlight. Back to watching your heart from your body and three long exhales and slowly open your eyes.

Take a stretch. Drink something. Someone's phone.

You might want to turn it off. Yeah. All right then.

Any last questions about the meditation? Oh, here we go.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you Geshe-la. May I ask that when we go up we are expanding the sky, the ocean but when we are backing down do we still expanding or still picture or retract? Yeah, good question.

[Speaker 1]
As we go up we expand the sky and as we come down yeah, we retract to the middle and that's a tradition for meditation in the diamond way in the tantric classes so it's important to get this feeling of things coming back to the center. It's a good question. Luka had a question.

[Speaker 2]
Thanks Geshe-la. I have a question. During this time, my cessation meditation because this time I choose the quality of my teacher is a kind of tolerance of pain so during the cessation meditation I started to think about his toleration of pain is from me but also the pain is also from me so I feel quite suffering inside of me.

I started to feel kind of guilty why I should make so much pain for my teacher.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a good question. When you reach enlightenment you get four bodies. One of the bodies is called headquarters body.

It's Amitabha's in-paradise and its definition is Ngepa Nganten which means five fixed qualities and one of those qualities is that all around you you only see high bodhisattvas around you and those bodhisattvas are not other people. They're the people in this room. You see?

So when you get enlightened you will see everybody in this room as a high bodhisattva. How they see themselves is different because of the dog and the chew toy and the pen so how they experience their own life you don't have to take blame for that or take credit for that. That's their seats.

So you will experience them as a high bodhisattva. How they experience themselves is maybe completely different. They may think, I'm suffering.

You see? So it's not your fault how they feel about themselves. You see what I mean?

Even after you become Buddha the people around you may feel that they are normal people. You will see them as high level bodhisattva. You can't stop it.

You can't help it. That's Buddhahood. So you don't have to feel responsible for how they see themselves.

That's not that's their seats. Like that. So when you're not a Buddha maybe you see people around you have some pain but maybe they see themselves as Buddha.

You see what I mean? Opposite. You can think the reason I see pain is coming from me.

I have to improve. But don't worry about how they feel. Could be they see themselves as a Buddha.

Which one is correct? Neither one. We're going to talk about it today.

Anybody else? Let's go. Let's go through the class.