Watching the breath for just a couple of minutes to settle our minds, sort of get here in this room into the moment, off the highway, out of the rain. So just watch your breath for a few minutes, either paying attention to the sensation at the nostrils or the sensation of your chest rising and falling. And now take a minute to just set your motivation for this session and for the whole day. You may have come out of curiosity just to hear something about meditation or because you’d like to learn how to meditate to become calm, more peaceful, or you may have had Buddhist teachings and understand that meditation is necessary for liberation from suffering for yourself. And according to the Mahāyāna, the highest level of motivation is to achieve full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.
So just take a minute to reflect and set your motivation for this session, for this day. Okay, thank you. Since we have such a small group, if everybody could I don’t know everybody. I don’t know everybody’s name. If you could just go around and say your name and maybe just what kind of background you have teachings here at Sai Zhing Ling or elsewhere, what kind of meditation experience you have.
If we could just do that, have just a brief little go around. Sure. Yeah. I thought it was There’s nothing to turn on yet. Okay.
I’m Drolkar, and I’ve been studying for a couple of year. And I don’t have much experience in calm abiding, so I’m here for no. To at least start. Thank you. I’m Carol, and I’ve been studying for a few years.
It’s babbling. But I really realize the importance of developing calm abiding and developing the meditation practice. Thank you. Hi, I’m Keith and I’ve been a member of Tai Shing Ling for about two years now. I practice meditation.
I try to every morning and I do some meditation teaching in prison in New Folsom. I’m Shuky and I’ve been practicing for a few years. And but my meditation pretty much sucks. It’s much better when I’m in retreats. Anyway, I keep trying, I’m very, very excited to learn more about Calm Abiding.
My name is Rick, and I’ve been meditating off and on for a while. And last fall, I took a retreat in Shamatha with Alan Wallace, and calm abiding was a great part of that. So I thought it’d be nice to have a refresher. My name is Ron Roberts, and I’ve been practicing for about thirty years and still learning. So and so that’s why I’m here to I’d like to bring more focus into my practice, and so I think calm abiding would be a good way to do that.
My name is Janet, and I’ve come to classes for a few years and do some volunteer work here. I make attempts at meditation, and I’m not accomplished meditation as yet. So I figured that you would be an excellent teacher for that. Don’t get your hopes up too high. My name’s Catherine.
I’ve been practicing off and on at Sai Zhing Ling for about ten years. Lately it’s been more off than on, so I need some help. And I definitely help with the calm abiding. My name is Keisha. I’ve been practicing for a couple years, and my meditation if I would just meditate as often as I think I should be, as often as I think about meditating.
If I would just do it, then that would be a start, but I’m looking forward to learning more. Okay. Thanks. I’m Joseph. I’m Keith’s nephew from New Zealand.
I’m here visiting and hoping to listen and learn. Thank you. I’m Karen. Been practicing for a couple years. I’ve tried to meditate off and on for a number of years, not successfully at all.
Join the club. Hi, my name’s Donna and I’m the bookkeeper admin at FPMT. And I’ve been studying Buddhism for about seven years. And I’ve been able to do the analytical meditation, I have a hard time taking it to concentration without sinking. That’s where I struggle a lot.
Okay. This is perfect timing. Great, thank you all so much. It’s always nice to kind of get an idea of, you know, what people’s ideas are and where you’re coming from and what you’re looking for from this class. So what I wanted to do today, we only have one day and it’s a short day.
When I teach at Land of Medicine Buddha, I torture people from about nine o’clock in the morning till nine o’clock at night, and Shuky wouldn’t let me do that with you guys. Tried to extend it a little bit, so hopefully think just recently, actually two weeks ago, I asked her if we could possibly go till five if we have to and so she changed at the last minute. Does anybody need to leave at the original time of four that you absolutely have to or is it possible that you could okay. Because there’s a lot of material to cover and I just wanna do it thoroughly enough to get you inspired and on the cushion. So need need some time to do that.
What I thought to do was just talk a little bit about calm abiding meditation in general, what the purposes are, how it relates to the rest of the path. Know, you’ve been studying Buddhism in general, a lot of you, all these different courses. So what’s this calm abiding business and where does it fit in and why is it so important? So to talk a little bit about where it fits in and then to review, for most of you I think it’ll be a review, to just review sort of the structure of a meditation session in general whether it’s Shine or anything else. Just to kind of, you know, the posture and the format of a general meditation session just to review that.
And then we’ll go more into the specifics of developing Shine. There are obstacles and antidotes. In the literature, you know, there are all of these really specific obstacles and specific antidotes. And then as the grand finale preview of coming attractions we’ll go through the levels of Shine and what you can expect as your meditation progresses, okay? And then we’ll talk a little bit about retreat and the conditions for retreat.
At some point in your practice whether it’s this lifetime or some future lifetime, you know chances are you want to deepen your practice with some sort of retreat experience and especially as you’re moving through the levels of Shine. So we’ll talk about that too. So as you can see it’s a lot to cover in one day. Please by all means if I say something that’s confusing or you don’t understand, interrupt and we’ll just go ahead and clarify as we go along. You know, I’ll leave time at the end of every session for questions, but you know, if I’m in the middle of something and it just doesn’t make sense at all, by all means just raise your hand and interrupt me and that’s, you know, we’ll just clarify on the spot, as it were.
And then let’s see our schedule. We have a break for lunch from twelve thirty to two. I think we’ll just kind of go straight through till twelve thirty if that’s okay with people. And then what I thought to do for the afternoon, we’ve got two to possibly five is to break it up into two sessions with just a little ten or fifteen minute break. I read in some management book or something somewhere that ninety minutes is the amount of time that you can really expect people to just sit still and be able to concentrate.
So I like to kind of have ninety minute chunks. So we’ll have a little two little chunks in the afternoon. Okay. So just different types of meditation which will be a review for some of you. There are basically three different kinds of meditation that are discussed and one is single pointed concentration.
Okay, single pointed concentration meditation and that’s taking one object and focusing on it developing your capacity to just focus on one object. Okay? The perfection of that is calm abiding. I’m gonna use the word shine a lot. That’s the Tibetan word for calm abiding.
Shamatha is the Sanskrit word. Shine is the Tibetan word. So that’s the perfection of the single point of concentration. You develop the ability to focus on one object without any wavering at all and we’ll talk about the different levels completely clearly for as long as you want. The texts talk a lot about four hour segments.
You know, you’re able to just boom, focus on an object without wavering at all. It might seem inconceivable. There’s some bewildered looks out there. Sometimes it seems like about five minutes is the most we can hope for and even that’s a stretch. So the thought of being able to just you know focus single pointedly for hours.
But that’s what Shine is. That ability mixed with, they say, bliss and pliancy. So it’s also a subjective experience of mental and physical pliancy, flexibility, and a subjective feeling of bliss. Okay? So that’s what Shine is.
So it’s sort of the perfection of that first type of meditation, single pointed concentration. Okay? The second type of meditation which we do a lot in the Tibetan tradition, a lot of other traditions don’t do this at all, is what we call analytical meditation. And you’ve probably done this in a lot of the courses you’ve done. For example, you meditated on impermanence, kind of going through the logical steps of, you know, everything changes, my body’s changing, it’s made of, you know, blood, molecules, everything.
So you go through those steps to generate some sort of a realization. So the analytical meditations are used for these, you know, basically to get a realization of these Buddhist concepts. One one western scholar that I heard speak recently, you know, he spends all his time studying these sutras, you know, and he’s just, you know, an original Pāli or Sanskrit or whatever, you know. And so he spends a lot of time studying and not much time meditating. And once he said, you know, I was reading this sūtra and for once something went below my neck.
And that’s what these realizations are. It’s like you can understand something like impermanence intellectually, no sweat. Really easy to understand. But having it go below the neck and become a life transforming realization is another story and that’s the goal of these analytical meditations. Okay?
Something that is super easy to understand intellectually even emptiness is not so hard to understand intellectually really. But then it’s like to have the direct realization is another story. So that’s the point of these analytical meditations. Okay? Taking these topics and making them go below the neck.
Okay, so that’s the point of doing that. And then the third kind that’s often mentioned is what’s called review meditation and this is taking for example the points like one of these prayers that we do, the Lamrim prayers that we do, the three principal aspects of the path, the foundation of all good qualities. We have these short prayers that sort of summarize the whole path in verse form. So a review meditation would just be, for example, reciting this prayer and it just makes you think of each point briefly. Okay?
And they say it’s really good to do one of these every day to review the whole path on a daily basis because at least it gives the imprint in your mind of those topics. Even if you don’t have a whole lot of time to sit and do the meditations, it gives the imprints in your mind on a daily basis. So that’s this third kind review. And it’s not really what we think of when we think of meditation. You know, we think of these deep states of mind but it is a third kind of meditation mentioned in the literature.
And by the way, the sources for the things that I’m gonna be talking about today, I didn’t make all this stuff up last Tuesday. There’s scriptural sources for everything and it’s primarily There’s a book by Kamalaśīla. I think it was about the eighth century AD, an Indian master called Kamalaśīla and he wrote a text called Bhāvanākrama, I think is the Sanskrit name, Stages of Meditation. And there’s actually a commentary by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and I think the name of the book is just called Stages of Meditation is the title of the book. Okay?
And then also a couple of texts by Maitreya. One is called Differentiating the Middle from the Extremes. Contains a lot of these instructions on meditation. Okay? Yes?
Would Vipassana then fit into the analytical kind? We’ll get there. We’ll get there. Actually Vipassana, the Sanskrit term for that kind of meditation is basically you know, turning that single pointed concentration onto the direct realization of the nature of reality. Now Vipassana as it’s taught in the West is sort of a mixture it seems and I don’t have much experience of both developing that single point of concentration and doing things like turning that on the body so that you realize, for example, the subtle impermanence of the body.
In Western style Vipassana, they use they come out of the Theravadan tradition which uses different schools in different the lower the Hīnayāna schools have a different definition of the selflessness of persons than the Tibetan school has. So for example, their selflessness of persons relates a lot to subtle impermanence. So they use the four foundations of mindfulness as a technique to generate a realization of the selflessness of persons and for them that’s their selflessness. Whereas for the in the Tibetan school it’s a completely different system of tenets. So it’s quite so it’s a little bit mixing apples and oranges.
So their insight, you know what they what they call insight or Vipassana is at a different level of selflessness than it would be for the Tibetan tradition. So it’s not completely analogous. Does that help? Does that answer your Yes, it’s Yeah. Yeah, so it’s a little bit However, you know, incredible realization.
I mean, to realize the subtle impermanence of the self, we’d be doing really great if we could get that. You know, so it’s not to diss that, it’s just saying from the Tibetan tradition, there’s a much subtler level of the selflessness of the person that what we’re aiming for when we do what we call Vipassana meditation than what’s taught in that school. Okay. Yeah, okay. Okay, So I wanted to talk a little bit also about So those are the three different kinds of meditation.
Okay. The single pointed, the analytical and the review. So I wanted to mention how does meditation fit into the way we engage with the teachings? Okay. And then there are three ways that we engage with the teachings.
There’s hearing, listening is one way. Contemplation is another way, and meditation is the third way. Okay? So hearing is, you know, getting the teachings, coming to Sai Chin Ling, listening to Geshe Dagpa and the other teachers give the teachings. That’s just getting the information, getting the raw information.
For us, that also includes reading books because we’re literate. You know, back in the time of Lord Buddha, there weren’t, you know, only the higher classes were literate. For us, we have all these Dharma books. So listening or hearing level of engaging with the teachings includes all of that. You can’t stop there.
You can’t stop there, you know. People say to me, oh, I don’t have much time to meditate so I listen to all these tapes of His Holiness in the car on the way to work. Is that okay? Sure, that’s fine if you never wanna get enlightened. That’s fine if you never wanna have any realizations on the path.
It’s not a substitute for meditation. Okay? Because that’s still that first level of hearing and listening. The second is contemplation. And this is really important and often skipped.
And this is just taking the information you’ve gotten, right, and applying it to your life. Seeing how, is this true for my life? Remember Lord Buddha said, don’t believe any of this stuff just because I said it and I’m Lord Buddha and I’m some big shot. Like forget it. See if it applies to your life.
Know, see if it’s true for you. And that’s what contemplation is and just mulling it over. This includes riding home in the car with four or five people and discussing it together. This includes discussion group stuff, you know, getting together with your Dharma friends over a cup of tea and hashing it out. That’s contemplation.
Just seeing if it’s true, how it applies, you clarifying the points, all of this level of stuff. And then meditation is the third point and this is where the stuff goes below your neck. That has to happen on the meditation cushion and there’s no substitute. Sorry. The tapes in the car are not a substitute for your rear end in direct contact with the meditation cushion and having it go below the neck.
So if you don’t want your life to change at all, if you’re really happy with saṃsāra the way it is, God forbid, don’t go near the meditation cushion. Don’t risk ending up in an outfit like this and totally changing your life, you know? Stay away. But if you’re kind of sick of trying to get happiness in all of these deluded ways and trying to do it over and over again, know, come on down, sit down on the cushion because that’s where it’s gonna happen. Okay?
That’s really where that life change I remember the first time I really got this, I was taking teachings at a center in North India at Tuśita in Dharamsala and we’re doing this death awareness meditation. Know, it was all about how death is certain, it’s inevitable, the only thing that’s gonna help you at the time of death is the Dharma and I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, sure, death is inevitable. And I’m and I’m sitting there, you know, and this Australian monk, my first teacher, is leading the meditation. Sort of halfway through, I got it, you know. It’s like, oh, oh my God.
I think I went like that and probably startled everybody in the class. But I was just, you know, I totally got it. And I went home and wrote my boss, I was taking a leave of absence from work and I was like, I’m not coming back. You know, hey man, I could die in three and a half minutes and I’m gonna stay here until I get it. So that’s that kind of life transforming things that happen when you meditate.
Like when he explained the points, was like, yeah, sure. You could die at any time. I know all that. It’s not so hard to understand intellectually, but it’s when I really got it and I sort of gasped. You know, it was this like, oh my god.
I’ve gotta change my life. And I did. And that was like the beginning of the story, know, the rest is history as they say. So that’s the kind of thing that we’re looking for from meditation practice. Okay, now what we do with the Lamrim meditations and a lot of you have had these Lamrim classes and have guided meditations.
What we’re doing is we’re alternating analytical and single pointed meditation. Okay, so this is really really important for the lam rim meditations because what we do, we go through the analysis of the points, right? We’re having a guided meditation or we’re doing it ourselves from a book. We’re going through the points. Then we get to that point like I did with that death thing.
Hang with it. Then you switch to your single pointed concentration to deepen the imprint as much as you possibly can. So you’ve used the analysis to get it, to get the point and then boom, switch to the single point of concentration and stay with that experience for as long as it lasts. Okay? Because that deepens the imprint.
That deepens the realization. So drop the analysis, stick with that feeling for as long as it lasts. When it starts to fade, start to get distracted and think about all the emails you have to do this afternoon. Go back to the analysis and start over again until you get the feeling again. So that’s how in the lam rim meditations you alternate the analysis with the single pointed concentration.
Okay, so we actually use both. I’ve explained them as different kinds of meditation but in our practice, we generally use both for those lam rim analytical meditations. Okay. So any questions at this point on those different kinds of meditation and how meditation fits into the path in this way? Clear?
Yeah? You’re okay? Okay. Okay. So the importance of developing shine, the importance of developing this calm abiding.
Remember I said shine is the perfection of that single pointed concentration. You know, you’re at the ultimate level where then you can focus on whatever you want for as long as you want. Like four hours is a good time. They probably say four hours because you know everybody’s knees give out after that and you have to kind of stand up and take a break. But of course, there’s yogis that you hear about that go off into a cave and can sit for like days, weeks in meditative absorption without coming out.
So, basically what we’re doing is developing this ability to focus single pointedly. Remember I said there’s all this mental and physical bliss that goes along with it? But even though when you develop that to its ultimate extent, it’s an incredibly blissful experience, it’s not the goal. And this is super super important. Big caution about Shine.
This is not the goal of the path. Now, Shine is not just a Buddhist practice. Okay? It’s shared with other traditions. Other traditions see it as the goal and that’s the difference between Shine in Buddhism and Shine in other traditions.
Okay? And for those of you who’ve heard the life story of Lord Buddha, you may remember before he went off and did the ascetic practices for six years, he studied with two teachers. Both of them taught these rarified states of meditative absorption. Okay, these very high levels of meditative absorption that were accessible through Shine and they taught them as the goal. You know, they said the goal of your meditation is to go into this blissed out state where not only are you not experiencing suffering at all, you’re totally blissed out.
And Lord Buddha’s like, you know what? You know, you always come down. It’s like getting high, know. You always come down. It’s not the end, it’s not the goal.
And so these teachers were saying, wow, you know, Lord Buddha of course like perfects these meditative absorptions immediately and then the teachers offer him to share their Sangha. You know, they’ve got all these followers, one had like five hundred and one had a thousand and they said, we can be partners, know, you’re good and I need a young guy to take over for me when I retire. So, like, you know, let’s be partners. And Lord Buddha said, this isn’t the end. It’s not liberation from suffering.
I don’t think it’s liberation. He went off and studied with the next one that had even this more rarified blissful same thing. Son, I need a partner. Like, let’s share. And Lord Buddha said no because it’s not liberation.
So this is a caution especially as you start to develop these states. Okay? For a very long time, believe me, you’re not gonna be feeling a bunch of bliss. You’re you know, your knees are gonna be hurting and you’re gonna be distracted and frustrated. But a time will come when you’ll start to feel this bliss and just be aware that this is not the goal.
You know? What we’re doing is using Shine as a tool for the meditation on especially the nature of reality. Okay? The direct realization of emptiness. And shine is absolutely necessary to get that direct realization of emptiness which makes you an ārya being, okay?
So, there’s no way to get that realization without shines. So, it’s like you’re spending years making this tool, you know? All you’re doing is spend There’s some In Greek mythology, there’s some story, isn’t there of some you know there are always these people doing these endless tasks and there I think there’s some story about some guy who spent like you know twelve years making some tool. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re making a tool of our mind with this incredible ability to focus because we need that to penetrate the nature of reality.
We need that to get that direct realization of emptiness and that’s why we’re doing it not because it’s so blissful And I mean that’s nice, bliss isn’t bad. Don’t get attached to it and there are all these cautions and in fact there’s you know really specific cautions in the bodhisattva vows about getting attached to the bliss of meditation and this is why. Because you don’t wanna stop like these teachers of Lord Buddha before the end, before liberation. Okay? And when you think about some of you may have had teachings on the five paths.
Okay? And if you think about how Shine relates to the five paths, you’ll see how important that is and how it fits in, okay? The first path and these are the paths that lead to liberation as they’re explained in the Tibetan tradition. Okay? The first is the called the path of accumulation.
So, what’s happening on this path as the name indicates, you’re accumulating a lot of merit. Okay? You’re accumulating a lot of virtue, you’re doing these practices, you’re making offerings, know, you’re accumulating lots and lots of virtue, you’re also working on your Shine during this path. So you’re moving up through the levels that we’re going to be talking about this afternoon, developing your ability to meditate single pointedly, okay? Now, the difference between the first and the second path which is called the path of preparation is shine.
When you get shine, when you get that fully qualified ability to meditate single pointedly with that bliss and with all of that stuff, you go to the second path. The second path is called the path of preparation. Okay? So what’s happening during that path is you’re using that tool. Okay?
The whole first path you’re making the tool of your mind. Okay? Second path, you’re using that tool to get subtler and subtler intellectual understandings of emptiness. Okay? You don’t have the direct realization yet.
And that’s the difference between, for example, the word in Tibetan is called don gyi and that means a mental image. Like you’re using your conceptual, you’re using a mental image, your conceptual mind to meditate on emptiness. It’s not a direct realization. That’s difference between sitting here in San Francisco and thinking about the Eiffel Tower. Okay?
We can’t get a direct perception of the Eiffel Tower in San Francisco but we can get a really good mental image, you know? Even if you’ve never been to Paris, we’ve all seen the postcards, know? So we know what it looks like versus walking out and looking at the Transamerica Pyramid. You probably can’t see it from here but you could see it from somewhere. What is that quite tower?
No, that’s something else. Anyway, walking out and getting a direct perception of something that we could see from here versus the mental image. So what’s happening in the second path is we’re using that mental image. We’re not seeing emptiness directly. It’s not like we’re walking out the front door and looking at the Transamerica Pyramid.
We’re sitting on our meditation cushion thinking about the Eiffel Tower. So we’re using a mental image or a conceptual thought about emptiness, okay? Which gets subtler and subtler and subtler and that’s what’s happening at the second path, okay? So you can see why Shine is absolutely necessary to progress on the path at all. Ain’t no way to get from level one to level two without Shine because that’s the definition of one to two.
So it’s not optional. Shine is not optional if you want to become a Buddha. It’s not optional. In fact, it’s the first step. Okay?
With a lot of accumulation of merit. So then second level, you’re refining your intellectual, your conceptual understanding of emptiness. Then bingo. At a certain point, direct realization of emptiness. You see emptiness the way you see the Transamerica Pyramid, direct perception, not mediated by any kind of conceptual mind at all.
Then you’re at the path of seeing. This is the third path. You’re an ārya being, you know. You’re a being who’s seen emptiness directly and that if you studied at all the twelve links, you know, that’s what cuts through saṃsāra right there. You’re you’ve eliminated directly that ignorance that’s the root of all of saṃsāra.
That’s absolutely necessary. Okay? No way without that to cut through saṃsāra. So that’s why Shine is used as that tool to get that realization that cuts through saṃsāra. So that’s the way it relates to the whole path.
Okay. Does that make sense? And I know these paths if you haven’t studied the five paths, you may not don’t worry about it too much, I’m just trying to give you an idea of like where it fits in and how important it is to get that as a prerequisite for having that realization and boom. That cuts the twelve links at the first link of ignorance. You know and you have to have that realization.
Now if you have that realization along with bodhicitta, you’re on your way to buddhahood. You know two more paths, buddhahood. You’re done. You’re able to benefit all sentient beings by sending out countless emanation bodies effortlessly. How cool is that?
You know, every suffering being, you can emanate exactly what they need to help them. I mean do you get frustrated like I do that you’re so limited and that you have to like sleep and eat and you’ve only got one body and you I mean to me that’s a drag you know. I think that level of prostrations is really leads to that motivation of bodhicitta is like I can’t stand it that I don’t even have one emanation body you know. Can you imagine having countless ones? So that’s what you know this is what leads to it.
Shine then direct realization of emptiness which as you know your question about the Vipassana that’s insight you know in the Mahāyāna tradition is a specific kind of emptiness it’s a specific kind of selflessness so that’s how the Shine and the Vipassana work together because you use that Shine, that Shamatha to get to the Vipassana. Okay, to get to the insight. Okay, so that relates to that. And then the last two paths, okay, so what’s happening at the last two paths? You have the direct realization of emptiness.
Then this is where this thing, I mean, this is an aside because we’re not doing a class on the five paths. I could go on and on, they’re so cool. So what happens is, you know at that point you’re an Ārya being, you could no longer create negative karma because you have no more ignorance. You cut But you have these deep karmic pockets unfortunately of past crappy karma and these imprints to see things as self existent. So what’s happening on the what’s called the path of habituation is or the path of meditation or habituation is the path right before Buddhahood.
You’re basically using your direct realization of emptiness. You keep going into that realization over and over and over again and you’re using it to remove even the most subtle karmic seeds that you still have and the taints for still seeing things is inherently existent. Okay? When you come out of meditation, you see things as inherently existent but you don’t believe it anymore. Okay?
You only have see emptiness directly when you’re on that path. You only see emptiness directly when you’re in the deep state of meditation. You come out and you see things the way they were but you know better now. You know that they don’t exist like that. Know, it’s and they say the analogy they give is it’s like a magician who does a magic trick.
It’s like I had these friends and they were identical twins and I learned a lot about how magicians do their tricks because they work for a magician and the thing where they saw the girl in half, one twins in one half and one’s in the other half, know I learned a lot. So the magician is sawing the girl in half, it looks to him like it’s a girl squeal you know they have to squeal and stuff. It looks to him like he’s sawing a girl in half but he knows better, right? Like even though he has the appearance of sawing the girl in half, he knows that one twin squished in one half and one’s squid I mean sorry, I just gave it away like hopefully, you know, it’s like, God, that’s how they do it? So that’s how it happens, okay?
So it’s like that magician who knows better but still has the appearance and that’s what’s happening on the path of meditation. And then when you’ve completely removed all of those stains to even have that appearance of things as self existent and when you can see the emptiness and the dependent origination simultaneously, you’re a Buddha. Okay, so that’s kind of the way the rest of the paths work. Okay? Okay.
Let’s see. There was another point there with the Sheena and the Hi there. Oh, okay. Yeah. So SHINee is achievable and necessary as a tool, as a tool.
So that was what my whole impassioned rave was about. Don’t get stuck in the bliss of Shine when you get there and it’ll take a while and we’ll get into that later. Okay? So what I wanted to do real quick is just review a little bit about how a meditation session works and posture and some things like that. Okay?
And I think you’ve all had this so I can review it probably pretty quickly. Now posture is really really important for any meditation session. Getting correct posture. In fact, I’ve even heard people say things like it’s sort of like eighty percent of having a good meditation session is getting your posture right. Okay?
So don’t ignore it. Don’t just plunk yourself down and what I’m going to be talking about for the next ten minutes is how to set yourself up so you’ll be able to have some success in your meditation. So you don’t just plunk yourself down on the corner of the bed any old which way and expect to go into single pointed concentration. There are certain preliminaries and prerequisites and posture is one of them. Okay.
So there is explained in the literature what’s called a seven point meditation posture. And I’ll just go through the points real quick. One of the points is the legs. And this is hard for us westerners. We didn’t grow up sitting cross legged on the floor, know.
So for a lot of us, this is really difficult. Some sort of cross legged position is really advised for meditation because it’s like it’s so stable. It’s like a tripod, you know, stable. And believe me, when you get to the point where you can meditate for like a couple of weeks without moving, you’re really going to want that stable base you know. So that’s the point of trying to get used to the cross legged posture.
For those of us who don’t do yoga, I can’t do a full full lotus or even a half a lotus but I’ve gotten pretty good at sitting cross legged for pretty much as long as I want and what I do, put one leg just right in front of the other. There’s different ways you can do it, you can cross your legs at the ankles. What I find is most comfortable for me is just putting, let’s see what happens, my right leg just right in front of my left leg and I think in hatha yoga, this is called I’ve heard it called the Burmese pose. So if you have hatha yoga books, this is the So any kind of cross legged posture at the very beginning, you know, I had to sit on like four cushions and I had three under this knee and three You know, it takes a while for everything to stretch out. But if you persist in trying to sit on the on the cushion down, You know, you will stretch out.
Even those of us that grew up sitting in chairs and didn’t even try and do this till we’re forty. Like believe me, it all kind of stretch out. And you may need to use more cushions in the beginning. Use them under your knees to kind of lift your knees but it’s not forever. You know, so don’t despair if it seems difficult in the beginning.
Do use whatever props you need. Okay? Now the bottom cushion should be flat and then you’re you should be raised a little bit. You should have another little cushion just under sitting on kind of the front edge of it, okay? So you don’t plop right down on one of these big fat ones because you’ll have the tendency to slump and that’s really bad.
So sit kind of on the front edge so it sort of pokes your the small of your back forward. So your back is arched a little bit and that helps you keep your back really straight. If you’re right on top of it, it’s gonna be hard to keep your balance so you’re gonna be slumped. I like the ones with the buckwheat hulls in them because then you can kind of squish them and make them fit your body, okay? So the back should be really straight and this is super important.
When we get into obstacles and antidotes, you’ll see how there’s things that you can do with your posture to fix some of the obstacles. Okay? Especially sleepiness or mental agitation. So make sure that your spine is really straight. They say imagine if you had kind of a cord lifting up from the top of your head.
You know, pulling your the crown of your head up like that. Okay? And your head should be tilted forward slightly. And they say you should be looking back in the ancient texts they say a plow’s length ahead of you. Down the plane of your nose.
Now some of those early translations, they said, look at the tip of your nose. And so everybody’s, you know, sitting, that was wrong. Okay? It should be just that your eyes should be focused down along the plane of your nose which gets you about, I don’t know, depending on how big your nose is, maybe like a couple of feet in front. Your eyes should be half open and this is super hard in the beginning but it’s really really important.
Just get used to it and it’s going to be hard and one of the things is your eye muscles kind of spaz out in the beginning. Know they have to kind of get used to holding your your eyelids halfway open. Now the reason that this is important as we’ll get to soon is one of the worst obstacles to meditation is something called subtle dullness. Okay. Which is so often, you know can be seen as a great meditation session.
And so if you keep your eyes slightly open, this is a real antidote to that kind of subtle dullness that you can develop and it just keeps you alert. So it’s super hard in the beginning. Please please just try and do it. It gets easier with time. So don’t close your eyes all the way just just force yourself to give a slight you know not like that but just if you’re aiming your eyes down the plane of your nose like that, they’ll sort of be at the right, you know, right level of being open.
Okay? Yeah. We’re gonna get to that too. Yeah. About distraction.
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t mean TV but just call me new things. Right. Oh, you mean to do that?
Oh, you know, you’re not supposed to do that. No. And okay. Now that it’s now that she’s brought it up, leave it to Lynn. So sorry.
Just kidding. So you’re you’re supposed to put something in front of you that’s not at all distracting, you know. Because you’re not supposed to start making little animals out of the pattern in the fabric, which, you know, you will do. Believe me. If you’re trying to sit there and focus, you’ll you’ll latch on to anything.
So it’s really important. Whatever is within the range of vision with your eyes down like that is neutral and is not going to be you know for me it’s books. I mean I better not have a book anywhere within range or I’m going to think that if I read that book right this very second, I’m gonna become enlightened you know and I’m just gonna reach over and it’s like you know the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are telling me that I need to read page eighty seven right now and then boom, you know. So whatever your personal source of distraction is, keep it out of out of And that’s why in the Zen tradition, they sit and face the blank wall and that’s exactly why. So don’t have If you meditate in front of your altar, you know, don’t have it real busy cause you start rearranging your water bowls and deciding that you need a different picture of his holiness instead of this other one.
So be careful about all of that stuff, okay? You know, you got time for that. The other you know twenty three hours of the day, you can fuss with your altar but for that time you’re trying to do your meditation, okay? The shoulders should be level. They say kind of like a coat hanger, just sort of level and back, okay?
So like that just kind of hanging from your neck, okay. Your tongue and jaws, your jaws should be relaxed but not like gaping open. Your tongue should be on the roof of your mouth right behind your teeth and this keeps you from having to swallow all the time or drool. You know, that just keeps your saliva going down so that’s really important. You shouldn’t breathe through your mouth and this is really important especially when we’re doing breath awareness meditation.
So your lips should be closed and don’t breathe through your mouth, breathe through your nose. Okay. Now your hands and arms, the position for hands in this tradition is your right on top of your left with your thumbs touching making kind of a triangle and suspended a little bit kind of centered on a point just they say like four finger widths below your navel, okay? And this is a chakra right here and so this helps to focus the energy to have the hands in a position like this really helps to focus the energy and there’s a lot going on in your subtle body when you’re doing meditation. We’re not going to get into too much of it but this is part of why the hand position is like like this.
And again, it’s sort of like the eyes. You’ll get used to holding them in mid air. In the beginning, if you want to put a cushion in your lap to suspend them. If you put them down on your lap, that’s too far down, okay? They really need to be kind of hanging right here and in the beginning, it’s really okay to prop them up a little bit until you you just get used to it, okay?
And then your elbow should be out from your sides a little bit just for circulation, you know, just so you don’t get overheated, okay? So those are the yeah, what do you are So as far as the hand position to the chakra, when you say your hands four finger widths below, you’re talking about the finger part of your hand. Oh, I’m talking about the center I’m talking about the center of where you aim the triangle. Oh, so this oh, okay. Like, the if you go four finger widths, it’s right here, and then you just center the thing right there.
Like, the the center of the little triangle that you’re making should be there. Okay. And you don’t have to go through this. You you can kind of feel it. You know, you can kind of get to the point where you feel we’re the right place.
But if you’re trying to get used to it, just measure down four finger widths and then just kind of put it right there. Yeah. Any other questions about the posture at this point? Some traditions, they have their hands on their knees like that. You see these Hindu things, and they do different mudras like that.
But in the Tibetan tradition, this is the position of the hands. Yeah. So if you’re supposed to relax for meditation and you’re having your hands kind of floating, isn’t that kind of counter Well, you get used to it. You know, and it’s sort of like the eye thing. In the beginning, it’s difficult but you will get used to it and it does have advantages.
So it’s better to get into good habits in the beginning even though it’s a little bit effortful in the beginning but once you get into the habit and then you’ll be there and then when you get to these higher states where things like this really do make a huge difference like now it may not seem so different whether eyes are shut or half open because we’re so distracted anyway, who cares and we’re not totally falling asleep but it you know at very advanced levels things like that and then it’s really a lot harder after you get in the habit to to change it. So that’s why even though for sure it’ll take a little bit of effort. And but it’s interesting that you use that the thing about relaxing because that was one of the other cautions that I wanted to give about in the very beginning. That was what I spaced out when I said, oh, I think there was something else. The goal of Buddhist meditation is not to become calm and not to reduce your stress.
The goal of Buddhist meditation is to finish your suffering permanently and get the hell out of the cycle of saṃsāra. Okay? I know there are all these you know mindfulness based stress reduction. God bless them. That’s great.
That’s not why you’re meditating doing Buddhist analytical meditation. It’s to get your rear end out of saṃsāra, okay? It’s fine to be calm. I’m not advocating people being stressed out and angry. Like that’s great but that’s not the goal of Buddhist meditation.
I just want to emphasize that there’s this thing that happens that I see a little bit and I sort of have a pet peeve about it as you probably will have understood by now about like watering things down to make them palatable. You know, Buddhism comes to the West and you don’t want to talk to people about renunciation because they don’t want to give up their SUVs so you have to kind of leave that part out and then you have to leave this part out and you have to leave that part out and pretty soon it doesn’t work to liberate you from saṃsāra and that’s not okay. You know, that’s not okay. Like I just got a email the other day, somebody wanted me to come teach some secular what was it like secular like dealing with emotion something and to leave all the Buddhism out and it’s like don’t ask me to do that. Like a, I got the wrong outfit, b, I ain’t interested you know.
I’m really interested in teaching people how to end their suffering completely and then be able to end everybody else’s. Know, if you want to go be calm, have somebody else teach you that. Okay. Sorry. It’s a little know, in graceful in that situation.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just had a a class at the Santa Cruz Community Center on meditation. It was built it’s like, I forget what we called it, tranquility and insight or something and everybody came.
And like ninety nine percent of the people came because they wanted to become calm and and reduce their stress, know. So I had to make it really clear and at the end I had them doing Śākyamūni Buddha meditation mantras and tonglen and stuff and they loved it, they totally But they just didn’t know better. Know, they thought that meditation was all about becoming calm. So I’m not dissing you at all, it’s just it triggered you know when you said to relax, it just triggered that I hadn’t mentioned this one thing, okay? So that’s the goal of Buddhist meditation not to become calm and relaxed, there’s other ways to do that.
Massage therapy and hot tubs are great, you know? So I recommend those. Okay, so any other questions about the posture? We okay about posture? Okay.
Okay, so, I wanted to just run through the six preliminaries. The six preliminaries also known as jor chos. The Tibetan word for this is jorcho. And again, you don’t just plop yourself down on your cushion and try and go into single pointed concentration. It’s not going to work.
Okay, so these are preliminary. Some of which happen before you even sit down on your cushion. Now these are super important to prepare your mind for a good meditation session. And the analogy that’s given in the scripture is you know you’ve got this rocky stony field with a bunch of weeds growing in it, you don’t throw a bunch of seeds out there and expect to get a nice crop of barley or something. It was probably barley because it was Tibet.
You know you just don’t throw the seeds out there and expect What do you do? You dig up the soil, you get rid of all the rocks, you weed it, you fertilize it, you get it ready and then when you plant the seeds, something’s gonna happen. So this is the analogous to what we’re doing with these preliminary practices. We’re preparing our mind so that then when we try and do the single point concentration, it’s going to work. Otherwise it’s not going to work, you’re going to get frustrated, you’re going to think meditation doesn’t work for you and you’re going to give up, okay?
So these these preliminary practices, get ready, spend time on these and then you’re going to be able to have a good meditation session. People freak out, they go, oh I’ve only got a half hour in the morning anyway for my whole practice. I don’t want to spend ten minutes on all this other stuff but it’s not other stuff you know it’s totally necessary for the practice, okay? So two of them happen before you even sit down on your cushion. The first one, clean the room and set up the altar.
It’s really important that like I said you don’t just plop yourself down anywhere to do your meditation session. It’s really nice to have a place that you do your meditation every day, okay? It can be a corner of the room, it you know, you don’t have to have an elaborate shrine room and a whole room dedicated but have a place in your house somewhere that’s going to be quiet, free from interruptions. If you have kids, close the door, know, don’t answer the phone, have a place that’s dedicated for your meditation. There’s a certain energy that goes into that place if you use the same place every day for meditation.
In fact, there are certain practices that we do in the Tibetan tradition where we’re told to do it on the same cushion. And that’s because that energy builds up in that space. And then the minute you sit down, your mind starts to subdue immediately because it’s like the habit energy is this place is for meditation so boom you sit down. And like I said it doesn’t need to be elaborate, it doesn’t need to be a big place just a corner of your bedroom will do and that’s fine. But you don’t do anything else there but meditate, okay?
And it should be clean, you should kind of sweep up and straighten up and not have a bunch of piles there. So clean the room, You don’t have to vacuum every day but just make sure that that area is clean and neat. Okay? It’s nice to have some kind of an altar because that also makes it more dedicated to meditation. Meditation.
Know, have some images of your teachers up there if you have them, a Buddha image. The three things that they say are traditional to have on altars is representations of the Buddha’s body, speech and mind. Okay? The body is represented by some sort of Buddha image. And it can be a painting, that’s fine, or a picture or something like that framed.
Some sort of Buddha image. The speech is represented by a text. And that’s why on Tibetan altars you’ll see texts piled on one side. And mine is represented by a stupa. And there’s stupas in the bookstore.
It’s just this little reliquary. They come in kind of different different shapes and sizes and so that represents the Buddha’s body, speech and mind. Okay? And then you make offerings in front of those and that’s actually the second preliminaries offering. So you set up an altar really nicely, it can be quite simple.
You only have a Buddha statue and a candle in front of it for the minimum. That’s okay too. And this brings up another point. It’s really important and His Holiness stresses this all the time not to use Buddha images as decoration in your house. Know, use them on an altar, always make offerings to them.
Don’t do this thing that you see people do of buying some nice thangka in a shop and they’ve got some room in their hallway and they think, oh wouldn’t it be nice to hang it here for decoration? His holiness is really heavy about this. You know if you’re gonna hang a Buddha image in your house somewhere, make it be like an you know, that that’s your purpose of doing it. Not for decoration but to use for your practice and then make sure that there are offerings underneath it. And this goes for even pictures of your teachers that you have on walls.
Always do some offering underneath whether it’s just a vase of flowers or a light or something like that underneath, okay? So don’t just use them you know because they’re beautiful like you would any other work of art in your home. This is super important if you’re practicing Buddhist because again it’s just the imprint in your mind. It’s what imprint makes in your mind. Are you using it as an object of refuge and making offerings underneath.
Okay. So offer making offerings is the second of the six preliminaries. And in the Tibetan tradition, you’ll see these water bowls. And these represent the offerings that were made to royalty in ancient India. So if you had a king, you know visit your house in ancient India, there was a certain formality that you did.
First you offered them water to drink because they were you know India is hot and dusty and first you’d offer a drink of water then you’d wash their feet You know that was the second one. Then you’d offer a flower garland like a you know in Hawaii you go and at the airport they give you a lei and you’ll see this in India and it’s usually made out of marigolds. Then you’d offer a flower garland. Then you’d light the incense, light lamps, offer them food, music. So all of the water bowls represent these offerings that were made in ancient India.
The reason you use water is to represent them is because you’re not going to you’re not supposed to offer anything with any kind of feeling of miserliness or stinginess. And so the thought was everybody can afford water. You know, nobody’s going to feel stingy about offering water. So, you offer the water and then you visualize what it represents, okay? And then when you visualize which is part of the practice, you make it as extensive as you possibly can.
So, you’ve got one little tiny water bowl but if it represents the light offering, you imagine all of these lamps like filling all of the universe. Know these incredible lamps and you know if you’re a student of Lama Zopa Christmas tree lights and like all of this you know light offerings filling space, okay? But that’s why water is used and we always get that we have all these visitors at Land of Medicine where they come in and there’s hundreds of water bowls and they’re like what’s up with the water? Know so we go through this explanation, okay? You should renew your offerings every day.
So empty the water bowls at night. And that’s this thing that’s to prepare you to die. And this is a reminder of impermanence, okay? So you just say, hey, I might not wake up in the morning so I’m just gonna, you know, empty the water bowls and get them all, you know, set in case I die during the night, my water bowls don’t evaporate. And that’s another point.
They shouldn’t ever be put upright on the altar empty. Okay? If they’re empty, then you turn them over. Okay? And you stack them up on each other which reminds you of dependent arising.
Okay? Dependent arising. Because they you stack them up kind of tilted and leaning on each other. When you fill them, you fill the first one all the way and then pour most of it into the second one, leave it with a little bit in and pour from one to the other and this symbolizes the lineage of teachings passing from one person to another. So, all of these things just like the way you do you know your offerings just reminds you of various points of the path.
Now, in your water bowls, if you want to offer the real thing as long as you’re not going to be miserly about it and you’ll see people stick incense sticks up and they’ll have a you know a little candle for the light offering place and for the food, they’ll have some kind of food. Carol was always great when the center was in her house years ago, she would sort of go grocery shopping and like put all the food on the altar and in the thing you always had those Pepperidge Farm cookies in those pink packages you know. So you can put real real food. Now the thing about the food offerings, replace them every day. It’s really good to put fresh food offerings every day.
But it’s really good not to eat them yourself if you have attachment, okay? My thing is chocolate. You know, I can’t offer a package of mint Milanos on the altar and then think oh at the end of the day, I get these you know that’s really bad. So I offer things that I don’t like so much and then I give them to my friends. It’s fine to offer your food offerings to your friends because they didn’t offer them you know and then they’re but if you have that miserly thing of like, oh, I put those, I’ll buy mystic mints and put them up on the altar because then I get them later, like that’s bad, know.
So it’s best as a rule of thumb so you don’t have to go through this trip all the time, just give your offerings to your friends, take them to work, put them out next to the you know teapot at work, that’s better. Then you don’t have to go through this, am I really crave did I feel that way at all today? You know, so you don’t get that craving at all, okay? Now the third of the six preliminaries posture, refuge and bodhicitta all into one. The third one.
So now you’re on your cushion. Okay? The first two happened before you sat down. Now you’re sitting down, you go into the seven point posture. Okay.
You take refuge and generate bodhicitta. Okay. And this isn’t a class on refuge but the real refuge as we all know is just saying, okay, I’ve tried to find happiness every way possible. It sounds like what Lord Buddha says makes a lot of sense. So I’m taking refuge in mostly the Dharma, okay?
In the teachings, in the technique to free yourself from suffering. That’s the real refuge. So you remind yourself of that. There’s prayers that you can recite in every, you know, all of these practices that we do and it’s really important to start the session with refuge and then bodhicitta which is generating that wish to benefit all beings. Okay.
The reason I’m practicing is at least to try and develop, you know, sometimes I feel for like myself, bodhicitta is like the wish to become enlightened for the benefit of all sentient beings. And I feel like I’m one step away. I wish I had that wish. Know, I’m a little like pre bodhicitta like, oh, wouldn’t it be cool to have that wish? I wish to have that wish.
And so, know, some of us may be stuck there. But at least you try and generate whatever similitude of bodhicitta you can in the moment. Okay? So that’s the third point. Now, after you’ve done that, before you start the subject, it’s good to do a couple of minutes of breath awareness meditation just to get your mind into neutral.
Like we did be at the beginning of the class. Know, ten to twenty breaths and that just could And they You know, you can’t go from like overdrive to reverse without going into neutral first and this is what’s happening. Know, just getting your mind into that neutral state before you start the subject of your meditation. Okay. The fourth preliminary, visualize the merit field.
And depending on what practice you’re doing, I know there’s this one daily practice based on Śākyamūni Buddha which just has the whole explanation of you know the Buddha on the throne and kind of goes into all the details. So the merit field would be different depending on what practice you’re doing but always do your meditation with a holy being in front of you. Imagine that they’re there helping you out. Know, they’re so happy and one of the things that’s important to do when you visualize the merit field, visualize them totally overjoyed. That like for once since beginningless time, we’re trying to meditate.
You know? So you always I mean for me it was really hard for me. I had this kind of critical judgmental father and I’d have to check myself because my merit field was kind of like you know. But visualize them really happy that you’re practicing. And then they hang out with you until the end of your session.
Okay? So there they are in front, the merit field. That’s number four. Now the fifth, purify obstacles and accumulate merit. And this is a big part of that process of like you know getting the rocks out of the earth and you know plowing it up and adding the fertilizer, okay?
So this is a really important part of the process. Purifying obstacles and accumulating merit. Before you do the actual meditation, do a really powerful practice to purify negativity accumulate merit and we have a beautiful practice in the form of the seven-limb prayer and that’s what happens here at the fifth. So this is one of those things where the numbers get confusing. The fifth preliminary includes the seven-limb prayer and that’s that one that you’re probably familiar with.
Reverently I prostrate with body speech and mind. Know, make all kinds of offerings both actual and mentally transformed. I confess all my negativities. Sound familiar? This one?
Okay. This is this prayer at this point. And we’ll just go through the seven limbs quickly. You’re familiar with it. Prostration is the first limb.
Don’t get back up again. You prostrated before you sat down on your cushion. But just mentally think of one of the qualities of the object of refuge. One of the qualities of the you know being in the merit field. Okay?
And just mentally bow down to that quality. Offerings. Here’s where you offer the water bowls or whatever it was, the candle, whatever it was that you put on your altar, okay? And mentally again, like I said, make it as extensive as possible. Make it enormous, know, expansive as possible and offer those things.
The next confession, okay? And this is just confessing our wrongdoings. Admitting the first step of purification is just admitting, you know, that we screwed up. We did something wrong. This is not about guilt, by the way.
Guilt doesn’t exist in Buddhism. It’s a total waste of time. There’s a difference between guilt and just regret. Okay? It’s like as an educated Buddhist, you realize that there’s certain actions that you did will lead to suffering in the future.
That’s all. We’re not born in sin according to Buddhism. We’re born in Buddha nature. Know? Really different.
Okay. So this is an excuse to wallow in guilt like all those other religions try and make you do. Okay. So this is just about saying, okay, you know. And think of something specific.
There may be something that you’ve done in the last day or two that you have some regret about so you can think of something specific, it’s really good at this point for the confession, okay? And then the next one and this is super super important, rejoicing. Don’t skip over this. This is the Lama Zopa says this is the very easiest way to accumulate merit is rejoicing over good deeds and don’t forget your own you know don’t do this low self esteem thing of like everybody else is so terrific and I’m worthless. You know, rejoice about your own good deeds, rejoice about your dharma friends, virtue, all these holy beings, know, think about his holiness, the Dalai Lama traveling around the world all the time, his tireless activities and just be happy about it, you know.
And this is such a powerful imprint in your mind instead of being happy about some terrible thing that somebody did, it’s like you’re happy about virtue. It just creates this imprint of your mind to be psyched about virtue, You know, to be really excited about virtue. Okay? So, that’s the rejoicing. Requesting the teachings.
Okay? Asking the holy beings to turn the wheel of Dharma, to keep teaching. They say, you know, these evanescent bodies of Buddhas aren’t going to stick around unless we ask them to. We need to create the cause for them to show up in our lives. We can’t just be complacent about it.
You know, we have to just ask them, will you please stick around life after life? You know, keep teaching me. Keep teaching me Dharma. You know, don’t you know, create the cause by requesting them to stay. And then request them to have a long life, you know.
Request them to have a long life which is the sixth of the seventh limb. Then you stop and do your meditation, okay? You’ve created all of this virtue by doing the seven limbs and try and really think about it. Don’t just recite the prayer and not think. Like what I do when I’m guiding meditation is pause after each line and have people really think for a minute about what it means.
And especially the rejoicing. If you’ve ever meditated with Lama Zopa, he stops at the rejoicing and goes on and on and on. You know and we’re offering all the holy objects and rejoicing about all the holy beings and you know you just go on and on because it’s like cheap merit you know. You don’t have to do anything except get off on somebody else’s virtue. That’s so easy, very effortless.
You know you just have to turn your mind towards other people’s virtue and get excited about it, okay? Then you stop and meditate. Your mind is really ripe and ready, the field’s been plowed and fertilized, then you do your meditation session. Then at the very end, you request blessings of the lama. And in a lot of the practices we do like in that Śākyamūni Buddha practice, you absorb the Buddha, know, comes to the crown of your head, sends down golden light.
Somehow you do some sort of an absorption and that’s what requesting the blessings. That’s the sixth of the six preliminaries is requesting the blessings. Okay? So you do some sort of visualization in terms of that holy being that you absorb them into you. You know, have nectar come from them into You know, sometimes it’s like nectar comes from their heart into the center of your forehead depending on what practice you do.
That’s that part. And then you dedicate the merit. You go back to the seventh of the seven limbs. One of them happens at the very end and that’s the dedication of merit. Okay?
So that that is really important for any meditation session whether it’s shinne or anything else. Do it with refuge, bodhicitta in relation to these holy beings. Don’t just plunk down and start watching your breath or whatever your object is, okay? Is that clear? Questions about that?
Everybody’s getting sleepy and we got about forty five minutes. So why don’t we just get up and stretch for a minute and if people need to take a potty break or get a drink of water or something, everybody’s fading out. So three quick questions. Okay. So the first one, is it okay to leave the water booth on all night?
Like, thinking that maybe our guru is up all night or sort of constantly offering all night. So in the morning when I wake up, I just empty them and make them again. The tradition is to empty them before you go to sleep just because you could die in the middle of the night. And that’s a thing. You know, starting with these hardcore Kadampa lamas who are constantly thinking about death and impermanence, and it was just their way to remind them.
Because, you know, they were off in some cave somewhere, and if they really did die in the middle of the night, the water bowls were just evaporate, and then you’d a bunch of empty water bowls sitting there. So it’s it’s really actually best. Lama Zopa has three places where there’s huge offerings of water that are there all the time because, of course, he doesn’t sleep and does his practices all the time. And so you can just kind of mentally think, oh, well, there’s lots of water bowl offerings being made to him, and I can kind of put my oh. It’s your Madonna thing.
The matrix Sorry. You’re gonna need to dress that thing. Well, was hoping that you’d Those days are You remember those days. We won’t go there. Okay.
Sorry about that. I forgot the matrix thing. So it really is better to just kind of, you know, I mean I completely understand wanting to make twenty four hour offerings. But if you really think of what the intention was that the Kadampa lamas did that and think about death and impermanence, then I think it’s best to kind of follow that tradition. Yeah.
Another thing is, no, the third point was visualizing, no, the fourth point was visualizing the merit field. Yeah. But before we took refuge. So should we In most practices, what you do is you take refuge with the visualization of Śākyamūni Buddha which you then dissolve and then visualize another merit field. Like in a lot of practices and it just depends what practice you’re doing like even in for example the six-session Guru Yoga Yoga, this tantric practice, you start out with a visualization of the merit field, do all of those things and then substitute it with a visualization of vajradhara, you know.
So it depends what practice you’re doing. It’s like they just kind of dissolve and then you kind of come up with a different merit field. Yeah. But you should take refuge in front of, you know, at least quickly visualize Śākyamūni Buddha before you take refuge and then do a more elaborate visualization on the fourth Now if if we relate this to not to develop Shine, we shouldn’t have read the merit field. We still have a merit field then?
Yeah. You still have a merit field. I mean, that’s not your object. We’ll talk about objects later on. But just mentally think, you know, these holy beings are hanging out with, you know, meditating with me, so happy that I’m meditating, sort of being my cheerleading section, so happy that I’m doing this.
And then they’re not necessarily the object of your meditation, then you switch to your object and you’re not thinking of them at that moment but like you’ve just kind of set up that energy as a preliminary. Yeah. Last thing is now with the the legs posture, is it okay to keep all always the one leg in front of the other or we should I read somewhere that they suggest to each session to switch comfortable for you. For me, I have one bad knee that I have to have elevated a little bit because I was in this car accident, like, twenty five years ago. And so I kind of only can do it in one configuration.
I think, you know, I’ve read that too and I think if you’re flexible enough, it is good to to rotate and to kind of change your position and have actually the full lotus position, I think it’s really specific which leg you have first. Is that right? People who do which one is it? Left goes up and then the right on top. And then the right on top.
And that’s really specific for that. You know, so it depends if you’re doing that, then there’s a specific configuration. For other ones, I have heard to to rotate. But I think it just depends on on your body and what what’s some of us in our old age, you know, we can barely get down on the floor as it is and it needs to be in a certain configuration. So I think it depends on the body.
Yeah. Yeah. Did you have something, Lynn? No. I guess not.
She doesn’t like to No. Was gonna add something, of course. I know. No. Add.
Go ahead. Never mind it. What was your first question? It might tickle my memory. Oh.
You know? You don’t have to turn on. On. Okay. Nice.
Yes. No cooking and stuff. Well, you know these little things on the these little plug in candles that go for ten hours? Yeah. You might be really happy with that.
I have I have one on my altar that just goes you you plug it into the thing. What is it called? An outlet. And it immediately just goes on, and it then goes off in eight hours or six hours or something like that. And it’s on all night while you’re asleep.
So think of it as a little night light. But for for the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, it’s, you know, you think That’s true. Yeah. I actually, I’ve heard that Lama Zopa really likes people to leave light offerings on all the time. You know, if you live somewhere I mean, for years, I lived places without electricity and it was just a question of candles and I didn’t wanna like burn up in the middle of the night.
But yeah, if you live somewhere where you can do little Christmas you know, he loves Christmas lights. Some little Christmas lights are those, you know, Taiwanese lotus light things. And if you can sleep through it, you know, whatever. I mean, that that’s true. That’s an offering.
You can the water bowls don’t do, but the light offerings is you can. Yeah. Thank you. That was a great addition. Larger votive that burns for ten hours.
Okay. And it’s in a metal. It’s in a aluminum thing. Okay. Be really careful about candles.
Lama Zopa’s Rinpoche’s extensive offering room went up in smoke last Sakadawas because somehow it had heated the tankas above it and everything went up in flames and the whole thing was destroyed and took six months to rebuild. So don’t leave candles lit when you’re not around. Just don’t. You know, even if it looks like some kind of safe thing, just just don’t do it. Especially on your altar because then all your holy beings will burn up, you know.
Another little thing when I Yeah. I was reaching down with a kitchen match because I don’t like to use those Lighter things. Yeah. Things. So I was reaching down and, oh gosh, a piece of the wood fell down in it.
Yeah. Oh, well. I’ll just leave it in there. No. Honey, I was up off my meditation seat.
I only hope I put my mala down. So then I ran over to staunch the thing. It just It’s like a rocket launcher or something. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It lights and then it becomes even more of a wick in the thing and then it yeah. So, yeah, be careful about that. Thank you. Any other questions about posture, preliminaries, anything?
Okay. What was the sixth preliminary? The sixth was requesting blessings. Okay. Which again, like how that happens, it’s some sort of, you know, your quest and some sort of light rays come from the, you know, refuge object or it dissolves into your head.
It depends on what practice you’re doing. How would you define blessings? You had to do this to me. Know, I’ve actually worked with this quite a lot, this thing of blessings and prayer. And my my idea is it’s generating a certain receptivity in in you to the guidance that the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are desperately trying to give us all the time.
You know my idea is the buddhas and bodhisattvas are like yo, hey you, woo hoo and we don’t get it because we don’t I mean I’m amazed after all these years how much I still try and figure things out myself and don’t ask for help. You know, don’t ask for any kind of psychic guidance or anything like that. I’m just trying to mull it over. Then the minute I think to do a prayer, suddenly everything becomes clear. So I think it’s that.
I think it’s just making your mind open and receptive and going, okay, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, your job description is to help all sentient beings. Here I am sitting here, know, trying to pull this thing off. I need your help now. And then it’s amazing you know it like with that sort of receptiveness and openness then they can just start to communicate with you. Like they’re trying to get your attention all the time but we’ve got like this brick wall in front and you know think that we’re on our own and it’s just not true.
So it’s like creating a condition of that kind of receptiveness. That’s the way I think of it. Yeah. This thing about you know having kind of a a blank space Yeah. Trying to do the calm abiding meditations or, I guess, any meditation for that matter if your eyes are open.
Like, usually at home, I would sit, and my altar is high enough. So if I’m looking for it and I’m far enough away, I don’t get distracted by that. But I keep a little table in front kind of sitting out like this, and it has all the little prayers and books. Is do you recommend just kinda pushing that to the side or something to get Do your preliminaries. Do all your prayers, you know.
And then just when you’re gonna do your twenty minutes or however much of calm abiding, it’s fine to just move it to the side for the moment so you won’t have that distraction. That’s no problem at all. Just pick up the cushion and face my little blank wall. Yeah. You could do that.
Either turn around you know, either have it so you can just do a little ninety degree turn yourself. It I think it’s easier to just you know, if it’s a small table to move the table. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Because you’ve already kind of been on toaster cover. Like, a great fabric. No. For sure. I’m not kidding.
Yeah. Yeah. Immediately, it’s gonna be, like, nothing. Yeah. Go right over all the Yeah, you could do that like whatever’s easy.
Yeah, it’s probably best not to move at that point to do it in another way. Yeah yeah. Could you make them for the St. John Ling bookstore please? Okay, great.
But it can’t be. Yeah. It should be plain. Yeah. No brocade.
No. Right? No. White too so that because I’m front of scene. Yeah.
You could do that. Just just have something you could drape over it while you’re doing your session. You can use a gray or a black. I’ll add that to my list of antidotes. Thanks.
Okay. Anything else for now, questions? Okay. We’ve got about twenty five minutes before our lunch break. So what I’d like to do is start on the obstacles and antidotes.
Okay? So now here we are. You know, we’ve sat down on our cushion. We’ve done all our preliminaries. We’re gonna start to work on our calm abiding meditation and things will start happening.
Okay? Distraction is the first obstacle that I wanna talk about because generally when people sit down to meditate for the very beginning, you know, they come back the next week and they go, my meditation’s a disaster. It’s made my mind so much more distracted than it ever was before, you know? Meditation makes me crazy. I can’t do this anymore.
I’m worse than I was before and I always say no, you’re not. It’s just the first time you’ve ever tried to sit down without any distraction and look at your mind. You’re just noticing what’s been there all along like sorry to break it to you but that’s what’s going on you know because this always happens, people freak out. They think especially if they think they tried to meditate to become calm you know. They’re the worst.
They come about freaking out because their mind is so distracted. And in the in the scriptures, they talk about our mind in the beginning being like a drunken monkey. Leaping wildly from branch to branch. You know, falling off, tumbling through the foliage. And that’s what it feels like when you first sit down to meditate, doesn’t it?
It just is so discouraging. Know, the first level of Sheene, I’m going to just preview what we’re going to talk about at about two thirty is being able to focus on the object at all. You’re already at the first level. So, that should give us hope. Like that’s already good.
You know, even remembering, oh, I’m supposed to be thinking about my breath. Like that’s already the first level of Sheene. You know, and that’s an accomplishment. So, this is what happens to people especially in the beginning. So, distraction especially for beginners is a huge obstacle, okay?
And so, there’s a couple of things that we can do about it. A couple of antidotes to the distraction, okay? First of all, there are a couple of main types of distraction and the one that comes up the most is thinking about other objects especially sense objects. And there’s a special flavor of distraction which is your mind jumping towards pleasurable sense objects. Know, thinking about the chocolate cake or the date on Friday night or like whatever it is.
Something that you is gonna be pleasant. You know, your mind is jumping towards a sense object. Okay? Usually, we never try and subdue these. You know, we let our mind wander off onto desire object all the time.
That’s what daydreaming is, isn’t it? There’s even a word for it, daydreaming. You know, what’s that? Your mind being distracted towards sense objects. So that’s a specific flavor of distraction and that happens most of the time.
In fact, the second flavor is negative thoughts that you have about other people. So some sort of negative hostile thoughts. We have about a thousand distractions towards pleasurable sense objects as we do one negative thought towards other people. You know, that’s about the ratio which is why, by the way, the Theravāda tradition says the root of saṃsāra is attachment. Cause that’s mostly where we’re going in our minds.
Know, we say in the Mahāyāna tradition, we say the root of saṃsāra is ignorance. They say it’s attachment. But it’s exactly why. Cause most of our distraction is attachment objects. Okay?
And then we have, you know some thoughts, somebody pissed you off, know the person at work got the promotion that you wanted and all of that. So that’s another one. And then the third kind of distraction is distraction towards a virtuous object. Thinking about the pooja you’re gonna lead this afternoon. You know, thinking about this project you’re doing for Lama Zopa.
Thinking about the spiritual program of Sai Zhing Ling and the discovering Buddhism class that you’re gonna teach tonight. Okay. That’s also not okay. I mean better that we’re thinking about virtue than not. But don’t think about it then.
You know, don’t think about it right. Carve out that time for single point of concentration. One of my students in the community center in Santa Cruz came back the next day and she’s like, you know, I just decided when I sat down on the cushion the first day that I needed to evaluate all the different kinds of meditation techniques that I’ve used in my life and decide which one. And that was my object. And I’m like, honey, that was distraction.
That wasn’t your object of concentration. I was like, decide before you sit down. You know, decide all that stuff before you sit down. Okay. In the beginning, maybe you’ll have an hour out of every day at best that you’re gonna be practicing.
You got the other twenty three for all of that other stuff. Know, like leave it. So even distraction towards virtue, you think, oh, I’m thinking about this virtuous thing. That must be good. Yeah.
It’s good in those other twenty three hours. You know, for that one hour that you’re working on your object. Don’t think about it, okay? Okay. So, what are some of the antidotes for distraction?
Okay. Check your posture. Remember I said before so many things can be corrected with your posture, okay? So check your posture, make sure you’re sitting up straight. Also make sure that your head is tilted down.
Sometimes just by lowering the tilt of your head. I noticed sometimes when I’m completely distracted, I’ll check my posture and I’m like that. If your head’s tilted back, it has You have a tendency to have a lot more distracted thoughts, okay? So, straighten up and tilt your head down, okay? Tuck your chin in.
Even if you feel like you’ve got the right head position, if you’re still bothered by a lot of distracted thoughts, just lower it, tuck it down a little bit more. Just see if that works. It’s kind of amazing actually and like I said, you know, I’ll be just floating off into outer space and I’ll just notice that you know slowly I’ve just kind of done like that and my head’s gone up. Okay. Reduce the amount of light in the room you can do to decrease your distraction.
And also again, like we’ve been talking about, make sure there’s nothing distracting in front of you. Okay? So those are some physical things that you can do with the environment. Okay? Your posture and your environment.
Now mental antidotes to distraction. Okay? Sometimes you go into distraction because you’re too intense. You’re you’re seizing onto the object like a pit bull, know? You’re just a little bit too intense.
So just relax, back off your focus a little bit, okay? Sometimes you know you’re just trying a little too hard, you’re a little too ferocious with the object. So just let it go a little bit. Okay? And that’s kind of the first level of subtlety of the mental corrections.
Okay? Now the next level, if your distraction is even worse, move to another meditation object just temporarily. Think about death and impermanence. Know? Think about, hey, you know, this is my big chance to work on my mind and I’m thinking about that party I’m gonna go to this weekend.
What? You know, that’s ridiculous. Think about those things that’ll just bring your mind down a little bit. Make it more serious. Whatever topics, death and impermanence, precious, you know, precious human rebirth is good.
Just think about this opportunity that you have to work on your mind. Get serious. Get serious. And that sometimes will just bring your mind down out of that level of distraction. Okay?
Now, the most drastic correction is go back to the breath for a while. Okay? If that doesn’t work, if you’re still distracted even after trying to think of one of those serious objects, go back to breath awareness meditation. In fact, when we talk about different objects of Shine, the breath is an object that suggested for people who have a lot of distraction energy. The breath is actually recommended for people who have this drunken monkey crazy thing too extreme.
Like we all have it but if it’s really extreme then you should choose the breath as your object. So but for this, even if you have another object than the breath, like let’s say that your object is a visualization of Śākyamūni Buddha, switch back to the breath for a little while to just bring your mind into focus. Okay? So those are the three sort of gradations of severity. And go to your breath as a last resort.
You know, switch back to breath. And then after a while, back object. You know, after you brought your mind down a little bit, switch back to another object. Now, you will notice in this list of antidotes that beating yourself up and thinking that you’re a failure as a meditator and every other being has Buddha nature but you is not listed and it’s not recommended. And this is the antidote that we apply most of the time, isn’t it?
Okay. So I can’t emphasize enough. Use the real live antidotes from the scripture. Kamalaśīla and Maitreya and Asaṇga knew what they were talking about. Okay.
You know, your Sunday school teacher in second grade didn’t. Sorry. You know, thinking that you’re a total loser is not an antidote. And just don’t go there. Just don’t go there.
And it’s what we do, right? You sit down, you think, oh, now I’m, you know, I’m gonna be a great yogi. And after ten minutes, you just think you’re a failure. This takes a long time to develop. So you have to be patient with yourself.
Think about training a puppy. You know, you don’t beat the living daylights out of your poor puppy the minute it poops on the rug. You train it slowly. Okay? So train your mind.
Be as kind to it as you would to a puppy. Don’t terrify yourself and try and be heavy handed with it. Okay? And so please don’t apply the antidote of feeling you’re a failure. It will not do any good.
It’s no antidote at all. Yeah. How about So as a as a substitute for moving to another object, how about the four immeasurables? Is that helpful? You know, that’s more of a preliminary and it’s more in terms of setting your bodhicitta motivation than it would be an antidote for distraction at this Because the point is to to switch to another subject, you wanna be a you want it to be a subject that makes your mind serious.
Now, however, having said that, if bodhicitta is your main motivation for practice anyway and if by thinking by thinking about this party that I’m going to Friday night, I’m delaying getting enlightened for the benefit of all sentient beings by x amount, then for sure. You know bodhicitta can act as an antidote for distraction if by thinking about it, it’s going to get you to straighten up, know. So for sure that’s so in that context, then it would. You know if you think of the four immeasurables or just any kind of feeling of bodhicitta, if it just makes you get serious about your meditation and sort of brings you out of that daydream, then for sure it would work. Thank you.
Yeah, yeah. Anything else about these antidotes to distraction? Okay, okay. I want to talk I’ll talk a little bit about physical discomfort because we got about ten minutes since it’s sort of a short short topic. So much of physical discomfort on the cushion is nothing more than your distracted mind trying to distract you.
You know? If it’s not going to work mentally, your distracted mind is going to make you think that if you don’t leap up right this very second, you’re going to pull a tendon in your knee and be crippled for life. You know? Or you just get restless and fidgety. You don’t really need to move around that much.
It’s just a symptom of distraction. Okay. So that restless fidgety thing, it’s not really that your body hurts. This is just as you know because of your distracted mind. Okay?
Now if you really do feel like you have some kind of pain or discomfort in your body, there’s a couple of things you could do. Check your posture. So many of us as you know as meditation progresses we start to slump the small of your back goes out. That doesn’t feel comfortable. Of course, you’re going to feel restless and fidgety.
So first of all, really check your posture especially your back. Make sure your back is really straight, okay? Another thing you can do is send the energy to that part of your body. Like really focus on it. Like if your knee hurts, really tune in to this sensation.
And often it will change from pain to just sensation and gradually dissolve. It’s really interesting if you just you know, think about the feeling and really focus on the feeling for a minute, then a lot of times it’ll just dissolve on its own. Okay? You can also, if you’re disturbed by a lot of physical discomfort and restlessness, before you start to meditate, you can kind of do a body sweep, like kind of go down your body relaxing each part of your body. Especially if you meditate, let’s say at the end of a long day when you’ve been kind of sitting up at a desk and you’re sort of tight and stiff and your neck is stiff.
Right around the time or maybe right after watching the breath for a few moments, just scan down your body and just purposely just relax every part of your body. Okay? And I don’t mean relax like slump, but I mean relax like whatever kind of tense muscles that you’re holding. Just relax them, you know. So kind of go down your body checking every part and just making sure that it’s completely relaxed.
Okay? You can also take a few breaths and visualize the whatever discomfort goes out with your exhalation. Okay? If you’re really feeling a lot of discomfort and you’re feeling like you need to get up, just try exhaling and visualizing that the discomfort goes out with your exhalation. There’s another trick you can do.
Visualize your body as hollow. Okay? And you can do this. And again, these are all antidotes to discomfort. You can switch from the object to one of these antidotes temporarily until the discomfort goes away.
Okay? So in visualizing your body as hollow, you can kind of start at your chest and just imagine all of the solid parts of your body, the organs, the blood, the bones, everything just dissolves into light. So you’re just left with your skin which is sort of like a balloon filled with this light, you know. And that might help if you’re just feeling aches and pains and things just visualizing it all. The solid achy parts just dissolving into light might help with the physical discomfort.
Okay. And like I said before, it takes a while to get used to this sitting cross legged business and you just have to be patient with that too. And it does really change, you know. It it feels uncomfortable at first and you have to use these props and the cushions and things. But in time, it gets easier and easier, you know.
So it will become easier if you just practice. So those are just a couple of little tricks of dealing with physical discomfort. Okay. Any questions about And again, don’t injure yourself for real. You know, if you’re really feeling like some part of your body is in excruciating pain, you know, don’t do this hardcore thing and feel like you can’t move at all.
You know, there’s this teacher called Goenka that taught Vipassana meditation to a lot of people in India and they just A lot of the you know famous western Dharma teachers studied with Goenka and they had to sit something like you know sixteen to eighteen hours a day and they had these sessions that were told not to move at all. Like they couldn’t shift at all. They had to get into the posture and for an hour. You know, just not to even move a muscle, not to adjust at all. But this is not that tradition, know?
The Tibetans sit there kind of slumped over like a sack of potatoes. We can do better than that but you know, you can you can move. And if it really does hurt, it’s okay to get up and take a break. Okay? Okay.
Any other questions? I think all I could do to them if they moved. I don’t know if it was like the Zen thing that got beat up with the big stick. I’m not sure. I think it was peer pressure at that point.
I think peer pressure was even worse than the big stick. I’m not sure. Okay. So let’s take a break now for lunch then this afternoon. We’ll continue with the other obstacles and antidotes and then get into the nine levels of shinne and then the proper conditions for really being able to develop, you know, at the higher levels of shinne.
Okay? So if you think of any questions over the lunch break, bring them back and we’ll deal with them. Okay. Thank you very much. Can I ask you before you take them?
Yeah. Could you do an offering for some food just to measure them? Oh, sure. Like now? Yeah.
Or over okay. Better Rubina does that. I think it’s kinda nice because I’ve been Well, is kinda nice. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So let’s think. Where is it? Over on the It’s in the bookstore. In the bookstore.
In the back. In the back of the bookstore. Bath in. Okay. So let’s visualize this wonderful lunch that Michelle made for us in the bookstore, in the book cafe.
And let’s offer it to all the Buddhism Bodhisattvas, all the enlightened beings, all holy beings. And as we eat, let’s think that we’re offering it. We’ve got a little Buddha inside of our heart, And all of this wonderful food turns into this blissful nectar. And as we eat every bite, let’s visualize that we’re making offerings to the little Buddha that we have inside of our heart and that we’re not eating it out of any kind of attachment, but we’re only eating it to be able to maintain our bodies that we can continue practicing on the path for the benefit of all beings. So let’s eat the lunch with bodhicitta motivation that we’re eating it not just because it’s delicious, but in order to nourish our bodies that we can carry on on the path for the benefit of all.
Okay. Thank you. And thank you to Michelle who’s been on. I see people still moving around. Let’s see who are missing.
Lynn and. Oh, is she down? Okay. So while we’re waiting, is there any questions that came up when you were mulling things over, hearing about Lynn’s three month retreat? I heard that was the topic of the lunchtime conversation.
Noise. What to do about noise, the distraction of noise? Yeah. Is it possible just to have noise around you and then just move around? You know, it’s best to do whatever you can possibly do to meditate in a quiet place just so you don’t have to struggle.
You know, it’s just really hard. In the if you live in the city, it’s really hard. You know, it’s it’s what do you do? Here you know, there’s buses going up and down and all this stuff and traffic and boom boxes and stuff. But if there’s a place in your house that’s quieter, Chucky for example has her meditation area in her closet.
You know, you have a big closet, you can actually go in and shut the door and make it quieter. There are ways to deal with noise just like you deal with any other distraction. You know, if it starts to distract you just like distracting thoughts, just bring your attention back to the object over and over and over again from the noise. But as beginners especially, it’s really good and when we talk about the qualities of a place, a quiet place is certainly preferable just so you don’t set yourself up for failure in very beginning. But sometimes it can’t be helped depending on, you know, where you live.
Yeah. What’s the relation between shine and the jhanas? Shine leads to the jhanas. Again, the jhanas are something that are more prioritized in the Theravadan tradition. Going into the jhanas like the four jhanas which correspond when they’re taught in the Tibetan tradition, they correspond to the four form realm absorptions.
And in the Tibetan tradition, it’s interesting. It’s thought that you’re not meant to go too far into the jhanas. The first one is good. The first one, the first jhana. But to go too far into the jhanas interferes with your ability to practice tantra.
So eventually in the Tibetan tradition, you’re leading up to the, you know, potential to practice the tantric path. So you don’t go too far in the direction of going up in the jhanas in the way you do in the in the Theravadin tradition. So again, it’s sort of a different emphasis, different tenets and a, you know, different way of practicing. So they’re not emphasized much in the Tibetan tradition. But you only get to that first absorption, the first jhana via shine, you know, but then not to go beyond that in the Tibetan tradition.
Yeah. Can you explain more what jhanas are? You know, that’s sort of outside because they’re not really emphasized in the Tibetan tradition. I’d rather not get too into that right now. There these meditative concentrate I mean, just for now to say that there are these rarified levels of meditative concentration and they’re those things that the Buddha’s first teachers were teaching, you know, the attainment of those.
But they’re not outside of cyclic existence. They’re just certain, you know, meditative absorptions and meditative states that you can get to through developing your single point of concentration, but they’re not a goal in and of themselves. They’re just part of the path. But like I said, for the Tibetan tradition, they’re not even emphasized at all. Different things are emphasized in in that tradition.
And I don’t even know that much about them. I’ve read about them a bit, but I don’t you know, I know the names of them. But as far as the characteristics of them, I don’t really know that much about them myself. Coming? Okay.
Any other questions while we’re waiting for Lynn to come back? Oh, she buying things? Lynn, buy things later. We’re gonna have a break. Uh-oh.
Busted. Okay. No. I’m just teasing. Okay.
Anyway, we’ll go ahead and start. So there are a couple of things that I wanted to mention. We talked this morning about the obstacle of distraction. Okay? And then there are a couple of other things that I want to mention.
Now, there is a part of your mind that you use to detect distraction. Okay? And the Tibetan word for this is she zhin. Seshing. And it’s a part of your mind that’s used to detect both distraction and dullness.
And it’s often translated introspection, vigilance, watchfulness. Okay? It’s sort of the watch person of your mind, the watchdog of your mind to detect if you’re experiencing agitation or dullness. Okay? Now, mindfulness, the word mindfulness is the part of your mind that allows you to stay on the object.
Okay? So mindfulness is the quality of mind that enables you to stay on the object. And then this vigilance or introspection is the part of your mind that tells you if you’ve, you know, gotten into distraction or dullness. So it’s a different part of your mind. Its only job is to tell you that.
Its only job is to notice whether you’re off. So it’s the watch person. It’s not the police that drags your mind back to the object, that’s mindfulness. It’s just this part of your mind that alerts you to the fact that you’re off track. So one of the things that we really want to develop as we’re developing our single point of concentration is to develop that capacity for vigilance and introspection.
And you’ll find when you’re meditating in the beginning, it’s not very tuned in. And you’ll space out for ten minutes and you won’t even notice it. And then all of a sudden you’ll be like, oh my god, I just planned my daughter’s wedding reception in this session instead of meditating, know? So one of the things that we really want to do is train that train train that vigilance, that introspection. Boom.
So you notice it the minute you’re off track. Okay? And that’s why a lot of your really early meditative experience is just gonna be constantly going off, coming back, going off, coming back, going off, you know. It’s going to be on the first level of Shine as we’ll we’ll see is like, basically it’s just like a fly landing on the object for a split second and then buzzing off again. So in the beginning, you’re just training, you know, your vigilance to notice when you’re off and coming back to the object with your mindfulness.
Okay? So that’s a really key key point and a key thing to develop. Okay? Now, one of the things that is often a misconception, you know, I said this morning that people come to class because they want to become calm and reduce their stress. And so often at beginning classes, I ask people, you know, just off the street, so what do you think meditation is?
And there’s a very common misconception that meditation means emptying your mind of thoughts. Has anybody heard this? Does this sound really familiar? The goal of meditation is to empty your mind of thoughts. Well, I say good luck.
Yeah. It’s your mind’s job description to think. And there was a big debate that happened in Tibet at eight hundred and our hero Kamalaśīla, right, the author of the stages of meditation was brought from India to debate. Okay? And this is the story.
Okay? It was very cool. Shāntarakshita was this famous abbot in India and he was invited to Tibet to build the first monastery. And he tried to build it and there are all of these like evil spirits and stuff that kept, you know, there’s a story that they tried to build and during the night, these evil spirits would come and tear everything down. And so he said, okay, we need bigger guns.
And so he brought Padmasambhava to subdue all the evil spirits of Tibet. So Shāntarakshita and Padmasambhava were a team. Know, they called Shāntarakshita the great bodhisattva abbot. That was what they always called him honorifically. In Tibet at that time, there was a Chinese monk who was very famous and they called him Heshang Mahāyāna.
Now Huashang apparently is just the Chinese word for fully ordained monk but anyway, there was this monk and he was teaching that the goal of meditation is to empty your mind of thoughts. So they decided, Shāntarakshita is like, this doesn’t sound right at all. That’s not the goal of meditation. The goal of meditation is to see emptiness directly and cut through your suffering at the root. So he decided that he was gonna have a debate with the monk, but then he thought, no, we really wanna win.
My student, Kamala Śīla, in India is even better than I am and he understands this stuff even more. So I’m gonna invite him to come all the way from India to debate Heshang Mahāyāna about this thing. And so they had this big debate. I think it lasted for weeks. It’s really famous.
It’s called the great Samye debates because Samye was the first monastery they built in Tibet and this is where the big showdown happened. Kamala Silla won. Know, Heshang Mahāyāna goes back to China. And so in Tibet, the tradition was not that the goal is to empty your mind. Now, it’s very interesting where this idea came from.
Remember before the Eiffel Tower in the Transamerica Pyramid, right? The direct realization of emptiness is a non conceptual direct realization. It’s like walking out and looking directly at the Transamerica Pyramid. You’re not using mental images. So since the goal was non conceptual, Heshang thought, oh to get to the goal, I empty my mind of thoughts.
And so that’s where this idea that meditation is emptying your mind of thoughts. You can see where it comes from. It’s misguided but you can see. You know, it’s like, oh, if, you know, this meditative goal is non conceptual, Gee, by emptying my mind of thoughts, must be able to get to that. Okay?
But the way it’s taught in the Tibetan tradition is no, you use your conceptual mind. You know, you use those intellectual understandings of emptiness and that’s why we study so much. You have to know, you know, it’s like they say, you have to be able to aim at the bull’s eye. You have to have a bull’s eye that you can see to aim at to shoot the arrow. And so that’s why we do so much study to really understand deeply the nature of reality because then you use your conceptual thought to get there and gradually gradually gradually get closer and closer until boom, you’ve walked out the door and seen the Transamerica Pyramid rather than just imagining it in your mind.
So I just wanted to blast that misconception out of the water that the goal of meditation is to empty your mind of thoughts. It’s your mind’s job description, you know? Yes, there are non conceptual meditative states but they’re attained through using your conceptual mind and using that kind of analytical meditation to get there. Okay? Any questions about that?
I know some people have heard of that Samnye debate. They’re nodding their heads. That’s that’s the thing. Okay. Let’s see.
So basically, what it feels like we’re doing at the very beginning when we start to meditate is, like I said, constantly returning our mind to the object over and over and over again, you know. And they say it’s sort of like, let’s say you go to Starbucks and you decide to sit outside at one of the little tables outside and you have your mocha frappuccino with the whipped cream and the little chocolate sprinkles and you’re sitting there at the table and people are walking past. So, you see them go, they’re coming going, you know, those are your thoughts. You stay with the frappuccino, you don’t get up and follow somebody down the street, know. So you’ll see the thoughts coming and going.
Stay with the objects. You know, the the breath or the picture of the you know, the visualization of the deity, that’s your mocha frappuccino. Stay. You’ve no doubt, you know, the passersby will come, they will go, you will notice them, don’t get up and follow them down the street. Okay?
And so that’s what’s happening with our meditation. For sure your mind will, know, have distraction, just keep bringing it back to the object. Keep bringing it back to the object. Okay? What about objects?
What kind of object for you Shime? Okay. And I mentioned already the breath is an object that’s really emphasized in the Buddhist texts a lot. And in fact, the four foundations of mindfulness that’s practiced in the Theravāda tradition, mindfulness of the breath is usually the first one that’s taught. The breath is easy, it’s with you all the time, You know, it’s a very it doesn’t involve a lot of concepts, it’s not like one of these complex visualizations so it’s taught a lot.
And it’s also taught like I mentioned before as a specific antidote for people with a lot of distraction. So if you just have a mind that’s even more crazy than our usual distracted mind, you may want to choose the breath as your object. There’s specific objects that are antidotes for certain extreme states of mind, you know. Certain extreme, you know, kind of mental afflictions that you’re really subject to. For example, if you have a lot of attachment energy, you’re supposed to meditate on the thirty two disgusting substances of the body, you know, to cut your attachment and that’s what you pick as the object.
For most of us that are just sort of normal in terms of our mental afflictions, right, we have a pretty mixed bag. In the Tibetan tradition, it’s really emphasized to choose some sort of body of a Buddha as your meditation object rather than the breaths. You can choose anything. I mean you But by the way, it needs to be a mental image, you know, either the breath or if you’re choosing a physical object, it’s not like you pick the bell and you just stare at the bell. It’s not a sense consciousness that develops single pointed concentration.
It’s mental consciousness. So if I pick the bell as the object, you know, I would look at it, get really familiar with it and then I’d meditate on the mental image of my bell inside my head. So it’s really important. This thing of staring at a candle, forget it. That’s not know, that’s not Buddhism.
Okay? It’s a mental image. You can only develop single pointed concentration if you’re using a mental image of a external object. Not it’s not about staring at it. Okay?
Now in our tradition, it’s really emphasized to use some sort of a body of a Buddha because then there’s a whole lot of extra virtue. You know, it’s not neutral like the bell or like the breath. Okay? You can use use the breath, you know, as an antidote to distraction. But to use the breath for your whole meditative career to go all the way up to calm abiding usually isn’t recommended.
They usually say use some sort of an image of a Buddha. Okay? It can be Śākyamūni Buddha. It can be one of the meditational deities if you’re really into Tārā, know, Chenrezig, whatever. That’s fine.
That’s fine. Pick an image of a Buddha because then it has extra benefit for your mind. Now, even though you don’t develop, you know, the single point of concentration by staring at the image of the Buddha, you don’t put a picture in front of you and stare at it, That’s not gonna develop Shine, but you have to be familiar with what it looks like. Okay? So it’s fine to have an actual physical image to check, you know, and get used to it.
Like whether if it’s Śākyamūni Buddha, let’s just use Śākyamūni Buddha, you know, get used to the way the robes are, the golden color, the crown protrusion, the way the hair is, all of that stuff. So you can pick a physical image, picture statue to get used to it. But then when you’re actually doing the meditation, it needs to be a mental image. Okay? So it’s some sort of body of the Buddha as the default the default Śākyamūni Buddha.
If you have a connection to some meditational deity, you can use that. Now, for those of you who’ve had tantric initiation, you can meditate on the self generation. Okay? So you’ve had a tantric empowerment and you do some sort of sādhana practice where you arise in the form of a deity, you can use that as your object and it’s extremely powerful because it’s very virtuous, right? I mean we’re doing this whole thing to visualize ourself as the deity, use that, Use that.
And in fact, that’s the point of tantra. They say it’s not, you know And for those of you who don’t know what I mean, don’t worry about it. But these these are these practices where you’re empowered by going through a certain ritual to meditate on yourself in the form of a Buddha figure and then you can use that as your object of meditation. They say, you know, use that use Shine on the object on the yourself as the deities which is called self generation and then when you’re tired of that, you really are tired and your mind starts to fade out, then switch to the mantra, okay? So for those of you who’ve done deity retreat, know, often you’re given right recite a hundred thousand mantras and you’re like, okay, I’ve got two weeks off of work, I have to hurry up and do this thing.
So what do you do? The minute you self generate, you immediately start with a mantra and according to all the commentaries, that’s completely wrong. You’re supposed to do Shine on self generation until you can’t, you know, your mind gets so tired and then you switch to the mantra just when your mind is tired. And this is often misunderstood and in most retreats that most people do, they think the whole point is mantra. Mantra is like, you know, when you’ve you’re fading out, that’s like second best.
And actually, had the wonderful privilege to do a three year deity retreat and the commitment was for the amount of time and not for the amount of mantras. So I could spend a lot of time on Shine on the self generation and that’s really best. Don’t do this thing of squeezing because you you know it’s just ridiculous. Don’t do this thing of squeezing your mantra commitments into the shortest amount of time possible. It’s just there’s not much benefit.
Okay so that’s best actually if you have one of these tantric empowerments using the self generation as the object is awesome because then there are all these additional benefits also. Okay. Okay, any question about objects? Clear? Yeah, Drolkar and then?
So when you do like a preliminary practice like Vajrasattva, so you visualize Vajrasattva, can you use that as an object to after doing the the mantra? That’s an interesting question because generally it’s either with the front generation. I mean, Vajrasattva is quite different because even though it’s a tantric practice, you don’t really do the self generation as Vajrasattva. I think, yeah, I think you could do that if you wanted to stop if that was your main practice and if you wanted to stop and get the visualization of Vajrasattva on the crown of your head really, really clear, that would probably work. I don’t see why not.
It’s interesting because I’ve never heard anyone comment on that but it’s an object just like anything else and it it probably would definitely work just as well as a front generation deity. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Because the thing with Vajrasattva is like, you know, when you read the commentaries, there are all these subtly different colors of white for all the, you know, the mantras like abalone and then the moon cushion’s like moon and this is like whatever and you can get all of those really clear and look at, you know, and use that as your object.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how are these objects or when do you decide to do these objects as opposed to the analytical ones you mentioned before of impermanence or emptiness and so on? Yeah.
Okay, those are two different types of meditation, okay? And for what I usually recommend So this is still the single point one then? Yeah, this isn’t kind of an either or. It’s like for your single point of concentration, it’s good to pick one of these objects and spend like usually what I recommend for people in their daily practice to spend a certain period of time just on developing single point of concentration with one of these objects. With one of those objects.
And not the analytical And then to spend a certain portion of their meditation time on a lam rim analytical subject. So it’s really good even if you just before your session spend like ten minutes on breath awareness. That’s really good while you’re still really developing your capacity to meditate single pointedly. And then do part of your time doing analytical meditation. I actually have friend oh, I should mention this book, Calming the Mind.
This is a really good reference book and I think they have these in the library, right? It’s by or at the bookstore. Hope so. Hope so. Anyway, this is your It’s a order.
It’s very nice. Yeah. This is a really good reference about all the things I’m talking about today except in a lot more detail. And this is by a lama named Gen Lamrimpa who passed away a few years ago and he was actually one of my teachers. And these teachings, he did a year long Shine retreat in Washington State in I think it was nineteen eighty eight.
And Alan Wallace was the translator and so these are the transcripts of that, all the teachings he gave during that year long retreat and it was really and I have a friend who did that retreat and she picked the breath as an object and then she did the breath for years and years and years and years and years. And there was a certain point where she wasn’t balancing out her practice with lam rim. You know with these lam rim realizations and there was a certain point that some of us felt you know years and years and years into it that some certain problems were coming up and we were kind of feeling wow she needs to balance with focusing on other parts of the path. You know, she was sort of getting too tilted and like losing her perspective is what it felt like to us. She was focusing so much on Shine and like I said, that’s just the tool to have these realizations and you need to balance out your practice even though your tool isn’t finally honed yet, still in order not to derail completely, you need to constantly be reminding yourself of the other aspects of the path as well.
So for most of us or even if you’re doing a Shine retreat, for example, I lived in this place in Central California called Sshine Land. That’s actually the name of it and it was a special place found by Lama Zopa where people could come and develop this. But he always gave us a lot of other practices to do, you know, not only the preliminary practices but really focus that we do lamrim meditation just so we would get the point, know, and we wouldn’t derail, we wouldn’t go into this blissful thing. We’d remember other sentient beings, we’d remember death and impermanence. So it’s really good to balance even if you’re focusing primarily on shine in a retreat situation to balance it out with the other aspects of the path.
That’s a good question. Yeah. So of course, I just did a three month retreat where I just didn’t do it exactly as she’s missing. But okay, so what you’re saying is that when you do the Shine portion, that’s really separate, not just from the mantra, but from, let’s say, contemplating the lam rim points and all. So can you do it like can you go in and go back and forth or do you like I’m gonna do ten minutes here and then or do you know what I’m saying?
Yeah generally what they say is figure out how much time you’re gonna spend on, for example, and then just do it. Don’t just start because the the danger is you’re gonna start to get distracted and you’ll be like, oh, I’m getting distracted anyway. I should jump to Lam. Might as well just do Lam Rim. And then that’s just remember the third level of distraction is towards another virtuous object.
So that’s the danger there. Now in any one given session, okay, like let’s say for example you’re doing sādhana on a deity, okay? So there’s a certain point you go through all the preliminaries in the beginning, right? All the seven limbs occur in separate, you know, parts of the preliminaries. You do the self generation then do Shine on the deity for however long you’ve decided to do it for that session.
Okay? Don’t throw in the towel because you get distracted and that’s the problem with saying, oh I’ll just go to Lam Rim and go back and forth. It’s just another distraction. So let’s say you’ve decided Or start saying mantras. Yeah.
And then once you start saying mantras, then you say mantras. You’re not gonna go back to trying to do your name. Okay. See, that’s Yeah. That’s where I was thinking.
Not a good idea. Because then because it’s just your distracted mind deciding to get distracted towards another virtuous object. And you think it’s okay because it’s a virtuous object. But just what I did in my retreat was I would spend x amount of time and I’d say, okay, this is the amount of time I know before my mind gets tired, know. So I can really do a nice Shine session for this amount of time, then I’m going to do mantra for this amount of time.
Now, there is a way if you’re doing mantra that, you know, there’s certain visualizations that go along with mantra recitation for these practices. And you can also do lamrim meditations while you’re reciting mantras. But don’t don’t go back and forth. Don’t mix them. Is the piece that you can take out.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And every little chunk, know, just decide ahead of time. Decide before you sit on your cushion how much time and then just stick with that. I mean, obviously, you know, if you were experiencing like gross agitation and you need to switch to another subject as an antidote, that’s a different story, okay? But that’s different from just switching back and forth in your practice. Yeah, okay.
Yeah. I might be misunderstanding but shinne is single pointed concentration. Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m using shinne which is actually the perfection of it. I should say single pointed concentration, yeah.
But when we do analytical meditation, we are trying to stay on a single topic, right? On an object. Yeah. You stay on a single topic but that’s a little bit of a different process than for exam I think what Lynn is saying is, for example, she’s meditating on the on, like the the body of a Buddha as her subject. Right?
But then when she starts to get distracted, she just switches to a lam rim topic. Now, if you’re doing an analytical meditation on a lam rim topic, like I said before, you use that single point of concentration to deepen your realization when you get there. I mean, the main meditation then is analytical meditation. So you go through the different logical points. You’re not meditating on the body of a Buddha anymore, you’re meditating on impermanence, let’s say.
So you go through the logical points and then when you get that realization, use single pointed concentration to deepen the realization. Okay. And and that’s a whole separate thing than doing a separate single pointed concentration session just to develop that capacity using an object like the body of a Buddha. Know? It’s the same for the mantra.
Which part is the same? That you’re doing single pointed concentration on your mantra. No. No. No.
After you do in within the context of a tantric sādhana, okay. After you generate yourself as the deity then that becomes your object of Shine for a certain period of time. Let’s say ten minutes. You use that and you you use that as your object. Do do single pointed concentration on that for like ten minutes.
That you’ve figured out that ten minutes ahead of time. Then at the end of that, you can go to mantra and at that point then you do other visualizations in relation to the mantra. You drop, you know, you still have the identification of yourself as the deity but you’re not using it as the object of Shine at that point. And it becomes a little complicated because in a tantric sādhana, you’re doing about like four or five different types of practice in one session. So it becomes a little complicated.
But the point I’m making is if you have the capacity, you know, if you’ve been empowered to visualize yourself as one of these bodies of the Buddha, then use that as your object of Shine and have your Shine session kind of in the middle of your whole tantric sādhana as a whole separate piece right in the middle. And then decide ahead of time how long you’re going to spend just focusing on you know the mental image of yourself as the deity. And then you go on to other things and then you can do a lam rim piece after that. Let’s say you have a three hour session that you’re doing a tantric sādhana which is pretty typical for a retreat. The preliminary stuff takes maybe like forty five minutes and then you say, okay, now I’m gonna have half an hour for Shine on myself as the deity, half an hour of mantra recitation, you know, lamrim meditation then go on like that.
So you do it in little portions. But to do that in daily practice is quite difficult unless you have a lot of time to practice. You know, that’s that’s more of something that you would do in a retreat situation where each session is three hours. For most of us in daily life, we don’t have a whole three hour session that we can kind of put everything in that context. But at least every day it would be good to have some period of time spent on Shine, some period of time spent on Lam Rim.
And on a daily basis, it may even be in different sessions, you know. And actually, Shine is a really good thing to do early in the morning because distraction is such a problem for us in terms of meditating on a daily basis. I said to set up a place in your house, doing it in the same place at the same time of day is really good. Because once again, that habit energy builds up that seven in the morning, I go sit down for forty five minutes. You know, and that’s what your mind just generally kind of subdues.
So the same time, the same place, it’s good in the beginning to do shorter sessions as then you don’t get discouraged. Okay? Do it every single day. Don’t skip your meditation all week and decide on Sunday you’re gonna do a four hour marathon. It won’t do any good.
It’s sort of like pounding in a nail, know? You just have little hits that pounds it in deeper and deeper and deeper, you know. So, even just a little even fifteen minutes every day in the morning, same time, same place every day is great. You know, don’t do this marathon thing, you’re not really going to develop your mind that way at all. It’s also really good to do when you’re not too tired or not too full of food.
You know, don’t go out to seed syllabler and eat a t bone with like baked potatoes and God knows what all and come home at ten o’clock and expect to do a Shine session. Know, just forget about it. Do it every day but like do it under the right conditions every day. And morning is really best because you’re not distracted you know. In fact, even nowadays I really try and get up before everybody else at Land of Medicine Buddha while it’s still dark, it’s really quiet, they’re not banging around in the kitchen, know, I can have a nice chunk and my mind’s not distracted.
I’m not thinking about all those emails and all those students that want to see me and all of this stuff, know. So morning is good. It’s good to do twice a day if you can but don’t expect your evening session to be as good as your morning session. So if you can just wake up a little bit earlier and have a I promise you the whole rest of your day will go so much better if you have a nice morning meditation. I found that when I was working before doing long retreat, if I could do my practices in the morning really nicely, it didn’t matter how chaotic the rest of the day got.
I was coming from this really grounded place. It was really nice. So that’s that’s ways to just set up your daily practice in ways that’ll work for you. Yeah. Did you have something else, Lenny?
I don’t know if this is the right time to talk about, you know, the daily stuff I was just I think when you talk about concentrating on the body of the deity, I noticed in the in the commentary I was reading by Lama Yeshe on this practice that it wasn’t really clear the way the commentary was written for me Whether you use use the time to concentrate on different parts of the body or just you pick one part like the third eye for example and stay on that for the entire time. So I never ever you know, like, oh, and what about that waist? It’s very slim. Yeah. And then, oh, yeah.
And I’ve gotta have bigger bigger shoulders. And you know what I mean? I would go for my entire body. I was not focusing single pointedly on anyone except for the third eye for a portion of it. Right.
Because that was Right. That could I could Okay. There’s techniques. I’d rather not talk about it now. Right.
But maybe we can either talk after or during the break a little bit, cause there’s definitely different techniques if you’re using the, you know, your self generation as the object. But maybe we’ll see if we’ve got time at the end or Another time. Yeah. Or another time or just after or something. Because yeah.
Yeah. I I I know exactly what you mean and there are techniques in in some of the commentaries that I’ve read that kind of explain how you deal with that. You know, what do you do? Is your mind wandering all around to all the different aspects or So we can talk about that. Yeah.
Is it important that the object of meditation be a visual image? I mean, though it’s mental, it’s still I mean, even though it’s mental consciousness, it’s if it’s a visualization, then it’s a visual image. Yeah. Versus what? What are you thinking of Maybe just an idea.
Like, maybe if you’re not good visualization. Yeah. The idea of the Buddha. Yeah. There are certain objects that are concepts that you can use.
Concepts are a little bit harder not to build a story about and that’s why visual images are good because even concepts that are mentioned as antidotes to these things like attachment, you know, and you’re supposed to think of the disgusting fluids in the body or something, you know, or for example impermanence is an antidote for something but it’s too easy to make it really conceptual and to kind of build a storyline. However, there are people that just have a lot of trouble visualizing and then to just focus on the feeling of a Buddha, know, or just the vibe for lack of a better word. I think it’s a great word. It’s really, you know, evocative of a Buddha. Know, just get that feeling of a Buddha and just just a fuzzy outline is okay.
You know, some people are great at details and they get every eyelash and like every hair curl. But if it’s just sort of this golden, you know, vague golden being with really the feeling. And then you may find in time that the details start to clarify. And that’s okay. That’s okay.
We don’t expect everybody to be like perfect tonka artist image. Know, they just say, start at least with the rough outline you know for the Buddha, two arms, two legs, one head like that and just the feeling of it so that’s fine. Yeah. Yeah. Clarity of the mind.
I’ve read that that’s a good meditation object. Do you wanna comment on that? Okay, that We’ll get into that. There’s one kind of meditation called Mahāmudrā which is meditating, using the mind itself as the object, you know. And in Buddhism, the mind is defined as that which is clear and aware.
And clarity in this context mean it reflects the object. The mind by definition always has to have an object. That’s why I’m saying you can’t clear the mind of thoughts. Like by definition, the mind has to have an object. So what happens in that kind of meditation is you sort of step one step back from the objects of the mind, whether it’s the sense perceptions or the thoughts, to the very mind itself that’s doing the perceiving, which is just clarity and awareness, you know.
But that’s actually quite an advanced technique and it’s easy to sort of that is definitely a technique of Shine and it’s called Mahāmudrā and it’s quite an advanced technique and you need to be really clear about what the mind is otherwise you can easily go into this subtle dullness that we’re gonna talk about next. But yes, the mind itself can be used as an object and it’s a very powerful object if you get really clear understandings or clear teachings about the nature of mind. You know, don’t just do this thing that people do and they hear these things and Dzogchen teachings and they say just abide naturally in the nature of mind. So what are they doing? They’re just sitting down and spacing out and they think that that means to it means something completely different like these words that in English seem like some warm fuzzy thing are actually really specific philosophical terms with specific meaning.
So you need to get really good teachings on that before you know what they’re you’re doing because it really is quite an advanced practice. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ve I’ve noticed sometimes if I try to focus on a deity, I I it’s like almost like a combination of like, a single pointedness and an and an analysis. And how how do you kind of go back and forth in order to build your image?
Yeah. Yeah. The image and then focus on it. And then as it begins to go down, you kind of rebuild it against a kind of combined analysis with that point. Yeah.
That’s true. Especially beginning. I’m so glad you brought that up because, you know, it is a thing that, you know, you’ll start to lose your grasp of the image and then you need to build up the visualization again and that’s you know the word analysis used in that context of refreshing your visualization then hanging with it single pointedly. So, you’re right. You know, you’d start to kind of lose and drift off and then you need to build it up again, fill in the details.
And you’ll find as your practice progresses, more and more of the details become clear. But that’s a good point. I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah. Because because I kind of when when Lynn was talking about the deity, because that’s really interesting to me too.
It’s like, you know, there are there’s so many different aspects Right. To to, like, kind of recall. So it’s like, you know, you do a certain amount of analysis, and then you have to just stop that and just Just, yeah. Sit there. Yeah.
And, again, you sort of need to decide what level of complexity you’re going to get to as your object, know, for any given moment and then stop your analysis there. Like say for this for this meditation, I’m going to have the rough outline and then the third eye is gonna be really clear and that’s my object. You know and then over the years, you fill in more and more of the details. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly and get more and more detail. Yeah. Yeah. So kind of decide where to stop because otherwise it just becomes discursive thought. Yeah.
You’re just running all over the You know? Yeah. I got my foot. Exactly. Right.
So in the beginning, you know, to get the outline with all the numbers of arms and legs and heads and things is a good start with the right color and then, you know, as you med it but but don’t get too into, you know, filling in. But you’re right. You do have to keep rechecking. Like, if you totally space out and you’re back at the wedding reception again, come back, you know, build up the outline and and focus again. So you do keep having to repeat that process.
Yeah. We okay? Okay. And we’ll do more about the deity maybe at the end of the day if we have time because that’s a whole specific way of of doing chine on that kind of object. Okay.
So, another obstacle is sleepiness, dullness. Okay? And this can range anywhere from just a dull kind of listless spaced out state of mind to totally falling asleep on your cushion. I mean, a couple of people maybe have done that, right? You keel over.
We’ve had long retreats with Lama Zopa Rinpoche. I should say long retreats where people actually sort of keel over and then there’s a big crash in their phones. So that would be gross dullness. Okay. So there’s some antidotes to this also.
There’s physical ones and mental ones as you may have come to expect by now. So the first kind of physical antidote is again check your posture. Know, so many times when we’re in dullness, what are we doing? Slumping. Slumping with our chin on our chest.
You know? And then, of course, how are you gonna so straighten up straighten up your back, and then lift your chin. Just like I said for the distraction, having your chin too far up can lead to distraction. But if you’re totally like that, that’s gonna lead to dullness. So lift, you know, straighten up and and tilt your chin back a little bit if you’re experiencing dullness.
Okay? Mental corrections. Remember for the agitation, I said let go a little bit mentally. Just kind of let it go. You may be too tenacious.
For this one, tighten up. Tighten up the focus. Okay? Tighten up. Tighten up the intensity.
Buckle down a little bit if you’re just kind of getting fuzzy. Okay. That’s a subtle level. You’re just starting to buzz out, fuzz out a little bit. Tighten up the intensity.
Change the object to something inspiring. Okay? Precious human rebirth, thinking about your lamas, know, thinking about inspiring subjects to sort of give you a jolt, know, wake you up a little bit, inspire you a little bit, get the fire going a little bit, okay? Focusing on some, just any kind of holy object luminosity in your mind, precious human rebirth, something that’s gonna be inspiring. Okay.
The ultimate drastic correction, especially for gross dullness that you keep sort of nodding off, just you can get up off your cushion, splash cold water in your face, get some fresh air, that’s what we needed to do at about eleven fifteen this morning, remember when everybody was falling asleep, know, get some fresh air, get air moving, can even pace back and forth, look at a view for a couple of minutes, okay? And then go back to your cushion. But just get up and walk around and just you know rejuvenate a little bit. And that’s the ultimate drastic correction and that’s only if you’re totally falling asleep, okay? So that’s the third level.
Now you use your vigilance, your introspection to determine if you’re experiencing dullness also. Okay? So it’s really important again that introspection, that part of your mind that just checks that you’re off base. And there’s the biggest obstacle to meditators is what’s called subtle dullness. Okay?
Subtle dullness. jing ba thramo is the Tibetan word for it because it so often feels like a really good meditation. And people who can sit in this relaxed state for hours and hours and hours are probably in subtle dullness. Okay? You’re not completely off the object, you haven’t totally fallen asleep but you’re in this dulled out state of mind.
Now there are three qualities to a good meditation. And in subtle dullness, one of these is missing. Okay. So what are these qualities? The first one is fixation.
And that just means are you on the object or not? Okay, fixation. The second one is clarity. And that doesn’t refer so much to the object like if you have the outline perfect in the third eye and all of that. That refers to your mind.
Clarity means is your mind clear? Are you sort of bright eyed and bushy tailed? You’re not fuzzy. You know, you’re not It’s not foggy. Your mind is clear, okay?
And the third one is intensity. Intensity. And that means you’re really into it. It And this is the kind of feeling you have when you’re reading a good book or watching a good movie and you’re just on the edge of your seat. You can’t put it down.
I remember Harry Potter number four, the one about the tri wizard tournament. Remember that one? The last two thirds of the book. I stayed up all night. You know, I was living in my yurt out in Arizona twice a year we’d take a break and we’d read Harry Potter because that was like you know the only thing you could That’s very funny.
And I had an oil lamp and I had to refill my oil lamp like three or four times because I I couldn’t you know there they are in the maze with the things and the sphinx. How could you you know so that’s that’s nar is the Tibetan word. That’s the that intense intensity. Like everything else goes away and you can’t put it down. And so that’s the kind of feeling that you should have about your meditation.
Now, subtle dullness is when you have the fixations okay, the clarity’s okay and there’s no intensity. There’s no intensity and that’s when you can sit for three or four hours thinking you’re having a great meditation but you’re not getting anywhere. You’re just hanging out in subtle dullness. And Lama Tsongkhapa who’s the founder of the Gelugpa tradition is just fierce about this subtle dullness. Know, this jing ba thramo, he’s like on it about this because he says, you could waste a perfectly good precious human rebirth hanging out in subtle dullness, know.
So you need to train your introspection, your vigilance to detect especially this one. And when we go through the levels of Shine, you’ll see how you use that introspection. And each level, you’re kind of making these mid course corrections. Like one level, you’re having some subtle agitation and so you correct a little bit for that and then you tip over a little bit into subtle dullness and then you correct for that. And like most of these nine levels are like tilting, you know.
It’s sort of like a rocket ship that’s just like trying to get it in until you’re finally like on course and then the last couple of levels you’re just in cruise control. Okay? So it’s that introspection that corrects for that subtle dullness just like it does for the subtle agitation. Yeah. So, how do you, how do you develop the intensity?
Well, one of the obstacles to the to the intensity is not understanding the benefits of meditation. Like the more you understand the benefits of meditation, the more into it you are and the more We’ll get to that. We’re actually going to talk about antidotes to laziness and they’re all sort of also corrections for that lack of intensity too. So we’ll get there in a second. Yeah.
Okay. Now one of the things that I forgot to mention about the distraction, we talked a lot about distraction. There’s gross distraction and subtle distraction. So let me just go back to the previous topic for just a second. Gross distraction is losing the object altogether.
You know? Daydreaming. You go off the object altogether. Now there’s something called subtle distraction or subtle agitation, and you don’t lose the object, but there’s still a lot of sort of subtext going on. And then and what they say in the text which is a kind of a visual analogy they say, it’s like ice, like a pond or a stream is frozen over but there’s all this water rushing underneath you know.
And you know how that is in your mind like you haven’t completely but there’s still this thing just waiting to sort of burst through you know it’s it’s right there even though you haven’t lost the object okay. So that’s subtle agitation. So when we go through the levels, you’ll see how to correct for that, okay? So it’s the introspection that just notes what’s going on with your meditation, okay? So we’ve got fixation, we’ve got clarity, and we’ve got intensity.
And these are the three characteristics of a really good meditation. You know, you’re on the object, your mind is clear, bright eyed and bushy tailed and you’re on the edge of your seat. You can’t wait, you know. Can’t wait to get to the end. Can’t wait to see what Hermione Brilliant thing Hermione does at the You know, there you are with that level of intensity.
Okay. Any questions about the dullness? Clear about that? Okay next obstacle. This is actually the first one and I’m going give you a handout in a minute in a minute after I’ve explained them all of the five obstacles and the eight antidotes with which comes from that text by Kamalaśīla, the stages of meditation.
The very first obstacle is laziness. And this is just not feeling like sitting down on your cushion in the first place. Okay? You gotta at least get there before you can experience agitation and dullness, don’t you? You know, if you decide that that Netflix movie that just came in the mail this afternoon is so much more important than getting enlightened for the benefit of sentient beings.
Just kidding. So you need to So laziness. And it’s really interesting. Sometimes the Tibetan words like some some Tibetan words are really easy to learn because they sound exactly like what they are. The word for laziness in Tibetan is lei lo.
Isn’t that great? Lei lo. So it’s kind of like lei lo. Lei lo. Yeah.
So that’s your first Tibetan vocabulary word. It’s really easy to remember. Lei lo. Okay. So there are four methods to trick you into getting on your cushion in the first place, which obviously is the first step, okay?
And they sort of build on each other. It’s actually not four different methods but it’s sort of like methods that build on each other. And these are the antidotes to laziness. Okay? And the first one is called depa.
Understanding the benefits of meditation. Why are you going to bother doing it every morning, getting up at five o’clock if you don’t understand what the benefit is? Okay. And there are a couple of different benefits. One is physical.
When you really get good at meditation, when you start working your way through these levels of developing your calm abiding, you have a physical lightness and suppleness. Okay? And remember before I said the thing about the four finger widths below your navel. There are certain relationships between meditation and your subtle body and this is one of them. You’ll start to feel the effects in terms of physical lightness, suppleness, energy as a side a side effect of your meditation.
Okay? Mentally, you’ll start to experiencing a lot of benefits. Again, suppleness and flexibility mentally. It’s easier for you to bounce back. You don’t get so thrown off by things.
You just have a happier mind. Even though the object isn’t to be calm, you know, you’re just happier, calmer, more mental flexibility. Okay? The rug gets pulled out from under you, you bounce back quicker. And this is a side effect of actually developing single pointed concentration.
Okay? So this physical and mental suppleness. Another benefit related to this mental suppleness is very very interesting. You have the ability to solve problems and see things that other people can’t see in situations. So instead of seeing dichotomies, you’ll see some creative way to solve a problem.
So mental creativity is one of the side effects. And this happened to me just a little while ago and I’ll just explain this as an example because after this thing happened, was like, oh, that’s that thing they talk about. You know, not that I’m any great meditator, but the situation was these friends of mine wanted to go from Santa Cruz. They’re they’re traveling to Michigan to visit family. The ticket if they left from the San Francisco airport was like a hundred dollars cheaper each.
It was a couple. So, of going to San Jose which is pretty close to Santa Cruz, they wanted to leave from San Francisco. The flight was like at six o’clock in the morning from San Francisco. So, we had to leave Santa Cruz at three thirty in the morning. They’re good friends of mine so I woke up and took them to the airport.
They left me their car to use over this long weekend they were away. They’re coming back Monday night at seven thirty. During the course of the weekend, a teaching got scheduled for Monday night at Land of Medicine Buddha. So, what do I do? I either schlop all the way to San Francisco airport to pick them up like I promised to do, good friend that I am, and miss this teaching that I really wanna go to, or I try and get someone else to make the three and a half hour round trip, which is hard.
If it been San Jose, it would have been easy. San Francisco, not easy. I can’t think of any because of course all my other friends want to go to the teaching too. So how can I ask them to sacrifice you know, so I can go? So I feel like I’ve got this dilemma, right?
What do I do? I skip the teaching or ask somebody else to go pick them up. And then my little creative mind from whatever little glimmer of Shinee kicks in and I thought, hey, wait a minute. Venerable Katie’s coming down from San Francisco for that teaching. I can drive their car to the airport, leave it there early, get Katie to pick me up, leave the keys in the car or call them in Michigan to see if they have extra keys.
Katie picks me up, They come in, get in their car, drive home. Call them up. They have extra keys. No problem. I go park the car, call up their sufferings and say it’s on level three in section a at the end of the thing.
And then I go to the teaching and then they drive home at nine o’clock. You know, for a while it just looked like this irreconcilable dichotomy. And then I thought, wait a minute. And they were fine. They were like, of course, you know, just leave the car at the airport.
No big deal at all. I I put an extra twenty bucks, you know, on the seat to pay for the extra two hours of parking, but it was totally worth it to me to be able to So that’s the kind of thing. That’s the kind of thing like your mind, you know, just somehow creatively sees solutions to things that originally looked like a dichotomy. So that’s one of the benefits, believe it or not, of the single point of concentration, okay? Another benefit is a little bit more obvious and that is you develop the ability to really focus.
Like wow. Not just on the body of a deity on anything you want. Guess what? You’ll probably get a promotion at work because you you know you’ll do better all around you know and you in your life and your job. You’ll be more focused.
You know you’ll be more focused in your relationships. You just developed this ability to focus. Have you ever talked to somebody and you just feel like they’re not even paying attention to what you’re saying that they’re thinking about a million other things and it doesn’t feel that great. After a while you just shut up. Like you feel like well why should I waste my breath?
You know you become a better friend by practicing. Can focus more on whatever it is that’s going on, okay? Not just during meditation but it bleeds out to the rest of your of your life. Another great advantage is your virtue is so much more powerful. Any virtue you do because you’ve got this focused mind that you’re training on it.
Know, it’s very cool. Any virtue that you do is so much more powerful because you’re bringing so much more of your mental power to it, okay? And then of course, the ultimate benefit, right? Is to be able to see emptiness directly and get your rear end out of saṃsāra. That’s cool.
That’s best. You know, that’s really the reason. But all of these ones, okay? So, the first antidote to this Lalo is think about these benefits. So, once again, don’t You know, if you don’t want to sit down on your cushion, don’t beat yourself up.
Don’t think you’re a failure. Remember that antidote I don’t want you to practice, the one you’re forbidden from practicing. Don’t do that. Look at this list. Remind yourself.
That’s all. That’s all. Don’t think that you’re a failure. You know, don’t think you’ll never get enlightened. Just think of the benefits.
Use that antidote when you feel lazy. Okay? Promise? Everybody promise? Give me a little positive visual feedback.
Yes? Okay, great. We don’t need more people with low self esteem on this planet, okay? I don’t want your meditation practice to be another excuse to feel like you’re worthless. Okay.
Alright. So that’s the first fix for laziness is just thinking about all of these benefits. Okay? And then after you’ve done that comes the second level which in Tibetan is called dunpa which means I want that. I want that.
Isn’t that cool? This feeling of like when somebody finally gives you a clear explanation of the benefits of something you’re like, yeah, right on. I want it. You know, I want to feel that way. I want all those benefits.
Okay? And then the next level is the willingness to work really hard to get it. To put in the sweat to do it. The sweat on your cushion. It is not easy to develop shinne, you know.
You It takes effort and it takes practice. Somebody said once, it’s like developing the ability to play the piano really really well. And I’ve read these studies about people who can play the piano a little bit pretty good and people who can play really well and it’s like the amount of hours of practice that they put in before they were fourteen years old is like a thousand hours versus like two and a half thousand hours. You need to put in the hours on your cushion if you’re really really gonna have shine and so you need to understand the benefits, have that willingness you know that wish to do it and then the effort. Then the effort will come.
The effort will come when you understand the benefits and you want to do it. And then the last level of the obstacle to laziness is what comes after you put the effort. You start to feel the benefits. You start to feel this physical and mental pliancy, okay? And then that makes you want to do it even more.
Like you start to really experiencing the side effects of it. And so it keeps you in there because you really get the start to get the benefit and that’s called shin jang. So your body starts to feel light and compliant, your energy level’s good, your mind is in a happy place, you know, you have this creativity thing about hopefully something more important than the car at the airport, know, so there are other things that we can find creative solutions like that. Okay. So those are the antidotes to just not wanting to get on the cushion in the first place.
Okay? Any questions about Lalo? You’re never gonna forget that word. Okay. Let’s see.
It’s three o’clock. Do you wanna take a break now or do you wanna review the five obstacles and antidotes and then Break. Go, Rick. Three. How many breaks and how many reviews?
Breaks. Well, the left hand side of the room wants breaks. Who wants to just review? Ten minutes? Ten minutes.
Okay. Ten minutes. It’s not bad. So after having told you all of this, could you pass just pass it around? So here’s a chart where I’ve just written it all out.
And let’s just kind of go over where it all fits into perspective. And I’ll wait till everybody gets one and then we’ll just review. I never want to be a big blank on the tape. Was when Michael when Geshe and Michael Roach stood up and said how much time you needed to put in on Shine in order to, you know, see this arm as made of light. Mhmm.
In this lifetime, I don’t know. What is it? He said every day for what? Forty five minutes or an hour. He said something like an hour.
An hour. Yeah. See? You remember. Yeah.
And you tried it, and you did it, but or whatever. You know? Yeah. And I heard that and just on that piece, thinking about all my practice commitments. Yeah.
Yeah. That was the hard still hard for me. Yeah. Well, we’ll talk about it. When we talk about the different level of shinae and what is actually necessary to get the conditions to achieve it, we’ll talk about that.
But don’t be discouraged. I mean No. I’m in it for Yeah. And that’s the thing. Know, his holiness, the Dalai Lama always says He always cautions people and he says, you need to balance these two things.
You need to get it that the path is long. You know, and you need to keep persisting at it. It’s like the tortoise and the hare thing. I the people that I know who just throw in the towel are the people that expect really quick fast results. And his holiness always says this, I remember one time in LA like ten years ago, somebody asked this question and boy, they’re never gonna ask that twice.
What’s the quickest easiest way to get enlightened? And if any of you were there, oh my god. He was so He was just like, I never would hear you say quick and easy. I mean, he just went off, you know, about the amount of effort. He cried because he was telling the story of Milarepa.
No, he was telling actually this the in the story he told and I’ll tell it here because it’s worth it because you know we’re talking about this thing of persistence. What he was saying was you know basically the thing is you have to realize that it takes a lot of effort and it takes a long time and you have to stick with it and get over this thing of what’s going to happen in the next ten years. Realize we’re talking lifetimes you know. And you have to just keep at it knowing that it’s lifetimes. And then he also said, on the other hand, you should be able to see improvement in your life.
And he says, if you look back six months, one year, two years, five years, you should definitely be able to see improvement. And if you don’t, you’re doing something wrong. So both. You know, we have to kind of keep both in mind. And I think of that too.
But I look at myself two years ago, five years ago, no comparison. Like, really so much progress. And I think my first three year retreat was just to teach me humility and that I’m not really such a great yogi as I thought. I mean, it just showed me where I am. Three It took three years for me to really get where I am and then I felt like I could begin because I really got clear what my defilements were but hey, what’s the alternative?
You know, there’s no option. It’s like a zero sum bounce or whatever that thing is. Know, there’s just no options. And then what he said was which is so beautiful and this is when he started crying. I mean first he totally yelled at this poor person.
Thank God it was on a note to toot to jimpan like it wasn’t some poor person standing there because he blasted like that’s when you think you know, you see his Holiness on Bill Moyers and you think he’s this kindly friendly little grandfather. And then you see him giving Buddhist teachings and you’re like, you know, just sort of like the atomic blast. And this was one of those cases. And then he told this story of Milarepa, right? Who’s this great yogi, everybody’s heard of Milarepa who went off in the cave and, you know, after offing all his relatives earlier in life, straightened up, which gives hope for us all.
And then went off and got enlightenment in one life because, you know he was so determined. And then it’s only just told the story. Milarepa had several main disciples but the one who’s really the lineage holder was Gampopa who turned started out life as a Kadampa master. Know in the Kadampa tradition and then went and studied with Milarepa and there was this one point where Gampopa was going off you know into another part of Tibet and he and Milarepa knew they wouldn’t be seeing each other again in this life you know, so there was just just this tearful parting and in Tibet, if the more respect you had for someone when they started on a journey, the longer you’d walk along with them before you turn around and go back home. Like that showed how much esteem.
If you just kind of turned around the kitchen and said, see you later, you know, that meant you didn’t have much respect. But if you at least walked to the front gate with him, if he walked half a day, sat down and had lunch and went back. So, Milarepa walked all day with Gampopa with him, you know, accompanying him on this journey before he walked back. They got to this big bridge over some chasm in Tibet. That was the parting of ways forever for the rest of this life.
And Gampopa said, master, you know, do you have one final teaching for me? So, Milarepa turned around and he wore this like white loincloth. That was why his name was Milarepa, he just wore this white cotton loincloth. He turned around, lifted up his loincloth and showed his rear end covered in calluses. And that was the last teaching of like, you gotta sit on your butt until it looks like mine, son.
You know, this is the final teaching. And his holiness told that story and just burst into tears because it’s like it does take effort. Know, it definitely takes effort. And this sort of microwave new age thing that we have of like, know, you sit back, sit down, not only do you become calm, but then by next Tuesday, got your own disciples. Forget it.
It’s not like that at all. New career path. Yeah. Right? Like, oh, I’ll be a great learning addicts.
So that’s yeah. Yeah. That’s it. But but the two things balance because you definitely see progress and you realize, you know, when you when you study like one of these texts like the Uttaratantra and you study the qualities of an enlightened being, forget it. I mean that humbles you really fast.
You know you realize what it takes to achieve these realizations. But what are we going to do? We’ve been stuck in saṃsāra since beginningless effing time. Know we got to do something about it now. We really have no choice.
And what better time than now? Look at the teachers we have. We have His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We have Lama Zopa Rinpoche. We have Geshe Dagpa.
We have Sechen Ling. Yeah. You know, we’ve never gotten this lucky ever. So that’s when you have to practice the antidote of, you know, precious human rebirth and inspiration to kind of counteract that feeling of discouragement. You never had it better.
You you know, holy A holy being in their past life made sincere prayers on their deathbed to be Lynn Sonnenberg in this life. So don’t waste their effort. You know? And that’s true for everybody sitting in this room. It’s intense and I’m serious.
Know? Okay. Sorry. I yell at people when I get excited. It’s really true.
It’s really true. Yeah. And you’re doing great. I’ve known you for a long time. You’re doing great.
Don’t worry. I mean? Kidding us. Like? But you’re interrupting about so much more virtuous things than you used to interrupt about, hey.
Gotcha. When I’ve listened to tapes of like five years ago, I wanted to call I know. Me too. Believe me. Me too.
I didn’t really say so. I’m like, sure. You’re drunk. Okay. So let’s review this sheet real quick, and then we’ll take a break.
So laziness, right? Lay low. We’ve got our four antidotes: understanding the benefits, physical health and pliancy, mental pliancy, creative thinking, ability to concentrate, realizations. Then we have the aspiration to practice, having understood the benefits, the willingness to work hard, and then the plant, you begin to see the results. Okay?
So those are all the the four antidotes for laziness. Second fault, it’s called in the text forgetting the advice but that makes it sound like you forget what Tenzin Choki told you at two thirty in the afternoon at Sai Zhing Ling, and that’s not what it means. It means losing the object of meditation. And mindfulness. Remember I said mindfulness is the part of your mind that drags you back to the object, that keeps you with that mocha frappuccino and not wandering down the sidewalk with the passersby.
Laxity and excitement, introspection, vigilance, the watchdog part of the mind Checks whether you’re experiencing that laxity or excitement. Okay. Now, after the introspection is kicked in, the next thing that could be a fault is if you don’t do anything about it. Know, your introspection has told you you’re daydreaming and you’re like but it’s such a great daydream. I’m gonna stick with it.
So, non application of the antidotes And then this is where the antidotes that I mentioned kick in, okay? So for distraction, loosening the focus, thinking of a sobering topic, returning to breath awareness for a few minutes, okay? And for dullness, tighten up, think of an inspiring object. In extreme cases, get up, walk around, get fresh air like that. Okay?
Now, the last fault is applying an antidote when you don’t have to. And after the break, we’re going to talk about the nine levels of Shine. Some of the last levels, you’re cruising. All you need to do, you sit down on your cushion, you apply a tiny bit of effort and cruise control kicks in. You’re doing great.
At that In that case, if you applied one of these antidotes, you’d mess up. So, leave it alone. Okay? And this last one is for the very advanced levels of Shine. When you’re doing well, your meditation is going well, don’t be paranoid.
Just leave it. Realize that you’re doing well and leave it alone, okay? So these are the five faults and the antidotes that correspond to them, okay? Great. Yeah.
With this category like over application, like if you’re using antidotes, you know, to remedy the fault of not using the proper antidote, can you is there an over application in that sense that you can do too? Like, not realizing that you’ve already kind of brought yourself up and you need to kind of stop. Yeah. Exactly. Do they do they call that by a different name?
Or do they or do a good question. I I think you know, that over application would probably also work when when you’ve just applied the antidote then you’ve gotten back on track then you just let it go. Good point. Yeah. That would that would work even before those last levels of shinea when you’re doing the mid course correction and then you’re back on track, then just cruise, you know, go back to the object and keep cruising.
So yeah, that’s a good point. Okay. Any other questions before we take our break? Okay. Let’s see.
Let’s take fifteen minutes. Why not? It’s three fifteen, so let’s come back at three thirty, and I’ll ring the bell, and then we’ll go for maybe another hour if that’s okay. K? Great.
Thank you for your attention. The the schedule the schedule is set until five. So if you would like to go, though, the Well, maybe okay. We’ll see. Let’s go till four thirty and then meditate for half an hour.
Meditate. Okay. We’ll just see how it goes with the rest of the subjects. And I wanna make sure everybody’s questions get answered too. So yeah.
Yeah. We had some acupuncturists in our retreat that we just did Oh. And one of the remedies that they said for this dullness and and sleepiness, which I get really easily and often, is that you use your you do you Like, massage? No. You just pinch all around the edge of your ear as hard as you can around the outside edge of your ear.
And even yeah. Well, it does. It hurts a little bit. But if you do it and it pinched the whole thing all nice and really tight as hard as you can all the way around the edge, and then you’ll notice that automatically you’ll feel most happy. Oh, interesting.
We should add that to. I’m saying that it it was something because Have does it work? Yeah. Have you tried it? Yeah.
I was So you just kind of pinch all the way down. Yeah. Hard. You pinch hard. You pinch hard.
And then there’s there are pressure points that do something to the energy. I took a little of a job. It’s not You do it tonight? No. It’s I didn’t not big problem with me because I think I didn’t sleep enough.
That’s very possible. That’s yeah. Yeah. I know who you work for, and it’s very possible. So it’s very, very often.
Like, my mind looks so dark and Yeah. Just You really need to in fact, our mama, we went to see him in. We’re asking about he doesn’t drink he’s passed away now. He didn’t drink black tea. He would drink this thing that he called white tea, which was milk and mixed with water without tea.
And then we’re saying, how do you stay awake during your meditation session? So I don’t have to worry about it. I sleep enough. I don’t have to worry about Mhmm. Drinking caffeine.
Why bother? Just get enough rest. Yeah. It’s premium coming attractions. Now that you’re Alan’s fine, by understanding the benefits of.
We’re gonna go through exactly how you develop it in stages. Okay? So we’re gonna talk about the nine state what’s that? You okay? Yeah.
No. I was just There’s a big flame right behind me. The the you don’t have all the All this stuff. Yeah. Wall instead of somebody’s face.
I’m always, like, hitting the microphone because I tend to you know? We haven’t tried it. Probably. Probably. Yeah.
If if you know what? When I do that, it goes all the way down here. Records my chin, which is not k. Cool. Which is troubling it all the time.
Okay. So we’re gonna do the nine levels of Shine and the six powers that go along with them. And I’ve got a handout on this for you that I’m gonna give to you after I do it. Let’s see. And then after that, we’re gonna talk about the qualities of good place to meditate.
And then if there’s time, by popular demand, there’s been a request for meditation at the very end. So for people who can stay at that point, we’ll do a meditation. How about just because we can do the meditation Shine on the holy body of Śākyamūni Buddha. We’ll do that for a meditation. Okay.
Alright. So stages of Shine. This is the stages that your ability to focus single pointedly will develop. I promise you, they will. The first one is called fixing the mind.
First stage is called fixing the mind. And this is just beginning to be able to put your mind on the object for a few moments. Okay. Many more moments off the object than on. And this is when I said, it’s like a fly, occasionally landing on the object.
Okay? Okay. So this is a point where you feel like your conceptual thoughts have increased. You come back to me next week and say, oh my god, I can’t meditate. My mind’s a disaster.
Okay? So this is the first You’re already at the first level. You know, this point that seems like a disaster is already the first level. So you’re just gaining familiarity with the level of your conceptual thoughts. Now, you get to this point, there’s the six powers.
The first power is study. So you get to this first level. This is like what happened to my Madonna thing. It’s like doing weird things. Is it Oh, you mean it sounds different to you?
Sounds different to me. Yeah. Was. It sounds different. It does, doesn’t it?
I probably, like, messed it up when I Okay. So you get to this level by getting instructions about how to meditate. That’s all. The first power is called the power of study. So this is just getting instructions about how to meditate.
Brings you to the fly landing on the object level, fixing the mind. Okay? Now the second level is called fixation with some continuity. Fixation with some continuity. And this is being able to keep your mind on the object for about one or two minutes.
And they say it’s the amount of time that you can say one mala of omani pemi hum mantras. Okay? That’s the what they mention in the text. So one or two minutes. And you’re not just like the fly landing on it for a split second, you’re actually able to meditate for one or two minutes.
Okay? And then the power you use to get to this level is called the power of contemplation, which just means focusing on the object. So your mind is just focusing on the object. Okay? So you’re able to hang with the object for one or two minutes.
Third level is called patchy fixation. Patchy fixation. And in this level, your mind is almost always on the object and when it’s off the object from time to time, you quickly patch it up. You fix it up. So, it’s like patching a hole.
You know, it’s mostly on the object when it bounces off, you quickly quickly patch it up. Okay? And the power we use for this level is the power of mindfulness. Remember I said that was the part of your mind that brings your mind back to the object, okay? And with some effort, keeps it there.
So there’s quite a lot of effort still going on at this third level of patchy fixation. So, the power you’re using is mindfulness to bring your mind back with effort when it goes off. But you’re mostly on the object, okay? Now, the fourth level is called good fixation. Good fixation.
So you no longer lose the object at all, but you’re still prone to quite gross agitation and dullness. Okay. So, you’re always on the object but remember I said it’s like the ice with the water running through. Like you never lose it completely but you get either subtle dullness where you like spacing out or you know, grosser dullness but you’re still on the object so you have the fixation but probably not much clarity or intensity at all. But at least you have the fixation at this point of of fourth level, good fixation.
And again, the power we’re still using here is mindfulness. Because with effort, you’re able to keep your mind on the object. Keep it on the object. Okay. The fifth level is called becoming disciplined.
Becoming disciplined. There’s no more gross agitation or dullness. So you’re no no longer either totally losing the object or falling asleep. You know, or just zoning out completely. You have fixation and clarity but no intensity.
So at this level, it’s better than before because you have fixation and clarity but no intensity. So at this point, you have a problem with subtle dullness. Okay? Which is a result that you’ve done from the work to bring your mind back to the object. So remember I said before you’re correcting for certain things and it sort of tilts you over in another direction.
So from the work you’ve done, it’s actually that the success of level number four has tilted you into this level number five where the main problem is a little bit of subtle dullness. Okay? So there’s no intensity because you’ve been trying so hard to correct for that subtle agitation and bring your mind down that you’ve tilted slightly into subtle dullness at this point. Okay? The next level, the sixth level is called becoming peaceful.
So you’ve just corrected for subtle dullness and now you’ve gone back to slightly subtle agitation. Okay? Just slightly distracted from the object. Now you’re not losing the object completely at all, but it’s still that water under the ice thing. You just have subtle agitation because you’ve corrected for the subtle dullness that you’ve experienced in number five.
Now number five and number six are you attain these primarily by the power of that introspection or vigilance, and that’s that thing that corrects. Because now your agitation and your dullness are so subtle that you really need that introspection fine tuned to detect, okay? So five and six, you’re using the power of introspection to correct. Okay. Now seventh level, becoming very pacified.
Okay. I love these words. Becoming very pacified is the title of this level. Now in this one you almost never have any agitation or dullness. They just show up occasionally and you’re able to subdue them right away.
You know, you’re so practiced at this point that every once in a while a little bit of subtle dullness or agitation shows up and you’re able to just correct for it right away. Okay? Eighth level is called becoming single pointed. And in this level, have to undertake a little bit of effort in the very beginning to subdue the subtle agitation and dullness. And then after that point, you’re on cruise control.
So at the very beginning of your session when you sit down, you put a little bit of effort in, you know, to get on the object and not to have any subtle agitation or dullness and then you cruise. Okay? So at this point, remember that obstacle of over application. This is where that would come in too. You know, you use a little bit of effort at the beginning and then you’re doing great and you don’t need to use any of the antidotes at that point.
So this is where you know the over application could be a problem. Now, in number seven and number eight, the power that you use is effort. You work really hard at your meditation practice. To get to these levels, you’ve had to work really really hard to get to this level. You know, you may have some calluses on your rear end like Jetsun Milarepa at this point.
Possible. Okay. We have better cushions than these days. He was sitting on rocks. I think that was part of the problem.
Okay. Now the ninth level is called fixed absorption. And this is deep meditation. There’s no longer any effort required to reach a really deep state state of meditation. Okay.
So even at the very beginning of your session, you don’t even have to use this slight subtle effort to correct for the You just The minute you decide to meditate, sit down, boom. You’re right there. Okay? And the power that you use to get to this level is familiarity. You’re just totally accustomed to meditation.
Okay. Now, this is an interesting point. We’re not at shine yet. Okay. Even at the ninth level, to get to shine, it’s this level of mind, this fixed absorption, no longer any effort required to reach a deep state of meditation.
And then Shine is this combined with that feeling that I talked about before, that mental and physical bliss and pliancy. So the difference between the ninth level and true Shine is bliss. Too bad. Like, you have to develop bliss. It’s that turning it down, Chucky.
I don’t think it’s turning it down. Think it’s I think it’s like got fixed in the put the cord behind your shoulder like before? No. It’s okay. Let’s try that.
Okay. So it kinda comes away. Now it’s The trouble with the Madonna thing, it’s, like, bendable. Yeah. Over application of the Android.
Snap this thing off. Okay. So nine levels, and then you keep going with your meditation, and then fully fledged Shine, mental and physical bliss, end of the path of accumulation, bingo, into the path of preparation. Okay? So this is that shine is, you know, the level that you go from the first path to the second path that I was talking about this morning.
Okay? So let me hand these out. If you could just kind of pass them all around. So this is a chart showing what I just explained. Okay, any questions about these levels or the yeah.
Can you just tell me what level seven is called? It is called becoming very pacified. Number six was becoming peaceful, and then this level is becoming very pacified. And that just means you don’t have that agitation or dullness. Okay?
So your mind is very pacified. And number five. And number five is becoming disciplined. We could all use a little bit of that. Okay.
Any other questions about this one? Thank you. So let’s talk about the qualities of good place to meditate. And this applies mostly to a retreat situation. But you can use these principles for daily life too.
Okay? These are good principles to have in mind for just in general. And the source for these qualities is a text called in Tibetan, Mahayānasūtrālamkara, the ornament of the sutras by Maitreya and Asaṇga. Okay? So that’s the scriptural reference.
The Sutralamkara is the scriptural reference for this list. Okay? There are six qualities of good place to meditate, and the first one has five. This is one of these Gelugpa things. You know, these nested lists that Galupas are famous for.
The seven of this, the ten of that, the three of the other things. So here’s here we go. Okay. The first quality of a good place to meditate is the qualities of the place itself. So the qualities of the actual physical location.
And then the first of the five subset is the things you need should be easy to find. Okay? Groceries, heater, clothing, blankets. You should be comfortable. This is basically about, you know, you should be comfortable and it should be easy to get the things that you need.
Now, a lot of western Buddhists decide that they wanna be just like millarepa, and they’re gonna go off into a cave with a bunch of barley flour. And our lamas just laugh at us and say forget about it, you know. The place you meditate needs to be comfortable. It should not be ostentatious, you know. It should be simple because ostentatious is just distracting.
But it should be simple but also really comfortable. You should have good food. Like forget about trying to do these crazy, you know, nettles thing. You know, just tsampa, like don’t do it. Have the kind of proper food that you’re used to.
I have this friend who’s a western monk and I remember about twelve years ago, he decided he was gonna go do a retreat in a cave, know, and he went to southern Arizona and went up in the mountains and he found this great cave and he went into it and he’s like, oh, maybe I’ll get enlightened here. This is perfect. Know, so he’s sitting up there and he has this view over the desert and it’s perfect. And so as the sun began to set, he started to notice that the cave was completely filled with daddy long legs that woke up at sunset and started crawling towards the entrance and he, you know, he I mean, we’re talking thousands. They were living in the crevices of the cave and then they start marching out to do whatever daddy long legs is do at night.
Thank God he had a tent with him so he put the tent up inside the cave, know, and then he came back later and he was like, that cave thing was a really bad idea. This creepy spiders you know. So don’t do this extreme thing you know. I lived out in the desert in Arizona in a yurt for three years and there were enough creepy things even though I had an enclosure and it’s really distracting to have really creepy things and rattlesnakes in your front yard. I mean, believe me, you don’t need that kind of aggravation.
It’s hard enough to just tame your mind without taming the environment. So that’s the first thing. Just be comfortable. Second, it should be a safe place and in the old texts they say free of robbers and wild animals and things like that because of course they had like tigers in northern India and wandering bands of brigands and all of this stuff. So, you need to be in a safe place where you’re physically safe.
At vajrapani Institute, the nearest neighbors have sort of these Hatfield and McCoy like shootouts with guns and stuff. And luckily, they’re not aiming it at anybody vajrapani but you know there’s this whole thing that on Sundays you hear all this shooting and stuff going by. So you need to be in a safe place. At Chineland where I just came from, apparently right after I left a bear moved in and broke into everybody’s retreat cabins and ate all of their food. And at Shinilan, they buy their food for a whole year at a time because the road washes out in the winter.
So everybody had just bought all their winter food, went out for a teaching. The bear came to visit and ripped everybody’s screen doors off and broken and ate their food. So I have one friend that’s in retreat there who’s a little sketchy about being out in the woods, you know, alone anyway. So after this happened and actually the bear ripped off his screen door and then ate all the food and he said there was a plate glass door onto the porch and he said there were two bear paw prints like it had stood up on its hind legs like looking in you know and somehow that really freaked him out that like the bear had stood. So of course after he came back, every time he’d hear the slightest little sound outside you know he just completely freaked out because he was really scared about this bear thing.
So, it’s good to be in a place where you’re not just going to be like you know starting at every sound and there’s no danger of bears or brigands breaking in and bothering you. Okay. The third quality should be a good location in terms of things like weather, not too hot, not too cold. Some of us live through places that are way too hot. Nothing that’ll make you sick.
Know, people go off to do retreat in India and they get chronic giardia for five years and you know, the hepatitis and all this stuff. So it’s good to have a place where you’re not gonna get sick and you’re not gonna suffer from all of these extremes, okay? The fourth quality of the place, a good support staff. People who understand what you’re doing and are really supportive. If you do a long retreat, you’re gonna have to have somebody bring you supplies.
And it’s really important that they be somebody who is really supportive and understands what you’re doing. I had a friend who was doing a retreat somewhere in Arizona. She and I made arrangements to go do a retreat somewhere. The person wasn’t a Buddhist at all. She thought retreat just meant sort of kicking back with boxes of chocolates and reading novels.
So she would come visit my friend every day to hang out. My friend is like, oh my god, you know. So she didn’t you know, this person who was meant to take care of her really didn’t understand what was going on. What was And you need people I was in a situation in retreat with a a bunch of different people taking care of us and they were taking turns. And there was this one point where like two of the people were involved in this sort of love triangle.
And so they were working together and they really weren’t getting along at all because both of them were interested in the same other person and there was this And I didn’t even know this was going on but they were cooking for us and I couldn’t eat the food for like a week and I didn’t know why and it was just you get used to this really subtle energy like when you’re really meditating. This is after about three years of retreat and I’d open the lunchbox box and it would be like, woah, woah, you know, something’s going on out there. I don’t know what. Luckily, had peanut butter and crackers and that’s what I lived on. So like the energy of who’s taking care of you is really really important.
You know, so that’s And and it gets more important the subtler your level of meditation goes. And I’m not usually one of those woo woo people about energy but like that was for real, you know. Also a quiet place and we talked about this before with no interruptions from other people, no telephones, even natural sounds like water. Know and there’s this famous story of this guy who went off to do a retreat and he found this beautiful cabin next to this babbling brook. Well, after about a week, he would go out during his breaks and try and rearrange the stones in the water to make a different noise.
Know, if you’re sitting there in total silence, rushing water is a bad idea. Even waves in the ocean, know, will drive you nuts. It’s sort of like what is that Chinese water torture thing with the drip and you’re just waiting for the next drip? It drives you crazy. Barking dogs are a bad idea, that’s why almost all retreat centers ban dogs like that.
There’s nothing like a barking dog to jolt you out of samadhi, you know. So quiet place. If you live in the city, it’s really hard. Try and find the quietest earplugs. You know, lot of people use earplugs if they’re meditating.
And you can see how all of these qualities, obviously I’ve explained them in terms of a retreat environment. But as close as you can get, you know, to the meditation place that you use in daily life. Like, if you’re doing a daily practice, tell your roommates not to bother you, not to call you to the phone, you know. Ask your kids or your partner or whatever to just give you that space so you don’t have the interruptions. Make sure you’re warm enough.
Know, all of those conditions even for your forty five minutes of daily practice are trying, you know, try and get it together like that. Quiet as possible like that. Okay. So the second of the six qualities Actually, the second and the third are really related. The second is reduce your needs and wants to nothing as few as possible, you know.
Just another distraction. I know, you know, my thing is books. And I was in retreat and I would have my reference books and then there’d be a bibliography at the end. And I was so sure that if I got the book mentioned in footnote eight hundred ninety two from Snow Lion catalog. You know, hopefully express mail next day delivery that then I’d get enlightened the minute I read it.
You know? And your mind just kind of goes into this thing and then you’re filling out the snow Lion catalog order form and that’s what’s happening instead of meditation, you know. So just you know food like asking your caretakers for this fancy food and all this stuff you know. Just let it go. You know just try and be as simple as possible and like reduce your needs as much as possible.
And then the third one really relates to that and that’s contentment and satisfaction. Just being happy with what you get. And I would do this thing in retreat that I called sort of the begging bowl mentality. Know, at the time of Lord Buddha and people who go around the monastics that go around an alms round, you know, it’s totally against the rules to like, oh, I really like that doll. Could you give me a little more and I’m not so into this pickle thing.
You hold out your bowl, know you turn down your eyes whatever they put in your bowl. You just eat it. You don’t pick and choose, you don’t ask and all of that stuff. So this is kind of mentality that’s really helpful to have you know when you’re in one of these kind of situations. Just don’t you know we can make such a story out of what we need what we want and all of this trip.
So just try and reduce that as much as possible. If you are in a retreat situation you know, give up your activities. Don’t bring in a bunch of extra stuff to read. Don’t bring in your taxes to do in retreat. Know, the rule for retreat is to bring in books that have to do specifically with the practice that you’re doing.
So, any references and commentaries and things that have to do with your practice, other stuff to read, don’t bring it in. You know, it’ll just be a distraction. Okay? So, just, you know, focus and close-up your business ahead of time, you know. So, even if you’re doing a short retreat, just, you know, clear the deck so you don’t have to send out any communications or do any business while you’re in retreat.
Now, fifth quality is pure ethics and this relates to what’s called the three higher trainings. Ethics, concentration and wisdom. Okay? So, in order to be able to meditate really well and attain concentration, you have to be keeping really pure morality. And believe you me, I did not spend much of my life even attempting to keep pure morality and it came to haunt me in this retreat when I’d regret about what a jerk I’d been and how I treated people my whole life.
About a year into this long retreat I did in Arizona, it struck me how incredibly selfish I’d been. You know, my whole life and how horribly I treated people, how much I’d hurt people and I was just completely filled with this incredible remorse that I really had to work with a lot, know? So keeping your vowed morality really well, whatever level of morality you have, bodhisattva vows are such a great support for being able to develop the ability to concentrate because if you keep your bodhisattva vows, you have nothing to regret in terms of your relationships with other people you know and you don’t have to have that remorse that comes up. So pure ethics is really really important. There’s this one American monk who taught who has this nice phrase he calls the bliss of blamelessness you know.
If you go into a long retreat and you just don’t have all these regrets and you really feel like you’ve done the right thing and treated people well and like that, it’s a great support. And in fact, in the three higher trainings, ethics supports concentration and then of course you need that concentration to develop the wisdom and those are the three hard trainings. The ethics, concentration, wisdom and then we’ve already talked about how concentration and wisdom support each other, right? You need that single point of concentration to have that direct realization of emptiness but to even get that far you need pure ethics. Okay, pure morality.
And then the last quality is giving up objects of the senses. Okay, so don’t have a lot of sense objects, being involved in a lot of projects and thinking about a lot of things when you’re in retreat. It’s good to be celibate. If you’re if you’re in a retreat situation, celibacy is really important. You know simple food.
So anything that would really you know not listening to music and things like that. So all of these ways, no Netflix, sorry Lynn. You know none of the never had a Netflix ever in her life. So things like that. You know just reduce your sense stimulation when you’re in a retreat environment and it’s interesting.
A lot of these qualities, you will find that as your practice progresses, your life simplifies naturally. Like even if you’re not in a retreat trying to attempt to have all of these qualities in your life. I have all these students that are new students and they come to me and they go, you know, it’s weird things happening. I just don’t want to go out partying with my friends anymore. I had this student in the class in Santa Cruz and he was brand new and after four weeks of class of the six week series, he came back and he reported that he’d, you know, we’re down in Santa Cruz.
So he said he’d gone to San Francisco for the weekend with these friends and they did all this stuff and all the sightseeing and yada yada and the whole like big weekend in San Francisco that used to be so much fun. And he was like, God, was kind of intense. It was too much. I just kind of wanted to be home meditating. And I was like, guess what?
Like we all go through that, you know. Your life will change. If you start to meditate, your life will change. Your definition of fun will change a lot. And at first, it’s really disconcerting and you think you become a really boring person because instead of dress you know, getting dressed up and wanting to go out dancing with all your friends, I mean my thing was like getting dressed up.
Believe it or not, I mean, this is like twenty five years ago. Getting dressed up, going out with my friends to these really trendy clubs in San Francisco where you didn’t even show up before eleven o’clock at night because you were like a little desperate and like you you know, to be really cool you did that and then you know go in the bathroom during boring songs and do some kind of substance to make you have even more of a fun time this whole thing. You know and then I lived in these monasteries in Indi for a couple of years and I came back and then my definition of fun was like sitting around drinking tea and talking about dharma with my friends and I was so concerned. It’s like what happened? Took me a while to sort of catch up to the change.
So a lot of you you know, you may find I mean, really helps I found. You know but you may find that your life changes and your priorities change and what’s fun changes and you know it may start looking, your daily life may start looking more like this list just as a result of practice you know. So these are the qualities, a good place to meditate and they’re gonna bleed through if you know to daily life as you keep practicing. Okay. So are there any questions about the list?
All pretty obvious, Yeah. One of the things Just wait. Oh. One of the things I came across one time reading about the jhanas was that some people experience a cessation of sensory stimulation altogether. And so one commentator was suggesting that noises wouldn’t even affect you anymore in that place.
I wonder if you could say something about that. I think it, yeah, definitely I think at a very high level of possibly the last couple of levels before fully qualified Shine, that would happen. You know, that would definitely happen that your mind is so focused on the object that anything else going on because remember, this is already you know, the higher levels are even getting to the point where you can just sit for hours and hours and hours focused on the object without any distraction whatsoever. So it’s quite possible that you wouldn’t even be at all aware of your sense surroundings which is one of the reasons you know you’re supposed to get into this position and also be in a place where nobody’s likely to disturb you because you can just go into this state for hours and hours and hours and not even be aware of the bear breaking in through this green door, you know. So, yeah.
Yeah. Definitely. I think at the upper levels of these, you know, list of nine it would be like that. Which is why you need to get, you know, really careful about your circumstances before you sit down because then you’re just not so aware of it at all. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Just a brief follow-up. Like I live in a big apartment complex and so there’s almost always noises. Yeah.
Something rather. If it’s not dogs, it’s plumbing, or it’s like clunking in the walls, or or people moving furniture around. Yeah. The worst for me, actually, most of those I kinda let flow through me. But the one that I seem to just not be able to tolerate at all is a pounding bass from somebody’s stereo.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That comes through even more than the other music. Like, it’s low enough, I can’t even hear them.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hear this boom. Boom.
Boom. Boom. And I kinda like drums, but there’s something about that That bass. Kind of like it’s just it’s just it’s almost I don’t know. It’s just like Yeah.
Permeates my entire being. Anyway, I I don’t know if there’s any answer that. You know, but with sounds, it’s sort of the same same technique that you use with thoughts. Stay with the mocha frappuccino. Let it go.
You know, you notice it, note it, and then just really try and let it go. And it is really hard. It’s sort of like the Chinese water torture drip drip drip thing and the guy was moving out moving around the rocks in the pond and you know if it’s something like that in this bass beat but just as much as possible you know it’s just try and relate to it. It’s just another distraction and bring your mind back to the object as much as possible. Yeah.
Yeah. But it’s hard you know with things like that. I mean I don’t think Milarepa had to deal with boom boxes and like all of this stuff you know and sirens. Mean you know it’s no accident that these yogis go off to the places that they go because they look at this quality and they’re like, oh, quiet place, okay. Gotta go up to the Himalayas or something.
So I think And again, it’s a progression. And if we’re just doing daily practice for half an hour, forty five minutes, but there may be and I strongly recommend as your practice progresses is to go to a place with these conditions. You know, one of my teachers actually made me promise about ten years ago that at least to That twice a year I would go off for at least ten days to do retreat, you know. And I kept that promise and it was amazing. Like even to go off I mean what I did was I actually tried to do two weeks twice a year and it was incredible for my practice.
And I think it directly created a cause for me to be able to do six and a half years later because all my priorities shifted. Know and before that I was like, oh I work for Lama Zopa Rinpochee. I You know, this life is just going to be about creating a bunch of karmic brownie points. You know, by working hard for Lama Zopa. And this teacher yelled at me and he said, look, that’s not good enough.
You know, you have this You’re smart. You can do it. And I don’t want to hear that from you ever again. I don’t want to hear this, oh, you know, this life is going to be about good karma thing. He’s like, make this life about realizations and I want you to do retreat twice a year.
And I did and it worked. Like my job, I mean, of course it’s hard and you leave and they freak out and it’s alright because it’s like what are you going to take into your next life? You know, your reputation or your mind? That’s all. It’s hard to do and what this person did, he had a normal job and he would just take the extra week without pay.
That’s possible. Like so you get x amount of paid vacation, just take the rest of it without pay. Just do it. I mean what are they going to do? Fire you?
Then great. Go into long retreat forever. Like fine, you know? So, think it’s real You know, I really recommend and couldn’t recommend more strongly. You know, it’s so different trying to do this on a daily basis and just doing chunks, just devoted with all of these qualities.
Leave your books at home. Don’t bring in your, you know, don’t bring in anything. No Netflix, no nothing for two weeks. And watch the changes happen. Like it all goes below your neck if you do that, you know?
And that’s when your life really changes. That’s the life transforming experience right there. No boom boxes. Years ago, I heard that there were two things that were really hard to deal with in trying to get single pointed concentration. That was other people talking and music.
And I think the boom box thing kinda fits into that a little bit. Yeah. That that really is hard to get around. My particular thing, I live at Partners Ed, which is a big complex. But actually, the apartments are pretty well built from the early forties.
So they’re not, you know, whatever that fake wall is. Forgot what what’s it called? Drywall. So everything’s pretty solid. And what the way I dealt with every one of the things that came up with was I wrote a letter to everybody about this.
And of course, it was going to be shared on email. I was going to post it in laundry rooms. In my I actually physically wrote the letter and then I looked at the letter and cracked up laughing and that helped. It’s sort of like know, the the emptiness thing you bring in and also bodhicitta, you guys, they’re just trying to be happy. They’re just trying to be happy.
But the thing that really gets me, and I can’t believe it, is tapping the horn. You know, I’m out here at five o’clock in the morning to pick you up for work. Venting helps. Venting is good. Venting on the writing a note and then just doing And then just doing nothing.
I I I think what I think you did mention persevering in spite of the obstacles Yeah. Of whatever noises it. I know Venerable Rabina tells a story of a prisoner who was meditating, and prisons are extremely noisy and routing. He was trying to do his meditation and he, you know, kind of trying to visualize the, field, and he was having a really hard time with all the noise. And he was about ready to give up, and he decided, no.
I’m gonna sit here a while longer. And he said, all of a sudden, the merit field became alive. It was like every one of those beings were sitting right in front of him. It wasn’t any kind of an image or anything. They were there Mhmm.
With him in his cell. And he said during that entire time, there was no noise Wow. From the prison. Cool. So Yeah.
So that I mean, that’s kind of an inspiring story Yeah. To, you know And that reminds me too. I’m so glad you brought that up because I was remembering in Finding Freedom, Jarvis Masters and he was talking about how noisy prisons are and he just said, I get up at three o’clock in the morning before any of them are awake. So the boom boxes probably aren’t going on at three thirty or four or even maybe five you know. So that’s another reason why that super early morning hours is such a prime time for your daily practice.
And then people always ask the lamas like, I don’t have time for practice and all this stuff and now I say, get up early. Like you’re probably not going to want to go out after nine o’clock anymore. Go to bed at nine thirty and get up at four thirty or five. Like that’s okay and it seems so crazy. You don’t have to watch the eleven o’clock news.
Nothing happened between seven o’clock and eleven that you need to stay up to watch the eleven o’clock news. You’ll find out about it tomorrow. Go to bed at nine thirty, get up at four or four thirty. You’ll have this wonderful quiet boombox traffic free couple of hours to do your practice. Like really for real.
Know, the early morning hours because of that And also I’ve noticed there isn’t this sort of psychic energy because everybody’s asleep. Like there isn’t this sort of psychic background noise of everybody’s thoughts which you get really I mean I’m not meaning to indicate like with the woo woo lunchbox that I’m at all psychic but you just get kind of in tune with that subtle energy thing. So that’s another reason that really early morning is perfect, you know. So just try it and it may involve changing your life and missing the eleven o’clock news, but believe me, in the greater scheme of things, it’s totally worth it, you know. Okay.
Anything else? Yes. Certain traditions talk not Buddhist traditions, but other, you know Mhmm. Stuff. They talk about a lot food and how food would make it harder for you to like, certain certain things.
I know here, for example Yeah. Yeah. This holiness and what I’ve heard is just not to eat after, like, monastics do. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. But, like, I know not eating, for example, I don’t like this kind of food and this. I don’t know. One thing that Yeah, that’s true.
I’m really glad that you brought that up about the food thing. Because one of the things that I learned in my years of retreat, well for one thing definitely the thing of you know the main meal being at noon and then you take a big break after that because you just can’t meditate well on a full stomach at all. Know, so but you need to eat. So if you eat basically once, like what I would do in retreat in the morning, I would have like a bowl of hot cereal or something light, like a piece of toast or a bowl of hot cereal, tea. And then at noon, would have my main meal, then take a break.
You know, that was my big break of the day and then at the evening, would just have some kind of hot drink like hot soy milk or hot chocolate or tea or something like that. And that’s really really good. Also, my my main meal was really really simple. Two things that are really bad for meditation are sugar and caffeine, know. Drink that mocha frappuccino I keep fantasizing about and then try and sit down and get chine with all that sugar and caffeine, forget it.
Your mind’s gonna be completely You get so sensitive and so especially in a retreat situation, those are two things that are really good to just eliminate. And you’ll notice, know, sometimes for a special treat and you know, I’m a chocoholic and sometimes for a special treat, my caretakers would give me some truffle or something. And I’d eat and I’d be like, you know, just like, oh, just crazy mind. Then I just study because I had all this mental energy. Was you know, I just study something instead of try and meditate.
So you get really So I think really simple. Now one of the things some people have trouble with what’s called lung, you know, this kind of wind imbalance thing. And then to eat heavier foods with more fat kind of brings the energy down. But in general, unless you have that problem, what I noticed in retreat was I wanted to eat really really simple light food, you know. And I ate so much less than I eat since I’ve come out of retreat, you know.
So for sure, if you can for me, even though cooking for myself which I did in the second half of this six years takes a little time but I really preferred it because then I could just do things as simply and as lightly as I wanted to. Lots of vegetables is good, you’re sitting a lot, your digestion, you know, it’s good to have a lot of fiber to keep things moving because you’re sitting a lot. And it’s also really good to do some kind of exercise every day. Prostrations are great because they’re virtue and exercise, know, walks, yoga, whatever to keep moving. But I’m glad you mentioned about the food because it’s really true.
One thing His Holiness says and one of the the things about monastics about eating in the evening is then you go to bed with your stomach full of food and you tend not to be able to get up early. You know, if I eat dinner at night, I can’t get up at three thirty the way I easily could do in retreat if my last meal was at noon and I just had something hot to drink at night, you know. But out of retreat, it’s really harder to fast at night. Like you get a lot of energy for meditation and you eat less and you sleep less. Whenever I come out of retreat like this last time, I just felt like I was starving and exhausted for weeks until my meditative stabilization adjusted.
You know, when you’re in silence and when you’re meditating all the time, you can get by on so little food and sleep, you know. So don’t try and do this extreme thing if you’re in daily life, you know, just for retreat especially though you really can cut back on the food and the sleep and be okay with it. But don’t deprive yourself, we talked about that. Don’t deprive yourself of the rest you need and try and get by on three or four hours of sleep. Sleep enough so that you’re not nodding off on your cushion too.
There’s no benefit in like just being frustrated and exhausted. Like sleep a night. Sleep as much as you need to. Sleep as much as your body needs to. But if you go into a long retreat, you’ll find that it gets you know, you just need less and less sleep.
Yeah. Anything else? Did you pay attention to the hours that you meditated like before dawn and stuff? Did you pay attention to dawn, before lunch? For some reason, I’ve taken that very seriously.
Oh, you mean did I do the four sessions the way they are in the text? Well, I mean, to pay attention to not meditating during sunrise, sunset, and midday and midnight. I didn’t worry so much about that one. But I did do the the four sessions the way they say in the text to have one before dawn and then one in the morning and then one in the afternoon and one in the evening. Like that But you didn’t angst when it I didn’t angst.
No. No. I’ve had enough to angst about that. I felt like it was a minor point of angst. I think it’s some very advanced levels.
The subtle energy shifts when those you know night to day things are happening probably do have a big effect on your subtle channels, but I wasn’t advanced enough to for to have that bother me at all. Yeah. Yeah. I guess for beginners, what kind of a retreat would you recommend? You know, the lamas say mostly for beginners group retreats are great.
Know because you have a retreat leader, you have someone to go to if you have problems, you have a schedule. Know, generally for the first retreat, I’d recommend doing it as a group with somebody that knows what they’re doing then you get used to the routine. You get you know, you get practice then you can go off and do a you know a personal one on your own. The lam rim is always a great topic to do a retreat and there’s ways that you can do lam rim retreats that you can cycle through all the subjects of the lam rim like one session at a time and then it takes about three days to cycle through and you can kind of continue doing like that. If you know you’re going to have a whole long period of time, you could spend like a day on each topic, a week on each topic.
It all depends on the amount of time that you have. But often for example at the end of these ten day courses they have at Tuśita Retreat Center and at Copan at the end of the month long Kopan course, often they’ll have these cycles of three day Lamrim retreats guided you know, to kind of show people how to cycle through like that. So the default answer, you know, analytical meditation on lam rim topics is always a great thing to do. And you can do it in conjunction. There’s a little booklet called A Daily Meditation Practice Based on Śākyamūni Buddha and you can use that as the framework for like the seven limbs and all those preliminaries I talked about, the visualization of the deity, the seven limbs and like that.
And then insert your lamrim meditation into that practice. So that’s a really nice thing to start with that daily practice with Lamrim inside. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really it’s really complete.
It’s got all the preliminaries and everything all in it. Yeah. I’ve I’ve heard some people when they when they do the mantras and I think that Geshe la also had told me because he had sent me off to do an hour of mantras for, you know, this little ceremony I was doing. Yeah. But he said if you get bored, you know, you can read on the topics that you’re doing while you’re doing the mantras.
And somebody had said what they do is they do the mantras and they do lam rim, and they if they’re doing a visualization as a deity, they visualize themselves as a deity going and teaching the lam rim Yeah. An enlightening being Exactly. While they’re doing their Lamrim. And so you can, like, incorporate that Exactly. Yeah.
To Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. And they would do a brief outline and then pick a specific topic and go do a little more detail into one topic. Yeah.
That’s a beautiful way to incorporate the the whole thing because tried that myself. It sounds like sounded like a good idea. Yeah. Because one of the visualizations that often goes along with mantra recitation for these practices is, like, sending out emanation bodies, you know, to benefit all sentient beings. So that’s a beautiful way.
I’d never heard that either, but how beautiful. You can send out these emanation bodies to teach lamrim and then segue into your own little lamrim, you know, as part of that whole bigger visualization. That’s nice, I like that. You’re like kind of incorporated. So your lam rim meditation is the teaching.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, good. In terms of daily practice, I already mentioned before, it’s really good to spend some time just on developing your single point of concentration with an object, okay? It’s also really good to do lamrim meditation every day. And don’t forget the preliminaries.
Know, don’t forget the whole thing that makes it into a whole package. So for daily practice, to do this shock, unless you have all these other daily practice commitments that some of us have more than our share, know, if you don’t have a daily practice yet to use that daily practice based on Śākyamūni Buddha as your daily practice, either precede it with ten minutes of breath awareness meditation or after you build up the visualization of the Buddha, which is part of the practice, do your Shine on that. Like do your single point of concentration on that. And then there’s a section you can do a Lam Rim. So those components, preliminaries, single pointed concentration, and Lam Rim analytical meditation every day is a great vehicle to do a daily practice, okay?
And then you’ll find that your lam rim meditation supports just your motivation to do any of it in the first place and then your single point of concentration, the more you develop that, the more successful you’ll be at your lam rim. They say, Bhāvanākrama has this analogy and he says, it’s like if you plant pomegranates, apples and walnuts all at the same time, then they all ripen and you can make a great fruit salad. Know, so don’t just do single pointed concentration for fifteen years, perfect it and then just begin to do, you know, develop both simultaneously. Okay? That’s a really good way to practice.
Okay? Yeah. How long so for for a safety practice Yeah. How long is it’s a good amount of you know Well for most people most people who you know have a job and householders whatever, it’s hard to sit more than about an hour in the morning. If there’s a way that you could have an hour that you do all those things, know that you’d an hour that you devote to the say the preliminaries take maybe ten minutes of that, you can do single point of concentration for maybe fifteen minutes and then a nice lamrim analytical meditation, that would be awesome.
Like an hour in the morning to do all of that would be great. It’s nice to do practice in the evening too But that sometimes your concentration is not so good. You could maybe do, you know, some mantras like dedicate the merit of your day, kind of review your day, do an analytical meditation on what you’ve done that day, review it, dedicate the merit of whatever virtue you’ve done. You know, it’s nice to have a sitting period but the evening is not so great for developing single point and concentration. So, I just recommend, you know, more for people to do it in the morning.
Now, one student who’s coming in Santa Cruz had a three year old. It was really hard. You know, I was saying meditate in the morning. She’s like, my son gets up at four You know, I can’t. And so for her, she had to adjust it to when her husband came home at night and the husband and the kid would watch TV and then she’d go.
So it’s like she was tireder then but what to do? You know, it was all that she could arrange. So it all depends on your your circumstances I think what you’re able to do. Yeah. Keisha, you’re really quiet.
Are you okay? Any questions? Okay. Yeah. And you’ve covered this actually when was out of the room, so tell me if you did and I’ll exaculate it.
Did you talk about, I know traditionally they say you just pick one object and you stick with that object forever. Oh, good. Thank you. I have heard Yeah. I know one teacher had said that it was okay to change objects, but only after you had stayed with it for a certain amount of time.
Yeah. Like a decent amount of time. Yeah. And then so but I wonder if you have because one thing that I did I started with my breath and actually had very good results with that. Mhmm.
And then I thought oh I should choose a virtuous object and bottomed out like it just the practice you know I’m sure there were other influences as well. So then I tried to go back to the breath and then I mentioned it to Geshe la and Geshe la said no you really should stay because he’s very very traditional. He said no you should always stay and then I thought oh I’ve wrecked it for this lifetime like do I have to like just like wait till next life to start over or can I just Yeah? Start over now with some object some other object. You mean he wanted you to go back and stay on the breath?
He said I shouldn’t have changed objects period. Oh, That’s what I’ve heard. Okay. So there’s a couple of things that I’ve heard. One thing is the reason that they say that is so you don’t do this thing that Lynn was asking about that, you know, you’re kind of getting bored with the single point of concentration switch to the lam rim.
So, you don’t sit in any one session and go, oh, I’m kind of bored with my breath. Okay, I’ll switch to Śākyamūni Buddha, do Śākyamūni Buddha for ten minutes, switch to Tārā, You know, do like that. You know, or even from day to day. I mean, God forbid within one session. But even jumping around from day to day because you’re not going to develop single point of concentration.
Know? One of my teachers said, six months minimum on one object. It doesn’t mean you can’t change ever in your life. Know and I think that extreme to think, oh I’ve blown it for this lifetime. That’s not really what it means.
It’s just for a certain period of time, you’re not really going to make progress unless you stick with the same object. And it’s also the antidote to that distracted mind just sinking, Oh, it’s not going so well. Now, it’s going to be something better. Which I don’t think was what you went through because you heard you know, I want a virtuous object and I’ll switch to something virtuous. Know, the breath is really really easy.
You know, it’s it’s easier than a visualized object. You know, for me it has been also because it’s there, it’s happening, know, it’s less effortful than trying to you know build up a visualization and the eyes and eyelashes and all of this stuff, know. But I think to pick an object and stick with it for a good amount of time, in six months is what I’ve heard is a rule of thumb to make sure that you’re just It’s not just your distracted mind kicking in, you know. But if for example, you know, you have a daily like some of us have talked about having a daily sādhana practice and then you do self generation as the daily and then for sure you could do that for the rest of your life and that would be great. Like if you have one main practice that you do every day and that’s the object that you’ve chosen, then there’d be no need to switch around at all, I think.
Yeah. Yeah. But I don’t think it needs to be as absolute as like for the rest of your because actually this this friend of mine who started with the breath, her lama was very traditional and she felt like she could never switch her into breath so she did her breath for like ten years. And I don’t think that’s you know this other lama’s like, no, that’s not what it means at all. Like that’s not that extreme that you you know you pick when you’re not even a Buddhist yet and you’re just gone to your first class and then you have to stick with that for the rest of your life like that doesn’t make sense at all.
Yeah. Did you have something? Yeah. Does it matter that the breath is not really a mental object? I mean I I know it works as an antidote but I mean they actually just make it your object of Yeah.
And that’s that’s definitely a point and I’ve actually There’s one commentator that I’ve read who said it’s not even one single object because it’s changing all the time. It’s impermanent. Know, it’s like the breath is going in and going out. But it is also mentioned in all of the literature as one of the valid objects that you can pick. But I’ve had that same qualm too and I’ve never actually asked a lama.
It would be interesting to ask that question and just say it’s not mental so what’s the deal? It’s just some some physical thing. But yeah. Yeah. I’m not sure about that but it’s definitely one of the It’s sort of the only one that I’ve ever seen in the literature that isn’t really just a mental object, either a concept that you focus on or a visualized image.
It’s sort of the only one mentioned in all the lists that is like some kind of physical thing and you’re not really analyzing it like you you are. I mean, sometimes you can go into an analytical thing about the impermanence of the body and then just focus on the impermanence of it, but that’s not really what’s happening with the breath, it’s more of the sensation. But that would be a really good question to ask somebody who knows a lot more than me which is almost everybody. But yeah yeah that’s a good point. Yeah.
Janet. But, like, I was just talking about the breath, and I hadn’t really thought about it before. But, like, some of unless I’m wrong, it seems like some of the more advanced meditators when they get into a state of a certain state of meditation, the breath almost suspends itself. Mhmm. And then you your object Yeah.
Will no longer be there. Exactly. So No. It’s true. So It’s a really good point.
So so What happens if you pick that and then Because you because you withdraw your your senses to a point where even the breath relatively Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good point. I’ve never seen that specific question addressed in the text, but that’s a really good point.
And it’s true. There is a point. But that’s like so, you know, that’s so far advanced that I doubt if you’d still be using the breath at all. I mean And actually that’s usually a result of doing meditations with the subtle body too. So then it may be that certain points of the subtle body would be more of the object at that point than the physical external breath.
But that’s yeah. Would be like a subtle wind that you meditate on as opposed to the gross breath. The gross breath. Yeah. Yeah.
Because there are practices where you’re then rather than the gross external breath, it’s more of the subtle body. But whether it just shifts naturally as your practice progresses, that’s another really interesting If followed the breath through all the way through, do does it become then maybe of of your object becomes a subtle wind Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to Ask and let me know what he says.
Maybe we’ll let have that one. Yeah. I’ll bring her along. Yeah. That’s a that’s a really good point.
Did you have something, Joker? Once you once you reach, you it doesn’t matter the doesn’t really matter the object, or you can really focus on it. Oh, then. Yeah. I mean, once you’ve developed it, then anything that you train your mind on, you you can just really have a a singular It’s just during training that you that it’s good to do this thing like stick with one object for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. There’s one in the very back. For doing a daily lam rim meditation, is that in the practice? Is there a good one to do every day?
You know, there’s a review meditation in that practice. So it’s a prayer Is it the three principle? I think it’s the Three Principal Aspects of the path. It has the prayer with all of the points in it, so it’s that review meditation. But what you could do is right before doing that one, insert you know one of the ones from the other books like How to Meditate by Kathleen McDonald.
Sangye khadro has a lot in them and that book Spiritual Friends has some really wonderful Lamrim meditation. So there are lots of ones, you know, from other sources that then you could use. That that book in itself doesn’t have a lot of guided lam rim meditations but there’s other sources for those. Anything else? Final, final, final.
So, inspired. A A book to recommend? Yes. From Kopan, you can get Venerable Karen’s. Oh, that’s a good one too.
Yeah. It says outline for I’m like, whatever. I don’t, you know Yeah. That that’s good. So it would be fun.
It’s just fun. Yeah. So it’s about three pages and it’ll just What’s it? Bullet points. Yeah.
We got it here. Oh, great. Yeah. It’s the spiral bound, it used to have an orange cover, maybe it still does. And this is by this Swedish nun who lives at Kopan Monastery and has been teaching ten day courses for beginners for God like twenty years or something you know.
Been teaching these ten day lam rim courses and has guided probably more lam rim meditations than any western sangha in the history of the universe quite possibly. So if there’s anyone who’s an expert in Lamrim meditation, it’s her. So that’s a really good one. Yeah and it’s all just the little outline and so you can just cycle through Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Last call for questions. Oh. Keisha has a question quick. Pass the microphone back before she changes her mind. Just kidding.
Don’t do it in a couple seconds. You’re gonna wonder if I’ve actually been in a hospital. Analytical meditation makes sense to me. The single pointed I I there’s a huge disconnect. There’s something that I don’t get.
Mhmm. So I sit down, and, you know, I I try to focus on the breath. And I I mean, I know that focusing on the breath is just a step. It’s one of the tools to get you to Yeah. Something I’m really familiar with in mind.
Blah blah blah. Mhmm. I get that. But when I sit down, it’s like, yeah. I know I’m breathing.
I’ve been breathing all my mind. But Yeah. Something there’s a huge disconnect from me, I haven’t figured out how to fix it. So so and so I avoid the meditation Doing it. Yeah.
Because I don’t know. Well, basically lots of courses. I just don’t there’s something that I just don’t get when you sit down. Yeah. You start this.
Breath. Maybe need a different object. You know, maybe you need an object that’s more meaningful for you, like a, you know, visualized image of the body of a Buddha. I mean, maybe what’s happening for you is like your breath just doesn’t make sense because it’s not a virtuous object and you’re kind of thinking instinctively, why should I spend my time? Sure.
In and out, in and out. Big deal. I’ve been doing this my whole life. Like, it would be interesting to try maybe doing you know that Śākyamūni Buddha meditation or whatever and really use that as the object and see if it shifts for you because it may be a motivational problem that you just don’t see why. I mean that’s almost what I’m hearing when you say it is like big deal the breath.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is really easier for beginners but it may just be that because it’s not meaningful for you, it doesn’t give you that intensity. It’s not the Harry Potter on the edge of your seat thing for you because you’re like big deal. And you need that to be able to really develop Shine, so you need an object you can engage with. So try, you know, one of the bodies of the Buddha and just see if it’s more compelling for you.
Sounds like the breath just doesn’t isn’t compelling. Were focusing on Tārā. Yeah. I mean, I I can you know, I’m there already. I’m sitting down.
I’m like, alright. Hey, Tārā. Yeah. Yeah. I I I don’t understand how to do mean, there’s just Keep going back.
I mean, you really are already at level number, you know, four where you’re not losing it at all, the point is to train the mindfulness, train the introspection. So use the object to train your mind, know, the introspection or vigilance that tells when you’re off and gets you back on and then the mindfulness part of your mind that actually brings you back, know, that’s it. And then work on you know, making the object more clear, more sharp, getting those qualities of the fixation, the clarity and the intensity because those can all be improved. See where you are in that list of nine and use those powers to get yourself up to the next level. You know because unless you are at the point where it’s perfect, you never lose it, it’s clear and it’s totally intense and compelling, you’ve got a ways to go.
You’re not there yet. You know? And so even though you kind of go, okay, how do I relate to this? It’s to just develop more of those qualities of clarity and intensity. You know, you can make it better and you can make it clearer and more compelling.
And then you’ll start to feel all of those effects. So maybe part of it is not understanding the benefits because there’s a little bit of I’m hearing a little bit of like why should I bother kind of thing which is that lay low a little bit. I mean you’re sitting down on the cushion but still it’s like you’re not really motivated. So if you really think about the benefits especially in terms of developing the intensity of it you know and the clarity and then just think, wow, once I developed an entara then boom, emptiness. Turn that laser beam of you know focus onto something like emptiness and you’ve just cut through the root of saṃsāra.
Know so maybe more study and more meditation like preliminary meditation on just the benefits of it to get yourself inspired to do it. That’s kind of what I’m sensing from what you’re saying. And be consistent. And be consistent, you know every day. And then when you notice yourself going up through the levels, it’s really cool.
You’re like wow, I was on three. You know one trick you can do is write down in a book your meditation every day. Like write down what’s going on. Are you at level two or are you at level three? And then you can really see the progress and you do it every day and it’s like, okay, you’re going to be at level three for six months, that’s cool.
Then you start getting a little bit of four creeping in that you’re not losing the object at all. Wow. Progress. You know, so track your progress and just make a note of yours, you know, every day. What’s going on?
What what was your object? How did it go? What was the problem? Was it distraction or was it dullness? Also make notes about like what did you eat that day?
You know, is it going better because I don’t eat dinner anymore? How much sleep did you get? You know, be a detective for your meditation practice to figure out what works for you. That would be a really good idea and then you’ll get inspired and you’re not just kind of plopping down and every day having what feels like this totally unique experience. You can really track and fine tune it and see what works for you in terms of the environment, physical conditions, diet, sleep, all that stuff.
So that would be a really good idea. See, you guys are plants. Know, you ask these questions that remind me of things that I meant to say at like two o’clock and just totally forgot about. But yeah, the daily log thing is a good idea. Yeah.
Well, there are six advantages mentioned in the literature for using the mind as an object. And I probably can’t remember all six off the top of my head but I can remember I think a couple of them. One is it’s so much less easy to get distracted if you’re using your mind as an object, you know. It’s just a more compelling object of your meditation to use your mind, you know, as an object. And another thing is by using the mind as the object and by meditating on the nature of mind itself, you gain a lot more insight into how your mind works and what the nature of mind is.
One of our problems is thinking that our delusions are us. You know? So, it’s sort of a key actually penetrating towards selflessness. Know? And the emptiness of the I.
Because you see that your mind is not You know, these defilements are adventitious. So that’s one of the advantages. Can I remember any of the other ones? Can you remember? We had that list of six that time years ago.
Know, I can email them to you. If you give me your email, I’d be happy because I know exactly what they are, I can visualize them and I’m just spacing out but there’s like definitely six advantages to using the mind in the literature for Mahāmudrā. And you need to get really good training. Like what happens is people who do this kind of meditation, there’s all of these classes in the monastery on mind and mental factors you know. There’s a zillion words in Sanskrit and Tibetan for mind and there are all of these subtleties of different things.
So usually people who are doing these meditations have studied the mind in incredible detail before they sit down. So they don’t do this thing that you see westerners do of go, oh, I’m just gonna relax into the primordial nature of mind. They don’t know what they’re You know, they have no idea and that’s like Dzogchen, it sounds so easy but it’s There’s a great book if you’re interested in Zogchen, there’s this unbelievably brilliant book as all of his holiness the Dalai Lama’s books are and I think it’s just called Zogchen and it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant and he goes into all of the myths and the, you know, the problems with it and fine tunes and what all the terminology means. Cause part of our problem is the terminology.
There’ll be something that sound a phrase that sounds so simple in English and we’ll go, Oh, I know what all those words mean. And it’s really the translation of this incredible technical term and he really goes into that in a lot of detail in that book. So if you’re more interested, that one And there’s this also another brilliant book that I often say if I had like one book to take to a desert island with me, it would be the Geluga Kagyu tradition of Mahāmudrā also by his holiness the Dalai Lama. And I can’t recommend that book enough for anyone who’s It’s called the Geluk slash Kagyu tradition of Mahāmudrā and you’ve got that here, right? I don’t know.
Maybe? Okay. Anyway, it’s published by Snow Lion and it’s by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. And it’s completely brilliant and it gives all of this background and exactly what Mahāmudrā is and all about the nature of mind. He’s he’s His Holiness is teaching on a root text and an auto commentary by the first Pänchen Lama, Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen, who’s the one who wrote the Lama Chopa Guru Puja that we do, you know, every two weeks at Sai Zhing Ling and at all of our you do it every morning.
Okay. You’re way beyond that. So it’s this beautiful commentary and his holiness is just like I say, if I’d won I have so many book darts in this book. Know, it’s this fat and I just it’s like completely it would never make it through a metal detector. I’ve got like all these brilliant passages.
So those are two things I’d recommend if you wanna know more. Right. When I was doing the Samatha practice with Alan Wallace Yeah. He had us do a couple of different ones. It seems kinda similar to this.
One was I can’t remember the exact name of it, but it was, like, just allowing whatever appeared to appear without censoring it at all. But he described it as kinda like taking an elevator down through a building and just seeing all the different activities that are going on in each floor. Oh. It is so yeah. That’s cool.
And then and then he described Shamatha without a sign as going down the same elevator, but it would be a closed elevator. Oh. So you don’t see anything. So it’s just nothingness almost. Just just that one pointed concentration, but without an object, basically.
And and both of those seemed similar to this kind of looking at the mind awareness itself. The first one having lots of potential content, but not getting, he said, without clinging and without distraction. So whatever comes up, just observing it. Yeah. I guess similar to kind of the Theravadin Vipassana kind of mindfulness.
And then the other one, the Samatha without a sign, just really being able to be present with awareness itself. So so it sounded like what you were referring to with these as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Good. Well, he’s he’s studied with a lot of Zogchen masters which I haven’t had the opportunity to do apart from some reading. I haven’t actually studied with, you know, Zogchen with teachers. It’s something that I’m interested to pursue at some point, you know, and it’s something that’s not Mahāmudrā is definitely taught in the Gelugpa tradition, but not so much Dzogchen.
So it’s not something we get an opportunity to do so much at our centers. Yeah. Yeah, good, thank you. Thank you for that reflection on your experience with Alan, yeah. Yes.
You guys are so good. Well trained. You mean with microphones? Yeah. Well, everything.
When Keisha was asking, when you were discussing and kind of answering about the different levels with a question, It came to mind, like, in the first so the second one says one to two minutes. But then when you get to the, say, third or fourth and and you’re trying to determine, well, you know, am I at this level, like, you’re making Yeah. Is I mean, it has to be more than a minute or two. So so how do you how do you determine a length of time, like, that qualifies Yeah. As a level.
Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because Right.
It has to be more than a minute or two. Right. Right. Right. Well, I would say I mean, just off the top of my head, and this doesn’t have a scriptural reference, but I would say, like one of the periods of time that’s mentioned Oh, and this is another thing.
To start with short Frequent short sessions. You know, this is another thing. When you’re really trying to do this even in retreat, they say twelve and a half minute sessions and do up to eighteen a day if you’re doing in retreat, okay? So I would say based on that, you know, if you’re able for twelve and a half minutes, for example, fourth level, you don’t lose the object at all. For that twelve and a half minute short session, that would be number four.
I think not You know, obviously, if you don’t lose the object for just two minutes, you’re only on level two. So I’d say for any for like a fifteen minute period of time, if you qualify for one of these you could say that you’re at that level and that’s one of the I mean they say twelve and a half minutes but usually people divide it up into fifteen minute sessions. And then between those short sessions and again this is for retreat or daily practice for example, if you meditate for forty five minutes, break it up into three fifteen minute segments. Now, in between, don’t get up and make a cup of tea and do all this business. Just lose, you know, just drop the focus on the object.
Open your eyes, stretch, look around, don’t get up, know, just give your mind a break for like a minute off the object and then go right back. Okay. So that’s what they mean when they say do a lot of short sessions, a whole big period, you know. It doesn’t mean you get up every twelve and a half minutes, you know. So say you’re gonna sit for forty five minutes or an hour, you can break up your shine time into little segments and then just relax the concentration on the object and then go go back to it again.
Does that does that answer the question? Yeah. I hadn’t really thought about it. Yeah. I hadn’t really thought about it.
Yeah, yeah. No, I’m glad you asked that because I forgot to mention the twelve and a half minute thing. That’s another thing. Yeah. And again, there’s so much detail in this book.
For those of you that are interested, those two books that I mentioned about Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen of course are great and this book is great. And obviously, know, in one day I wasn’t This is a year’s worth of teachings on this subject. So this is lots and lots of detail in here. Accessible. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s like you’re just sitting there with him. And by the way, Gen Lamrimpa Rinpoche, this wonderful lama, also with Alan Wallace, there’s a book called Realizing Emptiness that’s one of the most accessible in my mind books to really understand the view of emptiness. And it’s the teachings of Gen Lamrimpa and Alan Wallace and it’s called Realizing Emptiness and it’s just brilliant. Totally brilliant.
So I would highly recommend that one about emptiness too. Okay. Anything else? Well, it’s almost five o’clock. We made it even without meditating.
I’m so sorry. Everybody’s tired now. I don’t think we can do it. Okay. So let’s just take a minute to sit quietly and dedicate the merit of this day.
Okay. Spend a lot of time really trying to understand how to develop this single pointed concentration that’s so necessary for being able to progress on the path. So think about the incredible virtue. We could have been doing anything today, but we came here to really try and understand this crucial subject. So we’ve generated incredible amounts of virtue.
We’ll be able to put it in our karmic bank account towards our future enlightenment. So dedicate all of that merit towards being able to become a being that can send out infinite emanations in all directions and benefit all beings in whatever way they need. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. That was great fun.
You know, sometimes as a teacher, I just feel like everybody’s just Buddha’s emanating to pretend to ask me all these questions and, like, get me to think about these things. So thank you for your emanation bodies. I just wanna thank you so much for coming. And I also wanted to announce that is teaching on, Dying Well, on Saturday, the second of, June. And you’re also gonna give a evening talk on the twenty ninth of May on retreat.
Retreat. So more about this night. Yeah. Tuesday night. So it’ll be a lot of the stuff that we’ve actually been talking about the conditions for retreat and more in terms about how to make you we’ll just keep asking you to go back.
Will Madeline. Where? You’re be going to Vermont? I know. You’re sweat.
Yes. You’re unclear, You’re retreating? No. I don’t