Полный Танец льва: на лифте к прямому восприятию пустоты (2018, Аризона), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
Okay, here we go. Normally we would watch our breath to shift gears out of our normal life into our meditation. In the lion's stance, it's traditional to just jump right in to following some sounds in the room.

It could be an air conditioner. Refrigerators are very useful. If you don't have children, you might want to have children so you can do good lion's stance and have some noise in the house.

So, 10 breaths is weekday. 20 breaths is a Sunday. We're doing Saturday, so let's say 12 to 15 breaths each level.

So, I'll watch that. You don't have to worry about it. We're in the desire realm and we're connecting to outside sound and you're resting your mind on that sound as if you were resting your head on a pillow.

So, stay relaxed. Don't get tight. Every time you feel a little rashtra, a little tight, then do this trick of long exhale and when you reach the end of the exhale and the lungs naturally pause, then push a little more air out.

Then that will relax your body, relax your mind. So, anytime you personally feel tight, a tight chest or your forehead feels tight, then take an exhale break. Three or four breaths.

Long, long exhale. Then when the abdomen naturally tightens, then try to exhale out just a last piece of breath and that will release extra prana and the constriction will go away. Okay, here we go.

Sounds in the room. Then first form realm level. Just call number one and focus on your heart beating in your chest.

Try to withdraw from the outside sounds and it won't be perfect. You can't do it 100%. If someone makes a loud sound, your mind will go back to the outside world, to the desire world.

But then just gently come back to the heartbeat. Don't make a big deal about it. Just slowly come back to the heartbeat.

You're still in your body, your big body, and rest your mind on the heartbeat in a relaxed way, as if your head was on a pillow. Then decide you'd like to go to a quieter place. Gag ja, you want to cancel the noisier place, which is being in your whole body.

So you move to a quieter place. Each time we go up a level, it should feel like you're moving to a quieter place. And you are gently rejecting the noisier place.

So let's go to the quieter place, inside the heart. Go put your mind inside the heart. I'm sitting inside the heart and the walls of the heart around me are beating.

But it's not dark or wet. It's a beautiful small meditation room. I like to put lots of cushions.

Very comfortable. The air is very sweet and pure. Lots of sunlight coming through the windows in the heart, on the walls of the heart.

And it feels pretty nice in here and it's quieter. We don't have a meditation object yet. We're just stretching out our muscles, mental muscles, to get ready for meditation.

It would be quieter if I could go to some separate space in the center of the inside of the heart. If the heart was like a penthouse in a beautiful building with lots of windows and there were lots of rooms around the outside and then there was like a special room on the inside, not touching the outside wall, the center of the penthouse. So the outside walls have lots of windows and lots of sunlight coming in.

But then I go into a separate room on the inside. You can say the center of the heart. And I walk in there and I close the door and it's even more quiet than the inside of the heart.

It's the inside of the inside of the heart. Still lots of sunlight. Perfect temperature.

Very comfortable. And super quiet. Still no meditation object, just getting the mind quieter.

If a sound pulls you back to the desire room, just say, hi, I'm busy right now. Or come back to the center room inside the heart. Super quiet.

There's a small table next to you and on the table there's a small pot of sugar. You take the lid off. With your left hand, third finger, you reach in and just touch the top of the sugar lightly.

And when you look at your finger, there's a few crystals of sugar. Choose one. And make a decision that in order to go to a quieter place, you would like to fit your mind, whole mind, into this tiny crystal of sugar.

So you kind of open up one of the faces of the crystal, like a little door, and you squeeze your mind inside. But when you get inside it's kind of cool. There's a whole big meditation room.

Very comfortable. Very spacious, like a nice spacious apartment. Lots of light, lots of sunlight.

And it feels quite comfortable. Beautiful space to meditate. You can add flowers and beautiful things.

And much quieter inside this crystal. So at the same time that you're aware of a large, beautiful meditation space, there's also this feeling of focus, like the tip of a needle or like a laser pointer, which is the sugar crystal itself inside the heart, inside the inside of the heart. Stay here in this single-pointed, spacious, sunlight space.

Now expand your mind purposely, formless realm of memory. The name is endless space, but we're going to expand the mind inside the crystal, the Pacific Ocean stretching from pole to pole, from shore to shore, endlessly. If you drop a drop of water in the middle, then ripples would travel slowly forever.

If you like, you can follow one of those ripples or follow them in opposite directions. Inside this miracle, inside the crystal, your mind is expanding like a huge ocean. And enjoy the feeling of spaciousness, infinity.

Your mind is as big as the Pacific Ocean. Calm, beautiful, blue, deep. No real meditation object yet, just stretching our mental legs.

Now, think about the mind that's expanding, watching the ocean, expand this awareness. I like to imagine the sky, the light blue sky. Try to stretch my mind along the limits of the sky, limitlessly.

If you like, you can go further. Stretch the mind itself, the observer, beyond the sky into the space, outer space. And there are countless worlds, there are countless beings.

There are surely... Buddhas have come to other planets and there are surely people doing lion's dance at this moment in other worlds. Maybe worlds that overlap with our world.

So I like to imagine my mind like a big bubble and as it expands, then sometimes it bumps into other bubbles of other people's minds in other worlds doing the lion's dance right now. And I kind of like to say, hi, how's your lion's dance going? So expand the mind.

Certainly, there are actually infinite people doing the lion's dance right now. And let these minds together expand. But that thinking itself is kind of noisy, let's go to a quieter place.

Imagine your mind to stop thinking altogether. Like someone turned off a light and thoughts have stopped. If you see a thought moving through the mind, then intercept it, engage it, and intercept it like a missile and stop it.

And then come back to the mind not thinking. Third formless realm level. CHI YANG MED Fourth formless realm level.

Still, the mind is not thinking. But if a thought comes through the mind, then just move to the center of the mind, to the quiet place in the center of the mind, and let those thoughts move through the mind like clouds. They will dissolve.

They will go someplace. And I'm in the quiet place in the center of the mind, which is not thinking. This is not meditation.

This is not a goal. This is not a good place to stop. But we are just exercising our mind before we start the real meditation.

Now we'll start the meditation. Now we're warmed up. It's similar to one of our yoga teachers, Dharma Mitra.

He makes you do yoga for half an hour pretty hard, and then he says, now we're warmed up, now let's start yoga. So think about the teachers in your life, starting with your father and your mother, maybe brothers or sisters, people in your family that you grew up with, or school teachers or other family members who taught you valuable things. And they were particularly nice people, a good example.

We all have a few special teachers in our early school, or even university. Sometimes a sports teacher or singing teacher, art teacher. Then there's the people who taught you your job, a few special people who took their time to teach you something that helped you make your income.

Then there are spiritual teachers, priests, rabbis, imam, lama, someone you met, special person in your life who introduced you to spiritual things. Then there are special teachers like pets or children who taught you a lot. There are historical teachers.

There's your own. Historical teacher could be like Jesus or Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius. Lao Tzu, or heart teacher.

It's nice to use your heart teacher if you have a heart teacher. Some of us would like to have a heart teacher. We didn't meet them yet, but we have a picture in our mind of what we would like to be our heart teacher.

Any of these teachers, bring one to the room, ask them to come in, ask them to sit with you, knee to knee, real person, not a picture, not a movie, not a video, real person in your mind. Their body is warm. They are breathing some fragrance coming from their body.

But the most important thing is they are looking at you with great love and great affection. This is my student. This is my precious student.

They are proud of you, meditating, trying to help people. Now choose something about your teacher that you very much love, some good quality. There's a reason why you love the teacher.

There are pieces of them that are especially beautiful to you. And choose one of the sweetest ones. Maybe their patience.

Maybe their compassion. Maybe their knowledge. Maybe their love.

Choose one of these qualities. Focus on it. And don't forget it for the rest of the meditation.

Keep it in mind. Then ask yourself, why do I see this quality? Where is this coming from?

There's a feeling that this patience or this compassion or this love was inside of them when you met them. But imagine that this quality is coming from seeds in your own mind. It would be fun to go find out where I was, what I was doing when I planted those seeds.

No doubt, because watermelon seeds make watermelons, it must have been similar. I must have had this kind of love or this kind of patience in a past life. So go back to your past life in your imagination.

Make a movie. Most of us probably cannot see our past life directly. But we can imagine, and what we imagine is also coming from us.

So it's partly true already. So don't have doubt. Anything that comes to your imagination is probably partly true.

So go back to another country, to another time. Maybe a completely different occupation. Maybe different sex.

Maybe you were the opposite sex. Maybe you looked much different. Different race of people.

Different language. And try to make right scenes of that person in the past life, what they were doing that created this patience in my teaching. Make one scene and don't be lazy.

If you have extra time, give it more detail. Don't space out. Make it more and more detailed.

Exactly how did you help someone? What did they look like? How did you feel?

What was happening that evening afterwards? All the details. Here we go.

Have fun. Don't worry about your legs. Don't worry about your bag.

Give this time to examination. And slowly, gently come back to your teacher, kind of looking at them in a different way. You have more awareness of why they have this beautiful quality.

It doesn't make it less, it makes it more. It makes it more real. Because now you know where it's coming from.

You can keep it going. It never has to get less. It can always get stronger and sweeter.

All I have to do is have more patience in my life, more compassion for other people. I can always be surrounded by people who teach me, even my children, even my pets, even people I meet in the store. They'll show me some beautiful teaching.

I have the power to create a world like this because things are coming from my seeds. My world can get sweeter and sweeter. There's one thing that can stop that.

There's one force which can stop that beautiful world, and that's my own mistaken thoughts which come up when you're tired or hungry or lonely or confused. Sometimes it's good to bring those wrong thoughts to mind just to see how they feel, and learn to recognize them and fight them. So let's do a wrong thinking exercise and get used to what it looks like, and then if it comes up in a week or a moment of our day, we can recognize it.

So ask the Lama to please move to the side and bring up an imaginary teacher. I like to call it Bubu Lama, mistaken teacher. They look just the same.

They have the same face, same body, same clothes. They have the same good quality. But my feeling about that quality is that it comes from them.

It's inside them. When I met them and the first time I saw this quality, I had an assumption in my mind. I had a belief, unspoken belief, that this quality is coming from inside them.

It lives inside them. When they came to the room, when they walked in this room, they already had this quality inside them. So try to feel what it's like to have the wrong idea about this teacher.

Practice what it feels like to think that this quality is coming from inside them. Because this is the kind of mistake, mistaken mind, that causes our pain. This mind believes that the quality is not coming from me and there's no way I can keep it going or support it or develop it myself.

It's inside of them. It's not coming from me. So practice this mistaken state of mind so you can recognize it when it comes.

And it comes all day, many times, every hour. Now you can kind of make this fake teacher disappear. There's no such thing.

It's an illusion. It never existed. All the time I knew them, it never existed.

So make that fake teacher disappear. See that they are not there. They were never there.

And then try to stay in this medgok. Try to stay in this absence of something which was never there. This is emptiness.

And this is an emptiness which is useful, which can make a perfect world. Then slowly come out of that and bring your teacher back, the real one. Love them.

Have affection for them. Admire their good quality. They really have it.

It's real. It's more real. Enjoy them for a moment.

Now you're tired. It's been a long time. If you're meditating at home, you might want to open your eyes and take a break now, and then continue with the second round of the meditation.

But since we've been in retreat, since tomorrow we have to go home, why don't we push ourselves and see if we can finish the whole five rounds in one time. Take a few deep exhales. Push the exhale out.

Try to remove any tightness inside you. If you're already tight and it feels pretty strong, then it's traditional to move the meditation to the navel, down away from the heart, which is a very sensitive area. And you can move it down to the tight place where the exhale tightens, and move it a little to the back, and continue the meditation there.

Come back to the mind, which is not thinking, the inner core of the mind. Some thoughts are floating around on the outside, but in the inner core of the mind it's quiet. Be tough when your body hurts, when you're tired.

That's the time you make progress. It's like shaking in a yoga pose. Just hold it for one more second.

We speed up the steps as we come out. Maybe half the time you spent coming in. Back to the mind, third level.

Now we have thoughts in the mind, but we are engaging them, blocking them. Little less quiet than the center of the mind at the fourth formless realm level, which is called du she may du she may min. Try to stay still.

It doesn't actually help to move much. You might as well just stay still. Come back to that expansive mind.

You can use the sky. You can imagine other people meditating on other planets, and your mind is very, very, very huge, infinite consciousness. Now let's go back to infinite space, the ocean, broad, wide, as big as the world.

Maybe your ripples are coming back to the center. You come back to the sugar crystal in the middle of the ocean, but now it's the inner chamber of your heart. Beautiful sunlight here.

Very quiet. Come back to the inner room of the penthouse of your heart. Little bit less quiet.

You can hear the heartbeat at a distance, the outer walls. Extra exhale if you feel tight. It also helps if you feel tired, or if some part of your body is hurting.

Push out the exhales. Focus on the exhales. Come back to sitting inside the heart.

Beautiful, sunlit, open room. And then come back to your body, and you're feeling your heartbeat. Let's show what a good retreat we had at Diamond Mountain.

Let's show how stronger we are than when we started. Geshe Michael doesn't have to give me a break. Don't come out to the air conditioner.

Go back into the heart. Let's go back up quickly. Show how fast you can change your aspect of your mind.

Now to the center of the heart. Now to the sugar crystal. Single point.

Now explode it to as big as the ocean. Broad, broad, broad, still. Never stop.

Keep expanding. Now move into that state of mind, as big as the sky, as big as space, as big as this universe. Now let's stop thinking.

My control of my mind is so strong I can stop thinking. And come to the inside of the mind, which is stop thinking. Away from any thoughts.

Inside that space is your teacher. Happy, smiling, loves you. And they have this beautiful quality that's coming from me.

Let's jump down to the first level again. We're just finishing the meditation. We'll move quickly.

I'm inside my body. I'm watching my heart. Now there's my lama again.

There's my teacher again. I love this quality about that. Now I'm inside my heart.

My teacher's still there. That quality is coming from me. Seeds are opening in my mind.

Pictures are coming out of patience or compassion, covering this person. I'm in the inner chamber of the heart. Oh, teacher's still there.

Where did this quality come from? Who made it? Is it natural?

Is it part of them? Or is it coming from somewhere else? Come to the sugar crystal.

Oh, teacher's still there. And that quality came from me. I was in another country.

I was in another body. I look completely different. But I had some small seed for this patience.

I remember doing things to help other people. Let's expand the mind, sides of the ocean. Maybe the ocean is filled with drops that are filled with teachers.

Maybe every drop of the ocean has a teacher inside. Expand it to space itself. Still teachers everywhere, every star, every planet.

It's my teacher. That stopped mind, stopped thought, in the center of that stopped mind is a space, an emptiness, where my teacher never was. Teacher who had patience inside of them when I met them, in the middle of this stopped mind is a space called emptiness, where that teacher never was.

Stop all thoughts. Let the real teacher come back. Say hi or you're so cool.

And then let's do the last round, very quickly. Back to the mind, which is stopped. Let's show off how flexible we are, even when we're tired, even when we're exhausted.

Let's go to the air conditioner. Jump back to the mind with no thoughts. Look how flexible my mind is.

Go back to space, outer space. Go back to the sky. Come back to the air conditioner.

Go back to the ocean. Come back to the air conditioner. Sugar crystal.

Air conditioner. Center of the heart. Air conditioner.

Inside the heart. Air conditioner. And then sit in your body and watch your heart.

Ask your lama to stay with you in your heart. Wouldn't you like to sit in my heart all day? You're so sweet.

Sometimes I might need you when I don't feel so much patience, when I don't feel very compassionate. Won't you help me? They say, sure.

I'd like to be inside your heart. They start to rise up off their cushion. Their body gets smaller and smaller.

They come to the top of your head. They turn around, same way, facing the same way. And you can feel them land on the top of your head, soft, warm, like warm honey.

And they shrink to the size of your thumbnail. And they start flowing down your spine, like warm honey. You can feel this little version of your lama flowing down your spine to your heart.

And you say, here's a beautiful room for you. I've been meditating there today. The cushion's still warm.

Lots of sunlight. Please stay here and help me when I need help today. Inspire me when I need inspiration.

Three deep exhales. Give away the good karma. It's great karma.

Share it with the world. It's like a fire offering coming out of your lungs. It's like smoke from a fire offering spreading to the whole world.

I give you this karma. I hope everyone can meditate, see these things. Then we'll have a beautiful world.

Slowly open your eyes. Take a stretch.

[Speaker 2]
Wow, that was a while. I think that's for Sunday. Forget Saturday.

Maybe it's for your annual vacation.