Полный Танец льва: на лифте к прямому восприятию пустоты (2018, Аризона), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
We're going to meditate, so do the necessary. I got hired by the Library of Congress to buy some of their Buddhist books, Asian books, for a year, and so I went there to find out what I'm supposed to do, and I walked into the director's office and he looked at me and he said, do the necessary, and he said goodbye. It's a nice ...

do the necessary for meditation. All right, let's go. We're going to do four parts of the lion's dance today, and then tomorrow we'll do five, and you graduated, then it's up to you, okay?

So, today we'll add the fourth round, okay? I'm going to do it in two parts because it's going to be too long for you, okay? We'll take a break halfway, and then ...

but you know, when you do it by yourself, you feel like it's too much, and you're tired, and you finished with the Lama and all that, and you're like, why do I have to do more than eight steps? And in a yoga post, you know, we had this yoga teacher Dharma Mitra, who's amazing, and he's 70 something? 80, and he does a headstand with no arms, and ...

so anyway, when you go to his class, he gets you in the pose, you know, and you're shaking, he says, oh shaking is good, shaking is good, because you're building ... when you're shaking you're getting stronger, okay? And then, then he'll say, just hold it one more, one more second, you know, just one more second, just one more second, you know, and then you're like ...

you know, so his idea, which I think is true, is that when you're tired, and when you're shaking, is when you get stronger, okay? So, I guess that's why Buddha added step four and step five, okay? You're supposed to get stronger.

You feel like you don't want to do it, you feel like, oh that's enough, I don't want to do this crystal, sugar crystal stuff, but that's when you build up your endurance, okay? And your meditation gets stronger when you're tired, if you do it when you're tired, okay? But, we're gonna take a break, okay?

Alright, here we go. So, please come to the sound in the room, it could be the air conditioner. At home you probably have garbage trucks or kids and traffic, okay?

If you have a refrigerator near your meditation space, that's very good for lion's dance. If you're not doing the lion's dance, you might want to unplug your refrigerator, and don't forget to plug it back in. We'll stay on the sound, rest your mind on the sound, like you are resting your head on a pillow.

Now let's go to our heartbeat. Watch your heartbeat from the outside. If you're in a very quiet place, you can hear the heartbeat in your ears.

Rest your mind on the heartbeat. Don't struggle, don't look for it, just rest your mind on the heartbeat. Now go inside the heart, and feel the walls beating around you, a little bit quieter.

And it's not dark, and it's not small, it's a nice, beautiful meditation room. I like to put lots of cushions, lots of windows, and the sunlight is coming in, and the air inside is very, very fresh, like a mountain air, like the air at Dalai Mountain. Now let's expand that room, almost like a penthouse on top of a building.

And we go into an inner room inside the apartment. So not on the outside walls, but there's an inner room, like the core of the heart. Step inside, even more quiet place, close the door.

You can still feel the outer walls of the penthouse are beating, but it seems far away. Now inside that room, there's a small table next to you, and on the table is a small pot of sugar. And you reach in with your finger, and you pull out, on the tip of your finger there's a few sugar crystals.

Choose one of them, and then decide you'd like to put your mind in a more quiet place, and put your mind inside the crystal. It's kind of a difficult to squeeze in, but when you get inside, you're surprised to find there's another beautiful room inside the inside room. And extremely quiet, in the center of the center of the heart.

And meditate inside this sugar crystal, which from the inside is a very elegant meditation room with lots of sunlight. Now it's time to expand the mind, and stay inside the sugar crystal, and imagine the ocean. Very, very wide.

If you like, you can imagine a drop of water dropping in the middle of the ocean, and then the ripples go out, and out, and out. And you can follow those ripples going out towards the edge of the earth, in the deep, deep blue sea, dark blue, very placid, very peaceful ocean. And you can follow those ripples going out to the edges.

I like to think of a place that I actually used to go to for surfing. And I get in the water, and I go out on the surfboard, and I look at the horizon, and think of it very far away. You might try this exhaling, special exhale.

We're about halfway through, and it's helpful to get any extra air out of your lungs. So when you finish your exhale, then very gently push out a little bit more air, and your lower stomach will tighten. That will help you sit straight, and you won't feel so tight.

Now let's add the sky, endless light blue sky, to the edges of the earth, and up far, high, higher, and higher, endless light blue sky. Let your mind relax, and expand, and make it very, very spacious. Now let's turn off our mind.

Try to stop thinking, and if thoughts come up, recognize it, and push them away. Now let's do the same thing, but let's go deeper to the center of the turned-off mind, and if thoughts float by, or memories, images, just let them go. Don't engage with them.

Stay in the core, the silent core of the mind. Now we're ready to start the meditation. Everything before that is just kind of warming up the mind, getting the mind ready.

And now we'll choose a meditation object, and then we'll start the meditation. So all meditations start with an object. It's actually impossible for the mind not to have an object.

So think of one of your sweet teachers in this night, and ask them to come and sit in front of you. Meditate together. It's traditional to choose the teacher from the sweetest day you ever spent together.

Not maybe, not a day when you had a hard time or something, but it's traditional to pick a special day that you had together, and bring this most beautiful version of your teacher. And then think of some quality about them that you really like. That quality is coming from you, from seeds in your mind.

It's actually a reflection of who you are. It's a beautiful part of you. And then go back in your past lives.

Imagine past life. Be very free, feel free to go to any place, any time, any country, any body, human, animal, any sex, male or female. Go back and make a story about what you did in that different place and time, to plant the seeds to see this beautiful quality in your teacher.

You created that teacher by being kind in the past. So go back and enjoy. Make a beautiful story.

Don't be shy. You deserve it. You created that quality.

And make a very glorious and sweet history of the planting of this teacher and their best quality. We'll spend a little bit longer here. Then please come back to this room with your teacher, sitting with your teacher, and spend just one or two more minutes thinking about this beautiful quality.

Now you see it in a different way. You see that you really helped to create it. And we'll spend a few minutes there and then we'll take a break.

And slowly open your eyes. Take a stretch. Any questions?

Miss Sarafni?

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Precious One.

[Speaker 1]
I recognized this morning, like something clicked for me, that I've been trying to do this meditation as if each stage is happening to me right now. And my checker goes, no it's not. No it's not.

[Speaker 2]
Nothing's changed. It feels the same. And so I've been really resistant.

But today I set it in front of me. Like there is a me that's doing it, a separate me.

[Speaker 1]
And that me, except for the distraction was, I'm going to ask this question, that me can very easily go through each of these stages, enjoy staying there. Is it the same? To run the story versus do it?

I think we're always doing that anyway, maybe. I know what you ... I think I know what you mean.

And I think we're always kind of watching me, right, in the meditation. So, you're just putting it kind of in front of you. But I think we're always doing it in a reflexive way, anyway.

But I think it'd be a fun exercise to try it that way. Yeah. It'd be cool.

Other questions?

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la. My question is about the stage where we go into ...

[Speaker 1]
How do you tell someone's from Canada? They have lots of boots. My question is about ...

is that correct? When we go into stopping our mind, my meditation goes from light to dark at that point. And I'm wondering if, like maybe I'm supposed to still stay in the light, because it ...

anyway, that's part of it. And the other part of the question is, when I'm not like stopping the mind, I am still very aware of sounds, especially if I don't have my earplugs in. I am aware of the sounds.

So, my mind is not stopping. I am aware of the fact that I am working it to stop the mind. So, all of those things makes me aware that I have not stopped the mind.

Is there a method or a trick or some strategy that I could use? Yeah, good question. So, two questions.

I get that dark feeling when I go inside the heart at the very beginning. It's gooey and it's dark, you know? It's all like messy, wet, and it's dark.

So, I think what you're talking about is more of an emotional ... it feels dark to stop the mind altogether. In the text, which by the way, I said I would give you the technical text today, but I'm gonna give it to you tomorrow because I couldn't finish the homeworks yesterday.

But I'll give it to you tomorrow if I remember. In the text, it's kind of ... they often talk about feeling anesthetized, like when the dentist gives you a shot and then you can't feel anything, and they say during this process you feel like that, like someone has given you a shot of anesthetic and you can't feel anything, and you're just dulled out.

So yeah, I think it could get a little dark like that, and we're gonna talk about it today or tomorrow. Nagarjuna's gonna talk about whether you can actually turn the mind off, and it's not possible. The mind is called YUL CHEN.

The name of the mind is DE BZHIN, that's which holds the object. So, it's actually impossible to turn the mind off. So, we're just kind of pretending to turn the mind off, and don't get too frustrated because you can't, but you just pretend that you did, and you pretend you're sort of like in a deep sleep or anesthetized, and you're not as aware of outside objects like that.

It's not possible to turn off the mind, and in many mistaken systems of meditation, they try to turn off the mind, and they think this is a goal, and the karmic result of that, trying to anesthetize your mind, trying not to feel anything, the karmic result, if you just do that, it's interesting, you get forgetful, you become forgetful, you lose your keys, you lose your phone, you can't remember that you promised to cover something in the class, stuff like that.

So, yeah, don't, if you can't turn off your mind, just try to slow it down, and just try to make it quieter, and try to imagine turning off your mind. If things get dark, that's why we do the golden room meditation, and that's a very traditional way of presenting darkness, and it's called SNGA BA, and it's a difficult thing, normally it's listed as a antidote for chingwa, for dull mind, and the text just says, think of something bright, you know, like fill the room with sunlight, or look at the stars in your mind, okay, and it prevents this emotional darkness, feeling of darkness, while you're turning the mind off, so you can bring up some kind of SNGA BA in your mind, some kind of light in your mind as you turn the mind off. What's the traditional antidote if it gets worse, if your dullness gets worse? Splash water of your face is the extreme, so here is thinking of something bright, you know, like sunlight, and here is standing up and putting ...

what about ... what's in the middle? Think of something that makes you happy, okay, think of something that went well in your life, you know, many years ago something went well, and think of some happy moment in your life.

That's a kind of an emergency technique to prevent darkness, so there's three levels. First you think of something bright, like bring sunlight into the picture. I like to ...

soft sunlight, like not these overhead bright lights or something like that, and then if that doesn't work, you can detour to something that made you very happy in the past, like your mother is a good example. She came here, she was a very beautiful person, and then think of her for a while, and then go back to the ... to the turning the mind off, but don't get frustrated if you can't turn the mind off, and it seems like the harder you try, the louder it talks, so just gently try to turn the mind off.

One more question and we'll take a break. Thank you Geshe-la for teaching. I have a question on the lion dance on the part where in the sugar crystal, and then you expand everything as you walk into the sugar crystal.

I have heard many teachings from you about the lion dance. So Susanna said that in the past when you did the lion dance and that part, you expanded yourself through the universe, and you sometimes even greeted other people meditating in other worlds, and this time this is not happening anymore, and the question from Susanna is, is there a specific reason for that or why? When I taught it in earlier sessions, we expanded to the whole sky, and then we expanded to outer space, and while we were ...

that's because I read a lot of science fiction, and as you're expanding you hit other planets, and of course there are people doing lion's dance right now in other planets, not one or two, there are countless planets, so there are countless groups like us doing lion's dance right now, and they even look like you. You see, there's one chance out of a million that Vivian is in that group, looks just like Vivian, and there's two chances out of a million that there's Uta also, and then there's, you know, a small small chance that there's a group just like this, and there's a diamond mountain, another diamond mountain, all the roads are finished in that diamond mountain. And so, I like to imagine that my mind is kind of overlapping with ...

someone else is doing lion's dance, their mind is expanding, my mind is expanding, and I like to meet them halfway. Hi, you're doing lion's dance too, yeah? So, yeah, do that, that's fun, that's for sure, that's fun.

Yeah, I'm trying to get the ocean to help you expand your mind when you get to the sky, but if you have the power to go further, that's great, that's fine, no problem, very good. Okay, let's take a pee break, and come back when you hear the bell, okay? Try not to talk too much if you can.

Anybody need ... no? You're always welcome to record it and use it at home, especially starting tomorrow, we'll do all five rounds.

I think I hear my nephew, Nicholas. Some people say grandnephew, it's not correct. Okay, ready?

Let's go. So, we were sitting with our Lama, or any other teacher in your life, focus on that quality about them. We talked about the dependent origination of that quality, that it came from the seeds in my mind, from something beautiful I did in the past, but now let's look at the emptiness of that quality.

So, I like to play a little game with my teacher. I say, could you please sit to the side? Just sit off to the side a little bit.

In Buddhism it's kind of touchy to tell your teacher to do anything, so you have to be super respectful. I need to do an emptiness meditation. We call cessation meditation the same thing, and I need to bring the other Lama in front of me, which is the fake one, jada, the one who's not real, and I need to focus on this one for just a minute or two.

So, bring back a fake Lama. The real Lama probably went for coffee or something, and now there's this teacher in front of me. You can do this two ways.

You can think about the quality they have. In my case today, it's a kind of very peaceful nature of the Lama, and you can think about, you can try to remember how you used to see that quality, as if it were inside the teacher and showing out on the outside. You can do it that way.

For me, if I'm trying to think about the self-existence of my teacher, and the Garjuna has 27 ways, right? The Garjuna is going to teach us 27 different examinations of a fake Lama. But, I like to think about how I first met them.

It was one of, it was the most important day of my life, and I like to think about how did I, how have I always thought about that moment, and I can trace threads of causes. You know, I can say, oh this teacher lived in a house near, not so close, but in the same city, and I never met them. I never saw them.

I didn't know about them, and then one day they got in a car, and they came to my house, and they got out of the car. I remember them getting out of the car, and seeing them for the first time, and I remember them coming to the door of my house, and I remember having dinner together. So, that's how I imagine the events that led up to meeting my teacher for the first time in this life.

But, that's a fake teacher. That's not the real one. The real one came from seeds in my mind.

Their house on the other side of the city was created by seeds in my mind. Their car was created by seeds in my mind. The highway they drove on was created by seeds in my mind.

The opening of the door of their car was created by seeds in my mind, and approaching me at the door of my house, getting bigger and bigger as they crossed the lawn, front lawn. Those are all seeds sending pictures. So, try to get in touch right now with a fake teacher.

Oh, the road was built by the government. The car was bought by her mother. You know, the door opened because she put her hand on the handle.

Try to imagine how you usually think about how you met your teacher. This is a fake, Lama. If you keep thinking like that, you will lose them, because you won't plant the seeds you need to keep them.

You can add that quality. Oh, it was inside them, in their house, before they came to my house. They brought that beautiful quality with them in the car.

That's all fake. Now, ask the fake Lama to go away, respectfully, and bring back the real Lama to sit in front of you. And one more time, think about where they came from, and where this beauty in them came from.

And you can do a little coffee meditation. You can be super happy that you created this beautiful thing, most beautiful thing in your life. Yesterday, someone showed me their real app.

It was called Rainbow Turtle, and it was very beautiful, about appreciating where the beauty in their life is coming from. I said, why you call it turtle? They said, oh, you can carry this beautiful home with you everywhere you go.

You can always find beautiful things, and think about how they're coming from good things you did. Then, let's go back down. We'll start with turning off the mind, from the center of the mind, and letting other thoughts float around just outside that inner core.

So, there's an inner core of silence, and thoughts are sort of floating around outside, but we don't watch them. We don't think about them. We stay quiet in the middle of the mind.

Turned off. Going down, I like to increase, decrease the breath by half. So, we'll go down a little faster than we went up.

So, come to stopping your mind, but you're staying aware of the thoughts. It's a little bit less quiet to fight the thoughts that come up. Let's come back to the sky.

Wide, spacious, open mind. Beautiful blue color, just like Diamond Mountain sky. Blue sea, broad, vast, wide, deep, stretching to the edges of the horizon.

Sugar crystal, super quiet, single point, inner chamber of the mind, of the heart, and then inside the heart. Walls are beauty. Sunlight, and then watching your heart, back inside your body.

Now we're going to go back up. This is round four, and we're going to add something new, which is called phelgom, inside the Mayan stance. Phelgom means we're going to insert a short emptiness meditation between each of the eight levels as we go up, and this is to strengthen the meditation muscle.

So, we're going to skip from just sort of exercising in mental quiet. Then we're going to skip to emptiness, and then we'll come back to mental quiet, and we'll work our way up to level eight, this way, with phelgom. We're tired.

The meditation mind is tired. We've been sitting now almost two hours today, and it'll be a harder, and that's okay. It's like shaking during yoga.

If you push yourself when it's hard, you get stronger. So, go back to the quality of your teacher. Try to remember the quality, and realize it came from you, and it's not coming from inside of them.

That means you can always keep it. You can always enjoy it. Now go inside your heart.

Find some quiet. Don't think about the Lama. Just take a break.

Meditation break inside the heart. Relax. Have quiet.

Come back to your Lama. Remember the beautiful quality. Try to remember where did it come from?

What was that thing I did in my past life? Come back to the inner core of the heart. The walls of the heart are beating at a distance.

Take a rest in the quiet, inside the inside of the heart. Lots of sunlight. Maybe you can lay down in the sunlight.

Take a rest. Remember the exhaling trick when you're tired. Maybe your chest is getting a little bit tight.

Extra exhale. Come back to the Lama. Think about how this quality is not coming from inside of them.

You created it, and you can keep it going. It's up to you. If your Lama changes, that's also coming from you.

Sugar crystal. Take a rest in the sugar crystal. Quiet.

Single point like a laser beam, like the point of a laser beam. Take a rest in the quiet. Exhale.

Come back to the Lama. Try to think of things you'd like to do today. Seeds you'd like to plant to keep this quality in your teacher.

If it's patience that they have. Think about situations today when you might be patient. Come back to the ocean.

Relax. Quiet. Expansive.

Come back to the teacher. I so appreciate this good quality in you. Maybe you can tell them.

Appreciate them. Come to the sky. Rest in the blue sky.

Back to the Lama. Silent appreciation. Turn off the mind.

Block any thoughts. Back to the teacher. Oh, I must be a ...

I must have some good part of me if I can see this person. There must be some goodness in me. Back to the mind.

Turn off the mind. Take a rest. Let the thoughts float through.

Ignore them. Back to the teacher. You can, in your mind, join your palms in front of your chest.

Bow to them. Thank you for being in my life with your beautiful qualities. And then three long exhales.

And then you can slowly open your eyes. Take a stretch. Yeah, you did level four.

You did fourth round. Any questions?

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la, for teaching us. The quality that I choose for my Lama is why I see my Lama as a good meditator. And I saw a child who was living, like, very far away from the crowd with their parents.

And he was spending a lot of time playing alone. He was observing the little animals. He was imagining, like, beautiful things with people, a perfect world.

But, actually, he didn't choose to have this kind of life. He didn't choose to be alone. He didn't choose don't hurt other people.

He was forcing by his past karma. And that's what I see my Lama as a good meditator. But my question is, if we don't choose what we are thinking now, what are we saying, and what are we doing now, when actually we plan the new karma?

[Speaker 1]
Okay, let me see if I got it right. So, in Buddhism, we're gonna talk about it today or tomorrow. There's two kinds of causes.

I mean, there are many kinds of causes, but one way to divide causes is direct causes and indirect causes. So, for example, in your class today or tomorrow, I don't remember, we'll talk about a coffee cup. And, you know, the indirect cause was a person who made it, you know, maybe five years ago.

That person could even be dead now, you see? That's what we call gyü gyü, which means indirect cause. And then there's the direct cause, which Chen Zong brought it to me from the kitchen, you see?

So, there are both causes of the coffee cup. One happened a long time ago. We can't see it anymore, but it made the coffee cup.

And then the direct cause for me was that someone brought it from the kitchen. So, I think your question is, like, the indirect cause of my lama being a good meditator was that the child had seeds in their mind that caused them to be out alone and see animals and not to hurt them. And then the direct cause of my lama's meditation was this child.

But the causes that made the child's life happened before the child, right? So, those are indirect causes for your lama's meditation. And then the child is the direct cause for the lama's meditation.

And I think your question is going this way. If these old, old causes, if the old cause create my teacher's meditation, and the old, old cause create the cause of my teacher's meditation, then it seems like it's going to be difficult to change things, you know? I'm kind of ...

is there free will, right? Do I have choice? Or is all my decisions made by the karma that made the boy, you see?

Like, can I change my life? Is it possible to change? If everything is caught in a big web of causes, and even my decision to change is coming from cause, then how can I improve, you know?

What can I do? I like to tell a joke. I heard there was a scientific conference in Europe, probably Germany, and somebody said, we have no choice but to accept free will.

Everybody was like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's true, we are very caught ... it's harder to change than we think, because it's not a decision you can make about today, you see?

Like, Geshe Michael likes donuts. Geshe Michael would like to change that habit, but it's not something I can do in one day. It comes from a cause, that came from a cause, that came from a cause, that come from a cause.

There's a thousand causes to eat a donut, and there's only one to not eat a donut, and who's going to win? I don't think so. But, we are very much caught up.

In Buddhism, they say an interesting thing, okay? As you learn, if you have the causes to be in this class, then you will learn a new idea, which is that things are coming from you, okay? You will learn a new idea, and that's super true, okay?

There are other things in your life are true, some things are true, some things are not true, but the fact that things are coming from you is super true. So, according to Buddhism, super true takes priority, okay? And like, if I have addiction, we talked, we learned about addiction, right?

We had a two-week course about it. If I understand that this thing I'm addicted to, donut, is coming from me, that is so true, super true, that it's more powerful than the old seeds of addiction, you see? So, there's true things and there's super true things, and according to Buddhism, when you meet super true things, like Nagarjuna's wisdom, they are more powerful than all those past seeds, you see?

They are like Superman compared to Geshe Michael. So, they can win, they will win. Even a thousand to one, the super true thing will win.

So, that's why we're working so hard on wisdom, on the book Wisdom, because that karma is like an atom bomb, and it can destroy all the past ones. Cool? Yeah, good question.

One more question if you like. One here.

[Speaker 2]
Hi Geshe-la, thanks for the teaching. I have a question about the last part of the meditation. We are asked to switch from Lama to the sky and back and forth.

May I understand why?

[Speaker 1]
Why we switch back and forth? Okay, it's called pel gom. Pel gom means alternating meditation, and if you really want to know, okay?

Level three, four, five, in the scripture are called thugel. Thugel. Thugel means over the top, going over the top, coming back down.

Thupa means the top part of your skull, and in Sanskrit it's kapala, which came to be the word for cup, or kapala, right Bengami? Probably the same. He sent me to a restaurant in France with a kapala.

So, while we're ... the first two levels technically are the main lion's dance. The first two rounds technically are the main lion's dance.

Three, four, five are called thugel, and three and five are alternating. Sorry, four and five. So, we will put something between each level.

We will go back and forth. Why do we do that? Why do we even do these eight meditations on the way up?

Why are we spending time on meditations? There's two reasons, okay? Number one, oftentimes in Buddhism they will teach you what's wrong, so you don't do it.

You see what I mean? So, the first reason to do all these like space meditation, ocean meditation, it's a warning on the cigarette package, you know? It says ...

some people call this meditation, but it's not, okay? And it will hurt you, okay? So, there's a negative reason to do those meditations.

It's so you don't think those are real meditation. They're not, okay? They're not meditation.

They're just sort of warming up. Second positive reason is mental flexibility. It's called shinjang.

Say shinjang. Shinjang means mental flexibility, and if you're gonna be a good Buddhist, you need mental flexibility. Things are going well, you know, for ten minutes, and then this poo-poo hits you again, you know?

And then a Buddhist needs mental flexibility, you know? You have to say, okay, new situation, alright, I'll take care of it. Your wife suddenly gets angry.

I didn't do anything. And then, you got to be flexible to be a good Buddhist, and in your meditation, it'll be going very, very smooth, and then suddenly, you know, you start thinking about someone who criticized you yesterday, and then the whole rest of the meditation, or the whole rest of the three-year retreat, is about, oh, this person, you know, they hurt me so much, and I don't like this person. So, we're practicing flexibility of the mind.

New situation comes up, and you flow with it, you know? You bring up a different antidote in your mind. So, we're ...

there's a ... I took a yoga class one time. My teacher, my first yoga teacher, gave me good advice.

You travel a lot, so everywhere you travel, look up on the internet, and go to any yoga class. Don't even look what they're teaching. One time I made a big mistake, I went to a prenatal class in Hong Kong, but I got some good stretches.

But, I remember I went to one class, and they said, go into a tree pose, Vajrasana, and you know, stand on one leg, and then the teacher come around and push everybody, a little bit, you know? And then, you know, you try to stay up, you see? And then the next class, they didn't do it, but still, you were better.

Your tree pose was better, because you're expecting someone to ... so you're like ... you know?

So, like that. We're supposed ... we're trying to make the mind stronger, yeah?

Otherwise, this meditation, frankly, it seems too busy, right? Like it's too busy, you know? I just got used to it Geshe-la.

Don't go back to the ... you know? I was just appreciating my life.

I'll go back to the sky. Well, I've been ... but life is like that.

Life is like that. So, we're sort of getting practice for life. If you want to ...

if you feel like it's too scattered, like your life is already scattered, I don't ... Geshe-la, I don't need 26 parts to a meditation, then you can stop. Don't stop on the eighth.

Don't stop on the way up. Somebody asked me yesterday, you know, stopping my mind seems really attractive, and I kind of want to just stop there, and I'm like, no. You cannot stop on the first eight floors, okay?

The elevator should keep going, okay? It won't help you. There's no content, okay?

So, but if you want to stop on the past life, if you want to stop and do a long coffee meditation on how cool you are, because your lama is cool, then that's fine, and if you never ... you know, and then your alarm clock goes off, and you have to go to work, and you get stuck in your past life, that's okay. That's alright, okay?

Just do three breaths, come out gracefully. We're gonna learn a nice way to exit the meditation, probably tomorrow, but traditionally you bring the lama to your heart, and then you can go to work, okay? So, if you feel like stopping at one of the important parts, and you don't want to do all this pel gom, you know, you need some peace today, and you don't need more chaos, then you're welcome to stop and stay there, okay?

Alright, we're gonna go to the class.